L'appel du vivre by Angamaite

Y.T., Tirion

“What do you think would happen if I jumped?” Tyelkormo had asked him, once, sitting with his typical precarious calm on the ledge of one of the tower walkways of Finwë’s royal palace. He wore a wicked grin (the world predatory would only come to be associated with his brother much later, when he first saw him tear the throat out of an orc and wipe the blood from his mouth with a laugh, although his inclinations had never been particularly veiled) already then, but there was also something in his eyes that yawned like a crack. Sick curiosity, or else. 

Curufinwë had only frowned. He stood with both feet firmly on the ground, and contented with leaning on the railing with his elbows. 

“ You’d break your legs, and then burden us all with your unceasing complaints of boredom for endless weeks while you’re bed-bound.” he replied, deadpan. He was not quite so deadpan when he saw his brother lift his hands without warning--

But it was only to tuck his hair into place, and then fall back, teasing a frown out of him with a low chuckle on his breath. Curufinwë’s heart could’ve taken that cue to settle back into his chest instead of hammering away somewhere in his throat. 

However, the eyes that bored into him, silver and wild in Telperion’s waxing light, were still bright like two knives. 

Somewhere under the pressure of their stare, they were tearing a hole into the sky. That hole had the same shape as whatever that made him think about jumping in the first place -- it must have. It didn’t suit the smile he wore alongside it, but who could ever lecture one of Fëanáro’s sons about undue earnestness?

“Dash my skull against the flagstones, if I failed to right myself and landed in a way that’s particularly unlucky,” he tilted his head, ears dropping slack with only a subtle twitch. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen an Elda’s cerebral matter -- have you?” 

Curufinwë squinted suspiciously in his direction.

Tyelkormo’s fascination with death took odd forms, sometimes. And he so loved to partake fully of life in spite, or perhaps because of it, even more than the rest of them! Riding hard, running with wild abandon, climbing the tallest peaks, jousting and dueling without ever flinching away from a challenge, caring neither for the dirt on his white doublet nor the scathing glances and comments calling such behaviour unbecoming of a prince -- but also not for Finwë’s subtle winces when their grandfather watched him bloody his hands in skinning a catch or his nose in tumbling from horseback, Amil’s concerned glances at the anatomical journals that can’t have been drafted by guesswork, the tight white line of Atar’s mouth after announcing he would be joining Oromë’s hunt before he was even of age. 

Announcing; he never asked. He got that one from Fëanáro himself without doubt.

How one could walk without sound or shadow, and yet move through life in one uproar after another was just as much a mystery as whatever fascination he found in the Hunt and in high places.

But Curufinwë obliged him, this time. It was quieter up here, where the noise of dancing courtiers and the inane musicological scuffle between Kanafinwë and Findaráto couldn’t be heard, and he sorely needed the silence; Tyelkormo must’ve known that when he graciously offered him a getaway journey -- one excuse or another, they were old compadres in escapism. 

Still, he was infuriating sometimes. The Hunt couldn’t be good for one’s existence in polite society (and Curufinwë himself was hardly the best and most well-composed judge of that) with their visceral practices and ritual paring of gesture and manner to the barest necessities, regardless of whether Tyelkormo was blessed or not. Curufinwë was just as academically curious about what constant exposure to adrenaline and animal carcasses did to the psyche as he was annoyed by the blunt directness, the animalistic obsession of it. Obsession always has sharp barbs, moreso for one that gives himself away to a craft or to devotion heart and soul all; the incomprehensible part was that adrenaline and pursuit could be more pleasing than creation despite being completely intangible. Tyelkormo was no less bright than the rest of them, yet he chose to throw his academic mantle in linguistics and anatomy into the wind after his curiosity had been satisfied, and decided to return to chasing after ephemeral stags and strange beasts in Oromë’s tow instead of pursuing an academic breakthrough, which was less than what could be said even for bloody Findekáno, and Curufinwë had never considered him a paragon of academic brilliance.

But he was also his brother, no matter how much Curufinwë wanted to knock his head against the wall in hopes of making sense of it. 

That had to count for something.

He sighed, hackles rising and settling again, then raked through his hair. “No, I have not. And I’m not interested in doing it now, because at this height, the velocity would cause an impact that would crush most of the underlying tissues, or else the brain's structural integrity would be disrupted by shards of bone resulting from a splintered cranium, and I’d never learn what absurd structural anomaly makes you wake up before first Mingling every day.”

To his own surprise, his voice didn’t quiver with the pace of his heartbeat, not even once.

A high wind was picking up.

Tyelkormo laughed again, feral and hungry yet sated on good humour at the same time. Irony kept his eyes narrow in that scathing way that only the two of them shared; it could easily be mistaken for scorn, and indeed it was not without necessary derision, but what passed for good humour between them had never been without teeth.

“ I’d better watch out, if that’s where your ambitions lie, and keep to the walkways.” The look he gave him was withering. “My skull is too exemplary to let it suffer whatever shoddy journeyman goldwork you’d subject it to for examination purposes.”

Some part of him hated to see Tyelkormo’s boots hanging over the yawning nothingness beneath the walkway, and wanted to pull him off, make him swear that he wouldn’t talk about such things even in jest again -- something of Finwë’s caution and pained looks shot towards his pale hair when he must’ve thought no one was looking, suspiciously alike to the glances he sometimes gave to Míriel’s tapestries, must’ve rubbed off on him over time -- but he wouldn’t cull that brutal, unbidden honesty of his, for he had learned to love it too well in a world of careful preamble and veiled implications. If that meant putting up with something visceral now and then, so be it. Atar had always advised them to excise meekness from their hearts early. 

He would learn to appreciate it in time. 

They stood there alone for a while longer afterwards. Watching the barely visible pinpricks of stars upon the eastern reaches of the sky, breathing in the clear, cool air blowing down from the Pelóri whose peaks shone brilliantly silver in Telperion’s glow, the hollow ring of that strange question slowly petered out somewhere in the direction of the sea and left behind only companionable silence.

And then, one time while they were once again escaping the perils of court life on the high haunts of forlorn balconies, he did it. He tipped his head  into the courtyard and jumped. 

Curufinwë threw himself against the ledge with a cry -- he couldn’t breathe, his lungs were a vice and he could not reach his brother or stop cursing himself for failing to -- or, rather, wanting to loose one, if the words had not frozen in an aborted state halfway up his throat, and all he could do was watch the ghost of a silver visage float through the air against the deadly inevitability of the courtyard’s tiles.

But Tyelkormo landed on the balls of his feet with a roll and dashed off into the darkness of the bushes, laughing.

Chapter End Notes

This was originally meant to be part of a longer work as a flashback, but I've decided to also post it on its own.

Originally posted on Ao3.