From That Rubble by StarSpray  

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Four

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Heart,
I implore you,
it’s time to come back
from the dark

…

Let the world
have its way with you,
luminous as it is

with mystery
and pain—
graced as it is
with the ordinary.
- “Summer Morning” by Mary Oliver

- - 

“They gave you a palantír?” Findis perched on an empty workbench in Fëanor’s workshop, frowning at him as he collected the materials to make the blue diamonds she had asked for. The bright spring sunshine streamed through the window to make her hair shine like a memory of Laurelin. “Whatever for?”

“They need me to understand,” Fëanor said, “since, you know, I wasn’t there—at least not long enough.”

“So they want you to just wallow in all the misery of the First Age, though it’s now been six thousand years and more since it ended?”

“No,” Fëanor said. He couldn’t find the crucible he wanted; Curufin might have borrowed it. “There’s no point to wallowing.” He crouched down to look through the other crucibles in the cabinet, and found one that was close enough. “When do you want these diamonds, again?”

“By Midsummer would be nice, but there’s no rush. Have you spoken to any of them besides Curufinwë?”

“Not really—and I will have these done well before Midsummer. Diamonds are easy.” 

Caranthir had come back to Tirion with Curufin, but he’d continued to avoid Fëanor as he always had. Last he had hard, the twins and Maedhros would be returning home with Nerdanel soon; Míriel had spent the winter in Imloth Ningloron, and had written all about it to Fëanor. She had seemed very pleased to finally get to know her grandsons properly, and Fëanor was pleased also—and, tentatively, hopeful. He was trying not to be, circling the feeling like it was a wild animal that might bite if he made the mistake of looking directly at it, but it was hard to ignore. The palantír was not something he looked at every day, though he did pick it up most evenings, and most of the time it was horrible—battles and wounds and grief and pain—but Curufin had been right that there had been great joy and freedom and life in Beleriand, too. It was hard to see, sometimes, through the knowledge of how it all ended, but the more he looked the more he found. Fëanor was starting to feel as though he knew his sons again, that he might understand better how they thought and how Middle-earth had shaped them, for good and for ill. Even if by the end of this none of them wanted anything to do with him, still, at least he would know better why. That was worth all the tears and all the sleepless nights. And there was still the fact that they had asked it of him—that they had decided together that this might be the thing that let them start to close the distance. That alone spoke volumes—that they didn’t like the current state of affairs any more than he did.

Findis pursed her lips and looked like she wanted to press further about the palantír, but Fëanor started talking about something funny Fingolfin had told him earlier that day, and she got the hint. It was still odd, to know that he could confide in her if he wished—and to find that more often than not he did wish to, if he could only find the words—but if he was going to talk to any of his siblings about Middle-earth or what he saw in the palantír, it would be Fingolfin, or perhaps Lalwen. Findis had not gone east, and Fëanor had long since ceased to begrudge her that, but it did mean there was a very similar gulf of understanding between her and the rest of them—even Finarfin—to the one that lay between him and his sons. Even Fëanor had seen enough to know the general shape of what he had missed afterward even if the important details had eluded him until now. 

None of them were strangers to grief or rage or pain, but there were shades of all of those things, just as there were many shades of the color blue, and he did not want to make Findis, of all people, familiar with the ones he was learning.

And thinking of shades of blue— “Can you tell me more precisely just what color you want these gems to be?”

“Something very light. Like the dawn sky on a cloudless morning in early spring—bright and clean. And speaking of brightness…” Findis paused before going on with a more cautious tone, “You haven’t made anything with light since you returned.”

Fëanor placed the crucible on the workbench above his head and sat back on his heels. “Do you want light in these gems?” he asked. 

“Not if you do not wish to do it.”

“I can do it. Starlight or sunlight? Or moonlight?”

“I know you can do it,” Findis said, frowning at him. “But do you want to?”

He hadn’t done much with light after he’d made the Silmarils—there hadn’t seemed to be any point, since he’d reached the pinnacle of the art. And, well, his mind had turned then to other things instead. He’d wanted sharp edges, not beauty. “Yes,” he said now. He had to start again sometime, he supposed—and he’d never tried to capture sunlight or moonlight. It wouldn’t be difficult, but it would be new—and he hated the way that Findis was talking about it, as though it was something he needed sheltering from. And he had loved it, working with light, making things that sparkled and shone—if he hadn’t, he never would have gotten as far as making the Silmarils in the first place. He found suddenly that he wanted to start making such things again, especially if they would please his sister. That he would never surpass the Silmarils only meant now that he could make whatever he wanted without worrying about how impressive or not it might be. “What sort of light, Findis?”

“Starlight and moonlight, please,” Findis said. She hopped down from the bench and leaned over to kiss the top of his head where he was still kneeling in front of the cabinet. “Thank you, brother.”

He set to work as Findis departed, glad of a new project, something to fill his afternoons and distract him from the piles of boxes and chests still waiting in the storerooms of the old house. Many were too big or too heavy for him to lift up the stairs by himself, and he was either going to have to get creative with some rope, or ask someone to help. The only person he would ask was Curufin, but Curufin had already come once or twice, and seeing the state of the house had so clearly distressed him that Fëanor had not spoken of it again, lest he feel obliged to keep trying.

Several weeks later he found himself back at the house, attempting to lift a chest that he knew was too heavy. It slipped from his grasp and pinned one of his fingers. He cursed as he yanked his hand free, and decided to just give up—never mind that he’d only been there for fifteen minutes. Maybe he’d just go back home and read something. He had a dozen books he’d been meaning to get to and at least if he dropped one of them it wouldn’t hurt. Or maybe he’d go visit his granddaughters and distract himself with their games instead—it was very hard to feel unhappy or frustrated when Calissë and Náriel were climbing all over him or showing him all the things they were making or drawing or learning.

But when he reached the top of the stairs, he found Amrod and Amras standing in the dusty foyer, waiting for him. They wore their hair long and simply braided, and were dressed in the browns and greens he was accustomed now to seeing on them in the palantír. Surprise made him forget there was another step at the top of the staircase—but instead of falling on his face he found himself caught, one twin on each side. “Good morning, Atya,” said Amras, as though it was perfectly natural and not shocking at all for the two of them to be there. 

“Ambarussa?” Fëanor got his feet under him and straightened, looking from one to the other. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you,” said Amrod. “Curvo said you’re cleaning out all the storerooms. Would you like some help?”

“I…” Fëanor tried to think if Curufin had told him of any change that had come over his brothers. Then he recalled all the times Curufin had good-naturedly complained about Amrod and Amras coming and going at odd times and never with any warning. If they had decided they wanted to spend time with him as suddenly as they did anything else, the last thing Fëanor thought he should do was question it. “Yes,” he said when he found his voice again. “There are several chests I can’t bring up by myself.”

“A good thing we’re here, then!” said Amras brightly. 

As they returned to the storeroom the twins wanted to know what Fëanor was doing with everything, and why he did not want to keep any of it himself. He spoke the truth when he said he had nowhere to keep it—but did not add that he also didn’t want to find a space, or really to keep any of it, except for a few small things he’d found with particularly precious memories attached, tucked away in a box in the back of his wardrobe, rarely opened. There were more things that he thought his sons would want to at least look through, and those he’d been giving to Curufin, trusting that they would make their way to the others eventually.

He bent to pick up the chest that had fallen on his fingers before, and Amrod easily hoisted up the other end as Amras gathered smaller boxes. They filled the silence with chatter about hedgehogs and cats and various small happenings of the past year. Some of those things Fëanor had seen in the palantír—sometimes he needed to look for them all in the present, just to remind himself that they were all together and well and happy—but most he hadn’t. He could have listened to such stories for hours. 

In almost no time at all they had brought up all the boxes Fëanor had wanted to get out of that storeroom that day. “Thank you,” he said once the last box was set down in the foyer, and then realized he didn’t know what else to say. He still didn’t know what they wanted, his youngest sons, in coming to him in this way. He had scrawled out apologies in ink years ago, and tried to show his love in gifts, because even if he had been able to see and speak to them in person, he seemed to have come from Mandos tongue-tied and having lost all the eloquence he’d once put to such terrible use—at least for the most important things—and he hadn’t yet gotten it back. 

Amrod glanced at Amras, who nodded and left without a word, leaving Amrod to stretch out his muscles, looking around, appearing entirely at ease though Fëanor could see his sharp gaze taking in all the details of the crumbling house around them—the cracked tiles, the stains on the walls, the broken stairs. It was the same sort of gaze that had taken in a battlefield and then found the best way to carve through it, all in the space of a second; that had tracked orcs and game alike through the deep woods, never missing the smallest of signs. Then he looked at Fëanor and smiled, looking less like a hunter and more like Nerdanel. He had a smudge of grey dust over the bridge of his nose. “Thank you for the letters,” he said. “I know that’s overdue.”

If he were to be honest, Fëanor hadn’t actually expected any of his sons to read the letters—except perhaps Curufin. “It isn’t,” he began. 

“What I really mean is, thank you for writing two letters.”

Fëanor blinked. “I only wrote one.” Well, he had only sent one—one to each son. The dozens of others that he’d written over the years had been consigned to his bedroom hearth, but they had all just rehashed the first one anyway, trying to find a way to say I’m sorry and I love you and I miss you so much that didn’t seem to fall so flat, and failing. 

Amrod grinned at him. “No, I mean—a letter for me and a letter for Amras, instead of just one to Ambarussa.”

Oh. Fëanor looked away, at the boxes strewn about them instead of at Amrod’s face, as he tried to decide how upset he was at this and whether it was even necessary. “Do others write to you thus?” 

“Well, yes—but to be fair, it’s never letters like the one you wrote, usually just short notes to tell us a bit of news or to extend an invitation.” Amrod shrugged when Fëanor glanced back at him. “It would be silly to waste paper for those things. Just—we didn’t expect it. So…” His smile faded as he watched whatever Fëanor’s face was doing. “Thank you.”

“You shouldn’t—” Fëanor bit his tongue, hating this uncertainty and wishing he could speak without fearing that he would say the wrong thing. “You shouldn’t have to thank me just for that. I wasn’t—I know I was not—” Why was this so hard? “I know I have failed you in so many ways Pit—” No, not Pityo—he hadn’t heard anyone refer to either twin by their father-names since his return, not even Curufin, “—Amrod, but surely I was not so terrible a father that it surprises you that I can tell you apart.” He’d always been able to tell—it had bothered him for a time that Nerdanel had gifted them both only one mother-name, because however alike they were they were still two people, not one person in two bodies, though he’d let it go after the twins themselves had so fully embraced it. 

Amrod’s grin came back, though it was a little more tentative now. “There was quite a long stretch of time where we tried to make it hard for everyone to tell us apart, when we were younger,” he said. “We thought it was funny. Ammë was the only one who was never fooled.” Fëanor did not remember this—probably because they had not attempted the trick on him. He’d been preoccupied with the Silmarils and then with other things for too much of their childhood, and had missed all of those small jokes and joys. The reminder made that particular spot under his ribs ache. “And you can call me Pityo if you like,” Amrod added.

The memory of Maedhros flatly rejecting the name Nelyafinwë came to Fëanor’s mind. “But you do not prefer it.”

Amrod shrugged again. “Not usually, but…well, it’s what you’ve always called me.”

Fëanor felt like he had been given a puzzle with several missing pieces. It didn’t seem possible that his youngest sons would so suddenly just decide that they wanted to see him, to spend a day carrying boxes up and down stairs with him, getting dirty and dusty for a project they could have little interest in. It couldn’t be this easy—it hadn’t been anywhere near this easy with Curufin. The worst part was that the puzzle should have been simple to solve—he should have had all the pieces, but he had never known Amrod or Amras as well as he’d once known their brothers, and no matter how much of their lives he witnessed in the palantír, there was no making up for that absence. 

The quickest way to learn the answer was just to ask, however painful the answer, so… “Why are you here?”

Suddenly, Amrod looked very young. His smile disappeared, along with the cheer that Fëanor realized only belatedly was at least partly feigned. “I miss you, Atya.” It was the last thing Fëanor had really expected him to say, however carefully he was starting to hope for it, and he wasn’t sure at first that he had really heard correctly.

A second later Amrod closed the distance between them, throwing his arms around Fëanor, who found himself holding on far too tightly, except he couldn’t quite make himself loosen his grip. He was not going to start crying, and what came out of his mouth instead of anything important that he meant to say was, “When did you grow so tall?” Somehow in his mind both the twins were small, still—smaller than Curufin, always trailing after Celegorm or clambering onto Huan’s back to ride him like a pony the way that Calissë and Náriel did now. In reality, Amrod stood as tall as he did—almost exactly. 

“That’s how you can tell us apart,” Amrod said, laughter returning to his voice. “I’m taller than Amras.”

“You are not!” Amras exclaimed as he came back into the house just in time to hear. He had a basket in his hands that smelled of pastry and spices. “He’s a dirty liar, Atya. I’m the taller one.” He set the basket down and took Amrod’s place in Fëanor’s arms. He was, in fact, exactly the same height as both Fëanor and his brother. “Don’t cry!” he said, and Fëanor realized only then that he’d failed to hold back the tears. “We’re actually both shorter now than we were in Beleriand. Estë didn’t give us back bodies that had had any Ent draughts.”

Fëanor wiped a hand across his eyes. He knew what Ents were, but— “Any Ent—what?”

“Come sit down, and we’ll tell you all about it,” said Amras. “I found pies! They’re just like the ones they make at Imloth Ningloron, which I’m almost certain is a recipe one of the halflings brought—I hope you like potatoes!”

They ate the pies as a sort of picnic right there on the floor, surrounded by all the dusty boxes, while Amrod and Amras took turns telling Fëanor all about the Ents they had known in Beleriand, and about the surprise of all their brothers when they had arrived at Himring unexpectedly taller than they had been when anyone had last seen them. It was a far merrier story than many others Fëanor had yet heard from Middle-earth, or even seen in the palantír—a story from the Long Peace, when they had room to breathe and to laugh and to live, instead of only survive. It was much easier to really believe they had truly been so happy when he was listening to Amrod and Amras tell the story, still laughing over the jokes they’d made at Curufin’s expense even so many thousands of years later, than it was to watch it all play out in bits and pieces through the palantír. When they ran out of things to say about Ents and Ent draughts, Fëanor ventured to ask what they had been doing since their return to life in Valinor, and found them just as willing to speak of that, too—of their small house up in the mountains, just close enough to where some of their old friends among the Laiquendi, formerly of Ossiriand, had settled that they were not entirely isolated, but far enough away that they could go months at a time without encountering anyone else if they so wished. 

“We hung the prisms you made in the window,” Amras told him, his smile bright as the sunshine outside.

Before Fëanor could think of anything to say Amrod said, “You could come visit us, if you wanted.” But he added quickly, “But I don’t know if you’d be very happy there. It’s very quiet, and we don’t…do much.”

“I don’t do much either, these days,” Fëanor said before he could think better of it. He gestured around them. “Hence…” Hence the house project, something different and separate from his other usual routines. It wasn’t that he did nothing, it was just—

None of it seemed to mean very much, without the people with whom he most wished to share it. 

“It is very quiet there,” said Amras. “But we go among the Laiquendi fairly often, and they’re very merry. Maybe you should come visit us. From what Curvo has said, you could use some merriment.”

Fëanor didn’t wince, but it was a near thing. He’d thought that he was doing a better job of not worrying Curufin. But before he could think of something to say Amrod glanced at Amras and said, “But maybe not too soon. Cáno’s coming to Tirion later this year.”

Something in the way he said it made Fëanor pause. He would have thought Maglor’s coming to Tirion would be a good reason for his own leaving it. “What brings him here?” he asked. 

“Curvo said he would tell you, but we might as well,” said Amras with a shrug that tried to be careless and didn’t quite succeed. “Míriel and Indis have asked Cáno to write a song for Finwë. A proper one to honor his memory.”

Míriel had said nothing of that when she had been in Tirion. The lapse stung, though Fëanor knew it probably shouldn’t have—she surely had not known whether Maglor would agree, and there wouldn’t be any point in sharing a plan if it would just come to nothing. Still—she hadn’t written of it either, after he had agreed.

Amras went on, “No one has been able to do it, and it’s long overdue. So he’s going to be speaking to everyone he can find, because he says it can’t just be his words alone. That means he’s going to want to talk to you too.”

“Especially you,” Amrod added.

As much as he wanted to see Maglor—to see all of his sons, to speak to them without anyone coming away in tears or in anger—Fëanor’s first impulse was to refuse. He did not want to talk of Finwë, did not want to hear what some song made in his praise would sound like, even one written by Maglor. He couldn’t bear it—a reminder to be trotted out at every gathering or holiday to remind them all that he was gone and never coming back. 

And what was worse, it would not be the first time Finwë’s name was spoken between him and Maglor. Fëanor could not imagine that Maglor had anything kinder to say now than he had then. 

Finwë chose you, always, every time, even when he shouldn’t have. In your turn you set the works of your hands above everything, and set us on the road to our own destruction.

He looked down at the paper wrappings on his lap that the pie had come in. The lingering taste in his mouth had turned to ashes. His father’s absence loomed suddenly so large—blotting out the sun for a moment, leaving him in deep shadow. “What sort of song is it to be?” he asked when he could find his voice.

“A lament of some kind, but what form it will take, we don’t know,” said Amras. He sounded wary, and only then did Fëanor realize that he must not be hiding his thoughts very well. He had to be better than this, lest he ruin whatever this was before it even properly began. “He’s going to ask what you would like to hear in a song for him—it can be anything, really. He says everything new he learns helps him shape the song, even if he doesn’t end up including it all in so many words. He’s spoken to Míriel and Indis, of course, and also to all of us, though I don’t think Curvo or Moryo have given him an answer yet.”

“He also says he might not even be able to finish it,” Amrod added quietly. 

Fëanor took a deep breath and looked up. “Why would he not finish it? I’ve never…I never knew him to leave a song unfinished before.” Sometimes it would take him months or even years of cheerful complaining, but his songs always got done in the end. When he had been very young and new to songwriting, Maglor had sometimes come to him for help. Fëanor hadn’t thought about those golden afternoons in such a long time—he hadn’t recognized at the time just how precious those hours had been, full of laughter and jokes and clever wordplay, those glimpses of Maglor’s mind that few others saw because his songwriting was usually such a solitary exercise. He took it far more seriously than he had often let on in those days—even when the song was itself a joke, he had always wanted to get it just right, and would keep working at it until he was fully satisfied. In that, Fëanor thought, Maglor took after him, though he no longer knew if it was a strength or a flaw. 

“He said once that he was never able to find words for any of us no matter how hard he tried,” said Amras after a slight pause. Another glimpse into Maglor’s mind—into what grief had done to it. “But I think he will finish this one. He isn’t as weighed down by everything anymore, and it isn’t only his own words he’s got. In spite of what he says, he seems very determined to finish.” With that he rose to his knees to gather up the pie wrappings to dispose of. 

Amrod seemed to debate with himself for a moment before he said quietly, “Cáno isn’t angry anymore either, you know. I think he’s afraid.”

“I know that,” Fëanor said, also quiet. Maglor’s anger spent itself quickly—it had burned out that same afternoon they’d met in Imloth Ningloron, leaving him shivering and struggling against tears instead. He had even said, then, that what Fëanor had taken as strength was really fear. Fëanor didn’t agree—he thought Maglor’s strength was that he kept going in spite of the fear, not out of a lack of it—but it wasn’t an argument he either wanted or expected to ever have. “You’re all afraid, aren't you?” he asked. Maedhros had been afraid too—and so had Caranthir, though he’d hidden it a little better after his initial shock. So was Curufin, sometimes, even still.

“We have been,” said Amrod, speaking more frankly than Fëanor would have expected on the subject. “But Cáno is different. He was afraid of everything for a long time, and even after going to Lórien I think some of it lingers. He was afraid of us, before we met again, and even for a while afterward. He thought we would be angry with him.”

That thought made that space under Fëanor’s ribs hurt—a sharper pain than the usual ache of grief. “For what?”

“He wasn’t able to save us,” Amrod said, still speaking frankly—as though their deaths were just something to talk about like the fact that it had rained briefly the day before. “And he threw the Silmaril away.”

I cast it away; I threw it as hard and as far as I could into the Sea at the end of the world, and I would do it again in a heartbeat! 

“We weren’t angry, of course,” Amrod said. “We never were, not with him, about any of it. I think he’s afraid you will be though.”

“I’m not,” Fëanor said. “I told him I was glad he’d thrown it away.” He would have preferred all three Silmarils be cast into the fires of the earth or into the sea—so he did not have to look up in the gloaming to see one shining near the horizon. For a long time he had wished them never made at all. He didn’t think he really wanted that, now, but he was still glad they were all out of reach.

“Do you understand, though, why he might not believe that?”

“I do.” 

When Amras returned they got back to work, spending the afternoon opening up the different boxes to see what lay inside. Somehow Fëanor found himself telling Amrod and Amras all kinds of things about their brothers that they hadn’t known before—things from their childhoods, before the twins had been born. He could tell by the looks on their faces that he was giving them fodder for many jokes, which made him feel a little lighter too. Not everything from the past was dark and terrible. Once upon a time they had all been a happy family—truly happy. Sometimes these days that was easy to forget, even while he longed to have it back. 

In spite of the laughter of the afternoon and the fact that they had appeared at all, Fëanor was still surprised when Amrod said as they parted, “We didn’t come to Tirion just to spend one day with you and then disappear. We’ll see you tomorrow.”

And he did. And the next day, and the day after that—even when he did not do any work at the old house they came looking for him in his rooms or his workshop, to drag him out into the city to see some performance happening in one of the squares, or to try some new pastry that their cousin Súriellë’s wife Míraen had made, or to ask questions about the gems he was working on for Findis—and then to ask questions about Findis herself, and Fingolfin and Lalwen and all Fëanor’s other doings in Tirion. In return they shared things about themselves—little things like their favorite colors or the fact that Amrod preferred peaches while Amras liked oranges, or the songs they liked best to dance to.

Fëanor had felt, after a winter of looking into the palantír, that he understood his sons better. Now he was getting to know two of them, and it was confusing and elating by turns. He kept biting his tongue and then realizing he didn’t have to. 

“You seem happier lately,” Fingolfin said to him one afternoon. He had come to Fëanor’s workshop claiming to want to escape his duties for a few hours, so Fëanor had given him a box of gemstones to sort so they could both be doing something while they talked. Fingolfin dropped a sapphire into a pile of others, and fished around in the box for another. 

“Did I seem unhappy before?” Fëanor asked.

“Findis certainly thought so—at least all this past winter. She wanted me to take away that palantír you’ve got under your bed.”

“It’s not under my bed.”

“Well, wherever you’re keeping it. I wasn’t going to,” Fingolfin added when Fëanor shot him a half-hearted glare. “Curufinwë wouldn’t have asked you to look into one of those without a very good reason. But you were more withdrawn than usual up until Ambarussa came to Tirion.”

“I should’ve picked up one of those stones years ago,” said Fëanor. He returned his attention to the diamonds for Findis, half of which were cut and ready to be filled with starlight. The other half he would fill with moonlight. “I saw everything that unfolded in Mandos, but—well, you know. It’s hazy now.”

“And even Vairë’s threads can’t really capture the reality of it,” said Fingolfin. 

“Yes.” He had also listened to what anyone would tell him, and he had read the Red Book and many others besides—but there was such a stark difference between reading words on a page and seeing what had happened. “And—did you know our mothers asked Canafinwë to write a song for our father?”

“No. Is that why they both went to Imloth Ningloron last year?”

“It seems so. He’s coming to Tirion sometime later this year—Ambarussa told me he wants to speak to everyone before he writes it.”

“Hm.” Fingolfin set another sapphire onto the workbench. “Findis wrote a song for him once, but nothing like what our mothers will have asked Macalaurë to write. Did she ever show it to you?”

“No. I didn’t know she wrote songs.”

“She dabbles once in a while. One can’t spend so much time in Elemmírë’s company without picking something up, I suppose.” When Fëanor glanced up in confusion Fingolfin laughed. “Didn’t you know? Who do you think those diamonds are for?”

“For Findis…?”

“So she can put them into a set of jewelry for Elemmírë—who looks, I am told, exceedingly lovely in shades of pale blue and green.”

Fëanor tried to think if he’d ever actually seen Elemmírë and Findis together. He did not think he had, but he wouldn’t have cared, before, and these days Elemmírë very rarely left Valmar, and he did not often leave Tirion. Findis spent a great deal of her time in Valmar of course, but Fëanor had assumed it was to stay with Indis. “Oh,” was all he could think to say. Then, “Is Lalwen seeing someone I should know about?”

“Lalwen will spend a decade happily alone, and then go a year or two courting someone new every other week before deciding to give it all up again,” Fingolfin said, rolling his eyes fondly. “When something turns serious we’ll know—though we’ll have other things to worry about, what with the Dagor Dagorath starting.”

“I feel compelled to point out that my return from Mandos was once thought to herald the Dagor Dagorath.”

Fingolfin grinned. “True, but even your return never seemed so unlikely as Lalwen settling down with anyone. But we were speaking of songs. I have a copy of Findis’ somewhere, if you would like to read it.”

“I…I would, yes. Thank you.”

“Did Ambarussa say that Macalaurë would be seeking you out, when he comes to Tirion?”

“Yes.”

“That’s good news, isn’t it?”

Fëanor shrugged and didn’t look up from his work. He was under no illusion that Maglor would be coming to Tirion at all, let alone to seek him out, if he did not have this project before him. He was still afraid, and Fëanor didn’t know what he was supposed to do to allay those fears. He didn’t know if there was anything he could do. “I suppose I’ll find out,” he said.

“Findekáno has written to tell me that he and Maedhros are much happier. They are delighted to be uncles again, and seem to be determined not to be the responsible ones, unlike when Celebrimbor was small.”

Fëanor couldn’t help but smile at that. “Náriel and Calissë are equally delighted with them. Apparently Cáno was having all kinds of adventures in Middle-earth with talking beavers and unhelpful foxes.” Fingolfin laughed out loud. “And Curvo is just happy to have them both close enough again to visit.”

“So is Findekáno,” said Fingolfin. “Have you heard from them at all—aside from second-hand?”

“I saw them briefly. I was leaving Imloth Ningloron as they were arriving last year.”

“And…?”

“It went about as well as it could have.” Fëanor turned the uncut gem he held over in his hands, watching the way the light through the window caught on its surface. “They’re all afraid of me. They have been since—since well before the Darkening. I still don’t know how to fix it.”

“Doing what they ask of you is the best way, I think,” said Fingolfin. “Though I admit to sharing some of Findis’ concerns. You’ve seemed very tired these past few months as well as unhappy.”

“What is a few months of sleepless nights compared to what all of you endured?”

Fingolfin rolled his eyes. “Nothing you have or will endure can be compared to the rest of us. You will never cross the Helcaraxë or be besieged, or any of the rest of it—though I wish you wouldn’t pretend that your own death was not terrible in itself. There can be no perfect balancing of the scales; that is why we have all chosen to throw them out. Whatever your sons are asking of you, I cannot believe it to be punishment.”

“It’s not, but—”

“Then why require it of yourself?”

“I’m not,” Fëanor said, and glared at Fingolfin when he made a skeptical noise. “But I’m not going to shy away from something they need just because it’s uncomfortable.”

“Of course not—but is this not more than mere discomfort?”

“I’m fine.”

“Are you?”

“One of us won’t be if you keep questioning everything I say.”

Fingolfin relented, but only until they both left the workshop to prepare for dinner. “Fëanáro, it’s only—when you are so deeply unhappy you tend to neglect yourself. You haven’t been lately, as far as I can tell, which is why I haven’t spoken of it until now, but—I just do not want to see you start.” He slipped away down another hallway before Fëanor could so much as open his mouth to reply, so he was left staring at his brother’s back before he disappeared around a corner.

He did not like being so easily read by anyone. In his previous life, only his wife or his father would have said such things to him. Now—

Well, now he had three siblings who said those things in different ways, but he also had neither Nerdanel nor Finwë. In his previous life, he might have listened to Nerdanel or to Finwë only once in a while—and not at all by the end. Now he knew better, but it felt like a lesson learned too late. It felt like he was too late for everything—for his children, for his father, for his marriage. 

He’d meant what he said, though. The grief and the horror and the sleepless nights—that was such a small price to pay if it meant he could have a real conversation with his children without any of them feeling as though they were talking past one another, if it meant that someday they might not fear him. If they might someday really believe it when he told them that he loved them.