Work Text:
Maeglin could starve to death without much trouble. No one--Bauglir--invites him to dine, and the larders and kitchens of the mountain have not a friendly face between them. There are always a few pinched, scuttling servants, and a rumpled chef--and in the time Maeglin has gone in and out of the mountain, the cast of these characters has often changed.
He visited this place, this Diablo, before Master Bauglir came to it. Before there were many proper rooms and halls.
He did not come alone.
Curled on his side in the ever-dusk, with his hands tucked under his chin, Maeglin remembers the hazy places of his childhood. Upper rooms with windows for light. Thick stews and hard bread. Kind, if clumsy hands.
Faces that changed, too.
He's never been content. Not when he was left behind, less like a guest and more like an unwanted kitten.
(Maeglin has always wanted a kitten. The closest he has come is one of Annatar's horrid gifts: a pelt.)
He wasn't skinned, himself, nor was he drowned like kittens sometimes are. He was expected to earn his keep, at the one thing he'd always been naturally skilled at.
Weaponsmiths had been a common theme, in Maeglin's childhood, in between the obvious haunts.
He should have known not to be grateful for the invitations to dine that still came his way.
A voice--almost the only voice--tells him, Never be grateful for anything. It makes you a slave.
Maybe that was his failing, Maeglin thinks, snuffling miserably into his hands. Maybe Russandol was grateful.
By day and by night, forgotten in his little room, he sees Russandol.
Sometimes he tries to speak to him, in the hope that Russandol will answer.
But that is a betrayal of another kind, of another ghost.
When the whole mountain is silent, except for the way it always groans, Maeglin slips out, mole-like, and steals a few morsels.
All this keeps him alive for one more day.
Beyond that, he knows nothing.
He misses--