The fingers of his left hand idly toyed with the lock of the cage's door.
Fingolfin had offered him the bird in the golden cage for his fiftieth begetting day, and he had not been startled by the beautiful design of the cage or by the wren's elegant plumage, but by the smile on his uncle's face. It had been a genuine smile, one that wanted to love and be loved; and the intricate bars of the cage between them some sign of implicit reconciliation. His uncle had shown him all the nuances of the little bird's soft feathers, and Maglor had stared into its small beady black eyes; he had told him of its sweet singing voice, and Maglor had wondered at the daedal cage; and he had told him to tame it, with songs akin to its own, so that it would sit on his shoulder every day without flying away into the woods, and Maglor had studied his wontedly stern expression, now replaced by the warmest smile.
It could not be said that Fingolfin's elegant complexion was not beautiful. Set in its usual mask of indifference, it had the exquisite handsomeness of an ancient statue, one whose face was set in stone for ages unmemorable; noble features defined in hard and imperishable marble. His eyes, distant in their aloofness yet all the more sharp and present when they were set upon your own in disapproval, seeking as if to cut through the fabric of your fea and uncover the very core of your thoughts, showed the shades of iron and steel of Finwe's; appropriate for both their indifference, likened to the clouds of storm, and their keenness which was that one of a honed knife.
Fingolfin rarely smiled, and maybe it was the first time that Maglor had seen such an expression on his features, when he thought about it; and it was as if Finwe's second son was unsure of the way to curl his mouth, the spark in his eyes hesitant to twinkle properly. But he extended his arms to take the cage and the bird with due gratitude and thanks, and felt the cold metal against his palms except for where his uncle's hands had touched it. As he had turned away after exchanging words of politeness with Fingolfin's family, however, he felt the gaze of his father bearing into the back of his skull, and turning around, he saw Feanor's eyes, strange, inquiring, shifting from his son's face to the wren in the golden cage; and his hands had instinctively tightened around the bars of gold.
It was, in part, the reason why he was now standing in this clearing, not far from the edge of the wood; and the small bird in the cage tilted its head looking in turns at his newfound owner and the green foliage around them, its minute blue wings moving queerly as if in an eccentric dance. He raised the cage at eye-level, and stared intently at the beady round eyes of an opaque darkness, and the bird seemed to laugh, to mock him; as if he, no it, were the one held within a prison of gold. His brow drew itself into a frown. The bird had refused to sing for him, and he had once, tentatively tried to coax a few notes out of it by a simple song of his own, but though it had not ignored his song, a clever eye fixed into his own, no response had been given but that air of derision and jest that seemed so obvious in its looks.
Should he commit the sin of taming it? Beautiful songs would it sing for him everyday, and perched upon his shoulder it would sit, waiting for his hand to feed it some grain or crumb; he could caress its soft feathers without fear of sensing alarm in its slight body and wake in the morning to the sweet tones of its voice. But he remembered his father's eyes boring into his own, the questioning look that he could recognise, if none other: slightly surprised, slightly hurt, slightly disappointed.
Eyes suddenly narrowed, he harshly pulled the lock of the golden cage open, and swung it skywards at arm's end in one swift gesture; in a frenzy of flapping wings that seemed to suddenly fill the world the small wren was gone, a black dot in the pale blue sky that moved out of his sight to be merged into the dark foliage of trees.
Not a thought crossed his mind, not a feeling, and certainly not regret.
"This is my playground. What makes you think you have the right to tread within it?"
The presence of the child seemed only right. He tore his eyes from the spot in the uniform sky where the bird had disappeared, and turned his head to the side without moving the rest of his body.
The small boy was dark haired, and blue eyed, maybe a trait of some Vanyarin ancestors; and he wore simple clothes of green that allowed him to make his way through the forest unspied, seeing without being seen. Legs dangling in the void on either side of a slender branch that looked like it might break under his weight, the boy was apparently oblivious to that fact, and Maglor knew that he would not fall: it was not in the right order of things. His small face wore a defiant expression, that one of a child, omnipotent and invicible; and Maglor was almost drawn to smile.
"I came to give freedom to a bird."
The boy sniffed in a disdainful manner. "It was a beautiful bird. Why did you not keep it?" He leant forwards in accusation. "Do you not like birds?"
Maglor was startled into replying impulsively. "I like birds!" A fraction of a second later he cursed himself under his breath for this irrational reply. "Their song is dear to my heart," he continued, more thoughtfully, with all due seriousness; "but they cannot sing well when they are held captive, you see."
The child scoffed and raised an eyebrow at him. "But I have many birds in my house in cages and they sing just as well as those in the wild, if not even better, for my mother has taught them her art. I feed them everyday, and sometimes they come and perch themselves on my finger because they love me." He paused for a moment, as if perplexed. "Your bird did not love you because it flew away."
He refused to think. "It loved freedom better." The phrase clung to his mind, an idea that he pushed away with all the willpower he had left, and he barred his mind to all further dwelling upon that subject.
His father's inquiring gaze was there instead, posing that unvoiced question, burdening him in one split of a moment for the rest of eternity with the knowledge of ignorance.
He hardened his heart and bit his tongue. "Who are you then, little friend of birds who keeps them in cage? Will you tell me your name?"
The child sat up straight, proudly, and annonced "My name is Laurendil, and my father serves the Lord Finarfin."
The green of his clothing suddenly took on an entirely different meaning.
From his high position in the tree, the boy looked down at Maglor with an air half-amused, half-scornful, and set his lips in a slight pout as he spoke again. "And you are a son of Feanor. You have black eyes like him and his brood."
And he disappeared into the foliage with a slight rustle of leaves.
His last shout reached Maglor's ears only when the latter had begun to work himself out of his stupor. "I am Laurendil and this is my secret playground! I will have you thrown out of it were you to come again."
He went and threw the artful cage into some nearby stream and did not stay to watch it float away.
