VII. (Arakano)

The reunion between the cousins was not a happy one.

"This must truly be Mandos then. This must be death. I think I'm beginning to believe it. If I still had my body, if I could feel the pounding of my heart and the rushing of my blood, I doubt I could have kept my fist out of your face, Pityafinwe Ambarto!"

"I wish you hadn't."

"Don't get smart with me. Have you any idea of how many suffered and died after you made off with the ships?! After many of us shed blood ourselves to finish a fight that you started?! Do you have any idea what my brother went through, because of you? What little Itarille had to suffer?!"

"No, I don't."

"Our own mother disowned us! She went up to Findekano, and yelled in his face that he wasn't her son anymore! I can't even begin to imagine how hard this must be for Findarato and the others…"

"You're right, I can't."

"Don't screw with me! Are you even listening? Oh darn it! We used to go hunting in the woods together, you, Ambarussa, Artanis and my sister. We used to spend day in day out, thinking of stupid little competitions. We used to just eat it up when you two showed off whatever latest tricks you'd learned from Tyelkormo. We'd all gather 'round so we could listen to you tell us all about whatever travels or inventions your folks had gotten up to. We were friends, and you ditched us!"

"Yes. Yes we did."

"Well then maybe you should have thought about that before you made off!"

The youngest grandchild of Finwe groaned in frustration. Long he had looked forward to giving even one of his cousins a piece of his mind, but he had expected to be having the conversation with an opponent who would be yelling right back at him, not a grim, penitent figure who took his every word without flinching.

Even the tallest, most impetuous son of Nolofinwe would have ran out of momentum under these circumstances – his father had taught him too much of honor for him to be satisfied with such a one-sided beat-down.

"Oh curses! Curses on all of this!" Groaning in frustration, the young prince let himself fall back onto what passed for a fine carpet in the realm of the dead. "Figures that I'd be among the first to get myself killed. The foolish little brother. The babiest of the baby cousins. I can't stand it! And now my brothers are over there fighting, and I'm going to miss all of it!"

His wayward cousin cast him a silent glance.

For a moment, Arakano-the-younger made a valiant effort at looking offended, but then at last he relented, pulled at by forces stronger than any anger he might have left.

"Say, Ambarto, what exactly happened with Angarato and Aikanaro?"

"...I wouldn't really know. They were fine the last I saw them, but I wasn't there for long. I think Tyelperinquar happened to be playing with Artaresto at the time and we didn't want to interrupt them, so Curvo said they could all just come with us. There's no way he would have done that if he had known what sort of madness father was going to unleash. I don't think father knew until the very second that it came into his mind."

"...did something happen between the two of you?"

The youngest of the cousins spoke with a trace of genuine concern at this point. He'd always known his uncle and his children as a unified front.

"I'd rather not speak of it."