One Half

by Galadwen1977

Telufinwë Ambarussa dies at Losgar. But that may not be the end.

One Half

I lie motionless, with my eyes open. Next to me, over me, all around me, there are the ribs and hips of the ship, and somewhere over on the decks, are the bare booms with loose ropes flying in the wind. Playful waves are rocking the anchored ship: no storm, just one rise of the ocean after another, as the waves go to the stony coast. I am rocked along with my cot in their rhythm without having to make the slightest effort. In this lazy, regular movement full of splashing and the scent of seawater I soon feel drowsy. I would like to catch this seeming peace, at least for a while, immersing myself in the realm of dreaming, in which I am still an innocent child. I can not.

Just a moment. A few hours, before the camp on the shore of the bay gets quiet and rests. I'm waiting. I'm waiting like a hunter. Patiently.

This is all a mistake. A terrible mistake. Going further means to lose myself totally and forever. Return? Impossible...

I lift my arms above me, into the path of my gaze leading to the wooden ceiling, above which the deck is. In the light of the crystal beside my bed they look the same as ever. Clean. Pink skin, white nails. Everything as it once was. But I do not see them like that anymore.

The ship is rocking on the waves. Voices from the coast gradually become silent. I run my arm around my body and close my eyes. I'm determined. Let the eternal darkness devour me as I swore. I do not care. The vision of the future that appeared to me at the very moment when I first laid my feet on the dry land on this side of the sea surpassed all the horrors of the endless night that I can imagine. Once before I raised a sword on my kin, on my own people, I shed the blood of innocent. I'm sure, terribly sure that if I stay, it will not be the last time. Again and again women will be mourning their husbands, mothers will weep for their children, and the children for their parents – because of me. And better than this, let the wrath of doom fall on my head.

That decision was ripening in me even before the vision of the future spread out before me. From the moment the stolen ships left the harbor full of blood, where the waves rose to a terrible height, with pinkish lace of froth instead of white, with the smell of death, suffering and helpless anger all around. It was just the last drop, the last step. I will go back. I will kneel before the King of Teleri, I will beg for forgiveness, even if I should not get it. I will rush to the feet of Valar, I will ask them to get me rid of that horrible oath. And if it is not possible, I will gladly take any punishment. But I will not continue. Never.

My mother was right - as always. It's just that I've gone mad with everyone else for a moment.

I roll over my bed. Is it time? I still hear some voices from the shore. A harp playing. Laughter. How can someone laugh after what happened?

I lie and stare at the side of the deck with all its dark and cold shadows, with all the invisible stains of cleaned blood. Mother, I think, can you ever forgive me what I did? What I have allowed myself to do? There is no water and no tears to clean all the blood away. Not from the white wood of swanships, nor from my hands and soul.

From the hands a souls of my brothers ...

Am I the only one of seven of as who still have a conscience?

I know I'm not. I saw Makalaurë crying when he thought he was alone. Maitimo hold my shoulders on our way to the north when I was desperate, he whispered to me that he would never let something like that happen again, never. It happened what happened - but now we are wiser, we already know what a wild action without thinking can bring. With Ambarussa we sat side by side on the deck under the stars, without words, and I saw him feel as miserable as I. Why, then, am I the only one who is determined to prefer conscience to the darkness that can await us? At least I would have hoped that Ambarussa could understand me. My second self, the other part of my soul, my twin...

I should not leave him in such anger when I knew it could be forever. Ambarussa and I, two halves of one apple... It was not for the first time we quarreled. It would not be normal for the brothers as close as the two of us to never get into the disagreement. But it has never been so bitter before. So harsh and definitive. He threw me in my face that I was a coward and a traitor. I answered he's a fool with blood on his hands, so blind that he can not see what he's doing. I thought he would hit me, but we just stared at each other for a long moment. When Maitimo came to ask what was going on, I turned on my heel without a word and went off.

I should not have done it. I should not leave him - both of them - without trying to make peace. But now it's too late for repentance. The camp goes to sleep. Ambarussa rests in a shelter or by one of the fires, staring at the stars, and he probably feels as bad as I do. But he does not know that the sharp words were our final parting. He does not know that what I said to him, I mean deadly, terribly seriously. I'm going back to my mother. I'd rather leave behind my father, the silmarils, the Enemy, and the whole Oath, than to head for another, even worse, curse.

How much time do I have? I feel more and more tired, exhausted from grief and strain. I'm closing my eyelids and cold tears are flowing on my cheeks. Three hours, I guess, the time measured by the Light of the Trees that is no longer. I know for sure that I will wake up in time - I will feel the rhythm of the waves changing with the tide. I have contemplated my plan for hundred times in my mind, and as we sailed to the north and then across the sea, I have learned enough to operate the ship safely out of the bay and to the West. I can afford a short rest now because it will not be time for it later. Not when I'm on board only by myself, exposed to the whirlwinds of the wind and the sea and bad fate I've called on me myself. Alone in the broad world, under the cold stars.

I'm falling asleep. The final decision made me a little calmer in my heart.

But probably not enough. My dream is dark: I see my mother's face marked by grief as at the moment when she last hugged me for a farewell. There's no way back, she whispers while I look at her. She turns away. Now I see she's in her workshop, I know the long, bright room. Below the window on the bench, in row one beside the other, there are eight wooden statuettes, elbow high. I know their faces: my brothers. My father. Me. Mother is lifting them one by one, holding each in her arms as a living child - and then throwing them into an open fire in the corner of the studio. The flames burst. They fly high up to the ceiling. The fire has the color of her - of my - hair. I want to shout when she picks up a statuette with my face, to ask her for compassion; I can not. Something clutches my throat, it fills my lungs, chokes me.

It's not the sound of the waves what's waking me. In a second I understand that the smell of smoke that fills my nose does not come from my dream. I rise up quickly.

The under-deck is full of hot air that sticks my hair to my forehead with sweat. The boards of the deck flash over me. Smoke rolls around everywhere. The tears are filling my eyes, I am coughing, but I rise to my feet. Suddenly I can not see anything but flames. I'm walking in the direction where the steps to the board should be. And then I can see them: the flames leap from them and run to my feet like the molten iron that someone poured out of the melting pot on the floor. The smell of smoke mixes with the smell of burned lamp oil. My head is spinning.

The trap-door above the steps is open. Did I leave it open? I do not get it off. I should see stars in the opening, but I see only fire, more and more of orange and purple tongues crawling up the masts and the ropes. I am coughing. I am trying to catch some air. My tears dry out the moment they burst forth.

The ship is burning. That's all I need to realize. Everything is in the flames. I have to get out, to reach the edge of the deck and jump into the water, that's the only way I can save myself yet. I am barefoot and the fire absorbs the residue of oil spilled on the stairs, takes hold on the wood and approaches my bare feet. I do not have a sword or axe with me to break the side of the ship from here and go to freedom - and I do not have enough strength to do it. I feel sick. All I smell is smoke and my face is almost as hot as the glowing boards where lead my only escape route. I'm running up, without thinking. There is no pain, but it will come later, I burned in the forge many times, I know how it goes. I'm running.

And then I stand still. A fire rages about me. On all sides.

What has happened? I can not hear the sounds of the battle. I do not hear shouting, angry voices, a clash of weapons, just the thundering of flames. It's not just this ship. The whole Drengist is covered with fire. The sky is ocher. I can see nothing else.

I climb blindly and can not catch my breath. I still do not feel pain, but my feet reject obedience. I make myself to take a few more steps, though I do not know whether I'm approaching the side of the ship, the railing, or whether I crawl half-dazed in circles. I am screaming for help, but I do not hear my own voice.

I stumble. I put my hands in front of me. The red darkness is around me, over me, in me.

Somewhere beside, I do not know how far, something explodes. A firework of sparks flies around my face, the flame spills out into the invisible sky that has changed into fire. A wave of hot air hits me. I'm falling. Only now I begin to feel pain: air in my lungs turns into molten lead. The smoldering wood of the deck crushes under my body, somewhere I fall, and then I do not know anything.

xxx

I opened my eyes and closed them quickly again when I was surprised by a sharp light. To be certain, I have even shoved my forearms over my face. I had to fall asleep without realizing my intention of returning to the ship, for now I felt soft grass beneath my back. And I definitely had the strangest dream in my life. Is it time to get up and somebody came to wake me up with a lamp? Did I miss my opportunity?

There was utter silence around me. Not a voice... Even though... Now somewhere, a bird came out. The other answered. In the air I smelled the scent of the trees. Well known smell.
Something was wrong.

Again, this time more ready, I opened my eyelids. I pulled my arm from my forehead.

Trees were bent over me at all directions: pines, mallorns. This was by no means Losgar with its ragged rocks and a stony beach around the Bay of Drengist. And the light that pierced my eyes through the tangled eyelashes had nothing to do with the Fëanáro´s crystals, much less the ordinary lantern. I would have guessed that it was Laurelin at the top of the daylight, but it came from the wrong angle and the sky between the golden leaves and the dark green pine needles had a blue color of the blossoming cornflowers.

Something was terribly, incomprehensibly wrong.

I leaned over my elbows and struggled to sit up. The body was strangely uncooperative, my arms very weak and trembling.

"Slowly," someone who I did not notice until that moment warned me behind my back. "Your fëa has to get used to its new home. It may take some time."

The fragments of my dream came back: the wooden deck of the ship. My desire to return home, to leave my father and his foolish and badly prepared plan. Smoke filling my lungs, orange flames joining in a huge, devastating fire ...

These were Irmo's gardens. Lórien. Some of those parts I have never visited to this moment.

"I died," I said aloud what was burning on my tongue like the fire that as I thought I was dreaming about. In disbelief. Because the dream was no dream. It was softened, fuzzy, as if I was looking at it through a frosted glass, rid of the horror of that moment and the pain of the irretrievably damaged body, but it was still a shred of reality. A piece of my own life that ended in that moment.

I raised my fingers in front of eyes. White nails, pink skin. No traces of burns, no traces of calluses left by work equipment and a sword. No traces of blood. I had my palms like a toddler, not an adult man.

The speaking person has moved to my other side with easy steps.

"You died," she looked at me with deep gray eyes. "You went through Námo's halls and came back to life."

A tall, pale woman with dark hair. Or more precisely: a Maia in the form of a black-haired elf lady in a flowing white dress.

"Mistress..." I managed. "Nothing... I do not remember anything at all." I studied each and every one of the most hidden places of my mind, and did not find any memory of the Halls. It was... strange. Scary. Elves do not forget. I could recall in the slightest detail the events of my early childhood, every day of my life, probably the voices of my older brothers from the times when I and my twin were still resting in our mother's womb... Everything clear and distinct except the last few hours in the Bay of Drengist. Those were blurred and smoky in front of my inner vision, rid of the edges. And then nothing, a black hole in my memory.

"It is not natural for the Firstborn Children to remain without a body," she said, "outside Arda and outside of Time. Perhaps you will at least recall something later, gradually. But rather not. Believe it is for the better. You were healed, and you were allowed to come back from the Hall, that shadow is behind you."

I sat in the grass and stared at my hands. The edge of the guilt was not as strong as before, but it was still there.

"Not quite," I whispered. "I swore, I called the everlasting darkness on my head. And I broke the Oath. "

"You did not break it," she interrupted, shook her head. "Maybe you planned it, but it was not enough. Count it as fulfilled. Your grandfather's death has been avenged and the silmarils returned, those who had the right to hold them have surrendered them."
It did not make any sense. My father would never give up his precious Jewels. Sometimes it seemed to me that he cared more for them than for all of us and our mother together. I did not ask. There was another thing, worse.

"I killed," I said even more quietly. No, the pain and horror of Alqualondë was no longer as sharp as before, but it was still there.

The Maia leaned over to me, took my hands into hers.

"Strictly speaking, you did not kill. None of those who have come in your way and under your sword died of their wounds."

I lifted my head.

"It does not change anything. I have done something terrible."

"You were sorry, you received repentance and healing," she replied. "You were forgiven."

"I do not remember it!" I wanted to scream. What meaning does penance have I not even know about?

"Great," she said, as if reading my thoughts. She probably did. "There are many who can never regret because they do not admit their mistake. Valar have agreed that you can come back to life, they gave you their exaltation and blessings. You yourself agreed to return to the body. If all this is not enough for you, go, seek forgiveness by those you have hurt. That is the last step in your healing, Telufinwë Ambarussa, Son of Fëanáro. "

"My lady…"

"I'm Melian," she told me. "Irmo, my lord, will not take you out of his Gardens until you feel ready, but... Consider one thing. Your mother stayed alone and without hope. That's why you agreed to come back to life." In her eyes, I saw a deep sorrow. Lakes of sadness that can never fully dry up.

"Lady Melian, you said the Enemy was defeated and the Great Jewels returned..."

"Yes, they came back from the Shadow... But I did not talk about your brothers and father."

Within a second I understood that I should not ask because I do not want to hear the answer. Still, I asked and hung on her eyes like my last hope:

"Did they stay in Middle-Earth?" I did not believe I was guessing right.

Melian sighed.

"Just one of them."

I was silent. I buried my fingers in the grass, feeling the damp clay beneath it. Everything so full of life. Everything so green, happy in its carelessness.

Not one day of my life - not even one! - I did spend alone, without my brothers. At least Ambarussa has always been with me, every hour from our begetting to the moment... When we quarreled so wildly at Losgar and I left without a goodbye. In my heart I felt numb and suddenly I was cold.

Before all, in my previous life, I would probably cry and maybe it would help. Maybe I was a grown up at that time, but years are not all what matters. It's hard to really become a man if you have five older brothers and countless cousins, and all of them have been used to guarding and protecting you for years. Now there was none of them, and my tears were probably spent in the heat of the burning swan ships.

"Did I know that when I agreed to leave the Mandos Halls?" I whispered.

"You knew." She touched my hand once more. "And you also knew that what is most right, may not be the easiest way at the same time."

"What else should I know?"

"That Fëanáro´s sons ... are not very popular in Aman. Many will not welcome you."

I nodded. I would not expect anything else.

"Arafinwë is the king of Noldor," she continued. "From your cousins only Findaráto and Arakáno live in Tirion. And Itarillë with her husband on Tol Eressëa." So all the other somehow passed to Beleriand. How was that possible, without the destroyed ships? Better not to think.

"And my mother?" I asked. "She still lives in our old house?"

The Maia shook her head.

"She has a small house and workshop near her father's estate, in the woods behind Tirion. It is…"

"I know where it is."

So, Nerdanel, the one who always said what a city girl she is and who refused to move to Formenos, where she would feel lonely and uprooted, lives in a forced exile. The shadows of our actions did not fall on us alone.

"I can send her a message," Melian offered. "Some prefer it." And to my uncomprehending gaze: "To be picked up here, in the Gardens of Irmo, by someone whom they knew and cared for from their first life. Sometimes it can be hard to go back. "

Of course. I certainly did not think I was the first one to come back to life from Mandos. Teleri, killed on the beaches and quays of Alqualondë. Many of our own people, drawn when the ships dived in the storm caused by Ossë's anger. And what happened in Beleriand, from where I saw barely more than the rocky strip of coast?

How much time has passed?

"More than six hundred years before Morgoth was defeated," the Maia said. "And almost all of the Second age." She smiled apologetically. "Sorry. You ask as loud as if you were talking."

I blushed. I behave like a child who has never heard of ósanwë. I'll have to pay more attention. To be more in control.

"It will all come," she added. She probably read me as open book pages. "Do not be surprised when you find that you can not do a lot of things you think you have known from long ago. I'm not talking just about the avanírë. Very many skills require a close cooperation of fëa and hroa, but while your fëa remembers how to do it, this body has never done the same thing before. You must learn it again. Faster than the first time but still. Findaráto had told me how difficult it was to make his fingers understand the strings at first. It took him weeks before he was able again to master the tools for sculpting…"

I stared at her. Not because of what she explained to me about the body and soul cooperation. I already understood this while she spoke: it was difficult to coordinate the eye and the fingers for such a simple task as to tear a few bristles of grass and make a green bracelet. I have been wrong.

"Lady Melian, when you said that Findaráto and Arakáno live in Tirion ..."

"I did not mean they had come back from Beleriand by a ship," she nodded.

I felt my heart beating in my throat. It seemed to me that I had never been more alive - or did not realize that simple fact.

"Who has..." I started darkly and stopped abruptly.

"Rather ask who has not."

Mighty Valar, what were we thinking? I was hoping she didn´t meant it literally, and I did not ask her who had not die. I'll find out in time. Now it was too much for me. She seemed to understand.

"Soon it will be evening," she said. "I'll show you where you can sleep. Than I can send for your mother..."

"No," I stopped her. She looked up in surprise. "Do not send for her, lady, please. That's not right. I left her and I should be the one who will come back and ask for forgiveness. Just as I wanted when..."

When I was not able to return.

"All right," she said after a short silence. "I will not make the decision for you. You can stay here or leave whenever you want, but I still recommend that you stay at least until tomorrow. It will be better to travel in light of the day, and today you will probably not be able to go far. "

She was right about that. It took me a lot of effort to scramble to my feet and to pass a few hundred uncertain steps before I got out of the woods, across the bridge over the stream and into the light where the gazebo to which Melian had brought me stood. She seemed ready to take my elbow and support my weight – but to use such a help, I should not be a son of Fëanáro. I'd rather fall without help than show my weakness.

Suddenly I remembered something of my long-lost childhood: my brother Ambarussa, constantly hanging on one's hands, running around the kitchen, his short legs stumbling, but he stays on them because his leader - usually our mother or Maitimo, whom we used as our persistent and above all the patient nurse - will not let him hit the ground. While I, always the most stubborn of us two, stick to whatever I can see - the desk I have so high over my head that I barely reach, the chairs, the cabinet - and I'm trying to walk by myself even though I'm all battered and bruised from constant falls. In the end, I learned to walk on my own without accidents long before my brother.

My lips turned to smile with that memory. For the second time in my life, it seems to me, I am a stubborn toddler. Melian, fortunately, was right in one thing: my fëa knows how to do it all, and my new body learns quickly from it. After some time I was not tripping anymore and stopped feeling like I need a break every few steps, leaning back on the carved railing of the footbridge or on the trunks of trees growing around the trail.

The cottage stood on the edge of the forest and a grassy area opening toward the east. It had the impression of a garden structure - a minimum of solid walls, round columns and a dome roof, all light as prepared for flying. A long shadows of the trees were crawling over the meadow. As I looked back, I finally found out what was casting them: a big shining spheres, slowly falling down the heavens. It was as if it wanted to touch the peaks of the distant pines and firs, and looking into it was like looking at the light of waxing Laurelin. It could have me assaulted that Valar would do something and would not let our world to stay in darkness.

"Arien in her fiery boat, with the last fruit of the Golden Tree," Melian nodded. "It has many names, and the most common is Anar. Isil, a descendant of Telperion, is already in the sky on the other side. "

"So, it´s something like a little Mingling of Lights," I said deliberately in jest, but it did not seem very funny to me. The sight of the moonboat has caused me to be depressed against my will. I have had the opportunity to return to life without, hopefully, suffering the weight of the Oath and my own mistakes, but instead of rejoicing, I was slowly being impatient. Nothing will be like it was once. Not even the light we considered to be pure, inviolable and eternal.

Isil was pale in Anar's glow. And bruised. Half of an apple. That thought did not do me well. Now, as it seems, I am a half of some split up apple an well. May I at least remember if I saw my brothers in the Halls. Whether Ambarussa has forgiven me my strenuous words and what he could consider to be a curse and betrayal. If it's not him who still lives. I was afraid to ask and the Maia did not seem to want to continue our conversation. She found the stone bench next to the stairs to the gazebo, sat up with her back straight and her arms crossed on her chest, suddenly distant and inaccessible.

"Inside you will find everything you may need. Clothes, something to eat," she said without looking at me. She looked at the horizon which was now dark in the east, as if waiting for something. Far away, behind several terrain waves, orchards and gardens, in the last rays of the setting sun the roofs of Valmar shone. It was impossible to see Tirion from here.

"Would you like to dine with me, my lady?" I asked.

Melian shook her head and a long, dark curl slid over her chest.

"I will stay here. Rest well."

So I went into the house alone. It was an unexpectedly unpleasant feeling. Inside, there was a shadow, and a lone Noldorin crystal, somewhat different from those my father had made, was hanging on the silver chain in the center of the room. Its glow seemed to be a little purple, while the ones we had at home were usually clear or blue. Without interest, I looked at the supplies, carefully wrapped in canvas and fresh leaves. I did not feel hungry, but I realized I should eat something; I did not know how much I did not remember. Has this body ever eaten? And if so, how long ago it was? It was weird to think about myself like this.

I caught my reflection in the smooth surface of a shiny tin plate: the stranger I saw looked just like me, he had the same shape of face and color of eyes, the same reddish hair. It was me, and it was not. It could be my brother.

And this thought finally defeated me.

I collapsed on the bed on the far side of the gazebo, not unlike the cot in the under-deck of swan boats, and I sobbed spasmodically. Now, when I was alone, I no longer had to look at the dignity of Fëanáro's family or my own. I could not suddenly imagine my existence in a world without Ambarussa. As long as I was still sitting with Melian under the trees, it was easy to dangle it, not to admit it. After all, I knew I'd be alone in Aman, without him, even when I was planning to steal the ship and go back over the sea to my mother. And I knew I would be alone, without him, when I agreed to receive a new body, at least according to the Maia´s words. But now this thought seemed terrible and unbearable.

Undoubtedly, as a result of the fact that my fëa was still not used to it´s new home, I was soon exhausted. I fell asleep, and in my sleep, my brother came to me when I did not expect him.

He looked different than before: his hair hung in tight braids, drawn from his forehead, his eyes and his face harder than he had ever before, a healed scar on his chin and throat. Dressed in armor and a cloak over one shoulder. He hugged me without words and held me for a long time. We did not say anything, but I was sure he forgave me. That he loves me more than anyone else.

I woke up with the image that Ambarussa would not want me to worry about him.
Outside ruled the darkness, gazing inside the gazebo through the large windows. I was sure that I have slept for several hours, because my body was well rested and did not want to sleep anymore. The sharpest sorrow left me.

I picked up silently, in the light of the crystal, found a pack of clothes and changed from a simple tunic given to me when I returned to life. Should I go? In the long years since the Darkening of Valinor, which had disappeared completely from my memory, my brothers and father had each other, and those who rest inside the the Mandos Halls receive healing. Only our mother was alone in a house at her father's estate. All alone... I wondered if she wasn´t now used to her loneliness. Whether she still needs me. Wants me. You agreed for your mother, Melian told me yesterday, and looked at me with the eyes of a woman I would have believed was also an abandoned mother. There was a sorrow and desire in them.

So I'm going to Nerdanel. If she does not want me back in her life - well, it is my fault. I acted like a fool than, and I do not want to continue.

The Maia sat on the bench as I left her yesterday, eyes fixed in the sky.

"Can not sleep?" She asked as I walked down of the steps, without looking back at me. "It's too soon to be on the road." She moved aside and showed me beside her. Carefully I sit down on the edge to keep the distance between us. "It's barely getting lighter."

Isil crossed the night sky to the other side. In the east, the stars faded, and a very bright one stood low above the western horizon.

"You see?" Melian showed it to me with a seemingly carefree gesture. "It also has o lot of different names. Evening star. Morning star. Vingilot. In the Middle-Earth they called it Gil-Estel. Hope."

"Is that ... Is that a silmaril?"

"One in the heavens, one lost in the depths of the earth, one in the sea," Melian said. "So they came back. How do you want to hold a star in your hands? "

I do not want to, I was going to say, and it was a lie. So I was silent as the sky lightened, and the Star of Hope plunged down and down on its arched track. It almost seemed to be approaching enough to stretch my fingers and touch it.

Still, it rose me to my feet when something descended in a giant, elegant arc from heaven to the meadow just outside the gazebo.

It was a white-wood ship of a different shape than those we had stolen in Alqualondë. Vibrantly silver. Unearthly.

The figure shrouded in the light of the silmaril jumped in the grass, took a few steps between the boat moored in the meadow and our bench and turned into a man with a Great Jewel on his chest.

Strange; for a moment I really believed him to be my father. I could not imagine the silmaril might be carried by anybody else.

"Hail, Eärendil," Melian stood beside me.

The starship´s captain came to us, bowed to the Maia, and looked at me quietly with a rather piercing eyes. He was tall, taller than me, and blonde, dark-skinned and blue-eyed.

"Mistress," he said, watching me coldly again. "So is it time?"

I turned my eyes from his face to Melian´s. Was she waiting for him tonight? And about what time did he spoke?

"That's Telufinwë Ambarussa Umbarto. You will know his other name: Amrod."

He may have known it, I did not. Is it not strange to have a new name, a name in a foreign language that you do not even know about? I once again felt the sailor piercing me with his gaze. Then, with a firm motion, he lifted his hands to his neck and unfastened a necklace in which the silmaril was attached. Its light was now between us, illuminating our three faces from beneath. And I felt like it was calling for me.

…Be he foe or friend, be he foul or clean, brood of Morgoth or bright Vala, Elda or Maia or Aftercomer, neither law, nor love, nor league of swords…

I reached out my hand before I realized I was doing it. What we swore ... What we have sworn!

And Eärendil put the necklace in my hand.

The Great Jewel was glowing from it and it felt brighter than when my father was wearing it at his brow. I looked into it, and it dragged me and absorbed me. I have seen the contours of Two Trees, as I have remembered them from childhood and youth. The faces of my brothers, one by one, as they lean over it, and the Jewel casts sharp shadows into them. Father with three bright lights on his forehead. Mother ...

"Is the work of your hands truly more valuable to you than the lives of our sons?"

At that time I decided not to hear the pain in her voice. It was now clearer than anything else in the world. Ammë, Mother ... What would you see if you, like me, were here to look at the silmaril now?

Images shone in the light. Father laying on the burned earth in blood-covered armor as he changes in dust and ashes before my very eyes. Maitimo, unrecognizable, exhausted and scarred, with his right arm in bandages. Makalaurë, huddled in and alone on the shore of the sea, his blackened and cracked palms burned. Tyelkormo, helplessly on his back with Huan's paws on his chest and the wildly pricked dog teeth right in front of his nose. Carnistir, with his arms bent over his body and eight arrows stabbed in the torso from his throat to the lower abdomen. Kurvo, with empty eyes staring after his leaving son. Ambarussa ... No. I do not want to see more.

I strained my eyes, and suddenly the silmaril became what it was. Once more, it was only a thing, though sacred and exceptional, unique as its creator. But I have loved Fëanáro as my father, not the creator of miracles. For me, he was important, my mother and my brothers were important, not the Jewels we were all sacrificed for.

And I've never said that I can not voluntarily give what is mine.

I stroked the necklace with my trembling thumbs.

"A nice piece of art," I said with exertion. "It does not look Noldorin."

"It is dwarvish," Eärendil said. His face was as carved from marble, and he somehow reminded me of Turukáno. I could not imagine anything more odd: Cousin Turukáno with his black hair, pale skin and gray eyes, more Noldorin than I all the time, and this stranger, a complete opposite and yet so similar...

Melian stood still beside him, and just like I she stared at the necklace. Unlike Eärendil, she seemed to be crying at every moment.

Dwarvish. I probably did not see it a lot of things because I returned to the ship just after we had landed. But for the worse or the better, once I decided.

"As a star I liked it more," the last time I rolled my fingers along the edges of the silmaril and put it firmly back into Eärendil's hands. "The hope must not be taken from anybody." It was... hard. But I had seen the grief in the eyes of my mother and I felt the shadows of my brothers surrounding me. "Let it shine for all. I do not know much about ships, and I do not want to do such a job. "

As soon as my hands left the Great Jewel, I almost stumbled. My legs were like from wax, and I really needed to sit down. I contained myself. In fact, it was actually a relief. The weight that I did not even know that had been lying on my shoulders disappeared.

The Maia and the star sailor were staring at me in a way I did not like very much. Eärendil hid the necklace with the silmaril in the folds of his clothes. The glow disappeared and I felt a slight stab at my heart. Disappointment? Nobody said that this would be easy.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" I glanced from one to the other. The light of the day began to grow and reflected in their grim faces. No, I did not like their expressions at all. "Was that some test?"

"Not at all," Melian replied, while the blond man at the same time said: "Yes. Something like that."

I took a step back and dropped to the bench. I put my fingers in the marble. Not at all and yes, it was. Wasn´t something like this the main reason why our father decided that the Valar were deceiving us? No wonder.

The Maia looked sternly at the sailor.

"It was not a test," she said strictly. "It was just a way to avoid... unpleasantness. You are healed, you have not committed such crimes that could not be forgiven... They did not want to hold you - Mandos is not a prison unless we find it really necessary. But nobody knew what your Oath would do if you find out that one of the silmarils is still available. Moreover, this one - the only one which Fëanáro´s sons in the Middle-Earth never got. Unfortunately, everyone has in the memory what it had done in the past. "

"Everyone except me," I muttered.

"Námo the Judge would never allow another murdering maniac to run free in Valinor, swindled by his oath to insanity," Eärendil added a little more impatiently. Indeed, Turukáno through and through - he definitely had his tact.

"Are you talking about my father?"

"About your father. About your brothers. Thank you very much."

"Eärendil Ardamírë, I think that´s enough," Melian´s look hardened.

"Exactly my words," he replied. "It's done for me. I think we've already told everything, Amrod Fëanorion - or how you're going to call yourself now. Lady," he bowed before the Maia.

"Sir," she motioned her head. "Take my greetings to your lady wife."

"I'll pass them."

I did not say anything, and turned away from the ship rising above the trees.

"So you were trying to decide if you would or would not put me in the cell for the next millenium, just to be sure," I said as Vingilot vanished from the horizon. "Like some... Melkor."

"It is not like that."

"Is is not?"

"I told you you were free. You can go wherever you want, it still holds true, and it would hold true in any case. If you did not give up the Jewel, no one would take it from you."

I was struggling to continue the conversation. I fought with distrust. Lies? I was more careful than the last evening to control my thoughts and feelings and keeping them from her.

"Who was he?" I asked, nodding toward the sky.

"You saw. The Morning and Evening Star. Itarillë's son. "

Which explained much. At least his previously incomprehensible mental affinity with Turukáno. But Itarillë whom I knew was an adorable child who barely learned to read and write. It was hard to imagine her as an adult woman and a mother of such atrocious son.

"Actually, he's really nice," Melian said. I was not sure if she'd seen through my weak avanírë, or just followed the flow of my thoughts without it.

"I have seen."

"Come on. Well, you wanted it yourself." Suddenly, there was something dark in Melian's face. Anger. Perhaps she felt it all the time. "His wife is Elwing, Sindarin Princess and the great-granddaughter of Elu Thingol of Doriath, who was an older brother to Olwë of Alqualondë. It was his daughter with her groom who brought the silmaril from Dark Enemies fortress, where the famous Noldor could not get through for nearly five hundred years of Sun. And the Jewel in the Elven Kingdom was far more accessible than in Angband's walls." Her lips curved in a convulsive grin. "Your brothers, to fulfill their Oath, have plundered the land of Sindar. Elwing was less than three years old at that time. They killed her father, her mother. Their servants dragged her little twin-brothers, only six years old, into the woods in the middle of the winter to freeze or be ripped by wolves. And when they did not get the silmaril, they did the same again at a time when Elwing herself had two little sons. They overcame her, slaughtered her people without mercy. She escaped by jumping into the sea, leaving her own children alone in a burning town, and half a century she believed that they had ended somewhere murdered. Three of your brothers were killed at the massacre in Doriath. The one you cared most about at the harbor in Sirion's mouth. During two Kinslayings, worse than the first one. Much worse. And now you can say again what unpleasant person Eärendil is."

She told it to wound me with her words as much as possible. And it worked.

Maitimo, holding me around my shoulders whispering that he will never, ever let the bloodshed in Alqualondë to repeat... And then in the end... This.

I probably deserved what I got from Melian. Was I really so arrogant when I decided to ignore why Eärendil does not like me? After all, she warned me yesterday.

At that moment, however, I made all my efforts to control my face and make my hands stop shaking. To suppress the urgent need to bury my fingers in my hair, cover my eyes with my forearms and scream.

I scrambled to my feet, leaning on the pillar beside the bench.

"With your permission, lady... I'll go. If I'm really free and can leave. "

Melian stood on the other side of the seat, trembling. She waved her hand toward the doorway.

"Take your food and blankets for the trip."

So I went in as a mechanical toy, and without looking, I collected some thing I have seen first. Then I sat down on the bed and stared at the wall for a long while, unable to get up and start doing something.

When I finally went out, the Maia sat on the bench and wept with her face hidden in exactly the same way as I would have were I not Fëanáro's son and Finwë's grandson.

It seemed wrong to leave without greeting. She indeed have done something for me. Even that hard spit in my face was for the better. At least I know now what to expect. I'm not in the dark. Murdering maniacs... My father. My brothers... All right.

"Namárië, heri."

She lifted her head, half rose. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

"Telufinwë Ambarussa..." she called to me before I could miss a dozen steps.

I turned, uncertain what to do. Perhaps she has changed her mind and will tell me that my freedom within Valinor is limited and I can not count on forgiveness. If so, I was ready to take the punishment. I was prepared for it from the beginning.

"That was wrong," she said. "You should not have heard it like that."

"Like that or otherwise. It's still true, is it not? "

"But no brother should hear about it in that way. That was unnecessary cruel from me. Forgive me if you can. "

The sadness in her eyes ... She was a Maia, but her mourning seemed human to me. Familiar.

"Have you lost someone, lady?"

"My husband. My daughter. My grandson." She took a breath. "It's possible that forever. And at least ... at least in part it was my fault. It was my daughter, my Lúthien who brought the Great Jewel from Angband."

Two strokes of heart later, Melian, one of the Powers who was before Arda, was weeping on my shoulder. And I on hers.

"Go," she urged me finally when the tears run dry. "Go in peace. No mother... should stay without her children. And yours have waited too long. "

xxx

Under normal circumstances, a walking trip from the Irmo´s Gardens to Tirion takes ten, at most twelve days. I do what I can, but I am traveling for more than three weeks. This body is simply not used to... to anything. I have time to learn. To think. And get scared.

But all things end sometimes. Somewhere. I know Mahtan's house from my childhood and youth. We always liked our mother´s eccentric father and visited often as kids. All seven of us. Nine, counting my parents. Or only Ambarussa and I, when the older brothers and parents were too busy with their businesses. Our grandfather had everything that we missed in our townhouse: a forge open to anyone who went around. Animals, a lot of them: horses, sheep, cattle, lots of dogs and cats. Pigeons on the roof. Forest and stream and wilderness. I find it all also now.

Besides, there is a little cottage between the pines, just under the rock we liked to climb as boys.

Here too, the doors and windows of the workshop are wide open. I stand silently on the porch and look inside.

She is alone. Dressed in trousers and a work apron, her hair loosely tied on her neck, her the hands full of tools.

I watch.

It´s like looking into the mirror of the past. She is the same as once: a smooth profile. Cheeks dotted with fine freckles. The wild reddish mane I inherited from her.

She is quite different as well. Concentrated: not a wife, not a mother. Probably not a daughter. Nerdanel the Sculptress, Nolde, who devoted her life to stone and wood. The layer of fine marble dust covers her hair and face so it looks like silver.

I think that maybe it's too late. For everything. She put all her passion in her work. Like our father, at the end. One can never fully return, I can understand it now. I suppose I could not have return fully even if my ship has not burned and disappeared in the waves of Drengist. With me.

I watch.

What kind of statue comes from under her hands from a piece of white stone? I can see a wooden model that stands on the table aside. It´s familiar. Two halves of one apple.

I look at it and my tears flow.

Nerdanel may feel a look on her face. Or my confused thoughts, because I still can not really cover up. She put her tool on a desk. She lifts her eyes to the shadow in the door.

"Mother. Mom." I do not even know if I'm moving my lips.

And the sculptress is gone. Mother's eyes widen as if she is afraid to believe. She pulls her hand in front of her, like a blind man.

I stumble in, avoiding all of her work disorder just by a pure luck. I grab her hands, press them to my lips, to my face. I fall to my knees by her feet.

"Telvo ... Ambarussa ..."

"Mom..."

Her fingers bury in my hair, gently sliding along the hairline to my cheeks.

"You are at home…"

I try to hold on her, and she comes down to me on the floor, embraces me like a child. I'll always be for her.

"Ambarussa ..."

"Forgive me, mother. Forgive me."

"Forgive you? You come back to me ... It´s all that matters. "

And so we both cry, clinging to each other. I'm no longer tempted by tears. Eventually my mother looks up, her hand still on my wet face. She looks around.

"Are you ... are you alone?" In disbelief.

We should have been two even in her statue. Two who were one.

"Alone ..." I nod.

"So there is no hope..." she whispers, her lips trembling.

"It is," I am surprising myself as well. "There is always hope. I held its star in my hands."

We're getting up. And then we stand for a long time in front of the door to the workshop, in the green grass, and we look upward until the last silmaril rises on the darkening sky above the trees.