This is (technically) my first real Silmarillion fic, so I'm a tad nervous. Writing in the Tolkien fandom is awesome and terrifying. Big shoes to fill plus insanely knowledgeable fans equals slight panic. I've done my best with all the names/Quenya words, but if you see any errors, do tell. It would help me a lot. For those who don't know, however, here's a cheat-sheet thingy for your convenience:
Fëanor – Curufinwë/Fëanáro
Maedhros – Nelyafinwë/Nelyo/Maitimo/Russandol
Maglor – Kanafinwë/Káno/Makalaurë
Celegorm – Turkafinwë/Tyelko/Tyelkormo
Caranthir – Morifinwë/Moryo/Carnistir
Curufin – Curufinwë/Curvo/Atarinkë
Amrod – Pityafinwë/Pityo/Ambarussa/Umbarto/Ambarto/Atyarussa (Amrod, what even?)
Amras – Telufinwë/Telvo/Ambarussa/Minyarussa
Brother/Little brother – Háno/Hanno
Male elf – Ellon (yes, I realize this is Sindarin, but I couldn't find another word)
Lastly, Maedhros and Maglor are both young-ish adults in this story, but all their other brothers are still pretty little, think 4 to 9 range, or the Elvish equivalent thereof.
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It was after midnight, in those deathly cold hours of the intensest darkness, that Maitimo heard his door creak softly open. The sound brought him to consciousness, and he stirred under the thick layer of blankets, raising himself on one arm to survey the object of the disturbance, shivering as his upper body came clear of the sheets and was stung with the chill that hung heavy in the air of his room.
"What troubles you?" the eldest son of Fëanáro whispered gently into the still darkness, hardly needing to see the small form silhouetted in the door frame to know that his unexpected guest was one of his younger brothers. Often he had been awoken in the night by one or more of them, and always for some kind of trouble or another: nightmares, loneliness, the inability to fall asleep, the list was long and numerous. He had long since ceased asking why the youngest members of his father's house sought his comfort first in instances such as these, and not that of their parents or of Káno, but he nevertheless bore the interruptions in stride. If his brothers had cause for distress, then who was he to turn them away? He would have been lying, however, if he said he did not wish that they would seek that comfort at a more reasonable hour of the day.
Now, a sniffle reached Maitimo's ears before a voice, tremulous with tears, answered his inquiry.
"I'm cold, Nelyo, and I cannot sleep. May I stay with you?" It was Carnistir's voice, small and quiet as always it was, and Maitimo smiled, though he knew his brother could hardly see the expression in the dense shadow of his room. The fourth son of Fëanáro was certainly the most soft-spoken of the family, and he hardly ever asked for favors, even at his tender age, so for him to do so now told Maitimo that his plight must have been truly desperate.
He did not want to keep Carnistir waiting for his reply, shivering at the door, and so he shifted over in the bed, holding the blankets open despite the draft it let in, and answered resignedly, "it is just as well that I'm cold too, then. Come along."
The form in the entrance shut the door with a soft click, and then there came the rushing pitter-patter of tiny feet scurrying across the floor, and in the next moment, Carnistir had launched himself into his elder brother's bed, snuggling under the mound of blankets and poking his cold toes into Maitimo's warm stomach. The copper-haired ellon gave a soft cry of consternation and wriggled away from Carnistir, stating with a touch of heat, "if you plan on freezing me as well, you might take your leave, Moryo!"
That earned a rare giggle from his soft-spoken brother, but nonetheless, the little elfling removed his feet from Maitimo's body. The elder relaxed and wrapped the blankets more tightly around the two of them, laying back down and throwing his arm heavily over Moryo.
"There," Maitimo sighed. "Now, providing that you refrain from getting those ice blocks you call feet anywhere near me, I suppose I'll let you stay." His reluctant tone wasn't entirely authentic. Irritated though he might have been at having been awoken at such a late (or more precisely, early) hour, the addition of Carnistir's warmth wasn't wholly unwelcome. He hadn't noticed before in his sleep, but the night truly had grown bitterly cold, and he was now aware of the creeping drafts that slipped into the room through the tiny gaps in the windows and the space between the boards of the floor.
Moryo curled into his brother with a sigh of contentment, his body collapsed into a compact ball that rested against Maitimo's chest, his chilled nose buried in the fiery-haired ellon's clavicle.
"Thank you, Nelyo," the little one mumbled meekly, and now Maitimo chuckled. It was difficult for him to stay annoyed at any of his brothers.
"You are welcome, hanno," he replied, but Carnistir had already dropped off, like a warm, slumbering coal under Maitimo's arm. Lulled by the heat and Moryo's soft breathing, the elder soon followed his lead.
.
"Nelyo. Nelyo. Maitimo!" A young voice and a poke on his cheek brought the ellon from slumber once more, and he cracked one gray eye open to see Tyelko standing beside his bed, his golden hair shining dimly in the faint light of the moon through the window. Curvo was hovering over his elder brother's shoulder, his hands clutching a stuffed toy to his chest, his expression small and anxious as he regarded the bleary Maitimo.
"We're cold," Tyelko stated bluntly, unapologetically. "May we sleep with you?"
Maitimo sighed, but patted the mattress invitingly all the same. It wouldn't have been fair, irksome as it might be, to deny the two their request when he'd already allowed Carnistir to do the same.
"Hurry up," he told Tyelko and Curvo, "but do not disturb Moryo."
They didn't bother to ask why their middle brother was there in the first place, and they eagerly climbed into the bed, Curvo settling on the other side of Moryo, under Maitimo's hand, and Tyelko behind, pressed against Nelyo's back.
It was just as well that Maitimo's bed was so large, built not only for his royal status, but also for his considerable height and long limbs. Anything less than a truly sizable mattress would not have suited the first son of Fëanáro, and he could not decide if he was glad of the space to hold him and three of his brothers more comfortably, or if it was that very same roominess that had drawn them to his bed in the first place. He knew not—and cared not—for he was too tired to ponder it, and the warmth of four bodies under one set of blankets made him all the drowsier.
He did not even mind when Tyelko wrapped his hair around his frozen fingers, nor when Curvo sneezed on his wrist.
.
The third interruption couldn't have been more than an hour later, and Maitimo sensed the presence of another of his brothers rather than anything else. He steeled himself before opening his eyes, and found not one, but two more elflings hovering beside the bed. The twin eyes of both Pityo and Telvo blinked silently up at him, and Maitimo matched the look for perhaps a full minute before one of them said in a high, sweet voice, "chilly."
He couldn't tell in the darkness which one of them had spoken, for their voices were as identical as their faces, but it hardly mattered. The point had been made quite clearly, and even had they not said a word, Maitimo could have guessed at this point what it was they wanted.
He smiled ruefully and asked, "you want to join me?"
He could only barely make out both their emphatic nods, and he rose carefully to help the two youngest of the family up. He didn't even have it in his heart to be irritated by their presence. The twins had only just recently been moved out of their parents' room and into their own, so they often had trouble sleeping. It was they who disturbed Maitimo's sleep the most out of all his brothers, but they, unlike Tyelko, seemed to understand and respect that fact, young though they were, and so they never gave their older brother any further trouble.
For that, they deserved to at least sleep comfortably, and so Maitimo leaned very carefully over Moryo and Curvo and reached down to snag first one twin, and then the other, until they were both cautiously nestled in the bed together beside Tyelko, who mumbled and shifted at the disturbance, but thankfully did not rouse.
That made five brothers total. All the youngest of them were now piled snugly in Maitimo's bed, and now, surely now, he would be able to sleep without interruption.
He failed to notice, however, that the twins, in their careless youthfulness, had left his door ajar, and it wasn't long before the click-clack of clawed feet over the wooden floorboards reached the copper-haired ellon's ears, before he had even fallen back to sleep. Maitimo groaned, recognizing the sound for what it was, but didn't even try to stop Huan as the lanky puppy leapt onto the mattress and slumped heavily over the elf's legs with a canine sigh of contentment.
"Do make yourself comfortable," Maitimo mumbled irksomely at the dog, who thumped his tail happily at the sound of his voice before yawning cavernously and dropping his head over Maitimo's calf to sleep.
"Ai, I suppose one more does not truly matter," the elf whispered to himself, before he too slipped back into unconsciousness.
.
The sky outside was lightening to ashen gray when Maitimo was awakened for the last time. Someone was shaking his shoulder gently, and for a terrible moment, he was convinced that it was Nerdanel here to waken him. Had the morning come so soon? Surely, in weather as bitter as this, his mother would let him sleep for an extra hour at least, but when he opened his eyes, he realized that it was not Nerdanel, but Makalaurë who was leaning over him, his expression unreadable.
Maitimo sat up a bit—very slowly so as not to disturb all the sleeping forms in the bed—and raked a few errant strands of his copper hair from his face as he asked in a voice hoarse from sleep, "what is it, Káno? Has something happened?"
It was indeed quite rare for his closest brother to wake him for no obvious reason, and the only times that he had, it had been to tell him of some ill of varying degree that had befallen someone of the house.
"Worry not, háno," Makalaurë said in his melodic whisper, "nothing has happened, not unless you consider snow to be a noteworthy event."
He didn't, but he was curious now as to why Makalaurë had roused him.
"What troubles you, then?" he asked, hardly realizing that he was echoing the words he had spoken only a few hours ago to Moryo.
Makalaurë cleared his throat and looked pointedly at the six sleeping forms of his younger brothers and Huan.
"Well, I do hate to say this when you have such a large company already," he mumbled haltingly, "but… I'm cold, Nelyo."
.
By the time Nerdanel had finished preparing breakfast that morning, she was beginning to grow worried. She and Fëanáro had already been up for more than an hour, but they neither of them had yet to see hide or hair of any of their sons. Ordinarily, the three youngest at least would have been up, already bouncing in their seats as they waited for their morning meal while jabbering excitedly about the snow that had fallen the night before. But here were their seats, empty of all their owners, and Nerdanel could not even hear the laughter or yelling of Tyelko or Curvo—the loudest of her sons—as she set the last steaming plate of food down on the table.
She had said not word of her concern to Fëanáro, but she sensed his worry just the same. He had stopped his grumbling about the cold and the havoc that the snow must have wrought on his forge as he boiled water for tea over the stove, and his eyes kept straying, seemingly of their own accord, to the stairs as he awaited the arrival of at least one of his sons.
Nerdanel could stand it no longer.
"I'm going to see what is taking them," she said, wiping her hands on her apron, her eyes, like her husband's, fixed upon the stairs.
"They are well, I am sure," Fëanáro asserted passively, but Nerdanel could hear the unspoken concern behind the tone. He may have not liked to show it, but Fëanáro did care deeply for his whole family, and was in fact very protective of them, sometimes to such an extent that he distrusted anyone who he thought might do them any harm—anything from attacks on their person, to staring just a bit too long at Maitimo's conspicuous height.
"Nonetheless, my love," Nerdanel said, slipping off her apron, "their food will get cold if they don't come soon, and that would be a terrible shame on a day such as this."
Fëanáro nodded accord, obviously (to all but himself) glad of the excuse to have someone check in on his sons.
"A point well made," he agreed. "I shall stay here and make sure Huan doesn't fancy himself one of us and steal our breakfast again."
There was little chance of that, Nerdanel thought as she hung up the apron and started up the stairs. They hadn't seen Huan this morning either.
.
Nerdanel's glimmer of worry turned to a thicker dread when she opened first the door to the little Ambarussa's room and found their beds empty and the rumpled blankets scattered on the ground.With quick steps she entered the room and checked the beds, then the closet, and then the washroom that adjoined their chamber, but found not even a glimpse of their fiery hair anywhere within.
Her heart beginning to thud fearfully for the safety of her sons, Nerdanel departed Ambarussa's room and moved down the hall, on to Atarinkë's chamber, but found it similarly absent. When she continued on and found that Carnistir was also missing, she gave up all pretense of composure, and she flew to the remaining rooms, to Tyelkormo's, even to Makalaurë's—sweet, sensible, full-grown Makalaurë—but found them both empty, just like all the others.
Nerdanel stood in the doorway of her second son's room, gasping from exertion and fear. Even in the peace of Valinor, she never ceased to worry for her children, not even her eldest, but somewhere along the way, she had convinced herself that those worries were nothing but that: worries. She hadn't thought that one day they might come to fruition, that one day she might truly wake up to find herself suddenly bereft of every light of her life.
Suddenly desperate, she tore out of the room and flew to the last of her sons' chambers, though the hope that she might find any one of her dear ones had faded long ago.
"Valar, please!" she breathed as she ran, stopping short before her eldest's door and flinging it open with more force than she would ordinarily use, the wrenching cry of "Maitimo!" leaving her mouth in a rush of violent hope.
The door opened wide, and Nerdanel froze before a laugh of heartfelt relief escaped her, and all her worry faded into a memory upon the sight that greeted her.
There were her sons, all seven of them, piled in Maitimo's enormous bed, with Huan curled up at their feet. They all looked something of a mess, with hair of nearly every hue tangled together in a heap upon the pillows, limbs thrown over neighboring bodies carelessly. Maitimo was in the middle, his face to the door, his right arm thrown over Atarinkë and Carnistir, preventing them from falling off the bed. The golden head of Tyelkormo could be seen behind him, with the twins beyond, embracing each other in sleep with smiles on their angelic little faces. And finally, there was Makalaurë, hugging the last three to him, the blankets drawn all the way up to his bottom lip, one hand shielding the exposed side of his face from the cold.
Nerdanel smiled at the sight, gazing long at her sons and implanting the image in her memory. She would have to tell Fëanáro the two of them would be eating alone this morning. The day was cold, and she had no desire to wake them.
Fin.
I like to think that Maedhros was a really good older brother. A lot of fics I've read seem to portray him as fiery or cold, and in some ways he was later on in life, but before all that sad Silmarillion stuff went down, I imagine he was loving, though he probably missed the peace of being an only child. I wanted to bring that out at least a bit in this story.