Chapter Text
Maitimo knows his father is upset.
He’s always been perceptive about things like that. He takes pride in it, and it fills him up and puts him upright, the way Makalaurë never straightens his back except for when he’s about to perform his newest masterpiece. He knows how his family is feeling even when they show no signs of it, the same way Moryo can do sums in his head without bothering with ink and paper.
Maitimo is perceptive, the sky is blue, and Atya is irritated enough that Maitimo can see his jaw move a little and hear his footsteps get louder, as well as feeling something twist a certain way in his chest. He pauses for a moment, quickens his own steps to catch up with Atya and Ammë and his brothers, and slows down again once he starts outpacing them. He’s always at the back of the group when they walk somewhere together, protecting the twins.
“—stupid summer,” Telvo is mumbling, kicking his heels against the smooth stone floor of the house. They are just inside the threshold now, finally back from the long walk to the square at Kôr.
“I don’t even know what was the point of that meeting,” Atarinkë says, holding his hair up with one hand.
Tyelkormo shrugs. “They said it was to give thanks to the Valar. Anyhow, it’s what the point was, not what was the point.” Makalaurë laughs at that, the only sound he’s made since they finished the ceremony.
“We give thanks to the Valar all the time!” Atarinkë waves his hands and almost loses his balance, stepping on the edge of his robe. It is one of Atya’s old ones, far too large for him, but Atarinkë insisted. Maitimo tenses, ready to catch him if he falls.
So on edge even in your own home, Nelyo, his father had once chided him for the way he would follow his brothers around the house. He’d replied that it was the rules, and besides, he heard enough of Grandfather’s stories on a daily basis to know the importance of being prepared for anything. That had put a shadow across Atya’s face, the only time he couldn’t guess what effect his words could have.
Now, he places both hands behind his back the way he’s seen Nolofinwë do and lets himself feel important and mature as he thinks carefully over his next move. He supposes he could just ask Atya why he feels like this, but that would make his brothers worried, and he can’t have that. He could take both Atya and Ammë aside for a little private chat and save them from rumors or worrying. That would be a good opportunity to be alone with them—he can’t remember the last time he had their attention to himself.
Of course, it isn’t all that rare to see his father silently vexed these days. He’s tried talking to him and asking his brothers if they know anything, but no solution he can make seems to work. Of all the foolish comings and goings of their home, more than Moryo’s fits of temper and Tyelko’s woodland expeditions and Makalaurë’s endless sulking, it is this permanent tension in his father that bothers him the most. Maitimo has always hated being helpless when he is needed.
And he is needed, he thinks as he continues to glare at Atya’s back. It is certainly nice to have six brothers, and never dull, but do Atya and Ammë see him as they once did? Are they too busy looking after the younger ones to notice how long and hard he labors to keep his brothers under control and their reputation intact? Just yesterday he went to Findekáno on his own to apologise for some perceived slight on Atya’s part, not for the first time, and he’s certain nobody knows about it.
“It wasn’t a very good reason. We had to go up there just so people won’t forget we’re here,” Pityo proclaims, and Maitimo disentangles himself from his thoughts. “Everyone had a nice, strong view of Atya making a fuss.”
“A strong view, Pityo?”
“You’re not that much better with your words either, Tyelko.” Pityo pauses. “A nice, good view of Atya making a fuss. But that’s sort of—repetitive, like Makalaurë always says!”
“What’s all this about making a fuss?”
Maitimo winces and Makalaurë clutches his head theatrically as Atya comes to a sudden stop, one eyebrow raised. Nicely done, Pityo. Now his father will make a speech to justify causing a scene back in the square, and as responsible as Maitimo is trying to be, even he gets tired of dithering in the corridor to hear his parents’ speeches. He tries to find satisfaction in discovering what was making Atya angry, but instead he has a sense this is not the true answer.
To his credit, Pityo makes a valiant effort of backing out of it—“Nothing at all, Atya”—but their father only turns around to face them, creating the effect of a tutor lecturing his students. “Well, do all of you consider it a trivial thing that we must share a sigil with Nolofinwë?”
“And Grandfather, and Arafinwë,” Atarinkë points out. Everything in him, from the tilt of his shoulders to the tapping of his feet, screams I am eager for this. Maitimo briefly contemplates running away to the seaside.
“Yes, my father and Arafinwë,” Atya concedes. “But he was too involved in the speech of thanks itself to cause us much embarrassment at the ceremony. Or didn’t you see, children”—Maitimo determinedly straightens his back—“how quick Nolofinwë was to upstage everyone there, always cutting through others’ words to speak his thoughts, and his only? You know I find it intolerable that we must be presented as equals, under the same banner, the same sigil. I am sure he and poor Arafinwë share the sentiment.”
At this point, Atya pauses a bit longer than usual, leaving room for Ammë to interrupt him. “Fëanáro, if this upsets you so much, you could simply request to use a different sigil.”
“And risk hurting my father? No. He will always be more important.” Atya sighs and seems to relax, but not completely. Maitimo has learned not to expect to see him at ease anytime soon. “I will have a solution in time, I’m sure.”
“In the meantime,” Ammë says slowly and pointedly, “It is late, and I think our sons are in need of time to clean up.”
Atya blinks as if noticing them for the first time. “Ah, yes. I’m sorry. Nelyo, would you make sure the twins are in time for dinner? Your mother and I will be preparing the meals tonight.”
Always happy and always expected to make myself useful, Atya, Maitimo thinks somewhat bitterly. Out loud, he joins in Makalaurë’s exaggerated sighs of relief and leads the protesting Ambarussa down the hall. His parents will have finished cooking by the time they have all bathed and changed. There will be time to relax until he is in bed, inevitably reviewing every word he’s said today and, more importantly, worrying about Atya. Whatever is upsetting him needs to be stopped, if only for Maitimo’s sake.
At least he can help with something now, and he resolves to spend the next few hours thinking about it. How can they stop using the House of Finwë’s traditional sigils without slighting his grandfather? More importantly, if he does find a solution, how can his brothers be convinced to follow it?
Curufinwë Atarinkë is on a mission, and he won’t let anything get in its way.
Not even—no, especially not his most annoying brother, Tyelko. He is not going to let Tyelko distract him from the task ahead, even if Tyelko is dripping wet from diving into the fountains again, even if he is at this moment trying to recruit him for another adventure into the woods outside Tirion, even if an adventure sounds very, very tempting after three days spent indoors helping out with the forge.
This is for Atya. This, he tells himself as he straightens up the way he’s seen Nelyo do, takes precedence.
“—and with luck, we could find some more of those flowers Ammë liked so much, and we could bring home some of that sticky plant we used on Moryo last time, and—” Tyelko freezes in the middle of waving his arms. “You aren’t listening!”
“I told you,” Atarinkë says haughtily. “I am on an important mission, and I must not be discouraged. Now, come with me.” Discouraged? Dissuaded? Did he pronounce it wrong? Well, Tyelko won’t notice. He misspells words all the time.
“I don’t see what’s so important about making up a few designs.”
“It will help ease Atya’s mind!” Atarinkë tries to look down his nose and fails miserably. Why must his brothers all be so tall? Even the Ambarussa are starting to catch up to him. “I think Nelyo is right.”
“Nelyo’s always right about everything. What’s the plan again? I want to get this over with before I go outside.” Tyelko stretches out his hands and looks at the ground, as if he’s trying to do a handstand.
“You’ll do no such thing. We are all going to put effort into our sigils. We could be using them at every feast in Tirion for the rest of our lives!” He sighs. “I meant, I think Nelyo is right that Atya has been tense lately.”
“And how will designing sigils help ease Atya’s mind, oh dear Curvo?"
Atarinkë makes a noise that is most definitely not a huff. He would never do anything so undignified. “Do I have to explain it a hundred times? Nelyo said Atya wants to use a different sigil than Nolofinwë, but Nolofinwë uses Grandfather’s sigil and it’ll hurt Grandfather’s feelings if Atya separates from him like that. So if we all make our own designs and say it is for a creative project, it won’t be just Atya using a new sigil. It won’t be as awkward then, hopefully.”
He is panting lightly by the time he’s finished his explanation, but his brother, instead of appreciating his efforts, seems to focus on only one thing in his speech. “ Hopefully? And what if it doesn’t make anything better? Then we’ll have just wasted our time when we could be exploring.”
For a moment, Atarinkë wants to throw everything down and just tell Tyelko that sigils aren’t the least of what is bothering Atya. He wants to shout at all his brothers for being so carefree when he has to watch his father work himself to the point of falling unconscious trying to make something beyond death in the forge every night. But that wouldn’t be wise— see, Maitimo, I am not as stupid as you think — and so he settles for glaring at Tyelko and asking him, “Look, are you in it or not? I have to go tell the rest of them.”
“You know I want to help,” Tyelko replies. Atarinkë crosses his name off his mental list. Only four brothers to go before his mission is accomplished.
“Good. Now, find some paper and get to it,” he commands, and walks off quickly before Tyelko can start talking about his adventure again. Certainly the son of the greatest prince among the Eldar does not run from his brother, even on an urgent errand.
“Maitimo dearest, I am in desperate need,” Makalaurë announces, flinging open his brother’s door.
Despite his graceful entrance, Maitimo barely reacts, which is… concerning in more than one way. Now that Makalaurë thinks about it, it’s been a while since his brother appeared really energetic in front of him. Has he done something wrong? Maitimo never hides how he feels from him— from the younger ones, certainly, claiming they won’t be able to understand, but never from Makalaurë.
He shoves the thought aside. They can solve the problem another day, when it isn’t late and Makalaurë isn’t feeling hopelessly uninspired.
Not for the first time, he wonders why he came to Maitimo for help. He’s lucky enough to have been born into a family full of artists and craftspeople, where his parents and two of his brothers can all understand the awful feeling of having nothing but bland, useless thoughts to take up space in his head. Curvo and Moryo are still too young to give him any real advice, of course, but they would know more about what he’s going through than Maitimo, so logical and knowledgeable.
Well, it’s too late to turn back now. After a few long seconds, Maitimo has finally lifted his head from the pile of books on his desk and now blinks slowly up at him. “Makalaurë?”
“Yes, hello,” he says in his brightest tones. “I want to ask you for your aid.”
“Put that together from the way you shouted and slammed the door.” Maitimo pushes back his hair with one hand and rubs his eyes with the other. “What is it? Did you lose your notes again?”
“I haven’t lost my notes in a long time. It’s about the new sigils you’ve been talking about.” Makalaurë smooths out the drawing before putting it on Maitimo’s desk, knowing how his brother hates wrinkled papers. “I need your help designing it.”
Maitimo squints at his work, and much to his annoyance, looks away after just a few seconds. “This seems complete to me.”
“It needs something else to be truly complete. Some—some other touch,” he finishes lamely.
“And you needed to come and bother me about this?” Bother. Makalaurë very firmly tells himself that the wording doesn’t mean anything. He’s still Maitimo’s favorite brother. Did he come here to prove that somehow? The design does seem more complete now that Maitimo has said it. Did he just want to be reassured of his talent? His self-esteem has been taking a bit of a hard hit these past few weeks, at least according to Atya. He hasn’t written any songs for well over a month.
Instead of working up the effort to say all this, however, he settles for “You weren’t doing anything.”
“I could have been sleeping.”
“You can’t sleep if you aren’t in your bed,” Makalaurë points out. “Please just tell me what you think of it. Is it good enough for official use? Could it make Atya feel better?”
“Makalaurë, you know I don’t know that any more than you know you do.” Maitimo pauses. “That was too many words, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. You’re tired.” Makalaurë sits down on his brother’s bed. Like all the other furniture in Maitimo’s room, it is carved from dark wood, appropriately placed, and extravagantly large. The sheer neatness of the scarlet blankets, the best and smoothest in all the house, seem to dare anyone passing by to touch them and risk their owner’s wrath. Makalaurë does his best not to wrinkle them while stroking them with both hands. “Do you want me to go away? Should I come back tomorrow?”
“We will be presenting these designs to Atya first thing tomorrow morning,” Maitimo reminds him. “If you still think there’s something to add, we’d better think about it now.”
“But do you want to?” Makalaurë asks. “That should be more important than your”—he waves a hand—“self-imposed deadline, if you ask me.”
His brother stares at him for several seconds. Makalaurë has come to expect this; Maitimo can take some time to process new information, especially when he is tired and especially when whatever he’s hearing goes against his “rules.” Makalaurë may never understand why he feels the need to organize his own life as much as he does Tyelko’s or Curvo’s, but he tries to be there on those few occasions when these rules need to be broken.
“Alright.” Maitimo draws out the word, speaking less clearly than he usually does. “Right. Fine. Let me see that design again?”
“With pleasure.” Makalaurë had snatched up the drawing the second Maitimo put it down, and now he passes it back. It’s a good sketch by his standards, and similar enough to the eight-pointed stars Atya likes to use on his clothing that he ought to be pleased by it. But he can’t help but think there should be something more on top of what he already has, something to make it feel more like him and less like Atya.
Perhaps Atya is not the only one who wants to be different from his father. He thinks on that for a moment, deems himself incapable of coming to any sort of meaningful conclusion about it, and goes back to waiting eagerly for Maitimo’s input.
“For a start, there should be something filling up all this empty space.” Maitimo waves a hand at the blank section of his sketch, on which Makalaurë had scribbled the word black. “You did a good job on the layered stars, but the other houses wouldn’t like us using too many dark colors. We have to blend in.”
Makalaurë nods. “I’d thought of that, but I don’t know how to make it brighter.”
“You could put another design under the stars here,” Maitimo suggests. “Something… oh, I don’t know. Something round.”
Makalaurë dutifully sketches out a circle, the line tapering to a point halfway between each spike of the layered star. Maitimo takes his stick of charcoal and draws smaller circles under the points. “There. If you had these colored light yellow to match the inner star, it would look more balanced.”
“Thank you, brother.” Makalaurë grins and holds the sketch in front of him, taking in the shape of it. “What color should I make the circle-thing, do you think?”
“I think you should decide on that yourself.”
Makalaurë hesitates and looks at the sketch again, filled with red and gold and black. Even with the new background, it is so utterly Atya that everyone would think it of his making, and Makalaurë is oddly bothered by the idea. Their purpose is to please Atya, yes, but these are their sigils. He ought to include some sign that he, Makalaurë, was behind it.
What do others think when they think of Makalaurë? A young musician, a poet, eccentric and emotional. He glances at Maitimo, stretched out on his crimson bed with relaxed shoulders, still staring at the ceiling. A rule-breaker.
In one swift flourish, he takes the charcoal and scrawls the words deep blue on the background.
“Deep blue?” Maitimo looks at him sharply. “Nolofinwë’s color? I thought we were all trying to make Atya less prone to speeches.”
Makalaurë shrugs. “No one can own a color. Maybe it’s time we showed him that. And maybe—” He pauses, only for a moment. “Maybe it’s time we started being more like Atya, by being less like him. Can you understand that?”
“Mm.” Maitimo has gone very still, and he isn’t blinking anymore. “Maybe.”
Makalaurë can’t tell whether or not his brother is just repeating what he hears in his sleep, but he knows Maitimo needs his rest after spending so long looking after them all. He steps carefully out of the room and closes the door behind him, already wondering where he is to find paints. It isn’t until he tracks down the blue paint, gathering dust in Tyelko’s workshop, that he realizes he can hardly remember what it felt like to be uninspired.
