Strangers in a Strange Land by starshadeemily  

When Nolofinwë walked out of the Halls of Mandos, he lifted the wide collar of the dreadfully plain standard-issue shift given to all those who return, and looking down at his chest saw that he was unblemished. No discoloration, no scars where the boot had crushed him, nay, rather his ribcage, complete and unbroken, rose and fell with his even, regular, healthy breath. It was strange to breathe again, strange and wonderful and miraculous, and he laughed, and rejoiced to hear his own voice—after years uncounted of longing for a body again. But Nolofinwë drew up the sleeves of the robe and saw his arms, not tanned, but pale, not crossed with the ropy scars of war-wounds, but smooth, as a child’s even, excepting the dark hair, and he felt somehow . . . somehow bereft, bereft of something he could not quite name, and did not yet permit himself to name, for it was only by un-naming his discontent that he was judged worthy of standing in the sunlight once more.

To live in a body once more is to be clothed after a long period of nakedness, and a cold nakedness at that. Not that Nolofinwë had hated cold in life, nay he had preferred it, but the frigidity of death is not like the cold of a harsh winter, but a crueller cold, that he had at first resented, and he had resented that he resented it, for he had chosen to die and brought this on himself, had he not? He had known he would not survive a duel with the Dark Foe. But though Nolofinwë had chosen to leave his life, he had not chosen death. He had died because there was naught else he could do, and nowhither else he could go, and no other exit from whence to escape his grief. He had not died because he wanted to lie in prison, naked and alone, for longer than he had been alive. The cold of Mandos did not reward him, he had thought at first. It was not like the cold of the Helcaraxë, his baptism into survival and proof of his resilience, it was not like the cold and foggy land of Hithlum where he had made his home and proven himself hardy, it was not like the cold of the mountain streams where he had bathed, that made his skin numb but his heart thrum with a thrill of vitality. No, Mandos’ chill was numbing—but what did it avail him? What did he prove through his endurance of it?

For long it seemed, nothing, save that by his suffering he paid for his rebellion, and so Mandos’ prophecy was fulfilled, that the Exiles’ houseless souls would long lie in jail. But no chains needed Mandos to punish them, nor rack, nor rods, but the house of the dead itself was penalty enough. 

In time he learned how the coldness could be of any benefit him, for it made him yearn again for life, his natural state, but this too was bitter to yearn for what he could not have. After long years of reliving his death, he wearied of his nakedness, and would fain return, for only thereby could he hope to have happiness again.

But it is not enough to wish for life, nay, for according to the laws of Mandos the re-embodied elf must release all grudges and griefs he held aforetime.

How is this accomplished? To become benevolent, one must first imagine oneself benevolent, Namo instructed him. But all Nolofinwë could imagine was those final hours of his life: the smoke and the reek and the fires devouring yet the charred dead littered o’er the gasping plain. The foul, hot wind that stung his watering eyes. The audacious report of his fists smiting the ghastly brazen doors, and the terrible thunder of his craven foe’s reticent approach from his misshapen throne; the nigrous shadow of Morgoth towering over him, as menacing as the evil tripartite peaks behind them, darker than darkness and fouler than foul. The darting red flames from hammer-rent pits, and Ringil’s flashing, glittering azure light; the crunch of broken black mail and the cleaving of fearsome flesh and the anguish of a wounded god; the pain in his own long legs from leaping, the splintering of his shield. The stricken stones slipping treacherously beneath stumbling feet, and the mountain-heavy foot crushing his every rib—expelling his very breath as the shattered bones punctured his lungs and his own blood drowned him. And that last desperate, breathless stroke with Ringil and the black blood that burned like acid as it filled the desolate pit where he lay dying. These images paraded through his thought in a dolorous, doleful carousel, sometimes sequentially and sometimes all at once, but he had naught to distract him from this nightmare reverie, no food to sup, no converse to hold, no horse to ride nor partners to spar, nor lovers to love, no, for being without a body he had none of those occupations that might take a man sick with leisure away from his cares. Nay, all of Nolofinwë’s bloodless existence was care.

Namo would come to him where he languished and tell him to create dreams of reconciling with Fëanaro. He never permitted him to speak to Fëanaro, however, and Nolofinwë struggled to reconcile with one who existed only in memory. It was, he was certain, the most difficult, humiliating, and painful thing he had ever undertaken, and for long he resisted it. To excise his resentment would be as destructive as removing his limbs: it had become a part of him, and their rivalry had made him the man that he was. If he did not hate Fëanaro as much as he loved him, who would he be? He would not be Nolofinwë. He would not be Fingolfin, whose very name was an affront to his brother. He had been, from birth, positioned in opposition to him, born on the condition that Fëanaro’s mother remain deceased, born to a woman Fëanaro could have never come to love. On his account had Fëanaro lost his first ataressë, and to him had been given the prefix that Fëanaro so coveted. And it was Fingolfin that had so angered Fëanaro as to steal the ships, Fingolfin who relinquished not his kingship, who had knowingly inspired his own betrayal, Fingolfin who in his pride and hatred crossed regions impassible to reach Fëanaro. It was in pursuit of the Spirit of Fire that he had made himself the man that he was, and now he was being made to unmake himself, or else remain forever in the solitary dark.

And so perforce under such duress he began. He created visions of himself shaking Fëanaro’s hand as they had done before the throne of Manwë, but sincerely this time, with no double-meanings and no politics masking the dubious honesty of their words, and he repeated this over and over again, over and over and over and over until it became true.

When they finally met once more before the throne of Mandos, and he looked into those gray eyes, bright as they had ever been in life though the treelight was now departed from them forever, Nolofinwë did not regret that he had delayed his reembodiment until Fëanaro should be permitted to return to Arda. Manwë had come to him aforetime and offered him a body once again after centuries of punitive imprisonment (for being both a primary leader in the Exile and a suicide, Nolofinwë received a long sentence as punishment for his crimes,) followed by those afore-detailed years uncounted of gradual, protracted, but haply fruitful “correction,” and yet Nolofinwë had steadfastly refused this offer, for what did this generosity signify other than that Fëanaro had surpassed him once again? Fëanaro, marred and fallen, who must pay unprecedented penance for his blasphemy, was accounted as having committed a greater sin, for he had brought his whole people down with him into darkness and hateful rebellion. Though it clung to him threadbare and ragged, the last vestigial scraps of Nolofinwë’s storied pride would not permit him to accept that Fëanaro was in any way being credited for his own rebellion—nay, nay, his fall was his own and no other’s. If he should delay his return, it seemed to him, then he would finally, after a race he had run for his whole life and now his whole death, catch up to Fëanaro. This was the one singular act of pride Namo permitted of Nolofinwë, for it could possibly be read by the benevolent eye as the compassion of a brother who wished to share his kinsman’s sentence, and because, naturally, Namo would never deny an elf the opportunity to attribute more fault to himself.

The long-awaited reunion was brief and laconic, and when their children, but not their wives, met them at the dark doors of the dread halls, the sons of Finwë parted ways. They said little, for there was little to say. What is there to discuss with one who has seen and done nothing for thousands of years? What use to dredge up memories they were supposed to have made peace with? What could they say, who had ever spoken to one another in barbs and veiled insults, what could they possibly say if there was nothing to insult? And so they parted ways, and by differing courses made their way back to Tirion.

❖❖❖

His homecoming brought Nolofinwë no joy. He stood aneath the white tree Galathilion, unchanged though all the world had been altered, and he cast his gaze up to the Mindon and its blazing light, perfect as it had ever been, and the memories came back to him of a childhood playing in this very square paved with white unblemished marble. He stood in the shoes of a man twice dead, for Nolofinwë Aracano, Prince of Tirion, had perished on the Ice, and Fingolfin, High King of the Noldor, had been slain, but he, whatever new creature he was now, stood where Nolofinwë First had stood, and saw what Nolofinwë First had seen, and his white slippers glittered with the dust of diamonds, and he felt for the first time terribly, terribly small.

Nolofinwë followed his children as if he himself was the child, followed them down the side street beneath the grandiflora magnolias he had once planted, followed them to the golden gate of the mansion where he had dwelt, followed them along the crushed quartz pathway past the hydrangeas and dogwood trees, followed them around the great silver fountain and up to the stately stairs. The porch of the house was upheld with caryatids whose eyes were precious stones, whose robes were the same blue and silver polychrome as always, and in the shadow of their beauty stood magnificent doors, engraven with many patterns and blazoned with multitudinous stars of gold. The great hinges opened silently with a touch from Findecano, and they entered the opulent atrium, all frescoed walls and mosaic floors and crystal chandeliers and high, high windows that let in the westering Sun to bathe the ancient house in lavish gold. 

Lavish was his children’s affection for him, and they would keep him with them for the evening for supper and fellowship, but Nolofinwë was weary from the long journey made in a body ill-used to moving at all, and his mind, equally ill-used to converse and the company of others, grew faint, and he announced that he would retire for the evening. The memory of the house returned to him with every halting step, and he found his rooms with little issue. 

The bedchamber was for the most part how he had left it. Anairë’s things were all gone, but the bed was still perfectly made and its quilts, which she his wife had stitched, were the same spiral patchwork of blue and gold, and its curtains the same star-spangled sapphire. The walls were still wall-papered with velvet, and the floor richly-carpeted with intricate rugs of diverse colors, the furniture still as it was, with the dark finish unchipped. In the adjacent dressing room remained all the clothes he had left behind, perfect and intact, touched by neither moths nor rot nor the afflictions of wear and decay that he had become accustomed to in Beleriand. It felt like he had stepped into a dream, an artificial sort of state where nothing changes, and there is neither time nor space but only memory. He handled the old garments he had left behind, most of which were either ugly things he had little loved, casual summer clothes, or richly-beaded robes only suitable for balls and banquets: all attire unsuitable for a journey into dark and danger and Doom. Each perfect sleeve he touched elicited a memory. A day in the garden. A child on his knee. Teatime shared with his wife. A ball where he danced with her. A half-brother’s hand and darkness over the land and screams in the night. Staggering back against the wall from the force of the sudden remembrance, he let the ornate cloth-of-gold slip from clumsy fingers and he gasped for air, struggling to remember how to control his lungs. His body was still like a puppet to him, each step like the movement of a marionette, and though his spirit was clothed in it, he did not yet have the mastery of it. Like a toddler he stumbled thence to the bed and furled himself in the uterine embrace of the heavy quilts, but no sleep came to him, nor did slumber soothe his troubled mind, but in a state of dumb confusion he lay awake until the morrow came. He was unable to remember anything from the past few days, but he slipped back into the ocean stream of flotsam visions in which he had daily floundered and drowned for ages and ages: fire and smoke and black burning blood.

The Sun spurred him to rise, reaching her red-carnation fingertips through windows that faced the once-dark East, and stroked his furrowed brow, and smoothed his tousled hair with the rubescent rays of morning. Yea, verily Arien rose over the margins of the world and so he too must rise and pick up the strings of his articulated joints one by one to stand, to step, to step again, to go to the washbasin, filled, it seemed, in anticipation of his return, and rinse a face stiff and sore from a weariness he could not cure.

It was thereafter time for attiring, and out of what remained to him, he found a suitable tunic, green taffeta with blue and white paisley, and black hose that had always been a bit too tight for him, and beaded shoes. His jewelry box was well-nigh empty, for he had taken his most beloved treasures into exile, but there remained to him a golden torc, although it was not the favorite one he had worn aforetime as he had hearkened to the fell words of the Doomsman, who still held in dreadful death the father who had bestowed his second son with a mighty neckpiece as a signifier of his high estate. But nay, this other torc was thinner and somewhat easier to get around his neck, and though such a collar is hardly comfortable to wear nor is it kind upon the throat of the one who wears it, he felt somewhat more like himself. And yet, he was not wholly himself, for the pierced holes in his ears and nose had been closed, nay it was as if they had never existed, and the skin was marked by no indent nor scar, and he could not adorn himself at all with most of the remaining jewels in the box except a few unremarkable rings. What he could still make full use of was his old cosmetics, and as he lined his eyes in black he began to recognize the man looking back at him in the mirror.

But what small pleasure and pride he took in his attiring was his alone and was shared by no others, for when he admitted early-rising Aracano into his rooms, his son beheld his calf-length dagged hems, the low neck that revealed Nolofinwë’s clavicles, the torc and the heavy eyeliner, and he laughed gayly.

“Father, thou art arrayed in the antique manner of old! Such fashions have not been seen in Valinor since the years before my own return to the world of the living. Verily thy aspect is like one of the ancient kings of old.”

A shadow flickered over his merry face as soon as the jest winged carelessly from his smiling lips, for he recognized that the man before him was, in sooth, one of the ancient kings of old, come out of the pages of history and yet thrust into his own past. And Nolofinwë then recognized what he had not marked before, that his son was attired in strange (as it seemed to him) raiment: a voluminous-sleeved garment that was cinched in tight at the waist and had a high collar and a short hem that scarcely covered his loins.

“How many years, then, have passed since thy return?” Nolofinwë ventured quietly, dreading now to know the answer.

“Ah, I have not kept close tally, but more than six thousand years by the count of Anar have elapsed since my reembodiment, I ween.”

Nolofinwë nodded, but a freezing dread came over him like a surge of ice water into his lungs. By Varda’s lights, my son is older than me, he wondered. His heart beat faster and a darkness came over his eyes, but Aracano gave his father no time to digest this new realization, for he hastily took him by the hand for to introduce him to the wife and young child Nolofinwë had not yet met, nor known existed.

The little girl’s name was Alassiel and she looked at Nolofinwë with dumb wonder as if he had stepped out of an illustration in a history book, verily as if she had seen old Tata himself walk into the parlor where she played with her dolls on the floor, but when she came to understand that Nolofinwë was her grandfather, just as her mother’s father was her grandfather, she laughed with delight and hugged his knees. The mother, Helenis, apologized for the child’s excess and courteously introduced herself before kindly ushering everyone into the dining room, where Findecano, Turucano, and Irissë met them for a breakfast of ham biscuits, eggs, and grits accompanied by milk to drink. An energetic lady of the house with a sunny disposition and an inexhaustible devotion to the holy practice of hospitality, Helenis was very concerned with ensuring that Nolofinwë was comfortable, and asked him again and again if the food was to his liking, if he had enough to drink, if there was anything else she could do for him, and it irked him horribly, for though she meant well, her concern reduced him, a man and a king, to the level of a child, helpless and dependent on grown-ups for sustenance, and moreover she spoke to him as if he was a guest, yea verily as he were a guest in his own ancient house. And yet it was not his house. It was Aracano’s house that he shared with Irissë, Aracano’s house where he and his wife raised their daughter, Aracano’s house where few of the original servants remained. Unmanned and alienated, he chewed his biscuit in silence as the servingwoman topped off his milk. He remembered that he didn’t like milk.

The day passed in a blur of conversation as his children told him tales of everything that had transpired in his absence: of Turgon’s new city, of Aredhel’s new beau, of Fingon’s recent adventures, and naturally of all world events and world wars that occurred during the ages of their respective imprisonment. Nolofinwë had seen them all in Mandos; when each child had perished they had found him first, and their spirits had wept in their father’s arms in a bittersweet reunion. But as they had done in life, yet again they drifted away in death, on account of the solitary nature of the Halls, where seldom do the spirits of the dead commune, and in the end they were alone. First Aracano, then Irissë, then Turucano, then Findecano returned to life. He could have searched for tidings of them, as did many of the dead for their living kin, but he did not. He could have, and he believed he should have and sorely he regretted it, but he had not. And so it was now that he held converse with them for the first time in many centuries.

While Nolofinwë’s freshly-embodied and sleep-deprived mind was yet too porous to retain the exact specifics of all of this novel knowledge, even like snow the realization settled and dissolved into him that the world had been remade, and he had been remade, and there was no going back.

❖❖❖

The last of the many meetings of the day was with Arafinwë, who invited his returned brothers to sup with him in the King’s palace. The meeting with his blood-brother was happy, and Arafinwë kissed Nolofinwë’s cheeks and clapped his back in a warm welcome. They sat in the family dining room, not the great hall, but at the very table where they had all been wont to dine privately with Finwë, but Arafinwë, the youngest son who was as golden as his mother’s kin, now assumed their father’s golden seat, and at his left was Eärwen, and at her left Anairë. The sisters Findis and Lalwendë were not present, nor was Nerdanel, who dwelt now with Indis, who had declined to meet her eldest son. 

Meeting Anairë’s sky-blue eyes where she sat across from him, Nolofinwë saw therein the filiform trace of their marriage bond, but he did not see his wife. She had ceased to be his wife when he had parted from her, leaving her on the beaches of Alqualondë, shivering in the dark with the blood of her dear friend’s fallen kinsmen staining the trailing, muddy hems of her white gown. He had spoken her cruelly in a final row that was the culmination of years of unlove betwixt them, and she had, in turn, proclaimed his parting to be happy. He had come to understand during his death how he had mistreated her during those final years with the spurning of her counsels and the demands he made upon her, even commanding her to yield her body to him, but he gave her no apologies, and she seemed to expect none, but she smiled at him uncomfortably, unsure of what to say to him at all.

But Anairë had less to say to Fëanaro and hardly looked at him, who was seated beside Nolofinwë and was arrayed in Curufin’s raiment, black and red and so wretchedly fashionable and fitted and high-collared, a reminder, though unintentional, that he would ever leave Nolofinwë behind.

Nolofinwë felt again that terrible sense of unbelonging, that he was in truth an island, and the others all peninsulas of the main, and naught could he do to build a bridge to them who watched him from afar, able to observe but unable to touch even the tip of a finger. And thus, the only course was to call out to those distant posts, and the only hope at a remedy was speech, and so in search of belonging he began the conversation.

“Arafinwë-brother,” Nolofinwë addressed him, “I regret the absence of our fair sisters, and I miss their company. Pray tell, when shall the Finwieli grace us once more?” And forsooth the absence of Lalwendë and Findis troubled him.

“Dwelleth Findis with our mother, and abideth Lalwendë upon Tol Eressëa, for there are the returned Exiles reserved to make their home. Those who dwell in Aman may sail thither, and soon enough may ye go to her. She was near to thine heart, and she shall rejoice to see thee, but she cannot herself journey hither, but only we to her.”

A spark of resentment fluttered in Nolofinwë’s heart, but he averted his inward gaze from it, and durst not to name it, for it was of the species that he had been made to forswear. 

“The promise of reunion with Lalwen gladdeneth mine heart,” Nolofinwë said, and though he felt Anairë’s eyes upon him, he could not look at her, for another memory arose, a precious artifact floating to the surface but that must needs be forsaken in the stream, for this memory recounted one of the many misdeeds that Mandos had read aloud to him at his judgement. How humiliating it had been, to stand naked before the god and hear the full tale of his wrongs, his rebellion, his disobedience, his hatred, his love. At least sweet Lalwen had not been made to endure such a thing, but he feared what evils she may have endured in the long centuries of war since his passing.

Fëanaro’s eyes were upon him, two blades of quicksilver that cut the dermis of Nolofinwë’s mind, uncovering some sanguine mangled something the others could not see. Fëanaro’s mastery over himself had always been great, but his sentiments had ever been made apparent on his face like so much heraldry, and now thusly-returned what control of his minute muscles was yet deficient, and therefore, willing not that Nolofinwë should perceive that he perceived, Fëanaro lowered his lashes and directed his gaze instead to the feast before them. Arafinwë had spared no expense on rare game for the return of his brothers, and the table was piled with delicacies, followed by desserts yet more extravagant. Fëanaro, ever a lover of meats and indifferent to sweets, ate more of the former and less of the latter. He was still learning how his body reacted to food, how much it would take to fill him, and which foods settled better in his digestive tract, and he found that his eyes had been bigger than his stomach. Careless, he chided himself. And yet I learn from this. My memory tells me mine appetite was once greater than this; mayhap it is stunted by the newness of this body, and shall wax to the erstwhile size thereof in time. I shall observe myself closely.

There was, forsooth, much to observe in the world of the living. It had changed so little in many ways, but the observant eye would note that it was wholly other than the world he had left behind. Arafinwë he studied, and Eärwen, and Anairë, the way the women’s hands brushed as they dipped their plates, the lack of eye-contact between the Teleri woman and her lord, Anairë’s aquamarine dress and the seaglass beads in her elaborately coiffured hair. Arafinwë was clad all in white and gold and crowned not with their father’s crown, taken down amid fire and death into dark Beleriand, but one wrought in the likeness of the high crown belonging to Ingwë, that king of kings. Between him and the women, Fëanaro could not help but feel that this was not a table of the Noldor, but a board of the other kindreds. It would have incensed him once upon a time to see their royal house so diluted, but he had changed, and to be wroth would serve him not, nor could he find it in him to be wroth, and yet he was . . . uneasy. Yea, ill at ease he was. 

But while Fëanaro silently analyzed the import of an un-Noldorin Noldoran, Arafinwë cheerfully spoke to Nolofinwë about nothing and naught, for there really is very little to discuss with someone who has seen and done naught, nor really been a person at all, for well-nigh one hundred centuries, and it is likewise rather rude and impolite to inquire a man regarding his experience with death and his time being deceased, no matter how curious one might be regarding what it is like to be departed, but were it not so, such an inquiry would be moreover vain, for those who are returned remember little of their long abiding save the overall unpleasantness thereof, and already the memory was slipping from Nolofinwë’s clouded mind. 

When they rose from the table at the close of the meal, Anairë signalled to Nolofinwë with the slightest nod of her chin, and he followed her without and silently they made their way to a small courtyard where stood a silver birdbath, and a marble bench in the shape of two clasped hands beneath a redbud tree; yea to this selfsame place had he led her in their youth and on that bench professed his love for her, and beneath the light of Telperion he had looked into her eyes that reflected the dim stars and known that he could not wish for a fairer betrothed. 

And so here they stood again, her lips painted the same dark-cherry red, the same strands of pink pearls heaped lavishly on her neck, and once again they were betrothed but not wedded, for marriage is accomplished by the body, and the body Nolofinwë now wore had not as yet known the flesh of a woman, and though he saw plainly their marriage bond made manifest in her eyes, they were yet sundered.

This sundering yawned cold and vacuous betwixt them when he kissed her hand in greeting and the fair lady shuddered. He stepped closer to her on his puppet legs, closer than he had intended, and the tips of their poulaine shoes touched. So close were they, that aforetime their minds would have brushed together as are wonted the minds of those closely joined in marriage, whose thought is like the warm and cool waters of northern and southern seas, which are distinct and yet flow into one another, but no longer was there any affinity betwixt them, and her mind was as remote to him as the sundered sunken lands of Endor. What effort might bear him across so wide a sea? If he reached out to her he would find her mind closed off to him, and to attempt osanwë would be an affront to her, like caressing the cheek of a stranger who might rightly balk at such a presumptuous touch. A stranger, yea that was the proper word for their condition, and strange indeed had they become to one another. But suchwise had she named him before even he marched from Tirion, before even the Darkening, and in her bower she had named him ambitious, and cruel, and she had despaired that their designs were no longer in accord.

Nolofinwë knew wherefore Anairë had arranged this meeting, but he said naught. He had ever been a smooth talker, gallant in his manners and proper in all his usages, winning the hearts of all the lords of the court, but here his words failed him. She looked at him timorously, Helluin above reflected in eyes the color of a cloudless vernal sky, and those blue irises shivered in reddened orbs. Did she fear one returned from the dead? Nay, for she had not looked at him with such affright during the meal, nay, but Nolofinwë saw her right hand clasped folded at her breast, and he saw that the wedding rings were gone from it, and he understood what it was she feared.

“Where dwellest thou, lady?” he began. “For in thy widowhood thou art departed from our house.” The word our stuck like a fish bone in his throat, sharp and suffocating like a falsehood, like a pretention, but false too would it be to call it otherwise.

“I dwell with Eärwen my friend. Abide we in Alqualondë among her kin for the warmer seasons, and winter we in Tirion, that Eärwen may join for a season her lord husband. I stay here in the King’s palace for the present time, but in three weeks we ladies shall depart hence and return to our house by the sea, for cometh the Spring swiftly, and much labor awaiteth me in our gardens.”

We ladies shall depart. There was no ambiguity there, nay there was only fact, and unmovable fact at that, and naught would sway Anairë from her plans. Never had she erstwhile suffered aught to delay her schedule, but she had conducted all her business, even her relationship with her lord, according to a perfectly planned timetable. Anairë would be going, and the return of Nolofinwë had no bearing on it.

Nolofinwë looked in her eyes still, gazed upon the windows that opened into a house closed off from him, a soul that had been freed of all tethers for ten thousand years only to find its gilded bonds returned unexpectedly, yea Nolofinwë peered into those crystal portals and saw what she was and what she was not. Anairë had suffered grief from the loss of her family: father, mother, husband, sons and daughter, and this grief pooled in her heart like a deep well whose bottom has never been reached, whose waters could never be wholly emptied even though her lost ones had returned for her, for though death may be repaired it can not be made to have never been. 

But Anairë had never known war. Nolofinwë would never be so callous as to say that Anairë was craven, nay in sooth she was brave, and her last stalwart words to him had been proud, audacious even coming from a woman, but Anairë was soft. She had not known the torment and travail of the Grinding Ice, nor the terror of fell beasts and foes on the field of battle, nor the bite of the sword nor the pain of the barbèd arrow; she had never known hunger nor thirst nor the proximity of black, grasping death; she had not known what it was to wage ceaseless war against the Foe and to live in anticipation of a prophesied destruction that had come all too soon. And importantly, Anairë had never known death. No matter how much they might have been affine as youths, Nolofinwë had ceased to be a creature of Valinor. He had become a creature of war. Even if she endeavored to do so, Anairë, who had never hungered for even a day, who had never suffered more injury than the prick of a sewing needle, could never again comprehend Nolofinwë’s heart. The chasm yawned betwixt them.

Anairë spoke.

“Nolofinwë Aracano, Finwion.” His full name she called him and paused a moment ere she continued. “It is the law that those who return from death must take up again the affairs of their previous life, and resume all ties of love and kinship they had cherished aforetime. It is said that those who are given life anew shall desire the company of their rightful spouse, and when they meet once more shall like to wed them as they did in the courtship of their youth.”

It was not phrased as a question, but Nolofinwë knew what she asked. He had been promised such a meeting as she described by the Doomsman, who before he had released him had verified that Nolofinwë was willing to be united with Anairë again, and though he had wronged her aforetime Nolofinwë had expected that he would live his second life as a married man. Though she might not forget those final years of unlove between them, he had thought she may in time forgive him, and come to love him again, for had they not vowed before Eru to love one another to the end of Arda? But it seemed to him that their oath had been made void, for in gazing upon her he did not wish for partnership with her, nay, for how could he, when they were more alien to one another than strangers? Like the chasm betwixt them, a pit yawned in Nolofinwë’s heart, the destruction and annihilation of a promise, the shipwreck splintered into oblivion of a future that he should have known could never be. An itch crawled at the back of his head, hot and stinging when he recalled what Manwë and Mandos had told unto him, but he turned his thought away from the sensation. A reformed elf knows no discontent.

“I will ask of thee naught that is in opposition to thy will, nor will I make myself to act against mine own. I release thee, Anairë Helimmirë. Ill it is that spouses should part thus, but the Marring is found not in Middle-earth alone but in the Undying Lands also, brought by those faithful who have journeyed hither from without. And though this hröa is of Aman, my fëa is of Beleriand.”

She sighed. “I am pleased our wills align in this—” her tongue hovered, about to spill out more honest confessions, but she restrained herself. “And I am pleased to see thee well and hale again.”

“And I am pleased to see thee well likewise.” 

❖❖❖

Little wellness Nolofinwë found when he lay in his bed. To have reunited with Anairë in matrimony would have necessitated that they lie together once more, here in this bed, and by the joining of their bodies be wedded anew. But only his dry hand sheathed his bare manhood, grown erect at the memory of the hours of love he had spent with her on this selfsame mattress, beneath the selfsame canopy, furled in the selfsame quilts.

He remembered the tears of joy in her eyes when he brought her to her first climax, and how soft her body had been around him. How warm. How tight. How her purple eyeshadow had run in rivulets dark down her flushed cheeks as she had cried his name, an image of pure maidenhood and nobility made lewd in his arms. The selfsame color had she worn today beneath her comely patrician brows.

He tugged his foreskin away from his swelling tip and a thin bead of fluid emerged as he visualized the swell of her breasts, but he quickly took his hand away. He would not waste his seed on a memory, not when his full vitality was yet to return to him. He turned to his pillow and tried for sleep, but there was little rest to be found, and his dreams were of dark chasms and smoking pits, and upon his spirit fell a shadow as pregnant with emptiness as the Void.

Chapter End Notes

Laws and Customs among the Eldar says that long stays in the Halls of Mandos are a punitive measure, and that committing suicide “is held as a fault” resulting in a longer stay. Yikes Jirt!!

Laws and customs also says this, which is batshit and horrifying to me: “Nonetheless, since marriage is also of the body and one body has perished, they must be married again, if they will. For they have returned, as it were, to that state in their former life when by the motions of their fëar they desired to be married. There will be no question of desiring this or not desiring it. [...] none of the Dead will be permitted by Mandos to be reborn, until and unless they desire to take up life again in continuity with their past.” so basically it is in the text that Mandos expects spouses to remarry as a condition for reembodiment, and that this is accomplished, as was their first marriage, by fucking again.

in Emily-world the Noldor believe that the semen contains a man’s vital essence, and to spill can weaken him, so he must be wise about when and wherefore he cums. 

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Arien could not dispel the shadow, which had now not so much as fallen upon Nolofinwë, but percolated the soil of his spirit like a black rain, and like the Unlight that had swallowed the bliss of Aman, this shadow ate the pleasure of food, and of drink, and of converse.

And how much converse arrested him!

The visitors arrived first as a trickle, kinsmen and then close friends fallen in the war though they spoke of it not. But the stream swelled to a flood of old neighbors, lords of the court, former retainers and knights and subjects, and soon dozens of youths who were fain to meet the man who had duelled Morgoth, and they gaped and gawked at him, and their eyes trembled with awe as if they conversed with a ghost, and they regarded him with all the fear due to a myth that has become suddenly and overnight manifest in the flesh, unlooked for by all.

Findecano seemed little bothered by this development, though he admitted it was irksome, for he, likewise an historical figure and re-embodied myth, had endured a similar onslaught of attention, which had in time abated when he had become naturalized to this new age of the world. As he said this a shadow flickered in his eyes: the spectre of a memory and the fleeting, fleeting trace of that feeling they knew better than to name.

“Wouldst thou deny them admittance, Father? I shall turn them away if it be thy will.”

But Nolofinwë shook his head, nay, nay, it was best that he become acquainted with the denizens of this new world.

But he found no fellowship among the Eldalië, and only alienation greeted him with glad handshakes and pearly smiles in that grand white wasteland of a parlor. 

They spoke of a man called Fingolfin. They spoke of a man they named the most proud and valiant of the elven kings of old, a man of whom none sang but all knew the full record of his deeds. They spoke of a man who was dead. 

For he truly was dead, was he not? The body that sat in the white armchair in a new-fangled striped haincelin had not a warrior’s bulk nor a warlord’s strength. No calluses of the sword padded his palms, neither did thick scars criss-cross these new unmuscled arms, nor had frostbite blunted his fingertips. No record of his storied feats could be found in this vessel that had never wielded blade nor hauberk donned, and Nolofinwë could not help but feel that when they named him hero they lied. For the body that housed Nolofinwë’s spirit was diminished. 

And so too it was with the spirit it housed. Valiant they named him, but such a title is no name given to a suckling babe, but rather an epithet earned by a man with his works, and were he valiant in sooth he would be afforded chance to prove it—but what deeds of valor were there to do in Valinor? What means such a title when it is a name only? It did little good, he thought, to praise the valor of a dead man to his ghost. This present Nolofinwë was not valiant. In Elder days Fingolfin King had been valiant, but Vinya Nolofinwë sat in the parlor like a woman, sipping white tea with honey while his dancer’s legs missed their former fitness.

In the end, Nolofinwë sent the crowd away, but now and again he would see young boys pass by the house and stand in the street, shamelessly peering up at the tall windows in hope of glimpsing the dead man that lived.

In the end, too, Turgon returned to his new Gondolin. In the end, too, Fingon returned to his own house and his old habits. In the end, too, Aredhel returned to spending her days with her lover. In the end, too, Anairë returned to Alqualondë.

In the end, Nolofinwë remained in the house with Aracano, and Helenis, and bonny little Alassiel, named for Aracano’s childhood nursemaid. In the end, Nolofinwë sat and watched the little girl play with the nanny while Aracano dealt with his business and Helenis entertained ladies in the drawing room. In the end, an eternal sitting room of stasis was his lot.

Daughter of Joy was named the bright, mirthful little girl with cheeks as red as poppies and beautiful eyes like a brown calf’s, and she was forsooth a source of merriment and joy for Nolofinwë, who came to love her dearly and who taught her rhymes and riddles newly-recalled from his own childhood, but a Noldo man’s true contentment comes not from laughter and innocent play but from doing. And nothing was there to do. No, nothing to do at all. 

His craft aforetime had been politics, and he had in ancient days before the fall developed his craft to a greater skill than any other of his generation, and by skillful designs and subtle work and the cleverness of his tongue he had aforetime accomplished all his ends and held all of Tirion under his sway. But Arafinwë’s court was not Nolofinwë’s court, and this future time was not his time, and it was not for him to meddle in affairs he had had no part in contriving. Nay, the workings of the court were the domain of those whose lives were of the present, not of one who, having stepped out of the pages of history, knew only the courtly usages and manners of the ancient world, and to whom even the most common current etiquette was like a foreign tongue. Even his firm handshakes were of the old style—quaint, the modern man Aracano seemed to find it, for he was a well-mannered politician himself, having inherited if not his father’s personality then his talents. Talents that now atrophied in the sire.

Sitting there, staring listlessly out the window with a porcelain cup of cold tea hooked on a heedless finger, Nolofinwë envied for the first time the Gift of Men: the blessing from Iluvatar that is bitter to those who receive it and a mystery to those who do not, a divine provision for which those who have lived for centuries uncounted begin to yearn as the years weigh heavy and heavier on sorrowful souls. Hador, vassal, comrade in arms, dear friend, he had perished ere he was too old to fight on the plain of battle and while his thewful limbs were yet hale and his back unbowed with age, and thereat he had been mercifully taken beyond the circles of the world according to the nature of his kindred. He had not been made to suffer an indefinite impotent retirement, a nothing-life of hearing tales of his own heroism while sitting inside with the women and babes beside a coddling fire for ever and ever and aye. He had fallen gloriously, cut down in defense of the Barad, spilling his red lifeblood on the castle walls for the cause of king and country. And he had remained for all time glorious, forevermore a name preserved in song and tale, and the true Hador, wherever Eru kept him, was surely at peace. A legend there was among his people, Hador had said, that those who perish in war shall be taken into the heavens where is a golden hall, and a place shall be made for them, and they shall drink heavily and laugh raucously and make merry with the other great warriors of the world, until Arda should reach its ending. This belief the Edain had largely abandoned when they came to dwell alongside the elves, and although Nolofinwë doubted that such a legend could be true, he hoped for Hador’s sake that he had gone to his soldier’s Paradise.

But there could be no resting in peace for the glorious among the elves, and Fingolfin’s repose in Paradise brought him only sorrow, for it had reduced him to a dotard. Would that he who had died a man had remained a man! Would that he could share in the blessing of his friend and be immortal not in his life but in his death! But nay there is no comfort for the elves to be found in all of Arda, who must endure until the bitterest end, whether they will it or no. Nolofinwë’s nothing-death had been more wretched than this nothing-life, but the relief of being clothed once more had given way to melancholy. For eternity stretched before him, on and on and on endlessly to an unrevealed end; and for the rest of that time, be it soon or be it for a hundred thousand years, he must abide in this place, both his cradle and his tomb, for Aman had been sundered from Arda forever and there could be no returning. A narrow land had Fëanaro once called this place, a narrow land that hemmed their proud people between the mountains and the sea. Too narrow had it been for each of the princes to claim his own realm, too narrow for empire and conquest. But Nolofinwë had tasted conquest, he had looked upon the wide lands of Middle-earth, had stood beneath that endless sky and dug his toes into the earth that stretched for leagues upon thousands and thousands of leagues into the uttermost east, he had felt the life and liberty of that land, and though his sword was stained with black blood he knew what it was to be free. And he knew now indeed that this holy land was narrow, a thin continent bordered on all sides by the void, inescapable by the Incarnates cloistered there. There would be no returning, not merely to the drowned continents, the mountains and fair trees beneath the sea gone forever, not to Cuivienen now erased from the altered earth, nay but there would be no removal at all from Aman again for all the life of Arda. And how could there be, why would there be, when all of the kindred of the Elves who had remained in the Outer Lands were all faded away, become phantoms invisible to the eyes of Men? This fenced horse-paddock was, the Valar said, mercy.

And as he pondered this, that itch that had begun in the back of his head spread to the front, and it flared behind his eyes and it grew, and it grew and it grew until he could ignore it no longer. And at last he dared to name it. And he called it resentment.

❖❖❖

His resentment became soon a heavy burden, and he carried it in secret like so much contraband, concealing it with the stealthy cloak of a placid smile—an expression of the lips that extends not to the eyes but passes well enough for those who observe not too closely. He looked to the other veterans of the returned dead to see if they were likewise clandestinely burdened, but to his disappointment he saw no trace of this terrible new thing, this melancholy, in his old friends. Nay but their eyes, barren now of treelight, were calm, and their voices were soft and smooth as unruffled waters. They disturbed nothing and no one, and showed no signs of being disturbed themselves, and the gentle smiles on their faces were not disguises, but true expressions of their hearts.

Nolofinwë turned his attention to Findecano, and saw that vestigial shadow behind his sky-blue eyes, the sadness of a valiant king defeated, but Findecano was so consumed in doing, in going hither and thither and consorting with his old friends, even the sons of Fëanaro, that there was never any opportunity to speak with him at length. Moreover, Nolofinwë was quite loath to bare his heart to his son. Yea, ‘twas Findecano that had urged him into exile, and Findecano that had stood at his right hand during the full length of his reign in Beleriand, but nonetheless Findecano was his child, as he had always been, and Nolofinwë would not burden his son with the sorrows and fears of the father, nor by example would he lead Findecano back into impiety through the utterance of a sentiment that defied the instruction they had both received; for in sooth this resentment was not the mark of a reformed elf, but was rather a retrograde dissolution back into the old rebellion of the grave. Nolofinwë would not sow discord among his house newly-reconstituted.

Nay, Nolofinwë would liever confide in one of his own peers who suffered as did he. And in all of Tirion there was but one man who would fit the bill.

❖❖❖

Fëanaro was to be found haply in the Tirion university library. Nolofinwë had tried his estate first, had walked up the long white stairs between towering fir trees to a great mansion surrounded by lifelike statues and magnificent hanging gardens, but the gaunt two-handed Maitimo at the door had informed him politely that his father was not home. Neither was Fëanaro in one of the vast main chambers of the library with their high, high painted ceilings and shelves upon shelves upon shelves of scrolls and codices, nor was he in the plush lounges with gilded doorframes and velvet settees relaxing beneath the shadow of richly bound tomes, but after much searching, Nolofinwë finally found Fëanaro tucked away in a far back room small and low-ceilinged. He was bent over a large, plain table completely covered by stacks of open volumes, which were in turn blanketed by loose pages scrawled all over in black by a hand that could not keep up with the rapid speed of the thoughts that directed it.

“Nolofinwë,” Fëanaro said without looking at him, but continued to take furious notes from the open book in front of him.

“Brother.” 

Fëanaro glanced up, but curiously he did not correct Nolofinwë with a reminder that they were only half-brothers.

“To what labors dost thou devote thyself?” Nolofinwë said.

“To catching up. Ten thousand years was I arrested, and ten thousand years of scholarship missed. What is heaped before me is but the minutest fraction of the knowledge that has been acquired, developed and revolutionized in mine absence, and I would familiarize myself with it as speedily as I may. I like not to be behind the times. Dost thou mark this,” he said, scarcely containing a sudden burst of excitement as he held up a book before him, “they have fully reconstructed the Primitive Eldarin tongue. Such a thing I could never accomplish, though I at one time attempted it, being limited by my familiarity only with the tongues spoken in Aman; but with knowledge of Sindarin and the other tongues of Middle-Earth, the loremasters have since recreated the language spoken by our first forefathers. Seest thou the magnitude of the import of this development! It is extraordinary! An accomplishment of the hightest order!”

Fëanaro’s excitement was inspiring but not contagious, and Nolofinwë, despite an attempt at a smile, remained sullen. Such a thing went not unmarked by the elder Finwion.

“But I perceive that thou art come hither not for wisdom nor for lore, but other is thy errand. Speak, Nolofinwë, and declare thy purpose, and keep me not in waiting.”

Nolofinwë found that he could not, as he had designed to do, confess his heart to the man in front of him, and he chided himself for being such a desperate miserable fool as to consider thusly humiliating himself. This living Fëanaro was, after all, a stranger. “My half-brother Fëanaro” was a thought and a memory in Nolofinwë’s mind, and the flesh-and-blood creature before him, though appellate by the same name, was a man forsooth, and a man whose heart was wholly foreign. 

“Dost thou, Curufinwë Fëanaro, find thyself displeased at the…closeness of this land? Thou it was that called the Noldor to return to Cuivienen. Sweet ran the waters, saidest thou, sweeter than those of this land that was built for gods, and not for elves. What sayest thou, now that we are enclosed once more?”

“I like it not, nay, but naught can we do to remedy it. Verily I should like to return to the shore whereon I once stepped in conquest, driven by vengeance though I was, and verily should I like to explore the lands that I only glimpsed for a short time. But alas, it can not be. No ships sail thither, and no ships are there to return, and we must either grieve or be content. And here before me I lack not for things to explore.” He gestured to the books and papers.

“So thou art content, my brother? What then of the Valar? For once saidest thou that they keep us here as thralls. I ween that thou didst pay bitterly for those words in prison, but what sayest thou now that we are again under their watch?”

“It pleaseth me little, and I can not say I trust those that govern this land, who do not toil as do the Quendi and who have erred not seldom in their dealings with the Eruhini, but harbor I not such antipathy against them as I did aforetime. Did I still hold them in such hateful regard I would not be a living man, but yet a prisoner and a ghost, as all too well thou knowest. Nay, but it was not by Mandos nor by Manwë that I was judged fit for reincarnation, but by our father Iluvatar. Mandos and Manwë despaired, for though I was naked to them, my heart was complicated by my griefs, and it was beyond the scope of their ability to discern how best to judge me. And so called they upon Eru who made me. I was not privy to their converse, alas, for I should have liked to hear the voice of the Allfather, but spake He unto Manwë, saying that I had been given many gifts, and ‘twould be a sore tragedy that I should be locked away forever and use them never again for good. Manwë did not say it, but I greatly suspect by the look that was in his eye that Iluvatar had told him also that I had suffered enow for my sins. Thou wouldst know wherefore I fear no longer the yoke of our hosts? I fear not those who have relinquished their right to judge me, and I deem it unlikely that they shall impose upon me their will, nor meddle in my affairs, nor interfere with me as they interfered in all the doings of my first life.”

‘Twas strange, Fëanaro gloated not that he alone of all the dead-who-return had been offered parole by Eru Iluvatar himself—he was nowise humble, no, but he delivered this story only to relate the fact and not to prove his advantage over Nolofinwë. Queer was it likewise that no disdain tinted those latter sentences, as it would have ever done aforetime. For Nolofinwë himself was the product of interference by the Valar, and it was by decree of the Valar that his mother had been permitted to wed his father, and without the dread doom that Fëanaro so resented, Nolofinwë would not exist at all. And so too it had been the interference of the Valar that had exiled Fëanaro from his own city, and caused his greatest fear to be made true. Even in those turbulent days Nolofinwë had thought the Valar’s involvement in their house’s affairs had been an overstep, but he would have never challenged a ruling that rid him for a time of his opponent, and handed him power he had coveted in secret, although he would never have challenged his father as Fëanaro had once accused him of plotting to do with proud words before Finwë’s seat. Nolofinwë had regretted Finwë’s subsequent departure, and he had been jealous that his half-brother should be thusly favored by a father who had never known how to love his children fairly, and yet, now with the clarity of hindsight, would not he too have unkinged himself if he were ever denied the right to judge his own son?

But in speaking of those distant injustices, Fëanaro’s voice was even-tempered, laced with no animosity towards the man who had profited from the aforementioned meddling. It wasn’t right, Nolofinwë thought, it wasn’t natural that Fëanaro should be so courteous, so just in his evaluation of Nolofinwë, so forgiving if forgiveness this was, and Nolofinwë felt once more that he had been bereft of something he could not name.

“Art thou content?” Fëanaro’s voice broke his reverie. “Thou hast asked of my contentment, but I would know if beest thou truly as discontent as thine aspect showeth. Surprised art thou? Thy unhappiness is writ large on thy face, and even with a mask thou couldst not conceal it.”

“It is as thou saist, I be not content, Fëanaro.” Nolofinwë found that his voice rose unbidden, and ere he could tame it, a storm of long-pent emotion burst out of him in an explosion of bitterness, even as boiling water and steam blows the lid off a pot. “How could I be, when I have been returned to the land I willingly left behind, to learn that I must abide here forever? How can I be content when I am a stranger here, not a man but a relic, a remnant of history to be honored but never befriended? How can I be content when I am coddled by this soft and delicate land? I be here as a man, a warrior, a king, swaddled whole and placed in a cradle, having been made to suck at the teat of effeminate luxury. Thou knowest not, for hardly didst thou leave the Blessed Realm ere thou wert slain. Nay, Fëanaro, foughtest thou but one battle and not a whole war, and knowest thou nothing of the hardship I endured. Thy ship-stealing and ship-burning was but an adventure in a life of otherwise ease. The war changed me, Fëanaro, it changed me into something cold and painful and violent; how can I be now content in a land where such things can not even be named?”

“Speak not to me of suffering,” Fëanaro said sternly, his eyes narrowing and his lip curling in anger. Nolofinwë stepped back and closed his mouth, and recalled that Fëanaro in his own time had suffered griefs shared by no other elf of his generation. A stone of guilt sprouted in Nolofinwë’s stomach, and the tendrils of an apology crawled over his tongue, but he said naught. It did not, however, escape his notice that Fëanaro’s rebuttal was not spiteful; yea his voice was razor-sharp with the edge of offense, but his tone bore no portend of a grudge. Nolofinwë found in this his own cause for offense.

“This is not right,” he said quietly now, regaining the composure he had lost in his sudden outburst. “‘Tis not right that thou shouldst speak me justly, with no animosity, and ‘tis not right that I should regard thee without resentment. ‘Twas never like this aforetime and I like it little that we should be thusly altered from our wont.”

“Ever thou didst claim to wish for kindness, and now that it is given thee, thou refusest it; how curious. But be it right or no, it cannot be otherwise. Thou and I were made to excise our hatred an we would live again, for it was the condition of our release. I let go of my loathing not lightly, but let it go I did. But being this the current state of affairs, I think it unlikely that we shall resume our little rivalry, seeing as the conditions for its arising have been terminated. Abideth our father Finwë in Mandos; no longer do we begrudge each other his love and favor. No longer are we High Princes; Arafinwë is king and Findarato the Crown Prince. As must thou verily surmise, I little like Arafinwë’s regime, but in no position to challenge him am I, nor intend I to do so, and ween I that thou beest of the same reasonable persuasion in this matter. But being that so, we neither one have royal privileges for the other to covet. Nor have we any other status to envy, for verily have we started from the bottom, so to speak, and to the status of youths been reduced. Famous are we, yes, but hold we no positions of influence in our respective circles. I purpose to remedy this, naturally, and I shall soon regain my tenure at the University. They wish not for my return, so they say, but they can not deny my value forever, not when invented I the very foundations of all their philology, geography, and mathematics. Hypocrites all of them, for what Elda has not erred? Wherefore should I be excluded from the literati for crimes now-forgiven? But I digress. Our feud shall not return, excepting that we resurrect it by force. Dost thou wish, once more, to fight me?”

Fëanaro leaned forward, resting his chin on folded hands and looked up at Nolofinwë with a glimmer in his eye. He seemed so happy here, Nolofinwë thought with a frown, surrounded by his books and his writing, positively buried in the things he loved. Or if he was not happy, he was happier than Nolofinwë, choking on bitter melancholy as he was. But now he choked on something fresh, something old, something familiar: the knowing that Fëanaro had overtaken him again. How could this be? How could he sit here with a half-smile and a glimmer in his eye when he too had suffered what Nolofinwë had suffered? For the cutting away of his hatred had weakened Nolofinwë, had left him a shadow of his old self, which had been driven always by purpose, by ambition, by hunger. But the man without a stomach does not hunger, and the man without hunger does not seek food, and not seeking he atrophies. How had such a loss not weakened Fëanaro likewise? Was it that his spirit of fire was so great that the removal of the wind that had once fanned it had inflicted it with no injury? Or had Nolofinwë meant less to him than he had meant to Nolofinwë? Had Nolofinwë been allotted less space in Fëanaro’s heart and mind than he, Nolofinwë had given to his brother? A dark sensation like the growth of an algae bloom in stagnant waters spread in his stomach and climbed up his throat, which was suddenly very very dry, and a new-old emotion flooded him fermented-hot and sickly: a discontent he named jealousy.

There had ever been a chasm betwixt them, brothers separated by the sins of their father, brothers begetting ever new sins to keep themselves apart. All efforts to bridge this chasm aforetime had served only to widen it. And yet, Fëanaro offered Nolofinwë now a tether by which he might finally reach him. And yea, Nolofinwë was fain to take this tether, and if he might not pull himself up to Fëanaro’s level, he would perforce drag him down to his own.

“I do wish to fight thee once more.”

“So mote it be. Now, we must determine the nature of our contest. Aforetime ‘twas our wont to hold competitions of sport and of rhetoric, and I propose we do so again—”

“An we do so, I would liever do so privately. I wish not for a crowd.”

“I was not suggesting we invite a crowd. Merely that we conduct a contest of sport. What thinkest thou of boxing? ‘Tis a sport whereof thou wert once a champion.”

“I will meet thee once more in the ring. Name the day and time, and I shall not be tardy.”

“Now, Nolofinwë. We have no cause to delay, except to build our strength and skill. But I should like to adventure how strong our green bodies may prove to be while lacking all practice.”

“So mote it be.”

❖❖❖

The way to the gymnasium was lined with cherry trees blossoming white and pink in the early days of spring. Fëanaro walked a few steps before Nolofinwë, who could not help but notice that Fëanaro’s short tunic, cinched in tight at the waist, revealed beneath its pinstriped ruffles the shapely curve of his buttocks.

The red hose clung tightly to his thighs, embraced lovingly his well-formed cheeks, and alluringly dipped into the crevice betwixt those comely hams. It was lewd, it was indecent, but it was the fashion, and Nolofinwë regretted that he too was clothed likewise. Any elf behind him would see his similarly-revealed bottom, and any elf afore see the bulge of his manhood in its pouch. He missed the old style of hose, which were open in the crotch and left a man’s bits to hang free and easy in the airy space beneath a long tunic; only on horseback and on the field of battle had he ever worn smallclothes, and somewhat loose ones at that. Nay, but these newfangled leggings choked his manhood and no doubt disrupted his humors. 

But if Fëanaro shared these concerns, he showed no sign, but sauntered proudly down the crowded streets, apparently relishing that the perfection of his form was on clear display. Perfection that Nolofinwë did not fail to notice. 

Nolofinwë was not unaccustomed to seeing the bodies of other men, but as they undressed in the locker room of the grand edifice of the Tirion gymnasium, his gaze lingered on Fëanaro’s broad shoulders and narrow hips, on the veins that traced handsome meridians over his forearms and criss-crossed his large hands. It had long been said that he was the mightiest of all the Eldar in both mind and body, and ere his fall the Noldor had prided themselves that the pinnacle of elven perfection was born into their nation. His raven hair tumbled down his back in loose waves darker than the dark spaces between the stars, and as he bound it up into a high tail Nolofinwë’s fingers twitched, and he imagined himself touching those gleaming locks even as he tied back his own hair, a duller, browner black.

Naked save for the scanty gray cloths that covered their loins, the men circled one another in the ring. It was in an open court, with a floor of dirt and a roof of sky, and bounded by walls of frescoes depicting hunting scenes. An image of Tulkas stood to the side, watching the contest with a bronze smile. 

Fëanaro assumed a fighting stance and flexed his fist; the muscles were in no wise weak, but they had been stronger once. His legs obeyed him as he shifted on his feet, but not perfectly. He felt once again like a youth, unsure of his own strength and lacking the full mastery of his hröa, however Nolofinwë too had become again a youth, and Fëanaro remembered the first boxing match they had ever engaged. Nolofinwë had been young then, not yet come of age, and Fëanaro had been already a man in his prime, so there had been little chance of the boy winning, as one can imagine, but he had believed he had a chance, and was subsequently proven wrong. But this present duel was wholly different than that inaugural match: they were now both the same age, both equally inexperienced and unsteady, both equally lacking practice. Ah, but this would be an interesting challenge, would it not? 

Fëanaro threw the first punch, and Nolofinwë dodged, and nimbly danced around him. He always was irritatingly agile, Fëanaro remembered as he threw another punch that didn’t land. Many times he tried to smite him, and many times Nolofinwë evaded him, and with nary a sweat he stung him with a well-aimed strike in the stomach. Fëanaro staggered back, doubled over, but forced himself to straighten up, and gathering all his strength, smote Nolofinwë in the head so hard that he fell to the ground.

He lay there for a moment before trying to sit up, his eyes unfocused and his temple bleeding, and Fëanaro stood over him, taking no delight in his victory. For what pride is there in defeating a man who has let the fight go out of him? His face had been blank as he had danced around Fëanaro, he had not smiled when he punched him, and now struck to the ground he did not look up at Fëanaro with a violent urge for vengeance. Nay, he looked up at Fëanaro in a haze of pain, but there was no anger, no loathing, no spite. He had not truly tried. He had not fought his hardest. It was insulting that he should not give Fëanaro his best, and it was shameful that a son of Finwë should permit himself to lose so easily. Seeing Nolofinwë sitting there passively enraged Fëanaro, the first time he had been enraged since he had returned, and it enraged him still more that he had been promised an exciting contest that was now proving to be wholly and utterly uninteresting. And it was not as if Fëanaro had not lost his will to fight either, and it was not as if he had fought as fiercely as he would have done in Elder Days, for he too had been made to excise his antipathy, and he too had perforce surrendered his ambition, and recognizing this equal failure and diminishment in himself he directed all his frustration at his kinsman instead.

“Art thou forsooth the man who met in single combat Morgoth our Foe? Art thou he who made him lame? How low hast thou fallen then, if be thou him in sooth; but scarcely can I believe that one as weak-willed as thyself could have attempted such a duel. Look at thee, bent and bowed and bleeding, laid low in a duel thou couldst have easily won. Thou shamest us both, Indision,” Fëanaro spat, using the name he had ever used aforetime to signal that he did not consider Nolofinwë to be a son of their father, hoping to offend him thusly.

Nolofinwë glared at him, but what offended him as much as the insults was the knowledge that Fëanaro did not truly mean them. Nay, Fëanaro accused him of weakness and cowardice, but it meant naught: his anger was not directed towards Nolofinwë and his very existence, but towards the situation: the nonexistence of their former tension.

“Let us go another round,” Nolofinwë gasped as he staggered to his feet. 

“Nay,” said Fëanaro. “I will not be disappointed twice in one day.” He turned back to go to the locker room without another word, leaving Nolofinwë to stand in silence with one hand pressed to his swelling temple. An I am cruel to him, he shall fight me the harder. I cannot show him kindness and expect to be entertained, now can I? Fëanaro thought. Mandos hath broken him, hath taken a wild stallion and gelded him, and beating down his proud spirit made him into a sorry beast. That cruel god took a great man, a great work of Iluvatar, and marred him. Yea, ‘tis blasphemy and rebellion to say thus, but ‘tis sooth, and as Mandos remedied my marring, so shall I remedy Aracano’s. But not by pity may he be availed, nay, but pity shall be the death of him. He saith he is become hard, let me then be hard with him.

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When Fëanaro returned to his mansion, he went straightaway to his historic workshop, which was still in the horrible disarray in which he had left it when he had been exiled from Tirion the first time and in his boiling wrath had departed in utmost haste. He had taken with him the tools he needed for forging, and some of his jeweler’s tools, but heaped here were the manifold paraphernalia for every other craft he had ever attempted, and those were multitudinous.  

On one of the worktables, illuminated by a dusty ray of afternoon sunshine from the high, diamond-paned windows, stood a little copper figure with articulated joints, about six inches in height. A gleaming red stone was embedded in his naked chest, what was still burnished and bright, neither oxidized nor corroded after ten thousand years of neglect.

Fëanaro tapped the red stone and the little man began to walk haltingly to the edge of the table and back again to stand before Fëanaro at attention. He would move whithersoever Fëanaro willed him, but whene’er his thought was turned away, the doll would stand still, being animated only by its master’s will, for Fëanaro had forsooth put something of his will into that little carbuncle heart. For the automaton had no soul of its own to direct it, and no breath of life, unlike animals, which though unensouled, are alive and know the wants of their bodies, and may move as they will. No elf could ever create an animal, no matter how hard he tried, no matter how much power and subtle skill he employed, even as the Valar themselves can not create an ensouled person, for Iluvatar alone possesses the Secret Fire that burns in the heart of every fëa. The Powers had made Fëanaro’s present body, as they had made the bodies of all the birds of the air and the beasts of the field, but the soul that wore this body was born of Eru.

But the fleshly bodies of the first elves had likewise been formed by the Allfather, carefully knitted together according to the patterns He had designed for the shaping of His Children, and from mother to child the divine origin of their being had been passed down through the long and many ages. But the body Fëanaro now inhabited was not made by his mother. It was not made by her who had perished, who had been kept from him unjustly, her whose being he had kept within himself, for he had accounted the body that had issued fatefully from her womb to be a manifestation of her art, her first and last gift to him, and the blood that had been in his veins was the same as the creative blood of her womb, living crimson yet within him. But this novel body was not born of Miriel Þerindë, and though he had returned, and Miriel herself had returned long before, she would not depart her cloister to see him, nor was he permitted an audience with her who had forsaken the world entirely.

He could not hate her. He could not hate her for twice choosing death, not he who had rushed into it madly himself, who had contemplated it from the day of Finwë’s murder until his own demise. He could not hate Miriel, for to hate Miriel was to hate himself, but he grieved, wishing to see her face and hear her voice once more, and wishing too that he could be returned to the body she had given him, a body that was scattered as ashes at the bottom of the sea.

It was customary for the returned dead to mourn their old bodies, the bodies that had been small when their souls were small, and had grown with them from babes into men, and Fëanaro, who felt every emotion large and close, found himself choked with the magnitude of his irreparable loss, and for a while he sat unmoving and unseeing in his workshop, stumbling through visions of fire and pain and ashes in the wind, and tumbling into faraway foggy memories of a cold cradle and dim parting words he had been too young to know but old enough to comprehend. But at last he recovered himself, and finding that there were tears in his eyes, he wiped them away, and he studied his hand, moistened with the brine of his griefs, and clenched it into a fist. Though this vessel had been made by those for whom he had small love, it was his own now, untethered to the will of its makers, and was henceforth his to transform as any artist does with material given to him. He would make this body his own.  

❖❖❖

The first step to making this body his own was to build its strength. And this endeavor truly served a two-fold purpose, for he must needs be prepared for his next match against Nolofinwë, who had agreed to another competition, and who had proposed a race around the city walls. Having ever been a long-distance runner and no sprinter, the son of Indis believed himself to have an advantage in this contest. Ah, but that could only be so if he ran! Fëanaro had graciously allotted them both two weeks to prepare; he knew not whether Nolofinwë was practicing, nor did Nolofinwë know of Fëanaro’s doings, for they seldom crossed paths. Nolofinwë ran in the mornings and Fëanaro in the afternoon, but even with only two weeks to prepare, by daily exercise their legs became stronger and their feet swifter, and Fëanaro, at least, was more content. A contentment marred by the lack of urgency. Aforetime Fëanaro had always run his best, but even when he felt assured of his victory there had always been a certain anxiety, an unease at the possibility that Nolofinwë would catch up to him and prove himself the equal he claimed to be, or worse, surpass Fëanaro and usurp him, for Fëanaro feared more than aught else that Nolofinwë should have advantage over him. But it was even as he had admitted to his half-brother in the library: the days of their rivalry were passed and gone. But…peradventure with enough provocation something resembling that old fire might return to them, and they might begin to hunger as they had hungered aforetime…and should Nolofinwë hunger as he had once hungered and oppose him as he had once opposed him, Fëanaro would find him much more tolerable. He could not abide a strong man who lets himself grow soft, and Nolofinwë’s new passivity irked him even more than the slights and scorn shown to him by the University faculty. Yea, Nolofinwë had been broken, but Fëanaro did not believe that he was beyond fixing. How kind, how benevolent, for Fëanaro to wish for the betterment of his usurper! 

❖❖❖

Nolofinwë hardly liked the surprise that awaited him at the city gates when he arrived for their second contest, and his lips hardened to a thin line at the sight of Fëanaro’s seven sons all gathered together to observe the race.

“Thou didst tell me not that thy sons would be present, Fëanaro. I should have liked to bring mine own.”

“Must I tell thee of all my doings, Indision? Must I make thee privy to all my counsels who art, for today, mine enemy? My sons are here to watch me win. Mayhap tis fortunate that thine own brood are not in attendance, for they should surely be sad to see their valiant father lose.” Fëanaro sneered.

Nolofinwë said naught in response but stood in front of the dogwood tree what they had designated as their starting line. Its white flowers were all in bloom, and they shone like palest snow in the morning Sun, who bathed all the Calacirya in her warmth, yea even illuminating the east-facing hollows where the light of the Trees had never touched, and causing the juvenile grass there to gleam. Yea, Spring came sooner in these mild climes than it had done in frore Hithlum, that land of damp fogs by day and silver frost at night, where heavy-fallen snow had lain thick over the land and cloaked the ground in white for the greater part of the winter. But it was not so in Valinor, and March was alive and buzzing with the jubilant birth of green leaves, waxy in their youth, and the gaiety of blossoming flowers, of violets and crocuses, azaleas and daffodils, all nodding merrily in the cool wind that cut like crisp shears through the warmth of the Sun. 

At a cry from Nelyafinwë, the runners started off across the green, feet flying over the upturned faces of bluets and henbit. The ground at the base of Tuna was uneven, undulating like waves of the sea emerald in the morning light. Here and there gray stones blocked their path, and treacherous holes and ferny pits in the earth opened suddenly beneath their feet where bubbling freshets hollowed out the dark soil. 

Like the silver dew that still crowded on the grass, sweat began to bead on the runners’ upper lips. Fëanaro was ever so slightly in the lead, the muscles of his thighs rippling as he bounded over the mossy stones and clustered clover, but the long-distance runner Nolofinwë was close behind. They had a long way to go yet, for Tirion was no hillside village but a great city and Túna a mighty hill, and despite his lead, Fëanaro’s victory was in nowise guaranteed.

Curious spectators peered from the walls and called to their friends to come forth that they might behold this unexpected race, for they all recognized the princes, and some cheered them both on while others looked down silently with cold expressions. They did not all wholly trust Fëanaro, but were loath to cheer against him, for he was yet a man of high estate though his name was besmirched by his own doings. Fëanaro smiled; they would come around to him in good time.

With burning legs and heaving chests the sons of Finwë kept close to the sparkling white walls as the Sun-vessel climbed higher in the heavens, where soft clouds drifted like glistening snow across silken seas of azure. Their breath was coming heavy and the flyaway strands of their hair clung to their brows; but they prided themselves that they pushed themselves beyond the scope of what most of the returned dead attempt so soon, and regardless of who won, they would emerge stronger for this endeavor.

With the golden gates emerging into sight as they rounded the final curve of the unblemished marble on their left, Nolofinwë saw the Fëanarioni awaiting them and waving jubilantly to their father, and he put forth all of his strength and vitality and passed Fëanaro with but a few yards remaining, and so crossed the finish line in the lead with a cry. 

Nolofinwë’s lungs heaved and he bent over, put his hands on his knees and gasped for breath like a caught fish that struggles to fill its empty lungs, drowning in fresh air. But there was no joy in his victory, for he forgot his momentary hope and only bethought how once upon a time he could have ran this distance, even many miles, without breaking a single sweat. And when he looked up at Fëanaro he saw that he was surrounded by his sons, who happily congratulated their father on a well-run race, shaking his hand and clapping him on his bare and sweat-slicked back. With a sideways smirk Fëanaro glanced over at Nolofinwë, standing alone and breathless in the pitiless Sun, as if to say “Thy faithless offspring shewed not their faces in support of their father. What sort of man must thou be, that this should be so?”

That old, precious feeling stirred vermiform in Nolofinwë’s gut, worming and sliming like a treacherous serpent of the swamp, that old feeling that he had lately recognized as jealousy when it blossomed like an ill-sown seed, and he saw that Fëanaro, who had spread the manure to nurture this wicked seed, accounted this match as a victory for himself, though forsooth he had been by all appearances defeated. The chasm betwixt them yawned wider.

“Name our next contest, Fëanaro,” Nolofinwë’s voice rolled as he strode towards his rival. The wall of sons parted to let their father treat with his faux-foe.

“Debate,” Fëanaro said haughtily without pause, for indeed he had pondered this very question for the last two weeks, and would fain subject Nolofinwë to his own field of expertise, for his own advantage. “At the Fraternity where once were we members, like old times when I would take the one position and thou the opposite. An I propose a special meeting for us twain to spar, the current Chairman and executive committee shall in no doubt agree to it, illustrious alumnus as am I. Fools would they be to deny me.”

Nolofinwë clenched his fists. “I await it eagerly.”

❖❖❖

There is little one can do to prepare for a debate when the resolution has not yet been announced, and so the men waited in quiet impatience until the appointed day of their next contest. It was, Nolofinwë recognized, the only thing that gave structure to his life, and the anticipation of their rhetorical duel was a welcome relief in the monotony of it all. More and more he found himself desiring to win, and while sitting idly after supper he imagined his success, entertaining visions of his family and friends congratulating him on a speech well-delivered when he stepped away from the rostrum. 

The Sun was moving slowly towards the West and the facade of the great debate hall glowed with the bright light of afternoon when Nolofinwë and Fëanaro ascended the great stairs and with their children in their train passed through the oaken doors, four fathoms tall. 

The hall was little changed. Rows of desks faced a noble rostrum, behind which was a three-tiered dais. On the lower level sat two desks, one on each side, and these were manned by the Fraternity Clerk, who took the meeting minutes, and the Sentinel, who called the roll. In the center on the highest level sat the Chairman, who presided over the body. The current Chairman was an old friend of Nolofinwë’s, Astaron, and he greeted his friend and former liege-lord with a smile and a warm handshake. 

Throughout the calling of the roll and the reading of the minutes the fraternity members eyed the princes curiously; seldom did they have so much excitement as this. During the years of the Trees, Fëanaro and Nolofinwë had had many debates here, always culminating in increased bitterness and resentment on both their parts, and the men of the Fraternity did not wish for a return to those days, for the division between the princes had created divisions throughout the whole society, and the members had felt pressured to support the one prince or the other, and thus they had all of them been ensnared in that dread rivalry. 

Astaron called the Critic, Ecthelion, to the stand to introduce the debate. He produced a hat in which were many folded slips of paper, what were inscribed with the most controversial resolutions the good Critic could contrive. He fished around in the hat and drawing forth the fated slip, read it aloud gravely: “The founding of Gondolin was for the best.”

Everyone in the room tensed, for the matter touched no few of them nearly, and many were there who had been denizens of Gondolin, and otherwise many Noldor of Hithlum.

Nolofinwë was grim of face as Ecthelion explained that they would determine the speaking positions by coin toss, but a preliminary coin toss would determine who would toss the coin. Nolofinwë called tails and Fëanaro called heads, but it was Fëanaro who won that round. It came to him to toss the coin: whosoever should roll heads would speak in the affirmative, and whosoever rolled tails would speak in the negative. Fëanaro, to his smug satisfaction, got tails.

A few minutes were allotted to them to speedily devise arguments, and Nolofinwë was shortly called to the rostrum, because the affirmative position always goes first.

It was a rotten lot, for though Nolofinwë was speaking in favor of his son’s deeds, he must also speak in favor of the one who had taken away a third of his host. He folded his hands on the rostrum and looked out at the crowd, wellnigh five score men who had gathered together to witness this historic debate. He met their eyes as he had always done when he spoke before a crowd; how well he had once garnered support! He had been wont to meet each man’s gaze, and with a glance make him feel that he understood intimately all his interests, investments, and his qualms, and thereby persuade him before he even opened his mouth. But that magic was gone now, and he felt something like a circus performer, and he knew this debate to be a spectacle. A spectacle he had brought upon himself. But it was by this spectacle that he might prove himself the better man than Fëanaro, if that even meant anything, oh if that even meant anything at all. He needed something to be proud of, and he could at least be proud of himself for effectively arguing for a position he rather disliked, as Findecano and Aracano would see, who had missed the prior contest.

“Friends, kinsmen, distinguished gentlemen, honored am I to come before you once again, and I thank you for this opportunity to speak afore you in this new Age.” Nolofinwë began. “As well know ye, this matter toucheth me near, for Turucano is mine own son, and say I before you that his founding of his city was for the best.

“Turucano received a dream from Ulmo, I am told” which he shared not with me “and this dream counselled him to build a hidden city, for to protect the Noldor against the onslaught to come. And thusly he did, and built the very image of ancient Tirion in Middle-Earth, and accomplished a return to the glory and bliss of old.” and that city I never saw, nor knew existed nor received word thence until my dear Aredhel’s death “Twain are the reasons that this city’s founding was for the best: for the prosperity and safety that was accomplished there, and for the birth of Eärendil, who brought salvation to the world.” Eärendil my descendent whom I see in the heavens, with whom I have not yet spoken, for he is kept from us.

“In Gondolin a great multitude of people were kept safe from the wars without, and they prospered and begat them children, and fair they made the land of Tumladen. And were the Quendi not placed upon Arda to increase its beauty? And there was beauty in Gondolin” beauty my grieving Turukano spake of to me in the Halls “and there was great happiness and bliss for a time” a bliss Aredhel did not share, and she told me of how she sickened “and say I unto you that better it is for bliss to exist for a time than not at all. For the lands without were cruel, and the living hard for the peoples what were ever in peril, but safe was Gondolin, and glad am I, and good it is that Turukano accomplished that safety for his people. And such was Ulmo’s purpose in revealing his designs: that some of the Noldor might thrive, and not perish or be enslaved.” As were the people of Hithlum, my people, slaughtered or shackled all of them. 

“The second reason for the goodness of Gondolin was the birth of Eärendil. For born was he in Gondolin, and from Gondolin came to Sirion, and there met Elwing. Were it not for Gondolin’s construction, and yea, were it not for Gondolin’s fall—and by the grace of Iluvatar there will ever be hope and goodness that arise out of evil—he would not have come into the world. And were Eärendil not born, the peoples of Beleriand would be left to their doom, and in time be defeated, and be made thralls to the Shadow. But by his courage and Elwing’s was salvation brought to Middle-Earth.” Salvation withheld from Elves and Men for five centuries. Salvation Turgon’s sailors had sought and for their seeking were slain, yea even those who were not of the Exiles. 

Everything he had said was “correct,” verily the arguments that accorded most with the designs of the Valar, and the narrative favored by those of upstanding moral persuasions. But those gathered there who had been his people once upon a time winced, and Nolofinwë could only hope that they knew he shared their sentiments in truth, though not in seeming.

Fëanaro was next, and he smirked, self-satisfied and pompous as he approached the rostrum and gripped one hand on each side with alacrity. 

“Gentlemen of the Fraternity, noble scholars of rhetoric, old friends and old adversaries, I greet you all, and I thank you for this chance to argue before you once more. An honor and a pleasure it is, which value I not lightly, and I feel that I have come home, in a sense.” A few men glared at him, offended it seemed, at his entitled presumption. 

“Ye have heard the claims of my colleague and kinsman, who saith that Gondolin was for the best. Bah! Myopic and narrow-minded were all his claims, a pity truly that such drivel should spill from one whose greatness even I myself cannot deny.

“But let us frame this debate first. What importeth best? It importeth that a thing produceth better consequences than any alternative courses. And that is all well and good, but for whom is a thing best? For what is best for one man may not touch another.

“Saith Nolofinwë that the founding of Gondolin was best for the Gondolindrim. I do not deny it. But what of the exiles without? What of the people of Hithlum? A third of their kinpeople vanished in the night, with no tale of whither they had gone. This went ill, I ween, with High King Fingolfin, who suffered a severe defeat in the Dagor Bragollach. How much relief might his son have brought to him if he had remained in Nevrast? Enow that their ruin might not be beyond redress, I deem. Would then proud Fingolfin have perished in that reckless duel if he had not been utterly routed as he was? Were it not for the removal of his son, he might have seen fit to prolong his life; and wise and beloved King that he was, his people would have said it was for the best.”

There were shocked murmurs among the crowd, and Fëanaro smirked, silently congratulating himself on being so very gracious in valuing the life and well-being of his usurper. He continued and raised his voice slightly over the din.

“Spake Nolofinwë of Eärendil. I see not why the removal to Gondolin was necessary for his birth. Did Itarillë dwell in Nevrast and Tuor son of Huor in Dor-Lomin, they may have yet met. The absence of Gondolin negateth not the inevitability of his birth. 

“In conclusion, negate I this resolution, for while the building of Gondolin may have been best for the people thereof, it was not ‘the best’ for others, nor was it necessary for the fate of the world, and therefore this vaguely-worded and shamelessly-biased resolution is unmistakably false.”

His sons snapped in support as Fëanaro returned to his seat, but the two sons of Nolofinwë glared at him, and Findecano gripped his fountain pen with white knuckles. Nolofinwë would not meet their eyes.

Rebuttal speeches followed, which shall not be given in full, but it shall suffice to say that Fëanaro argued well and Nolofinwë, well, he did his best. Fëanaro was clever and cruel and spoke with authority and conviction, and though Nolofinwë was well- and reasonably-spoken, Fëanaro had shredded the logic of each of his arguments. In his rebuttal speech Fëanaro said something that touched Nolofinwë near, and stoked his heart, which was already bruised by the remembrance of his son’s betrayal and Fëanaro’s unspoken implication that unlike Nolofinwë, his own sons were faithful, and for the following statement Nolofinwë’s heart was stoked to anger:

“But not all of those in Gondolin were happy, and some there sickened as birds in silver cages. How can it even be said that it was best for the Gondolindrim? How when the city itself was a prison from which there could be no reprieve? A city in which death was the reward for those who sickened of it.”

It was plain he spoke of Irissë. What audacity, what wicked, supercilious pride! What brashness to speak of something such as this. Nolofinwë had learned of Irissë’s plight when she perished, and she had come to him in the darkness of Mandos, and thrown herself into his arms and wept, and when she was done with her weeping she raged, how Irissë raged! She cursed Eöl, she cursed Turgon, she cursed the white city, she cursed her own folly. But Nolofinwë believed that he deserved to be cursed likewise, for had he not given her leave to follow Turgon? She, Aredhel, had ever been torn between an unwomanly desire for liberty and a need for security, and sacrificing the former she had turned to Turgon to receive the latter, and it was by her return to the pursuit of the former that she had met her doom. Fingolfin had always thought it meet to grant her her liberties, as Lalwen had been granted hers, and when he later learned of Turgon’s heartless laws and bans he was disconcerted; yea he understood the necessity of the law, but Fingolfin knew all too well that what was strategic was not always right. But Aredhel had wanted safety, and she would not get it at Barad Eithel, castle on the frontline of a war, nor even in the towns of Mithrim, so close to Angband. And yet, if Fingolfin had doted on her, if he had kept her close, would she have stayed with him? If he had shown her the love and affection she deserved but had never gotten, would she have abided with him? He could not say. And so Nolofinwë cursed his own failure, and ruminated on a mistake he could never undo. 

Irissë, desiring woman, desired life, and death suited her ill, and it was a mercy that Mandos kept her not overlong, and a mercy that she was not here to witness Fëanaro’s nondecorum!

Those who attended the debate were divided in heart, for though many of them had been Nolofinwë’s men and held still a fondness for him, not all liked what he had said, and they could not deny that Fëanaro, though he trespassed against the official narrative, had been the better orator with his razor tongue and bright bravado. Few of them spoke to Nolofinwë afterwards, for which he was grateful, and he sped from the hall to wander the streets in a dark storm of tempestuous thought.

Fëanaro and his sons went out drinking afterwards; they were all of them more wretched by far than Nolofinwë — empty, regretful shells distrusted and isolated by their fellow Noldor, but their father had lately brought them their first joys amid the melancholy of Paradise, and he now gave them new cause to make merry, and they imposed themselves upon a tavern for the evening.

❖❖❖

When they returned by the long winding way, lined with close-planted cedars, to Fëanaro’s stately house, and the clouded western sky bled sanguineous as if the dying flames of brilliant Arien were so much blood soaking though a heavenly bandage, and the white facade of the house was as red as it had once been in the torchlight, the company of erstwhile kinslayers saw Nolofinwë standing proud and grim at the top of the stairs with an ivory-handled knife girt at his hip. His white garments glowed like flame but his gray eyes were like freezing shards of ice, nay, like glass that splits the skin wide open from the faintest touch. Having abandoned his gaiety, Fëanaro, ascending deliberately slowly, met his terrible gaze with his own, unblinking, undaunted, unwavering, a gaze of such frightening fell intensity that it would make any other man shrivel and cower before him, and without looking at them he bade his drunken sons to enter the house without him, for Nolofinwë’s business was with him and him alone, and he would have no spectators for whatever was to befall.

“For what cause art thou come hither, temerous son of Indis?” Like acrid smoke over the land his voice rolled haughty with a tone so bitter it could choke.

“Thou knowest well, Fëanaro, I am come to avenge mine humiliation.” Nolofinwë’s demeanor was as stone, as proud and perilous as Oiolossë behind them, where the fleeing fingers of sinking Anar clomb higher and higher before the purple shadows arising velvetine from the valleys below.

“Humiliation? I wot not of what thou speakest. All that I said, I said for the sake of rhetoric.”

“Thou liest!” Nolofinwë spat and took a step forward and put his palm on the damascened pommel of the knife. “Thy serpent’s tongue cannot deceive me, for I know that this debate was devised against me. ‘Twould be no surprise did I learn that the coin itself was weighted in my disfavor.”

“Stay thy tongue, Indision. I am no cheat—”

“If not a cheat then a braggart and cruel, and before the assembly puttest thou me to shame in making me to speak against myself. Thy words concerning my children were verily as a blow below the belt, heartless and needless withal to stir up old sorrows, and yea, verily though didst not say her name, spakest thou of Irissë. And in the course of that debate was I dishonored as a father in the eyes of the people.”

“Put no words in my mouth, Aracano,” Fëanaro snarled. “Naught said I of thy worth as a father, but by thine own accord thinkest thou such conceits of thyself. But thinkest thou aright, for thy son Turucano was faithless.”

Ah, but Fëanaro spoke soothly did he not? How this enraged Nolofinwë! How it enraged him to hear from another the truth he had long nurtured in his secret heart. There had always been enmity between Turucano and Fëanaro, rival of his father, Fëanaro whose meritocratic, if self-serving, ideals for government were wholly at odds with Turucano’s autocracy, and some of that old unlove stained Fëanaro’s words like the trace of blood on a shirt from a reopened cut. Nolofinwë was silent for a moment as he calculated what best to do with this new tide of resentment, but it was a moment too long.

“If my words grieve thee so, I welcome thee to challenge me again to another contest,” Fëanaro said.

“And so I do!” Nolofinwë bellowed suddenly and viciously, and with a violent flourish drew the curved knife from its sheath, and leaping forward pressed the point to Fëanaro’s velvet-garbed breast. It shone like a glede in the last light of the sunset. “I challenge thee to a duel, Curufinwë. This blade is sharper than thy tongue, and its bite shall be a just reward for thee! Perchance it will teach thee to speak less freely. I will not suffer thy mistreatment, but I shall have the victory in the end.”

But Fëanaro did not balk nor did he show any sign of fear, but instead he laughed with arms wide open. “Hail! Well met Finwë Nolofinwë! Pleased am I that thou art returned to us from the dead after so long thine absence. But what wonder is this, that thou, goody godly Aracano of Manwë’s favorite stock, art the law-breaker, the rebel, who wert ever so pious? Was not that mine ancient part to play? How endearing to know that thou makest thyself a criminal for my sake.” His arrogant smile was sickening, and Nolofinwë dug the tip of the blade deeper into his plush, snow-white houppelande, piercing the sumptuous cloth but not quite the vermillion doublet beneath. Fëanaro did not flinch.

“A criminal am I already, who am discontented,” he snarled. “I have rebelled against the Valar in being ill-pleased with their rule, ill-suited to their land, and resentful of their gifts. What more is it, to duel thee for mine honor? What more, a transgression born of pride? I am, as thou saist, returned to myself. Now come, go fetch a knife! I loathe to wait for the fulfillment of justice.”

“But it is against our brother’s law to duel, and against the Valar’s likewise. I have no reverence for such nuisances, but natheless shall we be exiled should we continue. Fortunate art thou that no others are here, else thou wouldst be already ferried to the court for judgement. I have been exiled before, and I will not suffer that shame again, upon my life. We must remove elsewhere for this duel.”

“Beyond the city walls, then. Let us go.” Nolofinwë withdrew the knife an inch and moved towards the stairs.

“Nay, not now, not with knives. If we are to duel, I would it be a proper duel between valiant warriors of our station, for we were kings once, and though our bodies are new and young, I will not fight like a sapling squire who cannot handle a knight’s weapon. We must have swords, and good ones withal. But lost beneath the sundering seas, our brands are drowned and gone from us forever, and Narsil and Ringil must be forged anew as images of their former glory, but those I cannot forge here in the city of cowards, but I must travel to Formenos, and there make the blades we require. And there in my northern house where perished our father will I give thee the fight of thy desire. Wilt thou, then, follow me, as once sworest thou to do?”      

Nolofinwë looked to the North, to the tall blue peaks snowcapped against a purple sky, and his eyes followed the line of the mountains to the place where Formenos lay, far out of the sight even of elven eyes, far where none in the city of his infancy would know his doings, far where he could find mayhap some action-doll semblance of valor, better than playing house as he did. 

“Aye. Thou shalt lead, I said, and so thou shalt, and to Formenos I shall follow thee. When pray tell do we depart?”

“A week hence,” Fëanaro answered without pause, for his mind ever moved at a rapid pace, and in matters such as this he needed little time to process such determinations, but arrived at conclusions with haste. And the timeframe he offered was itself hasty indeed, but Nolofinwë did not object. He nodded at Fëanaro, the closest thing he would give him to a bow, and they shook hands. ‘Twas a firm handshake, tight enough almost to crack the bones, and with it they sealed their pact, a vow betwixt brothers, whom even the grief of death had not divided, for here they were returned to the same form, hand in hand, eyes looking into quicksilver eyes, a blade against the other’s breast only recently put away. 

“I will meet thee at the gates at dawn,” Nolofinwë said, and descended the stairs into the twilight beneath the cedars.    

❖❖❖

Nolofinwë slept little that night, but he tossed in the bed, which seemed to have become a stony pit where there could be no reprieve, and the quilts had become like black blood to smother him. Well before the dawn he awoke with his nightshirt transparent with sweat, and disquieted he quit his chamber to stand on the balcony, which looked East. It had been built suchly so that once upon a time he could see the stars, and so he did now, as many as there had been in Beleriand, scattered over the firmament in a million points of light, each one a distinct flame kindled by Varda Elentari. 

The stars dimmed, and one by one retreated into the brightening blue as Arien wended upwards towards the horizon. A crisp breeze come up from the sea stirred his sleep-scented hair and slipped into his damp shirt, and fain he welcomed the chill. But it was not merely his flesh that chilled, but alack, against his will his spirit chilled, and like the stars above, its flame faded, for his wrath, so potent, so intoxicating the evening before, was slipping away. Yea, it slipped through his grasping groping hands, that clutching in vain could not fasten something as quick as oil. Once he had been a veritable vessel of febrile wrath, a wrath so great and white-hot that it had spilt shining from his eyes like the flaming tears of a god. Long had his wrath built in his former life, centuries of accumulation, centuries of laying it in silent store, but it had overflowed, loosing itself with the fell force of a centurial storm, when at last it could be contained no longer, and forthwith it drove him to madness. But he who had been an oil-lamp had become like a sieve, and his ire dripped out of him and seeped into the gutters, and the flame of his spirit unfueled was dim in his gray, glassy eyes. The sun rose. The stars were gone. And Nolofinwë was empty.

It helped naught to work out. He went to the gymnasium and boxed with a man who had decided from the beginning to let the former king win, letting his own blows miss and leaving himself open to be struck, and Nolofinwë was reminded that only Fëanaro would do battle with him as a true opponent. But he could not be angry with the boxer this morning, but he felt alone, not a man but a legend, who must be worshipped but never understood, and indeed the young elf worshipped him, and by this round touched and was touched by his hero. He had been born in Aman in the last age. He did not know of suicide.

Afterwards, in the healing humidity of the public bath, Nolofinwë bethought him of Fëanaro, bringing to mind all that he had said the day before, and ere that his haughty challenges, and he found, to his despair, that he could not learn to truly hate Fëanaro again. No matter how his half-brother might mistreat him, Nolofinwë’s heart had been castrated, and no grudge could grow there again, but impotently he essayed to draw forth the dessicated semen of enmity. Nay, his heart had become clear like the water in which he soaked, and just as his wrath had arisen, so it had passed with ease the very next day, and its diminishing wave left an unnatural calm in its place. If only he could keep the water choppy, if only he could stir it to a whirlpool, if only, if only, if only. He regretted the drawing of the blade in this quiet aftermath; hasty had it been, a lapse in self-control, an error in judgement, and he thought worse of himself for it. The right thing would have been to keep the anger pent. The right thing would have been to treat with Fëanaro, not threaten him. And Fëanaro, well, he had meant none of it, had he? He had been cruel, yes, but he was an actor playing a villain, and no longer a villain himself. He too, was made a gelding, though he hid it well. What could they do? Would their forecasted duel mean anything in the absence of ambition and animosity? But what else could they do otherwise? He would continue to dance the dance they had always danced, and he had, in truth, once been a dancer, and a dancer must move his feet even when it delights him no longer; he must carry on the show, even when he has no audience, and all the more when he has an audience of one.  

Nolofinwë stayed out until well after the sun had set, having spent the day at the gym, and at the baths, later at the market bumping shoulders with shouting vendors and gaily-arrayed women, at the circus to watch his favored horse lose the race, and finally after his thought-fogged vagaries he found himself on the steps of his house in the dark, looking out at the city that slouched reluctantly towards slumber. In the gloamingtide the white spires were made into hoary cenotaphs, and the eyes of the windows one by one blinked out, and were left like so many hollow sockets, blind to the persistence of death, blind to all but their solipsistic dreams. Ghosts of his past walked among the towering arches and spindle steeples and glass domes of the immortal necropolis, and haunted the dead man with memories of a perished childhood, and the spectres swirled around him who was unrestful, having himself risen from his grave to stalk the cruelly-glittering streets in tearless mourning. It seemed to him now that this city was his tomb, and Finwë-Nolofinwë Aracano was the corpse-turned-wight, for he was as bones that have no place in the air and no home in the mould, decomposing as he breathed. He looked to the frore North, followed the line of the rampart-mountains, snow peaks lapis-blue in the starlight, and far-off in the decaying mansion at their feet he prayed he could be resurrected this time into something whole. 

Chapter End Notes

 I am stealing the headcanon that Fëanor’s sword is named Narsil from LeetheVix

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The mirthful birds hailed the dawn, which passed in glory through the gates of day, and Fëanaro, passing through the gates of Tirion hailed his kinsman who rode astride a white steed. Fëanaro’s own piebald fell into step with its pale cousin, and with nary a word they went down the stone-paved road, clip-clopping as the distant mountaintops were stained red and then gold, and the aurulent rays flooded the vales and hollows, turning every leaf and blade into a paper lantern of green light. 

Riding afforded Fëanaro time to think, and his musings turned to his previous meeting with Nerdanel at her father’s house. It had gone exactly as well as he had hoped, but that meant not that it was a happy conversation. Mahtan and Nerdanel were perfectly cordial and he exchanged with them perfectly polite pleasantries, and after a time Nerdanel beckoned him into another room for the private conversation that they all knew was truly Fëanaro’s main errand in this visit.

“I have lived as a widow for one hundred centuries, and I have been content. We had happy days once, but the Fëanaro who raped the ships was not the man I married, and neither is the man who went into exile the man who standest before me. We cannot return to the life we once had. We cannot play at childhood. But I wot well the Valar’s preferences for spouses parted by death. What saist thou, Fëanaro?”

“I say that I too shall not be returned to childhood, and I came hither not to coerce thee into an arrangement we neither one desire. Thou shalt keep the life thou hast, and I shall have a life of mine own.”

And in sooth Fëanaro did not wish for her to be returned to him, she whom he had once named unfaithful; and so she had been in his eyes, for a faithful wife follows her husband wheresoever he may go. She does not defy him, nor endeavor to keep his children from him, as Nerdanel had done. It was good then, that finally, after so much strife, their purposes aligned.

Despite his sentiments, Fëanaro felt he ought to grieve the ending of their marriage, as he had grieved it once before, for yea, his anger at Nerdanel aforetime had been in some part a manifestation of his grief at her betrayal. But Fëanaro did not grieve, and he found this strange.

Bees buzzed in the cow pastures they passed, and the sides of the road were banked with clover, white flowers nodding in the breeze that whispered over meads dotted with the glossy eyes of buttercups. The grasses waved, juvenile but quickly growing, already sprouting seed heads, and curly dock grew in the fields, green seeds all a-clustered. The trees near the road waved gayly their new leaves, thin tissues whose backs glistened white with the ambrosial dews of morning light. Rising higher the Sun became almost-hot, and their shadows shortened as the road veered west and the cattle fields gave way to uncultivated land. 

They were still in the Calacirya when it came time to make camp. They had brought a heavy mule with them to carry much of their supplies, and having found a grassy spot to rest, they unloaded the beast and set him off to graze with the horses. The weather was mild and the sky clear, so they did not pitch a tent nor light a fire, and mayhap camp is an overstatement to describe two blankets stretched out on the grass. But such was the situation, and in the same silence they had maintained all day, they sat down side by side to eat bread and watch the sunset, having had received lembas from the holy woman who had been appointed as the city’s bread-giver—Earwen had never desired to assume the position—and they unwrapped the golden mallorn leaves carefully, each man to eat half a saffron-colored cake. They had to restrain themselves not to eat more, such was the quality of the waybread.

More golden than the bread was the light of the setting sun, and it glowed upon the grasses and upon the walnut trees, pale yellow deepening into the color of flame as Arien fell into the vats of the West. Blue shadows stole across the land, the trees stood still and silent in the quiet air, but crickets sang in the meadows, and for a time the land was tenderly illuminated by the sun’s afterglow lingering in the blue sky above. It was alive, all of it alive, electric with life, green, green, green, and Fëanaro dug his fingers into the earth and felt the life of it well into his body; he breathed in and out in time with the grasses, in tune with the crickets, all one, all one, all one universal heartbeat. But no, it was not all one, for lo, in the west hung a star, a brilliant star of distant-splintered light, and he, he was that star, but that star was not him. The light of my spirit embodied, the subtlest and greatest work of my hands, what was once hidden seen by all, recovered what was stolen, but recovered not to me. How is it that I should return, and my own be not returned to my keeping? Ah but the Valar believe the Silmarilli to be mine no more! They believe that I forfeited my right to mine own creation in the swearing of mine Oath. Ha! I am loath to believe the jewels would have burnt me as they burnt my sons, for they are mine own spirit, and being mine own spirit are mine own flesh. But a man can in sooth injure himself by his own doings, and there may be truth to their supposition. Well, I can not know what did not come to pass. But lo, I am alive and I have served my sentence, and my Oath holdeth me no longer. Let me handle it once more! Thou shalt return to the life thou hadst aforetime, spake Manwë. Then fulfill your promise, O King of Kings! For my life aforetime was a life in possession of my jewels, closer to me in spirit than even my wife whom you wished for me to wed. But ever you favor those with golden heads, and ever wish for them to receive blessings and glory. The Valar sometimes change their judgments when it pleaseth them, but they will not change in this. But…did they return my Silmaril, would my keeping of mine own creation make it all the more heart-rending to break in the end?

“He is my great-grandson.” Nolofinwë said without looking at Fëanaro, and not without some amount of pride, shot through natheless with uncertainty at how Fëanaro felt about the star, and plainly curious to learn the truth of his rival-brother’s heart. 

“He did a great thing, and he is a beacon of hope,” Fëanaro said after a pause. “Thou hast cause for to be proud.”

“He hath thy Silmaril.”

“Entrusted to his keeping by the Valar, in line with their purposes. No grudge hold I against him, who is no thief and moreover would come down to earth an he could, methinks. But Mandos lied not when he said that Manwë is King over all.” 

“‘Tis as thou sayest and Eärendil’s blessing is his prison. And I too know well the imposition of Manwë’s will. I had rather Thorondor had taken my corse to Lalwen. But my body was made a symbol of his favor for Turgon.”

To Lalwen. Not to Findecano, nay, but to Lalwen, Fëanaro marked. 

“Pleased to wield their power over the Quendi are the Valar, they who let Morgoth loose amongst us.”

“Aye, so they are, and so they did, and thus by that error was Finwë our father slain. But not all their ways are ill, for it was by Manwë’s will and blessing that Maedhros was delivered from his torment, and elsewise he would have perished, and the Noldor given themselves to civil war. But we were guests here once, freely come and free to leave, whatever threats might be contrariwise made. And we are guests no longer.” Nolofinwë said. 

“Speakest thou sooth, I deny it not, and methinks it had been better if the Valar had adhered to the designs of Eru, and left us in the lands made for our habitation. For we were not made for the gardens of the gods, and methinks the Valar erred.”

“But had our father remained in Middle-Earth, all our people would be as wraiths in these latter days. Sorrowful is the fate of the Quendi, and know I now wherefore Death is said to be the Gift of Men.”

“It would not have come to that, nay for we would have found a solution for our survival. I would have found a remedy for our plight, and I would have been joined by all those valiant who will not lie down without hope and accept such a fate. For Eru meant for us to make the world beautiful, and to embellish the Song, and think I not that He meant for us to accept Fading, but that it was to be our Test. Tyelperinquar believed this, and endeavored he to achieve that dream, but exploited was he by evil. Were there no agents of Evil loosed among us, we would succeed.” 

Nolofinwë nodded but spoke no more, and left Fëanaro to his thoughts.

“Guests free to leave,” he said, then and now. Not so had he spoken in the torchlight of the square—ah, but how could he have suffered himself to say aught that agreed with me? He who but a short time later claimed the kingship over all the Noldor. Guests free to leave, he said, and so did I.

Fëanaro looked at Nolofinwë more closely. He was not unlovely, nay but he was fair, his sharp features softened by the blue gloam. His face lacked the uncanny perfect symmetry of Fëanaro’s flawless own, and there was a mole on his neck and another on his hand, but such did not mar his beauty, who was his comely father’s son in face and form. Fëanaro watched as Nolofinwë ran his hands sleepily through his loose curls, dark as the shadows in the pond in the field below the hillside where they lay. His eyes, dull without Treelight, reflected the last vestigial glimmer of the sun. A crumb of lembas stuck to his lip, and Fëanaro thought to flick it away, but he stayed his hand, and said nothing, but lay back to look up at the stars resolutely, and did not look over at Nolofinwë again until morning.    

❖❖❖

‘Twas several days more ere they reached Formenos, that great mansion tucked in the blue foothills of the Pelori, standing tall betwixt the long arms of the mountains. The road thither branched off from the main highway, but after a dozen miles or so the cobblestones became covered with moss and leaves, and eventually disappeared altogether. The forest had grown over the road, and in places there were trees and bushes blocking their path; they only knew that they were still on the road because its former course made a depression in the land, and the ghosts of ditches bordered the high banks, but an untrained eye would not suspect that this had once been anything other than woods. On each side of the old road the pine woods were thick, too many grown too close too swiftly, and the shadows neath their crowded needles were cool, insulated from the lengthening days. But the forest, despite all appearances, was not unfriendly, and birds sang in the boughs, and squirrels chattered in their nests. But in time the land opened, and the tall pines gave way to cedars, which gave way to meadows where grazed wild cattle and sheep, whose forefathers had been Fëanaro’s stock. The men rode down a long straight lane between two rows of vast willow-oak trees and lo, the house came into view, and they saw that it had been claimed by the living earth, and vines covered its face, leaving not even the windows clear. A cenotaph, a place of death, become a foundation for life, though no doubt its hollow entrails yet remained barren.

The men dismounted, and led the horses across the lawn to approach the manor. A dread weight deepened in their stomachs as they approached the threshold, taking their time as they crossed the paved walkway and up the three long, shallow steps where grass had shot up betwixt the cracks, but the space before the door was clear. Clear, entirely clear, no moss nor grass, no dusty filth nor mildew stain, no blood remaining in the crevices of the stone. Fëanaro had scrubbed it well enough then; had his efforts truly lasted until now, that nothing here should grow nor gather? 

Once only had Nolofinwë travelled hither, and that for their father’s funeral procession, and it had been all he could do not to weep before the others gathered there. It always haunted him that he had not been able to tell his father goodbye, and even more so that he had been wroth with him up until he was murdered. But how can one be wroth with the dead? All that was left was to be wroth with himself. 

Nolofinwë had seen Finwë briefly in the Halls; “I am sorry, Father,” he had said, and though he specified not the trespasses concerned, Finwë knew: the coming before him in pride to execrate his brother, the animosity with which he regarded his father unkinged. And Finwë in answer begged him, “Forgive me, my son,” and though he specified not his trespasses, Nolofinwë knew, oh how well he knew all the manifold ways in which his father had failed him. But Nolofinwë could not judge him, for he was his father’s son, and he esteemed himself hardly any better, and now with the understanding of death he knew why his father had done all that he had done.

He looked at the bare stone and said naught.

Nor did Fëanaro, to whom the memory returned of rushing madly hither. He had ridden his horse hard from the Ring of Doom until her flanks foamed with sweat and she stumbled, worn-out, and thence had Fëanaro raced on foot, and with the vital strength of the Eldar in those days he reached Formenos without having stopped so much as to sleep or eat. He had wished for death, who was made now the first orphan in Aman, that he might join his father and mother, but his spirit did not leave his body, and he found that his sons had taken his sword from him.

But now, but now he felt not the unbearable weight of grief that had consumed him and turned his every drop of blood to a black mortuary flame, scorching and devouring his very sanity, and where it should have been raging he felt a kind of alien emptiness. Seeping up his body like groundwater through the soil, the memories returned to him, of how he had screamed as he held his father’s corpse, how he had wailed, how he had torn his hair, but though the waters filled him they did not drag him down, did not weigh heavy on him, but other than the anxious knot in his stomach he felt no different than he had before they came down the lane. It wasn’t right, but what about it wasn’t right he could not yet say.

But the men stepped around the place of death, and opened the great double doors that hung loosely on warped, rusty hinges, and these creaked, the long agonized groan of the dead forced to stir. 

The vast foyer was dark, what had once been the brightest room in the house. Raising a lantern aloft, Fëanaro saw above them a dangling chain covered in cobwebs. A large prism had hung there once, what had long ago been swallowed into the belly of Unlight, and light from the rosette window had streamed through in snowy beams to be captured and splintered by the prism, and given forth in a thousand rainbows thence reflected in the mirror mosaics on the walls. The light had bounced from mirror-tile to mirror-tile all around, and the whole room had swelled with a bright radiance of many hues. But the window was overgrown, and the crystal devoured, and the blue lantern-light revealed shards of broken tiles swept into the corners of the room. For Morgoth had smashed the walls and damaged them sorely, and in many places the plaster beneath was visible. With a father to bury and a host to muster, Fëanaro had not spared any of his limited time to repairing the house he intended to desert forever.

But forever is not eternal, and as soon as they were settled in, Fëanaro would fix things as best he could.

On the opposite side of the room, between two sweeping flights of stairs was a large arched doorway, and the men passed through it to the deeper parts of the house, to find that every surface was carpeted with a thick layer of dust, and verily their footprints left a trail behind them as if they walked in snow. Cobwebs clustered compounded and pale in every umbrous corner, and black widow spiders hung from every lightless candleholder, and rats scurried at the elves’ approach to slip into cracks in the walls. All the crystal chandeliers had been taken, and barren chains dangled from the ceilings. Through this desolate dilapidation Fëanaro walked slowly, studying the extent of the disrepair with an eagle’s eye, cataloging every damage for to repair it later.

They came at last to the lower parts of the house, where the ceilings were painted white and the walls were decorated in floral murals of psychedelic colors, and at the bottom of a long steep stairwell they came to a round doorway, which had once been sealed with magic runes, and would open only at the hand and voice of Fëanaro and his sons, but it had been forced open, and the splinters of the broken door were gathered on each side of the corridor, and the long hinges hung askew like the warped bones of forsaken skeletons displayed around a stockade

Within that portal sprawled expansive a great gallery where piles of gold and silver and jewels had once been heaped in store. Empty glass shelves lined the walls, where once hundreds of artificial jewels had been displayed in little glass cases or on velvet cushions, each one glowing with a spark of immortal light. Eaten, all of them, long ago. Cups had been piled here, wrought goblets crusted with jewels as thickly as the argentine morning dew, golden statues with gleaming eyes, earrings, necklaces, rings, scores and scores and scores of rings, silver girdles and armcuffs, anklets and bangles; countless works of peerless art had been gathered here once in a kaleidoscopic hoard of incomprehensible proportion. Eaten, all of it, long ago. 

Dread squirmed in Fëanaro’s stomach when he turned his gaze to the dark doorway that awaited him, an ornate thing whose round, gilded, fractured frame was carven with the shapes of leaves and flowers. Beyond the range of the lantern, the chamber yawned like a black pit, what had once overflowed with Light. It was a plain room, walls white-washed and plastered, with a stone table in the center, covered by a many-colored sheet like an altar cloth. They had been a bit sad there, the Silmarils, had not given forth as much of their light with no one to see them in their secret shrine where he had come everyday to gaze upon the peerless work of his hands.

Fëanaro approached slowly, scarcely breathing, and stood on the ruined threshold amidst the wreck of an iron door, riven all to pieces, and remembered how he had felt when he had first come here and they were gone.

“Leave me,” he said curtly, and Nolofinwë hesitated, but marking Fëanaro’s mood he quit the chamber, and went whither Fëanaro cared not, so long as he was gone.

They said that the jewels had burned the Enemy’s hands, and even enclosed in their casket they had aggrieved him. Good then, that he had allowed Varda to hallow them, that the Enemy might rightly suffer, though not nearly enough, for his crime.

Fëanaro put his hands on the altar, felt where the jewels had once lain, cupped his hands as if to hold them, breathed in deep as if to inhale the dews of Light that had once danced on the walls. And he felt nothing. Nay, Fëanaro felt naught as he visualized the ghost of the jewels before him, he felt naught as he dwelt upon their absence, he felt naught as he looked on this barren, desecrated chamber.

I have released them. They are no longer mine. But how is it that I have released myself?

Fëanaro had always been a vessel of grief. From the time of his infancy, carrying the grief of his mother. From his adolescence, carrying the grief of his father’s remarriage. From manhood, the grief of his father’s death. But now to be hollow, to be empty, to be barren—verily he could feel the shape where his grief had once lived and throve, but it was all gone. He massaged that place in his heart as if to return the flow of blood and bring it back to life, but no matter how he might work the muscles, no matter how he might push his breath into deflated lungs, nothing stirred, no pain, no hurt, no sorrow, no fruit of his loss justly, so justly arisen. And finally, at last, after replaying those old nightmares over and over and over in lurid detail, grief arose, but it was merely grief that he did not grieve, grief not for his father nor his mother, nor his jewels, but grief for Fëanaro. For what was Fëanaro if he did not grieve? Nay, Fëanaro was dead and gone, and this resurrected thing that stood in the sanctum was merely his shade, a remnant of the man augmented into a convincing imitation of the whole, but the man no longer. Twice had Fëanaro been born, and twice had he died, the death of the life of his hröa in the first, and the death of his innermost self in the second. 

Suddenly, Fëanaro quit the empty sepulcher, and went to see the rest of the house.

His sons’ rooms were largely intact, but here and there statues in the corridors had been smashed. At the end of a long corridor stood two large vases, thankfully unharmed but covered in so much dust that their white glaze appeared brown, and between these was an ornate door to a spiral staircase up a slender tower. Three towers had Formenos: one for a star observatory, one where he had kept a palantir, and one where he made his bed. To the second made Fëanaro now his way.

Great was the stone in the house of Fëanaro, and great its power, for it was tied to every other palantir that the craftsman had made, a master stone, verily greater in power than even the gargantuan stone on Eressëa, and this, like the latter, could see across the sea and into the furthermost places. If he so wished he could make a call on Eressëa now, he thought as he waved his hand over the dark, reflective surface of the stone, and therein saw a semblance of the flame of perception stir—yea, the stone greeted him gladly and invited her maker to use her as was his right. Against its glassy surface he splayed his hands, and it was cool but tingling with magic against his palms, but he did not quite open the channels of connection, though they lay expectant at the ready. Anon he would make a call to Eressëa and inquire about Lalwendë’s doings and wellbeing, and haply ask that she be summoned to speak with him—and to Nolofinwë of course. If she knew they were here she would soon be calling her most beloved brother—had Arafinwë sent a message? For Arafinwë had a palantir too, did he not? A seeing-stone sat in the Mindon, and it was not unlikely, though not certain, that the youngest son, jealous of his brothers, would wish to speak with them. To his confusion, they had not provided him with a wholly satisfactory explanation for their flight when they had departed Tirion in sudden haste; and Arafinwë bid them farewell with a strange and conflicted expression: relief perhaps, that they sought not to take his throne, but grief too, that they shunned his company once again in favor of each other, almost as soon as they had returned to him. I have ever had little to say to him; I perceive he is a kind man, but he shall learn no more of my secrets now than he ever did afore.

Fëanaro quit the chamber, and skipped down the spiral staircase and down a long hall to the other side of the house, where awaited him another door flanked by two similar large vases, intricately painted in blue. To his bedchamber he now ascended, and looked in fondness on his old things, almost exactly as he had left them, for Morgoth had not entered the towers, albeit the drapes around the tall windows were faded slightly by the sun, but only slightly, for the dyes used were of an immortal fastness found only in the Undying Lands. 

When the curtains were drawn back, the sun sparkled on the chandelier, whose every shining crystal was a prism, and at once a thousand rainbows danced over the walls and played on the thick, intricately-patterned rugs. Fëanaro found the figure-eight path where his pacing had once worn down the plush pile; he had seldom slept in the bed, though it was far more rich and sumptuous than any bed in Valinor except perhaps that of his father, and he preferred to sleep on his feet instead, much to Nerdanel’s chagrin; it made his dreams more productive, and besides, he could hardly abide lying still. 

Fëanaro looked around the brightly-illumined circular chamber, felt the floor beneath his feet and saw the rainbows playing on his body, and felt deeply that he had come home—yea, forsooth this was the only place he could now consider to be his home, for Tirion belonged now to others who had made it theirs in his absence, and at every turn he had been reminded that he was an alien. But here, everything was his, this whole house the product of his designs, and no one else had ever laid claim to it. And as he had rebuilt his soul’s house, so too would he rebuild his body’s house, and at last be home in both spirit and flesh.

But if a man is at home, it is meet that he dress like he is at home, and forthwith Fëanaro descended the stair to the floor beneath the bedchamber, which was dedicated to his dressing room and his privy. Here in Formenos he was in the past again, so it was sensible to array himself after the manner of the past, which no doubt Nolofinwë would be doing as soon as he was able to get out of his travelling clothes.

Fëanaro was relieved that he had left behind as many of his garments as he had when he left Aman, for he had followed his own advice to pack lightly, and from the well-stocked wardrobe he selected a long dagged tunic with voluminous sleeves. The fabric was white at first glance, but a shift of the light revealed that it was actually woven of many colors, although it was dotted all over with red and silver paisleys. He had left behind little of his jewelry, but he found a few slender diamond rings and a thick silver wristcuff adorned with turquoise. Among his things was a torq of twined gold and silver, and a circlet made of the same dual metals twisted together; these were given to him by his teacher Mahtan as a coming of age present, and though they had been dear to him, he had not carried them into exile on account of the ill-regard with which he and Mahtan had held each other in those last few bitter years. But all was forgiven now, and he crowned himself and wrangled the stiff torq around his neck, uncomfortable, yes, but once upon a time a signifier of status. He studied himself in the mirror and judged himself presentable enough, dressed well enough to go out by his old standards. Verily Aracano would have nothing to balk at this time. He had been so very offended when Fëanaro had appeared before Manwë in his plainest attire; oh his face had been an inscrutable and blank mask of course, but his eyes, oh how his eyes had broadcast his delicious displeasure. Wherefore wert thou wroth with me, son of Indis? Ever had I outdone thee, arraying myself in finer jewels and finer robes made by more skillful hands what thou couldst never access, and for once thou wert the one with the better aspect! In that sumptuous robe so crusted with diamonds that the cloth-of-gold beneath was well-nigh invisible. 

But it was all in the past now, was it not? Aye, but those contentious twain had retreated back through the pages of time and come to dwell in the house of history, and therefore ‘twas meet to dwell on those old disagreements, which had followed them in their memories through death. The aim, was, after all, to play at being foes. Well if they were to be foes, let Fëanaro play the old dance and go downstairs in his rich raiment to find Nolofinwë in his dirty travelling clothes. 

Nolofinwë had made himself busy and unloaded the horses and brought their goods and foodstuffs into the kitchen: a bag of flour, a bag of grits, cornmeal, several jars of preserves, dried and salted meats; enough to hold them over until they should be able to get food from the garden outside, which they had yet to see, but expected it to be in a sorry state, and indeed as they would later find it was no longer a garden so much as a wild field occupied largely by edible plants. 

Supper was lembas with cherry preserves, and the men ate largely in silence while leaning against the wooden countertops, and when they were finished they realized that, lacking servants, they themselves must wash the plates and knives with which they had eaten. Nolofinwë looked around, wondering where was the place to draw water, but Fëanaro drew his attention to a sink on the other side of the dim, dusty room. The spigot sputtered for a minute, but then water came forth, at first a trickle of brown sludge and then a brown stream, which Fëanaro let run until it cleared.

“Devices such as these are only newly-invented and newly-instituted in Tirion, and yet thou didst devise such a thing so long ago?” Nolofinwë said in wonder.

“Verily. I would have shared it with the rest of Valinor but…thou wittest how it was.”

Nolofinwë nodded in assent but continued to marvel. In truth this whole house was a marvel, of architecture, technology and art, vast, intricately decorated, limitless in its wonders, and this, this all was Fëanaro’s work. What a great mind, what genius his brother possessed! Nolofinwë could not but admire him, and as Fëanaro rolled up his sleeves and proceeded to wash the dishes, Nolofinwë gazed at him who was the fairest of all the Noldor, with his large hands, his corded forearms that loved to toil, as any Noldo should.

And we shall toil in this place, and may it make us glad.

❖❖❖

And toil they did, for Fëanaro began before dawn the next day in repairing the shattered mosaics and sweeping away the dust, but he denied Nolofinwë’s offers to assist him, and perceiving that there was work to be done without, he went outside and evaluated what it would take to clear the vines off the windows. He had a knife and shears from the garden shed, and he started on the ground floor and moved up. No few times did his feet slip as he clung to the walls of the higher stories, but he always caught himself. Thrilled by the danger, he cut and cut with increasing eagerness, climbing more recklessly along the overgrown, mildewed windowsills. And for once he smiled, for here was a challenge, a real challenge for his body, and since his return he had undertaken no meaningful labor, excepting his contests with Fëanaro, which had been rather contrived as has been expounded elsewhere, and he felt at last that he had some purpose. Each cleared window was proof of his efforts, and pride swelled in his chest whenever he looked back at his accomplishments; pride swelled when he felt the sweat soaking through his shirt. Afterwards the windows all needed washing, and this was more perilous even than the cutting, but he did not fall, and successfully washed every window clean of dirt and grime.

With the first of his labors completed (and it was no swift labor by any means), Nolofinwë went out to the aforementioned garden. He saw the long green blades of young corn, saw sprawling vines with yellow flowers that he took for squash, the dark leaves of mature collards, all of this surrounded by tall grass, thistles, lamb’s ear, and other wild plants. On the other side of the field there was a grape arbor, where vines grew there still, and beyond them were blueberry bushes, all tangled up with dog fennels and horseweed. Nearby stood an orchard of peach trees, and though the old trees remained, new ones clustered around their knees, and other plants grew there withal, bayberries, and other shrubs that crowded out once broad and open aisles. Beyond that the wild livestock grazed; the stone walls of the pasture were in disrepair, and Nolofinwë had no doubt that come harvest time the animals would find their way thither to feast on the bounty of vegetables. He would have much work to do; work which he knew about but had little experience in, being a prince and a warlord and no farmer who works the land. The work was even harder and more trying than he had anticipated, and when he stopped for lunch his brow was beaded with sweat, and he regretted that he had ever taken his farmers for granted. 

He weeded the former garden, pulling up the nonedible plants by the roots, lest they choke out his crops. He would have liked it if the crops were growing in rows, and would have liked still more if they were all yet within the bounds of the garden’s fences, but the plants had taken root, and there was nothing really to be done about moving them, lest the roots be damaged. 

In the corner of the vegetable patch he found strawberries, red and ripe, crisp and juicy, and he ate these with alacrity, and thanked Yavanna that she still provided for him. No flowers grew at his feet, but he hoped that he still had her blessing, and he prayed to her that she would bless his labors, but a shadow of doubt flickered behind his thought.

❖❖❖

On the day that Fëanaro completed his repairs, Nolofinwë brought strawberries and blueberries back to the house to share with him, and in the now-spotless drawing room the twain ate teacakes and drank expensive tea, savoring this moment of sweetness—although naturally they drank the tea oversteeped and black as Fëanaro liked it. But they felt properly civilized while enjoying their teatime: a deserved rest and a proper prelude to more work. Fëanaro had informed Nolofinwë that he had a store of pig iron in the forge, but it must be transformed into steel ere the swords could be forged, and the process would be laborious—and he wished for no assistance. It would be some time then, before they dueled. And having nothing to fight over at the moment, they chatted, and Nolofinwë expressed a desire to go to Eressëa after their duel had been won, there to visit with Lalwendë, and perhaps even dwell there for a while. 

“Always close were ye as children. Was it likewise in Beleriand?” Fëanaro ventured.

“Aye, Lalwen is dear to me, and ever was she a bright light in dark times, and she comforted me in our sorrow.”

“When didst thou take her as thy wife?”

“I beg pardon?”

“Thou hast ears.”

“I know naught of what thou saist.”

“Oh but thou dost.” Fëanaro waved his hand. “Thinkest thou that I am blind? Desired Lalwen to be thy wife since she was a little girl; any observant eye would have discerned it. And when speakest thou of her—something in thine eye betrayeth that thou sharedest her unnatural lusts. She comforted thee? I doubt not she did.” A devilish grin stretched his lips.

Nolofinwë studied him for a moment. Ah this was unfortunate and unlooked for, but Fëanaro was known for his skills of perception, and Nolofinwë should have expected him to uncover the truth sooner or later. Well then, if he could not hide it, he must claim it, for Nolofinwë dreaded to show anything but pride to Fëanaro. And why not be proud? Why not be proud that he had rejected the law that brother must not lie with sister? He accounted himself a rebel against the Valar, yea verily as much a rebel as Fëanaro, and like Fëanaro he had chosen to live as a man according to his own will, being lord and master over his own soul and flesh, and he was not one who in meekness obeys the mandates of those who had failed them.

“Verily I took her on the Ice, when lay we close for warmth, but my lover for many long years she remained. Lalwen, her craft is love, and skillful was she in my bed, but for all her talent and her store of wisdom professed she that I was the greatest lover she had ever known in the flesh.” Nolofinwë’s tone was haughty, and he lifted his chin proudly.

Fëanaro laughed with vicious glee. “Thou boastest of knowing thy sister! How low hast thou fallen, Indision, how wretched art thou become, given over wholly to sin. What would thy dear, righteous mother make of this?” His sneer positively dripped with derision, and his silver eyes glittered with delight, exulting in Nolofinwë’s fall.

“What doth thy mother Serindë make of thee, O slayer of kin?” Nolofinwë said in a voice low and cold, like a blade to slide between another’s ribs.

Fell flames of wrath danced in Fëanaro’s eyes and he almost rose, ready to curse Nolofinwë, but he mastered his ire and settled back into the couch and crossed his legs, as if making himself smaller would contain his outrage.

“Do not speak of her thusly, I warn thee.” There was still a hint of danger rumbling like distant thunder in his voice, ready to burst if another provocation should come.

“I do unto thee as thou dost to me.” Nolofinwë said perfectly calmly and innocently, as if there had been no offense given nor taken.

They glared daggers at each other for a moment, but nodded in a truce, each of them feeling intimately the same hurt that his mother had not wished to see him. Miriel would admit no visitors, and Indis had not deigned to come to Tirion to see her son, rebel that he was, traitor against the gods and mother alike. So, condemned are we both, and by those who bore us abandoned. Good ‘tis that he knoweth this sorrow also—good is it that he who had always been so abundantly loved now shareth this pain, Fëanaro thought.

Nolofinwë was fain to redirect the conversation to its previous course, and he had not exhausted his store of sexual exploits to brag about. “But Lalwen was not my only lover in Middle-Earth. Another I knew also, a mortal Man by the name of Hador.” Nolofinwë spread his legs and ran his fingers through his unbound hair. 

Fëanaro laughed again. “Thou? With a man? I marvel at thee, son of Indis, that one as righteous as thyself shouldst wallow with one of his own sex.”

“Speak for thyself, brother. Wot I well what passed among the apprentices of Mahtan in the forge.”

“It is no dishonor betwixt men of like worth and valor.”

“Speakest thou soothly, and no dishonor was it when I took Hador, nor when he, warrior that he was, took me in turn.”

“He took thee?” Fëanaro leaned forward, suddenly animated by the old flame of intrepid scientific curiosity. “Tell me of it, Nolofinwë. Is it pleasing?” For Fëanaro had but frotted with the worshippers of Aulë as a youth, and never had he entered another man, much less been entered in turn.

“Aye, it is pleasing, as much as it is with a woman. Mayhap, even more, an unparalleled bliss. To lie with a great man, to tumble with him in the violent throes of love, to grapple with him, strong arms locked together, to bring him to the ecstasy of spilling, few greater delights exist upon this earth.” A subtle, arrogant smile flicked up the corner of Nolofinwë’s mouth.

Fëanaro’s eyes narrowed; it did not escape him how . . . lasciviously Nolofinwë had described his lovemaking with Hador, nor how pointed had been his indulgent details, and he quickly caught what he believed to be Nolofinwë’s drift. “Thou fanciest thyself the greater lover.” 

“Is that what thou hearest?” Nolofinwë drawled, and his hand paused in carding his hair.

“If so arrogant art thou, then prove thy prowess. Empty are words without deeds to show for them.”

“Dost thou import—”

“Yea, another challenge shall it be, another game of ours, another spin of the dance. Grapple with a man, saist thou? Lock arms with him? Such thou and I are fain to do already. Come! Whoso shall first spill shall be the loser.”

“Then thou shalt surely lose, for thou art hasty.”

“Boast not too soon, son of Indis! I was wont to plough my woman until she could bear it no longer, and begged me, pleaded with me for release, and nightly I bedded her thusly. But I will let thee decide: wilt thou be the ploughman or the field? I defer humbly to thy great and extensive expertise.” 

“The field, for I have known it, and thou hast not, and ‘twould be more just, methinks.”

“So mote it be.”

The men doffed their old fashioned robes and looked each other up and down; Nolofinwë was comelier now than he had been at the boxing ring only weeks ago—his thinness had turned all to muscle, and his thighs and arms grown greater in circumference. A slight tan colored his cheeks and forearms, which before had been so pallid—whiteness was favored among the aristocracy, but Fëanaro could not but love the proof of a man’s labor on his body. Fëanaro looked down at the thick thatch of hair crowning a cock as perfect as his own. Not too large by any means, no sign of immodesty or the brutishness that a lengthy member imports, but verily the ideal moderate length. Nolofinwë was overall rather hairy withal, what with coarse curls on his chest, and Fëanaro could not but desire his masculinity.

And Fëanaro, oh what can one say of Fëanaro save that he was the fairest of all the Noldor? Nolofinwë looked at him hungrily, at his perfect face cast red in the light of the stained-glass window, his large hands, nimble, dextrous fingers nicked by his work, his long, long legs, the black waves of his thick locks tumbling down voluminously to his navel—were Fëanaro a meal Nolofinwë would have verily devoured him. And his eyes—oh his eyes were terrible, gleaming silver with the thrill of the challenge, pregnant with all the ferocity of a crouching tiger, knife-sharp in their unnatural brilliance. How sweet, to be run through by such a gaze. 

They approached each other slowly, like two wolves assessing each other’s strength before they touch, but Nolofinwë was the first to act, and he touched his fingers to Fëanaro’s cheek. He suppressed a shiver at the alien touch of another, but the intimacy of that simple touch caused his blood to heat, and he put a hand on Nolofinwë’s hip. Nolofinwë ran his hand along Fëanaro’s jaw, glided down his neck and came to cup the muscle of his bosom, and Fëanaro, likewise, ran his hand over the sharp angles of Nolofinwë’s narrow hips, and reached down to cradle his ample buttocks. Nolofinwë exhaled loudly and reached up to touch his brother’s hair, to twine his hands in those raven locks, to bury his hungry fingers in those waves and seek out the scalp to grip him by the roots. Fëanaro nudged his hips towards Nolofinwë and their cocks brushed against each other, red tips nosing out of their foreskins, veins filling up dark with the blood of iniquity, their father’s blood, the sanctioned sinner, begetter of their conflict, in vengeance for whom they both had gone to war, who now warred together for they knew how to do nothing else.

The ground was not a wholly uncomfortable place to take a cock, and the decorative pillows under his head and bottom served Nolofinwë well. Fëanaro studied him for a moment, lying in patient, stoic expectation, and he recalled what he had read about this act. He had found a book at his house—a banned book, to be sure—a book belonging to one Curufinwë Atarince, who had wedded only to have a son—that described in exhaustive detail how the homosexual act could be performed, complete with diagrams on the subject—truly the novel printing press was a wonderful invention—and Fëanaro had voraciously devoured the esoteric knowledge therein, and he accounted his present venture as a perfect opportunity to put his research into practice. As such, he licked his finger and put it to Nolofinwë’s sphincter and pressed it inside. Nolofinwë’s muscles clenched, and then loosened; Fëanaro could feel his pelvic floor relaxing under his gentle twisting. Good, if he is too tight I shall spill the quicker. He did not take much time more in preparing his half-brother, for he was impatient to complete this challenge and he gave himself over to haste, and he spat upon his hand and slicked his cock. Like a sword his tip was pressed against Nolofinwë’s hole, like a sword he pressed against him in challenge, and with a sudden, swift motion he plunged inside and stabbed his kinsman. Nolofinwë cried out; it hurt, how it hurt, but oh how it pleased him to be pierced as Fëanaro’s cock found that sensitive place inside him, but he grit his teeth lest he cry out again and give Fëanaro cause to believe he was winning.

This would have been so much better if they still hated one another, Fëanaro thought. How delightful it would have been to see the hallowed hatred in Nolofinwë’s eyes, defiant and desperate as he clung to the hope of a victory he craved more than aught else. How much stronger would have been the grip of his puissant hands on Fëanaro’s hips, how the fingernails would have dug into the skin and drawn blood. How sweet to see a good man give himself to violence in pursuance of an obsession stronger than any matrimonial bond. How sweet it would have been, to fight to the death as they fucked, loathing one another, loathing what they did, and in their loathing find their inexhaustible lust for life. Ai! What a wicked thing had Mandos done, what an injustice was his rule that his prisoners must cast aside their hatred if they would have their freedom! The price Nolofinwë had paid for his liberty was the chemical castration of his own heart, and this same fee had Fëanaro paid as well, for the better he had thought at first, but now he deemed that a small amount of hatred is good for a body. The Nolofinwë beneath him was not unvirile, but to pin him down, to jerk his cock mercilessly, to pound the hole yet unused in this new body, why it simply wasn’t as fun if he wasn’t fighting back with all the fury and determination of a temerous, intrepid usurper taking down a king. It irked Fëanaro. It irked him something awful, but he could not go down to the Halls and give Namo a piece of his mind, so instead he fucked Nolofinwë harder, angling his hips so as to find his prostate better.

But though he had been made to excise his hatred and cast it into the sea of redemption, Nolofinwë retained something of his pride, and something more of his cleverness, and he ran his hands through Fëanaro’s tresses and pulled his head closer. He caressed Fëanaro’s face as if he were a lover, and kissed him deeply, oh how deeply he kissed him, tenderly and lovingly. It was a clever move, Fëanaro admitted: the lips are an erogenous zone, and kissing inflames the heart, and thus enhances one’s arousal. And more than that, it worked. The tension built in Fëanaro’s body and he slowed his pace, but oh Nolofinwë was cunning, and just as Fëanaro thought he might be able to maintain his advantage, Nolofinwë caressed his ears, those sensitive organs, and they burned with the vermillion heat of passion. With all the ardor of a true and earnest lover, Nolofinwë grasped his brother’s hair, grasped it even at the nape of his neck, and roughly brought his head down where he could lick his lobe. Like the unsteady waters of a fountain, a shudder passed through Fëanaro’s tense body, and he jerked away, for he knew that if he suffered Nolofinwë to continue he would surely spill. Oh but look at him, look at the proud son of Indis, his eyes as heavy as the humidity of summer, his lips wet with the dew of kisses, his face flushed red, red, so very red with sickening lust. Fëanaro’s hand, dry now, for the spit on it was long gone, enacted his vengeance and tugged the turgid cock harder. How lovely it should have been, to see his enemy’s eyes roll back as he spilled, how glorious to defeat him in the battlefield of sex, to lay him low like this, his stomach covered in the fluid of his life, spilled in payment for his hubris, oh let thou be humiliated son of Indis! Let thy superciliousness turn to shame, oh braggart, oh treacherous misleader of men! But his victory was hollow as a tree, verily as empty as a broken vessel, nay as a vessel that was never filled though its mouth was wide and its volume great, and lo, he withdrew in haste lest he waste his seed—for in coming first Nolofinwë had lost something of the life of his fëa to be reaped by Fëanaro, reaped by him who had ploughed the defeated man, laid low upon the earth, and he, prideful as he was, would retain his prize if he may, nor would he admit in his spilling that Nolofinwë’s lovely flesh held any sway over him.

“I win,” Fëanaro said flatly, and quit the room on heavy feet, carrying about him a thick smoke of darkling wrath, but his cock was yet stiff before him.

❖❖❖

It was good that Fëanaro shut himself in the steelworks the next day. Humiliated, Nolofinwë would not remain in the house, but went outside to work, that by his labors he might forget how he had been shamed, and the raw bitterness of his defeat might be pushed from his mind. Forsooth Fëanaro had won this round, which Nolofinwë had so arrogantly believed to be an assured victory. How was it that he had not considered that Fëanaro would stroke his cock? Had he become a dotard and a fool in his death? And worse, Fëanaro had seen his pleasure, had seen how he delighted in being impaled on a cock, on Fëanaro’s cock, on the cock of his enemy. Truly was he laid low by his own folly. But he recommitted his resolution and dedicated himself to the hope of a future conquest. When my brother’s labors are done, I shall prove to him that I remain a worthy opponent. 

With long labors he rebuilt the pasture walls and saw to the garden, where he erected a scarecrow, for although neither blight nor flood nor drought would harm his crops, they were subject nonetheless to the appetites of the other dwellers in Aman, and the crows and deer were fain to share his yield, whether he would it or no. The squash flowers grew into infant fruits, the berries ripened and bled fresh and sweet in his mouth, the grapes appeared small and green on the vines, and the corn shot up higher every day. Cicadas buzzed, announcing that the spring had turned into summer, and the sun, high overhead, made the shadows shorter and shorter each day. And despite his efforts to stop the sieve that had been implanted in place of his heart, Nolofinwë found that he could not be wroth at Fëanaro over what he had done, over his humiliation, over how he had walked out so cruelly, but like the sweat that ran in rivulets down his spine, his anger trickled greasy down the drain, never to be recovered no matter how he might grasp at it. A strange and blasphemous conceit came to him as he remembered the sensation of Fëanaro’s lips, the feeling of his heat pressed against his body, the touch of his hand on his cheek; a queer and alien conceit of unimaginable preposterousness but nonetheless logically and perfectly reasonable—but as soon as this conceit arose, he dismissed it with the force with which he threw the horses’ manure out of their stalls, and left it like so much refuse on the ground. 

The dried cow patties, the uprooted weeds, these would be fuel for the kitchen fire. The Eldalië had a custom to make fires out of the smallest amount of fuel and maintain it for many hours with the subtle power that the Second Kindred call magic, and according to this custom Nolofinwë would have plenty enough fuel to cook with. And for the forge, coal remained for them to use. But Nolofinwë wished for wood, and when he strode out to the forest he gazed upon the immortal trees, upon boles and boughs more ancient than his first life, and even the youngest were older than any tree of Endorë ever was, and he looked upon those perfect trees, upon the leaf mould where no dead branches lay, upon the forest floor where no fallen logs decayed, and he grieved the cruelty of Paradise, that he must take a life to gain what Endorë had offered up to him freely in her cycles of birth and death, for the Earth gives and the earth takes and renews all things through the blessing of rot. But the part of the mind of Iluvatar that first conceived of rot was given to Melkor who is fallen, and Manwë, knowing only the divine thoughts and the purity from which he was created, can not comprehend decay.

Nolofinwë approached a pine tree with an axe. The golden blood of its sap oozed from its scaly bark, seeping amber from fissures between layers and layers of dark tree-skin, gray with lichen at the edges. Peeling one of these layers away, he saw how the bark was paler beneath it, even as his skin was paler beneath his clothes, and he snapped the flake, snapped it and turned it over in his hand, and snapped it again before letting it fall. 

In Elder Days Yavanna had given unto the elves groves of trees to harvest for their uses, and as soon as these trees were felled they regrew, that no forests in Aman would ever be destroyed for the Children’s wants. But it had not been so in Middle-Earth, and they had cut down trees at need, and when they did so they thanked the tree for its life, but they took not the lives of trees lightly, and cut no more than they needed. They had built stockades of great logs, had learned to burn wood on the coldest winter nights, had learned to make tar from the pines, and they had learned too that wood is the best fuel for cooking, and Nolofinwë, who purposed to slaughter one of the hogs roaming in the fields, would cook it not with a flame from grass, but from the fragrant wood of a tree. 

He swung the axe. Blasphemy against the Lady he knew it to be, yea verily ‘twas blasphemy against the giver of fruits. Guilt stung his heart as the axe bit the tree. Guilt stung his heart as he heard the tree scream in his mind. Guilt stung his heart as he realized the true violence of what he did to a creature that could not run. Yavanna would surely know that he cut one of her trees without her leave, for which he could have asked but did not, but the tree had been cloven, its hard flesh had been riven, and with the wound already dealt, he swung the axe again, and again, until the trunk lay prone upon the earth. 

He had cut it well above the place at its root that is the tree’s heart, and putting his hand on the sticky stump, he sang a Song of healing, for these powers had returned to him and were not yet lost, and new little branches with neonate needles emerged from the ruined thing to seek the Sun. Content that the tree would return to life, he directed his attention to the corpse of its upper body, and thereafter spent the whole day and the day after sawing wood, and the mule aided him in dragging back the logs, which he chopped in the yard behind the house. How invigorating was it to swing the axe! How delightful to work his muscles! To feel them ache from use, an ache that meant his strength grew, and grew, and grew until it was as great as it had been in the height of his glory. For Fëanaro assuredly labored hard in the ironworks, and assuredly his brow glistened and his damp back rippled with muscle, and assuredly with mighty arms he would work the bellows and the pulleys, and Nolofinwë would not be outdone again. And so he shed his shirt and with a gleaming back he chopped, and chopped, and chopped, and the riven wood lay in pieces all around him. 

He was the first of them to draw blood. The hog was weakened by the long chase, and the great creature could not evade him, weary as it was, and a spear in its side struck it down. But the hog did not lose its life just yet, for the wound was not a killing shot, but its breath was soon taken from it by a knife to its throat, and its crimson blood watered the earth as the hallowed life left its lungs and bubbled sanguineous from cloven flesh. But Nolofinwë did not pray to Orome when he slew the beast, but drug it back in silence. 

Warm was the blood on his butcher’s hands, and warm the heat of the creature’s flayed muscle, and warm the hunter’s pride at his triumph. How could he not but carve the beast open, break apart its ribs, and seize the heart that his curved blade had caused to stop? He gripped it in his great hand, pulsed it as it had pulsed when it was alive, made that mighty muscle work, and dark blood ran in rivers down his forearm. He put the heart to his lips and drank, drank the blood of his prey as if he himself had become a beast, delighting and exulting in violence. This life, given to me. This life, taken by me. This life, nurturing mine own. This life, dead so that I live. As it was in Endorë, as it shall be in Aman. He kissed the heart worshipfully and replaced it, and prepared to cook the hog. 

❖❖❖

Hard labored Fëanaro in the scalding heat of the forge, hard pumped he the billows as he refined the pig iron into pure ingots. The heat bothered him not, but he welcomed an environment almost as hot as his spirit, and surrounded by fire he exulted, and straining his strength hard, he rejoiced, for he was a smith and he was great, who manned this forge alone, verily alone, a sole man performing this complicated and intensive task, and doing it better than could any other even with aid. Against the guidance of his elders, Fëanaro had always trusted in his own ability and eschewed the ability of others to help, but it was good to prove his skill to himself, and good to prove his endurance, and good to be a man who has made himself. He labored, oh how he labored, how he labored like the paragon son of the Noldor that he was, and he filled the emptiness in his griefless heart with fire, and the vacuousness in his spirit with the ringing sound of beaten iron, and the long shadow of his death he drowned in sweat, until he emerged, reddened and soot-stained, unbent and unweary, having achieved what he had attempted in the most perfect degree. The iron made into ingots, and the ingots made into steel. 

❖❖❖

As this was done, Nolofinwë achieved his own adventure in the most perfect degree, and he laid out a feast for his brother, and the table was laden with meat and vegetables and bread withal. Nolofinwë was largely assured that he was now a better cook than Fëanaro, and he esteemed the culinary arts to be a worthwhile competition sometime down the line, and on the evening of the completion of Fëanaro’s iron-smelting this certainty was fed by Fëanaro’s own stoic admission that the food was in fact rather good. He could not but praise well-developed skill of any kind, and he inquired with Nolofinwë regarding the method of cooking the hog, by what recipe he had made the sauce from the ancient (and now extremely potent) vinegar, and he offered some comment about the quality of the collard greens and the hushpuppies. Nolofinwë made sure not to smile; it would not do to gloat, nor to reveal that he valued Fëanaro’s praise as much as he did. 

What would do would be to initiate Fëanaro into an ancient practice that he was certain would benefit them both equally, while their truce lasted. 

“What knowest thou of semen retention?”

Fëanaro’s hand paused as he dipped his cornbread into the amber pot liquor from the collards. “It is a practice for weak men to conserve what little strength they have,” he replied flatly. 

“Weak? Am I weak, Curufinwë?” Nolofinwë’s eyes narrowed. 

“Didst thou such a thing with Anairë?”

“Long hours I lay with her and never spilt. How else could I fulfill that woman’s bottomless feminine appetites and yet retain my native strength? For to spill often maketh a man weaker in body and in spirit; the great may feel it less, but a loss is a loss.” Nolofinwë drawled. 

“Pray tell, of whatever importance is thine erstwhile practice to me, whose spirit was ever inexhaustible?”

“But inexhaustible art thou now, in this new body? The Spirit of Fire, truly, but though thy body is become great through thy labors, I perceive thy spirit has no more mastery of itself than mine. We are youths, thou and I, and I would that we become men. And by this practice we shall achieve complete and perfect government of our fëar and hröar alike. Is that not thy desire?” 

Fëanaro laughed heartily. “Audacity! If only others were here to witness such unspeakable heights of audacity! Yea, Indision, I will indulge thy whims and lay with thee who art so desperate to bed me an it will forsooth make me stronger.” But as he said this, his eyes glittered with lust, and he took his gaze not away from Nolofinwë as he brought the golden cornbread to his lips. 

❖❖❖

They lay in Fëanaro’s bed—his territory to be true, but it seemed right to do something so intimate in one of their own beds and not in the neutral but impersonal zone of a guest bed, and being the one who proposed this venture, Nolofinwë had gallantly let Fëanaro pick the stage for the next movement of the dance. 

Only the rustling of the sheets and the sound of oiled skin sliding against oiled skin occupied the cavernous silence betwixt them—even their breath was quiet, and quietude was forsooth the object, to lay in passion while restraining the fire of one’s blood. In accordance with Nolofinwë’s instruction, Fëanaro kept the energy in his body under tight control, and directed it away from his cock and into his limbs to prevent orgasm. Nolofinwë held their frotting cocks together in his great hand, but he tried no clever tricks, and surrounded by the ribbons of Fëanaro’s tresses, he looked at Fëanaro without expression, open-eyed, closed lips, smooth brow, showing no sign of the arousal evident in the turgid member he nudged against the partner whose presence was necessary to execute this beneficial act. 

Immense control had Nolofinwë, it seemed, for the memory of the past remained in his spirit. Masterfully he restrained all impulses to claw at Fëanaro, to kiss him with teeth, to surrender to passion, and masterfully he kept his body calm and his spirit controlled. For sex is an act of the fëa, and Nolofinwë’s fëa was as disciplined as the most well-trained soldier, reacting not suddenly to provocation, but enduring all stimulation with immaculate, uninterrupted stoicism. He was, Fëanaro admitted, a worthy man to lie with. And yet, Nolofinwë was Nolofinwë nonetheless.

“Tookest thou my name,” Fëanaro said unprompted. “I was Finwë Finwion until the cusp of manhood, and at thy birth my father took my title, he split it in three, and gave he unto thee the greatest part of it. Nolofinwë of the Noldor, the name of an heir. But how could I hate my father, who betrayed me in taking to wife thy mother, though he knew how sorely it would grieve me who loved him? And so I denied thee my love, just as I scorned thy mother. And then tookest thou my name again—and to give a name, Aracano, to name something is to create it—”

But Nolofinwë interrupted him sternly. “In Araman I purposed to create myself as the High King. I regret it not, for I knew I was a more worthy king than thee, who wert unfit to lead. But knew I well that thou wouldst not return for me once thou didst cross the sea, and thus betrayed we each the other.”

Fëanaro sneered, his rosy lips contorted and his white canines bared as if in malice. “Unfit to lead? Thou, who led’st our people into death and misery on the merciless, hateful Ice, thou call’dest and callest me unfit? Hypocrisy hath ever been thy wont O son of Indis, scion of the blessèd.”

Nolofinwë was silent for a few breaths, unblinking, his eyes locked with Fëanaro’s like two sets of opposing swords. “I confess the bitter truth, that said I things that were mayhap . . . unfair.”

The words echoed between them like a howling in the hills, cruel words Nolofinwë had spoken within Fëanaro’s hearing, for to prove to those gathered there that the rule over all the Noldor was rightly due to him: “Moreover I have an errand in Middle-Earth, the avenging of the blood of my father. Fëanaro seeketh first his stolen treasures.” Words whose memory would have aroused bitter enmity, had not their bitterness been sacrificed.

Fëanaro studied him steadily as more memories of the past welled up, now clarified with the understanding that had been revealed to him in Mandos, when the foggy miasma of mistruth had been flushed from his fey mind, and the machinations that had ensnared him were made as bare as his fëa. “I myself confess that in spite of my great hatred for Morgoth, deceived was I by lies I knew not to be lies,” he said slowly as if it pained him, like walking on nails, “for came each lie from trusted lips, who saw in those stories a grain of truth, and I confess I believed about thee that which I wished to believe.”

“Thou didst threaten my life.” Nolofinwë’s voice was as hard-edged as the longest greatsword, but its sharpness had been dulled. 

“Believed I thee a threat to mine—didst not also call for blades to be made? Didst not also build a hoard of arms?”

Nolofinwë sighed heavily, but he did not avert his gaze, and stared into Fëanaro’s quicksilver eyes. “The Enemy knew of our jealousy, and he exploited it, taking a bruise and growing it into a cancer.” He put his hand on Fëanaro’s shoulder as his hips rolled and he rubbed against his brother, oil slicking the spaces betwixt his long fingers. Oil slicking the long gulf that lay betwixt Araman and Losgar, two sides of the same sea, opposite shores of a betrayal joined now in iniquity. 

“If he had not come amongst us, thinkest thou that we could have become true brothers, as sworest thou to be?” Fëanaro asked matter-of-factly, as it were purely a hypothetical no different from a scientific theory.

But Nolofinwë roughly grabbed Fëanaro by the hips, rolled him onto his back, and took his place atop him, squeezing their cocks so tight that his nails bit into Fëanaro’s skin. “True brothers a’ready are we, Fëanaro, each hungry for the right to rule. Did I not also seek vengeance against the Enemy? Did we not both hie to shed our lifeblood on the Enemy’s threshold? Was not I, as thee, fey and possessed by the allure of death, forsaking all love for my own life at the end? We are of the same mettle, thou and I, so how could I but follow thee as swore I to do?”

Fëanaro took a deep breath as the pressure on his frenulum built into inebriating pleasure, and he willed his body to back away from the cusp of bliss. 

“In time I might have admitted that we are alike, in pride and valor and in worth, were there no foe to mislead us, but, knowest thou it would have been no easy thing.” Fëanaro said stiffly, but Nolofinwë knew he spoke soothly. 

Nolofinwë leaned down to kiss him, a slow solemn kiss like the sealing of a vow everlasting, but when the kiss ended, as if the sea closed, as if grinding ice and fire melted into sweet waters beneath the innumerable stars, he kept his lips on Fëanaro’s, breathing in his breath, sharing in his life, feeling his thrumming heart beat in his flushed chest beneath him, joined, joined together in the flesh with his brother-foe in rapturous union until the dawn arrived as rosy as the blush on their cheeks; albeit even in such bliss they kept their spirits tightly reined, forbidding themselves to be tangled up like bridegrooms whose treacherous spirits braid themselves into a marriage bond and lay bare their minds to be woven together. That queer conceit returned to Nolofinwë and he suffered himself to name that which was heinous blasphemy unto themselves ere he cast it aside again: If I can no longer hate him, at least let me love him. 

❖❖❖

Hot flames danced in the furnace, hot flames that stoked joy in the heart of one who could no longer grieve, and calm in the heart of one who could no longer rage. 

Hot flames danced in the furnace, hot flames burning on coal, hot flames Nolofinwë fed with the bellows. 

Hot sparks flew as the hammer struck the metal that would become the blades, and as Fëanaro beat the metal into shape, Nolofinwë Sang over it for to enchant his sword as its predecessor had been enchanted, and Fëanaro Sang over his own blade likewise, and poured within it his power and his subtle skill. 

An aliform crossguard Fëanaro crafted for Nolofinwë while the other watched attentively, and he set in those intricate hilts many iridescent jewels that he had lately undertaken to make—verily Fëanaro had put much of his magic into this task, and the making of this thing delighted him, for once again the jewelsmith took up his old crafts, but he forgot not for whom he made this sword, not for what cause.

“Thinkest thou that we may duel without hatred?” He looked up from his work, and met Nolofinwë’s unblinking gaze.

“We duel for we can do naught else,” Nolofinwë said solemnly. “We are dancers tethered together, and when spin my legs so must thine, when leapest thou so must I, when blade is drawn another is drawn to answer it. When neglected we the dance upon our return, I was dead though I lived. How can the dancer keep his life, an he danceth not? Even when the music is gone, he stayeth not, but goeth on and on. Thou wouldst be a living man again, as would I, and therefore duel we must.”

❖❖❖

They met at noon in the great hall and pushed the table and chairs to the side of the room. It was a comely blade Nolofinwë drew from the scabbard, a fine weapon that glowed blue and glittered like ice, whose flat sides were like mirrors, reflecting his narrowed eyes as he held it before him, terrible and azure in the white noontide light pouring in through the vast windows to flood the room in brightness. Fëanaro’s naked flesh glowed in the light, but his hair, tied in a high tail, was as black as obsidian, and his hands were reddened and roughened by his toil. His cock was not entirely limp.

“Tell me, oh Nolofinwë Aracano, tell me the laws of this queer battle. For art thou the challenger, and thou mayest set our course; thou hast decreed a’ready that we must do battle unclothed, that our raiment may be undamaged—though I suspect that other are thy true designs— but pray tell: what other terms have been devised in thy wicked viper’s mind?”

“We fight until one of us, or both of us, may continue no longer, be he disarmed, or fallen from weariness, or sorely wounded. And he who yet standeth in the end shall be the victor. But the loser must lie beneath him, and be entered by him in the flesh.”

“Dost thou purpose to lose then, that I might take thee once more?” Fëanaro taunted.

“Nay, for I would take thee, Curufinwë Fëanaro. Hadst thou thy turn atop me, but the dance moveth, and my time approacheth. I will lay thee low, I will plough thee into the tiles of this hall.”

Fëanaro smirked, but he bowed, and assumed the proper form to begin.

What greater pleasure is there other than the duel? It a union of many arts, of dance, of smithcraft, of manly strength, of wisdom and strategy, requiring agility, speed, an a drive to kill. And no shortage of these virtues had the duelists in Formenos, whose blades crossed with a ringing report, and sparks flew as the blue blade smote the white. But Fëanaro laughed as he parried and drove Nolofinwë backwards. Forward and backwards the tide of war shifted, each man gaining ground and losing it and recovering it again with deft and measured usages of the blade.

“Hold not thyself in check,” Fëanaro taunted as he beat back Nolofinwë’s comely, exquisite sword, truly among the finest weapons that Fëanaro had produced, equal to the one in his own hand, now his pride and joy, his first great work since his homecoming. The jeweled hilt glittered with clear gems of starlight, and the blade glowed a subtle white, but when the light of the sun caught her at an angle, she gleamed with an oil-spill iridescence, aye with all the rainbow colors of the heraldic device painted on the wall behind him. Imbued with the fire of his spirit, the sword was like an extension of his arm, fell and terrible, and she cut through the air with a fluid motion. Cut through the skin of Nolofinwë’s shoulder as he essayed to dodge, but not swiftly enough.

Shallow was the cut, but the blood welled up red, the lifeblood of the house of Finwë spilled by his scions. Red, Nolofinwë’s blood shed by his brother. Red, the blood shed from this fabricated body, red and real as had been the blood he had spilt in the smoking pits of Grond. O to be wounded! O for the flesh to be marred in battle! Verily had this been his purpose in demanding a skyclad duel, verily had he designed to be hurt, and he raced madly to return the favor, teeth grit together in answer to Fëanaro’s persistent sneer.

Fëanaro cursed as the tip of the blade scored his cheek from lip to ear, and staggering backwards he touched a trembling hand to his face—Ai! Blood stained his fingertips and the wound stung, oh how it stung with the knowledge that it would leave a scar— but lo, how thrilling was it to display on his visage the evidence of his violent bellicosity!

“Fairest of the Noldor art thou no longer, Curufinwë,” Nolofinwë’s voice boomed haughty as he stepped closer, swinging the cerulean sword in a languid motion that belied the power tensed therein. He darted forward suddenly, leaving Fëanaro no more time to reck the marring of his visage, but the elder son leapt out of the way, and they circled one another, piercing each other through with the dread light of their eyes, the dread light of spirits flared finally to virile life, re-masculated, roaring ferocious like furnace flames, desperate to be released and devour the other. And how could they not be ignited thusly? How, when each beheld the other returned to his full puissance, naked and glowing in the noontide, fair and terrible and glorious? How could they not but lust for each other, men of equal valor? But though their spirits raged within, their discipline was perfect, and each step, each swing of the blade and step of the foot was timed exactly and the distance and speed judged perfectly—and was this precision not proof of the efficacy of that strange rite of Nolofinwë’s? Forsooth all their sins had come to this, their exaltation in a final transgression, a declaration of heresy in the hills, the baptism of blood to turn youths into men, puppets into kings. 

Shed my blood, Fëanaro! Lo, I open myself up to thee, I slow my feet, I am careless in the dance, good, good, cut me my brother, cut me and wound me, that this body may be mine own, that my body may be real, that a record of this day may be graven into my flesh! 

A red gash was slashed and torn across Nolofinwë’s chest, and the dark curls thereon became matted with blood that trickled down his front, down to his navel, down the trail to his cock, to slide down his testes, and drip onto the white tiles. It burned, oh how it burned and throbbed, but oh how his mirthful spirit burned with joy when his blade likewise carved a long, ugly wound in Fëanaro’s left arm, which he had left open, vulnerable to such a vicious caress. 

Fëanaro snarled and ran at Nolofinwë with heedless abandon, but it cost him, and on nimble feet Nolofinwë dealt him a deep wound to his thigh and he stumbled for a moment, but a moment was all Nolofinwë needed to leap upon him and tackle him to the ground.

He pinned him down, a hand grasping the wrist of his sword arm and slamming it onto the tiles with enough force to bruise, and the pain shot through Fëanaro’s hand sharp and cruel, but Fëanaro’s fist remained closed around the sword. But wield it he could not, for Nolofinwë’s hand fixed him to the floor like an iron manacle, nor could Fëanaro essay to rise, for Nolofinwë held the tip of his blade to his brother’s throat, in grave repayment for his ancient gesture. So easily could Nolofinwë pierce his throat, so easily could he cleave his windpipe and send him to Mandos, and this power rushed to his head like a potent wine, and the drumbeat of his triumph beat out a jubilant victory march in his skull. But lo, Fëanaro did not appear dismayed by his defeat, but amid the searing pain that radiated from his leg, he smiled sardonically.

“Hail, Fingolfin, hero returned to the land of the living! Glad am I to taste thy fury at last! The fury so fabled, so famed, but denied to me for so long that I wondered if the tales of thy valor were even true. Come now, son of Indis, come now O usurper mine and take thy precious prize. Thou art the only man—the only opponent worthy to take me thusly. I have tasted thy prowess with the blade; shew me then how well thou canst fuck.” And saying this he spread his legs, and the blood from his thigh pooled beneath him and seeped out into the spaces betwixt the candid tiles. He let the sword fall from his restrained hand.

No sooner had he done this but Nolofinwë, irked by the sharpness of his tongue, clamped the punishing hand over his mouth, crushing his face with all his weight as he spat upon his sword-hand and slicked his cock, already stiff and sanguine-red with his own glistening blood, and heartlessly he stabbed his brother. Fëanaro was tight, tensed by the agony in his leg, and anal penetration pained him, even like a raw and burning wound, but he did not cry out, nay he did not moan against the vise-grip of Nolofinwë’s great large-veined hand that clenched his cheeks and ached on his teeth. The knowledge that he hurt him deterred Nolofinwë not, but he judged the severity of this act to be just deserts for Fëanaro, who had humiliated him in the debating hall, who had outpaced him from the moment of their return, and he thrust into him hard and fast to mete him his due punishment. A crimson thrill shot through him, from his cock to his crown, the flame of the victor’s bonfire alight in his every vein, each jerk of his hips beating his foe down into the dust. 

But hardly had Nolofinwë established a good rhythm ere Fëanaro took advantage of his hands’ freedom, and seized Nolofinwë’s throat, pressing the thumbs into his windpipe, pressing on his arteries hard enough to bruise. An effective strategy, for robbed of breath, and dangerously so, Nolofinwë faltered, and Fëanaro took advantage of this opening, and rolled Nolofinwë onto his back, and began to ride him, easing his chokehold only enough that he would not perish. Throbbing, throbbing, throbbing his stricken thigh protested his movement atop his brother, and his advantage was short-lived, for Nolofinwë once again turned the tide of the war, wresting away the lead in the dance, and grasped Fëanaro by his hair, which had come loose from its ties in the course of their queer battle, and yanking his head down to his own, bit hard on his ear—ai! What a wicked thing to injure another elf’s ears, which are a sensitive organ! What a wicked thing, Fëanaro praised Nolofinwë silently as he permitted himself to be rolled again onto his back to take what Nolofinwë would expertly mete him.

Lying still for a moment, Fëanaro analyzed the sensation in his ass; in the course of their quarrel something in him had loosened, or at least grown accustomed to being fucked, and he knew now the bliss whereof Nolofinwë had spoken, for Nolofinwë’s cock found his prostate, and he marvelled that such perfect pleasure had been hidden away in such an unclean orifice, and he praised Eru his Creator for giving his body organs of ecstasy, organs to share with other men.

“Grapple with a strong man, thou saist—”

“Silence.” Nolofinwë growled and kissed him with all the ardor of an impassioned lover, pressing his tongue between his teeth, licking the inside of his mouth like a parched man seeking water in a nigh-empty jar, drawing back only to suck on his lower lip. The heat in his loins intensified and his heart pounded in his cock, and he wrapped his hand in Fëanaro’s hair to clutch him and forbid him from breaking the kiss. His other hand found Fëanaro’s ears and caressed them, a gentle touch, yea as gentle as a morning rain compared to the storm he had been wreaking upon his kinsman. In a sudden change in the motion of the dance, Nolofinwë skillfully stroked his ear, making Fëanaro to tremble, and for the next minutes he slowed his kisses to something more languid, something more luxurious and tender in its passion, and he rocked his hips with a smooth motion, the affective gestures of a practiced lover. This too was victory, this too a parade of prowess, this too a proof of manhood. 

But if they were lovers, if they were to fuck, it were best to do it properly, Fëanaro thought, for coitus is, fundamentally, an act primarily of the fëa, and elves who are wedded fuck not in body only, but also in the mind and in the spirit, and Fëanaro deemed that the chasm betwixt them need not yawn so widely in this hour of congress, but he saw fit to let a tether be sent across as it ought to be. When Fëanaro nudged against his mind, Nolofinwë opened, and he saw what Fëanaro saw, and felt what Fëanaro felt, and Fëanaro likewise knew his brother’s heart and mind. The bloodied cock sliding, the virginal ass pulsing around it, the heat of each other’s skin, this they shared in common. Fëanaro showed Nolofinwë how he appeared to him, his dark hair tangled and wild falling all around him, his face grim and terrible with pain but oh so fair in its viciousness, but the lips were parted, a drop of spittle, as silver as a morning dew drop, hung, and fell, the salivation of a hungry beast. And Nolofinwë showed Fëanaro himself, so comely covered in his own blood, his face contorted in dreadful pain, long-lashed eyelids heavy with lust, but his gray eyes were undiminished, more trenchant than a razor, more brilliant than a firework, unquenchable as Gil-Estel itself. This forsooth was the man who made the Silmarilli, the man who moved a nation, who, wounded with many wounds, was undismayed.

The pleasure built in their cores, Nolofinwë’s stomach pressed on Fëanaro’s cock, and they knew that they would spill soon. Vainly essayed Fëanaro to hold his climax in check, and likewise did Nolofinwë, who slowed his thrusts too late, but the wave of their rapture rose, higher and higher it rose and rose, unstayed, unhamperable, and it crested right at the crescendo, and crashed through their bodies with inimitable force, shuddering, shattering, shivering overwhelm blanking out the world as Nolofinwë’s seed filled his brother, and Fëanaro’s seed spilt pale and viscous onto their stomachs. 

As their bodies stilled, Nolofinwë burying his face to drown in the inky night of Fëanaro’s hair, their minds receded from one another, even as waters seeping back into the sea, and as their pleasure dissipated the agony of their injuries seared in its full magnitude through their bodies, but they were glad, for their wounds pressed together and their blood was become one, this admixture making these new bodies, which were born not from woman, into blood-brothers. The stinging of the air on their wounds was real, real the alteration to their bodies, real the scars that would form, real, so happily real, all of it. 

At the sound of Fëanaro clearing his throat, Nolofinwë raised himself on trembling arms to hark to his brother.

“The tally,” Fëanaro said, eloquent despite how sorely he had been ploughed. “The debate won I, and wonest thou the duel. But when first we lay together mine was the victory, but our intercourse today is a tie. Methinks thou, ambitious viper that thou art, may wish to arrange another match. Do I read this aright, Nolvo?”

The shadow of a smile lightened Nolofinwë’s sweat-greased countenance, no less for hearing the intimate name. “Yea, Naro, yea let us lie together again, to even the score.”

With a grunt he withdrew his softened cock and rose, extended an arm, and raised Fëanaro to his unsteady feet. They clasped hands in the pale noonlight, bloody bodies gleaming in the brightness, and they shook with adamantine firmness, well-nigh breaking the bones in each other’s hands for the strength of their grip, identical eyes clasping unciform likewise, acknowledging that they were remade as true-brothers in blood, true-brothers in heart.

If we can not hate one another, then let us live together. If we can not abide peace, then let us wage war. Let the dance spin, let it spin on and on and on. 

Chapter End Notes

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