Chapter Text
"My love," Oloste's mother said, "have you heard? Of his return?"
Oloste tried not to brush her hair too harshly at her mother's words. They were in her rooms and her mother -- ever so fast to appear in Oloste's doorway, ready to suffocate and shower her daughter with love in equal measure -- had come for dinner. Oloste had been told the news days previously, but knew as soon as her mother walked in that it was first now that the public had been made aware.
A second son of Fëanáro had been released from the Halls.
"Yes, mother," she said.
"And?"
"And what? There is nothing to say."
"Oh, don't act with me. There's plenty to say. To him, presumably."
Oloste took a deep breath.
"No, there's not. I have my son with me, and Nerdanel has one of hers returned. We have nothing to say to each other."
Oloste's mother sometimes had moments of clarity, where her sharpness took on another edge, one more dangerous to those around her. It was this clarity that now showed through.
"Whether you want it or not, you are bound by marriage. If you have nothing to say to him, that can only mean he has something to say to you. And then what will you do?"
"Lock the door."
"Oloste."
"What do you want me to say? I don't want to see the man. May he right his wrongs and find his place in Aman again, but it will not be with me."
"And what will Nerdanel say?"
Oloste hesitated, thinking of strong Nerdanel, who had become like a second mother through the years. How she, Colinde and Verciel had all become like her three daughters living under her roof, trying to come to terms with a new life.
Nerdanel would probably be disappointed, but not surprised. It had been difficult not to show Oloste's opinions on Curufinwë's exploits and place in her life.
"She will accept my decision and move on," Oloste snapped.
"And Celebrimbor?"
That made her halt in her movements to put on a necklace. It was with a little guilt she admitted to herself that she had forgotten him.
"He will do the same. He, if anyone, understands my issues with his father."
That was not wholly true; while Celebrimbor had certainly gone against Curufinwë, he also bore a wish to forgive. He had told Oloste that he would rather have his father back and yell at him, than never see him again. Oloste's willingness to ignore and forget her husband was likely strange to her son.
And Oloste did not have the most wondrous relationship with her son, these days, though she prided herself in that it was still better than whatever Curufinwë had shared with him.
"Your sisters-in-law will most likely come and greet him."
Oloste thought her mother was exaggerating Colinde and especially Verciel's feeling of duty to Nerdanel. Colinde would likely come, as she had done with Turkafinwë, and support their mother-in-law with the practical matters, but Verciel would not. Maybe for a visit some weeks later, to check up on how they were doing and, to Oloste's delight, scare her brother-in-law.
She had so enjoyed showing Turkafinwë her teeth, Oloste remembered with a smile. It soon disappeared however when she turned to her mother again:
"Perhaps for a day or two. For Nerdanel. But by now we all expect Nerdanel to be able to handle it and to call upon us if she is in need of assistance."
Her mother raised an eyebrow.
"And if she calls upon you?"
"Then I will come, but make clear to her that I would rather keep my distance."
Her mother hummed. Oloste ignored it, only put on earrings made from pearl, given to her by Verciel, and rose to go down to the table. She dared not tell her mother what really was on her mind: that even now, thousands of years later, she could not resist thinking that her husband would frown at the sight of her wearing pearls, rather than the jewellery he had made for her. That she was never free of him, never had been, and she need not see him, because he was always near her in one way or another. Like a ghost, but one she had made up herself.
"How did it go?" Oloste asked Colinde days later, when she knew Curufinwë had arrived at his mother's house, because she had felt it in the air in the city and kept herself indoors.
Colinde sipped on her tea before answering. They sat in Colinde's garden, technically in Nerdanel's house, but so separate that it was practically its own house. Colinde had her own rooms, her own garden, and one had to walk down several corridors before entering the quarters that Fëanor and Nerdanel's family had once occupied, back in the days when the Trees still lived. When Colinde, Oloste and Verciel had moved in with Nerdanel, they had lived closer to their mother-in-law, but as time passed and they needed each other's help less and less, Colinde had taken more separate rooms and Verciel had moved back to Alqualondë. Oloste had moved back to the house she and Curufinwë once had lived in, because her son had returned.
Now, her sister-in-law sat quietly, choosing her words carefully. Always so careful, Colinde had been. When Oloste had first met her, she had judged her as her husband had done, but now she held a greater respect for it. It had been Colinde who had taken care of their finances, she had seen to that they had food. She had dared meet the eyes of strangers in the street before Oloste even dared go outside.
"He was quiet," she said at last. "Not like Turkafinwë, not like he didn't dare to. More like he had forgotten how to speak, with us or with anyone."
That only bewildered Oloste -- Curufinwë, without his silver-tongue? Impossible.
"So- so he said nothing?"
"He said plenty, it only took some time for him to relearn. He spoke mostly with Nerdanel, avoided talking with Turkafinwë," Colinde hummed. "I think it upset Turkafinwë, actually. I think he expected some support."
"He's been lonely, I suppose," Oloste speculated. "He was the first to be reembodied and it's not like he can go to any of his reembodied cousins to talk with someone as him."
The only other grandchildren of Finwë who lived in Tirion were Nolofinwë's children and even though Irissë had been a friend of Turkafinwë, she was seldom seen in the city, but kept to the woods and friends far away, maybe spending time with her son, who dared not come close to any city of the Noldor.
'Aman is filled with scared ghosts', Oloste mused.
"That's on him," Colinde said. "He hasn't sought any out. And anyway, Curufin was not keen on talking with him, but I presume that is only for now. They will find each other again, in time."
Oloste wrinkled her nose. Colinde gave her an amused smile at the sight.
"What did you expect? Would you rather he sit alone and brood, with no company at all?"
"I would rather have him still in the Halls," Oloste said truthfully.
"Because it would be easier?"
"Yes," Oloste said. "I could continue like I have for the last hundred years, talk with my son, get to know him again, and not have to worry that his father will storm in and take over. Again."
"Celebrimbor wasn't there yesterday to meet his father."
"He will come," Oloste assured. "He wants to meet him, to talk or forgive or yell. Probably all three."
"He doesn't with you?" Colinde asked. "Talk and yell and forgive you?"
Oloste looked down on her lap, where she rested one of Colinde's teacups in her hands. Her hands had become softer in the last few years, as she had stopped labouring and working with them. When her son was small, she had spent as much time with him in the forge or workshop as his father. Now when she entered the forge her son occupied, she was a stranger to the place. Her son was grown. He looked at her and they talked, yet they could not bridge that emptiness between them. Oloste sometimes wondered if Celebrimbor even wanted to.
"No," she only answered. Her sister-in-law understood without any more having to be said.
"You have a better foundation to build on than Curufin," Colinde said. "At least you have done him no harm."
"I did not go with him."
This was a conversation they had had a hundred times, ever since they began living together in Nerdanel's too big house. When the darkness surrounded them and only the herd gave them light, and Oloste dared voice her doubts to her sisters, who shared the same burden.
"A wise decision," Colinde said, as she always did. "For you did not have to see your husband turn bitter, you did not have to take a stand against him, you did not have to choose between son and husband. You did not have to bear the shame of blood on your hands."
Oloste was silent.
"You have to get to know your son, whereas Curufin has to ask for forgiveness. Both of you face a challenge, but they are not necessarily greater than the other, only different."
"Curufinwë knows him. I do not."
"Curufin knew Celebrimbor in Nargothrond. He did not know him in Lindon or in Hollin. Neither of you have all the pieces," Colinde said, and then added: "As you should. Children grow up to leave their parents, to become something else. You cannot have your son as you had him when he was an elfling, for he is one no longer."
All this Oloste already knew, but it made her tired to think of.
"Why do you call him Curufin?" she asked, to change subject.
"He asked us to. It is not very strange, apparently most reembodied prefer their Sindarin names. Finrod is seldom called Ingoldo, after all."
"Turkafinwë never asked us to call him Celegorm," Oloste said, finding the Sindarin name strange on her tongue, untrained in that language as she was.
"Turkafinwë never asked us anything. He hid away, preferring us not to see him at all."
Oloste snorted.
"I must say, I enjoy your fearless approach to him. It is refreshing."
"Well," Colinde said in a rare stroke of boldness, "I do live with him. I can't go and coddle him."
Next, Oloste went to see her son. Celebrimbor's forge was situated far away from the guilds and workshops of smiths, nearly hidden away in an alley. Oloste often wondered what drove her son to hide his craft -- maybe the burden of his choices in Hollin still plagued him. Or maybe he wished for solitude, as many artists did.
She saw the smoke and knew he was there, which was why she did not knock on his door -- for he lived in a small house just by the forge, like a common man, and wasn't that a pleasant surprise? That Curufinwë had not raised him too proud? --, but she instead went straight into the fire, so to speak.
"Tyelpe?" she called.
"Yes?" came from the innermost part, where detailed work was done.
'Should I ask if he prefers Celebrimbor?'
"Ah, there you are," she said instead as she came around and saw him bent over a table, with small tools for jewelwork. She could make out what looked like a necklace -- she must have disturbed just as he was on his way to fasten the jewels that lay scattered around the metalwork.
"Apologies, did I disturb you?"
"No, no- not in anything important at least. It can wait."
Her son gave her a smile, one that would reassure her. She smiled back, though it lost its joyful part when she continued:
"I just came from Colinde, had tea with her. I mean- I assume you've heard that your father returned yesterday?"
"Ah," was all Celebrimbor said, as if he realised Oloste's errand.
"I am not here to bother you with it," she said. "You- She just told me how it had gone and I thought to come see you, see what you are up to."
'I shouldn't have mentioned Curufinwë at all', she thought.
"To hear how it has gone for me? With father?"
"No! No, I just-"
"A distraction?"
Oloste sighed. "Something more like that."
Celebrimbor looked down on the necklace, and Oloste had no idea what he was thinking. When he looked back at her, he was frowning.
"Is this what I will have to do from now on? Distract you from each other?"
Oloste cursed- something, someone. Some Valar, maybe. How could everything become so muddled?
"No, that is not your responsibility," she said. "Leave that to others. I will not have you become some- mediator or the like for me and your father."
Celebrimbor frowned even more. Oloste wondered if she should have brought Colinde, could she not speak better? Make sense of things better? Or Verciel, even. She could at least scream and fight like Oloste never really could.
"I have Colinde and Verciel to distract me from such things," she said. "Or your grandmother, be she a blessing or a curse."
"Grandmother is nice."
"Because she is grandmother to you, a mother to me. A bother and a supporter both at once."
Celebrimbor's frown lightened, though it held some concern now.
"How come you look down on her so much?"
'Oh, Tyelpe', Oloste thought and wondered if she could explain the intricate web of mistakes and promises that filled the relationship with her own mother; how they had supported and lied to each other, and how someone always being there could become a curse, how her mother had seen too much and understood too little and sometimes the other way around. Maybe he thought the same of her. 'By Varda and Manwë, by the stars, let it not be so', she begged in her mind.
"I don't look down on her," she said, "but sometimes- sometimes she is the opposite of what is needed. Supportive when I do not have the energy to take it, dismissive when I seek her help. We are just out of rhythm, in a way. Always have been. Nothing to worry about."
"It looks and sounds like it is malfunctioning, sometimes," her son said.
"It's been that way ever since I was a child. It looks bad, but we still talk, don't we?"
He hummed. "You always go and drink tea with her once a week."
"Yes, that is the way of mothers and daughters," Oloste said. "A mystery beyond solving, your father used to say."
She tried to smile, even when Celebrimbor looked at her with surprise. Oloste seldom offered any memory of Curufinwë's former presence in her life, seldom acknowledged it even to her son, who had partly lived in it. But the man was out of the Halls, was he not? 'Why bother caring, now?'
"You spoke about this?"
"We were married, Tyelpe, of course we did. Your father thought my relationship with your grandmother most peculiar," Oloste gave away. "I always blamed it on him being the favourite son, not having disagreed with his own father enough. And never having a sister or a daughter. There is something strange about mothers and daughters, I am telling you."
She was babbling. She could do this -- say something to her son, and then a river of words came out, too many secrets unveiled too soon, too much all at once. Celebrimbor easily became overwhelmed, in the early days of his return, but he had learned better now.
"I- Well, I guess I do not remember you two when you were not in strife," Celebrimbor said.
Oloste tried to remember -- had he truly been so young when her marriage had soured? Surely not?
"They were not conversations we had so much in your presence," she said.
"But you had them?"
Was there some sort of hope in his eyes? Oloste did not know if to let it be or kill it while still possible.
"Yes, for quite a while," she admitted. "We stopped … truly talking to each other soon after we moved to Formenos."
Those must be the years Celebrimbor remembered best and those were indeed years of strife. Curufinwë spent more time with Turkafinwë and his father than her, and she enjoyed and despaired not being near him at the same time. When he was not, she could rest and think and smile, but when he was there, she could not look elsewhere, still wanting his presence, but then there was a discussion, a heated rant from him that smelt of smoke and ill bodings. Eventually, it became easier to avoid him.
"I remember," he said. "Or, I remember something changing, though I cannot remember what had been before that."
"Oh, Tyelpe," she could not stop herself from saying. Her son frowned; he did not like her pity, never had. But Oloste had to say, could not stop her heart's bleeding seeping into her voice:
"It was better. What was before. Believe me -- something much better, that will never come again. Never again in my life, or his."