When the Sixth Day Comes by sallysavestheday

When the Sixth Day Comes

Read When the Sixth Day Comes

Nolofinwë never learns what prompts it. A word from Rúmil, perhaps, or Mahtan, or a flare of their own father’s regret that translates, as it sometimes does, to a request: Fëanáro, can’t you try to love the children?

He finds himself suddenly in his half-brother’s company, subject to that unnerving focus in a way that is utterly unfamiliar: Fëanáro is looking at him, at him, with curiosity. With interest. All that burning attention is his, and it is exhilarating.

With the key that is his brother’s name, they enter any salon that interests him, entangling themselves in rich, delicious debates on linguistics, law, engineering, literature. They immerse themselves in the markets – not, as Finwë does, with a great swan down the alleys and a beneficent nod to the shopkeepers whose works he patronizes, but diving deep into the smaller lanes of artisans, asking question after question about vision and process, testing and tasting and wallowing in the sheer pleasure of craft. In the company of these artists, Fëanáro laughs, Nolofinwë learns, to his surprise. His humor is bright and enticing, enveloping those with whom he shares it in warmth, inspiring camaraderie, loyalty. Love. Nolofinwë rises to it as to a warm hand on the back of his neck. He settles into Fëanáro’s hold.

On one warm afternoon, Fëanáro takes a turn into an area of the market that Nolofinwë has never visited. Fine arts of hand in thread adorn the doorways: embroidery, panels of lace, all the delicate work that Nolofinwë associates with Fëanáro’s pain. His brother is well known in the district, it seems – weavers and knitters and lacemakers greet Míriel’s son with warm familiarity, extending that welcome to Nolofinwë without design. They take tea in a small shop draped floor to ceiling in tapestry, winding their people’s history out of cloth, gold and silver thread glimmering in the half dark. Stars over Cuiviénen, shining. Fëanáro guides Nolofinwë’s hands as he learns the small stitches, an art he has always avoided – out of fear, out of shame? Bent over the delicate work together, they share an easy smile.

The strange dreamtime reaches its peak when Fëanáro opens his forge. Nolofinwë himself is no mean smith – Finwë has ensured it – and the complexity and innovation of Fëanáro’s workshop is intoxicating. The fine tools for jewelcraft, the storeroom of rare metals, the keen white flame that burns hotter and more pure than any he has ever seen…Nolofinwë’s Noldor heart sings at the craft of it, the beauty in making. The joy.

Fëanáro draws Nolofinwë after him into a locked room behind the forge. Both keys and words of power hold it closed. All along the walls are blades of beaten metal in curious designs. They are leaflike and eerie in the half-light, simmering with some strange foresight, deadly and calm.

Nolofinwë’s breath catches in his chest. He both wants and dreads the blades. Fëanáro’s eyes are bright, his cheeks hectic with excitement, as he takes one down. “Look, Nolo,” he says, laying the point against his own neck, grinning, “See how they shine?”

Fëanáro’s interest does not last, and their brief entanglement falls away soon after. Age and time and bitterness build up between them, like baffles, and they will never be this close again. But Nolofinwë is haunted by something unfinished, some interrupted act of making that he cannot name.

When the bright blade dips to his throat, at last, he knows.