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It was quite sudden, and there was--there was no pain. (When has your voice sounded so high and frail? When has your voice broken?)
You must go to him.
He is gone, Feanor. He died and I was not there to--
(He kisses your brow.) Go. I will stay with the boys. You will not want them underfoot for this.
(You do not ask, because you never ask, you are never
quick enough
even when you fight--and so you do not ask, why will you not come with me?)
"She died when I was quite young," Nerdanel says. "Three years old, to be exact. I remember a smile. Warmth. Little else."
The beautiful boy--Feanor--looks at her as if she has broken his heart. "You speak of it so calmly."
Nerdanel is a little stung. "I feel her absence," she returns. "But I--my father gave me every affection and support I could have asked for."
Feanor's eyebrows lift, a key sliding into a lock. "Because he did not marry again."
From everything he tells her, she expects to hate his step-mother and half-brothers when at last she meets them.
She doesn't.
Nerdanel would have been content to keep her father's horse-farm all her life. But if she had not spent three miserable years in Boston, trying for mincing grace when she was meant to run free--
--she would never have met Feanor.
"Please," she gasps, between kisses. "I must go home. This is too much."
He steps back, his hands still wreathed in her hair, his lips reddened and his smile triumphant.
"Why," Feanor asks, with the same foresighted purpose by which he shapes iron into strength, "can we not have the same home?"
(Later, she will learn that he has no foresight at all.)
Mahtan has always respected his daughter's judgement. Perhaps this is why he roars only once, about her choice in love, and then subsides.
One for sorrow, two for mirth...
Nerdanel wears a blue gown and a white veil, and carries orange blossoms and white roses both. The priest who marries them is very old, but he is the only one Feanor would have to say the Mass. The only one Irish enough, Nerdanel supposed, conceding with a fond smile.
It is a quiet wedding. Finwe and Indis and Feanor's two brothers are there, and she can see the jealousy in her beloved's mien as he gnaws a little at his lip. No doubt he wants no other eyes on her than his own.
"Take care of her," her father grumbles, red beard bristling, as his hand lingers over his daughter's.
Feanor draws both of her hands away, draws them close. "I already do."
Her mother is warmth and a smile. Her father is a booming voice and hair as bright as her own. Both of them are--
Gone. Are they gone? Has she forgotten, with her letters and her daydreams sufficing for daughterly duties?
"Can we not visit Boston, my love?"
Feanor kisses the palms of her hands, the crooks of her elbows, the hollow of her neck. "Why are you thinking of this now?"
Because I want him to meet our child. Because I left him all alone.
But Feanor would be alone, without her. He would know no other path. He is a man now--he must be, for they are married--and yet still, he looks like a boy by moonlight. Nerdanel lets him lay her arms open, lets his hands settle on her wrists as he presses his lips to the growing curve of her body.
A moment later, he looks up, grinning with fierce joy. Even in the dark she can see the shine of his eyes. "I felt him kick."
Mahtan is patient, for all his thunder. His square script--much like Nerdanel's own, before her letters were refined by Boston schoolmistresses--announces no outrage. No claim of rejection.
"Your red hair is like my father's, Maitimo," she murmurs, twisting his baby curls around her fingers. "His name is rather like yours, too--Mahtan."
"You have a father?" Maitimo asks, blinking innocently, and Nerdanel...
Dear Father,
I do not deserve to ask this, but would you come?
Mahtan was a sailor in his younger days. He rocks wee Maitimo and Macalaure on his knees as if they are ships at sea. Maitimo reaches one clever little hand up and pats his beard, his eyes wide.
"Like mine," he says softly.
"Aye, laddie. Like yours will someday be, unless your father's beardless blood is stronger than mine." (Feanor is in his forge, and thus thankfully not present to overhear.)
Macalaure sings, as he only does when happy, and Mahtan practically goggles in amazement. "He's barely speaking, yet, Nellie! What are you feeding him?"
"Carrots," Nerdanel laughs, and she finds that, beneath the laugh, her heart aches.
She hasn't let it ache, of late.
(Feanor never throws things when they quarrel--only words. He stands with his hands clenched at his sides and Nerdanel wants to break open his fists. Wants to make him feel.
She settles for dashing crockery against the floor instead.)
"Go. I will stay with the boys."
She always thought it was a choice between leaving one of them alone--her father or her husband.
The carriage rattles beneath her, and she is the one left in silence.
"You never loved my father, did you." She loves Finwe; is this not something she can ask?
Feanor, beside her, appears to be asleep. His breathing is almost too even.
"I am so sorry for your recent grief," Indis says, clasping her hand gravely, when next they meet. Finwe embraced her; Nerdanel is not sure she can find it in herself to be grateful (but she must.)
"I have a reminder of him in my eldest," Nerdanel murmurs, and to free her hand, she brushes Maitimo's hair back from his brow.
Dear Father, she prays, if you can hear me--I was wrong. I am all alone again.