From That Rubble - Chapter Five

[starspray]

Fandom: Tolkien
Rating: T
Characters: Fëanor, Fingolfin, Findis, Lalwen, Sons of Feanor, various others
Warnings: (past) Character Death
Summary: Decades out of Mandos, too many things in Fëanor's life remain broken. He can't do anything except wait for his sons to come to him, but he can do something about the old and crumbling house where they once lived.
Note: This fic covers the same ground as A Hundred Miles Through the Desert, but from Fëanor's perspective. 

First Chapter / Previous Chapter

…for his father was dearer to him than the Light of Valinor or the peerless works of his hands; and who among sons, of Elves or of Men, have held their fathers of greater worth?
- The Silmarillion, “Of the Flight of the Noldor”

.

 

Every so often, usually in spring, Fëanor made his way to Formenos. After the first unplanned trip had brought Fingolfin and Findis chasing after him, he made sure to tell Fingolfin where he was going and assure him that no, he did not want company, and yes, he would be back in a few weeks at most. It had been many years since he’d last felt the need to go; this year he tarried in Tirion until summertime, and did not plan to stay longer by the lake than a day or so. Fingolfin gave him a worried look when he shared his plans, but he’d already voiced his concerns and knew that Fëanor had heard them, and so said nothing more.

He never went into Formenos itself. After the first time he hadn’t even looked inside. It was too awful, and just made him remember the terrified and haunted looks on Maedhros and Maglor’s faces when they’d rushed out to catch him before he could reach the broken doors after the Darkening. He’d caught only a glimpse, then, of a bloody sheet laid over a shape that looked like a body but which, he had been certain, could not have been his father. Not Finwë. It was too small. It was too still.

Now he left his horse to graze near the trees and walked around the walls, glancing toward the climbing roses and the butterflies flitting between the blossoms, and the bees collecting nectar. He could see a hive overhead, large and busy, under one of the still-intact eaves. It made him think of one summer spent by this lake—long before the building of Formenos—when Celegorm had been just old enough to start wanting to climb trees. They had found a beehive full of honey in the woods, and Finwë had taught them—Maedhros, Maglor, and Celegorm—the right songs to calm the bees so that they could collect some honeycomb for themselves without getting stung. 

Maedhros had been scared of the bees. Fëanor remembered him hanging back and clinging to his hand even after Finwë had sung them calm. Celegorm, always fearless even as a small child, had had several crawling over his hands, giggling at the ticklish feeling. Maglor had not cared for the bees, but had felt the dripping honeycombs Finwë had cut for them all had been well worth the discomfort. 

Fëanor went to sit beside the grave. It was late enough in the year that the hyacinths had long ago come and gone. Poppies and Evermind bloomed over it instead, red and white and sweetly fragrant, mingling with sword lilies and delicate umbels of Queen Míriel’s lace. Finwë was not there—only his bones remained somewhere under the flowers and the grass and the stones—but it was the closest Fëanor could get to him these days, and it didn’t matter if he sounded foolish speaking aloud to flowers and grass, because no one else was there to hear. “I’ve been cleaning out my old house,” he told the flowers. “It’s falling down already, so I’m going to help it along. I don’t know yet what I’ll build in its place. Ambarussa are in Tirion, and they’ve been helping me. It’s…it’s been nice.” His voice broke on the last word, and he bowed his head. Across the lake a loon called out. They always sounded so lonely, and he had only ever heard them on the Wilwarinen since his return to life. “And Macalaurë,” he went on, as he ran his fingertips over the petals of a flower, “Macalaurë is coming to Tirion sometime this year, perhaps after the Midsummer holiday. He’s writing a song for you. I’m told he wants to speak to everyone about it, even me, but I don’t…I don’t know what to tell him.” He was meant to decide what it was he wanted to hear in a song sung for Finwë. What he truly wanted was for there to be no reason to write such a song at all, for the years to roll back so that Finwë was not only alive but had never died.

He wanted a lot of things, these days, that he could never have. 

“I miss you, Atya,” he whispered, as the wind wept over the lake, rustling in the cattails and reeds and bringing the smell of honey locust up from the woods on the other side. “I thought it would get easier with time, the way missing Ammë did when I was young, but it hasn’t. I miss you more every day.”

He spent the next day walking around the perimeter of the lake, looking for new kinds of butterflies he hadn’t seen before, and skipping pebbles over the calm surface of the water while indulging in memories of teaching his sons how to do it the same way Finwë had once taught him. Of the laughter and Laurelin’s golden light bouncing off of the ripples—of Nerdanel then picking up a stone and outdoing them all. 

When he returned to Tirion a few days later, he found that Findis had also returned from her visit to Imloth Ningloron. She was very pleased with the diamonds, and her cheeks went pink when he asked after Elemmírë. “I had no idea you’d noticed,” she laughed. 

“I didn’t. Nolofinwë told me. What are you going to do with these?”

“There’s that grand feast of Ingwë’s coming up in the next few years. These gems will do very nicely for the diadem and necklace I have in mind for her. It will take me until then to finish them, most likely.”

“How was Imloth Ningloron?”

“Lovely, as always. It was wonderful to see Macalaurë again, and to hear him sing. He seems very happy there with Elrond and his family—and there was a great deal of excitement, for did you know Gil-galad has returned from Mandos?”

“Yes, I’d heard.” The news had swept through Tirion, and Fingolfin had, after he’d gotten over his own giddy delight at his grandson’s return, made a joke or two about being concerned that he might be deposed. Everyone who remembered the end of the First Age, or the entirety of the Second, had been overjoyed at the news. Fëanor was happy for Fingon and his wife, and for Fingolfin, who had not seen his grandson since Gil-galad had been a very small child, and for Anairë who had never met him at all. It was a long time coming, this return.

“I also stopped to see Nerdanel on my way home—and Maitimo and Carnistir were there.”

“How are they?”

“I found Maitimo playing with a hedgehog in Carnistir’s garden. He seems much happier than when I last saw him. More at peace with himself. Have you heard that Macalaurë is coming to Tirion later?”

“I have. Ambarussa told me.”

Midsummer came and went. All of Fëanor’s sons but Maglor and Celegorm came to Tirion for it. He stayed out of their way, and feasted and danced and made merry—and felt merry, for the most part. It was hard not to when surrounded by such effusive celebration. The city was crowded with visitors for the holiday, and it almost felt like Tirion of old for a little while. Things got quiet again afterward, and Fëanor was glad to drop back into his normal routines. He went to the old house most mornings, though he didn't always do much, and his afternoons were spent either with Fingolfin or in his workshop. 

He heard of it when Celegorm and Maglor came to the city, bringing Elrond with them; the twins told him, before they parted late that afternoon—he for dinner with his sisters, and they to join the rest of their brothers in welcoming Maglor and Celegorm back to the city. 

He expected to hear from Maglor before long—a written message of some kind—an invitation or a request to meet somewhere. Fëanor did not expect to go walking through the cherry grove in the morning only to find the door to his father’s workshop standing ajar. He’d only gone inside once, just after his own return. It was empty—cleared out, hollowed out—and he hadn’t stayed more than a minute. There was no reason for anyone else to be there, and he strode forward to yank the door open, expecting some foolish or curious children. “Who is here? This is not a place to—” He broke off when Maglor spun around, eyes wide over the hand pressed to his mouth. They were overly-bright, as though he was struggling to hold back tears. “Cáno,” Fëanor said, taking half a step back. Of course it was Maglor. This place, where he had spent so many happy hours in his youth, would likely mean even more to him than it did to Fëanor. And of course Fëanor had frightened him—again. So much for this meeting going better than the last. “I am sorry, I thought…” 

“It’s all right,” Maglor said. He lowered his hands, clasping them behind his back, holding himself like he was bracing for—Fëanor didn't know what. He was dressed in fine clothes, though not in a style Fëanor was familiar with. He supposed it came from somewhere across the Sea. Though fine it was also practical and easy to move in, loose-fitting pants and sturdy boots, and a long-sleeved black tunic that fell to his knees, embroidered with stars and music notes in silver thread. Fëanor did not recognize the handiwork, but he recognized the faint creases—this was not something Maglor wore often. Whoever had given it to him would not be able to give him any others, and so he would keep it carefully packed away, preserved against time, only taking it out when it felt important—it was what Finwë had done with all the things Míriel had made, long ago. Seeing that Maglor needed to do the same made Fëanor’s heart ache. The maker of that tunic had loved him, and he still loved them. That this day was deemed important enough to wear such a gift meant something, though Fëanor couldn’t begin to guess what.

Maglor had bound his hair up in braids that morning as well, surprisingly elaborate, adorned with silver threads and beads fastening the ends so that they clicked gently together when he moved, and a pair of silver earrings set with tiny sapphires that Fëanor recognized as Curufin’s work. He wore no rings or bracelets, and only a simple silver necklace. It was a far cry from the way he had once dressed, even on a normal day. Once, Maglor had loved to wear bright and colorful jewels in his hair and his ears, with elaborate necklaces and bracelets that jangled on his wrists, and brightly colored robes. These days, Fëanor knew, he wore no jewels at all unless he felt he must, and his clothes were usually far more like what Fëanor himself was wearing at that moment—plain and practical. 

He settled his gaze at last on Maglor’s face. In their previous encounters he hadn’t really gotten a chance to look at it properly—he’d seen it up close often in the palantír of late, but that wasn’t really the same thing, especially since he had primarily been looking into the distant past. It was different, somehow, seeing the scars there in person, seeing the lines around his eyes that should not have been quite so deep.

Finally, Maglor said, “I was looking for you.” His voice shook, but whether it was fear or just the lingering effects of having been startled, Fëanor couldn’t say. 

It wasn’t surprising. Fëanor could think of nothing else that would bring Maglor to the cherry grove at this hour; he would have known from Curufin that it was Fëanor’s habit to walk there in the mornings. It was quiet, and a little piece of his father that still survived in spite of everything—the cherry trees that were descended from the ones he’d planted, and the workshop that had been preserved, even empty, as a reminder that Finwë had once walked there, that he had lived and laughed and been so much more than the stories made him. “To speak of this song you are writing?” he asked, just in case Amrod and Amras had been mistaken, and there was something else Maglor wanted to talk to him about. 

“Yes, if you will speak to me,” Maglor said. 

“Of course I will,” Fëanor said, a part of him wanting to laugh and another wanting to cry at the suggestion that he might not want to speak to his own son—for any reason. But he did not think he could do it in that workshop. Not when it was so empty and dark. “Let us come out into the sunlight.” It wouldn’t be much better under the cherry trees that Finwë had loved, but at least it was green and bright. Fëanor did not look back at Maglor until they reached the nearest tree. He expected Maglor to ask a question, or to say something, but he didn’t. When the silence became unbearable Fëanor said, “I don’t know if I will be able to speak much of him. It is…” Impossible. Unbearable. “Very hard.”

“I understand,” Maglor said. He spoke quietly—so very different from both times they’d last seen one another, when he had been furious enough to shout in one instance, and then determinedly and falsely cheerful in the other. He kept rubbing his thumb over the scars on his right palm. They looked pinker than Fëanor thought they should—inflamed, slightly, as they had been when they’d first met in Imloth Ningloron. They looked as though they hurt, but Maglor did not seem quite aware of what he was doing with his hands. “Grandmother Míriel said that he was the same way,” he went on. “Unable to speak of such close griefs.”

Not for the first time, Fëanor wondered if this was a habit he had learned from his father—some leftover remnant of Cuiviénen’s trials and griefs—or if it was something innate. In the end he supposed it didn’t matter. “He was.” 

Silence fell again, broken only by a bluebird singing in a nearby tree. This time Maglor spoke. “The question I have been asking is what others would wish to hear sung of him. Not all of it will be sung—I cannot give everyone a verse—but all of it helps me to shape the song, to find the words that will capture him best.” He paused very briefly before he added, “It cannot be a complete portrait, because to put something into words is to lose something…but it will be as near to it as I can make it.”

Fëanor had never thought of it like that—of reduction in translation. But of course the Finwë of a song would be less than the Finwë of life. Still, if it was Maglor choosing the words— “Then it will be very near indeed.” He crossed his arms and let himself fall back against the tree, feeling the rough bark scrape over his back through his shirt. That made him think of the marks he knew still covered Maglor’s back, and he had to look away from him, out into the trees, as he turned his thoughts back to the question at hand. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Maglor duck his head, staring at the ground rather than at him. 

He might as well admit just how hard it was. If nothing else, he could not let anything like pride stand in his way again. “I have been thinking of how I might answer that question since Ambarussa told me of it, but I don’t know. Anyone can tell you how great he was—how strong, how brave, how loving. You know all those things yourself.” It honestly seemed incredible that Maglor needed to ask questions in the first place. Of all Fëanor’s children, Maglor had been in some ways closest to Finwë. He had certainly spent more time with him than his brothers—hours at a time in the woodworking shop, learning all that Finwë could teach him and then often choosing to use that space for his own work rather than the bigger and busier workshops at home. He had learned the discipline of using his voice for more than mere music first at Finwë’s knee, too, before he had gone to study under Elemmírë and then the Valar themselves. Finwë had been a mighty singer himself even before coming to Valinor, and Fëanor remembered just how happy he had been to pass that knowledge on to Maglor. 

“There is much I do not know,” said Maglor simply. “And no one knew him like you did.”

Fëanor had to take a deep breath, biting the inside of his cheek hard so he didn’t deny that as vehemently as was his first impulse. When he could speak calmly he said, “I don’t think I knew him as well as I once thought.” And then something slid into place in his mind—thinking of the ways Finwë in the song would be diminished from Finwë in life, and realizing why the idea made him feel uneasy. “Regardless, I would not have him turned into—into a myth, into some figure of legend, to be reduced to his greatest deeds.” He was a figure of legend, by now—so was Fëanor. So was Maglor. But it was harder to forget that someone was real, when you could see them in person, when you had more than just songs and stories. Finwë too had been real, as real as the empty workshop and the cherry tree with its rough bark still digging into Fëanor’s back, and— “He was as flawed as any one of us.” It was only once the words left his mouth that he realized how they sounded. “Do not mistake me—I miss my father, and every day without him is—there are no words for it. I love my father, but I am not blind to his faults. His inability to speak of those most closely held griefs was one. If he had been able to tell me—willing to try to speak of—of his own family left behind or lost, perhaps things might have gone differently. I might have understood better his desire for a large family, knowing that he had once had one.” 

He didn’t really know if it would have made anything better. It probably wouldn’t have. He would have still held that a betrayal of his mother was still a betrayal, whatever the reasons that lay behind it. If Finwë’s faults lay in not saying enough, Fëanor’s had been refusing to listen to what was said. Still—at least he would have known.

“I have been told that his mother remarried after his father was lost,” Maglor said, “and that he loved his younger sisters dearly, though they would not make the Journey.”

Fëanor had known that he had aunts, somewhere in the east, and a grandmother. He had not known that she had remarried just as Finwë had done. If Finwë had just told him… He closed his eyes and pressed his palms against the tree bark, trying to focus his thoughts upon the texture and the way it dug into his skin. Maglor went on, still speaking so softly—so unlike himself, “It is not my intention to flatten him into a mere legend or story. With this song I am trying to do the opposite. That is why I wish to hear from everyone who loves him—and you most of all.”

He still couldn’t look at Maglor; the last thing either of them wanted or needed was for him to fall to pieces just speaking of his father. He kept his gaze trained on the cherries weighing down a branch just above his head. “He had a temper,” he said finally. “It showed rarely. He was furious at Formenos, but far more careful than I was to keep it hidden from all of you.” Even then, full of anger and frustration going in a dozen directions at once, he’d been a better father than Fëanor had ever been. “He was—” His voice threatened to waver and he swallowed hard. “—stubborn. Strong-willed, if you want to turn it to praise instead. And yet often he was too lenient. I don’t know why he did not intervene sooner in the conflict between myself and Nolofinwë. Intervene publicly, I mean, or more forcefully than only speaking sometimes to us each alone.” 

That was something he and Fingolfin had not really spoken of. It had been hard enough to speak of their father at all in the beginning, and now they rarely mentioned his name—following his own example, Fëanor realized with a pang. Speaking of Maglor’s songwriting plans had been the first time in years they’d spoken of him. It hurt too much, considering how each of them had last parted with him in life—hurt and angry and bitter. Fëanor’s parting from Finwë in Mandos had been much kinder, but that didn’t hurt any less, it was just different.

He understood only too well why Finwë never spoke of his lost family. He still wished that he had.

“Would it not have only made things worse?” Maglor asked. 

Probably; Fëanor knew he certainly would not have taken public criticism well, even from his father—especially from his father. “I don’t know. No one can know, for he never did.” Fëanor leaned more heavily against the tree, and thought again of the grave by the lake, and the slowly-crumbling stones of Formenos, and how even that place was holding up better against the passage of time than the house in Tirion into which he had poured so much more love and effort. “Findis is of the belief he will return to us one day. At least she hopes for it, but I cannot. Such estel is beyond me.” He didn’t even really like the word—it was too closely associated these days with the star, the Silmaril. It felt like something broken and sharp that he would just cut himself on trying to grasp at. 

“And me,” Maglor said, hardly speaking above a whisper. When Fëanor looked at him he had his gaze on the ground again. It was so hard to guess at what he was thinking. 

Fëanor hated this, this feeling that his sons were all strangers—the fact that it was more than just a feeling, that they were strangers, grown and shaped by things he was only just starting to understand. Maglor, most of all, was so much older. Even after decades in Lórien he seemed as though the Sea he had spent so many years wandering beside had tried to wear him down too—like it had nearly succeeded. It wasn’t true—Fëanor knew very well that a nerve of steel lurked beneath the surface—but as he stood there clad in black and silver, it was almost like he had faded partly out of the world, drained of color the way everything had been after the Darkening. Fëanor wished he had chosen another tunic that morning, something brighter. 

“Has this helped?” he asked.

“It all helps.”

And then they both tried to speak at the same time. “Atya—” 

“Cáno—”

Fëanor paused, and when Maglor didn’t try again he said, mind still caught up in thoughts of the Darkening, “Was it really so bad—at Formenos—when you did not let me see—”

“It was,” Maglor said, more firm than he had yet been that morning. “We did not let anyone see, Maedhros and I, and he tried to keep me back too when we approached the doors, only I wouldn’t listen.” He hesitated then, and Fëanor could all too easily imagine the scene as they approached the broken doors, stumbling through the unnatural dark, clinging to each other. And he had not been there. He should have been there—or they all with him—and yet—

Maglor went on, “Only Fingon suffered a worse fate, later at the Nirnaeth. Finwë was—” his voice came close to cracking, “—you would not have known him. It would have destroyed you.”

“It destroyed me anyway,” Fëanor said, the words slipping out before he could stop them. 

Maglor met his gaze for the first time that morning. “You do not need that memory of him in your mind,” he said, voice heavy with the weight of all the memories he carried. “We did not let you see because we loved you, and we knew that you would follow him to Mandos then and there.”

“Maybe that would have been better than what came afterward.” Fëanor didn’t know why he had suddenly lost all control of his tongue. He did not want to be saying these things, not out loud, not to Maglor. 

Maglor, though, did not seem fazed—or even surprised. “Such thoughts as that never lead anywhere good,” he said, with the look of someone who spoke from experience. “The Oath was a mistake—the Oath was what led to our ruin. Going east? That wasn’t.” Fëanor blinked, startled. “Beleriand would have been overrun ere the moon ever rose, and the rest of the world would have followed so swiftly even the Valar, had they chosen to act, would not have been able to stop it. Not all our deeds were in vain, however doomed we were.” 

Fëanor was not accustomed to thinking of it like that—to thinking of any of his last deeds as something worthy of remembering for the good they had done. The battle that had killed him had been, overall, a resounding victory—but he did not often think of it that way because he had not lived to see the results of that victory. It was something to keep in mind, maybe, when he looked again into the past.

Maglor ducked his head once more, as though he’d surprised himself with such a speech. He pressed his thumb into his palm again, more deliberately this time. Fëanor did not like that at all. More hesitantly, Maglor said, “When last we met I said some very cruel things.”

“Nothing that you said was untrue.” 

“That does not mean I should have said it. I’m—”

The last thing Fëanor wanted to hear was an apology. Not for that. Maglor had had every right to say what he’d said—it didn’t matter how deeply those words had cut into Fëanor’s heart. He’d deserved it, every word. He reached out before he could think better of it, unable to keep watching Maglor press into his scars to purposely cause himself more pain. Maglor flinched at his touch, but didn’t pull away. “You were angry,” Fëanor said softly, “and afraid, and in pain, and I lay at the root of it all. Do not apologize to me, Canafinwë.”

Maglor didn’t lift his head, and when he spoke he sounded so small and young—not angry but still in pain, and still afraid. “But I am sorry.”

What Fëanor wanted to do was gather his son up in his arms and promise him that everything was going to be all right—but he couldn’t do that, not when he was sure that he wouldn’t be believed. The only reason Maglor was there at all was because he had a song to write. But he was there, and so Fëanor had to take advantage of the moment, in case he never got the chance again. It was something, that Maglor was no longer angry with him, but Fëanor would have rather dealt with his fury than with his fear. “You need not be,” he said, resting his other hand on Maglor’s shoulder. “I am your father; you should always be able to lose your temper, to lash out, without fear of reprisal, especially when I am the one who has hurt you. I know that has not always been true, and I am so, so sorry—and for this most of all.” He squeezed Maglor’s scarred hand, just a little. He didn’t know which was worse—Maglor’s real scars or the marks on Maedhros’ hand that had remained with him even through Mandos and his remaking. That both of them experienced pain in Fëanor’s presence was—there were no words for how terrible that was, and he wished desperately that he knew how to stop it, how to heal that wound of the spirit that kept spilling over into the body. “You were not wrong. I put my works above all those I loved most in the world, and you have suffered the most for it. I’m so sorry. I know it’s not enough, I just do not yet know what will be.” When Maglor lifted his head at last, eyes wide and shimmering with unshed tears, Fëanor kissed his forehead—in case he never got a chance to do that again, either. “I love you, Cáno. I look forward to hearing this song when it’s done.” 

He didn't wait for a reply. Maglor did not seem in much of a state to say anything, and Fëanor had been aware for some time now that Daeron was waiting nearby. He didn't look back as he walked away through the cherry trees, putting his hands into his pockets so he didn’t have to look at his own unblemished palms. 

It was tempting, sometimes, to go introduce himself to Eärendil just so he could ask to touch the Silmaril, to see if it would burn him. He hadn’t, because he knew that wouldn’t be taken well—and because he didn’t know if it would be worse if it did burn him or if it didn’t. 

His intention when he’d gotten up that morning had been to go to the old house to try to rescue some stonework, hopefully without bringing the walls down around him. Instead he found Amras laughing quietly at some old scribbles on a wall in the room that had been the twins’ schoolroom. They were faded, a long-ago child’s clumsy attempt at a family portrait with only half-finished names underneath all the figures—but tangible evidence that those happy years really had happened, that they hadn’t always been so broken and weighed down by grief as they were now. 

Amras asked how things had gone with Maglor, and then invited Fëanor to go with him and Amrod when they left Tirion to return to their home in the mountains—a proper invitation, rather than the half-serious suggestions from before. 

Getting away from Tirion—from everything—sounded wonderful, but Fëanor couldn’t really make himself believe Amras actually meant it, instead of just trying to do something kind.

Then Amras asked, “Did you want to do any work here today?” and didn’t wait for Fëanor to finish his answer before deciding for him. “No you don’t. Come on. We’ll find Amrod and maybe steal Curvo’s girls and go riding outside the city.”

There wasn’t really any arguing with that idea, even if Fëanor was inclined to argue with anything Amras said or wanted at all—and he was never going to refuse a day with his granddaughters. 

They came to the colorful street where Curufin lived, turning the corner just as Maedhros stepped out of Curufin’s workshop with Celebrimbor and their cousin Elessúrë, the eldest son of Nerdanel’s brother Linquendil. Fëanor almost turned around, but Maedhros saw him first and slipped back inside. If Amras noticed, he gave no sign at all, and greeted Celebrimbor and Elessúrë brightly. 

It had been startling to come back to find Elessúrë a man grown with a wife and children of his own. He had been a very small child at the time of the Darkening—and Fëanor had not spent much time around him before then, not since his estrangement with Nerdanel. The rest of her family was cool, polite but far less welcoming than they had once been. Fëanor understood and did not begrudge it, though he felt the loss keenly. Elessúrë had been standoffish at first, but now he seemed as friendly with his cousins as he might have been had nothing ever happened, and if he also seemed a little uncertain when speaking to Fëanor—well, at least he was willing to try. 

Upon learning of the day’s plan, Calissë came flying outside to throw herself into Fëanor’s arms. He lifted her up and kissed her hello, and it finally felt easy to smile, instead of like an effort he had to put forth. “Hello, my love. How are you this morning?”

“I’m wonderful! Are we really going out riding all day?”

“We absolutely are.”

The fields outside of the city were wide and empty. Amrod had given more thought to the outing than Amras had, and brought a picnic lunch, after which Amras took Calissë out to teach her some tricks in the saddle that Fëanor knew would have alarmed Curufin—though only because he tended to worry more than was needed. 

That was new, too, the worry—another legacy of Middle-earth. Or maybe just of the Darkening—it was hard not to expect the worst when you knew what it looked like, when you knew how suddenly everything could all go wrong. 

“Did it go well, speaking to Maglor?” Amrod asked as they folded up the picnic blanket. 

“Yes.” Fëanor sat back on his heels. A butterfly flitted past his face, jewel-bright in the sunshine, making him think of the Wilwarinen again. “It was—it was hard, but not for the same reasons it was before.”

“Maybe next time it will be easier?”

If there was a next time. “Maybe.”

It was late when they returned to the stables. Fëanor handed Calissë, exhausted and half-asleep, over to Amras and asked them both, “Do you really want me to go away to the mountains with you?” 

“Yes, Atya,” said Amrod. “We really do.”

“Then I’ll come.” Fëanor tried to smile, but he felt as tired as Calissë—only there wasn’t anyone to carry him home. “Only give me more than ten minutes’ warning. Half an hour, at least.”

Amras grinned at him. “I think we can probably give you a full hour. It won’t be for some days yet, though. Will we see you tomorrow?”

“If you like, though I don’t think I’ll go back to the house.” He’d spent enough time lately surrounded by the past, and needed to ground himself again in the present. 

He took narrower roads and lesser-used alleyways back to the palace. Dinner awaited him in his rooms, alongside Fingolfin, his hair loose and the days finery abandoned in favor of plainer and more comfortable robes. “Aren’t you supposed to be dining with your court?” Fëanor asked. 

“I spoke with Macalaurë today.”

Oh. It seemed a little ridiculous now to have assumed that Maglor had just left after speaking to Fëanor. Of course there were others whose knowledge and opinions he would have wanted, and it had still been early when Fëanor had left him. His had been the first conversation, rather than the only one. “How did it go?”

“It was good to see him—I’ve always been fond of all your sons, you know that.”

Fëanor retreated to his bedroom to wash his hands and face—he’d planned on a bath, but that would have to wait—and change into something that didn’t smell like sweat and horses. When he returned, Fingolfin poured them wine, and pushed a plate across the small table by the window. “How did your meeting go?” he asked. 

“Well enough.” Fëanor stared at his plate and did not feel at all hungry. He picked up a fork anyway, curious about what Fingolfin had spoken of to Maglor, but not knowing how to ask. 

Fingolfin did not seem to have such qualms. “We never speak of him,” he said, pushing some vegetables around his own plate. “I wonder if we should.”

Fëanor had been thinking the same, but at the same time… “What is there to say?”

“Anything—everything. I don’t mean we need to—oh I don’t know. We could just reminisce sometimes, couldn’t we? Speak of happier days. Retell some of his stories or his old jokes. There was a saying among the Edain that no one ever really died as long as their name was still spoken. Hador joked to me once that neither he nor any of his people would ever die at all, with so many friends among the deathless elves to keep speaking their names.”

“It’s not true, though.”

“Well, no, not in the way you mean—I have not brought Hador’s spirit back into the world just by speaking his name now—but their memory remains. That is what will never die. It’s the same sort of idea that lies behind the memorial garden that Elrond and Celebrían have made.”

They ate in silence for several minutes. Out of the window the city glowed gently in the growing evening, as the stars shone overhead. Soon the moon would rise, casting its silver glow through the Calacirya before it climbed up over the Pelóri. “What did you speak of with Cáno?” Fëanor asked finally.

“I told him about Formenos—what it looks like now. We spoke about fear and guilt and anger—and then I shared some happier stories from my own childhood. He asked what I would wish to hear in this song of his, and I told him that I would like to hear something of the life and beauty that has come back even to Formenos. The way that—that life still goes on, in spite of everything. Atar knew that, and I think he would think it important to remember. Even Morgoth couldn’t ruin that place forever. Then he asked if I thought he should visit.”

Fëanor couldn’t help but recoil from the thought. “What did you tell him?”

“That it’s beautiful, but lonely—I didn’t advise him one way or the other. I don’t know if he’ll really go, but I don’t think Macalaurë is any stranger to lonely places. What did you speak of?”

He stabbed a slice of beet with a little more force than necessary. “His faults. Atya’s, I mean.”

“Really? Which ones?”

“His temper. How stubborn he was. The way he wouldn’t—the way he never spoke of anything, the same way we never speak of him now. I didn’t know he had siblings until Thingol told me about them, and I didn’t know his mother—his mother remarried, just like he did. Did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t.” 

“The sisters he left behind were from that second marriage.”

“Things were different then,” Fingolfin said after a moment. “They did not know of Mandos—they did not know that someone could come back. I wonder if the whole…” He gestured vaguely with his wine glass. “All of that, around our parents and our mothers, I wonder if it could have been settled differently if the Valar had just…been able to understand. Just because they are not made to love more than one person as a spouse does not mean we can’t.”

“Neither of our mothers told us of it, either—though they told Macalaurë.” Fëanor didn’t know where else Maglor would have heard it, since he had not spoken yet to Elu Thingol, or to Ingwë, or anyone else who remembered Cuiviénen. 

“No one speaks of Cuiviénen, or those lost before Oromë found them,” said Fingolfin. “It has always been thus—here and in Alqualondë and in Valmar. I don’t think it was something they agreed upon, I think…well, our father wasn’t the only one who found it difficult to remember old pain.”

“We aren’t much better, I suppose,” Fëanor muttered. He took a sip of wine, but it did little to wash away the bitter taste of grief in his mouth. “Amrod wanted to try—some sort of textile art, when he was young. I think it was lace. I refused to allow it, just because I couldn’t…” 

“It’s awful, isn’t it, the way we hurt our children without trying?” Fingolfin sighed and drained his wine glass. As he set it down he said, “I also spoke to Macalaurë of you.” Fëanor said nothing. “I did not expect him to speak so frankly of his own feelings.”

“I’m not sure he would thank you for sharing with me whatever it is he told you.”

“He did not ask me to keep anything in confidence. I do not think he would. You already know that he is afraid—what he told me suggests that the fear has always been stronger than whatever anger he might have felt.”

“I know that,” said Fëanor. 

“I don’t think he doubts that you love him,” Fingolfin said.

Fëanor wasn’t sure he believed that. “Maybe not. It just isn’t enough, anymore.”

“It is the foundation on which all the rest is built. You both took a step in the right direction today. The rest will come with time.”