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The stars wheel in dizzying circles above. A nauseating path carving through the otherwise inescapable darkness of a new moon. Amras is near blind, hidden beneath the overhanging branches of the woodland. Even his elf-sight can only help him so much here, and he has forced his twin to halt for the night before he inevitably injures himself in the gloom. Now they lie upon half made bed mats upon the forest floor, Amras tracing Varda’s great works with half-seeing eyes; Amrod watching the slowly rustling leaves around them.
His twin is not as blind as he out here. Amras is never quite sure how it has happened. He understands the way the sun hurts his brother. The way the harsh golden light carves burning lines across his face, digging with Arien’s beautiful, cruel claws into his brain. The furious burns which have bitten away at his skin – melting and rebuilding one side of his body – have also done so to his left eye. It is half-clouded and pains Amrod when not kept to shadow. But how it has transpired that he sees so clearly in the near stillness of such a fathomless darkness as this, Amras does not know. Somewhere, in that part of him which used to watch his older brother disappear to hunt in the train of the great Valar Orome with envy, he hopes one of those great lords of the west has granted his twin a gift – for their parents surely never had. Cursed by his mother name and set alight with the swan ships by their father, Amrod has lived a life shadowed with misfortune.
Amras does not mean to sound bitter, as he traces again the stars above, eyes slipping in his head from one side to the next with a speed which would unbalance him were he on his feet, but he cannot help it. The silver specks above cannot move, and yet here they dance. Spinning and flying as if further from his sight and grasp with every flick of pale blue eyes. As unreachable to him as the silmarils were to his father. As they remain to his two eldest brothers, still hunkered down in the slowly disintegrating keep upon Amon Ereb, many miles to the northeast. He rolls unseeing eyes at the idea. They’re fools to think they have a chance. Whatever may come of Maedhros nosing around at the havens, it will not be the reclamation of the hallowed jewel which Armas has not thought his father worthy of wielding since he set his own son alight.
The memory of it sends fury racing through his body, his soul. The heat of it greater than any stolen Teleri prize ship crumbling under its own burning weight could have ever been. The sight of Amrod’s skin, reddened and puckered with burns no matter how they have treated it across the long centuries, inspires a rage he hopes his father can feel in whatever darkened corner of Mandos’ halls he now inhabits. He feels sick with it tonight as his mind turns over everything which has brought them here. Already, three of his brothers are dead. Now it seems the remaining two wish to join them. Or, perhaps, they are simply willing to sacrifice the twins to whatever bloodied path they think will reclaim them one of three shining jewels. It is an uncharitable thought, but Amras rather finds that much of his charity, especially for his eldest brothers, has long been spent. He misses Celegorm, who would have often joined them on their forays into the wild in Valinor. Even here, he would sometimes ride down from Himlad to hunt with them. He knows Amrod misses Caranthir, who had been forced into their lands by the searing flames of the Dagor Bragollach – who’s admittedly surly presence had made the two of them laugh – at him if not with him – as no one else quite could. But Maedhros? Maglor?
Amras finds his stomach churns unhappily to think of them now. His eldest brother was right. All those years ago when he told their father ‘No’ he had been right. But he reneged on his own beliefs, through torture or his own inner force of will, he does not know. But now he hunts the silmarils with a dead-eyed intent which neither twin can anymore recognise. The darkness is to blame for these thoughts, he rolls over to face the very last embers of their campfire. It brings the blackened bile out of him in wretched thoughts he hates his family for ever making him have for them.
Amrod rises from his seated position across the clearing and picks his way toward his twin with the surefootedness in the dark which always soothes Amras just a little, for reasons he can never quite fathom.
“There is a deer trail, just a little down that bank over there,” his twin whispers, right eye alight even in the gloom. “It’ll be a good one to track down tomorrow.” Amras cannot help but let out a breathy laugh and at Amrod’s raised browbone where the hair never quite grew back, he answers.
“I didn’t even know there was a bank that way.”
“Well,” Amrod shrugs cheekily, slumping down against his shoulder until they meld in the dark into the single being everyone has always seen, “I guess that just proves I’ve always been the better hunter.” He spins away with a graceful ease Amras only knows in the daylight and laughs at the expression levelled at him. Amras rolls his eyes, lying back down to sleep, but with a chest far lighter than it had been several moments before.
----
The clouds are floating by with a gentle wistfulness in the otherwise blue sky above. They scatter into vapour or roll as they approach the distant mountains to the east. Amrod lies in the shade of a wide branched oak and watches them through squinted eyes. Already he misses the fuller cover of the deep woodland. Misses the cool darkness of the night before. Here he is not in pain – the shade is doing its job, but he feels limited in a way he has always found hard to describe. His senses do not reach out past the riverbank they sit on. As one of the eldar, especially one who has come from the west, he knows what he should be able to see, to hear and smell. He knows because they are the senses he remembers from his youth, which he can now only access in the dark.
Amras is several meters away, crouched by a small inlet and cleaning his hands, filthy from butchering their catch. The sun gleams brightly from his copper hair. The two of them had supposedly been born fully identical, but age had lightened his brother’s hair, or else darkened his own to an auburn as they had grown. Even before he had fallen asleep upon the deck of that cursed Teleri ship and accidently made it far easier for anyone to differentiate them, they had already been notably different to anyone who had cared. But here and now, he sees it even more clearly. It is in the way he keeps to the shadows, hiding from the pain he will not escape until either his spirit flees to Mandos, or else he endures until the very breaking of the world. It is in the way his brother seems to glow in the light as an elf should. The way he stretches his neck this way and that, turning his face towards Arien’s blistering beams.
But more so, Amrod thinks, it is in the furrowed lines which have rarely left his brother’s face in months now. They settle onto his expression whenever he catches sight of his twin’s scarred face, his weakened eye. It is better at night, when Amrod is the clearer headed of the two, but he knows that if his twin looks over at him now, his expression will fold into barely concealed fury. He cannot say why this has reemerged, if it the aching loss of their brothers which has reopened an old wound, or else the oath and the lengths it seems each of their family will go to in failed attempts to retrieve them. If the sight of it takes him back, as it does Amrod, to the night of the burning of the ships at Losgar.
He has long since made peace with the experience. He hates days such as this, in his own way, for the way they force him into shelter. But he can still understand the beauty in them. He hates the way he was forced to stay out of those early battles, how he had not been able to help any of his loved ones as they battled orcs under the stars. He hates the way he had still been too weak to leave their camp the night his father had died. He hates the way he had not been there to say goodbye, even more so upon realising there was no body to bury, and his sire was naught but ash in the wind.
He has hated all of this. But he does not hate Feanor.
It had chewed away at him for the first several years, as he had to learn to fight, to hunt, to live with his tight feeling skin and blurry left eye. Had lessened as he taught himself to hunt by night, how he has somehow found himself stronger in the moonlight than any of his kin. Now he has no energy left for the rage which burns hot within his twin. It is as if Amras carries it for both of them. It is times such as this he wishes he could reach out. To say, “It’s okay,” but he cannot. No soothing words will calm the rage which has taken a hold of his brother’s heart.
Amras, he knows, will never forgive their father this act. He may be able to move past the oath, the violence at Alqualonde, but he will never forgive that night – the mindless bitterness which spurred him to set alight those boats, and his son with them.
Amrod sits a little, watching Arien’s light from his safe distance. His brother, happier than he usually is in these dark times now her rays warm him through, could be the very fruit of the sun upon Arda. He looks vibrant and alive. He wonders to himself if he reflects Tirion in equal measure. Distant and cold – with no path open to him but to follow the golden light of his better.
A snort rises from him. Sun and moon. The idea would only make Amras more angry he thinks. To know his twin thinks of them as such inherently different beings. All because his father truly did not care enough, to gather all of his sons to his side before he betrayed his half-brother.
So instead of asking if the other is okay, instead of telling him Feanor didn’t mean it, that he should be gentler with their remaining brothers, Amrod simply lies back in the shade of the tree and watches as the sun glances off of his twin’s hair – ignoring all the while the pain beginning to bloom behind his left eye.
-----
The havens burn around them. Amrod slips into his brother’s shadow, face turning this way and that to escape the disorientation of the flames around them.
The night is dark beyond the borders of the fire, Amras can just about see the shapes of desperate figures hurtling towards what they hope is safety. It is not. There are soldiers in every direction. He feels his rage at his family burn hotter than ever.
Amrod slides one hand into his brothers as the clash of swords draws closer. He is here. He will be here until the end.
Amras tightens the hold. Whatever happens tonight, they will face it together.