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

Chapter 6: Celegorm and Curufin Take a Walk

Chapter 6: Celegorm and Curufin Take a Walk

The streets of Nargothrond glistened like silver ribbons beneath the bluish glow of Fëanorian lamps, and Celegorm and Curufin, sons of Fëanor and Lords of Nargothrond, stepped from their apartments and met in the middle of the street to commence their evening walk.

In the high stone ceiling overhead, Finrod had implanted thousands of tiny, glowing gems that sparkled, placed in the same familiar patterns as the stars Varda had strewn across the firmament in the world’s beginning. Cleverly placed lights and mirrors dispelled the darkness and gave the illusion of expansiveness beyond the cave walls. The air sang with the music of fountains, and a small band of children skipped down the road, playing light airs on their flutes, giggling as they spun and flowed around Celegorm and Curufin like river waters around a delta.

The brothers walked in silence, with tight smiles on their lips, as though they shared a secret. The air between them sizzled. The people had grown accustomed to their evening walks and waited on the steps of their apartments to greet them. Celegorm and Curufin’s faces fractured into smiles and they sang greetings into the musical evening with all of the intoxicating sweetness of drops of wine. They had only four hands between them, but they seemed to sprout more--as many hands as a hydra had heads--to grasp those of the people that met them, to touch the shoulder of a shy maiden or pinch an impish child’s cheek, while their words rolled into the air with all of the elegance and majesty of a red carpet being unfurled beneath feet of a King.

Celegorm usually spoke first, for his voice was strong and thick like the heady wines served with dinner, those that tempt the tongue into drinking more than the head can handle. He was an outdoorsman and a hunter, and he forsook the heavy robes worn by his brother and cousins for a light tunic and trousers that left his arms bare and did not hide the ropy strength of his body. He touched maidens only with his right hand--flaunting the lack of a wedding or betrothal ring--doling out feather-soft kisses to the backs of their fingers, and after he passed, more than one waited until her father wasn’t looking to stare at the way his backside twinkled in his trousers as he walked away.

Curufin followed his brother, and his lesser stature and softer manners were like the bitter teas taken after dinner to soothe the spiraling inebriety of the wines partaken. Where his brother’s grasp was always firm, Curufin’s fingers flitted with the gentleness of butterflies, but his eyes burned into the peoples’ as they spoke. Where they drank of Celegorm’s easy charm, it was to his brother that they confessed their troubles, and he stood and listened in stoic silence, motionless, with his eyes ever burning. Broken jewelry was passed into his nimble fingers with the knowledge that, come the next morning, it would be repaired and lying on the table in their entrance hall, encased in a velvet box embossed with the Star of Fëanor. To him, they reported broken cobblestones and leaky pipes, and when they awakened in the morning, the problems would have been fixed, as though the mere speaking of them to Curufin was a incantation inviting their miraculous repair.

Indeed, the brothers’ walk had become a popular part of the evening, and at times, they found themselves encased so tightly in a throng of people that their passage to the lower streets of the city was delayed. Celegorm called the names of the people as he saw them--never misspeaking a syllable--squeezing hands and inquiring after the health of their children and of family members traveling abroad, while Curufin dispensed advice about everything from the choice metals to use in the construction of a new hunting knife to the calming of a colicky infant. Through it all, Celegorm’s smile flashed, Curufin’s eyes burned, and the air between them boiled.

It was late by the time they climbed the streets to return home. The city lights had dimmed, and most of the citizens had retired to bed, but Celegorm and Curufin showed no weariness. Their chins were lifted and their backs were as straight and unbowed as the ancient trunks of trees. They walked in silence but smiled into the darkness. When they at last reached their apartments, they paused only to grasp hands and collide in a quick embrace. With his lips against the delicate perfection of his brother’s ear, Curufin spoke so softly that it was less a whisper and more a shared thought: “We have done it.”