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His mother greets him at the door, standing high in her silk slippers to press a kiss to his brow.
Fingolfin stoops to allow it.
“Your father is in his study,” she says, smiling the same kind smile that has comforted her gloomy eldest since childhood. “Will you take tea?”
“I...”
“You shall.” And she captures his hand as if he is a little boy, as if he does not know the halls of Finwe’s home.
His father is leaning over his desk, poring over a collection of notes. Most look to be in his eldest’s hand. Fingolfin presses his lips into a thin line.
“My boy!” Finwe exclaims, and the next moment, the notes are thrust aside and his father has come round the edge of the desk to grip both his shoulders in an eager embrace. Finwe’s affection is constant, whether affection is in fashion or not. “What troubles you?”
“I did not say—”
“I am a father,” Finwe says. It is ever a point of pride. “I know.”
Fingolfin takes both the point and the offered seat.
“It is Fingon,” he admits at last. “I am at my wit’s end.”
His father removes the spectacles from the end of his nose, sets them down, and listens with rapt attention.
“He is so—headstrong. Every command becomes an argument. If I attempt to confide in him about the nature of my work, he questions my ethics. If I bid him to mind his siblings, he protests that he needs to study. He is thirteen! A year ago he was not like this.”
“Like what?”
Fingolfin grinds his molars. “Spoiled.”
“That old adage, come true?” His father steeples his hands together and rests his chin upon them. “Spare the rod—”
“I will not whip my own child,” Fingolfin says, indignant. “I am not Feanor.”
His father smiles with half his mouth. “Feanor does not whip his sons either.”
“Then,” parries Fingolfin—and he will not admit to being unreasonable—“that is only because they are already afraid of him.”
His father does not argue; his father rarely argues with his sons. Only the eldest receives that privilege, which most would consider no privilege at all—except that Fingolfin has seen the heat of their anger, clashing like a storm, and counts it as only more evidence of their incomparable love.
“Do you want Fingon to be afraid of you?”
He does not.
“He is always a gentle and considerate boy during his visits here,” Finwe says calmly. “No doubt he is merely experiencing the growing pains of an eager mind.”
Like his half-uncle, is not said. Fingolfin rolls the head of his cane between his hands.
“I do not wish every conversation with my eldest to fall into a shouting match.”
“A worthy goal,” Finwe says, and sighs.
“But what am I to do? I am his father. I am not—I will not allow him to keep whatever hours he will, raise his interests above his duties, and defy my authority, all at the tender age of thirteen.”
“Indeed,” his father agrees. “There is plenty of time for that.”
There follows a brief lull; a maid comes in with the tea-service. Fingolfin recognizes his mother’s china, festooned with painted violets. He does not often drink tea, but he does not dislike how his father makes it, with a rind of lemon squeezed into the steaming amber depths.
“Now,” Finwe begins again, raising his cup meditatively. “Will you hear my advice?”
“I came for it.”
“You did. Still, I have learned not to depend on such consistency from sons.” Finwe smiles fondly, which means he is thinking of Feanor, and in a manner unfair to Fingolfin—for when has he ever been inconsistent, but with the preservation of his own pride? “First—a question. What does Fingon want?”
To be free of me. “He wants to study surgery, though I have explained time and again that he is too young.” Fingolfin shakes his head. “At present, most of all, he wants to spend holidays with his cousins. As if three weeks last summer were not enough!”
“Let him.”
“What?”
“Let him,” his father echoes, mild as ever. “Send him to Formenos for Christmas.”
Christmas? Without his family all together? Fingolfin feels a pinch in his throat, most unbecoming of a grown man, comfortably on the wrong side of thirty. “Do you really think—”
“Giving Fingon what he wants will make him feel respected. And he wants respect—or thinks he does. Yet he will also miss you, at such a festive time. And this shall remind him that, even more than your respect, he wants your love.”
“Do not the two go together?” Fingolfin asks, hardly above a whisper.
His father finishes his tea. “Of course,” he answers at last. “But time will teach him that soon enough, my son. Lend him your patience, first.”
“I am not known for my patience.”
“I disagree.” Finwe reaches out to pat his hand. Fingolfin feels the familiar tap of his father’s rings. “And I am your father. I know.”