and the waters prevailed by StormsBreadth  

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and though the mountains shake at the tempest

A character experiences a trauma reaction in this chapter. Details in endnotes. 

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Himring itself is surprisingly intact. 

They see the keep from a distance, looming from the top of the hill, still recognisable despite the upheaval all around. As they approach, it becomes clearer that the keep isn’t entirely unscathed. The roof is cracked open, and the walls to one side have become tumbledown. Wind, water and time have all taken their toll on the once-proud structures, grinding down the stones that once stood firm against the north. Sparrows nest in the broken crannies and crows caw out an unfriendly welcome. 

Still, the land is firm and high, and while rocks have been cast down and the land reshaped around it, Ribinvir declares that it could likely be rebuilt. Celebrimbor tries to imagine it. Falathrim stylings on top of Maedhros’s Noldor utilitarianism, the starry banners of Gil-Galad hanging from the walls. The vision makes his stomach clench.

The keep has been thoroughly plundered already, but they comb it over again just in case. Any textiles or papers left behind have become exposed to the elements and rotted away, and any valuables have been carted off. They find dented tin cups and broken tools and weapons. Losselloth finds a few scattered pewter beads trodden into the mud. She wipes them off on the hem of the tunic and wordlessly hands a couple over to Celebrimbor. 

They’re round, made by casting, decorated with bold lines in a style that suggests they’re Mannish, rather than Noldorin in origin. Celebrimbor takes them anyway, rolling them against his palm. There’s still some grit on them that Losselloth didn’t catch, but the shape is pleasant. Celebrimbor eventually tucks them in a pocket, intending to tie them to a cord later.

They sleep in a corner of the keep where the roof still provides some shelter from the rain. Celebrimbor is tired enough that he actually sleeps through the night, back huddled against the stone walls. He’s directly below the place where he used to sleep when he came to visit. The bed is long gone, as is the floor. As are most of the people he used to come to see. 

Across the courtyard, Losselloth’s open eyes gleam, reflecting starlight and the memory of the trees. 

In the morning  they descend, heading west. Towards Himlad by the Pass of Aglon, though no-one has said this out loud. Celebrimbor, for his part, is mostly trying not to think about it. The land here is soggy, getting wetter as they go down, and the broken mountains make it difficult to traverse. The ground itself has opened up in places, leaving deep chasms. Most are filled with streams. Some run deep and fast, while others are nothing more than a trickle. Eluduinen checks the water in all of them, and her frown deepens as the day wears on.

Celebrimbor expected to feel something as he travels closer to the Pass of Aglon, to the keep where he spent the first 400 or so years of his adulthood. Instead, it’s as if his feelings slowly fade away with every step they take, resembling nothing so much as the flat grey of the endless cloudy skies. 

Ribinvir keeps giving him worried looks. Celebrimbor offers him what he hopes is a reassuring smile. It only makes him frown harder. 

They reach the old keep the evening after leaving Himring. The two keeps aren’t actually all that far apart – it was less than a day’s ride, when Celebrimbor lived here. But the ways were maintained then, and there was a direct path. Now, on foot, they have to ford the streams and climb over the ridges where the mountains have fallen down, every step rendered more difficult by the relentless wind and rain. 

The pass itself has been split in two, a river opened up where the road used to run. The fortifications have crumbled on either side, which does at least provide a crossing-place where the stones are piled in the water.

The keep is in worse state than Himring. The fortifications were built on a ledge above the pass itself, from which the scouts could keep an eye on the great gates, and beyond into Ard-Halen. Now, a landslide has cracked the building in half, and chunks of wall mingle with fallen rocks in a tumble that falls all the way to the river’s edge. 

‘Is it safe?’ Losselloth asks, looking at the pile. 

Heledholf tests some of the rocks. They’re large, heavy, and move very little in response. She nods. ‘Safe enough to climb, if we’re careful.’

Eluduinen elects to stay by the river, and Damlann remains with her. The rest of them climb. Celebrimbor focusses on the movement of his limbs: hand over hand, foot over foot. 

His last memory of this place is the view from horseback as they fled. The castle was lit up orange, both from the blaze of the setting sun, and from the conflagration of the forest beneath. Curufin had doused the trees with pitch and set them alight to buy the fleeing defenders time, delayed the orcs who smashed down the gates and swarmed over the hills. 

They had to leave the better part of their wealth behind, the tapestries and tools, fine furnishings and casks of wine. They salvaged most of their jewels, a good store of weapons, their horses. Curufin had begun preparing the moment that he caught wind of movement from the north. They kept their jewellery in their ears and their swords on their belts. Celebrimbor fled wearing earrings made by Fëanor himself. 

Curufin, he knew, had been wearing Celebrimbor’s first necklace around his neck, a child’s wonky first attempt alongside the finest craft of the Noldor. 

Both have been lost since, of course. Celebrimbor didn’t know whether Curufin was still wearing it when he died: he didn’t claim his father’s body. His own earrings were left in Nargothrond, when Celebrimbor fled that place as well. He stopped wearing his old jewellery after Finrod’s death. 

Their less portable wealth has long since been destroyed or plundered. The group looks around the keep anyway, making their notes. There are no signs of its original inhabitants. They find some old, charred bones and broken cooking implements in a rubbish heap, traces of the orcs who took the place over after the Sons of Fëanor were forced to abandon the north. 

Celebrimbor wanders around as the rest of the group take their observations. He expects to feel something as he walks around. Some sort of sadness, or connection, or a sense of history. But there are no ghosts here. Celebrimbor’s father has been dead for nigh on a century, and the keep is just a place. An old, abandoned place, ransacked and empty. 

He still finds himself in the smithy. 

They were in an outbuilding, attached to the outer walls of the keep, and they’re still relatively intact. The forges, the benches, even the tool racks are still in the same place, just hanging askew. Celebrimbor runs his hands over them, feeling the stone under his hands. When he lived here, there was an annoying gap at the back of one of the benches down which tools had an annoying tendency to fall. Because the benches couldn’t be moved, the only way to retrieve anything was to lie on the bench and wriggle your arm down the gap. He wonders… 

It’s not hard for Celebrimbor to reach down behind the bench now. He stretches his fingers, and they brush something smooth. With a lot of careful finagling, he’s able to pull the object out. 

A pair of pliers. Fine ones, for detail work, like jewellery-making or filigree embellishments. He reaches down again, still hunting, pulling up everything his fingers will reach between the bench and the wall. He scrabbles at the shapes buried in dust and grime. He finds a file, another pair of pliers, a few bent pieces of metal that might have been the start of a ring, or a buckle, or some other small object. 

The file was definitely his father’s. The handle is marked with his emblem, the cupped hand beneath the star of Fëanor. The pliers he is less sure about, but he pockets them anyway, along with the pieces of metal. 

The ground shakes, and Celebrimbor is out of the forge and in the courtyard before any conscious thought tells him to move his legs. His heart is racing in his chest, every nerve activated and screaming danger. He looks around wildly, searching for a way out, out, as far away as possible. Buildings aren’t safe, but neither is open country – but there, he spots woodland. They can take shelter there. 

‘Celebrimbor?’ someone is saying.

‘It’s not safe, we have to get out,’ he says. The tremors haven’t stopped, and no-one is responding with nearly enough urgency.

The elf in front of him looks around her. 

‘Did you find something? Or is it the tremors, because Heledholf thinks –‘

Her words are passing through Celebrimbor like water. He knows that the name Heledholf is familiar, but in the moment he can’t process what it means. 

‘Doesn’t matter, if we stay here we will be killed. Don’t grab anything, just go.’

Celebrimbor turns to follow his own advice, but there’s an arm around his waist and he would simply hit them and get free but he recognises the face, and it gives him a moment’s pause. 

‘Tyelpë,’ the familiar voice says. ‘Tyelpë, we’re not under attack.’ 

Celebrimbor feels sick and on edge, all of his muscles tight with tension and screaming that he needs to move. But the arm around him is firm and his mind is slowly catching up with his body, regaining the ability to process the world beyond the immediate haze of terror. 

The person holding him keeps speaking: ‘We’re in the ruins of the Keep at the Pass of Aglon, it’s the second year of the Second Age of Arda. This isn’t Nargothrond, the dragons are all slain.’ 

Celebrimbor draws a shuddering breath, than another. Ribinvir is the person holding him, he knows. Ribinvir, who experienced the crumbling stones and shaking corridors of Nargothrond, the screams of the noncombatants as they were kidnapped or put to the sword. Ribinvir, who would surely recognise the signs if they were under attack again. 

He takes another breath, and another, trying to focus on the world around them. Another elf approaches, and Celebrimbor dimly registers that it’s Heledholf, another friend on their journey. Not from Nargothrond, but she was at Gondolin. She will have known horrors of her own. 

‘Celebrimbor, can you hear me?’ she asks, surprisingly gentle. ‘Can you follow what I’m saying?’

He nods, suddenly unsure of his capacity to speak. His limbs are tense, taut with the need to run, but he knows that he trusts these people and they’re telling him to stay. The conflicting needs are tearing him apart, making his breathing short and sharp. His face feels hot, tingling. 

Heledholf is still speaking. ‘Good, alright, I need you to tell me about this object.’ 

Something is shoved into his hands. It’s leather, wrapped around metal, perhaps eight inches long and rounded. The leather under his fingers feels well cared-for, with a stamped design of some kind. Celebrimbor looks down to see Heledholf’s water canteen. It feels reassuringly solid in his hands.

‘Celebrimbor?’ she prompts again. 

‘It’s made of tinplate,’ he says automatically. ‘To protect it from corrosion, and the leather case is to protect it from dents. The metal plate was hammered into two rounded shells and joined with tin solder.’ It’s poorly done, actually: there’s slightly too much solder and it creates a visible bump. Celebrimbor frowns at it. 

‘And the leather?’

Celebrimbor takes a slow breath. Some part of him registers that Heledholf is trying to calm him down, and he resents being treated like a panicking child – but it is working. The feel of the leather under his hands is pulling him out of that wild and frightened place, and describing the craft gives him something to focus on. 

The leather is less satisfying to him than the metalwork: it isn’t Celebrimbor’s craft, and he knows only a little about the process of tanning and conditioning a hide. He turns it over, feeling the water inside it slosh around. ‘The design was made with brass stamps,’ he says eventually. ‘It’s dark leather, made to protect the canteen from dents and make it easy to carry. The stitches are neat. There’s a point where one of the straps has been repaired, but it’s only noticeable if you’re inspecting it.’

‘Good. Thank you.’ 

Celebrimbor bristles at her thanks. It feels patronising. But then, he did just shout at them all to flee from nothing scarier than a tremor in the earth. He keeps his head down and tries to concentrate on breathing. There’s still a leftover urge to run, and he tightens his grip on the canteen, willing it to go away. A minute later, he hands the canteen back to Heledholf.

‘How are you?’ she asks. 

‘Better,’ Celebrimbor says. Now that he’s back in the present, his limbs feel strangely loose, and there’s a hot flush of embarrassment rising in his throat, his cheeks, the back of his head. He takes a breath and swallows his pride, sitting inelegantly down on the ground. ‘I’m sorry.

‘None of that,’ Heledholf says briskly. Then, after a moment, her gaze softens. ‘I have nightmares about the Gates of Summer.’

‘I couldn’t sleep under stone for a long time after we made it to Balar,’ Ribinvir adds. ‘It hits us differently.’ 

Celebrimbor nods. Objectively, he knows this is true. But it still feels like a failing, to be so caught out – and with thoughts of Nargothrond, too, rather than the equally ravaged keep they’re currently sitting in. He focusses on the feel of the stone beneath his hands and trying to keep his breathing at a normal speed. His face feels strangely tingly, his limbs simultaneously charged and unable to bear their own weight. 

Ribinvir sits next to him, close enough to touch. The warmth of his body is grounding, and after a moment Celebrimbor leans against him. The tremors seem to have stopped, and the rain is starting up again, but for now it’s light enough that it just feels cool on Celebrimbor’s face. 

‘Are you all alright?’ 

The question comes from the broken entrance to the keep, as Eluduinen’s head pops into view. 

‘We’re fine,’ Heldholf replies. ‘Just taking a moment after the tremors. I think we’re basically done here?’ She looks around at the group, who are nodding and making sounds of agreement. ‘Celebrimbor?’ 

‘Yes,’ he manages to say, and gets up. It’s only once he’s started moving that he realises he left the file in the smithy.

Objectively, he should probably leave it behind. It’s heavy, and he has no need for a file at the moment. No need for a file when he gets back, either: he has plenty already. But it’s a long time since he’s seen his father’s maker’s mark. 

He makes a split second decision, one he himself doesn’t fully understand, and turns back. ‘One second,’ he says, and takes off running. 

It’s only once he’s in the smithy again, picking up the file, that he realises he’s been followed. Ribinvir stands at the doorway, looking around the room. 

‘I don’t need supervision,’ Celebrimbor snaps. Ribinvir folds his arms. 

‘This isn’t supervision. I thought you might want company. You grew up here, didn’t you?’ 

Celebrimbor sighs, putting the file in his bag. ‘I think you’d say I grew up by Lake Mithrim. I was an adolescent when we landed at Losgar and an adult by the time we came to Himlad. Not that you’d know it from the way my father acted.’

Ribinvir nods thoughtfully. Celebrimbor belatedly remembers that Ribinvir had been in Nargothrond when Curufin and Celegorm stole it from under Finrod’s feet. Celebrimbor had never asked him, or anyone, what they made of the whole affair. Not while Celegorm and Curufin were ruling behind Orodreth’s nominal throne. Not after, when Orodreth bid them leave. He hadn’t wanted to know. Still doesn’t. 

‘It sounds like a challenging place to live,’ Ribinvir says, mildly.

‘Yes,’ Celebrimbor agrees. He takes one last look around the forge. ‘But wasn’t everywhere, in the end?’

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Chapter End Notes

Celebrimbor is triggered and experiences a state of confusion relating to his trauma over the sack of Nargothrond. We experience this from his PoV. He experiences some shame over this, but other characters are supportive. 

Chapter title from Psalm 46:3