Like Stars We Fall by Isilme_among_the_stars

The silvery stars reflected in the dark waters of the Gelion distort and dim as his brother disturbs them. Dipping into its swift current, Maglor’s hands bring forth chill rivulets that leave drops sparkling on his brow after he douses his face. Northern Ossiriand is cold enough at this time of year, Caranthir thinks as he shivers beside him, without dashing ice against your face. The winter snows would come soon. Even Caranthir’s ruddy complexion was paled by the chill air, but Maglor’s cheeks still flushed.

“Why this? Why is Maedhros ceding to Celegorm’s wishes now? He has restrained us before,” Caranthir demands of Maglor in harsh, insistent whispers.

“You know as well as I, Moryo. Surely the fear of everlasting darkness, the inescapability of it, sits like a glass shard in your own heart as it does in mine. Try to squeeze it into submission and the pain of its bite can be borne for a time. But sooner or later...”

Caranthir does not need Maglor to finish the sentence. His own dreadful thoughts flesh out the unspoken. He knows the madness that ever tries to burst forth from the rash words they spoke under Mindon Eldaliëva many years ago. It claws at him from inside his chest with increasing desperation. He grows weary of grappling with it, clinging on for the horror of what might happen if he gives in. Maedhros’s sanction of a march against Doriath has frayed his weakening restraint. He fears it will break, ashamed he is not stronger. The stinging look Caranthir directs toward Maglor, is not really for his brother, but for himself.

“Nelyo attempted diplomacy first,” Maglor tries to supplicate.

Caranthir had thought Maedhros immune to the unbearable, insistent clawing of the oath toward violence. After Thangorodrim, it seemed that he could endure any length of torture, unbent and unsullied. Hard as steel had he become, refined and tempered by the forge of suffering. This Maedhros was grimmer than the Nelyo of old, but more discriminating, of which Caranthir approved. Surely, he would steer them away from ruthlessness and ruin. Caranthir had counted on it. He was under no illusion as to the nobility of his own character. Pragmatism he had in lashings. But pragmatic men such as he are not often remembered for their honour. He needed his eldest brother’s steadfast morality to temper the worst impulses born out of cold logic. Much that it galled him. It scared him that Maedhros seemed to be slipping now.

“It was a poor attempt. He must have known that Dior would refuse. Our father may as well have branded us with the device of an úmaia as a star,” Caranthir spits out bitterly, “for of like ilk are we now regarded. The Fëanorel is looked upon by so many with dread and distrust, inspiring fear, division and betrayal. What good can come of anything we set our hand to now? But this folly? This can only end in evil.”

“Reason may yet win out, when it becomes plain to Dior we will brook no refusal.”

“I do not think that likely.”

Maglor makes no reply and they are left in the silence of their own thoughts. Is his brother truly that optimistic, or does he lie to himself to soothe his rent soul? Maglor has always been soft-hearted, much as he often seeks to surround it with flint. Though as noble as Maedhros, and possessed of twice the measure of pity, he lacks their eldest brother’s steely authority. He could not have restrained the rest of them for so long. Neither can he change Maedhros’s course now. Caranthir can tell that he has tried. He sees the aching of Maglor’s spirit in the pinch of his lips and habitual far-off cast of his gaze. Expressions identical to Ammë’s, both.

Her first rebuke of his own fiery outbursts awakened Caranthir’s awareness of the shield Nerdanel provided them against Atar’s rash and prideful temper. Even when little more than an infant, he understood they were analogous in this, he and his father. Caranthir would burn himself out encircled by her arms. He would lay his head on her shoulder in relief, peering out from the curtain of her red hair as she calmly held him. Her strength, like to stone, was cool, unyielding and untouchable by flame. He remembered in sharp detail the day the shield had come down. The set of Ammë’s shoulders ever proudly squared, had caved and softened. The grief in her eyes when they departed from her, bound for Formenos, was deeper than oceans. Caranthir blinks the image away.

A blemish lays upon he and his brothers, increasingly dogging their steps. It draws nearer as the years stretch on, their own personal hell hound. Their Carcaroth, fixing to lock them in its dreadful maw, and there would be no salvation for them. There would be no Huan to defeat it. He had deserted Celegorm in the end. No Luthien would cry half-Maian tears to soften the heart of Námo on their behalf when they fell. Few, if any, and certainly not she, had pity in their hearts for them now. No, their hellhound would continue to turn even the most noble-hearted of their endeavours to evil ends until it killed them. It would stalk them to the bitter end, their legacy leaving an ugly scar across the landscape of history. Not glorious as Atar had claimed. Námo had spoken truly indeed.

Caranthir’s anger had been inflamed by Mandos’s words, an incendiary declaration of the Valar’s judgement upon them. How unjust they were to divest themselves of blame. A doom imposed by callous tyrants angered by the independence of their no-longer cowed thralls. The words tore at him, keened by the first taste of battle horror on the beaches.

He nursed the precious promise of freedom from his father’s fair speeches close to his breast on the march to Alqualondë. When the first Teleri began to fall, he reasoned that it was unavoidable. Thralls they still were, too inculcated by the Valar’s enchanting lies to allow a bid for deliverance. But logic had not stopped nausea rising as the iron-tang of blood mingled with the stinging salt in the still, cloying air. Celegorm beside him, had seemed undaunted. His visage had been a terrible sight in the torchlight. With fair hair stained almost as copper as Nelyo’s flying about his shoulders, and red streaks darkening his face, he looked every bit as fierce as Tulkas. New blooms of crimson unfurled in the sand before him with each great arc of his sword. Curufin, though his face blenched, had none-the-less plunged ahead, his features twisted in morbid exultation. The vigour of his onslaught raised great splashes where he fought, knee-deep in among the crashing waves. The Teleri never stood a chance.

They still fought as passionately, though now with battle-hardened experience won from bitter centuries holding the Northernmost defences. Caranthir could expect no restraint from them in Doriath. He feared he too would become as fey in the heat of battle, stoked as his temper already was by years of injured pride. He knew not what he would do at the sight of Dior.

The first trickle of doubt had slid into Caranthir’s consciousness at Alqualondë. When the battle was over Nelyo swayed like a drunk before him as he collapsed, heaving against the side of a ship. He seemed a ghost as he turned to face Caranthir, the sickly-sweet odour of vomit on his breathe. At his brother’s ankles a spray of hair rose and fell with the swell of the tide. The body that it belonged to brushed against Caranthir’s leg. It’s slippery, cold hand sent a shiver of horror up his spine. Nelyo reached out, grasping his tunic roughly in one strong hand as his own stomach rebelled. It was the only thing that had keep him from plunging into the dreadful water. 

               “Is this the price of freedom?” he asked. Words catching in his raw throat, “it seems steep.”

               Nelyo had not had an answer. Then Námo’s words came, and Caranthir was convinced the sacrifice justified. In time, Maedhros’s leadership had taught Caranthir to accept the high price of freedom, no matter how dear. He had led them many times hence into battles with far steeper cost. Both had hardened to endure the mounting grief. Neither could remain soft and still survive. Not like Maglor.

Maglor’s delicate hands had seemed to hold all their grief lightly that night, as he held them all together. On board the ship gliding along the coast he quietly brings order to his brothers. He arranges them like chess pieces, in clever formations that shield them from Atar’s fey temper. Maglor settles the twins against a creaking wall in a far, quiet corner of the hold. Paralysed by shock, they stare with blank eyes into the darkness. Being the least bloodied, calculating in battle as he is in all things, Caranthir is recruited to stand guard over them. Comfort does not come easily, but he tries his best to offer it, placing an arm around each of their shoulders. They are both frighteningly still. Caranthir is unsettled by their silence, used as he is to the constant chatter they normally keep up between themselves. Usually it irritates him, but now he fears he will not hear it again, that his brothers will hide inside themselves forever. He is relieved when Amras begins to tremble, and Amrod, feeling it too, instinctively nestles closer to his twin.

All three flinch at Atar’s impassioned voice that rings out suddenly from above. Caranthir knows he will have to face Atar soon. He builds a fortress inside himself to wall in grief and fear, then quietly goes above. He does not allow Maglor’s gentle squeeze of his shoulders to soften the mortar. He lets the heat of Atar’s flames fire it like the pottery in Ammë’s kiln, until it is hard and strong. Only later does he realise the walls are made of anger.

The wind rises as the ship turns from the shore, making for the open sea. Standing at the prow Caranthir can see a vast universe, dark as his father’s raven hair but speckled with innumerable points of light. He has never seen the stars like this before, cannot tell where the sky ends, and the sea begins. As he stands transfixed, a single vermillion point appears in the heights of the heavens, careening downward, it’s golden trail fizzing behind it as it descends seemingly into the depths of the sea.

A shower of fiery trails begins to cascade, wavering in the reflected night sky upon the Gelion. Caranthir lifts his eyes to the heavens to watch them at their source.

“Have we brought this upon ourselves?” he asks his brother now.

Maglor frowns, confused. He doesn’t understand. Caranthir tries to find the words to explain. His mind is sharp, but he’s never found the eloquence to convey the complex reasoning he constructs or the conclusion he reaches very well. But this question he has turned over and over in his mind so often, that it seems possible.

“When the Valar shut us out of Aman, I thought the words of Námo against us were to be brought about by them. Deliberate consequences imposed to punish us for daring to seek our freedom.”

“Philosophy Moryo? This is unlike you.”

“Just hear me out,” he snipped back, frustrated. How little Maglor knew.

“Peace. I’m listening,” Maglor spoke gently, forestalling his temper.

“But perhaps it is not so. After Ulfang turned on us, I spent so long trying to work out why, calculating what measures would have been effective in ensuring his loyalty. How I could have prevented us from falling so low.”

“Ulfang’s treachery was Morgoth’s doing.”

“But not perhaps, his alone. How often has my anger crippled us? Am I not just as destructive as Atar? I am no more a master of it than he was. I must have seemed a dreadful man indeed if Morgoth was a preferable ally.”

“Haleth didn’t think of you as such.”

“And yet she would not settle in the North, instead needlessly leading her people on a dangerous journey West, preferring Thingol as her neighbour.”

“To follow her kin, didn't she tell you? That decision was hardly because of you as you are implying,” Maglor sighed, “you’ve had arguably quite fruitful alliances, and not only with Eldar. Celegorm and Curufin can’t even manage to keep our Noldor alliances intact. If they had acted with more honour in Nargothrond, perhaps Orodreth’s aid would still have secured victory even despite Ulfang.”

“Yes, I have a much better standing among the Noldor, don’t I?” Caranthir laughed bitterly, “All three of us are fatally flawed. Maedhros was right to send us the farthest. Námo never needed to curse us. We cause our own downfall. We would still have slowly torn ourselves to pieces had he never spoke.”

“We are all flawed, Moryo.”

“But some of us, it seems, more than others. I fear what I will do in Doriath, when my temper runs hot.”

“Then why do you come?”

“You know as well as I, Káno,” he replied, voice dangerous and low, “It is the same reason you are here. The shards in our hearts cut too deep.”

This night he is open enough to allow the soft squeeze on his shoulder to change him. But his heart is so fortified now that the hairline crack it creates in the mortar can no more undermine the wall than Ammë could cool Atar’s fire in the end. Maglor leaves his hand there and they watch the sky until the meteor shower ends.

How like them we are, Caranthir thinks, remembering the night the sky had merged with the sea, self-destructive stars falling from their high seat in the heavens to the darkest depths.

There is only one star in Menegroth. The sky cannot be seen from within its damp, stony halls. Caranthir burns so hot that the chill of the caves is imperceptible. There is only one star here, shining on Dior’s breast, and they are so, so close. Celegorm is almost touching it. Caranthir tries to burn a path toward him, tight sword strokes furiously cutting a way forward. Around him the ring of steel clashing against steel echoes and booms, bouncing endlessly off the hard cavern walls in a cacophony of sound. But even among all this noise Caranthir cannot mistake Celegorm’s sharp intake of breath. He is the first to fall, undone by a broad sweep of his sword that leaves him open to Dior’s well-placed thrust. 

               Caranthir renews the fury of his onslaught, but by the time he fights his way to Celegorm his brother’s Fëa is gone. The silmaril is gone too, though Dior is not, and he is formidable in his fury that burns as hot as Caranthir’s own. They are well matched, but Dior is beginning to gain the upper hand. Caranthir is relieved when Curufin’s pale face appears over Dior’s shoulder. His younger brother still becomes as white as he did in Alqualondë when the bloodshed begins, even after centuries of war. His preference always was for defence. Caranthir wonders after all this time, if he still feels just as afraid as that first time. If he does, Curufin has never admitted it, nor let it hamper him. But he is sloppy with grief now, defence all forgotten. His eyes keep straying to floor where Celegorm lies, and he leaves himself open too many times. Caranthir wants to scream at him, tell him to pull himself together, but he is too hard pressed.

               Dior falls under their combined might even as his men rally to him, but not before he is able to land several blows. Caranthir and Curufin are still hard pressed, but now Caranthir limps and Curufin’s left arm hangs useless by his side. He never does manage to warn his brother. He goes down trying to place himself between a sword and Curufin’s exposed side. The stone beneath his back is cool and steady, like Ammë’s arms containing his fury as a child. He can feel his heat leaking out, dispersing into it, his fire guttering. It if weren’t for the brother by his side, it would be a relief to surrender to it. Curufin’s sword still glints above in the dark that closes in on Caranthir, like a light in the heavens. He only hopes he doesn’t come streaking down to earth too.  

Chapter End Notes

This story was borne recent stimulating discussions on the about Caranthir’s perhaps undeserved reputation as the harshest of Fëanor’s son. They’ve inspired me to explore the character of Caranthir a little deeper and shaped the characterisation of him I’ve used in this story. A humble thank you to those involved.

I have tried to keep this story compatible with the cannon events and details of the published Silmarillion, but the fleshed-out characterisations are my own. 

Thank you for reading! I hope you have enjoyed it. I welcome your comments, but please be kind. This is my first ever fanfiction. 

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