most days I don't recognize me by annarobots  

When Maitimo was born, he had almost no hair on his head.  But he had soft perfect baby skin, and long curling copper lashes, and great big ocean-blue eyes that would, after many years, lighten to a grey that sparkled like the sea beneath rain-clouds.

“Darling baby, sweet boy,” the visitors cooed, tickling Maitimo’s feet. 

Nerdanel knew, of course, that every new mother believed her baby to be the most beautiful baby who had ever lived. 

But it pleased her deeply to know that she, alone of all mothers, was right. 

Still.  One wouldn’t want him to grow up with a complex.  Would he think himself only as worthy as he was sweet and compliant?  “He’s more than a pretty doll,” she chided the visitors, her tone light but sharp as a steel chisel.

“Such a strong grip,” said the people, when first he clutched an outstretched finger.

“What a fine, clear voice,” said they, when first he squealed in joy and not distress.

“A spirit of fire,” pronounced the king.  “Like his father.  Great and good will be the deeds of Nelyafinwë.”

And great and good he was!  Never had there been a baby more agreeable, more loveable, or quicker to smile.  He took easily to the breast.  He slept through the light of Telperion and woke uncrying when the golden light of Laurelin kissed his brow.  Happily he went to any open arms, though Nerdanel’s ached with longing when they did not carry his easy weight. 

Once Nerdanel recovered strength enough to travel, she wrapped the baby close, Fëanáro saddled up the horses, and out they rode, deep into the wild places of the continent.  Far beyond the range of the Tree-light, he would see the stars that Varda made. 

Blinking, calm and alert, Maitimo gazed up at the heavens, the starlight reflecting in his sapphire eyes.  And for a time, Nerdanel’s restless heart was at peace, for she knew that even if her hands never touched stone again, she had in her life made at least one masterpiece.

There was a Telerin widow-woman who lived nearby.  She had, it was said, lost her silver husband in the crossing, when he slipped on a beach-stone on the moving island, bumped his head, and tumbled into the water.  Ulmo heard neither his splashing nor her frantic cries and kept on towing.  In her grief she refused to dwell in sight of the Sea and instead took up residence among the Noldor, a free woman. 

Yet children were her heart’s delight.  She had never accepted that her husband declined to go to the Halls, and she still believed that one day he would return, and she would have her children.  In the meantime, she would take in little ones for a turning or two so that their mothers could get some time to themselves.

“Why would I wish for time to myself?”  Nerdanel was baffled.  On the floor beside her, Maitimo rolled from his back to his stomach and gurgled.  She clapped. 

“I only thought you might like to go work in your studio again,” said Fëanáro.  “You haven’t touched any craft since the baby, and he needs you not every moment.  It would be good for you both.”

Silly Fëanáro.  It certainly would not.  Besides, Nerdanel’s work was very far from her mind.  Her hands were too busy playing patty-cake.

“Come to brunch, we miss you,” said Indis, who was expecting again.  She glowed as she swelled, golden and lovely.  Nerdanel might have been jealous, once.

Why would she go sit in a stuffy café?  For mimosas and mushroom quiche?  When she and Maitimo got hungry, they crawled around the garden picking red strawberries warm from Tree-light and ate them right there on the ground.  Her friends surely would understand.

Yuletide draws near, wrote her father.  His invitation was politely worded but firm.  And even if she might have wanted to stay home for their first holiday as a little family, Fëanáro was always eager to visit Mahtan’s forge, and it was he who ultimately insisted that they go. 

Dutifully, she dressed the baby in cream-and-green velvet threaded with gold, a matching cap covering his bare head.  Then they were off to her father’s manor.  Everyone admired Maitimo’s red round cheeks, his fat thighs.  He was positively showered in presents: a tiny book of painted animals, a set of carved wooden blocks, a rainbow xylophone with a rubber-headed mallet.  They filled three wagons with gifts.

“Darling baby, sweet boy,” cooed the relatives. 

“He is no doll,” was Nerdanel’s refrain.

But when the evening turned silver, and Maitimo yawned, Nerdanel took him to their little chamber, rocked him in the wooden chair, and sang to him low, in a tune of her own invention, “darling baby, sweet boy; darling baby, sweet boy,” until they both fell fast asleep.

Before she knew it, her darling baby became a lanky adolescent who was as well-liked as he was intelligent and courteous.  His calendar was filled with teas, dances, equestrian events, and at least two hours each day devoted to brushing out and rebraiding his silky copper mane.  He also developed mild myopia, exacerbated by his habit of reading obscure poetry in dimly lit libraries with a friend, a fellow admirer of classical heroic verse.  Consequently, Fëanáro invented vision-correcting lenses. 

The new baby liked to knock them right off Maitimo’s face.  Then he would shriek, his voice more piercing than the cry of the King of Eagles.  Maitimo, as devoted and good an older brother as in all endeavors, tried his best to keep Makalaurë calm, but his efforts made little difference.  He shrieked in distress, he shrieked in joy, he shrieked for attention, he shrieked when he wished to be left alone.  He shrieked in all circumstances, no matter the time of day. 

Nerdanel’s ears hurt.

With great reluctance, she took Fëanáro’s suggestion and dropped the baby off at the widow-woman’s. 

Then she paced around the too-silent house sobbing inconsolably until it was time to pick him up. 

She tried again a few days later but gave up after an hour, for she was crying so hard, she could scarcely breathe.  She went knocking at the widow-woman’s door and snatched Makalaurë from her arms, choking out a tearful explanation.

The widow-woman assured her all was well, she could bring Makalaurë back any time.  Such a fierce child!  He would be welcome always.

“Darling baby, sweet boy,” Nerdanel sang, all the way home, and if her ears did not deceive her, Makalaurë in his shrieking tried his best to harmonize.

The next day, Fëanáro expressed bafflement.  “But why are you now unhappy?  The babe is here.  You never have to leave him in another’s care if you do not wish it.  I think I can offer mechanical relief, a device that appeared to me in a dream.  What do you think about ear-plugs?”

“Oh, sounds wonderful,” sniffled Nerdanel, not listening.  “But Fëanáro, I feel so guilty.  I took Makalaurë from her.  Took him right out of her arms!  She must be so sad and bereft, to be without him, now.”  Her eyes welled up just to think of the poor widow-woman, missing Makalaurë.

“Yes, of course,” soothed Fëanáro.  “Well, do you want to pack up his bag and try taking him over one more time?”

At that, she burst into fresh tears.  Makalaurë screamed so loud, he drowned out her sobs.

Tyelkormo was born blue.  He arrived so early, after only eleven months in the womb, his lungs weren’t fully developed.  Nerdanel was too dazed from the precipitous birth to feel fear.  Fëanáro’s face was white as the center of a flame.

Thankfully, a maiden of Estë was attending.  She popped away and back in a flash with Manwë.  It was he who breathed the wind of life into the babe.  Within moments, he was pink with healthy rage.  Later, his hair would lighten to that famous silver-blond.  But when he was born, and when he was very small, Tyelkormo’s reddish-brown hair was the exact same color as Nerdanel’s.  Chestnut, they called it.  Darker than Maitimo’s, plainer, but she took pleasure that they matched so.

Tyelkormo's babyhood proved just as exciting as his birth.  He bit his mother’s nipples; he learned to roll by rolling down hills at formidable speed; he developed fine-motor skills and immediately put jewel beetles into his mouth; he scratched and kicked with absolute glee, for no particular reason at all, other than—Nerdanel supposed—the pleasure of exerting his will upon the world. 

Then he learned how to walk. 

Nerdanel’s heart nearly stopped the day he discovered the stairs.

“Darling baby, sweet boy,” sang she, still half-sobbing, as she paced in circles, round and round the bedchamber, for hours upon hours, the silver-light that streamed into the little window now mingling with gold.  Now Tyelkormo slept, snoring, against her shoulder.  She could not bear to put the boy into his crib, not after that scare.  She saw the fall in her mind every time she let her attention wander: a chubby foot slipping, laughter dissolving into screams, a series of thumps, and then, that dreadful silence.  Time seemed to slow down, her heart skipping beats in her breast. 

When at last he wailed again, she felt no true relief, but only the slow realization that she was in for many more years of terror.

A few months after the staircase incident, Nerdanel turned away for just a few moments to hide a claw chisel the baby had unearthed, which she had snatched away just before he used it to carve grooves into her skin. 

When she looked back, he was gone.  Vanished.

They found him later that evening, happily playing in a creek with an assembly of snails.  She scooped him up, shaking.  “Darling baby, sweet boy,” she tried to sing, but out came only a low moan of fear, interrupted but not extinguished by finding him safe and unharmed.  He crunched a snail in his muddy fist and began to wail.

Of course, she knew that in the Blessed Land, true harm was unlikely to befall the boy.  The Valar watched over them, and the lesser spirits were everywhere.  It was a great hound of Oromë who had found him in the creek, in fact.

But anyone could drown in mere moments, even in Valinor.

Her heart needed a break.

“Give him here,” said the widow-woman when Nerdanel, deep shadows beneath her eyes, appeared at her door. 

Tyelkormo buried his face in Nerdanel’s skirts.  She had to pry his fingers off one at a time.  But as she walked away, leaving him screaming in the care of the widow-woman, Nerdanel’s eyes were dry.

She returned at last to her studio, which had grown dusty with long disuse.  The claw chisel felt unfamiliar; her hands were clumsy from lack of practice.  But her skill was not lost, and within weeks, she could again feel the shapes hidden within the stone.  Her old friends welcomed her merrily back to brunch.  There was a new café in Tirion, one that specialized in flaky pastries filled with chocolate cream or fruit jam. 

And as time passed, she took more pleasure in simple solitude than she ever had before.  In a land of total abundance, silence was the luxury she now desired most.  She could hear herself think again for the first time in decades.

So, as you can imagine, it was very, very easy for her to let Fëanáro take the lead, first with the children, and then with everything else. 

Nerdanel loved all her boys, of course.  That was never in question.  She simply loved them now at a healthy remove.  The widow-woman cared for all the rest when they were small, with gratitude.  And as the children grew up, they had many playmates: endless cousins, other children of Valinor, the spirits who loved little ones, and the hound of Oromë, who came to Tyelkormo again when he neared manhood, to stay by his side for ever.

Nerdanel began to make great things out of marble and out of stone.  Those were the days of perfect bliss under the Light of the Trees in the Blessed Land, before the Unchaining, before the Silmarils.

And then, well.  I don’t need to tell you what happened next.  For that is a tale known by everyone.

Several Ages of Arda later, Nerdanel had been a woman alone in the world for so long, motherhood seemed to belong to the life of a different person entirely.  She heard the voices of her children in her dreams almost never, these days.

When the grey-hooded visitor knocked on her door at dusk, she expected a pupil of stone, or perhaps a lover.

She certainly did not expect the Keeper of the Slain, so far from his dark Halls, right there on her doorstep.

If he had been an Elda, she would have invited him in for tea and biscuits.  As it was, she folded her arms and planted her feet.  Never had the Doomsman visited her with happy news, and she had little hope that this would ever change.

He pushed back his dark hood.  (A bit of theatre.)

He met her gaze with fearsome resolve in his fathomless eyes.

And he spoke.

In the heavens above, the stars were coming out.  She could see the Swordsman, Menelmacar, rising in the eastern sky.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?”  A strange feeling took hold within her chest.  Surely she was going mad. 

The Doomsman repeated himself.

The feeling flickered like a candle, but its spark was strong, and it held.

She thought she must say something of great profundity to meet this moment, but never had she claimed to be a wordsmith.  “I wouldn’t have thought he’d be first.”

He could no longer dwell within the Halls, Námo explained.  He was too much trouble.  He would not simply keep quiet and contemplate the terrible deeds he had done.  Instead, he roamed the Halls as a flash of silver mist, stirring up chaos and upsetting the other fëar who endeavored to atone in peaceful seclusion, as they ought.

No, he could not stay in the Halls of Mandos.  But where else should he go?

Námo looked at her with expectation.

Nerdanel had grown accustomed to her privacy.  Her home was her own.

Curse Fëanáro, leaving her to figure this out all on her own.  She missed and resented her husband in equal measure.  Sometimes she thought about petitioning the Valar for a true divorce, as it seemed he was doomed to spend the rest of the Ages in Mandos regardless, so why not free herself?  But it seemed a lot of trouble for little practical difference.  She would still be perceived as Fëanáro’s wife by the Eldar. 

And she was all alone, either way.

First she went to the Telerin widow-woman, who also dwelled alone even after all these years.  Long ago, she had helped Nerdanel in her time of need.  But now, her face went pale when Nerdanel told her Námo’s news. 

Could she—?

The widow-woman shook her head.  She had not been at Alqualondë.  But she would never forget.  No.  Never.  No.

Then Nerdanel went to her father, lord of his country manor.  But when she saw the full grey of his stately beard, the deep careworn lines carved about his eyes, she could not bring herself to ask him to take on this burden.  

She had one more idea.  Preparations for the trip took time, for there were lessons to reschedule, brunches to cancel.  Someone had to water the plants in the garden. 

Long had it been since last she journeyed so deep into the Woods.  It was darker and wilder than she recalled.  The trees she walked beneath were strange to her.  Her winding path took her to uneasy places before she found herself where she intended: the forest court of the Huntsman, the Great Rider on his ancient heartwood throne.

Oromë had expected her.  He appeared in full regalia, robes of shimmering autumn leaves, a crown like a mouth of canine teeth, a cloak made from the skin of a tiger.  The full court had gathered: forest-Maiar with antlers and hooves; flickering spirits that danced in the air like fireflies; foxes, hares, songbirds, and bears; and disciples from among the Eldar.  She recognized a few of them from another age.  Oromë’s wife sat upon a magnolia throne by his side, her crown a wreath of chrysanthemums the color of dark wine.  She spoke not, but watched the proceedings quietly as a proper wife ought.

Nerdanel couched her request in neither pleasantries nor flattery, but delivered it plain.  Then she awaited the Huntsman’s response. 

The Hound was there, too.  Nerdanel nodded in acknowledgement.  He turned round three times and lay his great head upon his paws, facing away.

The Huntsman was said to be dreadful in his anger, but in Nerdanel’s opinion, he was even more dreadful in his disdain.  His expression said it all.  No, he pronounced, giving her little chance to plead her case, giving her no explanation at all.  No shelter for the man who had followed the call of his mighty horn for centuries in the days of perfect bliss, who had taken sacred vows and—to Nerdanel’s knowledge—never betrayed his Lord.

No place for Tyelkormo in these Woods, then. 

She asked Námo: couldn’t he just release Tyelkormo unsupervised?  He was a skilled outdoorsman in his first life, and surely the years in cruel Beleriand only sharpened his talent for survival.  

But Námo informed her that this was against policy, ever since Prince Findekáno had been discharged with no chaperone.  He wandered too far north and tried to take down a woolly mammoth with no fellows and no weapons but his soft hands and white teeth.  That ended poorly.

It took an awful lot of effort, manufacturing a new body, and Námo wasn’t about to let anyone else get themselves killed a second time.  

So.  Nerdanel was all out of ideas.  There was no one else to whom she could turn.

She was going to have to deal with this herself.

A flash of incandescent anger ran hot through her belly, that it was he, and not Maitimo, returning to her now.  It should have been Maitimo!  Her firstborn, the strongest, the best of them.  Hadn’t he suffered enough, through torment and betrayal, with no mother to comfort him?  Why should he linger still in that cold, dark place?  Though millennia had passed since last he had been truly hers, still she longed for Maitimo.  She had missed him for such a great part of her life, she hardly registered the anguish most of the time.  But there was ever a hole in her heart, a hollow place that nothing else could fill.  She wished, impossibly, that Námo would send him back to her as a fat bald-headed baby, small enough to hold in the crook of one arm.  

But that was not the Doom that Námo had decided for her.

She acquired a tent.  It was a good tent. 

Tyelkormo arrived one morning in the waning days of summer, not long after dawn.  He was barefoot.  He wore only a plain grey robe, tied round his waist with a simple sash, a matching grey cap covering his head.  He came escorted by two Maiar of Mandos. 

“He might need closer supervision than the usual,” said one of them.  “Ah, but you wouldn't know...."

“Just don't let him wander too far," said the other.  “He’s a bit under-baked.”

“Oh, and congratulations!”  And with that, the Maiar popped away. 

She could not recall when last she had been alone with Tyelkormo, just the two of them.    

“This is for you,” she said, showing him the tent in the garden.  Beneath the tent, she had cleared the ground of stones.  He would be comfortable. 

He looked like Tyelkormo, but he was not quite Tyelkormo.  He certainly was not the child she carried.  Nor was he the man who set out from the shores of Araman a near-stranger to his mother. 

“I have no spare bedroom within,” she found herself explaining.  “You always preferred the outdoors.  You can open the skylight, there, if you wish to see the stars.”

He spoke no words.  Did he hear her?  He began to walk the length of the garden, looking at the flowers, dew sparkling on the petals in the morning light.

“You may come in twice a day for meals.  Have you broken your fast?  I have bread and butter.”  He shrugged.  “Supper is delivered hot after sundown, I have no patience for cooking these days.  They will bring enough for you.”

This was not the child she had wanted, but he was the one she had.

Suddenly, he dropped to his knees.  She reached out but was too far away to catch him before he hit the ground.  But then she perceived that he had not fallen.  He was gazing very intently at the plants that grew from the earth. 

Nerdanel went to Tyelkormo and knelt at his side.

The season was nearly over, but if one took the time to look, one could yet find many small, ripe red strawberries all over the garden.  The slugs and snails loved them, the robins and starlings, too.  She grew plenty for them all.  Were there enough for Tyelkormo?

He did not move as she gathered a small handful.  He did not move when she offered one in her hand.  When she tapped at his chin, his mouth opened.  She popped the strawberry inside, stem and all, wondering if he would choke.  Should she have chewed it up for him and spat it into his mouth like a bird?  Her stomach turned. 

He chewed and swallowed.  Then a small smile spread upon his face, uncertain.

He ate each strawberry she fed him and when her hands were empty, he began to crawl down the row, searching for more.  He went very low, close to the ground.  His grey robes dragged in the mud. 

The more he ate, the pinker he grew, and more animated with life.  More careless, too. 

Do not crush them! she wanted to say, but did not.

He picked all the ripe fruits from one row until none remained, and then he went on to the next row.  He went with such eagerness, in fact, the grey cap upon his head came undone, and fell unnoticed between the plants upon the damp soil.

From beneath the cap, a thick mass of chestnut brown hair tumbled out.

Nerdanel’s heart caught in her mouth.  The scent of strawberries was all around, sweet and ripe.  His hair caught the golden sun, reddish glints sparkling round his face.  Her knees dug into the dirt.

A very old song came to her lips, and she began to hum its tune.

Chapter End Notes

Many thanks to IdleLeaves, whose prompt sets in the September 2026 SWG Instadrabbling (and later) helped me to write this story. Parts of this fic have been rolling around in my mind for nearly two years now, but it finally came together all of a sudden just a few days ago. 

Thank you to InfiniteRiver and Irnina for reading the story and sharing feedback ❤️ 

Some inspirations and influences (links go to ao3 as I was not able to locate these particular stories posted on SWG at the time of publishing, please comment to lmk if you're the author and I missed it here):
* sallysavestheday's No Docile Artifact, an instant Nerdanel classic.
* clothonono's The Last Spring has imprinted on me so deeply, I refer to it even when I don't intend to. Of course I took much inspiration from this work when thinking about the Sons of Nerdanel as children.
* I have stolen Maitimo's myopia outright from lonelyvisitor's The Wager. 

You can find me on Tumblr as AnnaRobots. If you enjoyed the story, please consider reblogging my Tumblr promo post and dropping a kudos or comment. Thank you for reading!

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