The door was pushed open suddenly, coming into abrupt contact with the wall, and he turned his head to look at the intruder by pure instinct.
"Ah, do not move so, Cano!" A scolding voice came from behind him as a sharp pain stung his scalp, making him wince. "Your hair is already difficult enough to do, wavy as it is."
To give fair measure of things, Russandol gave his brother's silken locks another sharp yank, gentler this time however, and Maglor stayed still.
The door was closed again as if no one had ever opened it.
"Who was it?" he asked, making the conscious effort to not turn his head around to glance at his brother; instead staring straight into the mirror in front of him, looking at Russandol's reflection frowning at the back of his mirrored head.
"Just Tyelkormo." The other's voice was slightly muffled for the numerous hair pins he kept held between his lips, waiting to be stuck in Maglor's new complicated hairdo.
"Oh."
"Don't move."
He stiffened, bracing himself for the stinging pain that was sure to befall after such a warning, but after a while, relaxed; as nothing seemed to have happened.
A slight frown of concentration was set upon Russandol' brow as his hands worked deftly to intertwine strands of his brother's black hair with intricately designed golden hairpins. Maglor did not dare even twitch , as his older brother had already had to begin his efforts all over again twice as his long fingers got entangled in his sibling's supple locks; and resorted to staring straight in front of him into the mirror's smooth surface. It was another world, an image of this one: finite unlike it, as the carefully chiselled frame held the precious image there, two brothers, Russandol's fingers in his hair and hair slides between his lips, him sitting in a chair as straight as his back would permit, two fine young men like a tableau of family life and love that he could have fooled himself into believing was true. Low grumbling came from a voice that seemed to hover someplace above his head as Russandol's eyebrows came knotted together for a moment and Maglor almost blinked at the sharp and painful contact of cold metal with his scalp. Noticing the sudden tension in his brother's shoulders, the russet elf in the mirror softened his expression, and issued a short apology, as Russandol's hands grew gentler with the other's locks.
It had been a surprisingly agreeable experience to have another run a brush through his hair, and it brought back to him old memories that he would never have thought of again had the odd sensation not passed once more through his body. As a child, sitting in his mother's lap, as she ran her strong fingers through his hair, the fingers of an artisan, rubbing his scalp like an artful massage; mother and son, sitting in silence, strange stories told nights after night as he did not wonder why his father did not come home; her child cradled on her knees, arms tightened around his small body, things whispered in his ears that he could not understand. Odd dreams, remembering things that he has never seen; waking in the morning in her bed with the curtains drawn and the light of Laurelin flooding through them in eerie shafts, hurting his eyes.
He blinked at his own eyes in the mirror, black like some of the gems his father worked, that he treasured above all; inverted alabaster, he called it as he held it between his thumb and fingers, tiny facets of light reflecting off its polished surface. Most beautiful in the time of the waning of Telperion, when Laurelin herself had not yet awakened, he would then explain, with a crooked smile as he bent down and enjoined them with a simple gesture of his other hand to lean their heads closer to his, the stone a gleaming centre to the curious circle they formed; his voice a whisper so low that it sounded like the wind that bore queer tales in its breast. Most beautiful, most beautiful still in its rough form, unpolished by avid hands or by the constant caress of the river; and to prove his point, he had led them into his forge, swung his great hammer down upon the rock and broke it in halves, and uncovered in the heart of the stone wonders of crystals, tiny shards of jewels that stuck together as in an effort to reach up higher than the last, growing wild in every direction like an untamed underbrush.
An odd gleam in his eyes, changing like a pale fire; they were the ones who needed darkness to grow, he told, fascinated himself by the unworldly colours as if he had not expected to find them sprouting in the heart of the stone, darkness, and time, solitude and silence, and reclusion from the world.
The world stared back at him, Russandol towering above him with now only two pins left in his mouth and a victorious expression set on his refined features, the room inverted beyond the glass; his own face, pale, flushed, eaten by the presence of his eyes and the surrounding halo of sable hair.
"Here. You're all set." On the other side of the glass surface, Russandol leant down to rest his chin on the other's shoulder. "My baby brother all grown up. My aren't we quite the pretty boy now." Both young elves looked straight in front of them into the mirror, two pair of pitch-black eyes like gaping crevices with no end looking back into their own; and the older one suddenly deposited a quick peck on Maglor's cheek, surprising the latter so that he yelped and lashed out with his hand to push him back; but before he came to be actually hit the red-haired son of Feanor had smiled and sighed, passing a hand through his own yet casually braided hair and taken a step back to contemplate his work.
"I would not be surprised if all the maidens of Tirion were soon to start pursuing your favours, little Cano."
Maglor sniffed disdainfully. "That sounds hardly likely. Last time I checked you kept quite the monopole…"
"Aww, jealous, how cute." Russandol snickered. "I would have ruffled your hair would it not have quite defeated the entire purpose of my having just spent the last three hours toiling here in your room like a servant."
He took up a smaller mirror and placed it behind his brother's head, slightly to the right so that it would not come to be completely hidden, and Maglor drew in his breath as suddenly the world was multiplied, amplified, dilated; one no more, two no more, twins staring endlessly at each other through the thin layer of sacred glass, but infinite, boundless, untold, and innumerous.
