I have arbitrarily decided that I will use the most commonly known names for Feanor and his sons.  Correct use of their aliases is just too confusing.  Apologies to any who prefer them.

______________________________________________________________

Endurance

She had tried to ignore how many years had passed.  How many yeni, come to that.  How many ages. 

She left the heat of the forge where she created her gleamingly sinuous vessels which seemed to have neither end nor beginning – her attempt to convince herself that all good things would return at some time – and walked to the worn rock above the valley, where the breeze cooled her flushed cheeks and loosened her rebellious hair from its stern knot.

It had clearly been long – for her seat on the tireless stone had worn into the semblance of a throne.

They told her she would be better returning to the house, where she could sleep in a soft bed and sup at a table: dress herself in fine gowns and pretend to be a lady – but why should she?  She would rather sit here and watch the Eagles fly, and wish that she had their freedom. 

Long shadows streaked the wide fields and copses as the evening light caressed her shoulder, burning its way down her back with a heated intimacy that reminded her of his touch….  She thrust the thought away.  No more.  Not ever.   Its warmth disappeared below the crown of the hill behind her – like him – leaving her cold in a world that seemed ever darker.

She felt his arrival rather than heard it.

‘Come home, Nerdanel,’ he said gently, covering her fingers with his large, strong hand.  He smelled of molten metal and fire, barely subdued by the application of water and soap.  It was a fragrance that seeped back into the very beginnings of memory and spoke to her of love and safety.

She released a silent breath and raised her eyes to the stars.

‘You were right not to follow,’ the deep voice said eventually.  ‘You know it.’

‘Poor comfort,’ she sighed.  ‘Better to be wrong and in the company of those you love.’

‘Do you believe that?’

Nerdanel brooded over his words as Ithil rose.  ‘No,’ she admitted finally.  ‘But I must have been a dreadful wife and a terrible mother.  Why did not even one of my sons heed me?’

Mahtan sat beside her.  ‘Was I a fool not to talk you out of wedding him?’ he asked.  ‘He was never going to make you an easy husband.’

‘You could not,’ she said with conviction.  ‘He set my blood on fire.  I would not have heard your doubts.’

‘No more did all those who followed him to disaster.’ 

‘Then why did I, too, not follow him without question?’

Mahtan placed one arm gently round his daughter’s shoulders.  ‘Because you had learned to see the ashes that came after the flame,’ he said.  ‘Because you knew that he fuelled his passion carelessly with the lives of others.  Because you knew the heart of the elf who needed to control everyone and everything around him – and dared stand up to him.’  He pressed his cheek to her hair.  ‘But he could see in your eyes what he had become, my daughter, and he did not like what he saw.’

‘I thought I was so blessed, Atar,’ she whispered.  ‘Fëanor loved me – and we had seven sons – seven wonderful ellyn whose talents were only eclipsed by their father’s genius.  And I am left with nothing.  Six of those sons abide with their father still in Námo’s Halls – and the seventh…’ she closed her eyes, ‘the fate of the seventh is even worse.’

Her father squeezed gently.  Truth to tell, his grandsons’ actions had horrified him even more than his son-in-law’s.  Fëanor had always been impetuous to a fault, but his grandsons had perpetuated his criminal stupidity in ways that made his stomach curdle…  Their reckless disregard of the rights and wishes of others – their adherence to their rash oath, when all but a fool could see that, in this case, being forsworn would have been more honourable by far – had infuriated him on his daughter’s behalf and made him resent bitterly the impulse that had made him take Finwë’s son into his workshop all those long centuries ago. 

Would he welcome them back, should Námo come to decide that they had learned the enormity of their actions and begun to atone for them?  He had to admit that he did not really know. 

And yet, despite Alqualondë, despite their abandonment of Fingolfin’s followers, despite Menegroth, despite Sirion, he still found that what infuriated him most was their thoughtless cruelty to his daughter.

Nerdanel rested her head on her father’s shoulder and enjoyed his physical closeness, before she suddenly realised that presence was unusual.   ‘What are you doing here, Atar?’ she asked.

‘I thought that tonight you might need company.’  Mahtan raised his hand to smooth her hair, as he had done when she had been the little elleth who dogged his steps in the forge and wanted nothing more than to emulate his skills.

‘It used to be that my sons’ wives would visit at this time,’ she said, ‘but they have long since chosen to move on.  Only there is nowhere for me to go.’

‘Not so, my daughter.’  Mahtan looked out over the black and silver of the night world.  ‘You have spent long enough in mourning what cannot be changed.  It is time for you to come down from your mountain and rejoin the world.’

Nerdanel’s lips twisted bitterly.  ‘What use has the world for me?’ she asked.  ‘I have been viewed with horror and shunned for more time than I care to remember.  Few there are who would welcome the wife of Fëanor and the mother of his sons.’

‘Nienna invites you to Irmo’s gardens, my daughter – that she might help you learn from your grief and that Estë might offer you healing.’

Ithil had begun his downward journey before she answered him.  ‘Yet in assuaging my grief and healing my pain, I am afraid that I will lose them,’ she said.   ‘The ellon whose eyes blazed with excitement and to whom each challenge was a new adventure, whose first touch rang in my fëa with the sound of a gong – my Fëanor, not the obsessed elf he became, not the father who could sacrifice his sons for the touch of a jewel, no matter how hallowed.  And my sons, whom I loved from the first beat of their hearts: the gentle ellyn who longed to please their father – loving and loyal, noble and proud.  How can I keep them in my heart and love them and not suffer for what they did?’

‘I do not know, my Nerdanel,’ her father sighed.  ‘But I know that you must do something.  Your mother and I are worried for you.  Lord Aulë is concerned.’  Mahtan looked down at the top of his daughter’s head.  ‘You are stagnating, child.  Going round and round and over and over the same ground.  We have let you seek your own way for as long as we could – but you are no nearer finding your way out of this maze than you were an age ago.  It may be that all are caught in your sorrow and guilt and that none will be free until you have found your own answers.’  He put a finger to her lips as she raised her head.  ‘Silmë came to us, Nerdanel.  She has not forgotten.  Curufin and Celebrimbor will live forever in her heart – but she has to live here and now.  You are not the only one who has suffered – who continues to suffer.’ 

‘I hoped,’ Nerdanel whispered, ‘when the Exiles were permitted to return and we heard of my grandson’s survival – of his rejection of the endless pursuit of the jewels – that there might be some chance for him to escape the curse of his house – of my house.’

‘He did, Nerdanel.  He died at Sauron’s hands defending his people.  There is no dishonour in that.  His errors were no more than mistakes – if Manwë himself can be deluded by Morgoth, can my great grandson not be deceived by his servant?  When Celebrimbor is ready to return, Námo will escort him forth from his Halls to take his place among us.  But you do not want to offer him a refuge as damaged as that he fled in Ennor.  You must allow your wounds to heal, my daughter.’ 

‘They are – no longer as raw as they were,’ she said defensively.  ‘It is only on nights such as this one that once again they begin to bleed.’

‘A hundred yeni have passed since his spirit passed to Námo’s care.’

‘A hundred yeni!’ she marvelled.  ‘And yet at times like this it feels…,’ she shook her head, ‘like a blow freshly delivered.’

‘Nerdanel, I doubt that Fëanor will return before the world is remade,’ Mahtan said as gently as he could.  There was no point in offering hope – and the hopeless would, in any case, not accept it.  ‘But Silmë feels – she believes that her connection to Celebrimbor is reawakening.’  He paused, uncertain whether to continue, but finally added, ‘And more: there is a coalescence to her sense of Curufin that she thinks might mean that he is beginning the processes needed to return.’

‘Calimë – does she sense Maedhros?’  Nerdanel’s clutch on her father’s hand tightened. 

‘She says not.’  Mahtan decided not to mention that Maedhros’s wife had added that she did not wish to have him return, for even if everyone else had found it possible to forgive him his transgressions, she had not.  ‘And, of course, Maglor is not in Námo’s Halls – and he and Lirulin were not yet wed when Fëanor carried his sons off across the sea.’

‘What of the others?’ she asked, a hand going to her throat as if she found it hard to breathe.  ‘What of my little ones?’

‘Who is there to plead with Námo for their release?’ Mahtan returned.

The shroud of night faded before the ashen grey of a still dawn and the world seemed to pause until at last a line of flame began to paint the sky with colour.

Mahtan waited.  He had learned patience and knew that there were times when silence presented a stronger argument than words.

‘I will go to the gardens of Lórien,’ Nerdanel conceded.  ‘I did not think my grief mattered to anyone but me, but, if it will help my sons, then I will go.’

Her father’s hand raised her chin so that her storm-grey eyes met his.  ‘You matter to me, my daughter,’ he said, his voice unexpectedly stern.  ‘Your inconsolable pain has hurt your mother and me more than you can imagine.  How can you think it has not?’

Anor’s brilliance turned the copper of Nerdanel’s hair to fire.  ‘I am sorry, Atar,’ she said, taken aback.  ‘I have spent too long alone,’ she added as the blazing sky subsided into day’s tranquil blue. 

‘As you would wish to have protected your sons from all ill, so we would you, Nerdanel.’  The smith stood.  ‘Come, child.  You need to eat and rest and decide what you will take.’  She opened her mouth to protest, but his look forestalled her.  ‘I will see to the rest,’ he said.

‘I was only going to say that I am rather too old and hard-tried to be called a child,’ his daughter told him mildly.

‘You will be my child when the world is remade and all the elves have to begin again.’  Mahtan’s eyes were warm.  ‘And I will still expect you to remember my authority.  As I will have words for my son-in-law that he will not like hearing before I permit him to return to his position in my family.’

‘It may be a thousand yeni or more before you get to say them.’

‘That is fine.’  Mahtan drew his daughter away from the wind-blown rock.  ‘It will give me plenty of time to make sure that my thoughts are expressed as fluently as possible.  And that my words will be unforgettable.’  As they descended the hill towards her isolated cottage, he looped his arm round her waist.  ‘But first things first, my child.  Let us prepare for meetings that will come sooner than that one.’

Nerdanel stopped and turned towards him.  ‘How will they be received?’ she asked, her voice ragged with fear.  ‘Who will be prepared to treat my sons kindly?’

‘That,’ Mahtan judged, ‘will be part of their penance, I fear.  They will have to earn what was once given to them freely – but I cannot imagine that Námo would consider releasing elves who did not understand and accept the difficulty of their path.’  He looked at her sympathetically.  ‘And there will be compensations.  Perhaps, my daughter, preparing a way for them is part of what is asked of you – something you cannot do while you hide away from the world brooding on what cannot be changed.’

She inclined her head as she took his hand in silence and they continued to the simple shelter that was dominated by the forge behind it, while the birds sang in the bright freshness of the early morning.