First Meetings
The house was abuzz with anticipation the day he arrived. Her sisters had become quite the spectacle in their preparations for the arrival while she had simply yawned and scratched at the mess of hair atop her head and sipped at the cup of warm black tea in front of her. She liked it strong and bitter and she always refused to acknowledge her sisters prattling till she finished her cup.
But a prince was coming today, a High Prince, and not just any High Prince, the High Prince. Considered mightiest in all parts of body and mind, in valor and endurance, in beauty and understanding, in strength and skill and on and on and on they went. She watched her sisters with half lidded eyes and sipped at her tea. She was sick of him already.
Her father had come in and planted a kiss on the head of each of his daughters pausing at the youngest, grimacing at her cup. "You're too young to be so old Nerdanel" he would tease. She simply looked at him with eyes half lidded and continued to sip at her tea.
When she was finished she headed back to her room and dressed as she normally would. A pair of worn boys breeches and a tunic she tore the sleeves of off for when she worked in the forge. She headed back down stairs only to be greeted by her sisters still fluttering and fussing about, complaining about the state of the house and how little assistance they were receiving and when they saw their little sister their distress became even more vocal.
"Look at her!"
"Shameful!"
"It is not proper!"
"She looks like an orphan!"
They called to their father in protest. "Do something!" they cried. Their father for his part had stared at her in confusion for she looked as she always did. And so she took it upon herself to assuage her sisters' fears.
"Then tell him I am and orphan so that he may be dazzled by your charity and gracious nature."
She had no interest in this little prince and found herself becoming slightly determined not to like him. And from what she had overheard, he seemed to be more trouble than not and therefore resolved herself to be unimpressed.
She loved working in her father's forge. He never looked down at her for her ambitions. Her father being the only man in her life to ever encourage her endeavors, as even a few of the apprentices looked at her askance. And so it became her habit to ignore them and focus on her father only. He was commanding and strong and yet patient and gentle. The greatest of Aman's craftsmen and he only took the most promising students and she was always one. The forge was hot and dirty and smelled of burning metal and the air had an acidic taste to it but she loved it there, smelting the silver or gold, bending the iron to her will. This was her place, her world and she would command her father's attention as he did the forge, on her own terms.
She worked side by side with the little prince in the beginning and took great pleasure in correcting his mistakes and felt no small amount of consternation when she did not have to repeat herself. He was not like the other apprentices who were constantly vying for her father's approval. He moved with his own confidence and soaked up the knowledge of her father's forge. She would become irritated at the amused looks he would give her when she would grab the hammer before he could; leaving him to man the bellows, which he always did without complaint. But while he may have proven some level of dominance at the forge, he would never match her in the studio. He created things of beauty to be sure. But they were almost too beautiful, too precise. He could not immerse himself there the way that she did. She could get lost in the smoothness of the marble, spending hours running her hands over the stone till it finally spoke to her and she would grab the chisel and rasp and lose herself in the forms the stone would beckon her to create. She would go into the studio during Laurelin's early hours and suddenly realize she was still there long after the mingling of the lights. Occasionally she would look up to find him there; staring at her intently, his eyes shining with a strange silver light that reminded her of Telperion's reflection on the water. Sometimes she would just sniff at him and set down her tools, telling him to lock up when he was done. Other times she was too tired to even take notice of him and would just leave, stumbling out to the main house to collapse in her bed, waking the next morning still covered in dust from the day before.
It went on for some time like this. They would see each other in the mornings.
"Fëanáro," she would say with barely an incline to her head.
"Nerdanel," he would respond dropping to a deep bow before her.
And always when he straightened, her eyes would narrow as his lit up with mirth. It was not for several months that they would speak any other words to each other and even then it was brief.
"You do not like me," he had called out to her one evening as she set down her tools to leave, "do you."
She turned and looked him up and down, studying him with the same intensity as she would a potential carving stone.
"I suppose proportion wise, you are pleasing," she acquiesced, "… but then you speak."
She turned her back to him then and left the room, quite pleased with the finality of her statement, never seeing the slow smile that spread across the other's visage.
