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One day, if Maedhros lived long enough to see Morgoth be defeated, she would like to travel past the Blue Mountains and see more of Middle-earth, instead of remaining in Beleriand. The arrival of those other Men is a reminder that there are still places her kin and people have not seen, or explored. 

A new goal, one which her brothers would like as well. One not linked to the Oath, or anything related to the Silmarils. Perhaps she could even remind them that Atar would have loved to explore more of Middle-earth, if he had still been alive and not focusing on reclaiming his masterwork.

“Is something on your mind today, Milady? You seem to be somewhat absent-minded,” Bór asked, bringing her out of her thoughts to focus on the mortal who was sitting next to her. 

“I want to see more of the world behind the Blue Mountains. I want to explore those distant lands that are still unknown places on a map, see more cultures among both the Eldar, Dwarves and Men that should be prime examples of how different we all are.” 

The arrival of Bór with his people and the other Easterlings under the other leaders, had reminded Maedhros that Beleriand was just a part of the much wider Middle-earth. A new awakening of that joy in her childhood and youth, from the long-gone family trips with her family in much happier times, whatever they explored a part of Valinor where not even her parents had been before.  

“Yes. I think you would like to see the East, milady. I never witnessed anything such when growing up,mainly because it happened far away from my own place of birth, but I have heard tales of powerful rulers gaining enough power and lands to start building in stone, not quite the style of Amon Ereb but still stone buildings. You may even witness the start of Mannish cultures that could even rival the Elves in building and other arts that you Elves like so much.”

This made the heavily scarred She-elf smile, and with how that seemed to transform her for a moment, Bór could have sworn that he was seeing a glimpse of the Princess she had been when she was much younger. He had learned enough Sindarin to know what other Elves talked about when mentioning that Maedhros had been physically and mentally changed from her time in Angband as a prisoner of the Dark Lord. 

“I would love to see that, and be able to witness how their culture changes over time. Because just interacting with the Edain, like my last cousin Finrod was so fond of doing, should not really count as knowing everything about Men.”

Her late cousin had mentioned in letters a similar desire to explore other Mannish cultures outside Beleriand, in the last years before the Siege of Angband had broken. He would have liked to meet Bór and find out how different his people were from the Edain, which Maedhros was very sure of. 

“Then I will task my descendants to guide you there, for I can not be sure if I can make such a long journey again and return to Beleriand while still alive, because it took my people several years of travel by needing to make temporary homesteads and grow crops that we could eat on the journey.” 

That was understandable. His people were farmers, after all, and also moved their livestock between various pastures in summer, but they were not nomads like the Easterlings that Caranthir dealt with. Besides, Bór himself was already past 50 years old, even having a growing number of grandchildren from all his three sons and five daughters who had survived to adulthood and found a spouse to start their own families with. It was better that his future descendants, from among those grandchildren or their future children, were the ones to show Maedhros the East where their people came from, in the future. 

“I look forward to having a working relationship with your descendants as well, in the memory of how your people first arrived here.”

And Maedhros would tell them of Bór and his sons, her own memories of him as her vassal, and how things had been when his people had come to Beleriand. 

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With how he had chosen to be counted as a mortal Man, it was expected that Elros would desire to marry and settle down much sooner than Elrond, who had chosen to be counted among the Eldar. Yet, Maglor was not expecting to find out what sort of bride his former foster-son had chosen, not after how Elrond had found him at the beach by honest luck and almost literally dragging Maglor with him because well, no way he would miss this important event for his twin.   

“Nelyo would be proud…” he said slowly, holding back tears in both joy and grief. Joy for Elros was getting married, and grief for that his older brother was not here to personally meet the lady in question.

“I did not fall for Aigul because of her lineage, adar, but I do believe that uncle Maedhros would be happy to meet a descendant of the Man who refused to betray him to Morgoth.”

For it was a descendant of Bór the Faithful who Elros had fallen for, one of the few who still remained of that mortal bloodline after so many years of Morgoth desiring to wipe out the Easterling people who had refused to betray the Elves, and been among the refugees living at the coast. 

“Yes…yes, even if Bór only existed in our lives for a few short years, he left a deep impression with his loyalty,” Maglor managed to say in a thick voice from his emotions, “It would have been a cruel fate for both his family line and his whole people to be wiped out as punishment from the Dark Lord, simply because of his loyalty to my brother.”  

Even with his hand burnt and scarred from the Silmaril so he no longer could play the harp as he once did, Maglor could still sing at the wedding to honor how Aigul was descending from one of the less celebrated Mannish heroes of the First Age. He sang of her people, of their origins from the East and their ties to the Sons of Fëanor over a century and a half earlier. 

And Aigul, the great-great-granddaughter of Bór the Faithful, became the first Queen consort of Númenor, linking together the Edain and Elven bloodline of her husband with the Easterling people who had refused to serve Morgoth. 

With time, she would be mostly known under her Quenya name, just like Elros would be known as Tar-Minyatur, but her brother-in-law Elrond would never forget her birth name or her origins. 

Chapter Text

(Celegorm and female Dior from Choosing my own path in life)

Year 497 of the First Age, Amon Ereb:

Normally, it was meant as a last meeting between a father and his unwed daughter, before she met her bridegroom for the wedding ceremony. But this was not a normal situation according to old views. Ever since the Siege of Angband broke, it had become a new normal for complete strangers to take in and even adopt orphans, because of how many families that were ripped apart by Morgoth and his armies during battles and raids on both Elven and Mannish settlements. 

But Celegorm was not a normal adopted father. No, the bride-to-be was the most unlikely candidate to even be seen as a possible choice of being taken in by the Sons of Fëanor, much less him of all people. But the truth behind their relationship was complicated, they had known that from their very first meeting eleven years ago, and it had taken years for them to see each other as more than just a temporary guardian and ward. 

“As all the Children of the All-Father have found out one way or another: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Your mother may be the fairest one to ever be born, but she came off as unsetting for your paternal people when she met them in Brethil. We Eldar can have a difficult time to see what Dwarven or Mannish standards of beauty can be, especially those of Men, for different cultures may not always share the same agreement of beauty.” 

His adoptive daughter would be seen as plain in the eyes of Doriath, used as they were to the famous beauty of Luthien and very little contact with the other races, but both Men and Dwarves would agree that she was good-looking by how she took care of herself and refused to view Luthien as a beauty standard she would never manage to match. Yes, she had been born premature and this affected her health at times, but compared to when she first had entered his life, Celegorm knew that she was less sickly from the stress and trauma caused by her parents when she grew up. 

“I am glad that I took after my paternal grandmother and how she looked in her youth, for I fear that things would be more difficult between us over the years if I had shared the raven hair of my younger sister.” 

Vaid point, especially as she also was indirectly referring to her birth mother. Without her taking after her mother so much, Celegorm had less trouble keeping mother and daughter apart. 

“Your birth parents have found out the hard way that their famous love story comes with unwanted negative consequences. They have no right to complain about your choices in life, after all the political drama that they caused in Beleriand. You refused to suffer for their actions, and took control over your own life. And even if they were here today to witness the wedding, your maternal grandfather really has no right to complain about your choice of husband, after what happened because he refused to accept your eventual father as a son-in-law.” 

Finishing her hairdo, Celegorm saw his adopted daughter look back at him in the mirror. Really, how could anyone have seen her as plain once, especially with her old burn scar around her right eye that she had gotten as a very young toddler, simply for not living up to impossible beauty standards that were only made possible by Luthien being the daughter of a Maia? 

“All done. Are you needing some extra soothing cream for the scar on your arm, or does it feel fine?”

“I added some extra cream this morning after the bath.”

That scar was a memory of how she nearly had died once from blood loss after a orc raid, when he had realized that he saw her as more than just a temporary ward, of how he had tried to mix their blood together in the desperate hope of not witnessing another life slip through his hands. 

“Come, Dior. Nimloth is waiting for you, and everyone else in the great hall for the wedding feast.” 

Indeed, his adoptive daughter was the most unlikely one to ever be, and Celegorm was about to see her swear wedding vows to one of his fellow hunters from the Laiquendi, a former hunting apprentice that he had trained himself during more peaceful times in Beleriand, and therefore knew that he did not have to worry about Dior risking to be trapped in a poorly chosen marriage until she died. 

~X~X~X~X~X~X

~X~X~X~X~X~X  

(Female Celegorm and her son Dior from a male Luthien, from Prince of heartbreaks)

Year 21 of the First Age, Amon Ereb: 

The identity of the one who had sired her child during the Mereth Aderthad, had to be a tightly sealed secret. Not just for the well-being of her little son, but to avoid an unnecessary conflict between Doriath and the Noldor. 

“I will not marry someone who abandoned me like that! I refuse to be chained forever in a marriage bond to an Elf who has done the same to other She-elves in the past, simply because I ended up pregnant by him and he is the father of my son!” 

Celegorm shuddered in dread at the mental image of what sort of life she would likely have in Doriath as the unwelcomed spouse of Prince Luthien, how she would be miserable by being expected to behave in a well-mannered and refined way that she had hated already in Valinor, and having to witness Luthien not being a very good role model to Dior as he grew up.

“No, sweetie,” she whispered to her sleeping son in her arms, leaning back against the warm body of Huan, “It is better this way, for both of us. My skills as a hunter are needed in the fighting against Morgoth and his creatures, and you will have several, much better role models in how to be a respectable prince from not only my brothers, but also my uncle Fingolfin and my cousins. Well, most of them with my uncle's second son Turgon as an exception, but I will explain why I am not that fond of him when you are older and able to understand better.” 

And anyone who realized who Dior had been sired by, and tried to either blackmail Celegorm about it or otherwise use that information to cause trouble? Oh, she was going to make that person really regret poking their nose into something that was not their business. If it was cousin Galadriel, for example, well, her younger cousin would learn a harsh lesson that her ability to read the minds of others often bordered on her coming off as not respecting another person's boundaries and privacy, and how she could cause trouble for both herself and others around her without thinking of what she was doing.

“If she ever tells Thingol about Dior….I will make sure that all the Noldor will know that it was her, because she and her brothers are related to Thingol by their maternal grandfather Olwë being his brother and therefore the only members of the Noldorin royal family who have gotten permission to visit Doriath.” 

Sure, Celegorm and Galadriel had never been best of friends back in Valinor, but the only daughter of Fëanor would teach her younger cousin exactly how hard it was to be forgiven for something when Galadriel did not genuinely apologize for her misdeeds and work on her behaviour to never do it again.

Celegorm would be proved right about that worry less than half a century later, when the King of Doriath found out how the Exile of the Noldor was connected to the  Kinslaying at Alqualondë, and thanks to Finrod, Angrod, Aegnor and Orodreth seeing for themselves how Prince Luthien really was in character during their visit in Doriath, they kept the existence of Dior a secret from even Galadriel their sister, because with her now having Queen Melian as a tutor in lore and wisdom about Middle-earth, they feared that  Galadriel could reveal information without thinking of the consequences, like how it actually would affect others. 

Thanks to Celegorm ruling Himlad with Curufin, as well staying at Himring during the later state of her pregnancy where she could not hide her growing belly underneath her full-body length cloak and for the whole first year after giving birth to her son, Dior was kept away from people who could have spread words about his existence in gossip, and he remained a secret from Doriath. 

In light of what would happen during the later half of the First Age, especially with the Quest for the Silmaril, few among the surviving Noldor doubted that Celegorm had done the right thing in hiding her son from the royal family in Doriath. 

Chapter Text

Back in Valinor, Caranthir had never quite seen himself as the type to get married, unless he really lucked out in finding someone who could stand marrying the quickest-to-anger son of Fëanor and having the patience to handle his less than gracious moments. 

“Yes, you have a temper, but I seriously think that many Elves are naive about those who can get offended really easily. They can not have met many people who have poor social skills or similar ways that make them come off as not quite meeting the norm. Need to get out and expand their knowledge of personality by meeting more people themselves, I say.”  

He had never expected to fall in love with a mortal, of all people, but Haleth proved herself to be a successful leader of her people and very much the type of person that the younger Caranthir had wondered if he ever could find in his life.

““That is…nice to hear,” he finally said, adding a new piece of wood to the fireplace, “I mean, I have never looked at it from that angle. That my fellow Elves would be the ones in need to expand their own knowledge, rather than expecting me to do it to match their view on things.” 

She snorted, moving away the plate of mostly eaten fruit pieces and cheese they had enjoyed with the fine wine earlier. 

“The Exile here in Middle-earth should make a good challenge to this sort of thinking, for those who came here and did not truly expect how different this is compared to Valinor. We mortals are not something to be labeled into neat little arrangements for the comforts of others, and I know myself that there are Men who refuse to see the difference between the various Elven people, for example, simply because in their eyes, you all are pretty much the same,” Haleth said, and Caranthir did not doubt that she mentioned this especially to remind him that in some ways, the Eldar and Men was truly not that different. 

“May the race of Men keep reminding my fellow Eldar about this even in future generations, then.” 

Oh, that smile of hers was something he would never stop enjoying to watch. 

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Curufin had been so proud when it became clear that Celebrimbor had the promise of becoming a great blacksmith, just like himself and his own father. 

“Atto, looks like we have another little smith in the family!” he proudly explained, having rushed out from the forge with his son held under an arm to tell everyone this important discovery. While his brothers seemed happy to hear this, Maglor did not resist saying:

“Do not scare the kid for life with your high standards for safe work in the forge, Curvo. I know that it is to ensure that nothing bad happens, but you need to remember that it is your son and not any random apprentice.”

“Atto had no problems teaching me, you know…ow!” 

And of course, little Celebrimbor accidently dropped his little hammer on the foot of his father in that very moment, because well, it was not the most comfortable hold he was held in. 

“Maybe put Tyelpe down on the ground first next time he is holding something that can be dropped like this, honey,” Astarë commented as her son escaped out in the garden, a little worried about getting scolded about what just happened.  

But with the passing of time, and there being no end to their Exile to Middle-earth or a defeat of Morgoth, his son had reminded him that just because Celebrimbor was a grandson of Fëanor, it did not mean that he would always mirror the earlier generations as one may expect. 

Like Fëanor and Curufin, he was a blacksmith falling for a spouse who did a different trade. Unlike his grandfather and grandfather, Celebrimbor did not meet this eventual spouse of his at an early point in life, and instead married quite late. 

And while his name was connected to the creation of the Rings of Power, many would still remember his other masterworks which were untainted by Sauron, like the Doors of Durin.  

In a way, Celebrimbor marrying Narvi, who was a Dwarf, was very much a ideal manner to set himself as truly different from Fëanor and Curufin. 

Now with no Dark Lord literally keeping him in one place by the threats of an attack or raid, Celebrimbor was taking the chance to travel past the Blue Mountains. And Narvi was more than happy to bring him to the East, to let him see the cultures that his paternal relatives sadly had missed to visit. 

“I can understand the wish for travel beyond the Blue Mountains, with how they ended up spending the whole First Age more or less trapped in Beleriand because they could not ignore the threat of Angband!” she said when he revealed this. 

“Yes, the First Age lasted for little over 600 years, but indeed, it was impossible to leave while Morgoth was still around. They could have left to explore more of Middle-earth, but that would have meant that their realms were without their lords in cases of attacks and leaving the rest of the Noldor without allies. I know that Maedhros would never have left Fingon to fight Morgoth more or less on his own without the Alliance, for example.” 

That logic, Narvi could understand. If one left for unknown lands and was gone for several years, who knew what could happen in their absence back home in Beleriand? And what if the seven offsprings of Fëanor ended up dying in those unknown lands beyond the Blue Mountains, because Morgoth sent out his orcs after them and tried to break their travel company up in completely unfamiliar environments where they did not know where to seek shelter or where trustworthy people lived? 

“Oh well, I am grateful for having your relatives as very good guides on those travel routes, Narvi. No way I am getting lost here.”

She smiled at him.

“Well, my father and his kin are merchants. Of course that means we are traveling between the Red Mountains and the human cities for trade, or between the East and West!”

Then she challenged Celebrimbor to spot another landmark in the distance with his Elven sight, and guess the history behind that one. 

Chapter Text

As the second youngest and truly youngest of the seven children to Fëanor and Nerdanel, Amrod and Amras had grown up seeing their brothers and cousins get more attention from the public than themselves. However, as a very rare set of Elven twins, they got a different sort of attention compared to said older brothers and cousins from an early age. And it had not always been welcomed in combination with them being royalty as well. 

“It must have been a relief, then, to know that twins can be found among us mortals too!” Börte, the wife of Bór said in that heavy dialect in Sindarin her people had when not speaking their own native language, as the younger siblings of Lord Maedhros had paid her family an unexpected visit this morning upon hearing that her youngest daughter had gotten blessed with twins from her latest pregnancy, bringing with them a tasty fat wild goose as an offering.

“Yes, madam,” one of the responded, she was not sure which one, and the second red haired Elf added in: 

“It could be quite annoying with there being no other twins in Valinor, yes. At least none that we met back then. Here in Beleriand whatever a mortal hears about us being twins, no one wonders about us looking so similar.”

The newest granddaughters of Bór and Börte were clearly not identical in looks, showing the Ambarussa that twins did not always look like mirror images of each other, and they were very fascinated by this new knowledge. Basically, they could very well have ended up the same as well, if things had been a little different when they were begotten. 

“See, the older one takes after her father and his family more, while the younger girl looks more like Bór in the face.”

Of course, the chieftain heard what his wife said, and protested in a good-natured way:

“I say that she looks more like her grandmother and aunts.” 

The friendly bickering between the married couple over which relatives their newest granddaughters looked like, made Amrod and Amras laugh in fondness, for it reminded them of how their own parents could be, before things had changed after the release of Morgoth and the crafting of the Silmarils. 

Chapter Text

Sometimes, the difference between being parents to their own children and grandparents to the next generation was not that big. The important thing was to love the younger generation no matter which place they had in the family, care for them, cherish them, and encourage them to find their own path in life.

“Quite nice to have such a vast amount of careers among our descendants, do you not think so?” Nerdanel asked her husband one day, as they took a break outside with tea and some sandwiches to enjoy the fine weather. 

“Never boring or one-track conversations, yes.” 

As the oldest in the younger generation, they had gotten to see Celebrimbor grow up until adolescence. He had, thankfully, never sworn the Oath, but he had admitted that part of his reasons to leave Valinor back then involved a desire to not only see and travel in unknown lands, but also partly to escape the shadow of his father and grandfather as a fellow backsmith. 

“Can not disagree with his logic from back then, in light of what happened later. Yes, the whole thing with the Rings of Power was a strain on his name, but we can at least blame Sauron for much of that, and him being the co-creator of the Doors of Durin is a reminder that he did other masterworks that never got tainted by evil.”  

Rûsa, the firstborn of Maedhros, had been a challenge for everyone at first. Not because he was problematic, as some more rude people would label him, but because his past as a slave in Angband, where he had been born, had requested his maternal family to make a team effort in helping him adjust to Valinor after his rebirth and what it really meant to be free. 

“Speaking about Rûsa,” Fëanor said at recalling something, “I promised to help find more pigments for his painting colours. He is running out of a few that he uses often for the backgrounds of his paintings, and two of them are found in nature.”

“Good excuse for a two-day trip or something, Maybe get some good clay for our oldest granddaughter when you are at it?” she smiled, knowing that her husband would be kept busy because he really would want to bring home a good amount of the needed stuff for his grandchildren.

Cúwen, the oldest daughter of Maedhros and Rog, had found herself having a natural talent for pottery, and had even begun to sell some of her finest work under a different artist name because there were still some people who associated the House of Fëanor to only mean something bad. But this was beginning to change, thankfully. 

“Reminds me, when was the next music and singing performance of Lindë and Frëja here in Formenos to celebrate the annual harvest festival? Next week or the following one, right?” 

“Sixteen days from today, so you were not completely wrong about the date.”

With how the daughter of Maglor had inherited his talent in music, especially the harp, it was not uncommon for her to team up with the half-Dwarven daughter of Celebrimbor, who Narvi had birthed, because Frëja had a singing ability that reminded strongly about Songs of Power. It had been a great joy to watch their lessons as they grew up. 

“And Yuë would dance during that same music and song performance.” 

Their third grandson was a skilled dancer, but he had never made a public career of it for reasons that Nerdanel and Fëanor wished that they could help him more with because they hated to see how their grandson was affected by this. On the other hand, they knew themselves that this sort of troublemakers, who was the core of the problem for Yuë, would eventually get a little too overconfident and sabotage themselves in some way. The House of Fëanor just needed to wait for the right moment for this to happen, and maybe speed things up a little bit if it was needed by involving the rest of the royal Noldorin family behind the scenes. 

“Oh, Lówen will have another history lesson in Tirion about how the Elves in Gondolin is a prime example of what it means to miss out important historical events simply because you are not around in the same area.” 

The first time the youngest child of Maedhros and Rog had presented her study on this subject, as part of her training to become a historian that was a specialist on Mannish cultures to the degree she could be a specialist without ever leaving Valinor, Fëanor had just barely held back his laughter during the whole lesson in how his youngest granddaughter used Turgon as the chosen example: 

“When you have met only three Men in your whole life, two of them barely living ín your hidden city for a year before being allowed to leave, and the third one being your Elven-raised eventual son-in-law, one can not claim to really know the race of Men very well.”

The best part, and why Fëanor had enjoyed to listen to that subject so much, was that Lówen had not even intended to insult Turgon or anything such, but merely pointed out that compared to his cousins, the second son of Fingolfin really had missed the culture exchange which the rest of Beleriand had gotten when the Men had started to join the Elves and Dwarves who lived in that part of Middle-earth and other historical events that the Elves of Gondolin had missed to witness or take part of, thanks to their isolation from the rest of Beleriand. 

“Yes, a good amount of different careers. I think it will be a nice family dinner tonight with everyone here in Formenos.” 

Indeed, it was a planned family dinner for the whole family today, and they would have a pleasant time in the summer evening.