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He finds his mother swearing.
Maitimo is used to this—the fragmented household flying like arrowheads to their preferred quarters. Their father has his forge, where Atarinkë watches and works beside him, even since he was no higher than Fëanáro’s elbow.
Their mother has her chamber of faces and hands, forms so lithe and lovely that even the Valar have smiled on them.
(Once, Fëanáro used one of her creations to trick Ñolofinwë into speaking to it, and even Nerdanel laughed, though she forbade his meddling thereafter.)
Maitimo sighs.
Those days—those moments of light, if still-ruthless humor—seem already past.
Nerdanel chisels off another hunk of marble and it falls like a gobbet of flesh, except that it—clinks. She mutters another epithet, and Maitimo supposes that he had better rap his knuckles against the lintel of her door before he enters, lest the chisel fly next at him.
Her face clears when she sees him. They look nothing alike, save for their hair and the golden sun-flecks on their cheeks. Maitimo has his father’s eyes, and his dead grandmother’s bones, and hands not made for sculpting.
“Eldest,” Nerdanel sighs, and she sinks down upon her stool, shaking her magnificent tresses over her shoulders. “Why came you here? To scold?”
“Never, ammë.”
“To reason? Makalaurë has tried that already.”
“And I am no equal to his golden tongue,” Maitimo answers carefully. He glides a reverent finger along the shoulder of her latest creation. It is beautiful and strange, a girl wringing her hands. Her mouth is open—Nerdanel has even wrought the tense curl of her lips such that sound seems sure to spring from them.
“Your father,” she says, and she breathes long and hard before she continues. “Nay. I will not. I swore I would never complain to any of you.”
Maitimo wishes she did not have to. He leans against her table, both hands clasping its polished edge. His father made it for her, just as he made all the tools and trappings of this room.
“I have not Makalaurë’s words of comfort,” he says softly, “But I will listen, if you speak.”
“He asked me to spy for him.” A flash of the chisel, and Maitimo flinches despite himself. There is a faint clatter, and he looks down to see a marble fingertip rolling against his boot. It looks so dreadfully real, for all that it is white as snow. “On your uncle.” Nerdanel bites a lip, and Maitimo feels rather than sees that resemblance, since he has felt the same worry crease his own brow already.
“On Ñolofinwe?”
“Whom else?” Her brown eyes are shaded with sorrow—and yes, that is anger in their depths. “At night he keeps me awake with his mutterings. It is as if he believes that your uncle will defy him openly, claim his heirship, claim…”
The Silmarilli, Maitimo does not say, and his mother does not say it either.
“What did you tell him?”
“I lost my famed patience,” Nerdanel says, with a smile that is not quite a smile.
“You’ve spent it all on your sons.”
She sets aside her tools and stretches out one dusty hand to stroke his cheek. “Not you. We only look like firebrands, Maitimo. We are soft-hearted, are we not?”
Her hand, against his cheek, is shaking.
He captures it in his own, tangles his fingers in hers, forgets the maimed girl, stone-still, who stands behind them. “You should rest,” he says. “And eat. What have you eaten today?”
“Bread.” She frowns. “Or perhaps not. I do not recall.”
“Come with me.”
She hesitates.
“He’s not at home,” Maitimo says. “Come. Please.”
She follows him, and he finds himself surprised.
When the door is shut behind her, her hair glints as brightly as a crown. She smiles in the light, and Maitimo smiles with her, if only for a moment.
“I must leave my anger there,” Nerdanel tells him. “Do you understand? Some things, we leave.”
“I understand,” Maitimo answers, though in his heart of hearts, he doesn’t.