Let Him Find Honey by StarSpray

let ruin end here

let him find honey
where there was once a slaughter

let him enter the lion’s cage
& find a field of lilacs

let this be the healing
& if not   let it be

- “little prayer” by Danez Smith

- - 

In the end, all he had to do was ask. 

Not every tapestry woven by Vairë and her handmaidens was meant to be seen by all. There were those that hung in the great wide halls where the dead gathered, where the depictions of the War of Wrath were hung, and the Singing of the World, and the sprouting of the Trees, and their destruction—and the final ship to depart from the Grey Havens, bearing Círdan into the west at long last. Fëanor had seen it, and had turned away. 

But the walls of Mandos were many, and in other out of the way corners and rooms there were smaller weavings. He found another weaving of that same ship, but from a different point of view—a view of the stern, where two Elves stood, gazing back upon the lands they were leaving. Above them the stars were shining, threaded through the tapestry in silver thread and diamonds. One was dark haired and dark eyed, but the other—the other was darked haired too, but his eyes were soft grey-green. His look was mournful, as though he did not want to be leaving. The way that he was woven was strange, not like the other figure beside him or those behind him. Fëanor had seen it before and if he had not known better, known whose hands it was that wove the tale of his family, he would have thought it a beginner’s mistake, clumsy fingers missing threads or leaving gaps—that was how he had seemed before, after vanishing from the records of the world for a time, when he had reappeared in the valley at the feet of the mountains that seemed to be at the center of so much in these latter years. Those gaps had been closed, but not fully restored. They were shot through with thin lines of gold, in a pattern that looked distressingly like cracks radiating out through a broken piece of glass or pottery.

Fëanor did not know what had happened to his son, and no one would tell him—but he was coming home. 

His other sons had been released from the Halls, one by one, alongside their cousins and Fingolfin and so many others. Finwë remained; even if he had not pledged to do so for Míriel’s sake so that she could return to life, he would not have been ready. He had not faced Morgoth as Fingolfin had, prepared for a fight and for death; he had been taken almost entirely unaware, and Morgoth had not been merciful. Fëanor had not seen the body afterward, but he had seen the bloodstains on the stones and the looks on his sons’ faces, and he had since seen how battered and worn down his father’s spirit was. 

Very rarely in life had Fëanor found himself torn between one course and another. If he were to return to life he could find his children, find Nerdanel—try to repair what he had broken, or make something new. He could make things, in life, with his own hands—things of beauty again, maybe of joy, rather than weapons or things of destruction. 

But if he were to return to life, he would never see his father again. Never speak to him, never feel the warm press of his spirit against his own, even still wounded as it was.

If—of course—Námo would permit him to return to life. Fëanor had no illusions about his part in all that had befallen both his family and his people. He had died before most of it, but it was his deeds, his words, that had driven it all. He was under no delusion that he would be welcomed back to Tirion with open arms. 

He went to Finwë, who urged him back toward life. You should have returned long ago, my son. Go! Give them all my love. Do not grieve for me, Fëanáro. I am at rest and at peace.

So then he went to the stark and shadowy hall where Námo sat, and found Nienna there beside him, face shimmering with tears. 

Do you know what it is you would ask of me? Námo’s face was as a mask, as stern and devoid of emotion as Nienna’s face was filled with it; in his eyes was the glimmer of light as of ancient stars—but older even than the oldest of them. 

I do, Fëanor said. 

Grief awaits you outside these halls, Fëanáro, Nienna told him, her voice like the gentlest fall of rain upon spring leaves. 

Grief haunts me inside them, Fëanor replied. I need to see my children. My wife. Please.

What of your brothers, Fëanáro son of Finwë? Nienna asked. What will you do when you come to Tirion to find Nolofinwë upon the throne?

He had not thought of Fingolfin in a very long time—nor of crowns nor thrones, let alone desired them. It had never been about the crown, Fëanor had come to realize, though too late, far too late, for it to have made any difference. He can keep it, he said. I do not want it. Dispossessed I was and dispossessed shall I be still. This last parting from Finwë, this deep grief that he would carry forevermore, was no fault of Fingolfin’s—it was a grief they would share, united in this one thing at least, at long last. The only one to blame for it had been long ago cast beyond the Doors of Night. Fëanor would not argue if he was ordered to stay away from Tirion. He would gladly return to Formenos and rebuild it and dwell there forever, or go to dwell in a place even farther and more desolate, if he could only be permitted to see his family first. 

What if they do not want to see you? came the question, like the blow of a fist. What will you do if neither your sons nor your wife wish to look upon you again, Fëanáro? It was Námo who spoke; only Námo who would take the question Fëanor had been asking himself and draw it out of the depths of his heart to speak aloud. 

Nienna came forward to draw Fëanor into her embrace when he could not answer. The only way to answer that question, she said, is to go to them and find out. Yours has never been an easy road to walk, Fëanáro. Do not forget that your words did more harm than your sword, and those wounds run deeper and cannot be healed only by time, nor even the rest these halls offer. It was your Oath that drove your sons to slay their kin and betray their friends. It was your hatred the fueled the rift between your house and Nolofinwë’s. All he ever wanted was to be loved by his elder brother, as your sons are loved by theirs. 

He knew all of that. He knew it and he regretted it more deeply than words in any tongue—of Elves or of Ainur or of the Secondborn he had never seen in life—could express. And if that was not enough—if none of his children would see him—then at least they would have the choice of it. He would be there, if they changed their minds, not locked away in these halls out of reach. If they do not want to see me, I will not try to force them, he said, though the words hurt more than the whips of the balrogs that had killed him. I will let them lives their lives as they wish—only let me hear it from their lips, and let me live mine, lord. Give me the use of my hands again, so that I might try to make the world better rather than worse.

I will release you from these halls, son of Finwë, Námo intoned, more like he was pronouncing a doom than answering a plea, than giving Fëanor the greatest desire of his heart, upon the condition that you make peace with your brothers, and do not seek the crown you claim you do not desire. His eyes gazed into Fëanor, seeing everything that was in him. It has passed from your House by the hands of your son, and in Nolofinwë’s it will remain. There will be no festival, no summons to Valmar to stand before the Valar and the Noldor when you meet with Nolofinwë once again. You must meet upon your own terms, the two of you. There must be no false words. Full brother in heart, he called you once, and you did not answer him. I charge you now: answer him, whatever is in your heart, but let there be no bitterness left to fester between you.

And I further charge you: the Silmaril bound upon Vingilótë has also passed from your hands, Fëanáro. Do not seek to regain it. The oath is no more. The Silmaril belongs to all, now—all who look into the morning or the evening sky in search of light and hope. Know that your hands have made the thing that gives it to them, and be content.

Fëanor bowed. He would have agreed to anything, anything to be allowed to go to his family again. He would say whatever the Valar desired if only it meant he could have the chance, no matter how slight, of holding his children, or kissing his wife.

In one moment he was kneeling before the throne of Mandos. In the next he awoke in the gloaming, just as the stars began to blaze forth overhead. In the purple light he felt his lungs expand for the first time, brand new; he felt the caress of the breeze on his face and smelled the flowers, sweet-scented Evermind and hyacinth and daisy; he felt the cool grass against his skin and the gentle pull of it through his hair when he moved. His heart beat in his chest. He felt heavy. For so long he had been nothing but a spirit, disembodied and encumbered. Now he opened his eyes, seeing first the stars as once the very first Quendi had upon awakening by Cuiviénen. 

For long minutes Fëanor did not move, except to breathe, and to blink, relishing all of the myriad sensations that he had taken for granted before. He almost thought he could feel the very blood moving through his veins. It was exhilarating. Wonderful. Miraculous. He wanted to laugh, to sing, to weep—all at once. 

At last, he sat up. His hair tumbled over his shoulders, and he looked up through it at the small clearing in which he found himself. Behind him the sheer, forbidding walls of Mandos rose. A door was set into them, small and unassuming. Ahead of him was a path winding through the flowers, pale in the twilight, toward a wood. The wind passed through the trees, setting the leaves rustling. Somewhere in the distance an owl hooted, and closer at hand a cricket chirped its nighttime song. In that moment they were the loveliest sounds Fëanor had ever heard, and he could not recall why he had never paid any attention to crickets before, or to the wind. 

Movement on the path caught his eye as someone emerged from the trees. Fëanor went still, unable to anything other than watch as his mother made her way up the path. She carried a bundle of cloth in her arms; her dress was plain in style, the sleeves tight and ending at her elbows, skirts long but sensible, with no train; flowers were embroidered across the bodice, so realistic that it almost seemed as though she’d merely attached the real thing to the fabric. 

“Ammë,” Fëanor whispered as she stopped before him, shaking out the fabric in her arms—robes, embroidered with delicate and subtle textures around the hems and the sleeves. 

“My son,” Míriel said, as she bent to drape the robes over his shoulders. He shrugged into them without thinking, and then as she sat beside him he fell forward into her arms—warm and alive, both of them alive as they had not been since he had been too small to remember, too small to understand how precious the gift of her embrace was. He pressed his face into her shoulder and wept, and she stroked his hair and held him as the twilight deepened into night, until the tears abated. There was a certain joy in that, too—in weeping real tears. Joy and sorrow mingling together in a way he had never understood until that moment, in a way that brought Nienna to his mind, and the way that she smiled through her own perpetual weeping.

“Look,” Míriel said as he lifted his head. She wiped his tears with her hands, and then pointed to the sky. “You have not seen it before in life. Isil.” The moon had risen, round and silver. “With the dawn,” Míriel added in a low voice, “Gil-Estel will be visible in the east—Eärendil’s star bearing your Silmaril. What will you do, Fëanáro?”

“Nothing,” he said, hoarsely and wearily. “Nothing. Námo has forbidden it and I—when I made them I did not mean to hoard them away. I meant for them to be seen. And more have seen and will see that one now than I ever dreamed, and…” He wiped his own hands over his face. “Gil-Estel. Is it, really?”

“Yes,” Míriel said. “From the moment it arose it has been a sign of hope to the world.”

“Not for everyone,” he whispered. He had seen the weaving—seen the moment of the star’s rising and its light upon the faces of his last living sons. He had seen no hope there.

“They are hurting still, your children,” Míriel said softly after a few moments. “Macalaurë will arrive on Tol Eressëa soon.”

“Yes. But will they want…”

“They may not,” Míriel said. She reached out to smooth his hair back from his face; he had a memory of her doing the same when he had been small. It was the clearest memory he had had of her for a very long time—the softness of her hand and the quiet murmur of her voice, though he had not remembered the words. It was a strange thing now to have her do the same to his adult self, laid over that memory. “I am sorry, Fëanáro,” she said. “I am sorry that I could not stay with you. It was never you. It was the weariness of my own spirit.”

“I know,” he said. “I understand that now.”

“You do not, not fully,” she said, and smiled sadly. “I wish that heartache and weariness upon no one, though I fear Macalaurë has felt something akin to it.”

“There is something wrong with him,” Fëanor said. “I don’t understand what. In the tapestries…”

“It is not my tale to tell you, Fëanáro. He has suffered, but he has healed; he has your strength of spirit. Do not fear for him. But do understand that you may not find the welcome you seek when you go to your sons, or to Nerdanel.”

“I know. I know, but I have to—I must try.” It would break his heart, but he had survived heartbreak before. It would be better to know, one way or the other, to look into their eyes and hear from their own lips whether they would forgive him. And then, whatever happened…he would find a way to move forward.

“Of course you must.” Míriel kept stroking his hair, teasing out a few snarls with the ease of one long practiced with untangling thread. “But know this, Fëanáro: they love you. All of them love you deeply; if they did not, they would not be so hurt. I have watched and I have woven the tales of their lives; I know this truth as well as I know my own love for you and my own grief for Alqualondë and for the Helcaraxë, and for the rift between you and the children of Indis. Indis has my love, too, Fëanáro, and she and Finwë both had my blessing to wed and find happiness in each other.” Fëanor looked away, back at the moon as it hovered over the treetops. “I hope you will make peace with them in this life, my son.”

“So Mandos charged me,” Fëanor sighed. He looked back at his mother. “I think Nolofinwë and I are too much alike to ever be friends.”

“I think,” Míriel said, “that you are just alike enough to be very good friends, if you can only try.” She rose to her feet and held out her hands. Fëanor grasped them and let her pull him up. “Before you go to anyone,” Míriel said, “you must take time in Lórien to rest, to learn again what it means to be alive, to have a body—to eat, and drink, and sleep, to walk and run. Whatever happens next will be easier if you do.”

“When I do leave Lórien,” Fëanor said, as they walked together down the path, “where will I go? Where does Nerdanel live?”

“Near her father’s house outside of Tirion. It will not be hard to find.”

No, Fëanor thought, as they passed under the trees, the hard part would come afterward. But he did not look back, toward the walls of Mandos. There was only the way forward, toward whatever this new life of his would demand of him. 

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