Maedhros had brought Rûsa along to the food market, there had been a few things needed to be brought for the dinner later and she saw no reason to not teach him a few useful things about choosing the best food without wasting a lot of coin on it.

"Now, try and use what I just told you, by choosing a nice bread for dinner there at the bakery," she asked kindly to her son. Nodding, Rûsa was about to go across the main street of the food market to take a better look at the freshly baked breads for sale in the window.

"Do we need one large bread, or is it fine with some smaller buns?" he wondered.

"Two large bread loaves would be nice. Your aunt Rainiel sent over a recipe of stuffed breads I want to try tomorrow at lunch."

With that answer, he got inside the bakery to find something as she paid for some fresh carrots from one food stand.

After that they had been in the bakery, it was time to return home, since they both had a few household chores to do before it was time to start making dinner. Maedhros saw Rûsa look towards the paint shop, he would sometimes go there and buy new things for his drawings.

"We do not have enough coin left for new watercolours or brushes after shopping for the food. But we can go there tomorrow if you help out a little extra in the kitchen today."

Rûsa had looked sad at the mention of that he could not go to the paint shop, but he seemed a little happier at the offered opportunity.

"Really, ammë?" he asked, his eyes begging her to be kind.

Maedhros was about to answer, when there was a shrill scream in the air somewhere around them. Looking over her shoulder, Maedhros saw that it was a mother with a daughter roughly the same age as Rûsa, give or take a year. The blonde daughter was really screaming in anger, throwing a temper tantrum for everyone to see:

"I want it! I want it!"

By the way the girl was pointing against a stand which sold toys coming all the way from Tirion, it must be one of the toys, and the mother refusing to give in and buying the toy, to be the cause of her anger.

"You have enough toys at home and does not need another one. Come, it is time to go home."

"I WANT IT, I WANT IT, I WANT IT!"

Maedhros mentally did a grimace at the scene. Fëanor and Nerdanel had never allowed their seven children to act like that in public, pointing out that a such temper tantrum would be punished with the removal of a favorite toy for the rest of the day or another thing which their children would be punished by. Never corporal punishment though, thankfully, but she could recall a few times when her father had lost his patience and screamed at the disobeying offspring in question to just shut the hell up. Often that had both shocked and even scared his children, because of how rare it was for him to scream at them.

And Rûsa looked like he really did not want to be there at all, he cringed at the loud screaming, pulling on her robe in a silent plea to just go away from the food market. She could only hope that the screaming was not bringing up some unpleasant memory for him, something from Angband again. Bending down, Maedhros picked her son up in her arms to carry him home.

"We will go home, darling."

The other mother was standing firm in her refusing to give in to the demands of her daughter, who now had laid herself down on the street and still screaming about the toy. Finally, the mother ended up carrying the screaming girl in the opposite direction.

~X~X~X~X~X~X

When they was almost home, Rûsa asked in a quiet voice;

"I have never acted like that, right?"

Maedhros understood why he was worried.

"No. The closest I can imagine, was your temper tantrums back in the beginning after your rebirth. You had a lot of unreleased anger inside you because as a slave, you would face punishment if you acted out of line. During those first weeks with us, you had no idea how to act around us and outside that you were reborn in the body of a very small toddler and suddenly becoming dependent on strangers, I think a lot of those early frustrations was also caused by the language barrier, you would ask something and the language spoken by the slaves was very different from the Quenya we had grown up with or the various dialects of Sindarin we knew in Beleriand."

Her son nodded without a word.

"Will that girl be punished in some discipline, though?"

"I think so. If she had been mine, she could forget about that nice dessert after dinner I planned and also have to stay in her bedroom for the rest of the evening."

"You mean, how grandfather says "You live under my roof, you obey my roles"? I heard him say that once to one of my twin uncles."

Her brothers may have moved out of the house while Maedhros had stayed with her parents to get extra help with Rûsa if it was needed in some way, and they all knew that the moment they entered over the front door threshold, they had to obey the same rules as back in their childhood.

"Yes, we can create our own rules and do what we want in a house of our own, but my parents are firm on that we are to behave ourselves in their home."

One of the few, really few, good things about Rûsa being a former slave was that he knew to obey the rules and knowing that it could be very unpleasant result if he did not behave. Granted, he would most likely be viewed as spoiled nowadays with the most common punishment from his relatives being a time-out spent in his room or not getting any sweet, but Maedhros and her family knew that any harsher punishment could trigger up bad memories for him. Besides, being more creative in the punishments and having him do the household chores his small body could do, like sweeping the front yard and dust off things within reach with a feather duster, helped him indirectly learn how to avoid a messy house when he was old enough to move out.

"That reminds me...grandfather work's clothes from the forge is really sooty those days, shall I bring them to the washing room for tomorrow when it is that big washing day of the month?"

Maedhros took the chance to request something to him:

"Actually, just go and lock the door to his forge this evening when you go to feed the birds who have their nests and chicks up in our apple tree and give the key to me when you return. Might as well preventing Atar fully from going into the forge when it is time to start the washing. We can not have him show up with soot without warning and needing to start all over again!"

Rûsa laughed over those words as they finally came to the garden of the house her parents owned.