A different kind of training
For most part, his basic education went pretty well until Maedhros suddenly realized that the family was neglecting something:
"Etiquette?" Rûsa asked in confusion over the news, of what his mother had requested his presence in what was basically her private office after finishing the lessons with master Rumil this day.
"Yes...all of us have some fault in that, because we are not even living anywhere near Tirion and the royal court in the first place!" Maedhros groaned, feeling stupid over this situation.
A few years ago when he had started his schooling, Fëanor and Nerdanel had explained to their youngest grandson how it all had started, that Fëanor had never enjoyed his position as Crown prince over the Noldor due to all the social rules in the court, feeling a lot more comfortable in the role of a smith and inventor. That had been a part of the reason to why he fell in love with Nerdanel, who was not a noble but still widely respected as a craftswoman.
"Anyway, I would like you to at least learn the basics, so no one will claim that you are poorly educated for someone of royal blood."
Rûsa made a face in protest, clearly thinking that any such person deserved to taste what it was like to survive as a slave in Angband as he had done in his old life.
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Thankfully Maglor, who had been the one among the siblings to be at court the longest outside Maedhros, could help his sister in this.
"Princes and princesses have different social expectations, so I'm better suited to learning you the basics."
Having raised Elrond and Elros to have a mostly Noldorin-based education despite that they by birth was Sindarin princes, Maglor knew how to act as a teacher.
After one week, Rûsa began to realize why his maternal grandfather had not enjoyed being the Crown prince. Sure, as a great-grandson to the ruling High King, Rûsa would not have to think of how to act all the time, but after living one lifetime with trying to avoid punishment, things did not go that smooth.
"I would say, that you are more of a soldier than a courtier, for sure," Maglor said in a attempt to joke, given how true that was.
"At least soldiers seems to be doing something useful than the courtiers."
For Rûsa, who had been both a slave and a soldier against his will in the First Age, the whole idea of the courtiers seemed very strange. Attending the royal family, the use of messengers and scribes alongside servants, that he could understand, but the whole idea of trying to gain power though intrigues or marriage? Not so much.
"While I did master much of what a princess is meant to know, especially one who is the heir to her father despite having six younger brothers, I threw it all away during the Exile to become the female warrior I was there," Maedhros told her son one day when she showed the contrast between how she once had acted in the Years of the Trees and in the First Age.
Indeed, the copper-haired daughter of Fëanor was inevitably more of a warrior nowadays than what she had been as a unwed elf-maid. Not innocent, not really a tomboy either. Her movements, ways of talking and actions was that of a battle commander who expected obedience or someone would regret not having obeyed her order. Not even her brothers was spared from it, as Rûsa sometimes witnessed between his relatives:
This time, it was his third-youngest maternal uncle who earned the wrath of not only his own wife Astarë, but also his older sister for ruining a very fine piece of mutton intended for lunch that day.
"Uncle Curvo, surely you should have learned by now that treating a oven like a forge is only gonna make the meat into coal?" Rûsa asked after finding out where the black smoke had came from, followed by hearing his aunt by marriage yelling at her husband.
Maedhros was not pleased with her brother either, as she and her son had been invited for a meal and now it would take much longer time to fix something to eat, unless they took the sauce and used it on bread as simple sandwiches instead.
"If there is one skill he have never learned in either one of his lifetimes, it is the difference between smithing and cooking!" Astarë responded in annoyance after finally getting hold on her husband out in the front yard to the house and was now dragging him along by the ear to have him clean up the mess in their kitchen. Rûsa, however, merely proved some of his old behavior from Angband again by using a small daggert from his belt to cut out a piece of the blackened meat and try to chew on it.
"Even I know better than burn meat into coal by leaving it over a burning fire without watching the food."
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Somehow, Narvi got to hear about the newest lessons and had to add in what the Dwarves viewed as good behavior.
"Since we Dams are so rarely born no matter which social class we belong to, it is actually not unheard of that a commoner might end up as a royal consort, both to bring in new blood into the royal bloodline to avoid inbreeding and a lot of other reasons that is a little complex to explain for you currently as some of it are not meant for the ears of anyone below the age of adolescence. As a result, we Dams tends to gather together and learn wisdom and etiquette from each other, the older generation learning the younger, as it naturally happens."
To show her point, Narvi had brought along a few of her dresses and jewelry for special occasions, spending nearly the whole day showing the difference between the Orocarni where she had been born and lived her first fifty years of life, and Khazad-dûm where the rest of her long life had been spent.
Of course, the Dwarves of the East was also known for having tea parties as part of their culture that was different from the clans in western Middle-earth, and so Narvi had brought that along to let her Elven husband aunt and cousin have a taste of it.
"Ammë, did you ever feel out of place among the Dwarves of Belegost when you visited them?"
"In terms of the height difference? Not so much, with my horde of younger brothers and cousins I had grown used to folding myself over small furniture, and if that broke, there was always a nice chest for me to sit down on."
There was a open fondness in her voice at those memories as she smiled with the cup of Dwarven-made tea in her cup, and for a moment Rûsa mentally wondered if he might find himself in a such situation one day in the future, if he ever had any younger half-siblings from Maedhros or new cousins from his uncles.
One thing was for sure, he got a taste of the non-Elvish cultures that his mother and relatives had been involved with, if not so much the Mannish ones but more of the Dwarven ones.
