As they had warned him the day before, so did Fëanor and Nerdanel drive in to the shopping part of Formenos to help Dior find some of the clothes and shoes he needed.
"Having all the clothes stores on the same street is from older times. By making where the various goods could be brought, they ensured that the fabrics would not smell from the butcher shop, that the bakery was close to the street with the early restaurants and so on."
Dior listened as he watched the streets. In the city center itself, it was even a guidepost pointing towards where one could fit the right street for a particularly errand.
"Can we go to the bookstore afterwards? On the group home, the other teenagers recommended a book serie which they believed to be found here…"
It seemed like Fëanor had a fair guess on what Dior wished to find:
"Oh, I guess that they meant the Hunter Series? Of course, that is a very useful book series to read, especially in the lessons in how to behave around wild animals and to survive in the wilderness!"
And with that followed a long discussion on how the married couple had wished that there had been such useful books for their sons in the past, especially given how some things never changed with tourists who was too stupid for their own good.
Shopping for clothes was not something Dior had done much in the past. Pretty much all of his old clothes had been chosen by Luthien from the annual line of clothing for teenagers, all designed by the designers in Doriath Beauty, of course.
"How are the shoes feeling on your feet?"
Fëanor and Nerdanel allowed him far more freedom in testing out items that he really did not need, but wanted to feel how different they was against what he once had worn.
"They feel good. Not too big, not too small or uncomfortable."
Right now Dior was testing for the right size on a pair of Chelsea boots and slip-on shoes, and they had already chosen some normal walking shoes, alongside a set of hiking boots because they did not doubt that Celegorm would bring Dior along for a day in the national park at some point just to show the wild animals there, and a sprained ankle was not something Dior would want on a hiking.
"The walking shoes will be useful when you help out in the animal hospital. Even if you will only work for a few hours each day, you will need a good pair of shoes to walk in or you will end up with sore feet."
They also found a pair of boardshorts Dior could use while swimming, because he was not really likening the shorter variants.
"It is not that I am prudish, I just do not like how much the shorter swimwear for men are similar to underwear."
Nothing wrong with that, the married couple did agree on.
The bookshop was surprisingly large, but then again, it was the oldest one in Formenos still serving customers. It did not take long for Dior to find the first books in the Hunter series among the books for teenagers, and then he started to look around for other books he might like.
"Yes! Some of those rare books about the myth of Hades and Persephone that does not portray their relationship as starting by the infamous abduction!"
Dior was acting almost like a small child in a candy shop, as he walked around started to choose books to bring home. Based on what he chose, Fëanor could tell that he likely had a personal interest in history and mythology, along with nature.
"Ah, that one named From spring to death; from a Queen to her King is actually written by someone we know, so I think that you might like it," Nerdanel told Dior when she saw Anairë's name on the cover.
With how he did not even look at the fashion magazines in the shelves with various kind of daily, weekly and monthly newspapers, it was clear that Dior tried to put a distance between his past and his current life.
Just as Dior thought himself finished and would just grab one last book named How to help wildlife in bad situations caused by humans, a young woman happened to reach up for the same book. Well, to be fair she did not seem to be older than a Senior in High school, if Dior could guess her age right, but instead he found himself very much distracted in a different manner; some of her deep golden brown hair had fallen out of her thick braid and brought out the darker colour of her skin along with the black eyes, indirectly hinting to that she might have Silvan lineage in one half of the generation of her parents or grandparents.
"Ah...sorry, were you going to take that book?" Dior asked, trying to fight down the feeling of chaos inside his mind, almost like a panic trying to start. He was not exactly used to women so close to his own age after all, since all the female staff at his old home had been past the age of twenty or higher.
"No, you can take it. I was only going to write down the title for a friend of mine who likes animals," she responded sweetly, making Dior struggle even harder to not start blushing.
"Nimloth, are you finished?" a older man called from the opened shop door, and she hurried over to the cash register to get her errand in the bookshop done.
"I am on the way, dad!"
Only when the young woman had left the store, did Nerdanel and Fëanor share a sideway glance in silent agreement:
It was very much possible that Dior just had met a young lady roughly his own age that could turn into his first serious step in the part of life related to love and its related feelings, given how inexperienced he was in the area of romance.
"Dior, are you going to have that book or not?" Fëanor wondered, picking out a science magazine as a legal excuse to walk past his new foster son.
"Ah, yes!"
In his hurry to get to the cash register so he could pay for the books, Dior did not notice the name of the writer for the wildlife writer: Tyelkomo, Nos Feanor
~X~X~X~X~X~X
When they arrived back home, Celebrimbor was seen in the garden, taking in his cell phone. It seemed like his grandparents could read his movement pretty well, given how Nerdanel said:
"Ah, his girlfriend Narvi, if I am reading his face right."
Dior, who had been thinking on the young woman in the bookshop, was brought back to reality by the words and failing to hide a minor scandalous tone as he spoke:
"Girlfriend?!"
"Yes, it would be very odd, by the standards of our family history, if he was not in a relationship at his current age. Both Curufin and myself married our wives soon after coming of age and had become a father roughly around our nineteenth birthday. Maglor simply happened to meet and marry Rainiel later in life after that he had started to work. Caranthir have mentioned a possible lady he would like to take out on a date soon, but he can be a bit difficult when it comes to women," Fëanor commented calmly without looking up from his new magazine about science in the front passenger seat, as if it was something happening in all families.
Again Dior felt just how out of contact he had been with people in his own age because of how sheltered he had been while growing up. Sure, he had started to notice girls over the past two years since entering adolescence, yes, but relationships between servants and those they served was strictly forbidden and so he had been unable to really understand what teenage love actually meant.
"Were you really that young when you married….?" he started to ask in unease, not sure if he wanted to think about it. After all, Thingol and Melian had always talked about how important it was to get married before starting a pregnancy, and they had never hidden their disapproval over that their only grandchild was born out of wedlock, especially after that Luthien had refused to enter a marriage of convenience just to avoid the shame of being a unwed mother.
"More or less a still-living tradition here in the north. No one raises an eyebrow at seeing a young couple in their early twenties being married with a small child and possibly the second one on the way as well. That is how smaller communities have survived in the past, even with modern healthcare and all that which we have access to nowadays," Nerdanel explained while she parked the car on its normal place.
"Grandpa, grandma, Narvi is coming over here later this afternoon with some of our friends from school. We will plan more about that amateur play we talked about doing this summer," Celebrimbor called from the lawn after turning around when he saw the car owned by his grandparents.
"Fine by me. Just do not turn your family cottage into a two-person musical disco on the loudest sound level again like last summer when you and Narvi would celebrate that summer holidays had started."
"How was we supposed to know that dad had finished work unusually early that day and was taking a nap in the master bedroom when we started the music in the cellar?! And it was not like Narvi was making too much noise by the thick heels of her dance shoes!" Celebrimbor protested as his grandparents helped Dior to bring out all the bags with what they had brought in the shops earlier that forenoon. From the way Nerdanel rolled her eyes in slight annoyance, this was hardly the first time this argument came up.
"Celebrimbor was not too happy over the fun with his girlfriend being cut short since she was ordered back home to her own family and Curufin was not pleased over being woken up like that. It ended in a argument where our grandson ran off and spent the night as a guest in her house instead so Curufin could calm down in peace before realizing that he was the one to not have sent a message about coming home early that. Our fifth son is not that good at admitting mistakes," Nerdanel sighed as she walked indoors, Dior following after her with his new books in his arms. He planned to ask Celebrimbor if he could meet those friends of his as well, if they now were almost the same age as him, only one or two years older.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
author's note:
Boardshorts are a type of swimwear and casual wear in the form of relatively long (approximately knee length) loose-fitting shorts that are designed to be quick-drying and are generally made from strong and smooth polyester or nylon material
In honest lack for a proper and modern surname for the Fëanorian family, I instead chose to use the Quenya name of the House of Fëanor, which is Nos Feanor according to Tolkien Gateway. Tyelkomo is the Quenya mother-name for Celegorm from canon, which he uses as a pseudonym in the books Maedhros helps him to publish
