Radiance by StarSpray

Maitimo was crossing the courtyard, thinking of lunch, when his father burst out of his workshop, where he had been holed up for the last several days, neither eating nor, as far as anyone could tell, sleeping. “Maitimo!” he cried, eyes alight with the fire of success. “Come! Come and see!” He did not wait for an answer, but seized Maitimo’s hand and dragged him into the workshop. The windows were shuttered, and it was very dark. As Maitimo blinked, his eyes adjusted to the gloom, and he saw a wooden chest sitting on the workbench. It was a beautiful chest, inlaid with jewels and enamels in greens and golds and silvers, representing the Trees.

“It is beautiful, Atar,” he said, “but why is it dark?”

“Hm? Oh, this chest—your compliments should go to your brother. Curufinwë made this for me; but that is not what I have to show you! Look!” Fëanor drew him closer, and carefully lifted the lid of the chest.

Maitimo ’s breath caught in this throat as brilliant light filled the room, as though they stood beneath Laurelin and Telperion at the Mingling. Nestled on pale blue velvet were three jewels, each many-faceted and as big as his fist. It was as though Fëanáro had somehow plucked three of Varda’s brightest stars from the sky.

He was reaching for them before he could recall himself, but when he would have drawn back F ëanáro said, “It’s all right. They are meant to be handled. You cannot break them.”

So Maitimo picked one up. It was surprisingly cool beneath his fingers, but it warmed quickly to the heat of his hands, and flared with many colors as he turned it over. “Atar,” he said, still breathless.

“I have shown this work, these Silmarils, to no one else, yet,” Fëanáro said. He smiled and placed his hand on Maitimo’s shoulder, a comforting and warm weight. “I am glad that you were the first.”

It was very dark when they finally stopped, far from the encampment of the Valar. Heavy clouds obscured the stars and moon, and the air smelled of coming rain mingled with the sulfur and fires of the still-shifting lands. Maglor held the chest bearing the Silmarils; it was plain and unadorned, but well made.

Maedhros was tired—bone-achingly weary. But the Oath no longer whispered to him in the back of his mind, pushing and prodding him toward actions that, once upon a time, he could not have fathomed, let alone stomached. He let his sword fall from his fingers, clattering onto the stone. Maglor flinched at the sound, and set the casket down more carefully. It was yet hard to believe they had really done it, had really come away with both the Silmarils and their lives. Maedhros took a deep, shuddering breath and deliberately turned his thoughts away from the memory of E önwë’s face, stern and yet grieved, as he watched them go.

For a few moments neither of them moved to open it. Finally, Maedhros reached forward and pushed up the lid. Light, glorious and radiant and so bright he had to look away for a moment, spilled out of the chest. It was the silver-gold of the Mingling Trees, and it was starlight and sunlight and moonlight, and firelight and laughter and a youth they could never return to. When Maedhros looked at Maglor he saw tears on his face, and realized that he also was weeping.

Only two Silmarils lay in the chest, on the somewhat-tattered folds of what looked like someone ’s cloak. “One for each of us,” Maglor said after a moment, voice rough and hoarse.

Maedhros both yearned and dreaded to touch them. He knew what would happen. But he reached in anyway, to close his fingers around one of the jewels. It flared, brighter than the noonday Sun.

It burned.