14. Memories and secrets
During the rest of the afternoon, it was seen that Rûsa behaved a little awkward around Celebrimbor for some unknown reason. Mainly in that he seemed to try and put himself far away from his older cousin so he could not be grabbed.
"Wonder what happened between our two nephews at lunch?" whispered Amrod to Caranthir while they took the task of washing the dishes clean after the dinner.
"Whatever it is, it clearly seemed to shock Rûsa a lot. He rarely acts like this anymore around the family," answered Caranthir as he dried off a plate, careful to not drop it as he spoke. At the dinner table, Rûsa was busy in trying to win a simple game of coloured stones against Dis and Durin. The rules was to collect enough stones in the same colour to create the players' Clan symbols, in their cases the eight-rayed Star of Feanor and Durin's Axe. To not have the same symbol as her forefather, Dis instead chose her oldest brother's famous shield of oak as her symbol in the game.
"You are fast in this, young one! I guess that you have been training with your family?"
"A little…eh?"
Suddenly Rûsa's black eyes were focused on the half-finished Star of Feanor in front of him at the table. Something in the shape seemed to make him remember, a event from long ago…
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Rûsa cried like he never had done before in his life, where he was kneeling and holding Maeglin's dead body in his arms. This horribly overwhelming pain, the heavy sorrow in his whole body and soul…
"…why? Why did this happen…"
"So, your little concubine did end up dead after all."
Sauron. As Morgoth never left Angband after the duel against the High King just outside its gates, it had been him who had lead the attack on Gondolin.
"Hmf, foolish girl. Had you never let her escape from Angband, she might still have been alive right now…"
"SHUT THE HELL UP! DON'T COME ANY CLOSER TO HER!"
Rûsa's voice was thick from his crying and his sorrowful face furious when he turned around to face Sauron. Unknown to him, in that very moment he was like a almost exact, red-haired copy of his maternal grandfather Feanor when he had found Finwë's dead body in Formenos after that Morgoth had stolen the Silmarils.
"IT IS ALL YOUR FAULT! YOURS AND MORGOTH! IF ONLY THE TWO OF YOU HADN'T FORCED US TO BOND AFTER THAT YOU'D TORTURED HER INTO BETRAYING THE HIDDEN CITY THIS NEVER WOULD HAVE HAPPENED! DO YOU EVEN HAVE ANY IDEA ABOUT THE HORRIBLE GUILT SHE FELT OVER HER BETRAYAL?!"
Rûsa gasped deeply for breath, feeling like he would choke in his own anger and grief over Maeglin's death.
"You have no right to act like you are better, to label others as worthless…use us as nothing else than items for your own amusement…"
Sauron did not react at all on Rûsa's outburst, instead he simply kicked up the iron mask from the stony ground at his feet. Out of life-long survival instincts, Rûsa caught the iron mask in his left hand before it hit his face.
"You are a bringer of death, Rûsa. That is your fate as a War Leader of Morgoth. No matter what you do, people around you will always end up dead thanks to you. Now, continue to live that miserable life of yours with the added knowledge that you indirectly killed her by letting her leave Angband."
Ignoring Rûsa's pitiful whine and new crying at the uncaring words, Sauron turned around to leave.
"May both you and the Dark Lord one day be defeated when you least expect it as the two monsters you both are!" screamed Rûsa in grief as Sauron left him, the scream echoing against the cliffs. He knew that the army from Angband would leave soon, once there was nothing else than a smoking ruin left of what had been the white city of Gondolin the very same morning. He had to be fast, if he did not want to leave Maeglin's broken body out here in the open to become food for the ravens that soon would arrive.
"I am so sorry…I am so horribly sorry…I did not mean to cause this to you…I did not mean to chase you into death…I am so sorry…" Rûsa wept uncontrollably in despair as he tried to clean off the blood from Maeglin's pale face, now pale as snow in death. Closing her eyes and placing his iron mask over her face, Rûsa gathered his dark red hair in a hand, then cut off the hair with his sword between the shoulders and shoulder blades to place the hair in Maeglin's hands as a grave offering before he covered the bloody body with his cloak. Then, he started to built a very simple cairn with the large stones found everywhere around the place. It was not much of a tomb, but it was far more than what the other killed Elves in Gondolin would be given before their beloved city was burned down to the ground. Once the cairn was built, Rûsa stuck down one of his swords into the cairn as a grave mark and knelt to pray.
"Please…let her finally be free from her grief over the betrayal of the Hidden City…"
He did not know who he was praying to, or even why he bothered to pray to any higher power when his earlier prayers never had been answered. But in this very moment, Rûsa desperately felt the need of praying for Maeglin's sake.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
"…Rûsa! Rûsa!"
The commanding voice of his grandfather made Rûsa return to the present. Looking around in confusion, he found himself being almost face to face with his mother.
"You spaced out, sweetheart. And you are even crying…did you have a unpleasant flashback?"
Rûsa had not even noticed that he was crying, yet now it was clear for everyone present in the dinning room that he must have been a very horrible memory to make him even start to cry.
"Gondolin…ammë…"
Maedhros hugged her son, hoping to comfort him from the bad memory. Because of their set rule to never ask Rûsa about his past and letting him tell them of something when he felt ready, it could go very long time between every time Rûsa might reveal something of his first life in Angband.
"The two of you are WHAT!?"
Suddenly Curufin's voice was heard from the living room, causing nearly everyone to jump in surprise at the unexpected yell. Then the faint sound of something heavy falling to the floor.
"Goodness, I think this is the second time I have ever has seen my husband faint, since that was pretty much his reaction at hearing that we had continued the family tradition of getting a boy and no sight of the girl I once overheard him pray for…" they heard Curufin's wife Astarë remarked, shock evident in her tone nonetheless, from the living room. Feanor and Nerdanel gave each other a very sceptical look at hearing their law-daughter's words about their fourth son's odd behaviour.
"Well, that is a far nicer reaction than how my parents and two brothers reacted when I told them about our relationship." Narvi's calm voice was heard from the living room as well, quickly followed by Celebrimbor:
"I told you that he would react like that at hearing that we actually were married in secret back in the Second Age, Narvi!"
~X~X~X~X~X~X
In Tirion, something rather different was happening.
"Really, Glorfindel…you, one of Arda's most famous and best warriors, having gotten so unused to Maeglin's rather aggressive dance style that you end up knocking both of you to the floor when you would just spin around as part of a dance step…" commented Ecthelion in pure disbelief where he sat on a marble bench beside Glorfindel, who currently was busy in holding a wet rag against the bump on his head that Maeglin has given him out of pure irritation that he could not follow the dance steps.
"Not my fault…" whined Glorfindel, still in shock over how hard Maeglin could hit with her fist. To soothe Maeglin's temper, Rog had offered to take Glorfindel's place and was now sweeping over the dance floor with Maeglin in an elegance that could not be imagined from a heavily built Elf as he otherwise indicated.
"Tell me again why this dance would be seen as immoral by pious Vanyarin Elves, Rog, just because of that it is a dance for unwed Avari Elves to show up themselves for possible life-partners." requested Maeglin as she made a front boleo in the tango-styled dance that they currently was training on. Rog was helping Maeglin in the dance steps where she needed a partner.
"Either because of the unusually…revealing clothes that both you girls and boys will wear during this dance, or just the fact that it is a dance to catch a possible life-partner's attention," answered Rog as he focused on Maeglin's face, making a clear point of not allowing himself to be distracted by her clothes unlike poor Glorfindel earlier. Maeglin was currently wearing a very form-fitted, short-sleeved top, a similarly form-fitted hip belt and a full-length skirt in cobalt blue-coloured fabric richly decorated with beads, sequins, crystals and embroidery in a crimson red colour.
"Hmf. As if they have any right to complain about the dress styles that showed up among the Avari Elves after the Valar had brought the first Elves to Aman," snorted Maeglin as she nearly bent down to the floor with her head while Rog held a steady hold on her lower back so she would not lose balance.
"Eh…Maeglin, not to sound rude now, but it is actually nice to see you in other colours outside the black clothing you used to wear back in the First Age," called Ecthelion from the bench. In return, Maeglin flashed him such a unexpected smile that Ecthelion blushed a really deep red colour on his cheeks.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Back in Formenos, the whole House of Feanor had now entered the living room.
"Let me get this straight to ensure that your Atar heard it right before he fainted, Telpërinquar Curufinwëion: You, and Narvi here, were wed in secret back in the Second Age a couple of years after you had finished the Doors of Durin?" asked Feanor in a stern voice while his eyes switched between his oldest grandson and the Dwarrowdam in question. On a couch behind him, Astarë used a paper-fan to try and get Curufin to wake up. It was a bit of an awkward silence, before Celebeimbor finally trusted himself to answer:
"Yes, Haru."
A plain and simple answer, straight to the point. By now, Curufin had awoken on the couch and turned his head to see on his own.
"Is it possible to request the whole story about your relationship? Like how it started and such?"
To everyone's surprise, Celebrimbor blushed heavly while looking away from his Dwarf wife and Narvi looked rather uncomfortable while mirroring her Elven husband's action of not looking on him.
"I will say it in three words only: human slave traders."
Rûsa twitched as reaction on what his cousin just said, immediately having a quick flashback of Angband and his life back there. Slave traders had been part of everyday life there, often being the Orcs who kidnapped people outside Angband and brought them to a life in slavery.
"I see."
Sensing that it would be a bad idea to ask anymore, no one pressured the other questions that they might have wanted to ask the unlikely couple.
"I will help Rûsa with his evening bath," whispered Caranthir to Maedhros, quickly grabbing Rûsa around his waist before lifting him up and carried his younger nephew away under one arm before Rûsa could protest that he actually would have said bath tomorrow evening.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
"Unnnnncle Moryo…my evening bath is only every second day, not everyday…" complained Rûsa once they were outside the living room as he tried to get out from Caranthir's hold. With a happy bark at hearing her owner's voice, Snowflake hurried up to them from the kitchen.
"Nope, Snowflake. No bath with Rûsa for you today, a wet Elfling and a wet dog is not a good mix indoors, especially not in the evening before bedtime."
Caranthir easily ducked Snowflake without dropping his nephew on the way upstairs to the sleeping chambers. It was in a such movement, that Rûsa noticed the smug smile on Caranthir's lips, as if he mentally was very pleased over something. Over the 12 years that had passed since his rebirth, Rûsa had learnt that seeing that smile on Caranthir's lips would mean some sort of long-awaited victory over his siblings in some way. And indeed, Caranthir laughed a very self-satisfied laughter that sent shivers along Rûsa's spine for some reason when he was put down on the bed in his own bed chamber.
"Tyelpë could not have done a better choice of wife, if you ask me. What a perfect indirect revenge, now Curvo and Tyelko can't tease me about my short marriage to Haleth back in the First Age anymore! Out of all my siblings, those two were the only ones who never seemed to understand what I really saw in her…" Caranthir said in an almost sing-along kind of voice, before leaving for his own bed chamber. Once he had left, Snowflake was quick to push up the door with her front paw and then jump up in bed beside Rûsa. She was still small enough to not take up too much space in bed yet, so it would take a couple of more years before she was too big to share the bed with her owner.
"I honestly don't know what is the most creepy thing right now…uncle Moryo's very unusual gloat, ammë's attempts to keep her suitors away by wearing the jewelry she is given by her mysterious admirer, or the fact that my cousin turns out to be married to a Dwarrowdam..." Rûsa muttered for himself in a mix of disbelief and half-hidden shuddering while he patted Snowflake's head in an absentminded movement. His family might still be a little crazy by Elvish standards, but he had seen far worse in Angband. In contrast to that, the House of Feanor was and had actually been surprisingly sane even back at the Darkening of Valinor.