Silence

For Kazaera

- Prologue

 "Doll!"

A wide smile parted the small girl's face from ear to ear, as her short arms were extended towards him.

Almost warily, he took the ragged, tattered doll from her chubby fingers, afraid that his clumsy grasp would tear it to shreds. It was a very old doll, and soiled for having been dragged in the dirt for days on end. On any occasion, even the poorest craftsman of the Noldor would not have deigned lower his eyes on the rough, unskilled needlework barely holding the fabric together. Sitting next to the campfire with four or five young children huddled next to him, Celebrimbor handled the threadbare toy with reverence and awe, as if it was the most delicate and fragile treasure elvenkind had ever produced; for it was with a mother's love that these old rags had been sewn together, and it had been the source of a child's joy, and now this child had willingly given him her toy, sharing with him her games and her smile, in a language he did not know.

As much as Celebrimbor was skillful in handling the most precious metals and breakable gems, he did not know what to do with the doll of a young peasant girl in his hands. All the children had their faces turned towards him in expectation, and he felt a slight blush colouring his face.

"Doll?" he repeated slowly.

A round of gleeful laughter broke among the elflings. Apparently, his accent still left a lot to be desired.

Quickly, the small girl snatched the doll back from his large hands, and held it aloft in front of his face. Even as he was seated, she had to stand and reach up for the painted beads that were its eyes to be level with those ink black ones of the other elf; and she launched into a long monolog which the Noldoring youth could not comprehend. The tongue of the Sindar was pleasant to the ear; it flowed back and forth as naturally as the ebb and flow came to caress the blessed shores, where graceful swanships slept. In the surrounding night, the orange fire threw strange, dancing shadows on the children's youthful faces, but the familiar dance did not waken in his heart echoes of another night: it was as if the small girl's distant babble soothed the nightmare in his soul, kept the memories at bay.

The girl's speech ended. From the tone of her childish voice, Celebrimbor devised that she had asked him a question; however, all that he could do was to shake his head with a feeble smile.

~

"Is he your son, my Lord?"

The woman had approached him silently, and he was startled by her sudden presence at his side. He had been standing there for a while, watching Tyelpe try to interact with the children, and no one had spoken to him; he had thought himself safe from intrusion hidden in the shadows of tall trees.

"Yes." He smiled, awaiting the next question that was sure to come with a touch of irritation.

But for a long while after that, the woman spoke no more, and contended herself with standing at his side. Something about this unrequited and silencious presence made him feel uneasy.

"The children seem to like him very much," he said at last, hoping to break the silence.

The woman assented. "Children can feel it." He threw her a glance that confessed his lack of understanding.

Her eyes seemed slightly surprised that he did not understand, but only slightly so. "Children can feel it," she explained slowly, "when pain is in another's heart."

Later, he would do his best to forget, though without quite succeeding, the look he had felt her lay on his impassive face, heavy with commiseration and something akin to pity.

~

The next day, a pair of young boys had seized him by his tunic and made clear that they wanted him to spend the day with them on a walk in the woods. They shoved an empty basket in his hands, and at least Celebrimbor knew what that meant: often, in his childhood, he had snuck away from Formenos' iron doors and run along the indistinct trails in the nearby woods, hoping to happen upon a bush of blackberries. Under the glaring light of the Sun, he savoured again the almost forgotten sensation of the ripe, juicy fruit bursting under the pression of his teeth; and decided that he could not have forgotten it. He remembered sneaking back to his lonely room and pretending that he had never gone out, ignoring the stains of dark violet the seasoned fruits had left upon his hands and shirt.

At the end of the day, his basket was full, and he thought he had eaten at least twice what he had picked.

~

"Cursed be his name! Cursed to the Outer Void, and all his kind with him, who are no more worthy of faith!"

Formenos was a great building, but most of what filled it was emptiness. High pillars supported tall ceilings in vast empty rooms, for only a small part of it was really inhabited. In the loneliness of exile, the loneliness of their disproportionate fortress, the seven Sons of Fëanor had, maybe unconsciously, maybe out of an unspoken agreement, all chosen to live in the East Wing, and looked very surprised on the outside when it turned out that all of their rooms gave on the same corridor. They didn't like to be left alone, and six brothers were never gone without the seventh one following close behind. When they spoke, they spoke too loud, and often for trifle things; when they laughed, they laughed too loud, and when they walked, muffled the sound of their footfalls with no great success.

Celebrimbor stayed by his father's side when the heaviness of the silence became too heartfelt, or spent his time in his great-grandfather's room, listening to ancient stories he did not understand. But sometimes he slipped away and wandered alone through the dark corridors, his heart beating fast for fear of getting lost in his own home; maybe they would never find him, and he would stay forever lost in a labyrinth that his own kin had designed. And when he had been careless enough to let one of his movements create an echo on the fantastic walls, he stood still, suspended his breathing, and waited for the endlessly repeating voice to die out, like a sigh shattering against an abrupt cliff. 

When his grandfather's wrath was kindled, Celebrimbor hid under a staircase, and buried his head in his folded arms. It availed to nothing, because he could still hear the irate shouts, and the silence that was all around. Afterwards, his father came to sit near to him, and held him in his arms, though not a word was said; and the silence that was shared again brought tears to his eyes better than madness and rage ever could.

~