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“When you were this small, you know, you would not even consent to be bounced on my knee.”
“I doubt I had much choice in the matter, Athair.”
“Ah, Feanor. Do not tease me. You always had a choice—you made your feelings quite well-known, my dear, by beating your little fists against whosoever tried to bend you to their will.”
“Are you saying that Nelyafinwe Michael is a good deal more pliant than I was?”
Finwe was not much in need of softening—but his own smile deepened to see the satisfied one on his eldest’s face. “He is a tender-bellied little fellow, that is certain.” To demonstrate, he unlinked his fingers from the baby’s creased wrist and poked him lightly through his crisp white dress.
Maedhros gurgled with laughter.
“Is that what he finds amusing?” Feanor shook his head. He was leaning forward a little, shifting occasionally in his chair, and Finwe knew that, as a new father, he was ill at ease to relinquish his hold on his child.
“What have you been amusing him with?” Finwe asked mildly. He had another question on his mind, but he was waiting for the proper moment to ask it.
“I made him a waterfall of glass beads above his cradle. They are out of reach—I have assured Nerdanel that he cannot swallow them, though in truth I do not think he would be so silly as to try—and they cast light in a thousand colors all around him.” The smile was gone now, and in its place was dark frown. “He does not laugh.”
“Perhaps he gazes at it in wonderment.” Finwe cleared his throat, and put away an old grievance. “You were the same, you know. With your mother’s tapestries.”
“Was I?”
“Indeed you were. I never knew that a babe could marvel, but you did. Of course, I was young. I knew very little about babes.”
There was a long moment, while the eyes of father and son met and held.
“Nerdanel said that a baby will laugh when it is particularly enchanted,” Feanor said, and he stole little Maedhros back again, to cradle to his chest, with lips pressed to the crest of the baby’s head. “But she does not know much about them, either.”
Finwe shut his eyes gravely.
Then, quite carefully, he began, “Do you plan to call the child Nelyafinwe always?”