by Elvenwanderer
"Celeborn, my dear brother, thank you for coming on such short notice!" Galathil exclaimed as he opened the door to find his elder brother leaning on the frame. Celeborn looked quite bored and uninterested in the whole business of the world.
"It is always a pleasure." Celeborn replied with forced eagerness. The two embraced and Galathil invited the other into his home.
"I really am sorry to take you from your leave. I know how you love spending your free time alone and not chained to some elleth."
"No, no, you are right, I would most likely be at some bar somewhere drinking with others from my division until I was too inebriated to see straight." Celeborn mused with a smile.
Galathil laughed, and clapped his brother on the shoulder. He was going to comment, but was interrupted by his wife.
"Galathil! Shhh! The baby is just asleep! Besides, Nimloth does not need to hear drinking stories at such a young age...." She glared at Celeborn with her cold brown eyes.
"Good evening to you, too, Rethian." Celeborn replied with similar dislike to the elleth who was now pulling his poor, enslaved brother down the hallway.
"Come, now, dear! You are going to make us late!" Rethian screeched to her husband whose hand was trapped in the elleth's vice-like grip. He shrugged to Celeborn before he was dragged away towards Silom's talan. Celeborn greatly pitied and admired his younger brother, for he did not think that he himself could stand spending an entire evening in the company of Rethian and her twin sister. Even five minutes with one of them greatly strained his nerves. He did not know how Galathil did it, not how he could spend the rest of his life with her.
Is that what marriage was like? Existence as your wife's slave. To him, that did not sound particularly inviting. Perhaps marriage was not for everyone.
The elf sighed and glanced around the small, quaintly decorated entryway. It was far too frilly to be a Marchwarden's home, for it had belonged to their father before Galadhon had moved to the palaces in Menegroth to be nearer to Thingol and Melian. Rethian had committed this evil.
His stomach reminded him that it hadn't been since yesterday that he had eaten. Surely his brother and sister-in-law wouldn't mind if he helped himself to a few slices of bread. Of course Galathil wouldn't, but Rethian would. All the better. Being careful not to make too much noise, he sawed off a slice of the dark bread and helped himself to a rather large glass of mulled berry wine from an opened bottle. He was even more careful to leave it somewhere Rethian would find it.
Nimloth began to cry just as he was about to take the first sip of his wine. He started, spilling a few drips of the dark red liquid down the front of his new tunic, which was thankfully a deep shade of blue.
"I am coming, Nimloth," he called, his tone urgent and a bit strained. He never considered himself very skilled at this baby-sitting idea, and he felt somewhat nervous. Never would he tell his brother this, though.
A fresh gale erupted from the elf-child's bassinet as he entered her bedroom. He cringed. The sound was not what particularly bothered him, it was simply that he hated hearing an elleth cry, especially a miniature one.
"You certainly inherited your mother's hearty lungs, dear one." He smiled as he leaned over her crib, picking her up and cradling her to his broad chest. He now felt worse for his brother, to put up with two of them. Nonetheless, he cooed to her while testing her diaper, which was sopping wet. Instead of recoiling with disgust much like her mother would, Celeborn rocked from foot to foot to relax the child while peeling the wet cloth from around her body.
Once relieved of the uncomfortable garment and in a new clean one, the elleth immediately began to giggle at her uncle who was making funny faces and tickling her stomach and chubby arms. When given the chance, Nimloth wrapped her tiny hands around Celeborn's thumbs and guided one ominously towards her open mouth while squeezing his other thumb.
"No, no, Nimë, you do not want that in your mouth! Believe Uncle Celeborn! You definitely do not want to eat that!" The elf laughed, pulling his hands from her grasp to tap the tip of her squat nose. The baby pouted for a moment, innocent resentment clouding her face. But when Celeborn started to tickle her pudgy feet with the ends of his long silver hair, Nimloth broke out in fits of giggles. Eventually, the elf picked her up from the changing table and attempted to set her back on her bed in an attempt to get her to sleep. This time, the elf child blatantly refused to let go of his hands, and soon, Celeborn all but gave up trying to pry her small but surprisingly strong fingers from his.
"So you want to come with me, dear?" He managed to get his fingers around her small body to pick her up into the air. He cradled his infant niece to his shoulder, and as if to ensure her position there, the elleth exchanged her grasp on his hand for a hold on his soft hair, though she refrained from pulling it.
"May I have this dance, My Lady?"
The elleth giggled. Then, in his appealing tenor voice, Celeborn began to hum random notes, and then gradually shifted the tune to a version of his favorite drinking song, to spite Rethian. There was no possible way for Nimloth to know the difference between a drinking song and a lullaby at this age. Celeborn waltzed about the bedroom with Nimloth, intentionally striking his feet to the floor to produce a soothing rhythm.
After a while, he felt the pressure on his hair slacken then disappear as her body went limp and relaxed, molding onto his shoulder. He could hear her slow, peaceful breaths still in time with the music. As gently as possible he lowered her resting form back onto her mattress. With a tender hand, he removed her tiny thumb from her mouth and lightly pushed her brown hair out of her face and behind her ears.
Oh how he wished he could do this every night! What he wouldn't give to have a child this beautiful to be able to pamper whenever he wanted. He sighed, watching his niece sleep. He may have seemed resentful when Galathil asked him to come, but how quickly would she grow? In truth, he wouldn't pass up this opportunity for the world. Before they all knew it, she would be grown and independent. How he cherished his time with her now. It was not that he would not enjoy seeing her grow into the beautiful elleth she would become. He just knew the day would come all too soon that she was married and also a mother.
Celeborn hoped, seeing the child stir in her crib, that he would someday settle with some elleth and raise their own children. Perhaps there was no such elleth out there for him, but then again, perhaps there was.
Then he would be able to sing his daughter to sleep every single night.
Deeming her down for the rest of the evening, the elf decided to try to leave. Nimloth started to whimper as she woke to see her uncle departing from her bedside. Celeborn, smiling, turned around and began to hum.
In this fic, I have made Celeborn the older brother, with his younger brother married and already a father, so it throws it into greater contrast that Celeborn is still single.
Rethian is an OOC, seeming quite like my mother... hmm. The books said that Galathil had a child, so I assumed he had a wife, and was not asexual (what a disgusting idea, frankly), so Rethian was created.