Work Text:
He wants to go hunting with Orome.
He wants to go hunting because it will exasperate Athair at the best of times, and this is not the best of times.
Athair cares little for charity; he considers it officious. Athair cannot be made happy by anything but his own genius, properly admired, and the thrill of catching one whom he deems lesser, in error.
Once Celegorm enjoyed the latter sally, too; nothing better, for instance, than seeing cousin Fingon brought properly to task. But now Athair’s happiness and unhappiness alike have bloated into something vast, unattainable. Mother tries to coddle him, Curufin shadows his steps as if he’s three rather than newly thirteen, and Maedhros...
Celegorm would rather be out shooting a squirrel.
He gets halfway through lacing his boots and wonders if he’s a yellow-bellied coward. It seems a coward’s path to be the eldest left and yet stealing off with a neighbor. It also seems...craven...to avoid Orome merely because Athair might be displeased by the association.
“Shut up,” Curufin snaps at the twins. They’re singing under their breath, something about cherry pies. It’s baking day.
If everything was as it should be, Maedhros and Maglor would still be here.
“Shut up yourself,” Caranthir tells Curufin, and Celegorm knows he can’t tell them to fuck off, so he says,
“All of you sew it up, damn you,”
—and of course at just that moment, Mother comes into the kitchen and gasps at him,
“Celegorm!”
He stares at her—warm in color, soft in touch, and weak.
“I’m going hunting,” he growls.
Athair’s in his forge. There’s no one to box his ears.
Formenos is muted under a heavy blanket of snow. Huan likes it; his legs are grown so long that he can skip through the drifts. His paws are still too large for him, however, so sometimes he falls in a plume of feathery flakes, yelping.
The trees along the drive are burdened almost to breaking. Celegorm turns his back to them, facing the barn. He and Maedhros painted it last summer, and the red is still so bright. Red and white, fire and calm.
I helped, too, with the painting, Maglor would protest, if he were here, but Maglor’s prim whine has no place in Celegorm’s quiet memories.
He whistles to Huan—he’s been teaching whistles as orders, of late. Together, they make towards the barn doors. If this were anywhere else, there might be rats to chase, but there are never rats in Athair’s barn.
Inside, swallows are dumpling-fat with winter plumage, ranged along the rafters. Celegorm could shoot a few with his slingshot and make a pie of his own. Doesn’t need Orome for that.
His slingshot stays in his coat pocket.
(No hunting, after all.)
The hay at Formenos begins its life in tidy bales. Celegorm liked best to ride in the wagon itself, during a haying, catching the bales as Athair sent them flying up by means of a catapult that was the envy of the county round. Maglor drove the wagon, and the small boys, down to the twins, had the loathsome business of raking the swaths of golden grass to Athair and Maedhros, who baled it lightning fast and finished it off with sturdy twine.
Sometimes, if Athair had them come in the wagon late, the bales were made already. Then Maedhros and Celegorm manned the wagon together, swaying like captains on the high seas.
“Pirates,” Maglor growled, when Celegorm sprinkled a handful of burrs over his head from above. “Filthy, murdering pirates.”
Celegorm swallows hard. There is a lump in his throat that hurts him, not born of the tawny dust that floats around him.
“Down, Huan,” he commands, not whistling this time.
Huan springs down from his lofty hay-tower, and comes to sit at Celegorm’s feet. But for the thump of his tail and the murmuring of the swallows overhead, there is no sound.
Silent is the snow, the dead of winter.
Seized with a sudden idea as much as a sudden rage, Celegorm snatches a pitchfork from its post on the wall.
He ought never have gone ice-fishing with Maglor. Ought never to have been out of the house—but there, stinging, is a thought befitting Maglor: the wistful belief that he could have done something if he had only stayed behind.
What good Celegorm? What good Maglor, when the door is shut and voices rise behind it?
He’s torn through three bales before Caranthir, red-cheeked under his dark hair and worsted cap, calls him from the open door.
“You’re getting snow all over the floor,” Caranthir gripes, and then, breathlessly, “What are you doing?”
The air is cold. Celegorm’s nose and lips are cold. His hands, in woolen mittens, are sweating.
“Nothing as concerns you.”
“You’re ruining the bales.” Caranthir gapes when he talks. There’s nothing graceful about him. Not a mite of ease or charm or—
Curufin would say, Athair will punish you, as if Athair’s anger was as great a hurt as what Celegorm would suffer for it.
Caranthir doesn’t speak of Athair, and Celegorm feels some small, mean satisfaction in that.
“Mother’s looking for you.” Caranthir shuffles his feet. “We need more wood.”
“You can’t lift the axe yourself?”
Caranthir sniffs. “She called for you.”
“She’s worried, then?” Caranthir opened the doors no wider, but the wind is picking up and there is a fine layer of frost-white sweeping over board and boot. “Worried that I’ll run wild?”
“Worried that you’re being a dolt.”
“Women,” Celegorm says, smiling toothily as he pokes the fork into the stout bale, “Are prone to hysterics.”
Caranthir turns redder, in the half-light of the barn. But Caranthir is sullen, not given to words fine or fierce. He will not even defend their mother, and Celegorm’s eyes and throat brim with scorn.
He hangs up the fork, and leaves the hay tossed where it lies.
“Wood for our fire, then,” he says. “Tell her I am going.”