Cold Are Those Tools

Nerdanel did not know why she had gone there.

Everything in that house screamed Fëanàro’s name, and Nolofinwë, kind as he was, only added to her disquiet – the set of his hands, the curve of his jaw, the way he walked made him look too much like his half-brother. It disturbed her.

He is not his brother, she reminded herself, and tried to ignore a nagging thought that said ‘I wish he was! I wish he was!’

They talked softly, polite nothings that somehow feared to grow any louder. The house was full of whispered anger and muttered oaths, and Nerdanel felt that in the darkness they would grow and swell, and engulf any who dared to dwell here.

“Nolofinwë!”

The cry was loud; the voice was familiar, yet odd in a certain quality of tone.

“Excuse me for a moment,” Fingolfin said then, rising. “I must see what Fëanàro wants.”

“Fëanàro?”

Incredulous.

Fingolfin sighed, and looked down.

“You were not meant to know,” he said finally. “I feared – I feared it would only hurt you more.”

“Let me see him,” Nerdanel said, imperiously. “If I could survive the news of his death, I can survive the news of his living, surely?”

Fingolfin nodded, led the way, and it took a conscious effort for Nerdanel to prevent herself from running after him. As it was she walked a little too-fast, eager and striving to hide the fact.

She saw him – and choked back what could have been a gasp, or a laugh, or a sob.

“I tried to warn you,” Fingolfin whispered. “At least give me that.”

“Nolofinwë!” exclaimed child-Fëanàro, looking up with eager eyes. “I just – “

He stopped, looking up at Nerdanel, who shivered a little, involuntarily. 

So much the same. Dark hair, bright-shining eyes, same chin, same proud face. But young, so young.

Like, and yet unlike.

“Who are you?” he asked her. Abrupt, direct. She wondered if her Fëanàro had been the same when he was a child.

He is a child, she reminded herself.

He was looking up at her, expectantly, with the cool calmness of intelligent, patient youth.

“I am Nerdanel,” she said. “I – I know you are Fëanàro.”

Nerdanel did not know whether to feel pleased or sad. Pleased, because he did not have waking memories of terrible things to haunt him. Sad, because he did not have the pleasant memories, either.

His eyes shifted, from Nerdanel to his half-brother, and then settled on her again.

“You have lovely hair, Nerdanel,” he said, and Nerdanel wondered whether the man the boy had been was dead, or whether he was merely asleep within.

She remembered when he – no, not he – had said that to her first, but it had not been here, in this house of stone and dust; it had been in the forge, with the fires roaring, and the clanging of hot tools about them.

The tools were cold now, and the hand that had wielded them was too small to do so again, yet.

That had been a different Fëanàro, she reflected bitterly – ay, and a different Nerdanel.

He was always the older.

It was difficult for her to reconcile the memory of the man with the grave face and serious eyes to this child with the unraveling braids and sticky smear of honey on his chin.

Abruptly, she turned and left the room, not quite running, but with a sense of swift urgency, rounding the corner in a whirl of coppery hair and white dress.

Fëanor looked at the empty doorframe for long moments, and then at Fingolfin.

“I should like to see her again,” he said thoughtfully. “Will I, do you think, Nolofinwë?”

“I think you will,” Fingolfin replied, pity in his glance.

 That night, in his bed, Fëanor dreamt of light, and song, and a red-haired maiden at a great feast; then he saw fire, and ships, and blood, and he cried in his sleep.

Chapter Two

The years in Valinor passed in golden languor, as they were wont to do, unmarked by the turn of the seasons, and untroubled by the change of time, and Fëanor Finwë’s son grew swiftly again to manhood in golden Tirion.

Nerdanel avoided him as well as she could; but Tirion was not boundless, and she had to come across him a few times.

He was again grown now, and he was as she had first seen him – tall, and thin, and almost feline in is ease of movement – but his moods seemed easier now, and the thunderstorms of his temper were infrequent.

The sight was painful – Nerdanel could, she supposed, have gone to him, with the right of his wife to do so – but he had a new life, and she did not want to infringe upon it for selfish hopes of her own that might never be entirely fulfilled.

She told herself fiercely that she must move on– after the years she had lived without him, and not felt the loss too deeply, surely she could continue.

But seeing him seemed to set something to work in her; a longing that remained unsatisfied so long as she did not speak to him.

He was not blind, either, and he saw sadness in her, and liked it not – ignorant though youth made him, forgetful of his past and perhaps happier in the forgetting, he dimly remembered happiness there, and was displeased to find it absent.

Thus neither of them wanted to see each other.

She heard from ‘friends’ that he had taken up craft again – this did not surprise her. The forge was Fëanàro’s home, finally, and outside it he could never remain content.

Too many people felt sorry for her. It was there in their faces, in their voices, their manner – everything they did around her seemed tainted by knowledge, as if they knew something ill that Nerdanel did not.

But she knew more than they. She knew that this was not her Fëanàro, and this knowing was the only thing that kept her from insanity – for the intellectual realisation had detached itself from the rest of her, so that her heart still raced when she saw him, and in some corner of her mind, she still thought of him as melindo.

On one occasion, when he was perhaps thirty-five sun years of age, she saw him entering her father’s smithy, same cocky-confident walk, same impatient aspect.

She had held a glass in her hand, a thin, delicate one, and she was twirling it between her fingers idly.

She saw him, and dropped it, fingers suddenly nerveless. She could not help it.

He met her stare, grey on green, and it seemed to her that behind the outline of this half-grown boy she could see the man who had sworn his devotion, who had spent ages working in a forge only to be discovered later, after Telperion had waxed and waned both, peacefully asleep with his head on his arm.

She raised her hand, as if trying to touch someone through a thick sheet of glass, and gestured feebly towards him.

A muscle in Fëanor’s temple throbbed erratically, and Nerdanel wondered what he was thinking of. It had always been difficult to understand him, and rebirth had not changed him in that respect.

He bowed a stiff bow, and then hurried off quickly.

Nerdanel bent to pick up the broken shards of glass, telling herself that he did not matter any more, but she knew the lie in it, and in every piece of glass she saw Fëanàro’s face.

Melindo - lover (Quenya)