I own nothing.
The house she lives in now is one she never lived in with her family. It is new and unused; it smells still of the lime used to wash down the stones. That makes it easier on some days, and more difficult on others. Nerdanel lives in a place that houses no memories for her, and that is good on days when she wishes to forget, and bad on days when she wishes to remember. Like a pendulum, Nerdanel finds herself swinging back and forth between loving and hating this house she lives in, on the very outskirts of Tirion.
Now who is this even supposed to be? she wonders, staring at the half-finished face in marble, a face whose features she simply can not decide upon. It is probably, Nerdanel admits, supposed to be someone she once knew, one of her men-folk who went over the sea, for the face, though its features are undecided, is distinctly masculine. But who is it supposed to be?
Husband?
Son?
Perhaps even her grandson, speculating on what he might come to look like when he is grown?
Nerdanel can not say.
Sometimes Nerdanel thinks she fled the heart of the city to escape her memories. No, that is not it. Even when they hurt, even they cut her skin and heart and mind, memory is not something she deems it wise to try to escape. Memory is not what the heart desires, but the only remedy she can think of for memory is drunkenness or death, and neither holds any appeal. Why would she wish to forget her kin?
She remembers her sons as they were, bright and beautiful and blazing bright as the stars in the sky. So wearied Nerdanel was after birthing one, two, three, four, five, six and seven, and so wearied she remains, at times, but they were—are—her sons, her seven boys. The leader, the singer, the three hunters, the queer solitary child, the blacksmith who was the very spit of their father.
Alas, Nerdanel has to say that she holds few memories of her grandson; Telperinquar was born during the exile to Formenos, and Nerdanel did not care to travel often to the forbidding fortress town. He had been a little boy at the time of the Darkening and the Flight, and from what little Nerdanel knew of him, a sweet, open boy. Is Telperinquar still as sweet and open as she remembers him being? As an adult, is her grandson still as honest and innocent as she remembers? Or has the blighted world blighted him as well? Has he learned dishonesty and deceit? Does the malice of the world infect him as it has infected—
She can not say.
The shadow twins of those who left pass before her eyes, gathering in the shadows in the corners of the room, in the cracks between the stones on the streets. Sons and grandson. The daughter-in-law who left with her husband instead of staying here. Brother and sister by marriage. Nephews and nieces, dark and golden alike, all vanishing into the terrible ever-night like wraiths of the Enemy.
And there is Fëanáro. Who could ever forget Fëanáro?
Perhaps, Nerdanel concedes, part of the reason she chose to live in this house on the outskirts of town, is because of Fëanáro. No place her husband set foot in ever seemed quite as bright and alive once he left it. The fire within him, bright and fev'rishly burning, stole every other warmth out from under your feet, out from inside of your skin. He did it to Nerdanel without noticing. Him she remembers, bitter and sad and amused all at once.
But it is not the memories Nerdanel has sought to avoid and outrun. The memories are no friends of hers, but neither have they ever been her enemies. Memory and the past has no power to make her hackles rise and the hairs on her neck and arms stand on end.
Her parents beg her to come back and live with them, outside of the city. It is not seemly for a nís to live alone, not even in Tirion, mostly-empty Tirion where past social norms have been left so up-ended in places. From Taniquetil, Indis echoes their request: I am worried for you daughter; come live with me as you did before. From the palace, Arafinwë adds his voice to the chorus: I am concerned for you, sister—and Nerdanel always snorts to see one younger than her oldest son call her 'sister'—and it would put my mind at ease if you would come live with us.
No, it is not seemly for a nís to live alone, not when she is unmarried, not when she is wed, not even when she is widowed, and likely to remain so for all time. Not even in Tirion, where social norms have found themselves rather in disarray. And Nerdanel suspects that the intentions of those who have been trying to draw her out of her house to be to shield her from the whispers of those who stayed behind. That is what has driven her to the edge of town, more than memory ever could.
For it is not always whispering Nerdanel hears, murmured behind hands and leveled at her back. Her husband, her sons, her brother and sister by marriage, nephews and nieces, the things they have done have left scars behind. Scars not in earth, but in flesh and mind and soul. Scars on the collective memory of Aman. It is strongest in Alqualondë, where Nerdanel never goes, but the scars are present still in Tirion. She can see them in every dark and empty house or shop gathering dust. And she hears them on the voices, whispered or not, every time her men-folk are spoken of.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that Fëanáro and his sons are not remembered fondly by the majority of those living in the Undying Lands. Nerdanel is the first to admit that there is no reason for them to be, but time has not healed these scars and time has not made any improvement on memory—or truth. And the more she hears sometimes, the angrier she gets.
You would think, to listen to these Elves, that none of them ever committed a good deed in their lives. You would think that none of them ever did naught but evil. It starts out as venom leveled solely against Fëanáro and their sons, and that is enough to fill Nerdanel with grief and ire. But as time wears on and memory warps so easily under the weight of pain and scars, others are drawn into it as well. Nolofinwë and his get, nowhere about to defend themselves, are portrayed as eagerly and knowingly following their cousins into the horror of the Kinslaying. A few more years pass, and suddenly all of Arafinwë's children participated in the massacre, and Artanis's sword comes down on Telerin flesh, rather than Noldorin—at the very least, these things were not said openly in the heart of town, so Arafinwë and Eärwen were spared the pain of hearing their children slandered.
So little time is needed to twist memory and truth, so little time that Nerdanel finds it dizzying.
And what an incomplete portrait this all paints.
Her mother says that art is lifeless without its flaws. Istamë is a painter, not a sculptor or a blacksmith, but she knows artistry just as well as her husband and her daughter. Art is beauty, but beauty without flaw is uninteresting ('It's why I've never accepted a commission to paint a portrait of Lady Varda,' Istamë will whisper conspiratorially). 'The gist, my daughter, is that art has good and bad, and it is utterly uninteresting without both. It is incomplete without both.'
This is not the way it happened, Nerdanel knows, and says sometimes, to have the youngest of the Elves she speaks to stare at her insolently, until one or another of them recognizes her, and they blush and bow and scurry away. Of Arafinwë's children, only Artanis took up sword at Alqualondë, and she only to defend her mother's kin. Nolofinwë and his children followed Fëanáro, it is true, but never in any eagerness to take lives. Her sons are not the monster the tales name them as. Even Fëanáro is not what the tales say he is. He was fell and fey, grown impulsive, foolhardy and violent in his final years, but Nerdanel, for all the anger she has ever borne against her husband, has never thought him a monster. She does not now.
The dry autumn leaves scatter from her doorstep as she steps into the chill morning and looks out into the street. Nerdanel grasps still in her hand the half-finished face, its features undecided, likely to remain so. It is silent, so sweetly silent, as Vása barely glimmers over the surface of the horizon. This time of day, she likes best; the gentle golden light puts her in mind of Laurelin.
Will time set truth and memory to rights?
Nerdanel dares not say.
Telperinquar—Celebrimbor
Fëanáro—Fëanor
Arafinwë—Finarfin
Nolofinwë—Fingolfin
Artanis—Galadriel
Nís—woman (plural: nissi)
Vása—the Noldor's name for the Sun, meaning 'The Consumer'