Motherhood

Maedhros would never deny that Rûsa could be difficult at times. How could he not have such days, with his past as a slave in Angband? She could recall the temper tantrums her son had thrown during his first days of rebirth in a new body, mainly caused by a lack of a common language with his maternal family and being so honestly confused about his new surroundings because of how vastly different Valinor was from Angband.

"I am not going to punish him for this."

As far as Maedhros bothered in this moment, her son was perfectly justified in being angry; a half-finished drawing had been stolen by someone when he had needed to leave the garden for a quick errand back into the kitchen, and who would not be upset by theft?

"I think he has blown off some steam now," Nerdanel confirmed at looking out through the window, seeing her grandson breathing deeply with outrage, but at least he no longer shouted.

It was in moments like this, that Rûsa could hint to his actual past. He had learnt how to not reveal a aura of such intensive fury, but sometimes he honestly needed to get rid of his anger by punching something. In this case, a training dummy close to his own height.

"Shall we see if we can find the thief?" Maedhros suggested, one hand already on the garden gate to open it so she could leave the property of her parents, and her son did not waste time in running after her.

It turned out that his drawing had been stolen by a older Elfling at the local school, who had forgotten about a homework involving a drawing and not been very keen on fixing it by himself. But the sharp-eyed teacher knew the way in which Rûsa did his paintings, as Maedhros' son sometimes came over to the art class for learning about the finer details in how to do drawings and painting, so naturally he recognized the child's hand that made the half-finished drawing since the older Elfling had very little actual talent as a artist.

"Cheating does not work, not in school and especially in the adult world when looking for a job. It is one of the grounds to be fired from a workplace, and if you were one of my soldiers during the First Age, you would find yourself degraded to doing the works none of the more the experienced soldiers want to do," Maedhros warned the older boy, giving him one of her finest death glares as the teacher brought the student back inside the school building for another punishment.

"What kind of work did your soldiers leave for the punishments to do?" Rûsa wondered in honest curiosity.

"All the worst jobs in a army tends to involve a shovel, like emptying latrines that is basically big holes in the ground and needs to be emptied every few days. A camp needs a ditch as defense, and that needs to be digged. The horses needs a clean area too…"

Having helped his grandmother in the garden to plant seeds for vegetables earlier in the spring, Rûsa recalled how a garden trowel made a major difference by digging instead of needing to use his fingers. But he also knew how heavy a shovel could feel when the ground was wet and heavy after massive rain falls.

"Well, it should make a different form of muscle training, right?"

Maedhros hid a smile, of course her son would see it like that.

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

Other times, Rûsa was curious about very different things. It was hard to blame him for wanting to learn about stuff he could have known, had she just managed to escape from Angband before her pregnancy became too difficult to ensure that she would not be captured.

"And then, like this?"

Miriel was only happy to teach her great-grandson how textiles was made on a loom, with yarn and other fibers to make thread. One room in the house was intended for her to use during visits, with everything she could use if she wanted to weave or sew something.

"Yes, and now push the beater like this to tighten the thread. If it is too loose, the fabric will not be good later."

While Maedhros had been unable to do any textile work in the First Age due to missing one hand, she had picked up knitting as a way to relax now after rebirth, since she tended to become restless without something useful to do. Something left after all those years of fighting against Morgoth.

"Wow, from wool into this...it must have felt important to explore the possibilities of what you could make with a fabric like this, right, great-grandmother?"

Miriel had already shown him how the first fabrics among the Elves had been made from felt textile, and she used her own skills to give him lessons about the history of fabric and clothes. Since she was a daughter from a pair among the first Elves to have Awoken, she had grown up in a time when they had been using animal furs as clothing.

"Yes. Today fabric are almost taken for granted here in Valinor, so that is why I enjoys seeing how the Avari clans still uses some of the old techniques to ensure that it does not die out."

Maedhros felt pride at seeing her son gain new knowledge. Sure, he would never be a ideal child or even be a prince without any scandals around him, but she preferred challenges in her life and wanted him to learn from mistakes, since Rûsa would have great use of thinking outside the box.