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You see yourself reflected in your mother’s eyes, and you see your future. You are your father, but only at his weakest. Only less worthy of hard-earned love.
(I love you, I love you.
Maedhros—
It isn’t too soon to say it, darling, I could have said it the moment I laid eyes on you. It was not untrue then; it is only truer now.
You silly boy, Esther tells you, but she lets you rest your head on her lap, as she sits on the edge of her narrow bed, with you pressed against the folds of her skirts. You are always saying these things. So beautiful, and so many words.
As a matter of fact, I haven’t any skill with words. This is all trickery.
Liar. She strokes your hair.
I am a liar. But not to you.)
“Feanor, for God’s sake—” Your mother presses the back of her hand against her mouth. You are not breathing. You have not breathed, really, since Uncle Finarfin’s family bid farewell to yours too gaily, too brightly, and you were left to be burnt in the fire of your parents’ clash.
They have not even entered the carriage. Thus, the rest of you wait also. Celegorm is white as a sheet. Maglor is looking at you. The little ones—well, littler ones, Caranthir is thirteen—are huddled together.
“You see how he holds himself so high-and-mighty! I did not want this excursion in this first place, but I would not deny my father his heart’s wish.” Athair’s pain blazes through him, through all of you, like fire in grass. “What was I to do?”
The carriage attendants are keeping their distance.
“Do not make this a martyr’s conquest. You acted like a spoiled child.”
(I—I did not expect to see you! she stutters, and you are grinning as you kiss her through the open window, tasting the sweetness of her surprise.
Will you let me in the door?
I shouldn’t.
Will you leave me here alone?
Of course not.
She thinks her accent clumsy. You find it beautiful, like an instrument played with care and precision. You find everything about her beautiful, even in this dingy little room she has to call her home.
(You would show her Formenos’s wide-flung beauty.)
I am here for one night only, you say, when she admits you. You draw her to you, first by her hands, then her waist. You are trembling with the joy of her closeness. She brushes your face with her fingertips. You feel your skin turn golden.
I am happy. But why—why do you come to the city, this night?)
“Shall I travel home alone?” Athair cries. “Would that please you? Or would it please you better to abandon me altogether, Nerdanel, since I disgust you so? Would you disown your son for playing a teasing trick? Perhaps he should remain with me—shouldn’t you, Celegorm?”
Celegorm breaks down and sobs.
Jesus, Mary, you think, somewhere between a prayer and an oath. You want to comfort him, comfort your brother who hates to show his fears, much less his heart. But you can’t go to him, you can’t form alliances when they are snapping at one another like wolves.
(All of your family?
You have played your usual trick, and now you are on the bed beside her, and you are closing the demure distance she keeps between you very slowly. You kick off your rough boots—she has never seen you like this, in country garb—and tuck your arms behind your head.
Yes. We have a holiday planned, at the seashore.
Esther stares at her hands. You remove one of yours from its position and reach for her right knee, which is crooked towards you. She shudders beneath your touch, and her cheeks are pink.
Don’t distract me.
I wasn’t.
Maedhros—can I meet them?)
In the end, Mother doesn’t leave him. Of course she doesn’t. You want, badly, to be sick. You wanted to be sick two nights ago, when Esther stared at you with tears in her eyes.
I want you to meet them more than anything, but it isn’t the time.
Because you are ashamed.
Of you? Never.
You said you wouldn’t lie—to me.
They aren’t speaking to each other, but it’s still love. Their children are pale and tense beside them, but it’s still love.
You are looking at yourself in the space between them, in the shadowed pane of a window, and you just—you don’t know, if you will ever be more than that.
It isn’t the time.