Work Text:
Prologue
Sometimes, Arafinwë was like Laurelin, a golden light piercing through his brothers' dark clouds. And sometimes, his good nature was blinding.
Fëanáro was ever suspicious, quick to assume insult whether intended or not. Nolofinwë, practical and logical almost from the cradle, would do well to let his passions rule him, if only for a moment.
Arafinwë...Arafinwë was incapable of thinking ill of others, and could not imagine that others might think ill of him. He had often been the victim of practical jokes, believing everything his siblings told him, no matter how outlandish. Such things were done without real injury or malice; indeed, his siblings were quite protective of their little brother.
If Indis had been present to intercept the package, she would have spared her son the pain, but it had already been delivered. There could be no question of its origin; the knots around the oil-paper were too intricate to have been tied by Noldorin hands.
"I was thinking that I would fry it with lemon and butter," Arafinwë said, his eyes aglow.
"I must say that you are taking this well," she began.
"Do you think I should do something more elaborate?"
"I think you should simply return it." That was the usual course with such things. A dead fish...she never would have thought Eärwen could be so cruel.
"Return it?" Arafinwë looked puzzled. "Oh, with something of my own. A poem, perhaps?"
Indis' heart broke for him. "I think she is trying to tell you that she would rather not receive poems - or anything else - in the future."
Arafinwë laughed gently. "Oh, Amil, no - this is not...the Teleri would never send a fish as an insult."
Analogue
"Herdir Gladafel?" Celebrimbor pronounced the name carefully, determined not to drop the 'g' as his tongue wished to do.
"I am Gladafel." A tall, powerfully-built smith looked up from the horseshoe he was hammering into shape.
Celebrimbor had no idea how to proceed; he was not accustomed to arranging things for himself. He realised now the countless ways in which servants had allowed him to ignore the mundane.
"And what is your business here, Curufinion?"
He met the farrier's eyes with reluctance. "I was looking for a place where I might work. I work strictly at night," he added hurriedly. "I would not trouble you much."
"Hmmm."
"I have nothing in the way of payment, as yet." He doubted that the other elf would have much sympathy. A lord, a prince among his people, no less. Dispossessed.
The elf harrumphed again. "You will need to supply your own wood."
The hard winter touched even Balar, and the supply of wood, already strained by the influx of refugees, was rationed accordingly. "The Círdain guard the forests, and they are stingy about it," Gladafel had at last explained.
"A good thing, too, or you smiths would burn every last tree on the isle."
They turned to greet the elf stamping snow from his boots at the door.
"Hîr Ereinion," Gladafel bowed. "All is well with your horse, I hope?"
"She is fine and makes no complaint of her shoes. But I was looking for Celebrimbor." He held up his spear. "Could you?"
Celebrimbor ran his thumb over the blunted point. "No point trying to sharpen it, there is not enough left. It will need to be reforged."
The Falathrim lived by trade in kind. One offered what one thought a needed good or service was worth, according to means. They had no coinage - certainly, any coins would have long ago been melted for their metal. Aside from a seam of iron, nearly tapped out, Balar had no ores and no means to get raw metal. And so, Celebrimbor's custom paid him in wood and scrap metal, if they had a bit of wealth, or in bread or skeins of wool, if they were less fortunate. And fish, of course.
The work they brought to him was equally simple. At most, he might be asked to resize a helmet, or to melt some cherished item to forge rings of betrothal. The Noldor brought elaborately-crafted swords needing repair. Most often, however, the fisher folk came to him with their curiously blunted spears.
He was not at all surprised that Ereinion came to collect his spear in the middle of the night. As a child, he had often crept into the forge during the quiet hours at Nargothrond. Defiantly sleepless or troubled by nightmares, he would sit with his chin resting on his knees, and would watch Celebrimbor work until sleep finally claimed him.
Meril gathered her sleeping son into her arms. "He thinks too much, this one. He frets over things too grave for one so little."
"A great doom lies upon him," Celebrimbor agreed.
Meril stiffened. "He is just a child. A child who needs his family, no matter how safe a haven might seem."
Somehow, he had foundered into Nargothrond's political quicksand. "I did not mean-."
"I do not hold with your dooms and prophecies and oaths. You rail against them, but do not see that it is by your own folly that they are fulfilled. I will have no part in such despair, nor allow it to touch my children."
Celebrimbor picked up the spear. "What in Arda's name do you folk do to these?"
Ereinion discarded his cloak and sat on the work table, folding his long limbs under him with rangy grace. He was at that spidery stage of transition from youth, all arms and legs and a torso not yet grown into them. The years away from Nargothrond had given him a confident air. The caverns, with their bitter alliances, where one could not even trust a blood relative, must have loomed enormous to a small elf. To go unnoticed was the best hope. Beloved kin left, never to return, and one might be sent away for reasons beyond a child's understanding.
"That is the work of Tarsagall."
"Tarsagall?"
The corner of Ereinion's mouth quirked. "That is what the fisher-folk call him, at least in polite company. He is the fish you cannot catch, the fish who bites holes in your nets, setting all his brethren free; the fish who steals your last hook; the fish who darts out, only to turn himself into a rock when you try to spear him. They say he is a friend to Uinenda, and ensures that the Elves do not take too many of her children from the sea." (1)
"He is truly rotten," Celebrimbor agreed. "I thought perhaps you were all jousting at windmills," he joked, examining the spear.
"As Ingoldo's song told," Ereinion said, his face lighting up.
"Actually, your father wrote that. I think he thought of himself that way, sometimes. He-" Celebrimbor stopped at his cousin's wince.
'Too soon,' Celebrimbor thought. Ereinion's sleep habits had not improved, as evidenced by his hair, unbound from its severe style to a loose braid designed to keep it from tangling in sleep. Already, several strands had worked loose, and as Celebrimbor watched, Ereinion tugged a few more out of the braid.
As night drew late onto dawn, Ereinion stirred and prepared to leave.
Celebrimbor held the spear while Ereinion fastened his cloak. Curufin had invented a steel both stronger and lighter than the common alloy. Unfortunately, the making required such expertise that only Celebrimbor and a few of the Dwarves had mastered it. "Your spear should be much less likely to blunt or break, but the weight will seem off to you at first."
"I cannot wait to confound the trouble-fish with a spear he cannot break," Ereinion grinned. He poked ineffectually at his hair, now completely fallen out of its braid, trying to tuck it under his hood.
"Here, be still."
The heavy silk felt like a balm to his roughened palms. Someone - Círdan's valet, he thought with distaste - took very good care of Ereinion's hair. No elf of Celebrimbor's House would allow a servant such intimate contact. Still, his own ministrations were not entirely dispassionate, and perhaps equally inappropriate. He resisted the urge to run his fingers through the locks, for that would certainly be inappropriate. Ereinion tilted his head back, his lips slightly parted, not in pleasure but to allow his shorter cousin easier access. Celebrimbor swiftly braided his hair into a single braid, and secured it with the tie from his own hair. His braid would not unravel; he had the brittle hair of all smiths.
Ereinion took his spear and departed without a word.
A rap at the door woke him in the early afternoon, much sooner than he would have preferred. After several weeks' stay with Guilin and his wife, he had found shelter in servants' quarters at a farm. Though the farmer hesitated to show him the tiny hut, Celebrimbor found it ideal. He wished only for rooms of his own, even if those rooms were, in fact, a single room, with a table on one side of the hearth and a bed tucked under the eaves on the other.
"I believe these were left for you," Círdan said, shutting the door quickly against the cold.
"Someone left me dead fish?"
Círdan looked at him strangely. "Someone left you food." He hung the fish in the larder and turned around.
Celebrimbor followed Círdan's gaze to the table and flushed.
"I hope you sent Ereinion home beforehand."
Celebrimbor gathered the dirty glass and empty bottle of suithuil, the strong seaweed liquor of the Falathrim. "Arta-...Ereinion is too old to be sent anywhere."
"I am well aware of his age," Círdan said, smiling ruefully.
"In any event, it is not a habit I would want shared."
Círdan frowned slightly at this. "He is fond of you, you know."
"Would you prefer that I discourage him?" Celebrimbor asked stiffly. Círdan might overlook his unfortunate relations, but others would not.
"Indeed, no. I think he very much needs your friendship, especially now. And he has perhaps spent too much time among the Falathrim." Círdan's face turned suddenly grave. "He must reacquaint himself with his own people. They will have need of him.
"But, have a care, Celebrimbor. You know how it is at that age. The needs of the hroa are so new, and sentiments are so intense, that the young often confuse one for the other."
"I am all that remains of his childhood." Rather than resentment that he had survived where those closer to Ereinion had died, the young elf had latched on to him as a drowning sailor would cling to floating wreckage.
Círdan looked at him shrewdly. "I hope it is that simple."
With the fish left hanging from his door, two or three each day, and the fish brought to him in payment for his work, he had more than he could possibly eat. He gave some of the goods he received to the farmer for his lodgings, but he often found that his payments came back to him, in the form of a woollen hood or a hot supper. He was no longer astonished by the kindness of these folk. They spoke little, minded their own, but what he had at first thought hostility or coldness was simply their way.
He had not, however, quite reconciled himself to their love of sea fare. Breakfast was a smoked fish, dinner broiled fish; for tea, they served a fish paste with bread, and supper was a thick seafood stew. He did not dislike fish, nor was he ungrateful. No one went hungry on Balar. Still, he drew the line at breakfast.
Rhiw passed into echuir without the least sign of warming. On another snowy morning, Gladafel arrived to begin the day's work just as Celebrimbor finished packing up his takings for the night. The last few days had evidently yielded poor fishing, for though the fish continued to appear at his door, his custom had paid him in other goods.
Gladafel had a different explanation. "Word has got around."
"Sorry?"
"You have an admirer."
As he so often felt in conversations with everyone, but most of all with the taciturn Falathrim, he thought that he had missed something. "An admirer?"
Gladafel shrugged into his leather apron. "I suppose your folk give jewels, or suchlike. The Egladhrim give fish." (2)
An old story of Arafinwë and Eärwen flashed through his mind. "I do not think my benefactor is one of your people." He regretted the words as soon as he spoke them. It would not do to link Ereinion to such rumours, no matter how ill-founded they might be. "I think this admirer of yours merely thinks me a poor fisher in need of sustenance."
"Hmph. The Gódhellim do not fish in this season, Curufinion." (3)
One does.
Gladafel smiled knowingly, as if he had heard his silent thought. "You see how it is, then."
Notes:
(1) Uinenda
Old Sindarin word for Uinen. (The Lost Road, 'Etymologies' UY-) We don't know much about Falathrin, but in The Peoples of Middle-earth, 'Last Writings', it is said to have been more archaic than the dialects of the Mithrim and Iathrim. (pp 385-6)
(2) Egladhrim
lit. 'the Forsaken' - the name the Falathrim used for themselves (The War of the Jewels, 'Quendi and Eldar' p 379)
(3) Gódhellim
Noldor. There were two words for Noldo in Sindarin, 'Golodh' and 'Gódhel'. The latter was the more polite term - the first was probably used only in Doriath, as Círdan's people were the most friendly toward the Exiles. (Ibid)