From That Rubble by StarSpray  

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Eight

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You have drunk a bitter wine
With none to be your comfort
You who once were left behind
You will be welcome at love’s table
- “By Way of Sorrow” - The Wailin’ Jennys

 

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When he got home that night Fëanor took out the palantír, but only stared at it for a few minutes before putting it back and pulling out a bag to start packing for his winter away in the mountains. Being given only an hour’s warning had been a joke, but he wanted to be ready anyway. As he dug around for suitable clothes, his mind flitted from thoughts to ideas to memories. He had spoken to Nerdanel a few days before, briefly, when they’d met by chance after she’d lunched with Anairë. She had been in a good mood but distracted, her mind clearly on some new project taking shape in her mind. It had taken all of Fëanor’s willpower not to ask about it, mostly because he didn’t think she would have answered him. Once upon a time she could have spoken to him for hours about her ideas and the new shapes she wanted to explore, or the new methods of carving she wanted to try—some of which were her own invention, all of which resulted in the most beautiful things.

He dropped a shirt onto his bed and rubbed his hands over his face. It was his own fault he couldn’t sit and listen to her, or offer up his own ideas for her opinions. They’d once never stopped talking to each other, and both of their arts and their selves had only gotten better for it. No matter how close he got to his brother or his sisters, he would never be able to share that with them, that kind of joining of the minds that had been at the center of everything he and Nerdanel had built. He missed it—missed her—so much that for a moment he felt dizzy with it. 

With nothing else to do, Fëanor sat down and wrote a letter, getting his thoughts out of his head and onto paper. Most letters—to Nerdanel, to his sons, to his father—he burned. But some he kept, locked away under the false bottom he’d installed in one of his desk drawers. He didn’t really know why. This letter joined the small pile of others there, and then he went to get out the palantír again. 

He still didn’t look for Losgar. Instead he looked for the more recent past, not trying to see anything in particular, and found Maedhros jerking awake outside of Mandos. Fëanor watched him sit up slowly, eyes wide and startled as he took in the flowers around him, and the sunlit sky above, and his own body. He looked startlingly different, after all that Fëanor was used to seeing of him in the palantír now, in Middle-earth: restored to the fairness of his youth, but for the dark things lurking behind his eyes—and the missing hand. Sometimes it happened that the spirit had been changed so much that it carried over into the new body. Maedhros was the only one Fëanor knew of who had come back without a limb, but others had also come back with scars—like Lalwen. As far as Fëanor could tell, his missing hand was the one thing that had never bothered Maedhros in this new life, and he didn’t really understand why. As he watched him in those first few moments back in life, he saw Maedhros’ mouth form words, and by now he had gotten good enough at reading his sons’ lips to recognize what he said. Send me back.

Fëanor leaned back with a sigh, turning his gaze to the window, where his own reflection stared back at him, hazy in the soft lamplight. Then he thought—he might as well see everyone’s return, just as he had seen their deaths, and bent over the stone again.

Caranthir returned after Maedhros, waking up in much the same manner. He was surprised but not unhappy, however, and he responded to Estë’s gentle greeting readily enough. He lingered for a long time in Lórien, among the flowers, apparently reluctant to leave until Nienna came to speak to him; if Fëanor were to guess, she told him then that Maedhros had also returned to life, and that Nerdanel would be waiting to welcome him home. Once he did decide to leave Lórien, he did not look back. 

The twins returned to life as they had left it—together. Theirs was a far more joyful return than either of their brothers’, and when they left the flower-covered hillside before Mandos it was hand in hand and already laughing. Amras even turned to wave at the walls and the small door before they passed into the trees. 

When Curufin returned, he reacted much like Maedhros had, though he was more willing to accept Estë’s consolations. Fëanor knew why, though, knew the reasons were different—he remembered, in the Halls, how Curufin had not wanted to leave Celebrimbor. There had just been nothing he could do for him, there, and in the end someone—maybe Námo, maybe Finwë—had convinced him that the best thing he could do was return to life so that he could be there waiting when Celebrimbor himself was finally ready.

Celegorm was the last to come back—years after Curufin, and not long before Celebrimbor. Fëanor didn’t know why he had lingered so long. When he woke it was to Huan sniffing at his face and then licking up the side of it, so the first thing Celegorm did was laugh—right before he burst into tears. 

Fëanor ended that vision there—it felt like too private a moment to spy on, even decades later. If things felt irreparable between him and Maedhros, they seemed just the same or worse with Celegorm. They had clashed often and loudly before the Darkening, as Fëanor’s distrust of the Valar had grown and Celegorm had refused for a long time to follow along. Some things Curufin had said suggested that the hurt went deeper, though, and Fëanor didn’t yet understand just what it was that kept Celegorm from so much as looking in his direction whenever they happened to be in the same place.

Maglor had not come back to Valinor through Mandos, he had come by ship—Fëanor remembered seeing that tapestry, the weaving of the last ship departing from the Grey Havens: the moment he had decided to ask Námo for his own return to life. By the time the ship had docked in Avallónë, Fëanor had been in Lórien, clumsy and awkward in his new body and frustrated at the slowness with which his spirit was settling into it. Now he looked for that docking, and found a larger crowd gathered at the docks than he would have expected—though of course he should have. Círdan had been on that ship, as well as Lord Celeborn, and Daeron, and Elrond’s sons, all of whom had been long awaited by many. He watched Maglor take in the sight, eyes going wide and slightly panicked before he retreated from the railing. Daeron followed, briefly, but though they seemed friendly with one another there was not yet that deep and easy intimacy that was so clear between them now, even to Fëanor during that brief meeting on the road; Daeron did not linger very long, and he glanced over his shoulder with an unreadable expression as he left Maglor below decks.

In the end it was Maglor’s cat that kept him on board until long after the crowds had dispersed, rather than his own reluctance. He finally made his way to the harbor, and paused before a statue of Nienna, where he left a small bit of white stone just before Elrond raced down the street. That was a glad meeting—not merry, exactly, but it was the first real glimpse Fëanor had gotten of the deep love that existed between Elrond and Maglor. He’d only seen them together before very briefly and then at a distance, and afterward had had only Elrond’s own words to go on, and had not yet looked for that part of Maglor’s life in the palantír. Even when he’d seen them together more recently, there in Tirion, it had been at that formal dinner and they had not really spoken to one another. A minute later in the vision Celebrimbor arrived, crashing into Maglor hard enough that he nearly knocked them both over. 

It seemed incredible that Maglor could have doubted the welcome his brothers would give him, after such a meeting. Fëanor sighed again and set the palantír aside. That evening had not been, Míriel said, Maglor’s real homecoming, and she had been right. That had come later—returning to Imloth Ningloron after his sojourn in Lórien, when he was truly happy to be where he was, and when he could be entirely sure of the welcome he would receive upon his arrival. 

The next morning he slept late, and when he made his way to his own workshop he found Celebrimbor already there, looking tired. “Good morning, Grandfather,” he said.

“Is everything all right, Tyelpë?”

“Yes, only—” Celebrimbor had been sitting near the door, staring across the wide room at the forge on the other side, cold and dark. Fëanor hadn’t been using it much lately, being occupied with other kinds of work, and he still needed to clean it more thoroughly before he departed with Amrod and Amras. “It was around this time of year that Eregion fell,” Celebrimbor said finally, falling into the Sindarin of Middle-earth rather than the Quenya they usually used. “Did you know?”

“No.” Fëanor looked again at the forge, and then stepped forward so he blocked Celebrimbor’s view of it. “Want to get out of the city?”

“I…yes. I think I do.”

They went down to the sea, a short ride through the Calacirya, though they did not turn toward Alqualondë, instead heading around the south side of the Bay of Eldamar. A road snaked away south along the shore toward one or two small cities that had been built on the narrow coast and up into the rocky mountainsides, sometime during the Third Age; they did not go that far, instead keeping to the shores of the bay. After a while they left the horses to graze and walked down to the water’s edge. Celebrimbor stood with his arms crossed, hair loose and blowing in the wind, gazing east. “I wish you could’ve seen it,” he said finally. “Ost-in-Edhil. Eregion. Moria, too. You would’ve liked Narvi. I think…I used to like to think you would have been proud of me.”

“I was. I am,” Fëanor said. 

“Except—it all fell to ruin because of me. I was—”

“My understanding is that you were deceived, Tyelpë, and you were not the only one. The blame for that lies with the deceiver, surely?”

Celebrimbor laughed, but it wasn’t a very happy sound. He covered his face with a hand, resting it over his eyes as he bowed his head. “That’s—that’s almost exactly what Frodo said, when we first met. That it wasn’t my fault that—oh, how did he put it? ‘It still isn’t your fault that the best liar in the world lied to you,’ he said.”

“He was right,” Fëanor said. 

“Maybe.” Celebrimbor didn’t lower his hand. “You wondered, last fall, why I got so upset at such a small cut.”

“Tyelpë—”

“It was in my forge—my personal forge, that I’d built with my own two hands. I’d designed everything, built it all from scratch, even cast the anvil myself. It felt like I was—like my life was really starting, when I was finally able to use it. Like I finally had room to do whatever I wanted, to make things that would rival even your works. It was where I made the Three. And in the end…in the end it was just where I died, at the hands of one who I had—who had been my friend, for years. With my own tools. He took me apart, bit by bit.” He lowered his hand from his face, and slowly flexed his fingers. The cut on his palm had healed into a pale scar that would soon fade away entirely. In the distance a gull called out, and from farther away another answered. At their feet the waves washed up over the white sands, quiet as a whisper. In Avallónë across the water, bells rang. “It wasn’t quick. He took extra time with—my hands. I tried to fight back but I wasn’t strong enough. If he hadn’t had his Ring, maybe…”

Fëanor moved closer and held out his arms, unsure if Celebrimbor wanted that kind of comfort or if he just wanted a listening ear. Celebrimbor stepped into them and dropped his head onto Fëanor’s shoulder. He was taller than Curufin, but not quite as tall as Fëanor himself. It was very easy to remember when he had been so much smaller than either of them, bright-eyed and fearless, eager to learn whatever anyone could teach him. 

“I’m sorry, Tyelpë,” he whispered. 

“I miss it,” Celebrimbor said. “The forge. The—the gemcraft. I just—I can’t. I keep trying and I just can’t.”

“Then don’t try,” Fëanor said. All things considered, Celebrimbor was not that long out of the Halls—he had come back sooner than Fëanor, but not until well after the Ring had been destroyed and it was clear that there really was no chance, this time, of Sauron’s return. “It’s not—you aren’t handing him a victory by not pushing yourself now. You had the victory, in the end. You kept the Three from him, and you are here, while he is nothing. Less than nothing.”

“I know,” Celebrimbor said. “I do. And—almost every other day I really am fine. I’m happy, happier now than I’ve ever been, except—Calissë asked me to make her a necklace this morning. Not for any reason, just that she realized all her jewelry is made by Atya or you and—and Ammë was wearing something I made long ago, and so Calissë said she wanted something I’d made and—” His voice cracked, and his shoulders shook as he tried and failed to suppress the tears. “I want to make things for my sisters—with my sisters—and I can’t.”

Fëanor held him as he wept; it didn’t take long for the tears to run out. As he drew back, wiping his face on his sleeve, Fëanor asked, “Do you really want to find a way back to it, or did you just need someone to listen?”

“Both, I suppose. I can’t talk to Atya about it. Or—I can and I have, but—”

“I understand. Does he know what Calissë asked you today?”

“Yes, he’s the one that distracted her so I could slip away. And—it’s…I go into the forge with him sometimes, just to watch. It’s easier now than it used to be, but…” He shook his head. 

“What if,” Fëanor said, “you and I tried to find a way to make it work? At my workshop, not yours—away from your father and your sisters.” There would be no risk of untimely interruptions, and Fëanor’s own distance from this part of Celebrimbor’s past might in this case be a good thing. 

“I’d like that,” Celebrimbor said. He wiped his face again and offered a smile, small but genuine. “I think I’d like that a lot.”

“I’m leaving for the mountains with Ambarussa soon, but we can speak of it again when I return in the spring.” Fëanor wiped a stray tear from Celebrimbor’s cheek. “Until then—try to put it out of your mind. Your sisters know that you love them, whatever you do or do not make.”

“I know that. I just…sometimes I wish they could know who I was without the scars. The ones you can’t see, I mean. It wasn’t…” Celebrimbor hesitated, gaze flicking eastward, going distant. “What he did—with his Ring, he…”

“You don’t have to say it, Tyelpë.”

“Sometimes it feels like there are parts of me still missing. I don’t think that’s really true, but—it feels like it. Do you know what I mean?”

“I think so. And of course you are different now, but different is not the same as diminished.”

“And I would say the same to anyone else,” Celebrimbor said, a little wry and a little bitter.

“I don’t mean you shouldn’t miss who you used to be. Everyone does that, I think.”

“Do you?”

Fëanor looked toward the sea, toward the eastern horizon past Tol Eressëa, as he tried to give the question the thought it deserved. “Yes and no,” he said finally. He missed who he had been when he married Nerdanel, when their children were born—he missed being a husband and a father; he missed being his father’s son. He did not miss at all who he’d turned into later—though he did miss, sometimes, the feeling of certainty that he had carried in those days. It was exhausting to always wonder whether what he said or did would make things better or worse. 

It wasn’t all bad, of course, and there were signs that he might get more of that past self back than he’d dared hope for—but he wasn’t foolish enough to believe it would ever be easy or that it would happen quickly. He had also stopped trying to push himself to do more, to do better, to achieve things no one had done before. He’d already done that, and even at the time it hadn’t made him as happy as he had hoped it would. Now if he wanted to do something new he could do it just because he was curious, and it didn’t matter if he succeeded or not. And if he did not want to, he could just keep doing all the things he already knew and liked best. It was restful. It was also a little bit like coming up for air after being trapped for a long time underwater. 

“That’s how I feel, too—yes and no,” Celebrimbor said, “when I can think about it reasonably.”

“You don’t have to always be reasonable.”

“I know. That’s why I came to find you today.” Celebrimbor stepped back into Fëanor’s arms, sighing as he leaned against him. “Thank you,” he said softly.

They returned to Tirion late in the afternoon, just in time for Fëanor to change for dinner with Rúmil—he’d nearly forgotten again, and when he arrived at Rúmil’s door a few minutes late, his old teacher grinned at him. “Busy day in the forge again?”

“Busy day with my grandson,” Fëanor replied. 

“Even better. Come in—I would apologize for the mess, but I know you won’t mind.” The dining table was scattered with papers and old books, nearly crowding out the dishes laid out for the meal. “I’ve been looking through some old records for Daeron—you know, of course, that he’s in Tirion, and this time we were able to meet in person at last.”

“Had you not, before?”

“No, we kept missing one another. Every time I went to Valmar, it seemed, he would come to Tirion, and be gone by the time I got back. Speaking of leaving—you’re off to the wilds, I hear.”

“With Ambarussa,” said Fëanor. He cleared a pile of papers from a chair and sat down, glancing over the top sheet as he did so. “These are old, indeed.” They were full of notes and scribbles—the first forays into Rúmil’s alphabet. 

“We had a very nice talk the other day about the trials and triumphs of devising letters. Our thoughts had run along the same tracks—and at nearly the same time, if I have counted the years right—but of course the look is quite different.” Rúmil gathered up a few stacks of papers and set them at the other end of the table. “But how are you, Fëanáro? I feel as though I haven’t seen you in ages.”

“I’m well enough—though I’m looking forward to spending time away from the city.” Fëanor paused as Rúmil poured each of them a glass of wine. “Have you seen Macalaurë?”

“Yes, I stopped to speak with him the other day, only briefly. I don’t think I had much to offer for that song of his, but it was good to see him. Have you seen him?” 

Rúmil knew, of course, that Fëanor’s sons were avoiding him. Everyone knew that. Fëanor hadn’t really spoken of it with him, though. Since his return to Tirion they had fallen into something like their initial relationship, that of student and teacher, as Rúmil had taken it upon himself to catch Fëanor up on all that he had missed—in all fields, not only history—in a more methodical manner than Fëanor would have thought of for himself. It had been nice, to be a student again, but it also meant they had not spoken very much of personal matters. 

“Yes,” Fëanor said now. “I spoke to him when he first came to Tirion.”

“Of Finwë?”

“Yes.” Fëanor kept his gaze on his plate. “What did you tell him for his song?”

“A few stories from the Journey,” said Rúmil, who had been one of Finwë’s friends and staunchest supporters in the lead-up to the Great Journey.

“No one ever speaks of that,” Fëanor said after a moment. “Of the Journey—or of Cuiviénen.”

“Coming here felt like starting anew,” Rúmil said. “It was easier to let the pages of that chapter of our history fall shut, and to look forward instead. Certainly it was less painful. There was not a single person who chose to come here who had not lost someone to the darkness.”

“It seems to me that my father lost everyone,” Fëanor said. 

“His father, his brothers—his grandfather too, with whom he was very close in his childhood. His mother chose to remain behind—she would rival you for stubbornness—and his sisters remained with her.”

“And her husband.”

“Ah, you know about that?” Rúmil’s smile was rueful. “Such remarriages were…they were not common, but they were not so unheard of as to be completely shocking. Attitudes changed very quickly here, when lost loved ones returned from Mandos—but of course you know that.”

“I just wish my father had told me.”

“It broke his heart to leave his mother and sisters behind—and his stepfather, who he loved very dearly also. As I said, it was easier not to look back. But I think for Finwë, he also harbored hopes for these lands that never came to fruition, and that made it even more painful to remember what he had left behind.”

“His brothers, you mean?”

“Yes. But not everyone who goes to Mandos can return—and I do not mean for the reasons Finwë remains there.”

“I know,” Fëanor said. 

“There are also those who never came there in the first place,” Rúmil added after a moment. “That is the most grievous—and I do not think Finwë was able to learn which fate befell his brothers or his father or grandfather. And when I asked after my own lost ones, I was told that there are some in Mandos who do not even remember their names—who do not remember that they are Elves.” 

Fëanor remembered, suddenly, the state of Celebrimbor’s spirit when he had come to Mandos, hardly knowing who he was or where or why; he flinched and dropped his fork. It clattered onto his plate with a startlingly loud noise. 

“I’m sorry,” Rúmil said. “This is very poor dinner conversation.”

“It’s—it’s fine. I want to know.”

“It isn’t fine,” Rúmil said. “But this is why we have not spoken of it—we the Eldar, I mean. Even now the grief lies very near to our hearts, and Finwë, at least—he was never one to dwell in the past. It was almost a mantra of his, to not look back, to keep moving forward.”

“Do you know why?”

“No. All I know is that he went out once with his brothers, when he was still young—before he reached his majority, before his voice even finished changing—and only he came back. He was the first, years later, to stand up and say—though he was still young then too, with no authority to speak of yet—that we should pay more heed to Oromë than our elders were at first inclined to.”

“Do you know why his mother and sisters would not come?”

“They wished for freedom; Finwë wished for safety—and he did not believe that we were sacrificing one for the other. You would disagree, I know…”

“I don’t know, anymore, if I do.”

“There were many such arguments and many such bitter partings. Maybe there was no right answer. I don’t know either. I came hoping to be reunited with one that I loved—and I cannot regret it, though that has not come to pass.” Rúmil sighed, turning his wine glass to watch the liquid inside catch the lamplight. “I do not think your father would wish for you to be dwelling on all this.”

“In that, I do not agree. There is—there is dwelling too much in the past, of course, but to never reflect on it at all cannot be any better.” 

At this Rúmil smiled. “You are right, of course—but there must be balance, as in all things. Have you been doing much reflecting on the past of late?”

“Plenty. My own not the least.”

“To what end?”

“Trying to learn from it.”

Rúmil’s smile faded, and he leaned forward. “Fëanáro, if you’ll forgive me speaking so bluntly—your worst mistakes were ones made in the depths of grief so profound I do believe it drove you mad. There can be no lesson learned from that—it was not something you could control.”

“I made plenty of other mistakes that I must be careful not to repeat—but that isn’t what I meant. I was absent from the world for a very long time after I did things that shaped all that came after my death, and if I’m to move in it again I need to understand why and how it has changed—more than can be gleaned from even your writings. That’s all.” Fëanor paused. Then he asked, having almost to force the words up out of his throat, “You really think I was driven mad?”

“Don’t you?”

“I don’t know.” It made a sort of horrible sense—he remembered so little with any clarity after the Darkening. He couldn’t remember what he said at Losgar that had hurt Maedhros so badly, and he couldn’t remember the precise sequence of his thoughts that had led him to swear the Oath in the first place. Alqualondë was a horrific blur. The idea that he had lost not only his father and his Silmarils but also himself, long before he ever died, was enough to make his skin crawl. How was he supposed to prevent such a thing from happening again? How was he supposed to stop himself if he did not even remember how it felt to slide into such madness?

“Don’t forget, I have known you all your life, Curufinwë Fëanáro,” Rúmil said. “I saw the changes that came over you under the Enemy’s influence. That was not you, not who you were or who you are in your heart of hearts.”

“Even he could not make something from nothing,” Fëanor said. 

“You think you are the only one who has ever been angry? Who has ever been resentful, or bitter, or grieved? Of course not. We have all the potential in us for great good and great evil—but you were the target of a Vala’s machinations and hatred, both. Who knows what he was capable of, working as subtly as he did here? I do not believe he only used the rumor mill of Tirion to further his ends. Even you could not be expected to withstand years of pressure on all sides and then to be confronted with the Darkening—with Finwë’s murder—and come out of the other side unscathed. That you did not die of it there at Formenos yourself is still shocking to me.”

He had died at Formenos, Fëanor thought. It had just taken too long for his body to catch up. “That,” Fëanor said aloud, “is not an excuse—”

“It is a reason, at least. It is a reason, too, that you do not need to fear it happening again. You are under no such pressures now.”

With that, Rúmil changed the subject firmly, talking of some rumors he’d heard about the feast Ingwë was really planning in earnest now. Ingwion had gotten involved, and Rúmil thought it likely that Fëanor would come back in the spring to find Tirion bustling as the Noldor got drawn into the preparations too, and then moving on to the latest debates and discussions happening among the city’s loremasters. It was, overall, a very pleasant evening—and Fëanor didn’t think he regretted that initial conversation, exactly, but it left him feeling unsettled and unable to sleep that night. 

Morning brought more grandchildren—this time all three of them, Celebrimbor arriving with Náriel and Calissë in tow, to find Fëanor lingering at the breakfast table with Lalwen. “Everyone’s leaving!” Náriel exclaimed, dramatically throwing herself against Fëanor’s legs. “Even you!”

“Only for the winter,” said Fëanor as he lifted her onto his lap. “You had your adventures last summer, and now it’s my turn. I will miss you all very much, though.”

“Do we have to write to you, too?” Calissë asked, wrinkling her nose at the thought.

“You know your grandfather invented the letters you hate so much, don’t you?” Lalwen asked, laughing. 

“Rúmil invented them,” Fëanor said. “I only fixed them.”

“You made them too complicated,” Calissë said.

“I do apologize,” Fëanor said, trying and failing not to laugh himself. “I was rather more concerned with how pretty they were, at the time.”

“It’s not complicated,” Náriel said, “it’s just boring.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry about writing any letters to me this winter,” said Fëanor. “I’ll be away with Ambarussa in the mountains, so they wouldn’t reach me anyway.”

The visit turned into a series of games—hide-and-seek was a perennial favorite—that had Fëanor and Celebrimbor both disrupting several meetings and racing through the halls and gardens in pursuit of Calissë and Náriel. It had been a long time since Fëanor had laughed so much, or managed to forget about everything else that troubled him. 

He found Náriel late in the afternoon after a round of hiding and seeking in the middle of the hedge maze, apparently distracted from the game by the butterflies that were visiting the rosemary and lavender. Fëanor could tell that she was getting tired, and so he sat down and lifted her onto his lap. “Gonna miss you,” she said, yawning as she curled up in his arms.

“I’ll miss you too.” Fëanor kissed the top of her head and picked a few blades of grass out of her braids. Someday, far too soon, she would be too big to sit on his lap like this, and too old to want to. “I love you,” he told her, “so very much.”

“Love you, too.”

It wasn’t until Curufin had come to fetch his children home that Fëanor learned, from Fingolfin, that Maglor had come to take his leave. “He and Daeron are leaving for Alqualondë the day after tomorrow—when you are to leave with Ambarussa.”

“Was he looking for me?” Fëanor asked.

“No, he didn’t mention you at all—but he seems less burdened now than he did before his trip to Formenos. Try not to worry about him too much—just enjoy your retreat to the mountains this winter.” Fingolfin grinned at him. “I’m still surprised you agreed to go. I would think you’d go mad trapped up a mountain in the snow.”

“I’ve never done it before,” Fëanor said, managing not to wince at the joke—it wasn’t as though Fingolfin knew what Rúmil had said, “and I’ll try most things at least once.”

“I am glad you’re going,” Fingolfin said. “I think time away from the city will be good for you—especially with your sons. But I will miss you.”

“Really, you won’t be glad to be rid of me for a while?”

Fëanor had meant it to be a joke, but Fingolfin just shook his head. “Of course not, Fëanáro.”