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Annatar fed the cat delicately, holding between his thumb and his forefinger the thinnest strips of dripping red meat. The cat leapt from the rug each time to catch them, and for a while Celebrimbor pretended not to notice.
Eventually, he turned a page in the monograph which he was reading and hummed. “Have you found a suitable replacement for my company, then?”
“I am fond of cats.” The creature was overeager, springing high and catching Annatar’s fingers with her pretty teeth. Annatar made a point to appear generously unperturbed by the sudden sting, the beading of blood where a canine had torn a cuticle. “They are fairly intelligent animals. I have encountered some of them even clever enough to gain admission into the Mírdain, under these new standards of yours.”
Celebrimbor raised a brow. Turned another page. Annatar wondered if he was reading at all. “You are going to cost her a mousing job in the pantries, spoiling her like that.”
Annatar thought he knew better than Celebrimbor how to incentivize a predator to work for him. He did not say so.
“I am entertaining the idea of taking her as my newest pet,” he said instead, and Celebrimbor hummed again. Still, his ears twitched irritably, and Annatar thought this tiniest of barbs was not lost on him. He reclined, turning his eyes to the ceiling and allowing a subtle curve to his mouth, so that when Celebrimbor ventured a furtive glance at Annatar, the tips of his bejeweled ears flicked again.
“Might we discuss the matter then?” There was the sound of a gently closed book, a shifting body on the adjacent couch. The anteroom to Celebrimbor’s bedroom had long been rearranged in a fashion most conducive to these private evenings, in which Celebrimbor talked while Annatar annotated the former’s schematics, or Celebrimbor read while Annatar feigned to doze, or they both drank and Celebrimbor spoke somewhat less respectfully of his elder cousin while Annatar listened. “I know you are angry with me, my friend.”
“I took no offense,” said Annatar placidly to the ceiling. Celebrimbor scoffed.
“And yet she purposed to offend.”
“That is not lost on me,” Annatar hummed. Something flared in his breast—long-kindled annoyance which he took care now to conceal. “If the Lady Galadriel believes it necessary to announce when she is keeping secrets, and from whom, then I will endeavor to respect her wisdom.”
He felt Celebrimbor look at him long and hard. Annatar gestured vaguely in acknowledgement of his gaze.
“You are angry,” determined Celebrimbor again. He was intent on making this an unavoidable conversation. Annatar would oblige.
“I am quite furious,” he agreed.
“With me, and not my cousin?”
Prettily, Annatar sighed. The cat leapt up onto the couch and settled against his thigh.
“It is the manner of secret-keeping, and not so much the secret itself, which I find offensive.” This was slightly untrue. Annatar’s teeth were tight, too crowded in his mouth, but he smiled indulgently. “Primarily, it is the fact that you agreed to this theater, and embarrassed me so—”
“It was not pointed insult on my part, Annatar, to allow my cousin her request.”
“I believe it was.” Annatar knew it was yet a treacherous move, to challenge Celebrimbor’s trust in his cousin over his trust in his Lord of Gifts. Despite Celebrimbor’s increasingly frequent complaints about Galadriel’s administrative decisions, Galadriel’s beauty and her well-spokenness—pathologically confused for wisdom among the Eldar—still inspired loyalty in him. Affection , perhaps, of a familial sort about which Annatar knew too little to undermine in whole. “But I shall forgive it—”
“Forgive it!” echoed Celebrimbor with indignation. “I have not yet requested your forgiveness, my friend.”
Annatar hummed. His too-sharp, too-long teeth drew coppery blood in his mouth. He asked, with all the grace of a benevolent god: “Will you?”
Celebrimbor picked up his book again. Annatar could envision his scowl against his eyelids. It was a compelling expression, moreso for its uncommonality. Celebrimbor did not typically offer up his anger, electing rather to let it simmer long within him for Annatar to admire from an unsuspicious distance.
Annatar waited. Celebrimbor turned a page in the monograph.
“She is departing from Ost-in-Edhil,” Celebrimbor said. “Celeborn shall remain.”
“I see,” said Annatar. There were less teeth in his mouth now. Victory loosened his jaw. “I see.”
“You need not pretend that does not please you,” said Celebrimbor irritably. “I know how you feel about my cousin.”
Annatar doubted this. The extent of his feelings about Galadriel would have made Celebrimbor a touch uncomfortable, venturing as they did into fantasies of dining on her eyes, of bisecting her clever tongue with a paper knife.
“How do you feel?” Annatar looked to Celebrimbor at last, smoothing his expression to reflect a quiet tenderness. (Celebrimbor met his gaze eagerly, as if he had been waiting quite long for Annatar to look at him.) “You and the Lady have been on unsteady footing as of late.”
Celebrimbor grimaced. He said, “I hope that is not so obvious in the councilroom as it is in private—”
“Of course not.” Annatar waved a hand to dismiss the thought. “You have been as gracious as always.”
This was also slightly untrue. Celebrimbor’s frustration had a tendency to make him curt and cool, and—though he had wits enough to speak to Galadriel with only the respect that her title begot—his actions often belied him. He pinched the bridge of his nose now, betraying his displeasure with the course of this evening’s conversation.
Annatar sighed, and reached for him. He touched Celebrimbor's knee softly.
“My friend,” said Annatar kindly. “Let us discuss something else.” Having received his confession, Annatar had little desire to listen to Celebrimbor elaborate upon Galadriel’s poor opinion of him.
“No—it is fine. I regret that it came to this. It has not been my intention to drive her out, and I do not believe it will be perceived as such by the city’s majority—it can hardly be said, even by my detractors, that I am in any way politically ambitious—” Celebrimbor paused abruptly, appeared to register that he was getting ahead of himself. Annatar tipped his head sympathetically.
After a beat, Celebrimbor waved a hand. Exhaled sharply. “I am sorry for the offense,” he resumed. “You should not be used as a token of politicking between my cousin and me.”
Well. Annatar had not wanted to be the one to say it. He simply hummed his agreement, but he was markedly pleased.
“Thank you for your apology,” he said primly, and Celebrimbor snorted. Picked back up his book. Turned another page.
And yet, there was something not-unpleasant in Celebrimbor’s demeanor. Quietly, he laid his left hand over Annatar’s, upon his knee.
:
The departure of Galadriel marked no immediate change in Annatar’s dealings in Ost-in-Edhil.
He did not, with fresh vigor, whisper blasphemies into the ear of Celebrimbor, lead craftsman of the Mírdain. Annatar and Celebrimbor worked, and Annatar did not sleep, and thus he worked further into the nights, and he noted Galadriel’s absence mostly at dinners, which Annatar began almost to enjoy.
(And if Celebrimbor, now burdened in the wake of his cousin with statecraft, turned more frequently to Annatar for counsel, Annatar had no complaints.)
(Or, at least, he had very few.)
“You are boring me,” he said, lounging as he was upon his usual couch in Celebrimbor’s apartments. Annatar sipped pointedly from his cup.
“My sincerest apologies,” hummed Celebrimbor from the adjacent couch, though he sounded not at all apologetic. He made a brief annotation on the sheaf of papers balanced in his lap, and did not look up. “I am certain you can find something with which to entertain yourself.”
There were indeed many entertainments in Celebrimbor’s apartment, though very few of them were novel to Annatar. Of the contents of Celebrimbor’s personal library, Annatar had read nearly everything. Celebrimbor kept copies of Mírdain apprentice theses in his apartment, likely out of some sentimental bit of pride—Annatar had read them all, even presided over the writing of quite a few, and had long ago written in their margins critiques of everything he found unoriginal, poorly supported, or simply unforgivably dull.
Celebrimbor made another note in the folder. Annatar drained his teacup.
“I am not convinced that you are meant to actually read whatever they put upon your desk,” Annatar said. “I think irrigation budgeting is something that one delegates .”
“I was asked to review it,” replied Celebrimbor absently. “Several days ago now. Arasseglir has done me many such favors—”
“Arasseglir could not tell gold from brass,” Annatar dismissed irritably. “She should not be reviewing any of your work.”
Celebrimbor made a vague gesture which may have been intended to placate Annatar. Roundly unplacated, Annatar refilled his cup.
“If you intend to continue dabbling in civil service, I might inform you that many of the books in the center library are dangerously unusable.” Annatar reclined again as Celebrimbor hummed mildly.
“You were in the center library?”
Annatar sniffed. “The Mírdain’s collection is far from inexhaustible.” There had been a great deal of children in the center library, open as it was to any denizen or visitor to the city, and with few documents of real note even in the dusty archive, Annatar had been generally displeased with the excursion. He had tasted the residual acridity on his fingertips, in the subtle way that tasteless poisons prickled at the superior receptors in his mouth, and had simmered with irritation at a city of unwitting denizens who might perish from the handling of their own reading materials. Annatar did not approve of senseless waste. “Though the books there are better kept, and less poisonous. You might ask your companion Arasseglir to inquire with the local bookbinders as to where they are sourcing their leather.”
“A good deal of the central library comes from abroad,” replied Celebrimbor, though he had looked up from his confounded editing at the notification of this new crisis. “And most from outside the city. If the leather is not good—”
“Deadly, I would think, if not for you then at least for your mortal peers.” Annatar shrugged. “Cutting the covers from volumes which arrive from outside Ost-in-Edhil ought to diminish the likelihood.”
Celebrimbor frowned. “That seems expensive, not to mention indecorous.”
“Expensive and indecorous too would be the deaths of your Khazad ambassadors from contaminated pulp romances.” Annatar waved a hand. “Though if you could afford me some of your valuable time, we could devise a more elegant chemical test for Ost-in-Edhil’s imported organic materials—”
“You already have generous command of my valuable time,” Celebrimbor interrupted, though without any real annoyance. Annatar smiled indulgently, taking little care to conceal his sharper teeth.
“Be more generous, then,” he proposed, and then, charmingly, he tilted his head. “For more often than not, my dear friend, I feel your absence quite deeply.”
He was rewarded with the unmistakable tide of Celebrimbor’s amusement, and with Celebrimbor setting aside his pen.
:
He was looking at Annatar with a wide sort of affection. The bottle stood between them on the table, uncorked and half-empty.
There were no budget proposals or policy memos stacked upon the table surface. Annatar had been perusing a dissertation draft—unimpressive, largely, and he was beginning again to regret taking on students to demonstrate to Celebrimbor his magnanimity and his professed desire to teach —but he had discarded it on the couch beside him, and the cat slept now curled atop it, wrinkling the paper.
There was paint drying on Celebrimbor’s fingers. He was no renowned portraitist; as he had told Annatar in days past, his mother had been the artist, and Celebrimbor merely the hobbyist.
In actuality, he was not very good. Annatar had inspected the canvas following the application of Celebrimbor’s efforts upon it, and found the rendition of his own shape—all sharp angles, exceedingly pale, wearing a mossy yellow-green which Celebrimbor had not quite managed to accurately convey in the paint mixing—somewhat disappointing.
“Is this how I look to you?” he asked, lifting a lip disdainfully at the composition (which had been conceived by the laziest application of oil paints to stretched canvas, more often with a palette knife than a paintbrush). “I am not sure I care for your style.”
Celebrimbor twirled the palette knife absently, thumbed at a smudge of green-gold paint on his first right knuckle. The chiefest smith of Eregion was left-handed, though both of his brown hands were daubed with accidental color now. His smile was slow, a little tipsy, and only really touched half of his mouth.
“Quick little tokens like this,” he murmured unapologetically, “were more impressive in my youth.”
“But not very,” Annatar said, affording himself a bit of disdain. “I suspect.”
“That is one reason I did not pursue a vocation in portraiture.” Unabashed, Celebrimbor laughed. He gestured with the hand yet brandishing the palette knife, moving as if he meant to mar the offending canvas with a confident swipe through the wet oils. Annatar stayed him by a touch at the wrist.
“One may not have a talent for everything,” Annatar admitted, unconvincingly, though he looked over the painting again. In it, he was reclined artfully over the chaise, the dissertation of questionable value wilting uninspiringly in his hands. His fingers were spiderishly long, his gold-embroidered sleeves painted with more care and detail than his thin hands, and Celebrimbor had taken no artistic liberty to depict his fana any taller. (Annatar stood a head beneath his companion, and had not known at the moment of Singing this flesh that such a difference in stature, originally intended to make him appear deferential , would eventually become so irritating.) There was a slight and disuniform pinkening to Annatar’s painted face, which he took to be an unflattering attempt to convey a sense of imperfection , for he knew Celebrimbor favored his imagined relatable flaws. Perhaps the portraitist also meant to suggest that Annatar was somewhat inebriated, for he had included in the painted foreground the table and the open bottle of wine.
(Annatar was, in fact, somewhat inebriated.)
“Nonetheless,” he resolved after this contemplative moment, and he withdrew his touch from Celebrimbor’s wrist. “It is a disturbing depiction.”
“ Disturbing ,” echoed Celebrimbor, and he sounded a touch smug. “If my intention had been to offend your vain sensibilities—”
“I suspect it was indeed to do so—”
“ If that had been my intention, I could certainly have made you uglier.” He was demonstrably self-satisfied now, and despite Annatar’s unpleasant review of his work, the creeping laughter in Celebrimbor’s voice was not at Celebrimbor’s own expense. “At the most, I would say I have made you unremarkable, and if you wished to be painted as a great divinity by one experiencing religious ecstasy, you should not have spilled wine on my couch cushions.”
Annatar curled his lip. “Or I may have found a properly devout and trained portraitist, and not a blaspheming scoundrel who should have been barred from the purchase of paints quite a few centuries ago.”
“Yes,” agreed Celebrimbor with satisfaction. Now he scraped the palette knife through the applied oils, effectively eliminating the painted Annatar’s pale throat and the finer characteristics of his hands. “Or that.”
He placed the marred canvas on the table beside the wine. Annatar experienced the briefest creep of regret at its spoiling—he was indeed vain, and he had liked being the subject of even such injurious artwork.
“Lesser Maiar than I,” he said at last, “are charmed by the incarnate desire to cultivate hobbies from crafts at which they do not excel.”
Celebrimbor simply looked at him, unimpressed. “I find no personal advantage to agonizing over perfection here. This is recreational.” Annatar felt that Celebrimbor was sermonizing at him, and narrowed his eyes accordingly.
Celebrimbor reached for the bottle upon the table. Annatar, with as little thought, reached with him and again caught his paint-smudged wrist. (His hands were rather long, comparatively. Annatar sought vaguely, slightly tipsily, to recall if he had derived that aspect of his body from any of his elven reference models, or if this had been an overlooked artistic liberty. He had never before considered the question.)
With a trace of his thumb against carpal bones, Annatar banished every daub of paint from Celebrimbor’s skin. Then he took the bottle by its slender neck and refilled his own cup before he offered the courtesy to Celebrimbor.
The chiefest smith of the Mírdain looked amused. Annatar suspected it was again at his expense—perhaps, it was his insistence on touching Celebrimbor for sundry fastidious reasons tonight, which had suddenly become obvious to Annatar too.
“What?” Annatar demanded, and then to prove some antithetical point regarding his intentions, he extracted the wine stain from the couch cushions with an annoyed gesture. “I am recreating an environment conducive to religious ecstasy.”
He was putting too much weight behind his consonants. He hoped his slight inebriation would be disarming enough to endear as much as it could embarrass.
Celebrimbor’s gaze widened for the briefest of moments, and a detectable warmth flooded his cheeks. Annatar’s companion buried his gaze in his cup, and Annatar woke the cat by scratching behind her ears.
“Really,” Annatar said. The cat rolled to her side and observed him languidly. “We must discuss this bleeding heart of yours. This —” He gestured at the dissertation beneath the cat. “Is execrable.”
It was not quite so bad—lacking in imagination, certainly, and obnoxiously reactionary, but there was little fault to the methodology. Indeed, there could be little fault to the methodology even if the dissertation’s author did not present such an adept mastery of theoretical mathematics in her daily pursuits. But she had clearly striven to supplant originality in her work with flattery, and done so poorly, for Annatar could not endorse the usage of his own equations for a project so dull.
“They are your students,” Celebrimbor pointed out. “You are selecting them. I do not see how my compassion comes into the matter.”
Annatar snorted. Compassion, too, he found inapplicable to the situation.
“You are also one of my students,” he reminded archly.
“Mhm.” When he said no more, Annatar lifted his gaze to him. “Does that make your poor taste my problem?”
Annatar laughed, and surprised himself with it. “My taste is quite impeccable, and my students are expertly chosen.”
“Though you are not working from your preferred stock,” Celebrimbor said graciously, and notably insincerely. As if speaking disparagingly of himself , the second choice, would award him the point in this game.
Annatar lifted his lip. “You are seeking reassurances of your own adequacy.”
“That would be foolish.” Celebrimbor’s mouth curved, and he tapped a finger to his cup. “You are not the reassuring type.”
Annatar was seized by the sudden desire to eat him. He thought it showed on his face, though Celebrimbor did not look either frightened or apologetic. He hummed, and touched his thumb to his lower lip.
Annatar stood, extricating himself from the cat, and looked at Celebrimbor reprovingly.
“I have chosen my students for their potentiality. You , insufferable as you are—” Here Celebrimbor smiled, unoffended. “—you make possible the apotheosis of many futures which we have often discussed in this room. Not due to your skill in mathematics—”
“Though that certainly helps,” Celebrimbor murmured, amused.
“Be silent.” Celebrimbor tipped his head back against a cushion. “You, certainly, should understand my disappointment when I see such potentiality squandered in favor of a lazy paper, an ill-suited craft, and mediocre expectations.” Annatar strangled the urge to pace. He was not so bidden to anxious patterns and compulsions as that.
“Redhril’s defense of archaic silver alloys is hardly going to usher the apotheosis of any of our discussed futures,” agreed Celebrimbor.
“And that is the source of my frustration, precisely.” Annatar brought a hand through his own hair, and noticed that he had indeed begun to pace. He frowned.
“If only you could puppeteer us lesser creatures to enact the futures that you envision,” Celebrimbor remarked languidly from the couch. “With no detours of mediocrity or ill-suited crafts.”
“Do not tempt me,” said Annatar sharply, and startled when Celebrimbor caught his hand. He knew there was some—mild, but nevertheless unfortunate—surprise reflected in his face, by the flicker in Celebrimbor’s own eyes.
“Annatar,” Celebrimbor said lowly, and still he smiled very slightly at his expense. Annatar wanted to bite him. “Sit. You are going to wear grooves in the floor.”
Celebrimbor pressed his thumb lightly into the center of Annatar’s long palm. Annatar sat.
“Here.” Celebrimbor delivered his filled cup into Annatar’s hands. “Drink.”
Annatar scowled. “You make a habit of diverting unpleasant conversations—”
“Only when they are unnecessary,” Celebrimbor hummed. “Or when they are not my problem. Drop Redhril, if she is no longer worth your time. Are you really looking to me for permission to do so?”
“Certainly not.” Annatar sniffed. “I am simply—” Complaining was beneath him, an inadequate description. He gestured vaguely. “Exploring an argument.”
“Mhm.” Celebrimbor’s fingers worked a small plait into his own dark hair. On the adjacent couch, the cat had gone contentedly back to sleep. “If that is all.”
Annatar knew the irritation in his own expression, could taste the disdain in his mouth. He said, rather plainly, “Celebrimbor of Eregion. I am going to eat you.”
And Celebrimbor laughed. His teeth flashed, and there was a warmth in him not wholly attributed to what they had been drinking.
His fingers had ceased to fiddle with his hair. Annatar caught those of his right hand as they drifted aimlessly downward.
“Too often you lack the gravity one would expect from conversations with Ainur.”
“Do I?” Celebrimbor tilted his chin. “Are you reprimanding or commending me, my friend?”
“Neither.” Annatar examined Celebrimbor’s palm. “I am accusing you of insufficient faith.”
“A bit of both then,” Celebrimbor presumed, and he drew up his hand, and Annatar’s with it. He touched his mouth to Annatar’s fingers.
“Insufferable,” determined Annatar again, and then he lifted his other hand and wrapped it loosely against Celebrimbor’s throat.
Celebrimbor’s expression now reflected no amusement. He looked expectant; his breath was shallow and his pulse galloped. Annatar applied no pressure to his trachea. He observed the dilation of Celebrimbor’s pupils, as wide as a cat’s.
He did not eat him.
After a long anticipatory pause, Celebrimbor’s left hand drifted, touched Annatar at the wrist. Quietly—somewhat tenderly even, which was absurd in the moment—he detached Annatar’s fingers from his throat.
Celebrimbor deposited them with their too long, too pale counterparts in Annatar’s lap.
“Well,” Celebrimbor said at last, with as little gravity as he did cheer. “If that is all.”
:
Annatar filled the cup. He made an effort to press it into Celebrimbor’s hands, though these were heavy and uncooperative, and Celebrimbor was most resolutely looking above and beyond Annatar’s shoulder.
Annatar made his voice soft. He touched the glass to Celebrimbor’s lower lip and spoke. “I believe it costs more effort than it is worth, to make this point. Drink.”
Celebrimbor drank, though only through Annatar’s ministrations. When he made another attempt to deposit the cup into Celebrimbor’s responsibility, his fingers were limp.
“These are my rooms.” He made to sit, shifting his weight onto his too thin wrist and drawing himself painfully upward. Annatar made no movement to assist.
“Yes.” Annatar swept a demonstrative hand beyond them. Celebrimbor’s rooms were impeccably replicated, down to his nigh incomprehensible shelving system of the annotated Mírdain theses. “Is it a comfort?”
Sitting upright had proven too difficult; the most recent incident involving Celebrimbor’s hands had left them with insuppressible tremors, and furthermore an inability to support his weight. A quiet cry had escaped him in the attempt, which Annatar had politely ignored, and Celebrimbor remained as he had been, not uncomfortably reclined against the green cushions of the old couch.
Nevertheless, he panted. Lashes flickered, and Annatar glimpsed a roll of white in dark eyes. Irritably, he considered the potential waste of this expensive time and effort, were consciousness to abandon Celebrimbor now.
“It is,” said Celebrimbor, voice faint, “distasteful.”
Annatar had hardly expected Celebrimbor to kiss his hands in gratitude for this illusory excavation of his old rooms in Ost-in-Edhil, nor to enthusiastically commend the craftsmanship of such a complete reconstruction. He did, however, simmer at his guest’s complete lack of awe.
“Distasteful.” He savored the review, keeping his teeth behind his lips. “There are a great many things more distasteful, Celebrimbor.”
The threat found little purchase. Faintly, Celebrimbor waved a hand. “This one can be endured.” The couch, per its extinct Ost-in-Edhil predecessor, was a touch worn, far from luxurious, and yet comfortable enough to tempt one to forgo a bed in the late evenings. Annatar, even, had feigned to sleep on it in a handful of instances.
Celebrimbor turned his cheek against the shabby velvet. “You are golden again.”
He typically was, for it served him. Annatar may have been stripped down, unveiled as a deceit, but it was still the shape with the greatest probability of working Celebrimbor pliant. Annatar dipped his head.
“Familiar friends for familiar places.”
Celebrimbor was racked with a cough. Annatar suspected he had intended a laugh, the barbs of it catching in his throat. He waited, then offered Celebrimbor the cup of lukewarm water, and in his preoccupation with choking on his own cynical amusement, Celebrimbor accepted the gift. He gasped, then tipped the cup with shaking hands to his mouth and spilled half the contents down his front.
“Celebrimbor,” suffered Annatar, as he quietly removed the cup from Celebrimbor’s unsteady grip. “Really.”
One trembling, previously vivisected hand came to press to Celebrimbor’s mouth. The other twisted compulsively at his loose collar, tapping an uneven rhythm against the hollow of his own throat.
He rasped through the cage of his fingers: “If you are hoping to ply me with a memory of friendship —”
“I have no intention of plying you with anything this evening, Celebrimbor.” The destruction of his hands was still too recent—the inflicted nerve damage meant that the shaking would persist indefinitely beyond the fading of any incision scars, and this had been Annatar’s intention, but he knew better than to employ one effective tactic too soon on the heels of another. Celebrimbor was becoming unpleasantly brittle, and Annatar had no desire to spur another episode of catatonia. “I was only thinking—undoubtedly selfishly—that I missed this space, and you inside it.”
“ Selfishly ,” murmured Celebrimbor against his fingers. “Undoubtedly.”
“Though it is true that you also benefit.” A fire crackled beneath the mantle, as warm and real as Annatar himself, and the room smelled faintly and pleasantly like incense. Celebrimbor looked marginally less ill, and marginally more comfortable, than he had in a long time. “Perhaps I was also thinking compassionately.”
Whites flashed beneath dark lashes again. Celebrimbor had rolled his eyes.
“ Sauron —” he began with teeth, which was unpleasant. Annatar turned over his hand and the cat leapt onto Celebrimbor’s belly and settled there, purring.
Celebrimbor made a sound, part surprise and part pain, as the weighty reality of the cat impacted with his softly insulated organs. Then there was emotion; the cat had long since died naturally, and had done so in this very room. Annatar had been fond, and even Celebrimbor (who had with poor taste confessed himself more partial to hounds) had liked her very much.
Tentatively, he placed a shivering hand on her spine. The purring progressed to a loud, contented rumble.
“Distasteful,” Celebrimbor said, and Annatar asked, “Would you prefer I remove her?” and Celebrimbor said, “No.”
He appeared, at least, to recognize that he had been plied. His drawn face was reproachful. There was a tinge of self-directed disappointment.
Sulking had never suited him. Annatar stood, plucked a book from the shelves, and charted a slow, wide arc in returning to his seat. Celebrimbor watched him carefully, openly, seeking any indicators of intended predation.
“Come,” said Annatar, and he paused before Celebrimbor, at an arm’s length, considered the possibilities of settling beside him on the green couch. This would be indulgent to the extreme, but also likely to prompt that irritating fear response which Celebrimbor had cultivated of late—white-rolling eyes, slack hands, inelegant unconsciousness snatching him by the throat.
Annatar sat on the adjacent couch, propped his ankle upon his knee. He opened the book, which had been purposefully retrieved from among the detritus of Celebrimbor’s real rooms some time ago, and began to read. “Collect yourself. Your anticipation of pain is only tempting me to the practice.”
“You mean to—placate me—with that?”
“I mean to caution you. You are hyperventilating again.”
“Sauron—”
The cat unspooled so fluidly that her puppet strings were nigh undetectable. She turned her head and bit Celebrimbor’s hand.
The sound which fled him was an overreaction: the choke of brief pain, of surprise, and then the caught sniff of suppressed tears. Annatar waited patiently for Celebrimbor to reorient.
“We can sit in silence, if you would like. Or we could speak on a topic of your choosing.”
“Are you leading a seminar now?”
“I believe we have long since reached the limits of what you can be taught.”
A touch of old pride. “Impossible.”
“Fine. Then I have no curriculum prepared on such short notice.”
“This also seems unlikely.”
“Perhaps then I simply find you insufferable, and I have retired from teaching those who misappropriate my instruction.”
To this Celebrimbor nodded, and he said nothing.
Annatar said, “I could read aloud, if you would like.”
There followed a heavy pause. Celebrimbor looked to Annatar’s hands.
“Is it real?” Celebrimbor asked quietly, meaning the book.
“Implying that this isn’t ,” seethed Annatar, meaning the room. Nevertheless, he tilted the book to reveal its well-worn cover. “It had been yours.”
Celebrimbor sank against the green cushions. His mouth twisted, split lips bloodying anew from the expended effort. He looks quite martyrish in the foreground of all this comfortably shabby luxury, only slightly less lovely for the knowledge that Celebrimbor’s misery was, at the moment, both self-inflicted and largely an affectation.
Annatar might have preserved such a tableau, had he employed a portraitist or a talented taxidermist. He had saved from the fires little of Ost-in-Edhil but the most compelling of her books, the singular most interesting of her smiths. But while Annatar could keep the books from red rot, could tend them in the manner of the best archivist, there was little to be done about the smith, who had simply decided to spite him at every turn.
The cat settled again atop Celebrimbor’s chest and resumed her purring. Celebrimbor pressed a trembling hand into her soft flank, and indicated with the other at Annatar.
Annatar turned to the beginning of this newest addition to his personal library, and he began to read aloud.