Notes :

- This work is the translation of my (old) story "Un très gros chagrin".

- In this story, Maedhros and Fingon are about the same age.

- Correspondence of first names in Quenya :
Maitimo, Nelyafinwë/Nelyo = Maedhros
Findekáno = Fingon

A great sorrow

It must have been the maternal instinct that made her leave her workshop to get some fresh air in the garden behind the manor. There were fruit trees, vegetable plants and vines – for Fëanor wanted him and the children to know how to cultivate the land and be able to do everything with their own hands. It was harvest time and the air was warm and sweet. Nerdanel let himself be absorbed by the sweet and peaceful exhalations of ripening.

She had come there quietly, and all that could be heard was the laughter and voices of young people from the nearby wood. But there was something else... A sound that was not produced by a voice, but an instrument – a human chest. Nerdanel went into the vines, which were very high and heavy. There she found her eldest son, still a teenager, but already well developed in stature. At first she thought she was mistaken, that the noise she had heard was not coming from here. But it did come from her son, who was crying, his chest hiccupping.

"My big boy crying in the grapes ?" Nerdanel wondered gently.

Maitimo looked up at her. By God, even devastated his face was of great beauty. But the unhappy expression in his eyes pierced her heart. Nerdanel saw only her suffering baby, the one she could count on the fingers of her hand the number of times she had seen him cry. The teenager was of a reserved nature, he rarely showed his feelings when they were strong. He had always known that he was the eldest, and that he had to be solid, irreproachable like the prow that represents and leads the ship. Unbreakable. He was Nelyafinwë, the Third Finwë. Maitimo had to fade away... Maitimo did not exist.

But this time he was caught in the act. And not only was he crying, but now that he had started, he could not stop.

"Maitimo... what's happening to you ? Why are you crying ?"

"I don't know," replied the boy between hiccups.

Nerdanel wondered if he wasn't crying this time because he hadn't cried the other times. So she took him in her arms, trying to soothe him as she had done when he was a young child – although he was already almost a head taller than her.

It was then that the noises from the wood intensified : the sound of walking, a man's voice and a girl's voice. The silhouettes of two people soon became visible through the hedge that separated the garden from the path leading to the wood. Nerdanel recognised Findekáno, his son's half-cousin and best friend, through the foliage, and he was with the girl with the long, wavy brown hair that had accompanied him since his arrival. The two young elves were laughing, and as they passed the shrubs, without seeing Nerdanel and his son, Findekáno put his left arm around the girl's waist. This immediately caused Maitimo's upper body to contract again, with new tears, as her mother looked on in horror.

"They mustn't see me like this," he whispered to her, as the tears ran down his chin.

"Come on," she replied, leading him to a passageway at the back of the house.

A quarter of an hour later, mother and son were sitting in the kitchen. Nerdanel had wiped Maitimo's face, and boiled water with herbs for him.

"Nelyo," she said, putting a hand on his hesitantly. "Is it because your friend Findekáno has a fiancée that you are sad ? If so... You don't have to be, oh no. You are a kind, beautiful and gifted boy. And who is much appreciated... I'm sure you'll soon find a sweet friend, too. If you only knew how many girls admire your prowess in Tirion and Valimar. I am constantly asked about you when I show up in town."

But the teenager kept his eyes riveted on his bowl of tea, not reacting to these remarks.

"Or else..."

This was a much more difficult hypothesis.

"Or else... Do you love this girl too ?" Nerdanel murmured. "The same girl as Findekáno ?"

"No," Maitimo answered immediately.

So quickly... Nerdanel thought.

Then the teenager finally added : "I don't know, mother..."

Nerdanel then tried to make him talk about something else, which allowed him to calm down while the tears behind his eyes dried. It was lucky that Fëanor had taken Maglor and Celegorm hunting, she didn't dare imagine what her husband's reaction would have been – inevitably awkward, inevitably exacerbated. She suspected that he had organised this outing to avoid having to deal with Fingolfin's son, whom Maitimo had invited to the manor with this young girl whose name she could not remember.

And now they were coming in. The young Findekáno, who was not as tall as his son but no less strong, and his sweetheart, whom he held by the hand. No sooner had he passed the beam of the corridor than he smiled at her, with his grey eyes mixed with the blue of the Vanyar. A frank and sunny smile. But the way he looked carefree and self-centred when he turned to his lover irritated her, for she knew her son was sad because of him, somehow. He seemed to be all in the display of his budding sexuality, and nothing around him existed anymore. One could not hold it against him, but she remembered that Fëanor had never been like that with her. He had always seen her for what she was, not as the revealing part of some new phenomenon that age had brought.

Maitimo made an effort to look up at them, he even tried to smile – and Findekáno saw it then.

"We were looking for you everywhere, Nelyo !" exclaimed the son of Fingolfin. "But, have you been crying ?"

Suddenly he looked upset.

"No," his friend replied.

"Yes, he did cry," said Nerdanel. "But he doesn't dare admit it. He got so big that he hit his head on the beam there and cried with pain."

Findekáno grimaced.

Then Nerdanel made them sit down, one on each side of the big wooden table, to avoid untimely wet hands and hugs. Then she prepared a snack for them, as in the good old days. But Maitimo's melancholic look was no longer that of a child. And while she prepared the drinks and cakes, and while the teenagers ate, she watched them. She watched her son, usually so affable, struggle to lift his bowl. As a sculptor, she knew the plasticity of beings – and this deep knowledge had allowed her to capture part of their soul. Of all the sculptors of faces and bodies, she was the most respected in Valinor. And what she saw in her son that day, which he perhaps did not see himself, was not fear of loneliness, nor love for the girl. Oh, he loved her, in a way. Maitimo was one of those people who love everyone a priori. But he was not in love with her. On the other hand...

Findekáno and his partner soon left the manor, as they had to be in Tirion for dinner.

Nerdanel took the opportunity to have a few more words with her eldest son, before the rest of the family returned. Another woman would have let it slide, denying its existence, or holding it to be illusory, temporary. To speak of it would have risked giving it reality. But Nerdanel knew her son, she knew that if his emotions were not shown, they were no less deep and linked to the essence of his personality. To ignore or destroy them would be absurd.

So she told him a story from the Time of the Stars, when the Noldor as a unified people did not yet exist.

"Mahtan, my father, and your grandfather, were one of the first born, on the shores of Cuiviénen. He belonged to a tribe of the Tatyar. At that time, and throughout the Long March West, the Tatyar of my father's tribe remained free-spirited, as did many of the Minyar, and enjoyed their company."

"The Minyar... became the Teleri, didn't they ?"

"That's right. And Mahtan once told me that at that time, during the long march, there was a girl among the Minyar who was so beautiful, brave and gentle that not only the men fell in love with her, but also the women."

Maitimo frowned.

"Women ? But that's not possible..."

"That was under the stars, Maitimo. I don't know if it would be possible here. But it is a fact that it existed."

"And this woman that everyone loved... Did she make it here ? In Valinor ?"

"Yes."

"Do you know her ?"

Nerdanel laughed.

"You're very curious all of a sudden ! I think you are cured... You ask me if I know her... But you don't ask if you know her."

A few dozen leagues from Fëanor's manor, delicate music filled the last room of the domed tower of one of Tirion's palaces, the one facing Eldamar, where Finarfin lived.

The vault of this room had been lined with lapiz lazuli, and jewels cut by the Noldor had been fixed to it to represent the stars of Varda.

And under this starry vault played Eärwen, graceful as a swan. She had a very large harp with a frame covered with shells and pearls, and her long hair was a pearly white and silvery, which shone in the folds of the hair strands, covering her almost entirely.

A choir of young elves accompanied her music. And among them, the most melodious voice was that of Anairë, the wife of Fingolfin. And Anairë looked at Eärwen with adoration...