Súlimëo Quentar: March Stories by Elleth

The Artisan's Daughter

A change of heart for Nerdanel also means a change of history.

AU, a series of five drabbles according to Open Office.

This is how it goes: Mahtan forges, and Cemnarë potters, spinning the wheel with steady click, pulling shapes from clay over her bulging belly. In the evenings, her husband reads to them, and it is thus that Nerdanel, once born, grows into a bright-eyed child grasping at books and light, and playing with stone and metal. Cemnarë laughs, picking her up from a patch of light, amid piles of pebbles, fast asleep. Her girl, waking, joins the laughter; mother and daughter much alike, loving laughter, thought and crafts, and both are soon called wise before their time, Istarnis and Istarnië.

-

Cemnarë opens doors and windows, dusts and tidies, and finds no time to potter. No matter, there's greenware enough to dry while the house readies for Prince Fëanáro's arrival. To work as an apprentice, since Mahtan will have him, and he'll have to grow used to the clutter that a family brings. Nerdanel is all aflutter, the talk of the town has turned her head enough to wax lyrical over handsomeness, although she has never seen the Prince in person – and dreams of love, unwise though she knows that is. She is neither earnest nor wise all the time.

-

Fëanáro adjusts easily, works well in every field, earns praise. Cemnarë has more time for pottery. Sitting shoulder-on-shoulder with her in the studio are Nerdanel and Fëanáro, working on their own designs, and stealing glances. Nerdanel sneaks out a hand, corrects flaws that Fëanáro overlooked, and earnestly returns to her own work. Her daughter is skilled, but her heart is not in pottery – it is, much more, with him, and unfulfilled.

In the evening, alone with her daughter, Cemnarë cautions: "Don't lose heart, Istarnië – but however much you yearn, remember – not even here, love is always returned."

-

Cemnarë's warnings fall on fertile ground – and come merited, as well. There is some brief romance, she hears from Nerdanel, some stolen kisses, related with a girlish blush and laugh – and then, "He is not for me. I love him, but his first love is his craft. I will not be second-best, someone to turn to only when he tires of his forge and its creations."

A surprise indeed, but she knows to trust her daughter's heart. Fëanáro, wroth to be so shunned, departs, leaving autumn burning the leaves brown in his wake.

Cemnarë sighs, firing her pottery.

-

Cemnarë finds Nerdanel sleeping in her patch of light, and gently shakes her child awake, though child is hardly the right word now. She is a woman grown, and stubbornly unmarried, helping to glaze and burnish pottery, pumps bellows for her father, chisels her statues and ignores the gossip of Fëanáro obliging, and marrying some highborn lady. "I had a dream – if we had married, all would have come to darkness, and a star to save us." Cemnarë looks at her with pity, a daughter realizing that was all she ever really wanted.

In the kiln, her pottery breaks.

Chapter End Notes

Written for the following prompts:

N32: Last Lines: And realized that was all she ever really wanted.

O64: All OCs, All the Time: An Artisan; AU Card: Identify a crossroads in the life of a character you like writing about - write a story in which s/he goes the other route.; Book Titles: The importance of being earnest; Here We Come A-Caroling: If the Fates Allow; Colours: Brown