After the Fire

"Nerdanel also was firm of will, but more patient than Fëanor… and at first she restrained him when the fire of his heart grew too hot; but his later deeds grieved her, and they became estranged." – The Silmarillion, Ch 6 "Of Fëanor"

"Then he died… so fiery was his spirit that as it sped his body fell to ash, and was borne away like smoke; and his likeness has never again appeared in Arda, neither has his spirit left the halls of Mandos." – The Silmarillion, Ch 13 "Of the Return of the Noldor"

"How shall a marriage be ended for ever? By the will of the Dead, or by the doom of Mandos… if he will not permit them to return. For a union that was for the life of Arda is ended, if it cannot be resumed within the life of Arda." – Morgoth's Ring, "Of the Silmarils and the Darkening of Valinor: Of Finwë and Miriel"

She recognized him when he opened the door of her workshop and entered. Tall, with broad, strong, muscled shoulders, his body lithe and lean. His green eyes glittered like emeralds, and his dark hair was in a single braid that fell to his waist. Light poured in through the skylight above, the sun giving golden-brown highlights to his hair.

He had another name in youth, those old days before the darkness and the exile, when he had played as a small elfling with her russet-haired twins, but she knew he used it no longer.

He was now called Rog. Rauco. Demon.

They said he had been tortured in the dungeons of Angband, kept as one of Morgoth's thralls, and escaped daringly with his spirit not only uncrushed, but with its flame burning even hotter. With his mighty war mace he had fought the dark enemy with all the ferocity of the new name he had assumed. The Demon of Wrath, the Lord of the House of the Hammer, the strongest and most fearsome warrior of the Hidden City of Gondolin.

The darkest and most fey—save one—of the Lords of Gondolin, of them all he had spent the longest time in the Halls of Námo. The longest but for one soul, darker still, who languished there yet.

There was nothing demonic now in the eyes of this recently rebodied elflord who stepped into her workshop. His clear, green eyes looked into her own brilliant silver-grey ones, and he smiled.

"Lady Nerdanel, my eyes rejoice to see you once again." The voice was deep and resonant. "Forgive me that I disturb your work. I could not find your father Mahtan." And he named some tools he wished to obtain, for the smithy he was setting up at his House at New Ondolindë, where the people formerly of Gondolin now dwelled. Did she know if anyone here could assist him?

She wiped metal dust off her hands with a cloth, and climbed down the ladder from her sculpture. "Certainly. Come, I shall get them for you."

His green eyes were gazing with fascination at her new sculpture, all waves and fluid curves of wide, shining metal ribbon. He walked around it, his movements graceful and full of tightly-leashed power, like that of some dangerous, feline predator. She felt something prickle down her spine as she watched him.

"I've never seen anything like this," he said, his eyes bright. "It speaks. It seems almost to move. It is living, and whispers something different from every angle. What is it?"

"It is what the viewer makes of it."

"But what of the creator's intent?"

"The intent matters less than what you find in it."

"The work reflects the creator though, surely."

"What of me it speaks remains to be seen. It may speak to you of yourself, not of me."

He turned his head to another, waist-high sculpture that stood nearby. Seven young néri standing and sitting together, laughing and talking, as they might have in the days of innocence in the time of Trees. "This is much easier to comprehend," he said softly. "It is to the life." For he had known all her sons, though he had been friend only to the youngest by virtue of age. And there was a compassion in his eyes when he looked back at her.

"Come with me," she said. "I'll show you where the tools are."

A few days later, Rog was back, having forgotten one or two tools the previous time. Her father was in, and master and ex-apprentice spoke long in the smithy beneath her workshop. After that, the Lord of the Hammer stopped by to see her, and leaned against the wall looking at the curving, abstract sculpture as she polished some surfaces and textured others. His eyes were keen and curious, and he questioned her about her current projects and commissions, and when and why she had begun sculpting in the abstract. And actually listened thoughtfully to her replies. Inevitably she thought of another whose own works and projects had been such a consuming passion that her own works had barely been noticed.

His green feral eyes wandered from the sculpture to her. She felt his gaze move over her, from her flame-coloured hair piled atop her head, to her bare throat and her lean, bare, muscled arms. They moved over her body swathed with the large, shapeless apron, as though unclothing it.

They went on to speak idly of other things. The time he had been apprentice with her father, long ages past, and the works he remembered her sculpting then. Her thoughts on the differences between working with stone and marble and metal. His forge in New Ondolindë, and what he and the Lords occupied themselves with in these times of peace.

He wore a sleeveless leather jerkin, and her eyes were on his bare, muscled, bronzed arms, and his long legs clad in suede leggings and high boots. At times he leaned against the wall, at others he resumed his restless, graceful prowl. When he looked away and was unaware, examining the other works she had displayed around the room, she watched the expressions fleeting across his face, found herself admiring the beauty and symmetry of his chiselled features. Then she caught his eyes on her face, lingering on her lips. She looked away back to her work, but not before she felt a heat go through her that she had not felt for well over three millennia, and her heart beat faster beneath the thick apron.

Her eyes were drawn back to him, inexorably. She looked at a network of silvery lines on his arms and down one side of his face and neck. They were so fine and so light, they were barely visible. He saw her gaze.

"Scars," he said. "Or all that remains of them."

She dared to ask. "They say you were in Angband. Is it true?"

"Yes."

"If it pains you to speak of it, don't."

"It does not pain me anymore. That is what the Halls of Námo do for you," he said calmly. "The Battle of Lammoth. I was captured there. Enjoyed Morgoth's hospitality for a while… how long exactly, I do not know. It might have been five years. They were moving thralls from one pit to another when we saw our chance and escaped. I broke my chain, used it to kill the guards. There was nothing heroic in it. I was like a savage animal, fighting tooth and claw. In the end, eight of us managed to get away. Another fifteen were killed." His eyes glittered with memory and wonder. "It feels strange. To be able to remember the pain and every detail, but without the bitterness and the rage. Námos' Halls I might liken to a vast forge, wherein all dross and impurities are purged away, and one emerges whole and cleansed."

"And yet you keep your name 'Rauco'?"

"Partly in memory of these," he traced the scars on his bicep and other unseen ones under his jerkin. "I will never again be who I was in days of early youth. And partly I don't want the hassle of a new name." He smiled. "All in Gondolin knew me as 'Rauco'. And Rauco I shall remain."

She slid her fingers over the metal surface she had been polishing. And caught herself thinking of sliding them over faint white scar lines and muscled arms.