Work Text:
Sleep, little one, go to sleep,
So peaceful the birds and the sheep
“Mamaí,” mumbles the blanketed bundle tucked against Nerdanel’s side, and she feels it: the stabbing. Here is a blade, honed by love and tenderness, that is far more capable of laying her open than any sharp word or critical glance. She bears the slights of imprudence against her marriage—what else can you expect, from a country girl—and she has never had much beauty. Yet here she is, with a home and a family, and her only hurts come from loving them too much.
These are sweet hurts.
She leans down, now, to press a kiss against the pink shell of Maitimo’s ear. It is hard to lean, stretched and swollen as she is—November is just around the corner and with that month will come her second one, boy or girl as may be.
(Feanor swears girl; Nerdanel is quietly certain of another son.)
Yet for a few weeks more, it is just her and Maitimo, and Feanor, when he returns home from his jaunts to the city. Nerdanel knows how much he misses his father; or at least, as with many of her husband’s sentiments, she observes the range of feeling from the nearness of her love for him. Nerdanel misses Mahtan, but she writes him letters and sketches her works for him, works which he praises in reply.
She is, therefore, content.
Feanor is not content to be parted from Finwe, though neither would he be content to remain with him, stung by the presence of a mother and brothers he will not claim as his own.
The clock ticks on. Maitimo yawns. So many of his teeth have come in, and they are as white as the pearls on Nerdanel’s wedding necklace, though much smaller.
“Shall we take you to bed, my little one?” she asks, setting aside her book.
He shakes his head. “Athair,” he says. “I want Athair.”
Nerdanel lets him sit up until Feanor returns, smelling of horse and sweat and night air. She kisses her husband anyway, and Maitimo holds out his arms, wriggling with joy when he is lifted to his father’s hip, and the three (the four) of them sleep together in one bed, warm despite the first chills of autumn.
Quiet are meadow and trees,
Even the buzz of the bees.
“He’s singing, mamaí!”
Years later, Nerdanel will think that she should have known. Before Macalaure even forms words, he hums. And when his baby babble gives way to names and colors, yes’s and no’s, he strings them together in his sweet prattling voice.
Maitimo claps his hands with delight. Macalaure sings.
Nerdanel feels like dancing.
The silvery moonbeams so bright,
down through the window give light.
She hasn’t cried since Christmas. Anger is a dangerous flame, and she cannot waste her warmth. She has buried anger somewhere below her fear, and buried fear beneath her duties, and as much as she wants to scream and pound her fists against the cold doors of her husband’s forge—
She cannot.
Nerdanel cries in the grey of a February morning. She thinks it safe, before dawn. But Macalaure, with his owl-love of darkness and the dreams that soft shadows bring, finds her weeping into her hands.
He weeps, too.
These months have honed her sons along with her, from brave Maitimo down to her clinging babes.
“I am so sorry,” she says, “I did not mean to frighten you.”
“I don’t want you to be frightened,” Macalaure whispers.
(He is the most like her.)
O ’er you the moonbeams will creep,
sleep, little one, go to sleep.
Maitimo’s grin is crooked, and his shoulders slump, when he stops at the foot of the stairs, waiting for Nerdanel to descend them.
“Go to bed, my love,” Nerdanel says, halting two steps above him so that she can look him in the eyes. “We leave early tomorrow.” That she does not want to leave—that she would remain in Formenos forever, if given the choice—has become something she cannot say.
“Huan comes with us,” he tells her, very quietly. “Athair agreed.”
Proud, she reaches to cradle his cheek in her hand. “Celegorm will thank you forever,” she says, “And so will I.”
He shuts his eyes, and she half-thinks him asleep as he stands. Such is the effect of reasoning with Feanor; Nerdanel knows that well.
“Goodnight, mamaí,” he whispers. “The whole world is new tomorrow.”
Nerdanel feels it: the stabbing.
She leans, and presses a kiss to the shell of his ear.