The Election Farce of Nargothrond: Of Dumbness, Treachery, and Brotherly Love by Dawn Felagund

Chapter 4: Finrod Finds Celebrimbor

Chapter 4: Finrod Finds Celebrimbor

Finrod swung his feet out of his bed, detangling himself from silk sheets that slipped like warm water from his skin, and sighed. Unease sat in his belly like a block of undigested cheese. His thoughts whirled faster than a thousand fluttering birds, and whenever they settled long enough to allow him to sleep, a new worry charged into their midst like an obnoxious child, sending them all aflutter once more. He sighed again and rubbed at his eyes, dislodging an eyelash that lay like a slender black tehta on his thumb before he flicked it away with some impatience and sighed again, but these usual remedies were fruitless tonight. Suppressing the urge to indulge in another sigh, he stuffed his feet in the warm flocculence of his bedroom slippers, shivering with chilly delight as he pulled a satin robe the color of the sky in early evening over his arms, and set out in search of a glass of wine.

The halls of his private apartment were quiet, and the whisper of his slippers against the lusciously deep carpet soughed gently like the sea upon the crystal sands of Aman. He could call any of his servants, he knew, and they would come willingly and serve him whatever he desired, but he could just as easily uncork an old bottle, forgo the glass and settle on the chaise on his balcony that overlooked the city square, and watch the lamplight play in the fountains. As he walked, he pondered where his tastes in wine lay this night. He could have a raspberry vintage, a deceptively sweet spirit that gave a tiny nip just as it settled in his throat, spilling saliva that flowed forth with all the catharsis of tears. His mouth began to water at the thought, and he quickened his step to round the corner into the kitchen, and tripped over something on the threshold.

He looked back, expecting a loose tile or perhaps something dropped by one of his servants or himself and, at first, saw nothing. The hallway was strung in Fëanorian lamps, basking it in perpetual but meager blue light, and he squinted again at the floor.

There was an Elf crouching there, retrieving something that it had dropped. “Who dares squat in my doorjamb!?” Finrod cried, vestigial fear making his heart pound against the inside of his chest like the fist of a prisoner demanding release from his ribcage.

The Elf stood up. “It is only I, Ccousin.” The voice had the same quality as the drone of bees on a languidly hot afternoon, and one tended to forget the word it had spoken before it was even fully formed in the air.

Finrod became aware that he was daydreaming. Perhaps he didn’t need the wine after all to lull himself back to sleep. “What?” he asked.

“It is only I, Cousin.”

He squinted at the dark shape in the doorway and recognition drifted to his brain. It was his half-first-cousin-once-removed, although he couldn’t remember which of his seven half-cousins had begotten him. He was fully-grown, it appeared, but Finrod had no memory of him becoming an adult. In fact, the more he thought on it, Finrod couldn’t remember him being born at all. The longer Finrod looked upon the other Elf, the less memorable he became. Finrod shook his head. Was he not but a small lad the last time Finrod had seen him? Did he even make the journey to Middle-earth? Finrod did not seem to recall that he had.

And what was his cousin’s name? Silver tree? No, that was his sister’s husband. Silver foot? No, that was his cousin Turgon’s daughter. Silver … hand?

“Celebrimbor! That’s it!” He stopped and scratched his head. “How did you get here?”

“I came with my father and my uncle, Cousin Finrod, more than a year ago. That first night. In the rain.”

The memory of that night was still keen in Finrod’s memory: the terror of believing that they had been discovered by Orcs, the subsequent joy of his cousins’ arrival, juxtaposed beside the frightening tales they bore. Yet he remembered Celebrimbor in none of it.

“You were with them that night?”

“Yes, cousin. You allowed us in, then we met in your study and my father told you of our plight.”

“You were there too?”

“Yes. And the other day, I presented to you a necklace I made bearing fifty diamonds, in gratitude for allowing us into your home.”

“You did?”

“You are wearing it now, Cousin.”

Finrod touched his throat and found, as Celebrimbor had said, a diamond necklace around it. “So you did. Did I thank you for it?”

“I’m pretty sure that you did, Cousin.”

Another thought breathed its way into Finrod’s tired head. “Did I ask you why you are in my private chambers in the middle of the night?”

“I’m pretty sure you didn’t, Cousin.”

“Why are you in my private chambers in the middle of the night?”

“I came to borrow some materials.”

“Materials?”

“Yes, materials. I am crafting a ring of exceptional brilliance for your sister.”

Something swatted into Finrod’s memory with the force of a bumblebee flying into the side of his head. Celebrimbor! The one with the unhealthy obsession with his married sister Galadriel! Curufin’s son!

“You’re Curufin’s son!”

“Yes, Cousin.”

“And why do you come for these materials in the middle of the night?”

“Well, I find that, during the day, I will be happily working in the forge, and another of your craftsmen--often my own father--will come upon me and usurp my place as though he sees me not at all. And I like not to walk the streets during the day, for people seem to bump into me with alarming frequency. The other day, I stooped to tie my shoe and got knocked over onto my face right as my uncle and a string of maidens came dancing by. Every time I tried to get up, another would step on me. One was alarmingly heavy and rather resembled you, Cousin--”

Finrod cleared his throat. “How terrible.”

“It was not so bad. I have thick skin and am accustomed to be trod upon.”

Finrod found himself trying to memorize his cousin’s features, fearing that he might encounter him again and not know him, but his hair was the color and luster of mud, his face was a memorable as a lump of unformed clay, and his eyes had all of the excitement of dishwater. Only his personality was duller than his looks: Were it a knife, it would not even cut hot butter. As Celebrimbor rambled onward about some invention on which he was working that would sense and track foes moving in the lands surrounding Nargothrond, Finrod’s eyelashes took on the weight of lead and his muscles had the strength of rags soaked in cream. Celebrimbor’s words swirled around his head, faster and faster, forming a vortex into the black depths of his mind where lay ever-elusive sleep, until--as Celebrimbor began to recite projections on the increased safety of the lands they hunted and the subsequent increases in productivity and decreases in expenditures for healing and forging of weapons of defense--Finrod looked down and saw the floor rushing up at him.

Celebrimbor’s thoughts on the increased productivity of the metalsmiths once they were unsaddled with the chore of making weapons abruptly fell away. He looked down at the floor. “Cousin?” he said.

Finrod had fallen asleep.