What a lovely story! I have a great deal of sympathy with Finarfin and this is a totally believable interpretation of that moment in time for me. I love Aule in this story also. Of course, Aule travels with his tools(!) even on an errand of mercy to inform the new King of the Noldor of very bad news--and how kind of him it was to be willing to be the bearer of that news. That also feels very in-character to me. I've always imagined him as the most human of the Valar--probably from spending so much training and working with the Noldor--for as the texts tell us, "the Noldor were beloved of Aulë." (And I have always loved him for that!)

Beautifully crafted. Thanks so much for sharing.

really atmospheric, poor old Finarfin, left to pick up the pieces :(

er, i've seen other tales which use the Quenya names, but this is the Silmarillion thing. they are not used in the Silmarillion and are still unknown even to me (Russandol, i now know, is not even a real one). so i didnt know who you were writing about until you spelled it out. i mean, the artist is king, but its already really niche...

i liked the story, dont get me wrong, but the way its presented, maybe a hint of who the protagonist is...

the way you ended it was one of my fave linguistic tricks. 'but what are we gonna do ?', 'we have to xyz', ' but how ?',  'carefully!'.

heheheh, marvellous. :)

p.s. re: 'whomever'. the thing is, the most famous version of that word is from the Arthurian 'whomsoever draweth this sword...' thing. so though it may be correct, it looks  wrong. of course i'm quibbling ! we're nerds, aren't we ? :) 

An intriguing choice of characters for this prompt, and it works great! This is not a perspective often taken when talking about the Flight of the Noldor. I get the impression that even Aulë either appreciates the distraction provided by replacing the broken bolts, or he realises that Finarfin is at the end of his tether. Either way, he comes across as very sympathetic and supportive. Particularly as his advice his to proceed "stubbornly". Aulë rocks (pun fully intended)! Well done.

(Don't worry about the naming thing, btw; the list of characters uses the "standard" forms from the published Silm, and beyond that, you can use whatever form you like. They're reasonably common, and if readers are really helplessly lost, Google is their friend.)

Very interesting and unusual take on the exile. Thank you so much for writing this! Greatly done :)

All I wanted to do is hug Arafinwë-- and then the last two paragraphs made me want to cheer! I love this ficlet.