He read all her letters, all except one. The one he carried with him
everywhere he went. He intended to read it sometimes, but every time he
took out, he did not dare to open it, never more afraid of what it might
say. It would remind him of what he had lost, everything he had ever lost
since his birth.
It came back only a short while after their parting, with Ambarussa as couriers, who shot him stinging looks even as they delivered into his hands.
"She does not expect an answer." They had told him, and went off hunting with Celegorm. Perhaps those words compelled him to thrust it into his pockets without looking at it.
But now he stared.
The paper was caulked, as usual between them after a horrible accident once upon a time; the memory pained him even more than her seal, Mahtan's seal now, not theirs, which now bore cracks from the many times he had unconsciously fingered it.
Feanaro Curufinwe ignored that he was now lodged in a cabin within a stolen ship that he had killed his kin to board; he ignored the storm outside, and the violent heaving motions of the waves. The Teleri ships do not tremble much.
Sitting with one leg stretched out in front and another curled up against him, the hard wood at his back seemed, with each moment, stinging his back through his rent armor and wet clothes.
"It cannot be worse." Feanor said to himself, and forcibly calm, opened the letter.
--
My dearest Elf,
I apologize again, and I shall pretend that I heard your apology when you stood there mumbling by the door before I left.
I trust that you did apologize. You must have, otherwise I would not have borne you seven sons, and lived with you for so many years.
Both impertinent, we did break almost all the rules my father ever laid in his workshops, and others besides when we betrothed. Perhaps, I should have seen it, that we would break every one of theirs when we parted. I, Nerdanel the Wise, should have through all law of reason and logic, restrained Feanor, the skilled Finwe, from breaching the trust of the Valar and probably everyone else, by attempting to capture the light of the Trees. The scandal, the infamy of it all!
Yet how can I, you sitting there, my fair husband upon our bed, think of Noldor, Teleri, of Vanyar politics?* They never realized; I am never wise around you. I have never been wise, it was an illusion they cast around me because I see them as they are wont to act, and a word of two or mine seemed to calm your moods; I did not calm, I convinced you, and I could not convince you if you were not eager in the first place. I could care less about what Indis thought of the grand, blaspheming enterprise, or what Artanis's opinion on the matter, when I see your face marred by a seemingly perpetual frown, when your fingers bled from overlong toil. What I could not stand was that you became heedless. Heedless not only of your family, but everything we have thought, dreamt, and planned together.
I disliked your endeavor not because of jealousy, as you dared to suggest, because I see, that instead of benefiting life, as your proposed, it eats away at it. You never saw into the mirror again after that one time. I knew you saw someone else that day before you broke it. Dark colours had always seemed unfitting upon you, yet workshops and forges had ever required that somber garb, and you scarcely took them off.
But it is too late to tell you. Isn't it? I wished it could have been otherwise. After all, our meetings and leavings have all but sent rumors onto a frenzied state. I had half-hoped that all would be forgotten as before until I saw them, bright against your brow during Ar-Finiel's begetting day feast. And you, you were great and dark under their light, more beautiful and more terrible than I had ever seen you.
I was afraid, because I no longer knew you, so I went into the workshops, and kept you as you were in my memories.
My sons I still had, they were grown and could fend for themselves, I do not begrudge them of living inside the house they were born in. Indeed, I preferred it, because seeing them would only remind of you, and maybe, in some corner of my mind, I wished that they did the same for you.
I would never know. You never visited, and so I did not.
Such sympathies, as if there can ever be sympathies for such a thing as that lies between you and I, they came. All your relatives, even your father: this time, they pleaded in your stead because you do not come yourself. You should, and I would come back. Yet now, you know all the implications if we compromised our arrogance, and therefore would not.
Why then do I confess? Because it hurts, dear Feanor, it hurts knowing that I have been effectively been abandoned by you, and you did not even notice. You gave yourself to the work of your hands, becoming a thing possessed, and did not wake up.
It is strange, as I write this in my childhood room, with the light streaming in, in front of the balcony that we had oft climbed when younger, our lives seemed to have flashed me by, the end and the beginning in the same place at last. Irony. Ultimately, after a dream we wake up upon our own beds, alone with the bittersweet taste of regret.
Ambarussa is going to leave soon, so I must finish. I really should have written this and more long ago, so you would have a tome to read, to remember, and to reflect upon. But I cannot, I would not, you see. Our arrogance, as my father predicted.
My fondest wish to you, as always, though you would not always believe. Even if it must reside in your inmost thoughts, remember that I do indeed give it, and other blessings besides. After all, dearest elf, I love you, and Nerdanel does not live, nor love, lightly.
I miss you.
Mutually preferred,
Nerdanel
P.S. Give my compliments to Maitimo, as I know you cannot cook well, thank him for me for keeping his brothers(and most probably his Findekano, too) well fed.
--
Holding the letter close, Feanor wept.
*the orig. line was Yeats: "Yet how can I/ That girl standing there /My attention fix/ On Roman or on Russian/Or on Spanish politics?"
It came back only a short while after their parting, with Ambarussa as couriers, who shot him stinging looks even as they delivered into his hands.
"She does not expect an answer." They had told him, and went off hunting with Celegorm. Perhaps those words compelled him to thrust it into his pockets without looking at it.
But now he stared.
The paper was caulked, as usual between them after a horrible accident once upon a time; the memory pained him even more than her seal, Mahtan's seal now, not theirs, which now bore cracks from the many times he had unconsciously fingered it.
Feanaro Curufinwe ignored that he was now lodged in a cabin within a stolen ship that he had killed his kin to board; he ignored the storm outside, and the violent heaving motions of the waves. The Teleri ships do not tremble much.
Sitting with one leg stretched out in front and another curled up against him, the hard wood at his back seemed, with each moment, stinging his back through his rent armor and wet clothes.
"It cannot be worse." Feanor said to himself, and forcibly calm, opened the letter.
--
My dearest Elf,
I apologize again, and I shall pretend that I heard your apology when you stood there mumbling by the door before I left.
I trust that you did apologize. You must have, otherwise I would not have borne you seven sons, and lived with you for so many years.
Both impertinent, we did break almost all the rules my father ever laid in his workshops, and others besides when we betrothed. Perhaps, I should have seen it, that we would break every one of theirs when we parted. I, Nerdanel the Wise, should have through all law of reason and logic, restrained Feanor, the skilled Finwe, from breaching the trust of the Valar and probably everyone else, by attempting to capture the light of the Trees. The scandal, the infamy of it all!
Yet how can I, you sitting there, my fair husband upon our bed, think of Noldor, Teleri, of Vanyar politics?* They never realized; I am never wise around you. I have never been wise, it was an illusion they cast around me because I see them as they are wont to act, and a word of two or mine seemed to calm your moods; I did not calm, I convinced you, and I could not convince you if you were not eager in the first place. I could care less about what Indis thought of the grand, blaspheming enterprise, or what Artanis's opinion on the matter, when I see your face marred by a seemingly perpetual frown, when your fingers bled from overlong toil. What I could not stand was that you became heedless. Heedless not only of your family, but everything we have thought, dreamt, and planned together.
I disliked your endeavor not because of jealousy, as you dared to suggest, because I see, that instead of benefiting life, as your proposed, it eats away at it. You never saw into the mirror again after that one time. I knew you saw someone else that day before you broke it. Dark colours had always seemed unfitting upon you, yet workshops and forges had ever required that somber garb, and you scarcely took them off.
But it is too late to tell you. Isn't it? I wished it could have been otherwise. After all, our meetings and leavings have all but sent rumors onto a frenzied state. I had half-hoped that all would be forgotten as before until I saw them, bright against your brow during Ar-Finiel's begetting day feast. And you, you were great and dark under their light, more beautiful and more terrible than I had ever seen you.
I was afraid, because I no longer knew you, so I went into the workshops, and kept you as you were in my memories.
My sons I still had, they were grown and could fend for themselves, I do not begrudge them of living inside the house they were born in. Indeed, I preferred it, because seeing them would only remind of you, and maybe, in some corner of my mind, I wished that they did the same for you.
I would never know. You never visited, and so I did not.
Such sympathies, as if there can ever be sympathies for such a thing as that lies between you and I, they came. All your relatives, even your father: this time, they pleaded in your stead because you do not come yourself. You should, and I would come back. Yet now, you know all the implications if we compromised our arrogance, and therefore would not.
Why then do I confess? Because it hurts, dear Feanor, it hurts knowing that I have been effectively been abandoned by you, and you did not even notice. You gave yourself to the work of your hands, becoming a thing possessed, and did not wake up.
It is strange, as I write this in my childhood room, with the light streaming in, in front of the balcony that we had oft climbed when younger, our lives seemed to have flashed me by, the end and the beginning in the same place at last. Irony. Ultimately, after a dream we wake up upon our own beds, alone with the bittersweet taste of regret.
Ambarussa is going to leave soon, so I must finish. I really should have written this and more long ago, so you would have a tome to read, to remember, and to reflect upon. But I cannot, I would not, you see. Our arrogance, as my father predicted.
My fondest wish to you, as always, though you would not always believe. Even if it must reside in your inmost thoughts, remember that I do indeed give it, and other blessings besides. After all, dearest elf, I love you, and Nerdanel does not live, nor love, lightly.
I miss you.
Mutually preferred,
Nerdanel
P.S. Give my compliments to Maitimo, as I know you cannot cook well, thank him for me for keeping his brothers(and most probably his Findekano, too) well fed.
--
Holding the letter close, Feanor wept.
*the orig. line was Yeats: "Yet how can I/ That girl standing there /My attention fix/ On Roman or on Russian/Or on Spanish politics?"
