Unusual path in life
Formenos really was nothing like the cities in the south. It was a small town in comparison of size and inhabitants, but for some reason Fëanor had felt at peace the very moment he had arrived here. Perhaps it could be because the nature so close to the town, the lack of modern buildings and such. Today, however, the whole Nos Feanor family was helping to clean out the "home forge" as they called the small forge near the villa where Fëanor, Curufin and Celebrimbor would create more personal items and family gifts.
"It feels good that we can create items here too, and keeping traditional craft alive in the modern world."
Being a blacksmith was hard work, yes that Fëanor would admit, especially now when he was in his mid-60s, but he felt more alive in doing that instead of what originally had been intended for his life. Back in the first three decades of Fëanor's life, his father Finwë was a mayor in Tirion city, where a ancestor gained money and raising in social status by investing in the railroad industry, but spending time with other high class families and perhaps finding a wife from one of those families or perhaps even a unwed lady from an nouveau riche family, had never attracted Fëanor as the meaning of life.
"I knew officer Fingolfin and his brother Finarfin already in childhood. They may be a few years younger than myself and not from the same social class, but they were the only children living near my home and my mother never had any problem with me running off to play with them."
No, with a father who was often busy with his work, absent from home for long times unless it was a rare free day for him to spend with his wife and son, Fëanor had originally been raised by his mother Miriel almost by herself since Finwë often worked late. But her health had never truly recovered after the difficult pregnancy which had resulted in their only child, and Miriel passed away when he was 12 years old from stomach cancer which had left her as a shadow of her former self the last few years she was alive.
"Your late father is no one else than Finwë Ñoldóran? I did sometimes hear about him from my maternal grandparents, since he and grandfather were close friends…but I never paid proper attention about that since I would never meet people outside the summer house," Dior commented, recalling his childhood with uneasiness. One year was not long enough for him to truly break away from his past, yet he had thankfully came a long way from how he had been when he first had arrived as a foster child to the home of his nowadays adoptive grandparents.
"Nope, I did not fancy that sort of life at all. I have always wanted to work with my own hands, and when finding out in history classes how important a blacksmith would be in the old days...it was pure luck that I ran into Mahtan one day when my school class was visiting the stables where our riding lessons used to be held."
"Dad actually joked about how enchanted you were at seeing him work in the forge he had at that time!" Nerdanel called from the outside with a bit of a laugh in her voice. Back when, Mahtan had been working as a ferrier because that was the most likely work he would get as a blacksmith in modern times, yet Nerdanel could still recall how her father desired to make full use of his skills.
"And you moved to Formenos later, right?"
Promising to tell the full story later in the evening when all the cleaning was done and dinner had been eaten, Fëanor sent Dior back to cleaning off the dust from the shelves with a rag.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Later, when the dishes was washed and all that so the whole family could gather in the living room, did Fëanor tell the story of why he had ended up following after his future wife and in-laws to the north of Valinor:
"My father could hardly be called used to parenting. With my mother dead from the cancer, he was in deep grief for several years afterwards and uses his work to cope with his loss. But I knew that he hoped that I would follow in his footsteps, yet my heart desired something else and I started to hang around Nerdanel and her family whatever I could do so, trying to become a blacksmith apprentice despite that I originally had no idea which toys to use. When I did read in the newspapers about the hunting of Morgoth, I realized that Mahtan and his family would most likely move here to Formenos because in the north a skilled blacksmith will have a insured income because of everything related to historical crafts and objects that really last for a long time."
Mahtan had confirmed what the teenage Fëanor had feared, that he would lose some very important persons in his life for something he could not control. Of course, he did understand the motive behind the move and had tried to not see it as that he would never see them again, but at overhearing Finwë talking about sending his son to a different boarding school in the hope of that he would "start being with those of the same social class" instead of being found with people of the working class all the time, Fëanor had taken the final step in rebellion against the plans his father intended for his life without even asking his son of what he wanted.
"You basically took all your savings, packed a backpack and travel bag with clothes along with some keepsakes from your mother, and then traveled all the way alone up to Formenos?!" Dior wondered in honest disbelief, unknowingly mirroring the shocked look Mahtan's wife Celuwen had on her face when opening the door to find the teenage boy on the doorstep to the new house. His arrival to Formenos had been like a bolt of lighting from a clear sky.
"Exactly. He did apologize for showing up like that, and explained why when dad came home from work. We managed to get him enrolled into the high school with us as his guardians, because Finwë chose to act as if he had sent
Fëanor away to the north instead of his son running away from home."
Nerdanel knew that the relationship between Finwë and Fëanor had never been close even after the shared grief over Miriel dying, and her eventual father-in-law had only started to warm up to her as a daughter-in-law when Maedhros and Maglor had been born.
"Anyway, I could not stand living in the modern cities for another reason. I know that with all my ideas and improvements to the electric fence around the national park and other things to prevent any fatal accidents between humans and wildlife, I could be a important inventor….but the mere idea of all work to get a patent, and how people would expect me to come up with something new soon...no, I prefer the way my life has been, a blacksmith with some rather unusual hobbies."
At his other side in the sofa, Dior heard Celebrimbor fake a cough to hide his laugher. Calling any of Fëanor's inventions for hobbies was a big underestimation of what he could think of to create if a inspiration or idea stuck him. That was only one of many things that Dior found awesome about his new family ever since he first had came to them.
"What about the family name? Because...both your given name and surname sound almost identical."
Now Nerdanel grinned as she came out with some tea cups and heated up water for tea on a tray, knowing that it would be something fun to tell.
"Ah, that is a rather funny tale. Most people knew who Finwë Ñoldóran was and that he had a son rarely seen in the newspapers, so to avoid attention from anyone who could be sent to get him back to Tirion city before he arrived to Formenos, Fëanor used the same surname as the ancestor who had first arrived to Tirion city and became rich on the the railway industry. Nowadays people are more likely to know the family under the Ñoldóran surname since that ancestor changed his last name in order to get better respect among the upper classes, so basically Fëanor have tried to return to the originally humble origins of his family."
That was true, because people hardly had anything akin to social classes in the earliest form of human history before people started to stand out from others thanks to some form of unusual skill to create new things with.
"Our visits to the south have always been rare, not only because of how cold the relationship between my father-in-law and husband was for many years, but also because of all the planning needed for a family with a ever growing number of children, and trying to find what that could suit everyone without someone feeling like it is a waste of time."
Dior could imagine that in a mental image inside his head, with his adoptive father having no less than six brothers in different ages. Also, in the previous decades it would be hard to find something suitable for both teenagers and younger children, since different ages tended to not have the same taste in what counted as fun to do on a family trip.
"But is amazing how you managed to survive having seven children."
Now it was Fëanor who smiled over his tea cup.
"Helped by that they had some years between them and that we had help from both kind neighbors and my parents-in-law to act as babysitters if we needed a small break. Granted, it was not planned that Celegorm, Caranthir and Curufin would be born only a year between each one, but sometimes Mother Nature likes to remind us humans that no matter how clever we might think ourselves to be, the most basic human instincts are still active in our brains and bodies."
Thankfully Dior was distracted by Elros offering him a apple piece, so he did not really catch the unspoken meaning of what his adoptive grandfather said so his younger grandsons would not ask any embarrassing questions.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
When all the family members had returned home to their own cottages, the married couple since 47 years enjoyed the silence.
"I really do not regret following after your family to Formenos and choosing a life here, rather than remaining in the south to obey my father without caring for what I truly wanted to do."
Nerdanel understood what he meant. Both their lives could be so different from what they had, if just something in the past had not happened. They would live in two different places, be married to spouses they never could imagine now and most likely have different children.
"I am glad that you chose to come here then, despite knowing that it could very well end up in disaster."
They kissed each other in the fondness shown between a husband and wife who enjoyed a good marriage to each other. This was the life they both wanted from an early age, to leave the modern world in the south and instead enjoy a more old-fashioned life in northern Valinor, and gotten that wish by moving to Formenos.
"It was a good choice to let Dior be our final foster child, for we are not exactly getting any younger with each passing year."
He smiled at his wife.
"Yes, and it was a extra bonus in that he could become one of our grandsons by Celegorm adopting him. Now he can enjoy life here in Formenos without having to worry about his biological grandmother Emeldir be his sole close relative until that he finally marries."
Both Fëanor and Nerdanel, however, were in the shared agreement that Dior was unlikely to marry within a few years after coming of age like they had done. He needed more time to heal from his very controlled and overprotective childhood, to grow as a person and finding what he really wanted to do as work career in adulthood.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
author note: in this AU both Fëanor and Nerdanel are born in 1936, so with how fathers was meant to act as head of the family back then alongside the vast differences in social status, Finwë would have strongly different values and expectations on morals and family than Mahtan who is from the working class. Since people in his social circle would have found it a massive scandal if it came out that Fëanor not only ran away from home, but also married a common woman like Nerdanel, Finwë chose to act as if his son was sent overseas to Middle-earth for studies and he had next to no contact with Fëanor outside annual birthday greetings, Christmas cards and very few visits between them over the years
Celuwen is the name of Mahtan's in-canon unnamed wife that I uses for my own stories