and the waters prevailed by StormsBreadth  

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and the swallow a nest for herself

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Celebrimbor is in the forges, when Ereinion finds him.

With the war finally over, there’s a hum of activity in the air. The High King had declared that the rough settlement on the north of the Gulf of Lhûn is to be made permanent, and people had jumped to respond, making plans and breaking soil. Eager to put their mark on the land, to finally build something new after the decades of destruction.

Since then, there’s has been no end to the building works, and thus no end to the broken tools and the need for new ones. The makeshift forges are full with the clang of hammer on metal, a ringing counterpart to the cries of the gulls that bob on the nearby waves.

Ereinion watches silently as Celebrimbor hammers out a dent in a spade. 

Once he’s satisfied that the spade is fit for use again, Celebrimbor adds it to the pile of fixed tools and turns to his king. 

‘My lord,’ he says with a slight bow. Etiquette is still one of the things the infant kingdom needs to settle. In his personal life, Celebrimbor knew, Ereinion preferred informality, but a protracted military campaign had required a rigid hierarchy. Add to that the cultural differences between Sindar and Noldor, and where the new city will fall remains to be seen. 

‘Cousin,’ Ereinion replies, a small smile on his lips, indicating his own approach. Celebrimbor feels his own lips twist in return, though with a heavier irony.

‘After everything, you would claim kinship with the House of Fëanor?’

‘I would claim kinship with you, Celebrimbor, ever a friend to my own house.’ Ereinion’s voice is warm, but it rings with an authority that leaves no room for argument. Celebrimbor bows his head in acknowledgement, and Ereinion moves on, looking around the forges. ‘You’re working as a blacksmith?’ he asks. 

Celebrimbor shrugs. ‘I’m doing some blacksmithing,’ he says, which isn’t quite the same thing. 

Ereinion nods, thoughtful. ‘Not your preference?’

Celebrimbor has been at Ereinion’s service for the better part of a century now, and his king knows him well enough to know that blacksmithing was never Celebrimbor’s particular interest. While he could make a sword better than just about anyone yet living on Middle-earth, his passion had always been for smaller works of artistry, silver- and goldsmithing. Gemcraft, when he had the time and capacity. 

But that sort of delicate craft requires a level of creative energy that Celebrimbor hasn’t felt for several decades, and besides. There’s little enough demand for jewellery these days, and lots of demand for tools. Spades and hammers and chisels don’t need great artistry to do the job, and he can make them serviceable enough. 

‘It’s what’s useful right now.’

‘Your commitment to the new city is admirable.’ 

Celebrimbor makes a face. He’s not sure that he is committed to the new city. He had just been in the area when it started springing up, and since it had been doing so under Gil-galad’s command, he had felt he better contribute. 

If nothing else, it’s something to do. Proof that the world hasn’t ended and Celebrimbor’s own two hands still work.  

‘What do you want?’ Celebrimbor asks, rather than attempting to explain any of this.

Ereinion takes it in good humour. ‘I’m sending a group back into Beleriand. We know that the land was torn up by the fighting, but we don’t know when, or if, it will be safe for people to return, and our planning for the next few years hinges on what land we have available. We need more information.’

Celebrimbor nods, already thinking. ‘Do you want me to make equipment for them?’ he asks. Last he saw of Beleriand, it was a mess. They’ll likely need some sort of climbing gear. Lamps, maybe – he probably has the materials stashed away somewhere.

‘I want you to lead the group.’ 

That was not what Celebrimbor was expecting to hear. ‘Me?’ he asks. ‘Surely there’s someone more suited.’ Someone not so closely associated with a disgraced band of murderers, perhaps. 

‘I can think of none better. You know the lands of Beleriand well, are skilled at solving problems and have a cockroach’s knack for survival. My people hold you in high regard, and I consider you one of my most trusted advisers.’ He pauses, glancing around the forge. ‘And I think you will get bored of fixing tools before too long.’ 

Celebrimbor looks around, at the grime of the forge and the pile of tools he’s fixed. Beyond the make-shift shelter they’ve made for the smithy and out into the dust and bustle of the new city. As he watches, a swallow lands, scratching at the ground. She carefully picks up a glob of mud in her beak and flits away, back to build her nest.

Even the birds are creating their own little homes. Settling in, finding where they belong. Ereinion is right. Celebrimbor sighs. 

‘When do we leave?’

They leave three days later, which was enough time for Celebrimbor to make a couple of lamps and say goodbye to those few people who might miss him, or at least mark his absence. His fellow smiths clap him on the arm and wish him luck. Galadriel tells him she hopes he finds what he’s looking for, and refuses to listen when he tells her he’s not looking for anything. Elrond seems distracted, while Elros is brimming with vitality, but they both embrace him. 

‘If you see anything of Maglor…’ Elrond starts.

 Celebrimbor grimaces. He thinks the most likely course is that Maglor followed his brother to the depths of the earth, or turned and threw himself into the sea. Can’t promise that if he did find him, he wouldn’t send him to the grave himself. But he cares for Elrond enough not to say that. 

‘I’ll let you know.’

The group Ereinion has gathered is small, for ease of travel and because not all that many can be spared. Ereinion has appointed Celebrimbor as their leader, and while Celebrimbor suspects that the group will be fairly egalitarian, he’s mindful of the responsibility as he travels to their meeting place. Mindful, too, of his heritage, and whether some may object to following him on those grounds. 

He knows it won’t be a worry with the first person he spots, at least. Losselloth came over with his family on the stolen ships, and followed Maedhros to Himring when the Noldor parted ways. Kept following him, even as the Sons of Fëanor turned to worse and worse deeds: he knows she remained in their camp after Sirion, and likely would have followed them to the bitter, fiery end if she’d been allowed. 

She offers Celebrimbor a nervous smile when she spots him, and he makes himself offer one back. He knows that the twins were always fond of her, and t hat she has a sensible head on her shoulders and a good knowledge of eastern Beleriand, both of which will be useful on their quest.

The elf standing next to her is someone Celebrimbor is much more straightforwardly pleased to see. Ribinvir was a stonecarver in Nargothrond, working alongside King Felagund on some of the city’s most ambitious projects. When the city fell, he was one of the few who fled alongside Celebrimbor and made their arduous way through the wilderness to the Isle of Balan. Their paths have not crossed much these past decades, but Celebrimbor remembers him as cheerful and steadfast and capable of swearing extensively in Khuzdul. Now they’re walking into the wilds again, Celebrimbor is glad to have him at his side, and Ribinvir’s friendly grin suggests the feeling is mutual. 

‘Celebrimbor,’ he says, grasping Celebrimbor’s arm. ‘Good to see you again, old friend.’

Celebrimbor smiles and says something in agreement, before turning to greet the other two elves he vaguely recognises. Heledholf, he knows, is a former scout of Gondolin, one of the refugees who arrived at the Havens of Sirion. His impression of her is brusque and practical. Taerfinios is one of Círdan’s administrators – Celebrimbor actually knows his wife better than him, as she had done a lot of work coordinating relief efforts whenever there was a crisis, which there often was. Taerfinios acknowledges Celebrimbor with a nod, and passes on her regards.

The final two Celebrimbor doesn’t think he knows at all. They introduce themselves as Eluduinen and Damlann, both Sindar, though judging by the pearls threaded through Eluduinen’s tousled blonde hair she hails from Falas, and Damlann’s soft woodland accent suggests Doriath. He has wide eyes and long fingers that can’t keep still, and introduces himself as a crafter without naming a specialism. 

And that’s it. Seven elves, of varying backgrounds, scooped up by Ereinion to venture back to the wastes of Beleriand.

It’s raining when they set out, a light drizzle that gets heavier as they begin their climb up through the western foothills of the Ered Luin. The tsunamis that crashed over Beleriand when the sea broke through may have ended, but the land is still marshy and unstable. They judge it best to stick to the higher ground. 

Their initial plan is to travel up along the mountains, keeping their feet clear of the marsh where possible and using the height to see a wider sweep of the land, before descending further north. The rain makes it hard to see much of what’s ahead of them, however. For the first morning, they mostly stay tucked inside their rain cloaks, focussing on their ascent. For all he’s been working in the forge, Celebrimbor’s body isn’t used to this kind of exercise, and he finds himself breathing heavily, sweating in spite of the rain and the chill.

There’s a break in the rain around early afternoon, and they gratefully take the opportunity to sit in a clearing and eat. The group makes the careful small talk of people who do not know each other, but know they are going to have to work in each other’s company for a long time: polite, earnest, carefully not touching on anything too sensitive. 

Celebrimbor finds himself sharing a rock with Eluduinen, who cheerfully explains the knack to finding good oysters as they eat their lunches. 

‘Not that there’ll be any colonies established there yet,’ she says, gesturing back to where the Gulf of Lhûn cuts a gleaming swathe through the landscape. ‘The waterscape is still too new. And it might not be the right type of water, once it settles, or the right temperature. We don’t know, really.’

That’s the crux of the matter, isn’t it? They don’t know. What the land will look like, what its people will look like. What they’ll find as they cross Beleriand, this land they all knew so well, now shattered and changed.

Celebrimbor looks back. The Havens are still visible from here, a cluster of buildings and tents dipping their toes in the bay. It crawls with activity, people hurrying to and fro, working on the building projects or carrying messages or going about their own unknown errands. They’re too far for even elf eyes to identify individuals: all Celebrimbor sees are the movements. But put together they show a city alive, a city growing. 

‘We’ll find out,’ he says. 

The rain continues on and off for the rest of the day. They push further than they might otherwise, hoping that the rain will stop in time for them to set up their tents, but the light starts to fade with no end in sight, so they end up making camp in the rain. Celebrimbor offers to go and hunt, leaving the others to wrangle the wet canvas of their tents or root around in the trees for dry firewood. 

He slips away into the scrubby brushes, listening to the sounds of nature. He's not been on this hill specifically, but he once spent a few weeks in these foothills on a hunting trip, and the broad lay of the land is familiar. 

It was in the early days at Himlad, once the east had settled and their fortress at the Pass of Aglon newly built. Celebrimbor was feeling restless, an adult and yet still part of his father’s household, isolated in a lonely castle, watching an unstable border. Desperate for his father’s approval, resenting the fact that he brought him here. Meanwhile Curufin was by turns restless and distant, and nothing Celebrimbor could do was good enough. He and his father were too similar, and yet not quite similar enough, and the tension grew over the long summer until Maedhros came to visit. 

Then it exploded. 

There were screaming matches between all four of them, but Curufin and Maedhros especially. The sting of exile was festering within him, and he resented Maedhros giving up the crown. Celebrimbor, meanwhile, resented the fact that for all their arguments, it had never actually been about him. Eventually, and with unusual tact, Celegorm announced that he was taking Tyelpë hunting. 

And he did.

Hunting with Celegorm alone was not the genteel, horseback experience that Celebrimbor had come to expect from the rare occasions that his family got together or entertained guests. Celegorm ran with Oromë's hunt back in Aman, and for them, hunting was something you did on your own two feet, over the course of many weeks, with only a bow, a knife and a bedroll. They slept out under the stars, Celegorm making sure that Celebrimbor knew how to navigate and Huan providing warmth when the nights took a chill. The hound’s fur was soft under Celebrimbor’s hands.

Celegorm could could never be called gentle. But he could be patient, when he had a mind for it. Patient when lying in wait for prey. Patient when teaching, his firm hands guiding Celebrimbor to skin a rabbit or set a trap. 

Patient when planning an assault, or scheming to take over a city. Celebrimbor knows well that the hands which taught him to hunt were bloody in more than one way.

It was late spring, when he and Celegorm went hunting, and the woods were alive with the sound of skittering things and creatures. It was difficult even to move without startling a fat pigeon or a family of mice. Now, it’s eerily quiet. Most of the old growth trees are gone, leaving behind stumps covered in moss and ivy. Young beeches and pines have started to grow between them, reaching skyward while shrubs colonise the underlayer, but if the woodland has animal inhabitants, they’re quiet, and Celebrimbor can see no sign of deer or foxes. 

He tells himself it’s just the rain, that creatures are hunkering down out of the downpour. He would gladly do the same: hunting in the rain is miserable work. He wanders further and later than he expected through the quiet of the woods, before he eventually finds a couple of pheasants hiding in the gorse beyond the woodland. He scales back up the hill with them as the rain eases off to a trickle and the last of Arien’s light gleams through the thinning clouds. 

The land below him is devastated. 

When Celebrimbor was here last, he remembers the rolling hills beneath them, the carefully tended and orderly vineyards and farms of Thargelion, the silver rivers that crossed the landscape to converge on the Gelion as she made her stately way down to the sea. 

Now, the Gelion rushes like a sea herself. She burst her banks long ago and shows no sign of subsiding, pulling the landscape with her in a rush down to the sea. The rest of the landscape is just as devastated, farms and vineyards swallowed up in a churn of mud, chunks of land thrown up and on their side, earth torn asunder. Celebrimbor has to stop for a moment just to stare. He had seen some of the devastation during the war, but from the ground, it was hard to see the full scale of it. Seeing it in full, Celebrimbor feels like the landscape itself: torn open, churned up. Lit by an impassive grey light. 

He stays there for longer than he should. When he turns to go back to camp, his bones jolt as if from sleep.

He's the last one back. Taerfinios and Heledholf have already set up the tents, Eluduinen has brought in water from a stream, and there’s a thin little fire going under a pot. Ribinvir, sitting by the fire, wordlessly holds out a hand for one of the pheasants, and they sit down to pluck and gut them. 

Then, because they are elves, they sing. 

It’s Damlann who takes up the refrain first. It’s a Sindar song about walking through the woods to meet one’s beloved, but they all know it. Some of them spin harmonies, or argue over verses. Celebrimbor is reluctant to join at first, still shaken and strangely blank from the landscape. But he is an elf, and there is no sorrow too deep for song, and even if his heart is not in it he can mouth along with the words. 

Celebrimbor finishes preparing his bird and leaves it to Ribinvir, the superior cook, to deal with. The song comes to an end, and Damlann starts on another. When that one ends, Eluduinen starts a Teleri sailing song that Celebrimbor doesn’t know, but quickly picks up the call and response. 

By the time the pheasants are cooked and they’re ladling out stew to go with their waybread, they’ve sung a dozen songs and the last gleams of Arien’s light are fading from the sky. With the cloud cover, the night is incredibly dark, and it hides the view of the churned-up landscape. 

Celebrimbor crawls into his tent, and is grateful for it. 

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Chapter End Notes

Title from Psalm 84:3