My Son by polutropos  

There would be no wedding. It was never a question: if Feanáro was banished, so were her brothers, and so was she.

That was, of course, not how Hostamir saw it. It is not the way of a daughter! he had cried, and she regretted giving him the courtesy of a farewell. She would not have but for the need to prove herself better than her own mother, who had disappeared from Tirion the moment Feanáro’s doom was declared. It is the way of a wife to follow her husband, her too-long betrothed said. I am not your wife, Makalaure spat in return. I will never be your wife.

When the door of his house slammed behind her, it was as though a heavy cloak fell from her shoulders, breaking its choking clasp around her neck. She could breathe. How strange, the surge of joy, the sensation of floating. She urged Quildalote to a gallop, flying from the cloistered streets of Tirion to her father’s house. The home of her youth: soon to be emptied and purged of all that had come before.

How strange, her calm, her relief, amid the maelstrom of anger and grief rolling through the household as they prepared to leave. But as Makalaure could enspell all eyes and ears, make herself the only presence worth noticing in a room, so too could she disappear. She did so then, lest her mood, so out of accord with the rest, chafe at their discontent. Alone in the room of her childhood, she ran her hands over the many and meaningless possessions she would leave behind. Vermilion gowns, heavy brocade, gaudy carcanets, dainty flutes and lyres and other such gifts befitting a princess.

She did not notice the heaviness gathering around her heart until it was rising into her throat, pressing against the backs of her eyes. What selfishness. What faithlessness, to feel relief at her father’s disgrace. Too late, grief welled in her chest. Grief she ought to have felt the moment his doom was proclaimed. She brushed the tears from her eyes and hurried to help load the wagons.

“You have brought nothing?” Russandol asked, directing his eyes to her mare’s flank, free of saddlebags. She could not keep truths from her eldest brother, who had peeled away the casing of every secret she sought to hide.

(Not every secret. There was one; one she could not give word or shape even in the recesses of her own mind, that he would never know.)

“No,” she answered. “There is nothing here that I will miss.”

All she wished to bring with her was already on her person: the ring her father had given to her, to match those worn by her brothers; a broach emblazoned with the sigil of her house; a dagger crafted in her father’s forges. It would have been better were broach and dagger the shield and great sword each of her brothers bore. But that was not the path her father had chosen for her. A warrior she would never be.

They made the journey to Formenos with far more haste than they had in simpler times, when they wandered unhurried through the wilds, following their father’s curiosity and absorbing all he had to teach: they the saplings and he the light; the rain; the rich soil nourishing them.

The fortress, too, was much changed from those days of bliss. Formenos was silent as the desolate hills about the gates to Mandos; their father, as sombre as he had been in Lórien. (Makalaure, who had been a child, could not recall the body of Míriel, but she remembered the grim face of her father, his beauty marred by grief, and the flame that burned in his eyes for many days after they had left that place of mourning.)

In Formenos, Feanáro spent days and nights on end locked in the lightless vaults beneath the earth. Only Finwe dared seek him there, and his weary look upon returning seemed to deter Makalaure’s brothers from trying the same.

“Do you fear him?” Makalaure asked Russandol, as he pulled a brush through her hair.

His brushing slowed, then stopped. Makalaure turned to look at him; at his thumb worrying over the horsehair bristles. At last he asked: “Do you not?”

“No,” said Makalaure, and she meant it. “I grieve for him.”

Russandol hummed. “You should. Fear him. Especially you.” He sighed and placed both hands upon her shoulders. “Turn around, sister. I am not done.”

The door was unlocked. “Father?” Makalaure spoke in a voice clear and assured. No; she did not sound afraid, because she was not afraid.

No answer came, and so she pushed the great door open, just enough to fit herself through. With only the softest touch of her fingers, the latch clicked shut behind her.

Feanáro was bent, head heavy and drawn to his chest. Makalaure's own shoulders rolled forwards sympathetically. It was wrong, seeing her father thus diminished. Yet the Silmarils seemed to hold him, embrace him, glowing steadily despite the darkness. Their iridescent beams danced upon the walls.

Just as Makalaure drew breath to speak his name again, he greeted her.

“Child,” he said, unmoving. “Come, stand beside me. Let me see the light on your face.”

Makalaure obeyed, silent in her approach save the brush of her robe over the stones. As soon as she was near enough, Feanáro’s hand was around hers, pulling her close.

“Look at me,” he said, and turned to her. Though he stood much taller than she, it seemed in that moment that she faced him eye to eye. He lifted her hand, setting the palm against his cheek. His skin was dry, cold; his eyes too, but swollen and pink. He had been crying; the sight was familiar to Makalaure. How her father wept and wept, a storm of grief turning the course of every breeze in its path. He pressed her hand more firmly to his face, pleading for comfort in the only way he could. Her heart opened to him, for Feanáro’s trust was hard-earned.

“You are luminous, my child.” With his free hand, he threaded a strand of her unbound hair between his fingers. “So bright and faultless.”

Faultless she was not, for his gentle caress stirred in her an unspeakable longing. How he would despise her if he knew.

“We have missed you,” she said. At once she wished she had not spoken, for Feanáro’s jaw trembled with new sorrow.

“I have neglected you in my grief, have I not? My most precious works. My children.”

“No,” Makalaure said. “No, your pain is ours. We understand your grief is not… is not neglect. I came only to tell you that you have our love. That when it suits you to return to us, you will be welcomed. You have our devotion, Father.”

As she spoke, the light of Feanáro’s eyes guttered. He was not hearing her.

“You were to be wed,” he said, and the grip on her hand loosened. “Your betrothed…” He paused. Makalaure felt no bitterness that he could not remember his name, for she had no desire to hear it spoken; not in this moment of intimacy, not in the presence of the Silmarils. Not ever again. “He did not follow us,” Feanáro finished. Remorse flickered in the quivering of his mouth.

He would speak no apology, and that was well, for Makalaure wanted none. “I told him not to follow.”

“Still.” Feanáro released her hand and cupped her face instead. “You are owed a wedding. You deserve to be seen as the jewel of the Noldor.”

“Father, I assure you: it is nothing. I would choose you a thousand times before any husband. Ever would I choose my own blood before that of a stranger.”

“Quiet,” said Feanáro. Then, turning from her, he whispered over the glass dome over the Silmarils, releasing its seal. He lifted it. The jewels were set still in the filgreed circlet he had once worn to the great feasts and festivals of Tirion. Many, many years on, their blazing light will burn Makalaure’s eyes; but then their glow was as a balm for the mind; like a mirror reflecting the loveliest parts of herself as pure light and colour. Feanáro set it on her head.

“Father,” she gasped as at the touch of a lover; as at a stroke of inspiration unlooked-for. The circlet rested upon her light as a crown of flowers.

Feanáro gasped in turn, brushing his knuckles over her cheek and down the curve of her neck. “So beautiful,” he said. “Alas that you will ever be alone, for there is none worthy of such a bride.”

“I am not alone,” Makalaure answered.

A tear slid down Feanáro’s face, pearly in the light of the Silmarils. “Would you sing for me?” he asked.

“Of course,” said Makalaure. “Anything.”

Feanáro smiled cheerlessly. “A wedding song.”

Makalaure had played the weddings of many noble elves, and knew every song from the most ancient chants of Cuiviénen to the hymns of Valmar and her own intricate variations on Telerin folk songs — overwrought, to her own mind, but the public of Tirion demanded music that affirmed the greatness of the Noldor in all arts: not only of lore and craft, but of song.

None of these were the sort of song befitting this moment. What poured from Makalaure’s lungs was a song of yearning. Its origins unknown, she had always imagined it a lament for kin lost and left behind on the March across Endóre. Or perhaps before, upon the shores of Cuiviénen, when the paths of elves first diverged, their bonds pulled apart by Orome’s coming. It was no wedding song — but Makalaure made it one.

She restrained her voice, that might easily have filled the room; might easily have sounded beyond the stone walls. She sang in a whisper, full of breath, of unspoken and unspeakable longing. She would marry; she would marry here, in this vault beneath the earth, with the Silmarils upon her brow, with her own father. Let her be bound to him, let the thread of parentage be pulled tight, doubled-back and around, a knot unbreakable as the Silmarils she wore.

These thoughts came into her mind as if placed there by another power, in a voice both not her own and more true to herself than any she had spoken with before. Deeper, like her father’s, but not his either; for Feanáro’s voice was fire, and this was a voice like the sea.

She did not note when her song ceased to be sung aloud, could not even say when it was muffled by Feanáro’s kiss: fire turning her watery spirit to vapour. Yet she was solid against him, her body hard and taut.

He spared her the shame of having to consent to his taking her, turning her back to him. He wasted no time at groping of her flesh as other men would have: with one hand at the nape of her neck, he folded her as he might bend metal, bringing her torso to rest upon the ledge on which the Silmarils had their lonely casement – those jewels that now adorned her brow. As she was pressed forward, their light washed over the polished marble surface.

Feanáro rucked her skirts about her waist; his hands slid beneath the hem of her smallclothes, slipping them over the curve of her ass and down her thighs — it brought to mind the way she had seen his skilled fingers peel a thick-skinned fruit, drawing away the bitter flesh like a cloak to expose the sweet body beneath. She sighed, closing her eyes against the resurgent fear that he might yet ask her permission. That she might yet be forced to willingly submit to this act that surely broke all laws of nature.

But it was by a breach of the natural order, by death, that her father had been born into the world: his spirit ranged and raged beyond the confines of order. The One had created him to reign over nature, to capture it and reshape it; Feanáro set his own laws, and for that did Makalaure revere him. Here, not Manwe nor Mandos nor the One himself could adjudge her. Her father was her only king.

When at length Feanáro spoke, it was to murmur only, “My jewel,” and, “You are mine.”

“Yours,” Makalaure breathed, the moisture of her breath and the flush of her skin warming beneath her cheek.

Against the soft skin between her thighs she felt the firmness and the heat of her father’s want. Involuntarily, she squeezed her thighs around him, clenching her teeth and vainly gripping the smooth stone for purchase. The jut of her hipbones crashed against the ledge as he thrust her forward. She whimpered, but held firm. There would be pain in this union, and she welcomed it. She imagined bruises blooming over her body and bucked back so he could drive her forward again, and again.

His hand curled around her waist, beneath her skirts, diving low to stroke her wet crease. His thumb brushed her little cock, with such careful slowness that she could imagine it huge as a man’s; imagine his thumb the entire palm of a hand. She swelled beneath the touch and groaned. Even so had she heard her mother groan between the smack of flesh on flesh, when her father and mother thought themselves alone. When they thought no one heard, and Makalaure in shame and searing pleasure ground her palm against her sex, and with the other hand stifled the sounds of her ecstasy.

Now she moaned as her mother had, now grunted and growled as Feanáro himself had. Fingers wet with her slick, he looped his hand still further between her thighs, reaching back to circle the ring between her cheeks. Makalaure, weak with her pleasure, would have slid to the floor if not for the strength of his arm holding her up.

How could he know? How could he know the secret pleasure she took in touching herself there? In the darkness of drunken lovemaking, how she would slide a finger beneath her body while she was taken from above, to feel the fullness from both sides.

Even so did his finger pry her open. She was tight from disuse and chafed against his knuckle, but impatient nonetheless to take more of him. Her little cock, untouched, throbbed in answer to the pressure from behind.

“More,” she cried. “Please, more.”

With his free hand Feanáro gripped her by the hair, pulling at her neck so that if she rolled her eyes to the side she could make out the shape of him, his grimace of pleasure.

“How easily you open for me,” he said, drawing circles to stretch her wider. Abruptly he released her hair, and her forehead banged against the marble. She heard him spit, felt his cock slide from between her thighs and groaned at the loss; but soon it was between her cheeks, its wet tip at her hole. Open as she was, it was not nearly enough to take him. She lay limp over the ledge, tried to relax as he breached her. It hurt. She was splitting in half. But even had she wished to escape, she could not move. He had her pinned, and her body trembling with the force of her pleasure rendered her helpless to resist.

Then the discomfort gave way, and like a ship tossed at sea that suddenly harnesses the wind, her body swelled and grew tight, quickened, and rode the pain like a wave.

“Feanáro,” she gasped, “Father.”

“Yes, my son,” he answered, and again and again with each thrust repeated my son my son my son.

Tears burned in Makalaure’s eyes. Did she but take the place of another, one he desired more? “No,” she choked, “no, not your son.”

“My son,” he repeated.

“No, it is me, Makalaure,” she said, then wailed as a burst of sensation spiked in the pit of her stomach.

“Yes, Makalaure,” he said, “my son.”

Then he shuddered, yanking on her torso as he burst and quivered inside her. Her own bodily pleasure sputtered, dying in the flood of her emotion; but it mattered not, for her heart was full, her spirit so expansive that it filled the room.

He pulled himself from her, his spend dripping down her thigh. She strained to clench herself shut, not wanting to lose this part of him that he had left inside her, but she was too slack, too stretched. She gasped, still bent over the counter.

She stayed there, exposed and too enfeebled to move, long after Feanáro had left without a word.

My son. My son. My son.

It was as one reborn that Makalaure lifted himself from the counter and arranged his skirts. It was as Makalaure, son of Feanáro bound twice over, that he ascended the steps still wearing the Silmarils upon his brow.

Chapter End Notes

Thanks to Chestnutpod's <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15eu60V2L9W514jL17btANyCxqY8CMBjtNLHIhwZqv3k/edit?gid=151141473#gid=151141473" rel="nofollow">Elvish Name List</a> for the name Hostamir. Thanks to firstamazon for cheerleading and beta'ing.

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