starspray | A Hundred Miles Through the Desert

Fandom: Tolkien
Rating: T
Characters: Sons of Feanor, Elrond, Feanor, Daeron, various others
Warnings: n/a
Summary: After years in Lórien, Maglor and Maedhros are ready to return to their family and to make something new with their lives--but to move forward, all of Fëanor's sons must decide how, or if, they can ever reconcile with their father.
Note: This fic is a direct sequel to High in the Clean Blue Air.

Prologue / Previous Chapter

It was very strange having Fëanor in their little cottage up in the mountains, but not in a bad way. He had ideas for fixing various things that neither Amrod nor Amras had thought of, and was also, Amrod learned early on, made very uncomfortable by heights. The way he visibly restrained himself from protesting when Amrod climbed a particularly tall tree or jumped from one branch to another, following the squirrels, was almost funny. It was also a far cry from the Fëanor of their youth, who had not even noticed when they’d climbed onto rooftops or scaled the garden walls to sneak out and venture into the city. They had not always succeeded in sneaking out, because their mother had been more observant—and if she hadn’t caught them, Caranthir had, though he usually just told them to be quieter about it before turning his back—but that hadn’t ever stopped them from trying.

Autumn in the mountains was glorious—the trees were afire with color, reds and golds and oranges, with patches of dark green pine, and soft warm browns. Amrod loved the autumn, loved spending his days in the treetops, watching the birds and the squirrels and other beasts go about their winter preparations. He hunted, and brought back game to dress and preserve for the winter; the Laiquendi who lived not very far away came to trade, bringing preserves and mead in exchange for some of the things Amrod and Amras had brought back from Tirion—and in exchange for Fëanor’s talents, often bringing small things to be fixed or asking for his opinion on how best to go about crafting one thing or another. They knew perfectly well who Fëanor was, but they had come up into the mountains to stay and so rarely went back among the rest of the Eldar that they did not care. Ingwë himself could come visit and he would be treated with the same cheerful irreverence. Amrod had realized only when they had their first visit that he and Amras had forgotten to warn their father, but the worry proved needless—Fëanor just laughed with everyone else. He seemed lighter, out here away from everything, less burdened than he had been in Tirion. He seemed more like himself, more like the father of Amrod’s earliest memories.

Fëanor had once traveled widely—they all had, but they’d all gotten that wanderlust from their parents. Amrod was still hesitant to ask too many questions, lest it seem like he was questioning Fëanor and not just trying to learn things, but he ventured to ask, a week or so after they arrived in the mountains, “Why do you not leave Tirion anymore?”

They had come down to the lake where, in the winter, Amrod and Amras joined the Laiquendi to ice skate. With time yet before the waters froze, Amras was fishing, and Amrod had wandered with Fëanor up the shore a little ways, to a spot where there were many flat and round stones perfect for skipping over the water’s surface. Fëanor picked one up and turned it over in his fingers, and did not answer until he had flicked his wrist to send it skimming over the water. “There’s nowhere else I have particularly wanted to go,” he said, “and no one to go there with. I did return to Formenos once, but did not stay long.”

“Why?” Amrod asked. “I mean, why go there at all?”

Fëanor flung another stone out over the water; this one only skipped three times before sinking under the surface. Overhead a flock of geese passed by, pointing like an arrowhead toward the south, dark against the clear blue sky. “I wanted to see my father’s grave,” Fëanor said finally, without looking at Amrod. “I wanted to see what had become of everything. That lake used to be a place of happy memories. Now it’s just…lonely.”

“Maglor likes to say that lonely doesn’t have to mean unhappy,” Amrod said. He knelt to pick up a handful of stones. “But I’m not sure if he really believes it or if he’s just trying to make the rest of us feel better about having left him alone so long.”

“I have seen some of the places he lingered most often,” Fëanor said after a moment. “He isn’t wrong—there is great beauty in the most remote and desolate places…and your brother always liked seeking out those places, even when he was young.”

“Like Ekkaia,” Amrod said. He flung a stone out over the water and counted a dozen skips before it plunked into the water. The ripples spread out over the water’s surface before slowly fading away.

“Why did you all go out there?” Fëanor asked. “I know why you left—but what took all of you all the way to Ekkaia?”

“Oh, that.” Amrod shook his head, laughing. “It was Mithrandir—we met him on the road right before Midsummer, which seemed like chance at the time, though looking back it definitely wasn’t. He went on for a while about broken pottery and then told us that Ekkaia was nice that time of year. Someone had already joked about going all the way out there, and so we thought—why not? Amras and I hadn’t ever been there, and neither had Curvo. And then it turned out Mithrandir played the same trick on Maglor, putting the idea of Ekkaia into his head when he left Imloth Ningloron. It could have been worse, though,” Amrod added, glancing over at Fëanor with a grin. “Historically when Mithrandir meddles in someone’s life they end up getting sent on some terribly dangerous but important quest. At least we didn’t have to face any dragons!”

Fëanor’s smile was brief and forced. “Your journey was still dangerous, was it not? Curvo let slip that he had to stitch Nel—Maedhros up at some point.”

“That was on the way back.”

“What was on the way back?” Amras asked as he came to join them, holding up several fish. “I have lunch! Ambarussa, I thought you were going to start a fire.”

“It’ll just take a minute,” said Amrod. “Tell Atya about the River Incident while I do.”

By the time Amrod had a fire going and Amras and Fëanor had the fish boned and cleaned, Amras had described the rain and the hill country they’d gotten themselves stuck in on the way back from Ekkaia, and the rain-swollen river they kept coming up against trying to leave it. “And so Maglor finally decided he could sing the current down,” Amras said. “Apparently he knew a song for making a river flood, and just had to reverse it or something to do the opposite. I don’t know anything about songs of power, so I have no idea what exactly it was that he did, but it worked.”

“Did Daeron help?” Fëanor asked.

“He played music and lent some of his own strength to it,” said Amrod, “but the words were all Maglor’s. But that all went exactly as it was meant to.”

“Only then there was a hill cat—a particularly stupid and starving hill cat,” Amras said. “It tried to jump Maglor after he came up onto the bank after the rest of us, but Maedhros got in the way and it knocked itself and him into the river. We and Celegorm shot at it, but the current was already picking up anyway.”

“Maglor tried to drag Maedhros out of the water, but then all the water his song had held back came roaring down, and took them both,” Amrod said. Fëanor dropped the knife he had been cleaning. “It’s all right! You’ve seen them since—you know they’re fine.”

“Huan found them some hours later, downriver,” said Amras. “Maglor had managed to get Maedhros’ wounds bound up, but he’d strained his voice with the song and then lost it entirely while yelling at him. We all took turns yelling at Maedhros ourselves, but—well, it wasn’t really his fault. Any one of us would’ve done the same thing if we’d been closer.” Maglor had also been almost unable to move with fear, for reasons Amrod hadn’t understood at the time and still wasn’t entirely sure that he did. That had been more disturbing to him than anything else, in spite of all the blood. “Anyway, that’s when the rest of us decided that Maedhros and Maglor weren't allowed to be the oldest brothers anymore.”

This startled Fëanor into laughter. “What does that mean?”

“Mostly that they don’t get to complain when we go and poke them out of whatever bad mood they’ve worked themselves into,” said Amras, “and we get to protect them instead of the other way around. That hasn’t stopped Maedhros from threatening to toss us all into the river behind Ammë’s house for worrying at him, but I don’t think he’s actually done it yet.”

“Does he need worrying at?” Fëanor asked. “I thought all that time in Lórien…”

“Oh, he’s much happier now than he was before they went to Lórien—they both are,” said Amrod. “The fire’s ready for the fish, Amras. I think the rest of us are just too used to worrying, especially about Maedhros. Even when none of us were really talking to each other, we still worried.”

“Why didn’t you? Talk to one another, I mean,” Fëanor asked. When Amrod and Amras glanced at each other and hesitated, he sighed. “I’m not—I won’t be upset with you. I just want to understand.”

“We know,” said Amrod. “I’m just not sure how to explain.”

“It’s not that we hated each other, or were angry, or something,” said Amras, “except that I think Curvo was angry at Tyelko for a long time.”

“That’s because Tyelko wouldn’t talk to him, because he’s an idiot,” said Amrod.

“And you could be forgiven for thinking that Carnistir was angry with everyone,” Amras went on, “but that’s just because he’s prickly. Well, less so now. A little bit.”

“We all changed in Beleriand,” Amrod said. “And we didn't fit together like we once had. Like we still wanted to.”

“In Beleriand, by the time we went to Doriath, the Oath was the only thing holding us together,” Amras said. “For some of us it was the only thing keeping us alive, I think.”

“And then we all came back and didn’t have that anymore, and didn’t know how to talk to each other or even really what we wanted to do,” said Amrod. “Carnistir had the easiest time, I think, settling back into life. I think Grandfather Mahtan and Grandmother Ennalótë helped him a lot. Especially Grandmother.”

“Maedhros had the hardest time, because Mandos didn’t work for him and the Valar weren’t very careful about when they released him to find what he needed in life,” Amras said. “And of course the first thing he did was go and take up one of the palantíri, and the one time Maglor was easy to find…”

“He was in Dol Guldur?” Fëanor asked softly.

“Yes,” said Amrod, “and none of us knew anything about that until he came here and Tyelpë met him in Avallónë and then told the rest of us. Tyelko was furious with Maedhros for keeping that secret.” He hadn’t been very happy either, but it hadn’t come as a surprise—it had been a shock to learn that Maedhros had known, but not that he had kept it from the rest of them. Of course he had. And anyway, when had any of them except maybe Caranthir ever talked to him long enough to even bring up Maglor’s name?

“How did you find out that he knew?”

“He’d told Elrond, who told Maglor, and maybe told Tyelpë? I’m not quite sure of the order,” said Amrod. “And obviously Maglor couldn’t keep hidden that something had happened. Maedhros never has apologized for keeping it secret. Ammë knew, too, but obviously she would want to keep it from the rest of us.” They had all also been in tacit agreement not to be angry with Nerdanel about anything; they had done enough to upset her already, and she did not deserve any more hurt, not from them. “For us, it was—we’d gotten used to the quiet of the woods, when we lived in Ossiriand. We didn’t want to go back to Tirion, and it was awful in Ammë’s house with Carnistir so grumpy and Maedhros hardly able even to look at us. So very early on we came out here and found some old friends and then made our own home. We didn’t leave very often, until Huan came to find us when Ammë called us all home, so she could tell us you were coming back. So maybe we had about as easy a time getting used to life again as Carnistir, except we did it out here away from everyone.”

“It’s not that we ever hated each other, although Curvo thought Tyelko hated him for a long while,” said Amras.

“We just didn’t know how to talk to each other anymore,” said Amrod again. “We didn’t know how to love each other, after all that happened and all we did. We joke about being annoyed at Mithrandir’s meddling, but really that was the best thing that could’ve happened to us.”

“Hill cats and flash floods notwithstanding.” Amras moved the fish off of the flames, and set the other one into the pan with a sizzle. “You can probably find it in the palantír, but that would just be alarming yourself for no reason, Atya. Everyone turned out fine.”

It had set Maglor and Maedhros back, though, Amrod remembered. Maglor hadn’t looked at Maedhros in the face even once between the river and their arrival at Nerdanel’s house. Amrod hadn’t forgotten either the panic in Maglor’s voice when he’d called for Maedhros as he hit the water, or the fear that had clung to him afterward. He wasn’t going to mention any of that to Fëanor, though. Maglor and Maedhros now were closer than ever, and all the rest of them—even if they still clashed sometimes, and still needed space to pursue their own lives away from everyone else—it no longer felt like any little spat would grow into something unfixable. It was just normal brother things, instead of what their first lives had made of them.

As the days passed, the three of them often parted, each to his own pursuits. Amrod and Amras went hunting and foraging; Amrod took to the trees, and Amras ventured into the deep thickets. Fëanor wandered somewhere in between, looking a little more at peace every time he came back. There was very little for him to make, out there—they had no forge and no materials anyway—but he had a sketchbook that would doubtless be filled with ideas before the winter was out, and it seemed like Fëanor didn’t mind the forced idleness, at least for the time being. Amrod did catch him once or twice looking at the prisms that he’d made for Amras, and which they’d hung in the kitchen window that got the most sun, with a look on his face like he was making notes of all the mistakes he’d made and how he would make better ones next time.

When he was alone one morning, Amrod climbed one of the tallest trees, which gave him a view down the mountainside and out over the plains beyond. He could see a rainstorm in the far distance, dark clouds and hazy rainfall beneath them. Where he sat the skies were clear, slowly brightening with the dawn. Amrod drew one knee up to his chest, and idly kicked his other foot against the tree trunk. It was very cold; soon they would be waking up to frost, and then not long after that the snows would come. He wondered what all his brothers were doing, and how they would be spending their winters. Hopefully it would be quiet.

After a while he started to sing softly, a simple song of the year’s waning, saying farewell to summer and to harvest time, and welcoming the frost and the coming chill. It was a song he’d learned in Imloth Ningloron, that had its origins in the Shire far away—or maybe even farther east, if what Elrond had said about versions of it coming into Eriador with the first halflings was true. Amrod didn’t usually miss Middle-earth, but sometimes he wished that he’d gotten to see more of it, that he had been able to wander over the Ered Luin or the Misty Mountains, to see the Falls of Rauros and follow the Anduin down to the Sea. He gazed out over the wide plains and wondered what else there was to discover out there. He and his brothers had wandered far and wide when they were young, but the lands of Valinor, though called Undying, were not unchanging. He could never see the Lonely Mountain or wade in the streams of Ithilien, but there were other things to discover here. Meres and streams never yet seen by Elves, flowers yet unnamed or creatures never before seen. Hills never climbed, valleys never explored.

Maybe if things went well—maybe they could take other journeys like the one to Ekkaia, when Calissë and Náriel were older. Perhaps Elrond or his sons might come with them. Perhaps, if things went very well, even Nerdanel and Fëanor…?

Elrond said often that it was never wrong to hope. Amrod knew his brothers’ wounds ran deep, some deeper and older even than all that had gone wrong after the Darkening. But Fëanor had left them all alone when they had asked, even though he clearly didn’t want to. He listened more than he spoke, now, and the very first things he’d made after his return from Mandos had been gifts for all of them. That meant something—that meant quite a lot. Amrod didn’t know what lay between his parents, but if Maglor and Maedhros could go to Lórien and come out of it again smiling and laughing, then surely there was hope that their whole family could find a way to fix itself.

The cracks would always be there. But they could be glued back together like the broken bowls that Maglor liked to fix, and the missing pieces could be filled in with gold. “Huh,” Amrod said out loud, as a blue jay perched on the branch just beside his head. “I guess Mithrandir wasn’t talking nonsense after all.” He looked at the jay. “Not that you’d know anything about it.” The jay ignored him and preened its feathers. “Or maybe you would. You like shiny things.” Amrod took one of the small gold clips out of his hair and held it out. The jay peered at it with its bright beady eyes, tilting its head back and forth for a few moments. Then it croaked its thanks, snatched it up, and flew away, vanishing in a bright flash of blue into the dark pine woods.

He swung down to the ground, still thinking about broken pottery and how fixing it could make even the sharpest and most jagged of edges into something lovely, and nearly landed on Fëanor. “Good morning, Atya!” he said as he staggered a little, having swung to the side at the last moment, and as Fëanor took a few quick steps back. “Sorry—I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

Fëanor glanced up. “How far up were you?” he asked.

“As far up as the branches would hold me, so nearly to the top. I had a nice chat with a blue jay.”

“What do blue jays talk about?”

“Well, I chatted. It may or may not have been listening.” These days Amrod always felt like he’d achieved something when he got Fëanor to laugh. “What are you doing out here?”

Fëanor’s laughter faded. “Just walking. It’s very quiet.”

“Lots of birds have gone,” Amrod agreed. “It will be even quieter when it snows.” There was nothing quite like the silence of fresh snowfall, especially out in the forest. “Is it too quiet?”

Fëanor shook his head. “No.”

“You won’t hurt our feelings if it is,” Amrod said. “I know it’s not for everyone, trapping yourself up a mountain for the winter on purpose, and you’ve still got a little time before that happens.”

That got Fëanor to smile again. “It’s also something I’ve never done before,” he said, “and I’ll try almost anything once. I don’t mind the quiet—I would have once, I think, but not now.”

“Can I ask what you were thinking about, that brought you out here?”

Fëanor’s face did something complicated. “Just—trying to figure out where it all went so wrong.”

“If you think about that too long you’ll just wind up at the very beginning of everything, when Melkor introduced the first notes of discord into the Great Music,” said Amrod.

“I’m trying to figure out where I went wrong,” Fëanor said.

“You aren’t going to go wrong again, Atya,” Amrod said.

“Did you acquire some form of foresight as well as a few extra inches of height with the Ent draughts in Ossiriand?” Fëanor was clearly trying to make a joke, but whatever his thoughts had been circling around before he met Amrod was too heavy and dark for it, and he just sounded bleak instead.

“No,” said Amrod. “That would have been awful. Foresight can be useful, I suppose, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it make anyone happy. I like the here and now just fine—I don’t need hints or visions of what the future holds. But there’s nothing left to go wrong, Atya. Morgoth is shut away beyond the Doors of Night, and Sauron is utterly destroyed. All the rest of their servants are gone too, and none were ever as strong as either of them. The only harm that can find us just comes from ourselves—”

“That’s rather the problem,” Fëanor said. “If I—”

Amrod took a step forward and wrapped his arms around Fëanor, burying his face for a few moments in his shoulder. Fëanor’s arms came up to wrap around him in return, holding on very tightly. Fëanor hugged like Maglor did, like he was afraid to let go lest they vanish into smoke, or like ghosts. “You don’t have to wonder where it all went wrong,” Amrod said. “I know exactly where it went wrong—where it reached the point of no return. It was when Grandfather Finwë died, and that wasn’t your fault, and nothing like that is ever going to happen again. You frightened us before that, because you were so angry, but it wasn’t anything like afterward. And I’m not frightened of your temper now.”

“I am,” Fëanor whispered, almost soundless.

It wasn’t an unreasonable fear exactly, but it was needless, and Amrod wasn’t sure what to say. He didn’t know how to reassure his father—in the past it had been the other way around, and Fëanor had never needed reassuring. He had always been so assured, so confident. That had turned to arrogance and pride and had been his downfall, but Amrod did not like to see him now going in the opposite direction. There had to be a balance, or else nothing was sustainable, but Amrod didn’t know where that balance lay or how his father might find it. Most likely it was something he had to do on his own.

Amrod had never had to do anything hard on his own. Amras was always there, knowing him almost better than he knew himself. In many ways Fëanor had always been alone, set apart in so many different ways—by his brilliance, his status, by the fact of Míriel’s death, by his own choices. It didn’t have to stay that way, though. Only Fëanor could figure out how to live with what he was capable of, maybe, but surely that didn’t mean there wasn’t any way to help.

“You know what it looks like now, when it gets very bad,” he said finally, “so you can stop before it gets there.”

“And if I cannot?”

Amrod drew back to look Fëanor in the eye. “We’ll tell you,” he said. “Amras and me, or Curvo, or Fingolfin or Findis or someone. We know what it looks like, and we aren’t afraid to speak up anymore. You just have to trust us enough to listen.”

“I do trust you, Pityo,” Fëanor said. “It is myself that I no longer trust.”

Later, Amrod told Amras about that conversation. They had gone down to the lake again, while Fëanor wandered higher up in the mountains. Amrod wasn’t worried about him getting lost; they would be able to find him easily enough if he did, but Fëanor had a canny sense of direction of his own and it had yet to steer him wrong. “It’s remarkable how alike he and Nelyo are, isn’t it?” Amras said when Amrod was done. “Everyone always says it’s Curvo that’s most like him, but that’s only on the surface. Underneath it’s Nelyo that’s got his fire.”

“Tyelko’s got it too,” said Amrod, “and now all three of them are just…I don’t know if Nelyo’s afraid of himself, but I think Tyelko is, and Atya definitely is.” All of them used to burn so bright, but Maedhros’ fire had nearly guttered out in Mandos, only to flare back to life when he’d come out of it, except turned inward so that it just slowly ate away at him over the years. Lórien had banked the flames and now it burned low and steady, much like it had when they had been young—but the scorch marks on his spirit remained. Tyelko’s fire burned low too these days, but Amrod wasn’t sure if he could call it steady. The fire of Fëanor’s spirit, the thing for which he was best remembered, could be a deceptive thing. It flared to life sometimes; in Tirion hardly anyone would look at him and think anything was wrong. But sometimes when there were no eyes on him it was like the light in his eyes flickered out, like he’d shuttered a lantern. Not always—but often enough that Amrod had noticed, and he didn’t like it.

“I think Nelyo’s afraid of Atya,” said Amras. “He asked me the other day about Losgar, you know.”

“What about it?”

“If I’d been nearby when he’d spoken to Nelyo afterward. I wasn’t—we were trying to do something useful with the horses, I think.”

Maedhros had never spoken of Losgar afterward. None of them had, but Amrod did remember how Fëanor had stopped looking to Maedhros for his opinion when they and the leaders among their people were gathered to council—Fëanor rarely took advice but at least before he had let Maedhros speak; he had stopped speaking to him at all, save for giving orders—and those short, sharp things. Maedhros had obeyed every one of them without question, and without expression. And then after Angband and Thangorodrim there had been far too many other matters to think about. And, well, Fëanor hadn’t been there, so it had ceased to matter. Now Fëanor was back, and whatever had triggered that change after Losgar suddenly mattered again quite a lot.

“Did he say why he wanted to know?” Amrod asked.

“No. I’ve half a mind to look into the palantír for it, though.”

“Oh, don’t do that, Ambarussa.”

“You don’t think it would help? If Losgar is at the root of what’s between Atya and Nelyo—”

“I think neither of them would thank us if we tried to meddle,” Amrod said.

Amras sighed. He stooped and started cutting sprigs of wild thyme to add to his basket. “Whatever Atya said, it must have been awful if Nelyo’s still holding onto it this long.”

“Of course it was awful,” said Amrod. “Almost all the things he said then were awful.”

“Right,” said Amras, “and we all knew that, and Nelyo knew he would be furious when he defied him. So what could he have said that was so bad that Nelyo still can’t let it go, even after he’s come to terms with everything else?”

Amrod knelt to harvest some mushrooms near the wild thyme patch. The problem with being the youngest was that they’d missed so many years, so much that held weight for all their brothers, that shaped what they did and how they thought about Fëanor now. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, it was just the way time worked, but it was horribly frustrating all the same. Even if Maedhros were willing to confide in either of them—which he wouldn’t be, because he was the oldest and they were the youngest and he still thought they needed protecting, whatever any of them said about reversing their roles—there was a good chance that they wouldn’t really understand the root of his pain anyway.

As autumn faded toward winter, Amrod put Losgar out of his mind. Fëanor also seemed to do the same—or at least to try; he laughed more, and started to tease Amrod and Amras back, and to tell stories of his own misadventures and wanderings when he had been young, before Maedhros had been born. The nights grew longer and colder, and after the first snowfall Amras recruited a pair of blue jays to carry notes to Curufin in Tirion for them.

Then a mockingbird appeared with a note tied to his leg. “Oh hello, Nallámo!” said Amrod as he opened the window to let him in. The note, of course, was from Celegorm, admonishing them to take care in the heavy snows and letting them know where everyone had scattered for the winter. As Amras wrote back to assure Celegorm—really, to assure Nerdanel—that they were perfectly fine and knew exactly how to handle winter in the mountains, Amrod found some seeds for Nallámo to eat before flying back down the mountains.

“Is Tyelko back to collecting strays?” Fëanor asked as Amras carefully tied his note to Nallámo’s leg.

“Seems so,” said Amras. “I think he found this one in Imloth Ningloron. But lately it’s Cáno that’s going around with small animals in his wake. It’s very funny.”

“The hedgehogs you mean?”

“He went to Lórien with one and came out with three! And his cat, of course.”

“Elrond says the cats of Imladris adopted him back when he first arrived, and that he wasn’t surprised at all that at least one insisted on coming west with him,” said Amrod. Nallámo flew away, and Amras shut the window. “Pídhres hates Huan, too—it’s even funnier than the hedgehogs.” He turned his attention back to Celegorm’s note. “Tyelko and Carnistir are with Ammë still, and Curvo’s back in Tirion; Maedhros has gone to Eressëa to spend the winter with Elrond—good, I’m sure it’s much quieter there than in Tirion—and Cáno and Daeron have gone off to Thingol’s realm with Calissë.”

“Curvo let her go with them?” Fëanor asked, surprised. “How far is Taur-en-Gellam from Tirion?”

“I’m not sure,” said Amrod. “I’ve never been. Amras?”

“If you’ve never been, I’ve never been,” Amras said, “but it’s farther than Imloth Ningloron—north of there but farther west.” He sat on the floor to lean his head on Fëanor’s lap. “Calissë will be fine, though—she’s with Maglor, and she’s also known Daeron and his family all her life. Ammë is good friends with Lacheryn.”

“Yes, I know. I’m not at all worried about Calissë.”

“Is it Curvo?” Amrod asked. “He’ll be fine too. Rundamírë won’t let him worry too much.”

“And that won’t stop him from worrying at all,” Fëanor said with a wry smile, “just like you can’t stop me from worrying about him.”

“You can always spy on him in the palantír,” said Amras. “Or maybe talk to him—I bet he’s got one so he can spy on Cáno and Calissë.”

“Assuming he can find them,” said Amrod.

“Your brother is quite easy to find these days,” Fëanor murmured as he ran his fingers through Amras’ hair. “He does not seem to want to hide himself away any longer.”

“Do you look for him often?” Amrod asked.

“Every once in a while—just as I look for all the rest of you. In the Halls I was always able to find you in the tapestries, to see what you were doing and that you were safe; it’s reassuring to be able to find you now in the palantír.”

“Did you see Cáno in the tapestries?”

“Until he disappeared into—into Mirkwood. If those things were ever woven, they were not shown to me.”

“That’s probably for the best,” said Amrod after a moment.

“We’ve seen his scars,” Amras added softly. “They’re very bad.”

“You haven’t looked for that in the palantír have you?”

Fëanor looked toward the window as a gust of wind blew snow against the glass. “No,” he said. “Not yet.”

“Don’t, please,” said Amras. “You don’t need to see it.”

“I thought the point was that I should see everything.”

“I think what we all meant was everything until the end of the War of Wrath,” said Amrod. “Although—I don’t care what Maedhros thinks about it, you don’t need to see what happened to him in Angband either. Or on the mountain. Unless it’s his rescue, that’s probably fine. But have you looked for Himring? Maedhros loved Himring, and it withstood everything the Enemy could ever throw at it.”

“I’ve seen it,” Fëanor said. “I like hearing about it all from you better, now that I can more easily see it all in my mind. Tell me more about the journey to Ekkaia?”

“That calls for drinks. Do we have any chocolate, Amras?” Amrod asked as he got up.

“No, but we’ve got more tea than we can ever drink,” said Amras. “Find one of the tins we haven’t opened yet—one of Carnistir’s experiments.” He got up to put the kettle over the fire, and tossed another log onto it as the wind picked up, howling around the corners of the cottage. There would be monstrous drifts to clear away from the doors come the next morning, but for now it was cozy and warm inside and there was nothing to worry about or to do, except for Amrod and Amras to compete to see who could make Fëanor laugh more. It was still a little strange to look over and see him there sitting by their hearth, so far away from everything else—but not in a bad way. It was nice.