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Finwë
Fëanáro was gone. He could not be with Finwë all of the time — he disliked court and was still too young to hide it, and played well by himself. Too well, Finwë thought. He wished Fëanáro was oldest to a whole pack of children to teach and baby and fight with. He spoke to his dolls as a teacher, instructing them in how to draw and recite. He was a charming orator already.
Usually, when Finwë was distracted from fatherhood by the demands of kingship, Fëanáro was with his nurse. But she was visiting her family and had no assistants yet, and so this morning Fëanáro had been left in the safe room beside the receiving hall, which was small and cozy and full of his toys. If he left it, Finwë should have seen him. He was not supposed to be able to open the trick door into the servants’ hallways, but then Fëanáro had always been clever. There were no signs of violence or any reason to think anyone had taken him. Finwë reflected, as he wound through the halls and out into the warm air, that parenting Fëanáro would have been easier with someone else to keep an eye on him. Someone who could be with him half the day and trade off. Someone who Fëanáro would not always be searching for.
Finwë liked to think he would give up anything for Fëanáro, but he was not the only one who would suffer if he abdicated kingship of the Noldor — there was no one to take his place. And then where would they be, Fëanáro and himself? Still motherless, still wifeless.
At least finding Fëanáro was done easily enough. He knew he was not permitted further than the walls of the palace, but there was one place he would go regardless: to find his mother. The walk was not far.
Lórien was always peaceful. It was why Míriel had come here, after all, when she had lost interest in doing anything except watching the unchanging sky. She spoke of thunderstorms and rain; endless darkness. Never of their son. Never of her craft.
Finwë stepped between thorny rose bushes; a figure stood in the distance, swathed in glimmering gray. Finwë’s heart leapt for a moment, but though she was a woman, she was not his wife. She — like he — was only a temporary visitor.
He moved through the rest of the grounds without letting his eye linger on anything. Without wondering, as he always did afterwards, if these were the last sights Míriel had seen. If she had looked at any of them and regretted, even for a moment, her choice which was not a choice. Finally he stepped into the glade where Míriel had lain herself to rest.
Often Finwë found his son on the grass, in the trees, or under the bushes. Most of the time, Fëanáro treated this glade as if it differed not at all from the gardens of the palace. Sometimes he brought toys. Recently he had received a simple loom, but no teaching as yet. How could Míriel Þerindë’s son be taught to weave by anyone else? He might have brought it to show her. Fëanáro thought Finwë unaware that he presented bribes just like the rest of them, though they always came back home with him right away. Why would he think to leave them behind? To Fëanáro, the entirety of his mother was right here.
But today, Fëanáro was curled on the steps of the bier instead, fast asleep. He could not clamber up completely; he was too small. This was as close as he could get to his mother. Fëanáro’s head was pillowed on her silk skirt, body shielded by her pale mossy veil. He had no idea of the cost of the cloth pillowed under his head. The smell of the flowers was thick around him, lingering like a dream.
Finwë watched him for a moment, unable to move. Never had the similarities between them been so obvious, not when Fëanáro had his dark coloring. But Finwë could see Míriel in Fëanáro’s cleverness. Míriel in his laughter. Míriel in his quick, impatient hands.
Míriel in his slack, sleeping features.
While Finwë worked to master the fear of Fëanáro’s peaceful face, he looked at his wife. So still now, as she had only rarely been in life. Only her chest moved.
Míriel’s body was lifted away from the ground so that the many who came to mourn her could kneel at her side. Irmo and Estë’s Maiar removed any gifts left behind. Most were eventually delivered to Finwë — an agonizing tribute. But some, he hoped, made their way to Míriel herself. The letters never did, he knew. She was dead. She wished to be unbothered. And yet he left them here for her anyway, and when they came back without responses he tucked them away with the rest.
No gifts had been left today. Only their son, here as he always was.
How terrible that Fëanáro would never know her outside of this fine solemnity. None of it had been here originally. Míriel had lain down on the grass in a gown nearly plain, with no color at all. But her students and friends had thought it an outrage for the Broideress to be displayed in something so absent of her craft, and so they had improved it when Fëanáro had still been just an infant. To Finwë’s less-tutored eye, the work appeared as if it had been done by a single artist — the dress had the wide embroidered collar she favored and pearls trailing down the sleeves. At the time he had not been capable of gratitude; it had simply been one more task to deal with, one more group to appease, and he could not stop dealing with them because who knew where he would go if he did? And then what of Fëanáro, who had lost so much even before he was gifted speech?
Stepping closer, Finwë saw that Míriel’s shoe was not missing but clutched in Fëanáro’s hand. It was time to try waking him.
“Fëanáro?”
Fëanáro did not stir, though his grip tightened around the slipper. It did, truly. Finwë could see the material deform. Fëanáro could still hear the world. He knew he must be parted from Míriel again. He always was, when Finwë came to guide him back.
Finwë tugged the slipper from his hand. The delicate silk was somewhat crumpled, but not noticeably so. Finwë slipped it back onto Míriel’s foot, so pale and defenseless. In her hand he placed the shuttle which had fallen from the spindle that stood guard above her; Fëanáro must have been exploring it. Yet the thread — unused and therefore unspelled — had begun to yellow with age. It would be far too brittle to work with now.
Then he picked up their son. Míriel’s veil slid over him, relinquishing Fëanáro slowly, but eventually he was small and solid in Finwë’s arms.
“Thou canst come back,” Finwë told Fëanáro softly, after he had righted Míriel’s skirt and veil. This stillness was hardly better than a portrait, but it was what they were left with. Finwë could not properly be father and mother and king, regardless of how he tried. And while only Finwë’s father had died in the crossing, distance had rendered all of Fëanáro’s grandparents similarly inaccessible. Finwë needed a partner. But Míriel slept still. His tears and anger and pleading had not moved her in either life or death. She needed time, which grew more scarce by the day. Fëanáro had already grown from an infant to a young boy. How old would he be when he finally met her in truth? A father himself? “Let us go home. Let her sleep.”
He did not think Fëanáro heard him. He was still in Finwë’s arms, rocking with each step. As an infant, Fëanáro had needed to be carried nearly all of the time, else he was inconsolable. Finwë had spent many long hours walking back and forth in the hallways as Laurelin bloomed, noticing little else beside the next step. He had been so relieved by the need keeping him anchored; his world had shattered. The new one turned on Fëanáro. For decades more Finwë could allow himself that comfort.
Like those long-ago hours, they walked from Lórien in silence. The turrets of Tirion were in sight by the time Fëanáro finally stirred. He did not yet sleep like an adult. Selfishly Finwë was glad for it; if Irmo took Fëanáro often, he also relinquished him quickly.
Fëanáro’s hand clenched around Finwë’s sleeve, ridged with embroidery. “Amil?”
His eyes must have still been closed. He must have remembered only where he had been. If the shoe was gone, it was because his mother had needed it. It must have been so simple to him. How often did he take it from her, hoping that it would be gone when he woke?
Finwë hefted Fëanáro up closer and let his hand rest on the crown of his head. He said nothing. He let them both, for a moment, believe.
Indis
The prince’s pilgrimages to Lórien were well known. They were rarely a cause for gossip — it was not scandalous that he should go and see his mother. The ashes of their dead in Cuiviénen had been similarly tended, if not half as disquieting. People preferred to think of what Míriel had left behind as a statue: a monument to what had passed into the still-forbidden parts of Valinor. It was not unthinkable that her son might be among them.
Indis’s visits were less well-known. She did not make them as Míriel’s successor, though that was how the story would go once flattened to a page and fixed in ink.
No. She was here as a friend.
Death was nothing to dwell in and grief was worse still. But Indis had learned to weather it long ago, and by now the eddies and flows were routine. Yet she still hesitated to touch Míriel directly — death had firmly fixed a barrier Míriel had never let grow in life. Long before either of them had met Finwë, Míriel had been a proud, unfearing laugh in the darkness. A hand always reaching back towards Indis to urge her on. Míriel had been as sharp and bright as the needles she had fashioned from metal.
Even now one was pinned through her sleeve, a tiny glitter unnoticeable to any unaware of it. Prick thyself, lady, she thought, unable to find the humor in it or leave the thought alone. Indis checked the positioning with her fingers, careful not to brush against Míriel’s corpse.
No damage had arrested her body. It was still warm; Míriel’s chest rose and fell. If she desired, Míriel could have slipped back into it at any point. Once Indis had tried switching the needle with one carved from warmer bone, which they had both learned on. But steel had been what Míriel had wanted. When bone had proved it would not anchor her, Indis had given it back and felt unmoored herself.
In Cuiviénen, Míriel’s death would not have been unremarkable — how could it be, when she was so brilliant and young? — but it would have been understandable. None of them had known what a strange and terrible gift comprehensible deaths were until they had left them behind.
The early years had been hard. Indis had not been the only one asking why such a thing was still possible in the Blessed Lands — especially to someone who had always been so alive! But eventually it had settled into the way things were. Fëanáro grew. Indis married; Míriel approved, in clipped indirect words meant for the illumination of the Valar and the Quendi and not Indis or Finwë.
During her first visits Indis had done nothing but stare in mute silence until her own uselessness overwhelmed her and she had left, never managing to say what she had come for. It was always so obvious in those moments that Míriel could not hear her. Her visits had been sporadic and agonizing. But then one day Indis had come and found the thread connecting her spindle to her shuttle rotted through. That had shocked her into blazing emotion. Indis was not proud of how she had reacted; it had been very dramatic and Míriel would have teased her endlessly for it had she seen.
These days, Indis did not cry, though she still avoided bringing Finwë or Findis with her. Her concerns were practical; her bag was stocked with thread from Yaisampa, who neither charged nor managed to speak of where Indis yearly brought it. They had been children together, very long ago. Yaisampa was one of the few who had not — even obliquely — taken sides between the queens of the Noldor, who had never asked it of them. Indis’s supporters thought her overly gracious — they praised her restraint and her kind heart. If only.
After the first terrible wave of grief had passed, Indis had replaced everything that could rot as Míriel would not, and attended to everything else because who else would? Maiar would tend the grounds but not, as far as Indis could tell, Míriel herself. Replacing the spindle did not take up much time. The thread came gladly into her hands while the wood of it would be fine for some years yet.
When she finished winding the new thread on, Indis considered what lay before her. Míriel’s gown never could disintegrate. All who had contributed to its making loved her too much to let it. Prayer had soaked into the essence of the fabric itself. Lady Vairë heard and loved them. Neither did the carved bier need replacing; it never had. Indis could not say why Míriel’s tools rotted but not her resting place. The question made her unhappy and so she tried not to wonder.
All she had to do to finish her tasks was tend to Míriel’s disarrayed hair. The wind pulled at that more than anything. Yet Indis hated it. Every time, the braiding was so much harder than she remembered. Findis had not improved the experience — she squirmed far too much under the brush to acclimate Indis to Míriel once again. Nor had Finwë. When Indis brushed out his hair, the intimacy was reciprocated and nearly palpable around her fingers.
Míriel was blank and so horribly empty.
But her braid had fallen into the patch of roses beside her and Indis could do hard things.
So Indis crouched on the stairs and worked as best she could. At one point doing this had recalled Míriel’s transition from girl to married woman: Míriel practicing on Indis’s hair until two married ladies looked back at them from the polished bronze mirror and Indis’s stomach ached with want. Finwë finding Indis before his first wedding and making an impossible promise. The roles which had been allowed to them before they were always in the light and which could never now be recovered.
But today Míriel’s stillness reminded her of winding wool and the endless motions of spinning which Indis’s position had at last freed her from. Findis was young enough to still be infatuated with it; she had far more natural patience than Indis had at her age. That had been a skill hard won, in domestic as well as public life.
Practicing it had scraped her hands raw and seen her tongue bitten nearly through. Yet Findis had been such an easy birth, tiring only in the usual way. Not the terrifying spell which had fallen over Míriel and held her still. Stepping into motherhood had been such an unfairly easy transition for Indis, even if her first attempt refused her so hard she sometimes forgot she had tried.
Even now, only Finwë thought it was reasonable for Indis to participate in Fëanáro’s wedding ceremony. Indis and Fëanáro were equally firm on the impropriety of that. Had Fëanáro asked it, Indis would have broken tradition gladly — she dearly regretted not doing so for Míriel’s final decades — but he never had wanted her. Only his grief. So Finwë would play both parts. Space would be left for Míriel, who had not and would never take them up on the offer.
Indis clenched her jaw as she came to the end of the braid, where the hair was cool as it should have been.
There. Everything was set back into place.
Indis could leave.
Yet she lingered. The weather was pleasant — the weather was always pleasant. That was a gift she had come to take for granted.
It was silly to be afraid of Míriel’s body. What didn’t Indis know about it? The last time she had explored it had been centuries ago, but her own body had since been changed by Findis in it. Guessing how Míriel had swelled and ached and turned tender, as Indis’s body was even now beginning to do once more, was easy. And yet she would never know for certain, because Míriel would never come back. Indis’s agreement to the marriage had seen to it.
Indis’s fingers brushing against Míriel’s death-softened hand did not alter the slow rise and fall of her chest at all.
Voice ringing like steel across the clearing, Fëanáro asked, “Are you here to steal my mother, too?” His eyes shone with the indignation that they still, after all this time, consistently held when he looked upon her.
Fëanáro was a true son of Valinor. He had a temperament well-suited to it. Proximity to divinity could be a wearying thing — Indis had been glad to leave Taniquetil despite her fondness for it. She had adapted and yet thought she might be forever shaped by the starlit permissiveness of Cuiviénen, even though that had seen them torn and twisted. She could not brazen through her imperfections as Fëanáro did; little enough though he had to be ashamed of.
Indis stood and stepped carefully away from Míriel’s body. She tried to avoid Fëanáro in public, because she could hold her tongue well but not indefinitely, and he could not do it at all towards her. Through long practice, Indis did not say that she was as much Míriel’s wife as Finwë’s. It would neither calm matters nor be accepted as a sound theological argument. That did not matter. She knew it was true. Even if she had sundered herself upon these shores, despite the protests of her spouses. Under the eyes of the Valar, the edges of marriage were clearer; the margins were no longer wide enough for the old structures. Yet they did not erase what had been.
“I don’t mean to disturb you,” Indis said instead, lifting the bag with the old thread. She had not thou’d Fëanáro since before her wedding, when she had been one among many visitors and he had still accepted her presence and affection.
Finwë did not like the careful formality between his wife and son, but Indis rarely saw Fëanáro, so the balance was not so difficult to maintain. Fëanáro lived with Mahtan and when he did visit, Indis found other duties to attend to than entertaining him. It was easier on all of them when she did not intrude. When she accepted that she was always intruding.
Years ago she thought she had begun to see him soften, but that had been before Findis. Fëanáro had held her at his father’s request but not lost his betrayed and unmoored expression for a moment. There had not been a second formal visit; Indis had begun to take Findis with her instead. They saw each other only at the beginning and end of visits, and if Findis noticed the strangeness she had not asked about it. Fëanáro had not warmed to his sister yet, and the likelihood he would seemed slim as the years passed.
Perhaps it would be easier with this second child. Fëanáro was older now and starting a family of his own. That might finally soothe the wound of his mother’s absence as nothing else could.
“Why are you here?” Fëanáro asked suspiciously.
“Congratulations on your engagement,” Indis said, which could have been an answer. She was, tacitly, invited — her husband had been and she was not explicitly disallowed, which Fëanáro would not have been shy about doing. Perhaps he was softening. Perhaps it was Nerdanel’s influence. Perhaps it was that he felt he was finally too old for her to want to be his mother. If he was looking for insincerity, he would not find it. Trying as Fëanáro could be, Indis had decided decades ago that she would love him. She stuck to the resolution still, matching stubbornness with stubbornness. Just like his mother. “I hope Nerdanel brings you every happiness.”
“She will,” Fëanáro said defensively, then straightened. “I’d like to see my mother now.”
Indis inclined her head. She left Míriel and her son to their silence.
Fëanáro
His mother always smelled like roses. The scent hung on her so strongly that whenever Fëanáro caught it — in a lady’s perfume rising over a crowded theater, in the oil the Vanyar anointed themselves with during the greatest festivals, in a garden on the other side of Valinor entirely — the years seemed to fall away. All of them folded in on each other and he was once again a child in need of soothing.
Never was that feeling so powerful as when he came to visit her.
Her domain was out of the way; the hedges worked in tandem with the trees to conceal her resting place. It was difficult to stumble upon, and so the first map Fëanáro remembered making had been one to her. Many long and productive hours had been spent in the silence here. It was easier to be brilliant when faced with the reason why, and there were not so many distractions as in his other places of learning. His mother would not try to slow his mind down.
As the years went by and his mother’s rightful place was eclipsed by that woman and her children, he had seen increasingly fewer people here. Everyone else had forgotten her. Only Fëanáro had not and could not. She was the beginning of his life. He had lived up to the potential she had given him. He was an excellent son. Anyone would be proud; his father certainly was.
Fëanáro bent to kiss his mother’s warm cheek, bouncing Moryo in his arms as he did. How strange, that he no longer needed the steps to ascend to her! She seemed smaller as the years passed. “Hello, Amil.”
With the words, the bubble of silence lifted. The children were not fighting yet, but they were fidgety, as they always were at the beginning of visits. He beckoned towards them. “Come say hello and then ye can play.”
Káno attempted solemnity, but that did not last very long, and Turko was still too young to understand things like this. They dispersed quickly; they had been here enough times to know where they could not go, and there were rarely visitors elsewhere in Lórien this early in Telperion’s blooming. Yet Nelyo hung nervously back.
“What’s wrong, Maitimo?”
“Nothing, Atya.”
“Thou dost not want to play?” Nerdanel chimed in.
Nelyo blinked stolidly.
I’ll handle it, Fëanáro said mentally. There’s an age where the permanence is overwhelming.
During their last visit — Nerdanel pregnant with Moryo and Nelyo old enough to hear things he shouldn’t — he had put together that his grandmother’s sleep would never end. And, moreover, that the reason she had sunk into it was the same thing his mother was currently doing. But the birth had gone well and Nerdanel was happily returned to sculpting while Fëanáro was quite pleased with his newest boy. Things between them were mended.
Moryo was not a very responsive nor vocal baby, but he would follow movement with his eyes and at the moment was very fascinated with colors and textures, which made him easy to entertain. Káno had taken to lobbying for a sister, so far unsuccessfully, while Turko was skeptical of younger siblings in general and Nelyo equally in favor.
Nerdanel bent to greet her silent mother-in-law, then ruffled Nelyo’s hair. “We’ll be over by the copse of red trees where ye usually play when thou’rt ready.”
Nelyo picked at the threads of his sleeve, clearly expecting to be scolded. He was such a strangely nervous child. There was little reason for it; he had simply always been that way.
“Wilt thou perform a favor for me, Nelyo?”
“Atya?”
“Couldst thou hold thy brother a moment?”
Nelyo accepted without another word, sitting where he was and opening his arms. He was bossy with Káno and Turko but sweet, most of the time, and a much better help with the younger two than Káno had proven to be. Such a dutiful son Fëanáro had been gifted on the first try!
“What worries thee?” Fëanáro asked when they were settled.
“The baby is scared,” Nelyo said after a long moment, touching Moryo’s fuzzy scalp. He was looking at the flowers in front of him; he had turned away from the bier.
Fëanáro glanced down at Moryo, who was gumming contentedly on his own fingers and not looking at either of them. “What’s he scared of?”
“What if Haruni Míriel wakes and does not know who he is.”
“She won’t wake.” The reassurance was bitter.
“But he’s wondering what if she does.”
“Then she will know ye, for thy grandmother records all great deeds of the House of Finwë, and thou, Nelyafinwe Maitimo, art most certainly among them.”
Nelyo frowned. “But I haven’t done anything yet.”
“Thou wilt, Maitimo. While Haruni sleeps she does not know only now, but the future as well. Everything written in the Song. So she knew thee before even Emya and I did. That’s why we say hello. Wouldst thou like to show Moryo how it’s done?” Nelyo shook his head. “What if thou holdest my hand while I do? Sometimes it makes me sad.”
To this Nelyo acceded. Fëanáro tucked Moryo securely in his other arm as they stood and faced the bier once again. “Because she is your mother,” Nelyo puzzled out. “And if she is asleep she cannot kiss you or read to you or give you a brother.”
“Yes,” Fëanáro agreed, feeling a prickle of emotion despite himself. There were a good number of things his mother had never done and never could. He must give her a great many interesting scenes to weave. Perhaps someday it would be enough to satisfy her. She had held him, he knew; his father had told him. She had held him and kissed him and let him sleep on her breast. She had not said goodbye. “That is so. Each time I visit, I like to remind her how much she is loved. However absorbing our Doom, we want her here.”
“Why does she not wake, if she knows we want her so?” Nelyo asked after Fëanáro had kissed his mother’s limp hand. Nelyo had inherited his stubbornness indeed; he did not follow, though Fëanáro could see him gathering his courage.
“Birth was a very great strain for her. Thou knowest, Maitimo, that I am uncommonly skilled.” Nelyo nodded. “One theory holds that is why.” He would know eventually; better to hear it from his father.
Fëanáro’s own father sometimes said, unprompted, that the rumors were untrue and Fëanáro had not killed his mother. After remarrying, he had started adding his new wife to the tally of the blameless, and looking hurt when Fëanáro disagreed. Yet it was the one topic on which Fëanáro and Indis were allied.
Fëanáro had turned the puzzle of it over in his mind for years and years. Each time the conclusion was the same: Fëanáro had driven his mother out and Indis had locked the gate behind. He was just too much. He was the best of her. That was his pride and his shame; his burden alone to bear.
When he thought Nelyo had finished absorbing that idea, Fëanáro said, “So she must rest; as Emya rests after each baby.”
Nelyo’s face went briefly shocked and then ashamed; he looked away. Ah, that was the problem. Fëanáro sat and opened his arms. Nelyo came into them, pressing his little face in Fëanáro’s neck. “Emya is very strong,” Fëanáro reassured him.
“But if you were one and we are four, what about the next baby?”
“What next baby is this?” Nelyo did not soften with the teasing, and so Fëanáro added truthfully, “If there is a next baby, Emya will make sure she is very rested. Ye boys will go visit Haru Mahtan if she needs quiet, but this is a very, very uncommon reaction, Maitimo. Emya will be fine.”
“But if there are too many babies she won’t be.”
“Thou’rt too young to worry about such things. She’ll know before there are too many. Kiss thy grandmother and go play with thy brothers. It’s good to have playmates, yes?” Nelyo said nothing but did as he was bid. “Thou’rt a good boy, Maitimo. Go play.”
As Nelyo disappeared to join the rest of their family, Fëanáro made a note to tell Nerdanel that Nelyo had been worried. Perhaps they could go somewhere alone and he could feel like an only son for a while. It would not help to send him anywhere else — the last time they had visited Fëanáro’s father, Nelyo had come home insisting to be called Maitimo and would not tell Fëanáro who had asked it of him. He’d told Nerdanel that it was no one and she had believed him. Thou thyself usest thy mothername, Fëanáro, she had said. Why should thy children not do the same?
Yet Fëanáro knew better; Indis hoped to set her eldest son as companion and competition to Nelyo. She pushed the children together after seeing how his half-siblings had not swayed Fëanáro. Nelyo was too young to know how people would tear at him. What being part of the House of Finwë meant. Why they did not live in Tirion.
But, Fëanáro reminded himself, Nelyo had his brothers. He could do well enough with them and Indis had never stopped Fëanáro’s father from visiting. He could defend his family.
For now, it was Fëanáro, his mother, and her newest grandson. He put the thought of Nelyo’s troubles out of his mind.
Moryo had settled. Fëanáro unwrapped him, placing him on his grandmother’s breast. He watched carefully, in case Moryo wriggled too far and no hands came up to catch him, but Moryo seemed content where he was. Fëanáro knelt on the steps, not quite touching either of them.
Four children had he done this with now, and every time he hoped. Each was another fragment of his mother: Nelyo had her hands, Káno her temper — or so his father said — and Turko her hair. Who could say what Moryo would prove to be?
(And what am I? Nerdanel liked to ask when he expressed this theory to her. A sieve?)
Of course it never worked. Fëanáro had stopped believing that it would, and yet—
And yet.
She could come back, even now. Even still. If she really and truly wanted to, the Valar would not stop her; it was antithetical to everything they said about the Halls of Mandos.
Fëanáro wanted to speak to his mother. He wanted to know the sound of her voice. As a child, he had fantasized about the day she would come back. That dream was very old and tender now. Whenever he opened it, light shone through as if it were vellum which had been scraped too thin and rendered unusable.
The dream had always felt the most real when he had it in Lórien. He did like to sleep here, wrapped in possibility, and not only for that reason. There was no danger and few expectations; the wind was warm and the flowers were sweet. Yet his father did not like when Fëanáro did so, though he had never said it aloud. It had taken a number of too-tight embraces to realize why and stop. He had not been clever about people as a child. Only things.
While Fëanáro had been lost in thought, Moryo had begun chewing on the neckline of his grandmother’s gown. Fëanáro scooped him up — Moryo did not laugh like Turko would have, but he did gurgle — and did what he could to salvage it. There was little worry in the action, as his mother’s clothes and tools slumbered with her, neither rotting nor wearing. No noticeable stain would dry into the fabric.
Moryo then made it clear that he wanted to be put down, so Fëanáro unfolded a blanket and settled him on it. He placed Moryo’s favorite scrap of rabbit fur there as well, but Moryo ignored it in favor of practicing crawling. He was quite determined about it; he would get there soon and before Fëanáro knew it he would be walking.
Fëanáro sat on the lowest step and leaned back against the bier, feeling the familiar carvings slide against his head until he found the one place he could settle. The furniture was built for display, not comfort. His mother’s hand was smooth and warm when he pressed it to his cheek. The scent of roses was strongest here, stirring up old memories of childhood. He had loved the bushes, which knew him too well to draw blood.
Shortly before they would have to leave — Moryo would need to sleep soon, and it was hard for him to do it outside, let alone the older boys — Turko came back pouting, declaring his brothers unfair. Evidently he was not yet a match for Nelyo and Káno when it came to running, even though neither of the older two had yet begun to grow as rapidly as they soon would.
“Outsmart them, Turko,” Fëanáro advised, encouraging Moryo to wriggle a little closer to him. Oh, he was getting cranky. “Use thy surroundings.”
Turko analyzed the space, but found nothing. He turned to Fëanáro with a gravely disappointed frown. Fëanáro made his own face serious in response and pointed to the space under the roses, which Turko had dismissed. Turko scrambled beneath one just before Káno skidded into the clearing.
“Careful with the baby, Káno.”
“Yes, Atya; hello, Moryo. Have you seen Tyelko?”
“I’m afraid I haven’t,” Fëanáro said, but winked.
With the hint, Káno did the rest of the work. The greenery hid most of Turko, but his pale hair peeked through the gaps in the dark leaves.
“I see thee! Out, Tyelko.”
“Thou must catch me first!”
And they were off again. Fëanáro smiled as the sound of shrieking laughter broke the silence of the glade, flooding it with cheer.
Míriel
Few of the tapestries Míriel oversaw depicted the family she had known in life. Time passed, naturally, even if not at the same rate outside these doors. Children were born and then grandchildren. The House of Finwë numbered in the dozens. Wars were fought; her family spilled over the continent she had so gladly left behind. Míriel and Vairë’s Maiar recorded it all. Even set apart as they were in the Werenossë, deep in the house of the dead, it was not so strange that the bulk of their efforts would be focused on the events across the sea.
Míriel did not consider that those centered on Valinor were still being produced and simply hidden from her. At least not until she came to make her rounds — she had just finished Lómion Begins His Second Night in Gondolin and so was allowed only supervisory duties and rest for a week or two — and found the door barred to her.
Calarustë, a flighty and honest Maia new to this division, was the one Míriel cornered. “Is this not a room containing a tapestry concerned with the House of Finwë?”
“No. Yes. The piece…” Calarustë’s aptly-named skin deepened to green over her eyes and at the ends of her fingers, as if she were permanently oxidizing copper. Míriel watched both flutter nervously. “It concerns the prince Fëanáro.”
Míriel was unmoved. “Many do.”
“And thee.”
That was new. Míriel had never been set to work on a tapestry of herself, though she knew a few existed. She was permitted to visit the larger structure of the Halls of Mandos — encouraged, frankly; she knew some outside hoped she would be tempted to dwell there instead for a while — and often stopped by The Wedding of Míriel and Finwë. Sentimental, yet a solid piece of work. She liked to see his face.
“Lady Vairë fears it will upset thee,” Calarustë added nervously when Míriel said nothing.
“Yet she has ordered it made. Why, then, is it not in my records?”
“Not Lady Vairë,” Axowen countered as she stepped outside as if to see what the trouble was; they could all hear perfectly well inside, of course. “Lord Mandos.”
Axowen’s gaze settled on Míriel — like Calarustë, she was trying to judge Míriel’s reaction. Unlike Calarustë, she only did that when she knew there was a reason to do so. That, more than anything, was confirmation of Míriel’s first wild suspicion. Her only child, so full of life, was dead. Her intake of breath was controlled — but the expansion of her lungs was needless to Míriel. Obsolete.
“Let her in,” Axowen told Calarustë, and stepped aside.
Pity was not as thick on the air as Míriel feared. Sorrow swam in Axowen’s clear gaze, but that was always there — she had first been called to serve Lady Nienna, and carried the weight of that duty forward even if not the work.
Míriel observed the piece without allowing emotion to cloud her judgment. It was big; fifteen feet by five. Like most, it hung straight down from the ceiling, keeping the tension even. Saminië and Réniel sat in front of it, alongside Axowen’s and Calarustë’s vacant stool. Bones wrapped in dyed wool — so many shades of green! — dotted the unfinished work where they had only just started on the clouded light around her. Míriel’s body was picked out in careful threads, bright red and yellow aside from her pale hair. Fëanáro as she had never seen him was asleep below her. A third figure was yet unwoven.
The hand which had drawn the guiding image pinned in the corner was indeed Lady Vairë’s. She always lent Míriel’s face a faint sweetness that, while not enough to alter her features, was not quite fitting for a grown woman. Míriel walked closer, until she could tell it was Finwë who had yet to be added. He still braided his hair the same as he always had.
“What is it called?” Míriel asked. She was not upset. She was not fragile.
“Fëanáro and Finwë Visit Míriel,” Saminië said.
Réniel made a sound of mild disagreement. “Finwë Watches Fëanáro and Míriel Sleep.”
Properly, the piece was likely called something like Lament for a Dead Mother or Grief Wells Ever Upwards or even A Royal Visit, but there were dozens of Laments and Griefs and Visits among the House of Finwë alone. Between themselves the weavers used more straightforward titling. Míriel wrote down the former, disliking immensely that it was not already on her list. Her handwriting was poor; she had learned how to write late in life and was not given much cause to use the skill.
“Be careful with the color here,” Míriel instructed, pointing towards the pink of her own cheek. “Ye make her look alive. Hardly a proper corpse.”
There was a careful silence. “It is sleep,” Réniel said after a moment, clearly trying to sound like she was not offering the words as the correction they were.
“I would have a moment,” Míriel said.
She was not obeyed immediately. Pity curdled the room. Only once Axowen gave the others a look did they go. The door clicked shut behind the Maiar and then Míriel had the space to herself.
She sat in the center stool Axowen had vacated. She meant to take up the bones, as leaves were trivial and hardly work, but her hands remained in her lap. She did not look again at Fëanáro — much younger than he usually was, with his face soft and open and very much like her own — but could feel it above her. The great emptiness of Finwë’s back was a reproach.
“What wouldst thou have me do?” she asked him, though she knew. She had read all of his letters before she sent them back. She remembered them still.
She felt Axowen settle on the stool beside her some time later. Only rarely did Míriel lose track of its passage in a way that mattered; time was more of a suggestion in these halls, stretching backwards and forwards as it did. Only those who left were anchored to its passage in the true world.
Míriel was still more tied to the progressive sequence than most who lived in the Werenossë and not Valimar, as their lady ordered that Míriel must rest. She was not built for ceaseless work. Unlike the Maiar, it drained her. And so usually during her mandated rest periods she would sketch. Often it was simply scribbles, sweeping the charcoal in satisfyingly thick lines until the whole page was black and her fingers smudged, but sometimes Míriel’s hand turned towards scenes from life. Some became tapestries eventually, in the slow years. Some were just for her, so she could lie down and imagine weaving them.
The texture of Indis’s hair was almost as fine as the silk weft they used in the most consequential tapestries, while Finwë’s had been coarser. She could not remember if Fëanáro had hair when he was born. In any case, that memory had been replaced by so many silk and wool and linen threads against her calloused fingers.
Mriel could wear weeks away on charcoal and memory. She judged her mood by how strongly the desire to do so pulled at her. When she was almost herself she did not want to waste the time. Of course, when she was terribly not herself, she did not want to leave the loom, either.
“He is dead, then?” Míriel asked quietly, when she grew tired of wondering. She touched Fëanáro’s pudgy arm to indicate which of them she meant. Axowen had been Míriel’s guide to the Werenossë during the years in which conversation was beyond her — anything but work, which her fingers were still steady on. She could solely weave and spin. Not evaluate, not draw, not plan, not converse. Only follow what was put in front of her. Axowen remembered still; she had seen Míriel through the transition back to this state of almost-living.
“Perhaps not right now,” Axowen said. They both knew it for the deflection it was.
Hearing of Finwë’s death had been strange. Míriel had discovered it in a roundabout way through The Coronation of Arafinwë. Indis had been in the background — almost incidentally, just as in the wedding series — but not Finwë, despite the many familiar and strange faces there. When Míriel had submitted a request for Indis Mourning Finwë afterwards, it had been rejected. Míriel, Lady Vairë said, still lived life in one direction. She should continue trying to heal that way, too.
So Míriel had grown used to the thought that her husband was somewhere in these same halls, perhaps not yet but soon. Five little-soothing words dancing on her fingers as they wove worthless masterpieces.
When it had actually occurred, however, she knew no one else had put it together. Certainly no one had expected the manner in which it came to pass, though Míriel had suspected Finwë would never depart voluntarily from life. Everyone had been frightened by the new dark. Only Míriel was untouched by it. Less shaken, too, by the thought of murder. She had grown to adulthood in darkness no less vast; her aunt had been stolen away into it when Míriel had been only a girl. She did not need the Trees as the younger generations did. As the Maiar and the Valar did. On the journey to Valinor, Míriel had weathered terrifying thunderstorms and drenching, endless rains. She had found lightning blinding and gone on despite it into a land saturated with an embarrassment of soft light. She would not give up her peace now.
The weavers had, as a group, spent two years under candlelight on Tirion at Night — a long tapestry which was shades of only black and gray and blue. Some contributed primarily tears or harsh words, but everyone had been in the room, even those Maiar whose interests lay away from the House of Finwë and who Míriel knew little of. They spoke to her with unconcern for who she had been. She was respected for the position she had earned within the Werenossë. Like Axowen, Míriel had slid easily into the dutiful life here. Sometimes the Maiar forgot she was not one of them, which she liked. Then they did not think it would be better for her to be driven out into the loud and exhausting world they painstakingly wove. They did not think her desire for distance concerning or strange.
When they had finished Tirion and broken again into their usual groups — Maiar fortified once more and Míriel sent away to rest — Lady Vairë had delivered a sketch for The Courtship of Indis and Finwë directly to Míriel.
It had not gone into the project rota. Drawn in a realistic style, it was nowhere near stylized enough to use. Unlike most of the official records, Indis was not in a mirror position of Míriel. For once she was allowed to be unburdened by symbolism. If Indis faced east it was naturally so. Her body turned towards Finwë; it still held a hint of the shyness in her first flirtation, for all that Indis had grown well into self-possession. There was warmth in both of their faces — Vairë loved them all — but Míriel did not think it was exaggerated. They both had been sweet with her and slow to fall. It made sense they would be so with each other as well, without Míriel. Even the second time.
Míriel kept the drawing in her room, turned the wrong way around so it would not catch her eye or fade in the new sun’s blanching sharpness. She had never woven it, even in practice. She could not bear to find their faces suddenly strange under her fingers.
There was no risk of that with Fëanáro. She had learned his face on a loom.
“Did he leave a body?” Did Finwë know what had become of his pride and joy? Would any of Mandos’s grimly silent Maiar think to tell him?
“I suggest thou dost not ask.”
“Mine breathes?” Ah, see how her interest turned ever back to herself! Yet she could not help wondering. Fëanáro’s death was an impossibility; never for a moment had she doubted he would live. Her own was a certainty.
Axowen nodded. She saw Míriel’s next question before it was asked and said, “I visited once. I found the experience…unsettling.”
“I imagine it might be. I do envy the self-cursed their decomposition.” Míriel assuredly had never thought anyone would come to gawk at her. She had only wanted rest. What she would give for a body that progressed neatly through gas and maggots and bones! No doubt would remain then about where she belonged. “What others does Lady Vairë keep from me?”
“None. Truly, Míriel.”
“Because this is my responsibility,” Míriel said hotly — Axowen would not repeat it. There were many things she knew Axowen had kept in her confidence. “All of them. They are my family; the Werenossë is my home. That is what was promised to me.”
“Our lady respects that. Thou knowest she cannot understand.”
“No one does,” Míriel said. Sleeping Fëanáro had finally drawn her eye, peach and ink and turquoise. Such a heavy weight under her fragile veil. “They think me unfair. Yet he had Indis. Both of them! All knew I would not return. Why should he mourn still, when he never knew me?”
“Perhaps here he will unlearn it.”
“I do not think he will,” Míriel said, and stood briskly. She clapped her hands together once, loud enough that the sound made her recoil inside herself. “Well! I cannot tarry. Thou canst resume; I will return tomorrow.”
“Míriel. Let this one go.”
“Thou canst not stop me,” Míriel said, even though she knew she would. She could have been nothing but a disappointment to Fëanáro. She was not made for motherhood. That was a settled question now, surely.
“More of that and I will tell the lady.”
“I wish to use my hands.” And disappear into the work. She felt wooden.
“A few days and thou canst. Elevingë Considering the Silmaril would benefit from thy attention. I will report our progress on this one to thee — or dost thou doubt my capability?”
Míriel frowned at Axowen, but it was ordinary stubbornness now. The thorn of it still pricked her heart from time to time; it was this that said she would not go to her throne nor to the Halls of Mandos proper as tradition demanded. Childishly — and unbecoming of a queen — Míriel simply wanted to see how far she could push.
Yet if she did, the work would be ruined.
Míriel placed a careful checkmark beside the title of the piece.
Axowen accompanied her to the door, but stopped just before it, touching Míriel’s arm with her blue and ivory fingers. “If he is in Mandos and well enough recovered to walk the halls, wouldst thou like me to ask if ye may speak? Just briefly; just to meet. Thou hast made no vows to stay apart from him.”
“He is not and will not.”
“If.”
Míriel could not say no, regardless of how much she wished to avoid Eldar still, particularly those who knew her in life. He was fully into adulthood now. And he might not even be dead. Perhaps Lord Mandos simply wished for a reminder. Yet even if he was, the meeting was impossible. Once Fëanáro was dead, after all, his spirit was destined for a place other than these lands. They were all split now: Míriel in the Werenossë, Finwë in the Halls of Mandos proper, and Fëanáro pledged to the Void by his own fool hand.
And Indis, twice-abandoned and yet still living.
Míriel could go back to her if she ever discovered the desire within herself. It was only Finwë whose wife she had sworn not to live as again. With each other, Míriel and Indis could be widows beyond reproach. Even if Indis still refused her, as she had after their arrival in Valinor, until Míriel and Finwë’s visits had tapered into nothing at all and they had been a strange pair of only two. How dreary that would be. Indis had gone back to Finwë eventually, when the Valar allowed it. She might let Míriel into her confidences once again. Míriel could be resented for the intimacy by her own stepchildren and their spouses, and let Indis defend her, and return eventually to the Werenossë when the pull grew too strong and the world once again colorless. Then everyone could be equally and freshly disappointed in her.
“If,” Míriel relented, and turned away from the tragedy hanging in the air. Her work was meant to steady her. Now she was out of the rhythm.
Míriel swept out of the room and continued. Unfortunately, everything was running smoothly. No problems demanded her attention. Everyone knew something of the tapestry, she saw; they kept urging her to rest. She took their advice when avoiding it becoming tiresome. She resented Fëanáro for his need of her still. Míriel resorted again to drawing and could create nothing.
At times like these, she truly did feel dead. Yet somewhere out in the world that existed — impossibly — still, her body went on breathing.
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