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As an expert in the habits and affairs of large carnivores, Annatar finds it reasonable that the Eldar spend a good portion of the summer day simply lying about, especially when their latest optical experiments must be left to cool undisturbed in the kiln. Still it might have rankled him once - yet as evening descends upon the courtyard, he can grudgingly admit its appeal.
Celebrimbor sits next to him, one arm slung over the back of the bench (whose wrought iron ornaments he had sketched out himself) and one leg crossed over the other. He sits less politely the longer you talk with him, Annatar has noticed, if he trusts you. And they’ve been talking for nigh an hour, first about their project, and then about their new students, and then about whether one student’s peculiar ideas made any sense at all, and if so what to do with her. Annatar said she had the competence to lead her own group, if a small one; Celebrimbor said they had best be careful what manner of spiritual imagery they sponsored in a public place; Annatar asked if he had seen Eregion’s parties lately; and Celebrimbor laughed.
So easy, with him, to lose time that way, easy as it hasn’t been with anyone for a very long while.
Rearranging himself a bit, Celebrimbor emits a noise of contentment. He may look like one quietly enjoying the oncoming breeze, but Annatar knows well the turn of his thought by now. Given a few minutes he will surely say something as outlandish and fascinating as the near-heretical student earlier. Annatar watches the way his pupils track over the brickwork, his irises making their little corrections, his ears twitching slightly as the body reacts to the world without even any direction from the mind.
Looped through the inferior helices of those ears, he wears paired silver rings, as do so many other Elves. They draw Annatar’s eyes, lately, the little sun-catching ornaments he affixes to himself. It makes him seem to expand within his finite bounds, the way fractals appear in a crystal when you turn it in the light.
Celebrimbor glances to him now, with one eyebrow raised in amusement. “I can tell when you do that, you know,” he says. “And I mean no offense, but it does make your company slightly disquieting.”
“I am a being as old as time itself,” Annatar grouses. “I should think that comes with the package.”
“Well, out with it.”
“With what?”
He makes an expansive gesture. “Whatever you want to ask me, about, oh, fundamental natures and incarnate experience.”
Celebrimbor himself becomes disquieting company sometimes, seeing more deeply than he should. But one of the most interesting things about him is that always shares in Annatar’s questions.
Annatar uses a hand to indicate where the jewelry would sit on himself, had he opted for a fána with holes in its inferior helix. “Those rings you wear. They are not only for decoration, are they.”
“Oh…” Celebrimbor’s own hand rises, mirroring, to brush at the objects in question. “No, I suppose not. We do use them for decoration, for beauty, but among my people, they once had another meaning too: we first wore them at a particular time in our youth. This came just before adolescence for most, the same age we may choose new formal names or seek apprenticeships away from the house. The word was immosívë, self-knowing. I had not thought about mine that way in some time.”
Annatar has never been that young, has barely even imagined what it might be like. Not pleasant, he suspects. “So someone must decide when the child is ready, and inform the world at large? What a strange circle of logic that makes! For another cannot claim to see your own self-knowing, but ask the child and they will declare that they know themself already, all the louder the less they truly know.”
“A fair point - certainly I would have done so! That is why the decision falls to the family, close family. Parents, grandparents. My first earrings… My father made them. At the time I saw no circle in the logic at all, only a sign I was cherished. But I make my own now, call that immosívë indeed.” He lets out a bitter laugh, hand settling back beside him. “Few here follow the old custom anyway, these days, as with so many things - perhaps for the better. We wear them only because we like to.”
“Yes, I have even seen toddlers wearing them, and grown Elves without. Perhaps it is for the better.” He recalls Celebrimbor dressing for a festival in the jewels his dwarf friends gave him, and the new-spawned foragers of Cuiviénen, who adorned their faces with bone from the animals they killed. “Yet it still holds power, marking your bodies that way.”
“It does. We who seek to change the world, but whose own forms remain constant in time - what else can we do? Though that is not an instinct you know firsthand, is it.”
A thought strikes him then, as he considers Celebrimbor’s jewelry and words, and he is rarely one to let a moment of inspiration pass unattended. Nor is he above a little vanity.
“Maybe I ought to.”
Celebrimbor turns to face him fully, eyes narrowed with interest. “How so?”
“I ought to get a set of my own.”
At once, his expression brightens. “Now there’s an idea!” Annatar can practically hear his mind spinning, building the image already. “I think it would suit you very well. And of course you could adjust your form for all manner of ornaments, not only simple rings - actually, we need some charcoal, we could plan this -”
“No,” Annatar clarifies, though the prospect is tempting. “I mean I ought to get them the way the incarnates do.”
It takes a moment for Celebrimbor to disengage from his scheme. “What, threaded in with a needle?”
“Yes.”
“When you could do it by will in an instant instead, without any impalement.”
Annatar rolls his eyes at the dubious stare. “I am curious, Celebrimbor.”
The fondness that comes over his face then is familiar; Annatar likes that. “Of course you are,” Celebrimbor says. “And who am I to impede the progress of science?”
Inside the workshop, Celebrimbor rummages, gathering a flask of strong spirits, an inkwell, and a pair of fine-pointed pincers, as for twisting wire. Then he heads down the halls of the Mírdain and pilfers a tightly locked compact from a colleague, leaving a note behind in his dreadful handwriting. The rings, he retrieves from his own jewel-box.
“How about these?”
“They will do,” says Annatar. “Gold is my color.”
“Then sit down here.”
They had ended up in Celebrimbor’s rooms, as they so often do these days. Annatar sits at his desk, whose surface is overrun with half-finished sketches and models that Celebrimbor must herd into a pile to make room for the piercing tools. First he uncorks the flask, releasing its potent odor as he wets a scrap of fresh cotton.
“We need to keep the whole operation clean,” he explains, “since we are dealing with biology.”
Annatar does not scoff, but he comes close. “My body cannot decay. Even a truly Elvish one would not, unless left out in the open with its injuries.”
“If you want to learn our ways, you must learn our techniques of sterilization too.”
In these later hours, the last of the daylight always spills in through the window here. Before Annatar sat down, Celebrimbor had pulled the chair into the middle of that light, for a better view of his work. It cuts a diffuse slice of brightness over his face, and over his hands as he moves them to clean each of Annatar’s ears. The chill of evaporation almost provokes an involuntary shudder.
“You seem to have some special expertise in this process,” Annatar comments.
Celebrimbor has laid the flask and cotton aside in favor of the inkwell and pincers, dipping the very end of the tool into the ink. “When one is a jeweler with friends who enjoy both high fashion and potent alcohol, one gains the requisite experience. Daeroch wears my handiwork, and so does Sólva, though I doubt either remembers that night…” He chuckles, and clicks the inked pincers together twice, a longstanding habit of his.
Annatar can anticipate their use. “Are you to lay down guide marks now?”
“Yes, just as we do for engraving. Hold still.”
He does produce such lovely engraving.
Gently, steadily, Celebrimbor takes first one ear between his fingers, then the other, leaving a decisive dot on each with the tight-closed tips of the pincers. Annatar resists the reflex to flick his ears away. He resists, too, the strange and powerful twinge that rises when Celebrimbor draws back and levels his craftsman’s focus upon him.
“There,” Celebrimbor decides aloud. “Now do not touch them! I refuse to bear the blame if these come out uneven.”
Once he’s turned his back, Annatar furtively moves to poke at the dots, where the coldness lingers on the skin.
“I mean it,” says Celebrimbor without looking up from his colleague’s borrowed equipment. “You’ll smudge the ink.”
Well, he has a point. Annatar opts instead to watch him withdraw a shining needle and clean its surface with the spirits, and he wonders at these creatures who allow each other to hurt them - who take pride in it. What an odd place for reckless trust, when they are already so weak. And despite the weakness, which he knows all too well, how sure, how fascinating, are Celebrimbor’s hands in motion.
“Are you ready?” Celebrimbor asks.
“Get on with it.”
That same fondness from before colors the incarnate’s soft laughter as he leans in close, grasping Annatar’s ear again, guiding his head to tilt a little to the side. Though neither part is really his, Annatar reminds himself, or at least not really him. Only something he made. He could remake it, if he wanted. His true self, folded tight into this fána, could surge outward like a leaping wolf, like a wildfire devouring the air.
He expects the pain, but its character takes him by surprise: bright, concentrated, and confusingly warm, unlike anything he’s ever experienced from a weapon or a set of teeth. Having passed the needle through, Celebrimbor uses his pincers to thread in the spark of gold. Then he moves round to the other side.
Annatar listens all the while to the rhythm of his breath, stirring against his own hair. Air flows in, percolates into the lungs - spongy, blood-dark, fragile - then flows out again. Much ends up wasted, but the body gets by, working on and on. It is the only body Celebrimbor has. He decorates it. He scorns and cherishes its history. Air flows in, earthly nourishment flows in, and the gas of soot flows out.
A tiny flame.
The fine spike of pain, the tugging - symmetry. He works swiftly. He is trying not to hurt him too badly. Does he presume he touches a being who shares his own weakness?
For one absurd instant, Annatar imagines showing himself right there - not all of himself, never, but enough to fill the room with burning light, with the idea of eyes, with a hum that shakes every metal object in range. See me! he would call to Celebrimbor, spoken words discarded; he would reach out. He would reach out -
“Done,” announces Celebrimbor, stepping back. “Oh, yes… Gold is your color.”
See me, Annatar would call. He could get fear anywhere, but from Celebrimbor, maybe, he would get something like rapt scrutiny, like possibility.
Something like this.
“Let me, ah, let me go fetch a mirror.”
Celebrimbor finally turns away to make for the washroom, out of sight. He leaves behind a settling quiet and two little wounds.
They have, intriguingly, heated up; Annatar can feel his heartbeat in them. Touching the new rings is not pleasant at all, but he does it anyway, maps where the metal interrupts his flesh. Then he stands from the chair, and turns his senses on Celebrimbor’s movement behind the washroom door. The Elf had opened a drawer to retrieve his hand mirror, but now he tarries, one hand on the basin and the other pressed to his face. A few breaths, before he straightens and walks back.
One of the most interesting things about Celebrimbor is that inside his body, his precarious living body, dwells a mind so alike, in so many ways, to Annatar’s own. One of the most unsettling things is that its true and deep motions might remain entirely opaque to him.
Emerging into view again, Celebrimbor’s hair catches the evening light. A few strands have come loose, as they always do, and they sway as he offers the mirror. “Behold, the results of an experiment. I hope you find them to your liking.”
“I do,” says Annatar. He turns his head to see the metal shine. “I always seem to, in our collaborative projects. For that is the only thing to call it: I made this form long ago, but now you have lent your hand to its making as well. Yes, I understand how your people came to place so much meaning on this custom. It is a tying-together.”
Celebrimbor sets the mirror down on the desk. He stands very close before him, and very still, a rare sight indeed. Meeting Annatar’s eyes and holding them, he lifts one deliberate hand, as if to seek the contours of some thorny problem, some precious solution. He leaves enough time to pull back, but Annatar does not.
The hand settles on the side of his face.
No weakness apparent in that touch. None at all.
“So do you know yourself, Annatar?” he asks.
Annatar mimics his gesture, reaching for him in turn. Perhaps he has always rather wanted to. Celebrimbor’s cheek feels cool to the touch, but only because of the unusual warmth always present in his own skin, and he notes with a pulse of satisfaction how the Elf reacts. A near-imperceptible shift of the head and widening of the eyes. Still, Celebrimbor’s gaze does not waver.
Voice as sure as ever, Annatar answers, “Yes.”
Like the crystal turned in the light, the meanings multiply within the finite space. They remain that way a moment, caught, each one watching the other, and neither willing to fold first.