From That Rubble by StarSpray  

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Twenty Eight

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I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.
- “Sea Fever” by John Masefield 

 

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It was rare that Fëanor went to the seashore. He had visited Eldamar often in his youth, but rarely ventured north or south of Alqualondë, where there was only starlight and where the waves were wild and cold, crashing against the feet of the mountains that rose right up out of the waters. There were one or two small cities down on the southern coasts now, he had heard, built up and into the mountainsides. 

Fëanor had no idea why someone would want to live in such a place, but he woke up one morning with a very strong desire to pass through the Calacirya and wander for a little while by the shore—to let the untamed waves of Belegaer wash up over his feet, and to listen to the music of it crash against the rocks. So that was what he did, since there was nothing else he was meant to do that day. 

He rode through the mountains and turned south, away from Alqualondë and the Bay of Eldamar. After a short while he left his horse to graze where he would among the tough grasses that grew by the southward road, and climbed over some boulders to reach a stretch of pebbled beach, where the waves were not quite as violent. The skies were overcast, and the water grey and steely. When he stepped into the waves they were very cold, for winter had not yet fully released its grip on the world especially out of the balmy influence that Uinen held over the Bay of Eldamar. He retreated and sat down where he would stay dry, and watched the foam wash up over the stones, leaving behind bits of shell and seaweed. The Music was loud that day, echoing all the Themes that had been sung before the world was made, that told its story and offered those who could hearken some small connection to the Timeless Halls and the Time before Time.

Fëanor rested his arms on his knees and stared out at the horizon. After an hour he saw a small shape, pale in the morning light, appear, carried swiftly westward by the winds and currents—a ship full of Elves. They were fewer these days than they had once been. Those Elves who remained in Middle-earth were those who, for the most part, were determined never to leave it. 

After watching the ship for a while, movement to the south, on the shore, caught his eye. When he turned he saw a figure walking up the beach, cloaked but not hooded. His long golden hair was braided neatly and simply, falling over his shoulder in a single unadorned plait. Fëanor immediately recognized Finarfin, and found himself caught between trying to slip away before he was noticed in return, or just staying where he was so it didn’t look like he was fleeing. In the end he just turned back to watch the waves. He hadn’t come seeking Finarfin, and it would be easy enough for them to just ignore one another if Finarfin wished.

“Fëanáro?” Finarfin stopped a few feet away, looking startled. “What are you doing here?”

“Sitting and thinking,” Fëanor said. “What are you doing here?”

“Walking.” For a few moments they regarded each other, both wary but for different reasons. Finally, Finarfin said, “I suppose we should talk, before we’re thrown together every day this summer.”

“That isn’t why I came out here,” Fëanor said.

“Yes, I know.” Finarfin came to sit beside him. “This would be a very odd place for you to come looking for me. I rarely come walking this far.”

“Does your knee trouble you?”

“Not today.” 

“How is Aikanáro?”

This got a smile, though it was faint and brief. “Doing well, and looking forward to the summer. How is Russandol?”

“Also well.”

“And Macalaurë? I’ve heard that his performance went well—and that you went with him.”

“I did. All the Valar were moved to tears by it. He’s well, and will be making his way west soon, with all the rest of the singers. I think Findaráto is also going with them.”

They both fell silent, watching the waves roll up toward their feet. The wind changed, and carried the sound of bells down from Avallónë, where the city was preparing to welcome the incoming ship. Finally, Finarfin asked, “Why did the Valar release you from Mandos?”

“I asked.”

“That’s all?”

“I was surprised too. There were conditions, but nothing I wouldn’t have done anyway.”

“What were they?”

“Not to seek to take back the crown, and to make peace with Nolofinwë.” Fëanor paused. “Mandos did not direct me to make peace with you, but I did intend to try—except that I was advised against seeking you out, and you have since made it quite clear you want nothing at all to do with me.”

“It’s true, I would not have been willing to hear you out before now,” Finarfin said. “I’m still not sure I really want to—but as I said, we’ll be thrown together all this summer, and I would rather not have anything important left unsaid when we are meant to be making merry. Nor do I wish for an audience for something such as this.”

“I suspect you have more to say to me than I have to say to you,” Fëanor said. He looked at Finarfin, who had his own gaze trained on the ship coming in. More than any of their siblings he took after Indis, with her golden hair and runner’s build. His eyes were the blue of a summer sky, and in Fëanor’s memory he was always cheerful, like Finrod, quieter than his son but with a ready smile. Of course, Fëanor had fewer memories of Finarfin than of Fingolfin—he had been so easy to ignore, the youngest of Finwë’s children and never any threat, and Fingolfin had been the one to put himself forward more often, more like Fëanor in temperament and thus unafraid to clash with him. 

“Maybe,” he said after a little while. “It’s so—it’s horribly ironic, and also just horrible, how you and Nolvo spent so long fighting over which one of you should have been Atya’s heir while I never wanted anything to do with it, and then in the end it was me saddled with the crown. Findis and I had a terrible fight over it ourselves—a mockery of your fights, since she didn’t want it either. And then she went to Valmar and we didn’t speak again until I was preparing to leave for the War of Wrath.”

“You were good at it,” Fëanor said quietly. 

“Yes, well—it’s easy when there is hardly anyone left to rule. Even after the War of Wrath when the way was opened again—there was still hardly anyone who returned. They were all dead. You were all dead, all of you but Macalaurë and Artanis, and she refused to come home and he had just disappeared. Most who did return settled on Eressëa instead. I have also been a ruler during peacetime, not war—it was always going to be easier.”

“You did lead our people to war.”

“For fifty years out of thousands. But I was never unwilling to go to war. Am I not also Finwë’s son? I loved him too—I was as angry as you were when he was slain. That was what you never seemed to understand, Fëanáro. He was our father and we loved him as much as you did, and it didn’t have anything to do with you. That he loved us was never taking anything from you. I never understood how you seemed to misunderstand that, given you had so many children of your own that I know you loved fiercely. You never seemed to understand either that we wanted to love you, too. There was no trick in it. No plots. No subterfuge. Just—you were our brilliant older brother, and for a long time we did not understand why you seemed to hate us so.”

Fëanor picked up a stone and turned it over in his hands, rubbing his thumb over the water-smoothed surface, thinking of the difference between it and the softer smoothness of the cherry blossoms. “I’ve had a lot of time to think,” he said, “mostly in the Halls, where one doesn’t really have a choice but to consider, well, everything, but since I returned to life, too. I don’t—it wasn’t that I was jealous of Atya’s love. Or—I was, but that wasn’t the heart of it.”

“What was the heart of it, then?”

“You had your mother. I didn’t. And in those days there wasn’t anyone who understood. Even those who had made the Journey—because death was not supposed to touch us here, and the only one who could be blamed for it was me. And—I did not even have the hope of her return someday. Now all of us know that particular grief, and I wish we didn’t.

“That was why I asked. To come back, I mean. Cáno was coming home, and I had only lingered to watch for him in Vairë’s tapestries. I couldn’t bear not knowing what was happening to any of them—and then I did not want them to have to suffer like I suffered.”

“But they did not want you back. Not then.”

“But they had the choice. They could change their minds, and at least I would be here if they did.”

He could feel Finarfin’s gaze on him, weighty and assessing. “What would you have done if they never did change their minds?”

“Mostly what I was doing these last fifty years or so—staying in Tirion. Reading about all the things I missed while in Mandos. Making things. I initially thought of returning to Formenos, but having gone back to see it I don’t think I could have stayed. Nolofinwë wouldn’t hear of it, anyway.”

“I didn’t know you had gone back there.”

“I go every few years or so, just to…sit by the lake.”

Finarfin leaned back on his hands with a sigh. “I went once, not long after the Sun first rose. I planted flowers, made the mistake of looking inside the door, and then left. I didn’t wait long enough. It was still—there were still—stains. On the floor.” Fëanor grimaced. “Elrond and Celebrían have a little garden in Imloth Ningloron where the halflings are buried. It was made to be visited often, and sometimes I have wondered if I should have been making regular pilgrimages to Atya’s grave all along. I just couldn’t make myself do it.”

“I’ve seen their garden. It’s…it’s very different from the shores of the Wilwarinen. I don’t go there because I feel I should.”

“Are you trying to punish yourself?”

“No. I just want to talk to him sometimes, and that’s as close as I can come.”

The ship drew ever closer, and for a while the two of them sat and watched it, until its sails were all visible, and the dark wood of the hull, and the pale green banner flying from the mast. Closer at hand, gulls swooped over their heads, to dive into the water and bob on the waves. Others landed on the shore to peck at the shells, or at the mounds of seaweed that might hide something else good to eat. Finally Finarfin said, “I have been angry with you—with all of you—but I don’t think that I am anymore. A fire needs fuel to burn, and I have finally run out of it. But I am not prepared to return to Tirion—the mere thought exhausts me.”

“Nolofinwë would be content with a letter.”

“Maybe. This summer will exhaust me too,” Finarfin said, mouth twisting unhappily. “I will go, because if any of us are absent it will be noticed and remarked upon, and I think it would rather spoil what my uncle is trying to do, and I will put on a smile for the duration, but I hope neither you nor Nolvo will ask more of me.”

“I will ask nothing of you,” said Fëanor.

“This isn’t how I thought such a conversation would go, you know.”

“Many people have said that to me. You thought it would be a fight?”

“Well—yes. I thought you would have all kinds of excuses and justifications, and you would be horrendously eloquent about it all just to make arguing with you impossible and infuriating.”

“If you’d like, I can tell you about how Rúmil thinks I went mad in my grief,” Fëanor said after a moment. “How I don’t even clearly remember most of it—I’ve been looking into the past through an old palantír, and it’s like watching someone else. Or how my entire life had been upended even before the Darkening, and then our father’s murder and the theft of the Silmarils were just—the final stones on the cairn of it, and I felt I had nothing left to lose. I could go on at length about all of that, but none of it matters—it doesn’t change anything.”

Finarfin seemed very fond of long silences. Fëanor didn’t look at him, instead lowering his gaze to the foaming waves, not coming in as far now as the tide began to go out. He hadn’t meant to say any of that, really. Most of it he hadn’t even said aloud to Findis or to Fingolfin. But after a while Finarfin said, “It matters. The why—what you felt, what you feel. It doesn’t change anything that happened, true, but we cannot move forward without understanding each other. I am not unaware that you were the main target of Melkor’s scheming—and I know that I cannot imagine what that must have felt like.”

“I don’t think I realized the extent of it, until lately.”

“I did know, by the way—what Rúmil believes. He was one of my advisers when I was king, and we spoke of that time often and at length, trying to make sense of it. He has always been very fond of you, but I have never found that to cloud his judgment.” Finarfin got to his feet. “When you return to Tirion, tell Nolofinwë to come see me sometime. That will end in a fight, but better to get it over with before this summer, so we can at least pretend to be the best of friends while everyone is watching.”