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Carnistir is the first of them to marry. That is not where it all begins, in truth, but at times, it feels as such.
Not long after the fourth son of Fëanáro comes of age—with Curufinwë not far behind him, on the cusp of true adulthood—Carnistir enters a betrothal with a noblewoman named Taþarillë, a scholar and botanist with whom he has been engaged in a quiet courtship for some years hence.
Curufinwë is the first to know of it. Not because Carnistir confides in him, but because of his old habit of surreptitiously sifting through his brothers’ mail. He likes to know things—he does not always act upon what he knows, but he likes to know it, anyway.
He keeps it to himself, until the news breaks out. Their parents, naturally, are thrilled; given the age of their eldest sons, it’s a little unusual that none of them have married yet. Nerdanel immediately sets to work on a series of hardstone figurines to commemorate the engagement; Fëanáro subjects the poor girl to rigorous questioning, yet apparently finds her acceptable. In fact, Fëanáro is so thrilled that for several weeks, he announces the news, sparkling-eyed, to every single person he passes on the street, and even tells Ñolofinwë my son is getting married! with such enthusiasm that his usual disdain is drowned out. He has not been so excited since Curufin earned his smithing mastery.
“Watch your back, Curvo!” Tyelkormo teases Curufinwë, as the frantic rush of wedding-planning subsumes the household. “It seems your status as Atya’s favorite is in jeopardy.”
It is something of a running joke among them, the idea that Curufinwë is their father’s favorite. Certainly, their father adores them all. Certainly again, it is Curufinwë with which he spends the most time, one-on-one; no one else shares his aptitude for metals and jewels, and there is a joy and a pride in their shared craft which the others cannot understand.
Even so—it’s Tyelkormo himself who has their father’s love for languages, Elven and otherwise; his restless spirit, his eternal thirst to go out and explore. Were it not for the seasons Tyelko spends with the Hunt, he might spend nearly as much time with their father as Curufinwë does.
So it is less bitter-tinged than it might have been, coming from Tyelkormo’s lips, and rather than bristle, Curufinwë only rolls his eyes:
“Oh, please,” he drawls, with a flicker of a smirk. “It will pass.”
“Not if they have any children, it won’t.”
Curufinwë grimaces: “Moryo, reproducing?” he says. “Eru save us all.”
“Well, Atya and Ammë have to get their forty-nine grandchildren somehow.”
“Don’t encourage them,” says a new voice: Carnistir, reappearing. Despite his faint grimace, a flush warms his cheeks and brightens his eyes, betraying him; his engagement ring—their father’s work, of course, forged of the traditional silver and adorned with a pure black diamond—newly agleam upon his finger.
“Well, if it isn’t the man of the hour,” says Tyelkormo. He bares a grin, claps Carnistir on the shoulder: “Our itty bitty Moryo, engaged! I remember when you were a squalling little red ballsack of a thing, biting the fingers off anyone who touched you.”
“I didn’t bite half as much as you did.” Carnistir disentangles himself from his brother’s grasp with a scowl.
His fiancée, a step behind him, says nothing. She never speaks much—more aloof, Curufinwë thinks, than shy—yet her features, too, betray her, softened as she gazes upon Carnistir, even as he and Tyelkormo begin to bicker in earnest.
She catches Curufinwë’s eye. He tilts his head, and stares at her in silence, an unspoken question in his gaze.
Curufinwë Atarinkë is not his father. Hurt him and you will regret it, he does not say, because it is not his job to do so. What makes you think you are good enough for him? is not his job to say, either, and so he does not say it.
He does not say, why him?
Why marry Carnistir—why love Carnistir, when no blood, no duty, ties her soul already to his own? Carnistir is—well, he loves Carnistir, begrudgingly though he admits it, but Carnistir is difficult to like. He’s snappish, stubborn, unsociable. He prefers numbers to words, takes every little slight personally, and needs each aspect of his day-to-day life to remain a certain, precise way.
They do not always get along, he and Curufinwë. They are close in age, and yet Curufinwë has ever preferred Tyelkormo—Tyelkormo, whose wild mischief suits him better than Carnistir’s eternal sense of irritated misanthropy. Tyelkormo is his beacon, a bright white flame—he kindles easily, angers quickly; he laughs quickly, as well.
Curufinwë teaches himself how to laugh quickly, too. Arranges himself with calculated precision, crafts from a young age an arsenal of smiles and scowls and stoniness; their father wears his whole heart unashamed and blazing across his face, and Curufinwë learns to do the same. To seem, at least, to do the same.
Curufinwë Atarinkë is not his father. But it serves him, sometimes, to act as if he is. A little smaller, a little slighter, a little more reserved. Clever, but not quite so clever. To play upon the expectations of it all.
Carnistir, on the other hand, cares far less for such machinations. No, he’s always been the solitary type, even as a child; Curufinwë recalls eavesdropping upon their parents’ whispered discussions, their worries that the loose split between the brothers—Maitimo, Makalaurë, Carnistir as one half; Tyelkormo, Curufinwë, the twins as the other—is undercut by three tightly-knit duos, and Carnistir left alone.
But he has never seemed to mind. In fact, after the wedding, Carnistir moves out entirely—not untraditional, though no one would bat an eye either if he and his wife remained in his father’s house—and, when the family flits from place to place, traveling across Valinor as they are known to do, he joins them less and less. When he does, Taþarillë comes with him, which Curufinwë does not mind; he likes her, he supposes.
It is . . . strange, though, with Carnistir gone. At their ages, they are all in and out of the house—Maitimo has his stints at court, Makalaurë his performances, Tyelkormo and occasionally Ambarussa their seasons with the Hunt; Curufinwë himself goes with their father to visit the great forges of Aulë—but now, in all their homes across all of Aman, Carnistir’s rooms nearly always lay silent. His parents remark on multiple occasions upon how empty the halls now feel, how dearly they wish he would come over more often for dinner.
When Curufinwë weds, he decides, he will simply have his spouse move in—to do otherwise, he is certain, would break his father’s heart. He’ll be sure to select someone who does not mind.
When the novelty wears off, the question arises: which of the brothers will be the next to wed?
Maitimo is the eldest, and perhaps the most-pursued: his beauty and charm afford him with no shortage of potential suitors. He takes no interest in any of them. Curufinwë has his suspicions about that—mostly involving his brother’s particular affinity for the company of one Findekáno Astaldo—but he keeps them to himself (which is to say, between himself and Tyelkormo).
Conversely, Makalaurë flutters through a never-ending string of courtships and flirtations and heartbreaks, flitting from muse to muse as if flung by the mercurial winds. Lately, though, he has failed to mention anyone new, and has been spending more time than usual in Alqualondë.
Over dinner, Nerdanel theorizes that he has finally met someone—“He’s met a lot of someones,” Fëanáro points out dryly, and she replies that perhaps this time, he has met The One.
“He is not usually so quiet about such matters,” she says. “And there is something . . . changed, in the sound of his songs. I think perhaps he really loves this one.”
“Ooooooh,” Pityo sing-songs, kicking his twin beneath the table. Maitimo is at court, Makalaurë still in Alqualondë, and Carnistir at his own home, so it’s only the six of them tonight. “Káno is in loooo-ooooove!”
“Why would he not speak of her to us,” says Curufinwë, “if that is so?”
“Would you?” Tyelkormo challenges.
“Perhaps he fears the match is unsuitable,” Nerdanel says.
“Then he ought to have chosen a more suitable candidate from the beginning,” Curufinwë declares, “and spared himself the heartache.”
Tyelkormo barks out a laugh: “You are cold, Curvo!” he says. “I don’t think that is generally how it works.”
He doesn’t see why not. “He might have broken it off before the affection set in, at least.”
“He may not have had the luxury,” their father puts in. “Why, when I first laid my eyes upon your lady mother, covered in charcoal and sketching so intently she did not notice me at all, I thought I was surely in the presence of some fire-spirit of Aulë—so startlingly radiant was her hair and her smile, so bright the mad shine of inspiration in her eyes. I could hardly speak. I knew at once that the sight of her would sear across my vision every time I closed my eyes, and would torment me beyond reckoning for eternity.”
“When I first saw your father,” Nerdanel says reflectively, “I thought he was the most insufferable person I’d ever met in my life.”
Féanáro, predictably, merely throws back his head and laughs in rich delight: “And we were both correct!” he says.
“Well,” she amends, cracking a smile, “not entirely insufferable.”
His lips curve upward: “My dear, you flatter me tonight.”
“I thought I tormented you?”
“Quite so,” he murmurs, resting his chin on his hand, his eyes gone dark and soft. “Exquisitely.”
She leans over the table to kiss him. Her fiery curls shield her own face, but Curufinwë can still see his father’s, his expression both familiar and foreign; he has seen it nearly every day of his life—painted across their shared features, shining and sure. Fire in his eyes. They fight more than they used to these days, he has noticed, but that fire never goes out of his father’s eyes.
Curufinwë Atarinkë is not his father.
His chest, abruptly, feels hollow. He averts his eyes, and runs the tip of his finger around the base of his goblet: a deep, elegant red, both from the color of the crystal and the wine within.
Should he finish the wine, the goblet would still be red—nearly the same, on the outside. Merely empty.
Lighter.
Less.
“Ewww,” says Telvo, pulling a face, as their parents break gently apart.
Nerdanel laughs: “Your time will come, little one.”
“But not for a very long time!” Fëanáro adds quickly, as Telvo and Pityo make sounds of disgust. “You are still too young for that sort of thing.”
“Though,” Nerdanel says thoughtfully, her sly gaze slipping toward her elder sons, “as for you two. No one yet who has caught your eyes, my dears?”
“No, Amillë,” Curufinwë replies evenly. You are cold, Curvo! rings again in his ears, and he thinks: cold, cold, cold.
“We shan’t be tied down so easily,” declares Tyelkormo, leaning jauntily back in his chair.
“Rakes and flirts and scoundrels, our sons,” sighs Nerdanel, though her eyes remain alight with laughter. “Wherever did we go wrong, Fëanáro?”
“They’re young yet,” Fëanáro dismisses, with a flutter of his hand. “Give them time. Curvo, pass the wine, would you?”
He does.
So. By process of elimination, it will likely be Makalaurë who marries next. Tyelkormo, certainly, will not be married anytime soon. His heart belongs to the Hunt—in more ways than one. A ceaseless bachelor, he calls himself winkingly, but Curufinwë knows why he’s been lengthening his time in Oromë’s train, why he rides back with stars in his eyes and a stumble in his gait.
Pityo is quite convinced that he is in love with their cousin Írissë—and he might be, a little bit, in the way that he falls in love with all wild things. Curufinwë, though, knows better.
They’re out in the wilds one night, the three of them—Curufinwë, Tyelkormo, and Írissë—camping far south of Tirion. Curufinwë is crouched beside a stream, running his fingertips through the cool, clear water, wondering whether the area holds any useful ore. His brother and cousin have occupied themselves with wrestling vehemently in the grass. When they’ve tired themselves out, they collapse in a heap of white linen and sweating limbs, Írissë sprawled out over Tyelkormo with her braids askew over his bare chest.
“And this,” says Curufinwë, waving an arch hand in their direction, “is why the public makes indecent assumptions regarding your relationship.”
Tyelkormo merely laughs: “Írissë, my darling,” he says, still breathless, “you know I’d wed you in a heartbeat.” He stresses wed with a lascivious wink.
“You couldn’t handle me,” she cackles at him, smacking his thigh as she would Huan’s side, and Curufinwë rolls his eyes. “Come now, Curvo, don’t be jealous—you know you’re my second-favorite cousin.”
“Half-cousin,” he mutters, on instinct.
“Let them talk!” Tyelkormo declares. “Everyone loves a good scandal.” And it would be a scandal, for more than one reason: firstly, they are technically close enough kin to raise a few eyebrows; secondly, the vitriol between their fathers promises no shortage of drama should they ever attempt to court.
“I suppose it serves to divert suspicion from . . . elsewhere,” Curufinwë allows. Subtly, Tyelkormo stiffens, his eyes flitting to Írissë in alarm, but Curufinwë only says, “I doubt our father’s leniency extends to your habit of bedding Oromë’s Maiar.”
Tyelkormo relaxes, and Curufinwë shoots him a little smirk. Írissë knows about most of Tyelkormo’s various casual flings, but there are some secrets Tyelkormo does not share with her—some secrets that remain between him and Curufinwë alone.
For instance, the fact that Tyelkormo’s latest fling is with Oromë himself, and it has grown far from casual.
He’s certain Írissë will figure it out herself, in time, but there is a certain satisfaction in the knowledge that he was the first to be told. Then again, they’ve always been a duo, the two of them; he’s been at his brother’s heels since he could walk. He guards this truth as closely and jealously as he does his father’s favor. The blood shared between them is the truest thing he knows.
Promise me you will always tell me everything, he thinks out of nowhere, as he watches Tyelkormo laugh. Promise me I will always be your favorite.
Promise me that it will be like this forever, you and I against a wide, wild world; promise me that out of everyone, you still need me the most.
He wonders, in a shiver of sudden resentment, if there are things Tyelkormo tells Oromë that he does not also tell Curufinwë—what secret corners of his heart he has turned over to his Vala’s care. He wonders, if asked whom he loves most in all the world, what name Tyelkormo would say.
Curufinwë’s own answer is ever-ready upon his lips: Tyelkormo. Atar. A near-perfect tie. No one ever bothers to ask; they all already know.
There is the unspoken expectation, of course, that this may someday shift, that there are those he will love whom he has not yet met. Children. A wife.
An inevitability—or, the latter is, at least. Some Elves spend many years alone; some love is slow to bloom. Some Elves—Tyelkormo, for instance—are less chaste even in the preface to such love than they are meant to be, despite the supposed nature of the marriage-act. But eternity yawns ahead, and everyone finds someone eventually.
Everyone finds someone who becomes the world to them.
(Everyone finds someone who matters more than him.)
He meets her at a conference in Tirion.
The panels and presentations have all concluded, and the attendees mingle amongst one another; shapers and scholars of metal and stone. Chief among them, as ever, are his parents, bright as beacons among the crowd. They’re amusing themselves by terrorizing some poor, ill-prepared researcher—which is to say, Fëanáro bombards him with a loud series of interrogatives and disputations, while Nerdanel occasionally pretends to be about to have mercy upon him and interrupt, only to shamelessly spur her husband on instead.
Curufinwë is idling in the corner, debating whether the effort of forging connections tonight is worth it, when his gaze falls upon somebody familiar. A Noldorin woman, standing alone, with a leather-bound notebook creased open in her hand.
He draws nearer, and she seems to sense his gaze; she glances up, and he sees the moment she recognizes his face—and then, a half-heartbeat later, the moment she double-takes, and realizes he is not his father.
Nonetheless, she curtseys politely: “May I help you, Your Highness?”
“I know your face,” he says, by way of greeting, “do I not?”
“I attend this event every year, my lord.”
Yes, he has seen her before, he thinks—her face, long and sharp; her hair, deep brown with glistening highlights of red, twisted into a silver-pinned knot—and yet he cannot shake the feeling that knows her from elsewhere. “Have you a craft?”
“Silver, my lord.”
His brow lifts. It is not a shocking response—there exist female smiths, among the Noldor—but it is primarily a man’s art, in the way hunting is, in the way healing and textiles are not.
“To whom are you apprenticed?” he asks.
The woman looks back at him, cool and appraising: “I have earned my mastery already.”
She says it calmly, the steel-glint of her eyes neither sharpening nor wavering; though he does not miss that this time, she leaves off his title.
Probingly, he makes no apology for the slight. “To whom were you apprenticed, then?”
“Vorohlón.”
“Ah,” says Curufinwë. That will be where he has seen her before, then; he has met Vorohlón briefly, in his time at the Halls of Aulë, and may have glimpsed her at his side. “An adequate smith,” he allows, and turns his eyes upon the dripping silver that adorns her form: “Your work?” he asks, with a gesture.
“The armlets and the medallion only,” she replies, lifting a wrist. “Not my best work. I am not usually much of a jeweler.”
He takes her offered hand, and inspects the gleaming cuff that wraps around her forearm: an elegant piece, unadorned by jewel or pearl, well-made and free of firestain. The medallion that clips the fine silver net upon her hair is of similar quality, depicting the lithe figure of Nessa leaping beside her deer.
“If this is not your best work,” he tells her, releasing her hand, “then you are better than your erstwhile master.”
“Thank you,” she says. With a flicker of playfulness: “I apologize—I would repay the compliment, but . . .”
He smiles, smooth and practiced: “You are hardly at fault for having had a lesser teacher than I.”
“He taught me well enough, for my purposes,” she answers coolly. “And he permits me to use his forge still, which is kind of him.”
“Why not use your own?”
Her mouth purses, ever so slightly: “I would,” she says, “if my father would allow one to be built.”
Curufinwë hums. “And who is your father?”
“Namnandur.” He recognizes the name as a minister in his grandfather’s court. He’ll be certain to remember this woman, then; she may prove herself useful. “You may find me at his residence under the name of Lady Lórendis,” she adds, “should you care to commission the sort of silverware too mundane for Your Highness’s own hands to forge.”
The sudden edge to her voice, sharp yet twinkling-eyed, makes him swallow down a laugh. “You speak of your own work so disparagingly?”
“Well,” says Lórendis, quite evenly, “I only had a lesser teacher, after all.”
This startles another laugh out of him, and this one makes it to his lips. “Hmm,” he says, as her own thin lips tilt into a subtle, keen little smile. “Well. Good evening, Lady Lórendis.”
“By all means, good sir,” she says, curtseying again, “take your leave. If you speak with me for much longer, people will start mistaking me for somebody important, and then I shall know no peace.”
Turned from her, he smiles again, unseen.
Later, as they leave, his mother asks him, “Who was that young lady you were speaking with, Atarinkë?”
“Lórendis,” he replies, “daughter of Namnandur.”
“A craftswoman?” says Fëanáro.
“Yes.”
His parents exchange a hopeful glance. He pretends he doesn’t notice. Their hope is in vain; he felt no sudden spark, no catch in his breath when her bare hand so briefly touched his own. He felt nothing at all.
He meets her again by happenstance, during a visit to his grandfather Mahtan. And she is not an unpleasant conversation partner, nor an unskilled smith; one way or another, he ends up commissioning a set of tableware from her, after which their correspondence simply never peters off. She has a sharp tongue and a quick cruel wit, half-hidden beneath a mask of demure modesty.
The years go on. They strike up a friendship, mainly anchored in the exchange of gossip and sneering judgments regarding other figures in the world of metalworking. He brings her along to events that he would otherwise attend alone. She gains a suitor, a Telerin musician named Yávierion whose attempts at tender poetry are as clumsy as they are inane—something Curufinwë is quick to tell Lórendis, who only laughs.
“I find his earnestness rather sweet, actually,” she tells him. “Though my father seems less enthusiastic about him than he used to. You oughtn’t have invited me to that party; now he’s gotten his hopes up.”
“Yávierion?”
“No,” she says absently, “my father. He’s hoping you might court me. I daresay he overestimates my feminine charms.” She changes the subject before he can respond: “Did you see the mirror-frame Ruimenwë presented at the guild hall the other week?” she says instead.
“No.”
“A gaudy monstrosity,” she pronounces, her nose wrinkling in a familiar cast of disdain. “Either his client is horrified, or utterly tasteless. It was all I could do not to laugh aloud. Here—let me sketch it for you.”
She does so, and he surveys the results: “Tacky,” he agrees. “You could do better.”
“I could do better with my eyes closed,” she mutters. “In fact, I think I will; he could use a little humiliation. The same theme—the birds? Or something else? I think I shall stay with the bird theme. I’ll tell everyone he inspired me.”
“Do not bother; he’s hardly worth the time.”
“Humiliation, my dear friend,” Lórendis says sweetly, “is always worth my time. In the meantime, however—there are a few preliminary sketches of this dishware set I would like for you to look over.”
“By all means,” says Curufinwë, as she flips open her notebook. “I’m sure I can find something to criticize.”
Time carries on; their friendship continues. His father asks him, on occasion, how Lórendis is faring. He answers honestly—that her work is going well, that she is considering taking up a secondary craft and becoming an actress, if her father permits it; and that no Atar, I am still not courting her; yes, Atar, her suitor still has yet to propose.
Then, inevitably, the conversation fades away, and the two of them return to their work—side by side, heat rising up through the silent forge. His father, lately, has been smithing less, having turned his ever-swiveling sights upon gem-craft and mineralogy, and so their stints of collaboration have grown sparser.
What have you been working on? his father might ask him, then. His answers are never particularly interesting. Fëanáro listens anyway, alight with genuine enthusiasm for every little detail of whatever trinket he is designing, every little comment on the process of tempering steel.
Yet, if Curufinwë were not his son—would he give his work a second glance?
He knows Fëanáro does not fake his enthusiasm—both because Curufinwë has worked hard to be so worthy of such undivided attention, and because Fëanáro fakes very little of anything.
He has no need to. He has so much fire within him—raw passion, raw energy. Raw love. His body cannot contain it; it spills out of his eyes, swells out to fill the room, blazes unmistakably in every work of his hands. His fervor is fierce and all-consuming, and yet seemingly endless: a wife for whom he swears his heart will burn eternally; seven sons, each as proudly adored as the last; a thousand passions and projects; he is a father and a husband and a son, a smith and a jeweler and an inventor, a linguist and a loremaster and an orator.
Curufinwë is only a smith.
Oh, he is a skilled smith, yes—it is in his very name. He has his father’s talent, and yet none of his father’s innovations to his name. Letters and lamps and seeing-stones; greatness is a spill of spotlight just beyond Curufinwë’s fingertips, while in the shadows, unrenowned yet resolute, he burns quietly on. Missing, perhaps, a certain reactant, a certain heat.
Missing something.
Curufinwë Atarinkë is not his father.
He is the shadow of the flame on the wall, the soft ember in the ashes—a fragment. A fraction. A facsimile. He is a spark that has yet to catch.
He is the age his father was when his parents first fell in love.
Given that, he is unsure why it has not happened yet—the fabled moment of realization. The hitch in his heart, the heat in his cheeks. The pieces are in place: he enjoys Lórendis’s company and respects her intelligence; he is aligned with her vision of an ideal home, an ideal partnership. If it is anyone, it would have to be her; he is too narrow-hearted to fit in anyone else, beyond his kin.
He waits.
He wonders, sometimes, if he is empty.
Curufinwë Atarinkë is not his father, but he is proud to carry his name, his face, his legacy. His pride.
There’s no pride like the pride in creation, his father likes to say.
It has to be him, Curufinwë decides, to carry on the line. To be the first of his brothers to produce an heir. For the esteem it will earn him from his father, who has been hinting loudly about grandchildren for years, but beyond even that . . .
He wants, in the end, more than anything, to make something that matters—the works of his hands, of gold and silver and steel, fall short. Too empty.
A work of his fëa, of flesh and blood and soul—that, perhaps, will do.
“A baby?” says Tyelkormo, incredulous, when he shares the skeleton of his master plan. “And what are you going to make it from, exactly? Wrought-iron and wires?”
Curufinwë, briefly, considers it.
“I imagine the traditional method would prove far easier,” he replies archly, instead.
“And you want—what? Flirting tips?”
“By Aulë’s beard,” says Curufinwë, shivering, “no.”
“Good luck trying to convince someone to reproduce with you, in that case,” Tyelkormo teases. “Unless you mean to try to seduce—what’s the name of that little silversmith friend of yours again? Lórissë?”
“Lórendis.”
“Yes, her.”
“I’ve thought upon it,” he admits. “She is good company, and would produce offspring both intelligent and fair.”
“. . . I can see why you have so few options.”
He scowls: “Well, I wouldn’t phrase it like that to her.”
“Isn’t she betrothed, though?”
Curufinwë’s mouth tightens, just a little. “Not yet,” he says. He does not look forward to the day that changes. He isn’t likely to see her often anymore, if she ends up settling down with Yávierion—he dwells in Alqualondë, and most Elven families do not make it a habit of traveling nearly so much as his own does.
“Then you’d better quicken your pace,” Tyelkormo warns him.
“Is that what the Lord Huntsman says to you?”
“Shut up,” says Tyelkormo, pinching him.
His would-be rival aside, however, Curufinwë thinks he can pull it off, if he tries. It is not out of the question that she could love him. Perhaps he’ll even learn to love her, in time. It does not matter if he is empty; he can do what he has always done, and craft a mask so masterful that in time, it becomes his true face.
He does not think she loves Yávierion, or at least not yet—like Curufinwë, she is still waiting. He must determine, then, whether her entertainment of Yávierion’s courtship stems purely from true desire, true endearment, or from what he represents—a new start.
In the end, there is no need for him to broach the subject—Lórendis does so herself.
“Curvo,” she says to him suddenly one day, as they stroll through the theatre district of Tirion, “you’ll come to my wedding, won’t you?”
He makes a pointed glance toward her hands: they bear several slender bands, a few of them even silver, but none of them an engagement ring.
“Theoretically,” she establishes, “someday.”
“Someday,” he repeats.
“Someday.” She twists one of her rings around her finger, a blinding flash in the gold-bouncing Treelight. “I have been attempting to picture it, lately. It’s . . . odd, isn’t it?”
“What, marriage?”
“Odd to think about,” she says. “Oh, I do not know. I imagine I’m simply . . . not ready yet. But were Yávierion not the right man, then I wouldn’t feel . . . Oh, I don’t know,” she says again, and frowns. “It will cause my father to stop pestering me—there is that, at least.”
“Such passion,” he drawls. “Aren’t most women at least somewhat more excited to marry their betrotheds?”
Something in her frown tautens. “He is not my betrothed.”
Ah. There. He scans her face, leans in, head tilted: “Yet he will be,” he says, “most likely, in time. Do you not wish for it to be so? Do you not love him?”
“Do I not love him?” she echoes, with a sigh, and turns her wandering eyes skyward: “What does love feel like? How is anyone meant to know, when they have never loved before?”
“My father says it was all at once,” he offers, “immediately, like a lightning-strike. He knew at once that my mother was the love of his life.”
“Not particularly helpful, in my case,” says Lórendis, sighing again. “Well. Still. When I marry, I should like to be like them.”
“Insufferable?” he suggests.
“Well-matched,” she clarifies. “Not—I wouldn’t want anywhere near so many children—one or two should be enough, I’d think—but . . . to have someone with whom I could collaborate . . .”
“What,” says Curufinwë, a little coldly, “is your little pet who trails after you like a concussed puppy not quite up to your standard of collaboration?”
“You are too cruel,” she admonishes him—but he hears the note of laughter in her voice before she stifles it, glimpses the edge that glitters like a swiftly-sheathed knife beneath the surface of her eyes. “Yávierion is . . . sweet.”
“Oh,” he agrees, no less coldly, “certainly. Sweet—and little else.”
She rolls her eyes, though her smile has broken through to her lips: “He’s handsome,” she insists, “you cannot dispute that.”
“You misjudge my inclination for disputation,” he replies, desert-dry. “If well-matched is what you seek, then search elsewhere.”
“Where?” she says rhetorically.
“Well,” Curufinwë muses. “You could marry me.”
Lórendis stares at him. He stares back, gauging her reaction.
“You jest,” she says, after a moment.
“I am entirely serious.”
“I did not know you felt that way for me.”
Her voice, devoid of either hope or disgust, remains cautiously polite. Curufinwë switches tactics:
“I don’t,” he says.
Fëanáro Curufinwë is not a liar. He wears his passions far too proudly to disguise them, even should he bother to attempt it; few would think to doubt his sincerity, and by extension, the sincerity of his well-crafted, self-forged simulacrum.
Curufinwe Atarinkë is not his father.
Lórendis knows it—knows him, to a degree that he at times finds discomforting, more than anyone else who does not share his blood—and so it is understandable that she hesitates. That her eyes flick over his face, sharp and searching, for any hints of his deceit.
“No?” says Lórendis.
“No,” he repeats. “You’re pretty enough, I suppose—”
“How charming you are.”
“—but I do not love you.” He decides he might as well be entirely upfront. “The offer is purely pragmatic; you want your father out of your business, and I want children. One or two would suffice, as you yourself said. I would not expect anything else of you, beyond the necessary acts of consummation and conception.”
Narrow-eyed, she looks upon him, and whatever she sees makes the tension bleed out of her face, bit by bit.
“I do not love you, either,” she says, eventually, softly.
It brings him a bizarre sort of relief to hear. “Good,” he says.
“I would not chain you to me if you do not love me.”
“Do not worry yourself about that,” he replies. “I am not—” I am not my father—“much of a romantic.”
And what of your chains? he does not ask—what of your Yávierion? Will you ever learn to love him, in time, or are you like me—tired of waiting?
He thinks of telling her, you are my dear friend, and I have few enough of those. He thinks of telling her, I do not know how else to ensure I do not lose you. He thinks of telling her, nobody needs to know that we are liars; nobody needs to know that we are empty—do you understand? Tell me you understand me. Tell me you are like me. Tell me you, at least, will not leave me alone.
He says none of it. He’ll let her think on it; if she refuses, he will find another way.
“It was only a suggestion,” he says.
“We’re young yet,” she says, quietly.
“Yes,” Curufinwë agrees. “We are.”
They marry a few years later. This surprises nobody—it’s already what everyone expects, after she breaks off her courtship with Yávierion, and they take advantage of expectation. Plan it all to the letter, discuss the terms of their future like a treatise. She wants a life beyond the boundaries of her father’s word, her father’s house; the means to pursue her potential and her craft. He wants a child who will properly inherit the temperament and intelligence of an artisan.
Their parents are thrilled.
They permit exactly one year to elapse between the betrothal and the wedding—precisely, perfectly traditional. The ceremony, too, is perfectly traditional: a feast of both their houses, gathered amidst autumn leaves and lavish decorations to witness their holy vows. Makalaurë plays upon a great golden harp; Tyelkormo stands at Curufinwë’s right side, Lórendis’s favorite cousin on her left. The engagement rings are silver, the wedding rings gold—the former crafted by her hand, the latter by his.
Under an arch of wine-red roses, Curufinwë takes his friend’s hands in his own.
She is the very picture of a radiant bride, arrayed in deep gray silk and silver, with white diamonds glistening in her dark cascade of hair. He’s adorned in intricate robes of deep maroon, with more metal in his hair than even he has ever donned. Flashes of them match, artfully arranged: his trims dark gray and his jewelry silver, her earrings ruby-red. They have crafted the shell of perfection in diligent tandem: the shine of her shy smile and the laughter in her eyes; the settle of soft warmth over his face when he speaks the words of his vows.
“I do so swear,” he says, when prompted, clear and ringing and certain.
“I do so swear,” echoes Lórendis, more softly.
Their speeches made, their union blessed, her mother gifts him with a jewel—a deep amber topaz—while his father gifts her with one from his own workshop, a shining white adamant set in silver.
He slips off his engagement ring—so carefully crafted by his bride’s clever hand—and pulls out the wedding-bands. White-gold for her and yellow-gold for him, the better to suit their complexions, but set with matching fire-opals.
His bride slides the ring onto his finger, and—
Curufinwë, yet again, feels nothing.
Well—not nothing. And yet—nothing he is meant to feel. Forever, he thinks, a little distantly, as the cool metal nestles against his skin. There is no severance, no escape. Save a certain and unlikely circumstance, he does not have another chance to bind his heart to another’s.
What does it matter, when he has so little in his heart to bind? What does it matter, when—
Lórendis catches his eye, and winks.
His lungs loosen, and he breathes again, the thrill of odd triumph quirking up his lips. For once, his smile is entirely honest.
His father, standing beside them, is misty-eyed—beaming at his son, alight with joy and pride. When Curufinwë catches his eye, he does not have to fake the warmth in his lingering smile. Their careful practice in the mirror, half-facetious, has transformed in time to something realer: a secret, winking between them. Beneath the gilt of wedding-gold is their true silver.
There are few people, all told, whom Curufinwë loves. He supposes that he loves her, to some extent, in his way. And if it is not the love they are meant to feel—nobody needs to know.
The real wedding, of course, occurs afterwards, and neither of them are entirely sure if it will work. The formation of a marriage-bond, he has heard, requires both the marriage-act itself, and some actual intention to marry—yet will it be enough?
It’s enough.
It’s awkward, and does not feel particularly holy. But it works. He supposes they have told no lies, in their vows to the Allfather—they have sworn to love one another, and that is all. They have not sworn to become one another’s world, to care less for their crafts and families than for each other.
That does not stop the thrilling sensation that they have gotten away with something terribly devious.
Afterwards, newly wed, they lie inches apart upon their marriage-bed. Her hair, half-unbound, sprawls across his cheek; between them, their hands are just barely brushing, his knuckles against her fingertips.
“My lord husband,” she says cheerfully, grinning at him with lips still shimmering from her elaborate wedding-day makeup.
“My lady wife,” he returns, in an indulgent drawl.
She lifts her free hand, miming the raising of a glass: “Here’s to a fruitful new partnership, my friend,” she announces, deadly serious, as if speaking of some matter of diplomacy or trade.
“Quite,” Curufinwë agrees, and smiles. Empty liars they may be, but they are empty liars together.
Curufinwë Atarinkë is not his father. Yet in the end, if not for the same purposes—like his father, he has married his best friend.
Like his father, he vows to himself, someday he will make something that changes the world.