Full transparency by Quente

Strange...

Read Strange...

Celebrimbor frowned thoughtfully at the last passengers to debark from the ship -- on unsteady legs, perhaps used to the sea, they looked small. Children of men, come by grace of the Valar on some errand? No rumor of these passengers had come to Tol Eressëa, no matter how porous the final pronouncement had proven, from the day of the Oath.

About to turn away, Celebrimbor was caught by something strange. Small they looked, and yet, unbelievably, somehow like kin. He took a step nearer, and then another, away from his friend Elrond who was yet greeting his wife on the long stone dock that sank its foot into the bay.

And one of the two children looked up at him, and lo! Celebrimbor could see that this was no child at all, nor yet one of Aulë’s folk. Pushing down the small twinge of disappointment, he saw that the short old man strode forward, and there was a light of something in his eye -- what was it?

And his friend ran after him, crying out a name, and catching him before he could quite cross the distance.

In Westron, dredged from the depth of Celebrimbor’s memory: “No, Bilbo! I told you -- it is not his fault!” 

Fault? Celebrimbor came to a halt before the creatures, and looked from face to face, baffled. At last he said, in Westron serviceable enough, although undoubtedly antiquated to these ears, “Welcome to these shores, ye who traveled the sea road. What wroth have you with me -- is it with my family, as of old?”

“No,” said the older-looking of the two, “It is just with you. You see, my nephew has spent the past few years cleaning up a mess you left for us in Middle-Earth, Celebrimbor Curufinion, and I would like you to see how it left him.”

A ... mess? Setting his jaw, Celebrimbor turned to look upon the younger being, and suddenly realized why he’d been so drawn to them. In this nephew, especially, it was almost as if he was seeing into a clear glass -- once full of light -- now empty and drained, with nothing but shadow left behind.  Shadow, and pain, and the memory of something fair, once. And almost -- as if reluctant to give up his last secret -- the deep trace of memory that Celebrimbor carried from his own forge.

Struck, and shaken, Celebrimbor sank before them to his knees. “I see now,” he said. “I see now.”