The Name of the Fire by Kios  

“He is gone, my Lord.” The Maia says. “He cannot be found.”

The words dissolve into the mist as if swallowed by it. In the Halls of Mandos where time thickens and thins like breath in a sleeper’s chest, souls drift anchorless. They are suspended in a veil beyond the living world, where the laws of what they thought they knew are transformed into something else. To those who still cling to the memory of life and consider judgment a heavy weight, it is a miserable place—a maze full of paradoxes and contradictions which make less sense the more one tries to understand them. 

To Namò, Keeper of the Dead, it is a different story. The music of each soul comes to him as patterns of duration: melodies of memory, thought, lingering feeling; fixed images, experiences, and choices which turn into shapes in time that reveal everything and conceal nothing. A majority of souls resist this nakedness, trembling on their fragmented strings like leaves in the wind; being either too afraid to see themselves revealed, or too proud. A minority however, are worn smooth by long ages of remembrance and gradual acceptance, and they resonate with deep, stable rhythms that lope and wind around each other symmetrically. 

All of the deceased are under the Doomsman’s care, and none can hide from him.     

He turns his attention inwards, permeating every Hall and through all densities of time. Each one feels his gaze as it passes. Some quaver in fear, some welcome it in peace, others weep, and a few laugh. The chord-structure is as it should be. All are accounted for.

Except for one. 

There is silence where a melody should be. White mist now fills the gap where a brilliant flame once burned. When he probes, there is only the print of dissonant chords lying abandoned on a trail that leads nowhere, like blood left on the ground where a wounded animal has passed.

Namò looks to the very foundations of time—the threshold where these Halls lose substance and lengthen into infinity like water falling over a pale precipice, and the fabric of Arda itself blurs into nothing. There even the all-seeing eyes of Manwë fail, for beyond that brink lies no land, no star, no hour. Only a depthless dark where music cannot take shape. 

He listens. 

There is nothing. Not the faintest hint of a pattern, nor the erratic thrum of a spirit who is lashing out. No echo calling for help. Just endless silence, as if the soul himself did not know where his will had taken him.

The Maia who brought the news stands stiffly beside Namò, hands clasped behind his back as if trying to refrain from pronouncing his own opinion on the matter. His fëa trembles slightly—not from fear of his lord, but from the instinct that something ancient and fundamental has gone awry. 

 “I do not understand…How could he choose that over judgment?” The Maia whispers.

Namò does not answer at once. Judgment, for him, is not a matter of decree or punishment. It is a matter of place: every soul must settle in a density of time where they can first learn to bear the weight of themselves, and then to shed it. If time flows too lightly they will flee and resist the truth; if time thickens too much they will trap themselves in, reliving memories and clinging to old luggage. Placement is a delicate business, for all souls tend to prefer the known and fear the unknown; thus even in death they adhere to life, where hours tick by in a familiar and comforting manner that permits the habit of thinking old thoughts. 

And where old thoughts never change, there can be no letting go of oneself. 

It is one of the biggest ironies of Mandos: the Halls are there to help one heal, but to heal one must surrender life and all it carries. Only then will one find peace in death, and only then will one be ready to live again.  

But when one’s will is too sharp to yield, yet too fractured to endure, what then? When defiance is so absolute that it leaves no place to settle, no chance for peace or pause…

Is there any space left for conscious choice? 

Namò frowns—a subtle movement, almost imperceptible, felt more as an increase in the power of his awareness than a physical gesture. He speaks softly, the mist carrying the words no further than the Maia’s ears.

“He has not chosen.”

It is all he says. 

———

The Doomsman remains there, meditating, long after the Maia (who with a troubled heart and bewildered fëa) has taken his leave. He is focused on the brink, contemplating the silence he cannot foresee. The weight of his thought sits heavily upon his brow, time itself pausing like a fist closing tight. 

It is clear to him that the missing soul cannot be simply called back without consequence. No guess is needed to know where, or rather what, he has now entered; the melody which was once rooted so tightly in the essence of Arda has now slipped beyond rhythm and reality altogether. 

But could he reach beyond the threshold? Could the Doomsman’s voice summon back a fading song that has gone too far?

Perhaps.

But at what cost?

To pull a spirit against its own resistance, to force an already splintered mind back into a density it is not ready to bear—that would be a breaking beyond all hope of return. It would go against every principle of Mandos, against the very essence of Namò’s purpose. 

Many misbelieve his role is to bring justice, but in truth it is to restore. He is the conductor to those countless symphonies who have lost their way; the guide to those too blinded to find the light on their own. He never coerces, never imposes, never engages. He simply nurtures. 

Some arrive to him turbulent and must learn to surrender. Some arrive hollow and must learn to be filled. All struggle at the beginning—it is a fundamental part of the journey—but when it is surpassed there comes a deeper understanding: that peace is only ever to be found within, and never without. 

Mandos holds no authority to realize this for a spirit. There is only the rhythm, the state, the domain which best allows for transformation. 

In the Halls there is a quiet law, known yet never voiced: the stronger the will, the thinner the rhythm of time becomes to hold it. 

In the case of a fire that had once burned bright enough to make jewels sing—and whose intense attachment to them left no room for surrender—the inability to settle down in any one gradient led to time evaporating in greater and greater amounts like clouds shrivelling up under the sun…Until there was nothing left at all but Void. 

Nay, none here are at fault. Dissociation was not chosen, and the Halls did not banish. There was only a spirit that would not rest and a system that could not help. 

Namò lets the thoughts pass. He lets the grey memories of a melody that could have shaped itself a happier theme, fall away like sand through an hourglass. 

And he does not reach across the brink. Some journeys cannot be lightened, and some destinies cannot be commanded. Still, the Doomsman reads possibility in the loose chords left to blow in a windless wind by the edge of the world. He sends a final thought, more to the silent dark than to the soul that has fallen beyond it: 

Thou must find thy own path back, Fëanarò.

Chapter End Notes

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For a while, Fëanor does not register any change. Darkness surrounds him, but that is nothing new. In Mandos there was plenty of it. Gentle shadows had thrummed in stone and tapestry, murmuring false lullabies of silence and healing that he never bought. Light was a rare thing, made reverent by its scarcity, granted solely to those who submitted—as if tempting souls with its potential presence would somehow convince them to unravel. 

To him however, it was a taunt, an insult, a cunningly crafted illusion of the memory of what he had created to lure him into the Valar’s trap, and become their blind worshipper like one of those foolish Vanyar. 

So Fëanor did what he has always done when confronted with something threatening: he blocked it all out with fire. And as consequence, as they have always done when confronted with resistance, the Valar segregated him from light completely. 

Curse Mandos and his damned schemes to the Void!

But Fëanor prides himself in being a maker at heart. His passion may be light and fire; but that does not mean he is reduced to nothing in their absence. 

No, he simply creates his own. 

Thus he had glared with a brilliant flame, burning down Halls to the point of unravelling; until walls and floors evaporated into mist as thin as a line, and he was left walking in a shapeless dark. 

The absence of light becomes the absence of…Everything. 

He begins to notice that something is off when nothing pushes back. He feels a strange weightlessness, a sense of being afloat within a space without air. There is no opposition to his fire, his defiance, his will. As an eminent craftsman he knows it is a universal law that where there is a force there is always an equal and opposite response to it. And for as long as he can remember he has felt this responding push: in life there was always opposition—either to his words, his hammer, his deeds—to which he had responded and manipulated in turn; in death so far he has been the one opposing, and he has grown used to external pressure upon his spirit. Its weight had given him strength, because it gave contrast, definition, and confirmation that he was succeeding in keeping everything out. 

But this darkness does not seem to provide anything to push against. It is as if no substance exists which can allow a reactive force; no present medium in which his fire can form and be fed by. Fëanor expects entrances, levels, limitations, sequences—but all are gone. There is only vastness without distance. An endless night without any horizon. Blackness that is so utterly void of light that colour itself becomes mere fantasy. 

He finds it very annoying indeed.

Out of habit, he turns sharply on his heel. It is his signature move, meant to establish disapproval and nominate objection; once upon a time, it was his baseline, his means of escape in confrontations he deemed beneath him. 

Except now, the motion feels hollow, undefined, like something has been stolen from it—but he knows that the movement was resolved exactly as intended. 

He tries turning again, in what he imagines is a different direction—only to meet the same issue. 

Impatience heats up.

Overtaken by the urge to reassess his spiritual form, he looks within himself. It is the only precious thing he still keeps that is utterly his own; he would loathe to see it gone, or disfigured. He re-measures the structure of his hands, his face, his garment, visualizing from memory what they are supposed to feel and behave like, and comparing that against the present. 

They are as they should be; their weight remains solid and continuous even when all else around him has failed. Distance still functions inside the boundaries of his fëa, though it takes much effort to keep it. He holds his hands before his face, and can only see them if they are very, very close—and even then, it is more of an impression of hot fingers against his face, while his mind fills in the gaps of their appearance.    

Suddenly, dread creeps in. 

He reaches for the familiar pulse of time, thinking that it, at least, would answer to him. It is there—or something like it is. What once was a steady rhythm is now a broken interval, weak and fragile like steel that has been stretched too much. It is countable only if he insists on it, and even then, it does not readily form. When he tries to name the seconds they slip away from his grasp, leaving only a faint imprint of progression that is soon forgotten. In its wake only silence remains, whole and absolute. 

Fëanor dislikes silence. It stands for decay.

Anger rises, familiar in the bite of its heat, coming in wild tongues of flame that rear up like countless snapping mouths. He welcomes it like an old friend, for it has never failed him before, never forsaken him. When Morgoth came knocking it had wrapped its coils around him and spilled sharpness from his lips; when he faced uncertainty and scorn it had held him in a lover’s embrace and scorched a path forward; and now it returns to fuel his will, lending strength in the face of obscurity…

And the belief that he can outlast the darkness. 

It directs his thoughts to what is most dear to him. Like a circle completing its orbit around a center, his mind loops back to the Silmarils. Retracing their memory gives him strength where none can be found externally. He recalls the light he had focused, the brilliance he had shaped into being, the perfection he had made eternal; and though he is lost to them, he knows that somewhere in the world they still live. 

And as long as they endure, he will persevere. 

He then conjures the faces of his sons, of Nelyafinwë foremost and Curufinwë proud. Of seven wills as sharp and strong as his own. They will carry on his legacy—they must. He is certain of it. They shall not fail to avenge him, to finish what Morgoth started. He did not raise them to yield at the first sign of trouble.

So he gathers his fire and sets it against the darkness.
 

For a while, it is enough. 

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Like erosion carving away at stone, things start to warp in slow degrees. 

Pressure, once coming in from the outside, now accumulates within. It builds in the space between Fëanor’s every thought, pushing against their momentum, delaying their arrival, chipping at their clarity. His mind, which he once held in such high esteem because of its orderliness and the effortless control he had over it, now commits small acts of rebellion. 

Static pauses begin to form in odd corners of his mind, hiding behind discarded memories or under the dust of buried hurts, festering there until he discovers them and drives them out. There are times when Fëanor finds himself repeating things and starting thoughts over from the beginning because he had lost track of them in the middle. 

Efficiency, surety, congruency—qualities that were once maintained automatically—now require his conscious supervision. It is a necessary effort he resents, because it means his self-possession is loosening.

But he tells himself that this is nothing. This is nothing. It is simply the darkness playing with him. Small cracks and chinks in his armor are hastily covered up with fire, and he bars himself within memory. What fraying sense of time remains he uses to retrace scene after scene, dialogue after dialogue, belief after belief. Before him there appears the cold edge of his sword against Nolofinwë's blue-clad chest, the Oath ringing in his ears as night shrouds eight proud figures, the roar of red flames swallowing the silhouettes of white ships. 

He does not remember them for pleasure—they are decidedly unpleasant—but to prove himself right again. It brings him strength and stokes his anger. 

Yet despite his best efforts, he experiences only temporary reprieve. Unwanted things intrude still, foreign and dismaying, like ice cold water slinking through impossible walls…

Nerdanel reaches—

reaches—

—hands touch but never detect. Wind in the speechless trees echo…Atar! Atar! Ata…Empty chambers cold and treasure-less.  

Again and again Fëanor shoves the anomalies behind towers of flame, bitterly cursing; yet again and again they return through the gaps, silent as the endless night all around him, gathering in the lapses of his mind and in between his thoughts until he feels like a clogged drainage system. Too late he realizes that using memory as a defence was a mistake; for it has been twisted right under his nose, the logic of it erased and the conviction taken out of treasured moments, until only confusion remains. 

The more Fëanor remembers, the less he remembers things right. 

Attempts to preserve his memories only result in further disorder. The reality of sensation fades; soon it exists in his mind only in the form of a passive idea. He tries to recall the action of walking, but in the darkness verbs never land. 

Nerdanel’s face looses its painful definition—he tells himself it is for the better, and that things which are no longer useful should be discarded. He forgets the sound of her voice, the fierce passion they had once shared, and retains only the pain in her eyes on the dusk of their last meeting. 

Rose lips are ash…Words fall from them like dead things. A mirror of tears unshed. Colour withers. Whisper grates—Fëanarò—

grates—Fëanarò—

grates and shatters like glass—please!—

Fëanor snaps back sharply, recoiling like a whip after a false strike. He summons fire and the absurdity disperses as suddenly as it came, leaving him swaying in the middle. An aftershock of silence stretches out in his mind, but before it can close its jaws upon him he chases it away with contempt.

Stupid things, he sneers. 

He spins around though he knows it is useless. He just wants to imagine the sparks cracking in the wake of his spirit like they always used to. 

A part of him desires another Hall to appear out of the black. There, at least, he will return to something he is familiar with. 

But he is also reluctant for it to come. What use is there to enter substance, if he will only incinerate it and return to darkness?

His thoughts are rendered inconsequential. No corridor appears, no matter how much he commands it to come. No arch, no shadow, no square. Nothing.

It seems as if reality no longer bends under his will…As if there is no reality at all, and this is all simply Void…

Fëanor stops in his restless thought, realizing it is just that. Void. 

Suddenly his anger erupts into wrath, and all that has been occluded in his mind is flared away. In their wake is a narrow-eyed clarity he has not felt for a long time. 

He glares at Nothingness with eyes ablaze in hatred. 

Oh I see, He snarls. So this is thy justice? Have I proven too hot for thy hallowed Halls, that thou hast cast me here to rot, as if I were Morgoth himself? As if I were mere vermin? As if I were not King? Curse thee! Curse thee who sits upon thy throne and thinks thyself just! 

An inferno roars. Fire spills from him, from mouth and fist and heart, lashing out blindly at void. Like there was anything there to burn. 

Let the Valar see, he thinks. Let Him know. I will show them all how grave a mistake they have made. I have burned Halls before. I will burn Void as well. 

Forests of flame hiss and pounce. Out of it he shapes swords and spears, axes and arrows; snarling beasts with glinting teeth; terrible winds and looming boulders; rumbling forges and molten metal; and he hurls them all at Void, daring the darkness to withstand the might and brilliance of Fëanarò Curufinwë.

But the darkness does not flinch from him. Neither does it battle against him. It is there. Impartial to his display. What fire he has unleashed upon it fizzles out, losing heat and radiance until it curls in and devours itself, because there is nothing else to conquer. Not even death.

And Fëanor’s rage, once such a powerful thing that could last forever, becomes a small and ephemeral thing in the face of infinity.

It horrifies him beyond measure. 

He finds himself trembling upon ash, watching uselessly as a nameless fear encroaches like a shadow in his mind. 

A sudden and desperate need overtakes him, and he tries to flee—but from what, he does not know. He casts out reckless fingers like a drowning creature flailing for purchase. But he cannot escape. 

For the semblance of time has forsaken him altogether. A moment is an entire age. He tries to rouse fire again, but it answers agonizingly slowly, like it has been depleted.

Silence can no longer be held at bay. Through the fissures in his walls, it comes, a bitter herald of ice and ruin. 

He plummets into stupor. 

The gap between thoughts stretches on without end. 

His mind is rank with things in disarray. 

For the first time, Fëanor doubts himself.

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He aches for something to do. His ghostly fingers itch to give shape to something, to hold an object, to touch his own face…To strangle someone. Yet his fire sleeps, and he is unable to create even a mere spark. Waiting is the only thing left to do, though he loathes it even more than the dark. He waits, and hopes that his fire will replenish itself. 

Deep down, Fëanor knows it is a fool’s hope, as there is no fuel in Void for failing lights. What fire he has wasted upon it is gone for good; but he will not accept that fact. 

So he waits, while his pride swiftly sours into disgust at his own state. 

Reduced to praying and loitering about like a vagrant! He scorns. How pathetic. The mighty Lord of Lights, thrown into Void where he cannot even produce a single spark! Even Arafinwë would be ashamed. 

Mocking laughter echoes from within. 

Shut up! He snaps. 

More echoes ensue. Fëanor shudders, feeling inexplicably cold. He hates the stillness. The confusion. His fury has forsaken him, leaving him companionless in this desert of darkness—he hates that most of all. Even the Silmarils no longer bring any measure of comfort. In the passing of every sluggish thought they fade from him more and more. He clings to a pale reflection of their memory, but the effort required to hold them is as steep as the slopes of Taniquetil. 

The Oath throbs and gnaws. It is a pain that no longer propels him forward—and yet it is a burden that he cannot part with, a burden that presses inside along with everything else until he trembles under the pressure like too much air blown into molten glass. 

Distantly, he is aware that he might burst.

He turns bitter. What love and care he once possessed for his mind is gone. He directs the incessant itch in his fingers to his own thoughts, strangling them and then the hand that strangled—and then the hand behind the hand. 

It is stimulating, at least, though it brings him no joy.

He wonders when was the last time he has felt joy. Pure joy. 

The Silmarils appear, achingly heavy. 

He flinches from them. 

Then he flinches from himself. 

Such a reaction is unprecedented, Fëanor snaps. Since when dost thou fear them? Since when dost thou fear a part of thyself?

The question unsettles him. Despite knowing what awaits him there, he examines his memories, dissecting what he can make of the undefined period he has been in Void with an urgency that refreshes him. 

At least he has something to do.

But the once well-tessellated paths of the past are completely indistinguishable. He slips and turns astray, circling around in a dull mesh of faces and actions, unsure of what his purpose initially was. 

How forgetful thou hast become, he snides. Now thou sittest here idly like a despicable thing.

I am waiting! Fëanor retorts. Seest thou not? You are the forgetful one.

Ah? Waiting? Waiting for what? Since when has the Arannólë’s pride sunk so low as to tolerate inaction? And since when hast thou begun to distance thyself from me with ‘you’?

Fëanor sputters. He juggles between a thousand insults to throw back. They crowd together in the forefront of his mind, fighting for leeway. 

The pressure spikes.

Enough! He shouts. 

The chaos dissipates. There is blankness. 

He forgets what the argument with himself was about. In its place is an empty space that soon blends into the blur of all the rest. 

Fëanor pauses. 

Blur. 

That was never a good thing. 

Following a long-ingrained habit, he retraces the blur that is memory with obsessive hands. He tries to make it clearer. To polish it. To engineer it into a better condition. 

The blur thickens. Coarse. Crude. 

Worse. 

Bitterness coils. He tries again. Harshly. The blur retreats from the force of his assault—

His hammer falls—

Blood beneath his fingers—

Sil…proud on his brow, now bare. Barren.

Silmarils! Fëanor snaps with effort. They are mine—

My Minyon—

Fire fire fire all about him. Blood-splattered white shores—

His father smiles and—

And—

The blur returns. 

He is no longer sure if he wants it gone; either way, he does not attempt to clear it. 

Just this once, Fëanor ensures himself, I will rest for a bit. My strength shall return to me again…

Something gnaws at him, twisting and writhing like a living thing, and it is not the Oath. A quiet little voice wearing the shape of malice whispers: 

Hast thou stopped fighting? Is this defeat?

Almost involuntarily, Fëanor lashes out. He grasps the traitorous questions and squeezes hard. Before he can process what is happening, he has already lost himself in a broken analogue of violence.  

Darkness enshrouds him completely. An instant and an eternity lapses. His own thoughts flee from him.

Suddenly, he feels so very alone.

Let me go! He demands, with a voice that had once swayed so many hearts. Give me back my fire! Give me back what you all stole from me!

No one responds. 

He is so cold.

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There was nothing. 

Now there is something. 

Fëanor cannot explain how he knows, only that the knowledge is there. Beyond the boundaries of his fëa, there is a faint yet peculiar difference. Almost like a ripple. He half-expects it to be another trick from his mind, but he cannot shake off the odd sense that Void is now no longer empty…That something lies there, disturbing the stillness. 

A presence, where only absence should be. 

He reaches out. It feels surreal—almost painful—directing his attention externally after so long of having it weaponised internally; like stretching an atrophied muscle. 

But the motion dies almost as soon as he makes it; he should have expected that. Undiscouraged, Fëanor tries again. 

He thinks he can sense something: a faint hum, a slight undulation. He reaches farther, believing he can touch it. Yet his hand closes upon emptiness; there is nothing to grasp, nothing to see.

He is beginning to think he was mistaken, when it suddenly shifts, as if detecting his presence.  

Then it disappears.

Fëanor falters, stunned— 

It reappears just as quickly, before he can even process its vanishing act. 

It is far closer, he realises. 

Close enough that Fëanor, for the first time in ages, can feel the intensely familiar push and pull of a boundary interacting with his own. 

He forgets to be wary. With the fervent reverence of a man dying of thirst finding water at last, he presses himself tightly against…against…

Blank shock overtakes him.

…A spirit. 

He is pressing against a spirit. 

Being. 

Soul.

Here.

Hope blooms, like a gasp of fresh air in a stagnant tomb. 

Fëanor extends his thought over, eagerly probing, searching.

He finds nothing. Not a whisper of thought, nor a shadow of memory. It is like staring into an endless black pool. 

The hope withers, transforming into unease.

“Who are you?” He asks. 

The soul does not respond. His words fall through it like light through a prism. Each letter gets reflected, extended, stretched. 

Green and blue and red and white.

“A-a-are who who you? Ra-a-a.” 

The syllables bend and arch and fall apart; disintegrating into tenors torn from their context, accents ripped from their history, sound reduced from the mould of living voice. All meaning dissipates, and the skin beneath is laid bare:

Trepidation. Confusion. Intrigue.

Fëanor’s own feelings rebound at him, pulled apart and squashed back together again, spearing through his mind with painful alienness—

He reels back, snatching the ósanwë away like a hand from a nettle. 

“What in Valar’s name was that?” He yells. 

Silence is his only answer. 

“Is this thy version of a joke? Answer me!” 

Fëanor thrusts out spectral hands with the intention of giving a hard shake; but of course they pass through. There is no essence to push against, just a faint discordance that tells him something is still there.

The soul, unafraid, does not resist him. It simply meets him where he tries to throttle it. Ósanwë reopens once more—Fëanor does not know how. All of his anger passes through like sparks falling into deep water. 

It does not react, except to absorb the shards of his vitriol and examine them the way a child would explore something new. He watches, perplexed, as none of the expected backlash happens. There is no retaliation, nor flinching away, nor any attempt to appease. It is as if Fëanor’s aggression was forgotten the moment it had passed through—

Or rather, as if the soul never understood the gesture was aggressive in the first place. 

Bitterness courses through a well-worn path. Fëanor has the familiar impulse to sneer. 

“Art thou even animate? Or just imbecilic? How fitting. All my rightful possessions have been robbed, my own mind has turned against me, and now I must happen upon mindless things that infest this wretched darkness.” He makes as if to push the soul away. “Get thee gone!” 

But as he utters the words, something probes the edges of his fëa, seeking entrance. It is like a touch, and yet not. He can feel invisible fingers gently playing, can feel a foreign contour aligning with one of his own, can feel the sharp shards of his earlier anger being offered to him in a different shape. 

Fëanor finds himself utterly at a loss. He stares, frozen, unable to decide how to express a reaction. 

For it is not just the impossible and horrible desecration it has made of his frustration, presented now as carefully as if it were a delicate blossom, that he cannot fathom. 

It is the intimacy. It has violated all he thought he knew about the rules of mind-to-mind communication. It has crossed into his own fëa without needing sanwe-latya; entering an private space meant only for those who had communed with Fëanor for ages—his wife, his father, his sons. 

It is a violation Fëanor has never dreamed of before, a threat he never thought he would ever face.

He strikes back at everything at once. 

“What is this?” He demands sharply. “What are you?”

The words are denuded again. 

Flower, flower, fëa, son. 

Fëanor has the bizarre and irrational sense of being stripped naked against his own will. 

Indignity stings, hot and bright. 

And for one fraying moment, Fëanor thinks he might burn again. But he does not. He can only watch, helplessly, as another of his precious possessions is taken, destroyed, and then given back to him as carefully as the last two times—like it was a flower. A gift. 

He sneers, ignoring how the close bitterness feels unusually hollow. 

“Thou art fouler than Morgoth, and more false than he! At least when he stole from me the pain of it was mine own. But you! Unnatural thing. How darest thou rob a robbed man, twist what thou hast taken and then trespass into his mind to hand it back like an offering? Is this a joke to thee? A trick…Thou…”

Even as he speaks, withered things come back to him, undoing his tirade and disrupting the rhythm of his words until he can no longer hold on to what he wants to say—

Morgoth’s name bleeds into shadow and hate and lies and fury—

The nouns are pressed upon until cracked open— 

Light is uncovered, love is unburied, and the Silmarils are suddenly there, bright and pure and clear—

He thought he has lost their light to the blur—

Impulsively he grabs at them, trying to box them in now that they are bright again—

But they cut him—

Sharp light bares flashing steel and red smoke and hard faces that rush by and—

He recognises them all yet—

Their names escape him, leaving a kaleidoscope of traits and beliefs and false pretences—

He attempts to return to the Silmarils but they are lost to—

Voices that crush against each other, arguing and accusing and—

He knows what they are saying but the meaning is not there and that hole hurts—

Fëanor shakes himself out of the torrent. He is left reeling. 

Not for the first time, he wishes he could incinerate the soul.

“Úvanimo I name thee; an ill-natured thing! For thou art wretched and wrong!”

He severs the connection. 

It is a painful act, stinging in the way all intimate ósanwë couplings sting when cut off harshly; like tearing out one’s cuticles.

But at least he has gotten rid of Úvanimo—

Or so he believes, for a stretch of stillness. Then a line meets his fëa, once, twice, thrice, the thing prodding for entry again, and he realises that severing his thought from it is not an ending. 

For the thing lingers upon the sphere of his presence, and will not go. 

Yet Fëanor is stubborn. He endures the incessant prodding, locking himself within the bars of his own mind again to ensure no accidental connection. And, since he cannot physically turn away from it, he fixates upon the motion of his worn thoughts, forcing them to move around the ever-growing blur so that he can be carried away by them.

He wonders how long he can bear himself, before making the mistake of reaching out again.

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The light. His thoughts are anchored on the light, on that one brief and crystal-clear image of the Silmarils as they should be amidst a flood of insanity. 

It had been an effective distraction—first the novelty of it, then the effort to keep it shining. Eventually however, the memory of the encounter faded into dullness; and he is now left with only the word and the desire to make the word real again.

Úvanimo, irritatingly and persistently there, grows into an increasingly enticing solution. It may be a horror beyond Ëa, but in the stillness Fëanor can only care about the Valar-damned light. Somehow, the thing had cleared his memory enough to allow light to shine through again; and he covets it, even though its brilliance had cut like glass.

If he could use it to his advantage, manipulate it to show him what he wants to see, then perhaps—perhaps rekindling a spark may not be so difficult. 

And where a spark flares, a fire is not far off. The accursed blur could then finally be driven out. Fëanor could be Lord of Lights anew. 

Furthermore, there would be a certain vicious satisfaction in deceiving something that seemed bent on ruining him. 

Encouraged by these coiling thoughts, he casts his attention outward again, allowing the bars encircling his mind to lower.

Úvanimo is there, close and intimate. 

He imparts what he wants whole: a hazy image of three gems upon a brow, crowned with the words light, beauty, purity and the concepts of colour and hue. 

Úvanimo takes the components and dissects them. Now that Fëanor is keen on observing what it does with the memory, he is able to watch the full process of its curious dismantling: how it turns the image this way and that before bending it, how it presses upon colour until the idea explodes into a thousand glimmering shades, how it takes down the words from the pedestal he placed them on and seems to just hold the words in its attention before they instantly dissolve…

Everything goes wrong from there. Too many things happen at once. In place of the words are a multitude of ideals, impressions, and conclusions—

The perfect and worst texture for a gem— 

The best and least angle for refraction—

Nerdanel laughed best when they were younger—

His mother used to call him Minyon—

Things would be better without Indis and her brood—

Silver shadows danced in the leaves when Laurelin waned—

Úvanimo pulls on the threads of each fragment to reveal yet other experiences and judgements and associations; until their link is overwhelmed by a storm of things belonging to Fëanor’s mind. 

Fëanor pushes back, trying to restore the original image of the Silmarils. But Úvanimo does not turn to the gems. It presses instead upon the brow beneath them, until the Oath rears its ugly head, until pride and possession are laid trembling in the open, until all are flayed apart into doubt, desire, and a cold, gnawing tension that he recognises but refuses to name—yet he cannot look away—

Fear.  

Fëanor makes the mistake of resisting. 

“Fear? I am not afraid! Show me light!”

But the harder he resists, the harder his own resistance returns to him. The shard of memory he had initially given to the soul is stripped beyond the minimum, beyond all semblance of form, beyond all deception; until at last it can dig no further and—

There is light at last. 

It brings none of the expected relief. 

Instead, there is agony. For the light only illuminates every illusion that Úvanimo has undone: every fallen denial, every blurred space, every scattered thought.

Fëanor cries out; and it is not in pain, or even in rage…but in grief. 

For suddenly grief is there, terrible and all-consuming, and he realises that it has been there all along, covered up by his anger until unravelled bare. 

Gone.

He cannot think. 

Gone.

He cannot act. 

Gone, gone, gone.

His fëa contracts around a single point, as though reducing itself to the smallest possible shape might spare it from breaking.

It is now, when Fëanor is erratic, desperate and overtaken by grief, that he is most dangerous.

He does not remember attacking. He does not remember aiming intent sharp enough to kill. 

There is only pressure, bursting free at last. 

It is not until agency fails that awareness returns to him. He finds himself frozen midway through the act of lashing out, his spiritual hands caught somewhere he cannot feel. 

He yanks them back, but they remain strangely rooted. 

Ripple. 

Prod. 

Ripple. 

The hands that had aimed to smite are now being held instead—

No, that description is not quite right. Úvanimo is not physically or even spiritually holding his hands; rather, it holds Fëanor’s very conception of them. 

He snarls. 

This again.  

It begins to trace the grooves of his hands, light and curious and deceptively innocuous. 

This time, Fëanor is prepared. He rips its boundaries away and attempts to tear it apart. He hones murderous intent right into the center of its field…

He should have known better. 

Mirrored violence strikes him like lightning. Fëanor’s hands take the brunt of the blow, shuddering under the force, their innate structure unspooling layer by layer—

A small but elegant lead rose is twined around his fingers, his first creation—‘Look, ammë!’—

Over and under and over and under the needle went, his mother’s slender fingers swift and sure as she wove— ‘Ammë, can I try?’—

Intricately woven Silima was cupped in his palm, glittering brighter than the stars and so surpassingly beautiful, the greatest thing he has ever made—

Aulë smiles patiently as Fëanor dissects his large hand: bone and tissue, muscle and nerve, vein and artery—

His hands are braiding Curvo’s sleek hair when Tyelko asks dreamily, ‘What if fingers had fingers had fingers?’—

The scent of parchment fills his nose as he writes, ink-stained fingers tirelessly crafting characters—

He stands in his forge, fanning fire, bending metal, using deft and unyielding fingers to shape items of destruction—

He clasps Nerdanel’s hand in both of his and murmurs, ‘Wed with me, melda.’—

The hands which so many times had held his children and grandchild; taught them, guided them—

Úvanimo pulls. 

Silima in his palm—

Palm. The shape of a hand,

Colour red, colour white. 

To be bended and extended,

Weight firm, weight heavy.

To touch and to feel,

Skin smooth, skin fair.

Until lines of stress 

Make it rough, make it firm—

“Stop!” cries Fëanor—

Tug. 

His hands braiding—

The hand. Flexes. Grasps:

The second joint on every third finger cracks.

Opens. Closes:

The right pinky is bent from the hammer.

Parts air. Parts water:

Silk brush, wet sooth—

Presses wall. Presses stone:

Hard impact, solid surface—

Twist.

His deft ink-stained unyielding fingers—

His. Ever-faithful, ever-obedient.

Never failing to send what they see;

Growing as he grew,

Learning as he learnt. 

Ceaselessly making his dreams a reality—

“No!”—

Shift.

So many times his hands have held—

They hold…

They carry. They touch;

They craft his legacy,

Write his thought.

They bless his followers 

And destroy his enemies—

Pull, pull.

Her hand in his hand—

Nerdanel. Rosy cheeks. Russet hair.

Passion coursing, blood through artery…

Pain grating, ash through blood.

Anger broiling, hot air through ash—

Þerindë. Sparkling eyes. Silver hair. 

Love wreathing, strings around his heart.

Joy bounding, music around strings…

Grief aching, strain around music—

Snap!

Joy. Pain.

Ink stains. Curvo’s hair. Hammer. 

Vein. Love. Anger. 

Fingers—

Why are there five of them?

“Because—because it has always been this way—”

But why? 

He finds he does not really know why— 

Five. Line. Skin and bone—

Palm. Grip. Warmth and weight—

Hand. Craft. Cause and effect—

Why—

He does not know—he does not know—everything is suddenly so heavy—there seems to be no end to this movement—

The web of relationships that are his hands begin to dissolve.

“No!” 

Fëanor attempts to put things back together. He starts from what he thinks is easiest and most obvious to himself:

“Bone first, because it supports. Then touch—no. Weight. Skin over fingers: thumb, index, ring and pinky attach to—no, something is not right—Fingers attach—”

To what? 

Úvanimo examines the concept of attachment and presents to him a myriad of similar things: 

To a bud, like a stem?

To a cloth, like a seam?

To a picture, like a frame?

To a light, like a gem?

To a person, like a sentiment?

“To a palm!”

What is a palm?

The question stuns him.

“The center of a hand, obviously! Made to open and close—to close—”

Close an opening. Obscure, cover—

Like clothes. Cloth. Door closing— 

Too close…To close…

Lose…

“No! I am not losing this. I cannot lose this. I cannot—”

Fire and light.

First one, then three. 

Seven. Now five.

Fëanor flinches, curling his precious hands into fists to prevent them from being taken. 

Only…

How does one make a fist?

Fëanor tries again. 

Nothing.

Hands have lost all meaning. 

“No…No…No!”

He redoubles his attention upon them, striving to reassemble what no longer has significance because he cannot fathom existing without them. 

But every attempt to rebuild merely offers more to dismantle. 

His wrists unfold. 

Then his forearms. 

And Fëanor is faced with the impossible choice to either pull back and admit defeat, or lose the form of his spirit entirely. 

…He pulls back. 

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In the bottomless silence, there is grief, new and old. 

Frayed and aching threads hang dead from his elbows, the only memory left of what once was there. No amount of will or despair can bring them back. Fëanor’s spirit performs a hollow but compulsory imitation of screaming for a long time.

For even the knowledge of the verb itself has no essence anymore. 

He cannot bear it. He cannot bear it. 

Unmeaning weighs heavier than imperfection, heavier than death, heavier than himself—

Or what is left of himself. The crux of his spirit is no more. The tight hold he has always clung to loosens—as ‘hold’ no longer is. 

Without it, Fëanor’s will crumbles.  

Perspective shifts—if it could even be called that, for perspective is a fragile thing now. He looks at the ruins of all of his structures that once stood tall and proud; and under the barrenness of unmeaning they fade and change bearings, until he no longer knows what they were for. 

Long-standing accusations shift, like a landscape changing. Wrongs once laid entirely upon the shoulders of others refuse to stay put, sliding back towards their source. Old justifications that he had rehearsed so often they had become indistinguishable from truth—they drove me to it; my sons will fulfil; Fëanor does what Fëanor says—cease to feel inevitable…

The pain of the Oath becomes a pain he struggles to see the point of bearing. Its purpose, once so clear and unshakeable, is now littered with countless holes that throb for the shape of sense that had filled them.

Vaguely, he is aware that something fundamental within himself has changed…

But that is old news. Many fundamental things have been taken away from him already. What difference is another? 

He wishes could just…step away from it all. Away from the necrotic blur. Away from the noise. 

Yet he does not want the silence either.

His entire self is one mighty burden…

Fëanor begins to understand that there is nothing waiting for him except more of this: Void and oblivion and endless pain.

And Úv—

Fëanor wrestles his thought away from it, before the mere act of thinking its name can open connection. 

But it is a tiring thing. Every time his elbows ache for the parts that are not there is a time he is reminded of it; and every time more and more effort is needed to quell the natural turn of his thought towards it. 

Every hard-won success only serves to make him feel empty. Pointless. 

He feels the need to compare himself to the past, to the vague assemblage of broken memory and narrow experience that has lost all order and sense. 

Old fragments surface from the blur, missing their hands and the arrogance the Lord of Lights would have disregarded them with:

Keen, open eyes watch. Eager—two eager things—explore and rejoice in m—

M—?

Others happy—

Didn’t he once love being helpful? Didn’t he always hate being useless? 

The questions breed countless others. Doubts and regrets and failures(so many failures, he did not realise there were so many)gather, until, inevitably, they all lead to one simple yet devastating question. 

Why?

There is no answer. 

Not from himself. Nor from Void. Nor from—from—

Overcome with despair, disorder, grief, he weeps. 

For an age, and a moment, and an eternity. 

The pain grows beyond endurance. 

Enough, he begs. Make it stop…

“Po-o-otsss…K-k-kaaa—”

The noise screeches like a fork against plates, distorted pain shaking Fëanor out of his cold dream.

He does not remember letting any thought stray towards Úvanimo.

Yet it is here, again, tracing his boundaries and carefully absorbing transmitted grief like it is not killing Fëanor from the inside—

It follows the tracks of the threads hanging from his elbows. Slowly, delicately. As if it was not the one responsible for them, as if they were not the ruins of something indispensable, as if every line was new and it did not remember the disaster of their last interaction…

Words spill forth in a rush, almost without his permission.  

‘I am sorry.’

Fëanor is not entirely sure what he is sorry for; but he has to do something, has to try to shake off the crushing weight, has to find some way to dispel the strange and nameless brittleness filling him. 

Úvanimo receives and looks. Under its thorough scrutiny the apology is unable to hide behind haste, and dwindles into something small and exposed and so very, very ugly.

Guilt thickens, 

Biting, burning, 

Strangling, smoldering.

Freak, liar, evil thing,

Now innocent like—

Everyone but himself. 

The arrow of blame pierces—

Nothing but itself. 

Úvanimo, such a cruel name—

A clear mirror into his own hatred. 

Crack-crack—

There goes fear!

Crack-crack-crack-crack—

There goes denial! Avoidance! Deflection—

As Fëanor beholds yet another naked exposition of his own mind’s dull, banal machinations, he feels so tremendously drained. 

The old habit of reaction surfaces, but he finds himself too tired to follow the pattern of it. He knows what lies at the end of that path; and he does not want to suffer another collapse simply for the sake of maintaining resistance anymore. 

His anger is gone, like blood absent from a vein. A hollow shell clenches around nothing—his mind’s last futile attempts to carry out the familiar response. 

“I…I…”

It falls away unfinished. 

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