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Tyelpelinde was deep in concentration on the piece before her – a portion of an intricately-carved wooden banister from the king’s palace that had been brought to her for refurbishment – when the knock came on the door.
She knew who it was, of course. It was the same knock that came once a month, like clockwork. That was what she had permitted, and he had held to it painstakingly ever since.
She no longer bore the same fury she had once held against her law-father; thousands of years were too long to keep burning, even for elves. Her thoughts had turned to forgiveness even before her son had returned to her; and after – well, peace was no longer beyond her.
Still, Feanor was quite a lot even on his best behavior, and she did not appreciate constant interruptions to her work.
Sighing, Tyelpelinde put down her awl, wiped her hands on her apron – Feanor of all people would not care about the varnish-streaks and the ever-present layer of sawdust that settled upon every surface, herself included – and made her way carefully through her workshop until she reached the door.
“Hello, Feanor,” she said, stepping aside to let him in.
“Tyelpelinde, I brought the lemon cakes you like from that stall in the arts district of Tirion,” Feanor greeted her, brandishing a basket.
In a past life, it would have been incomprehensibly strange to see Feanor at the doorstep of his law-daughter’s home with a neatly-covered basket of cakes upon his arm, but this was not a past life. This was a current life, and Feanor had been released from the Halls of Mandos after ages of the world had passed, but his sons had not yet returned.
Tyelpelinde’s own Curufinwe had not yet returned.
Might not ever return.
“I’ll get the kettle on. Celebrimbor can’t join us this time, unfortunately – he’s been in the palace for the last week working on the king’s gems for the midwinter festival. Not that it’s Arafinwe keeping him – from what I hear, our poor king has become little more than a reluctant model for my son and his eldest son, the peacock,” Tylpelinde said, maneuvering her way to the kettle in the corner where a few chipped tea mugs sat inside an elegantly crafted wooden cabinet.
Feanor, with the deftness of long practice, stepped around the various wooden banister pieces lying haphazardly amongst a confused array of worktops, tools, and other equipment, before making his way to where a little table was crammed into the corner near the kettle.
“It is a shame I missed him, but I will get to see him soon – I am making the matching set for Earwen, although I did agree to allow Celebrimbor and Finrod decide on the base styles first,” Feanor said.
Tyelpelinde raised an eyebrow.
“And this is why all of Tirion believes you are wrapped around your grandson’s little finger, my dear law-father,” Tyelpelinde said, snorting. “When you would cede even decisions of your craft – “
“He is a mighty gemsmith, grown great over the thousands of years – greater even than his father – “ Feanor said, puffing up, before stuttering to a halt.
“Yes, greater even than his father,” Tyelpelinde said plainly, before taking the whistling teakettle and pouring out two cups.
Opening his mouth before pausing, Feanor decided instead to focus on the cakes, uncovering the basket and laying out the beautifully iced cakes onto mismatched plates he pulled out of the back of the little cabinet.
Tyelpelinde watched with a little amusement as Feanor opened his mouth again, closed it again, and then came out with an entirely different question than he was certainly planning to ask. She was not unused to this.
She wondered if perhaps, at last, it was time to answer the question Feanor never could ask.
“How goes your work?” Feanor inquired.
“It is going well. The entire banister needs replacing and refreshing, more or less – it’s been in place since Finwe was king and well, long as things endure in Valinor, after thousands of years it does seem time for a change,” Tyelpelinde said.
Feanor choked for a moment, before taking a sip of his tea.
“A time for a change,” he said, quietly.
Tyelpelinde let the silence pass for several long moments, thinking.
Ever since Feanor had been released from the Halls some years ago, he had begun to show at her door. He was polite, kind even. He asked questions about her work, about Celebrimbor, about her own family and their endeavors.
He did not ask about her husband.
She had not turned him away, but she had set a limit. Once a month, he might come to her door, and he might come bearing cakes or gems or tools for her craft or other bits of finery. They would talk lightly, of little things, and drink tea. She would not say the words he dreaded to hear.
And then, with the assurance that came from her silence, he would leave, until he would return the next month, and it would start again.
Perhaps it was time to talk at last.
“Feanor,” Tyelpelinde said suddenly, causing him to jerk his head up.
“I am still waiting upon him, and still yet plan to wait longer,” Tyelpelinde said simply.
“I – “ Feanor paused. He knew at once what she spoke of.
“I thank you, Tyelpelinde, for those words,” Feanor said at last. “I know it is – I know it can only have been a difficulty nigh-unimaginable, to wait for a spouse that may never return from the Halls, that wronged you as he did, but – but I am grateful, that still you give Curufin this chance. That you still give my son this chance. I know you may have – you may have wanted to seek differently.”
The last few words seemed to be forced out of his mouth.
“Yes,” Tyelpelinde said frankly. “I did, and I still do, at times. I have thought often of it - to take up the statute of Finwe and Miriel, and ask for dissolution, for it has been said often enough that my husband will never again come out of the Halls. You may have returned, but the blood on your sons' hands continued beyond yours, and healing seems to be beyond them forever. And if it is true that you say he repented in the Halls for the evil he did to me, then I think also that he would not deny me agreement for this. I think that he would agree to this closure, that I might move on in my own life.”
Feanor, his eyes tight, said nothing. He could not refute this.
Tyelpelinde continued.
“And perhaps I might find myself a new husband that would never dream to speak those words that he once did to me, cold and harsh and sharp as a knife. A husband that would not take our son away into doom, nor turn to such darkness that he would take the lives of our friends – and again – not to speak the least of kidnapping a lady to force marriage against her will. Perhaps I might find a new life, with a new partner at my side, and move on at last. I have my son back, after all; I would not be forced to give up my son with his father,” she said.
“And yet still I wait, and wait, as I have waited for thousands of years and ages untold, and I do not petition the Valar. And yet still I allow you your visits every month, when I know you check on me for the grief that I might close the door upon your son ever returning back to life, and bring me lemon cakes in some wain hope that they might sway my heart in this. At least, you have not come to threaten me yet, which I suppose I ought to be grateful for,” Tyelpelinde continued.
“I would not – I will never raise a hand or threat against you,“ Feanor protested fiercely, but he fell silent as Tyelpelinde held up her hand.
“Never. Yes, perhaps, never. And oddly enough, Feanor, I believe that of you. I believe you would not threaten me, not you who have returned from the Halls in this life, and that is perhaps strangest of all. And now you have no sword to wield, so instead you take up a basket in desperation,” she said.
Feanor, his lips tight, said nothing until it was clear that Tyelpelinde had finished her words.
“No, I will not ever threaten another or raise my hand against them again,” Feanor said. “I will not shame my mother, nor my father, nor my sons, nor my wife, nor any of my family, nor myself in that way ever again. And I do not delude myself to thinking it would work in any case – I do not think any evil I could do would ever save my son. It never did before – it only ever led to his doom,” Feanor said.
Tyelpelinde raised an eyebrow.
“We did not save ourselves from the Eternal Darkness by fulfilling our oath,” Feanor said simply. “We failed, after all. One of the silmarils is beyond our reach forever – the other two rejected my sons, and were thrown by them into the sea and flame – and the rest of us never so much as touched a silmaril again. It was only by mercy that we were gathered into the Halls of Mandos and our oath extinguished upon our will, rather than left to the darkness we had called upon ourselves.”
“I have always wondered – who was it amongst the Valar that spoke for you?” Tyelpelinde asked. “I was only ever told that my husband was not in the Void, which I was both bitter and glad for at the time, but I did not know how it came to be. I thought that the Lady Nienna would speak for all of you, but how did she sway her brother the Doomsman?”
A darkness came into Feanor’s eyes.
“It was not the decision of the Valar to send us or keep us from the darkness; we had made that decision ourselves with our oath, and the Void took me upon my death,” Feanor said.
Tyelpelinde looked at him with horror.
Feanor smiled then, wryly, before continuing.
“It was Namo who called me out of the dark. When I died, I knew nothing but darkness, and I knew then truly what it was I had condemned my sons to. I cannot – I cannot explain what it is, to be in the dark utterly and forevermore, and to know there was nothing but darkness ever left,” Feanor said, quietly, deliberately.
“And yet – yet still I heard the horn,” he continued. “Namo called to me, even lost in the Eternal Darkness - he called me back home. I followed his call willingly, and at last came to his Halls, and there he kept me.”
“You see, Namo held that his duty extended to all the children of Illuvatar,” Feanor continued, “and he would not refuse to sound his call to any of them. Not even to those he had doomed. Not even when he had to sound his horn into the Eternal Darkness itself. And I think – I think he was rather glad, in fact, that I followed it back in the end, for the Valar – they never wanted to lose any of us,” Feanor said softly.
“He sounded the same call to my sons, and one by one they followed him back to the Halls. It was – it was difficult for him. I saw him as he called my sons. His horn was meant to extend throughout the reaches of Arda; it was never meant to go beyond to the Void. Greatly he blew, and much strength he expelled, merely to bring home the most doomed of us all.”
“I feared in the end that even this would not be enough – he could only call them, he could not force them back, and for my eldest son I feared greatest of all – but even for Maedhros there was something that connected him yet to the living. His brother, perhaps, or the sons that he fostered. In the end, we all of us followed the call, and returned at the last,” Feanor finished.
Tyelpelinde shuddered, clenching her tea mug tightly.
“So, you returned,” Tyelpelinde said slowly. “For Namo in the end released you, and you came back to life having gone through not only death but the Eternal Darkness itself. And you return to the home of your law-daughter, carrying a basket.”
“Yes. Yes, here I am. For what father could do nothing – could stand aside – when it is his son at risk? Yes, perhaps I am reduced to wielding a basket of cakes rather than a sword and banners and an army at my back, but whatever I might wield, I shall,” Feanor said, his eyes shining. “Better I am here, and better that I throw away all pride and plead at the home of my law-daughter, and do something, than sit back in my own home and hold tight to my pride and watch my son be locked away forevermore.”
Tyelpelinde, her eyes just as fierce, stared back at her law-father. She looked into Feanor’s eyes, unflinching and yet open in a way she had hardly seen before the darkening.
"There are many that would say that I would be doing no such thing, for my husband is already doomed to death everlasting. Why should I wait for something that is so hopeless? Why not simply move on?" She asked.
Feanor flinched, his hand gripping his tea mug. He said nothing.
Tyelpelinde sighed.
“Ask, Feanor, ask all that you have wanted to ask since you first came to my door,” she said at last.
“Why?” Feanor asked without hesitation. “Why do you wait? And what might I do, to convince you to continue to wait for my son, even when it seems so hopeless and has brought you such suffering?”
Tyelpelinde snorted.
Feanor continued rapidly. “Do not have me wrong. It is not that I care nothing for you, nor your suffering, nor have no respect for your life. You are my law-daughter, and a prodigiously skilled craftswoman at that. You are part of my family, and ever you are under the protection of my house, if you ever will it. And I do not wish to see you suffer,” Feanor said.
“And if it were your choice – if you did, in the end, seek the dissolution that my father did – then what could I say in justice? And if you were to suffer less for it, and find happiness, then I do not lie when I say I would be glad for your happiness,” Feanor continued.
“But still, he is my son, and I am his father, and I cannot – I cannot give up hope, and I cannot stand aside, when he may be locked into the languishing halls of death forever. Already I bear the ever-lasting loss of my father. I cannot – I cannot – my son – “ Feanor paused, choking down words.
“I cannot do nothing,” Feanor said at last.
Tyelpelinde sat silently for several moments, her Noldorin-grey eyes dark. At last she sighed, and spoke again.
“Why? Perhaps I still hold some lingering affection for him,” she said slowly. “Perhaps it is an echo of a love that once lived between us. It has been so long, and so much has passed between us, that I cannot even tell in clarity.”
“Perhaps it is for my son, who would still seek reunion with his father, for all the grief that lay between them once. And yet he has told me that he will respect my choice in this matter. He is grown wise, over many thousands of years, and I know he speaks the truth when he says that he is willing to leave this in my hands. But still, he would like to see his father again,” Tyelpelinde continued.
“Or perhaps, and most accurately, it is because of Luthien Tinuviel,” Tyelpelinde said at last.
Feanor’s eyes blew open wide with shock. For all that he might have expected, this was not at all in his thoughts.
“What of Lady Luthien?” Feanor asked hesitantly.
“The Sindarin who returned to these shores have told many tales of her love, and her doom. I wonder - do you know all of it?” Tyelpelinde asked calmly, taking a sip of her tea.
“I have – I have heard the main events,” Feanor said slowly.
“Then let me tell you one thing you may or may not have heard,” Tyelpelinde said. “When Luthien and her mortal love died – the first time – Luthien bid Beren to wait for her in the Halls of Mandos, for she would not be long behind him. And so it was that when Luthien sang before the Doomsman, and moved his heart, she was able to gather Beren with her and return to life, for he had done as she had bid and lingered in the Halls rather than move on to the doom of Men.”
“But I have ever wondered – why did Luthien ask? How did she know it would work? The Doomsman had never before – and perhaps never again shall be – swayed in that fashion. The unions of elves and men were little known or understood, save that our fates were so vastly different. Such a choice – to return to life, and choose mortality – was unheard of. So why ask Beren to linger? Why even try – indeed, why even give her heart to a mortal when she knew it was so doomed?” Tyelpelinde asked, her eyes burning.
“We only know her plan would work because it did. But no one knew you could even make such a plea before Namo before Luthien did. And I think – I think it is because Luthien had hope, even when there was no reason to believe there should be any hope. And she tried, anyway. She did not give in, but instead she sought that hope, no matter how unavailing it seemed,” Tyelpelinde said.
Feanor looked at her, his eyes steady, seeking.
Tyelpelinde continued.
“Feanor, I watched my husband turn into a creature of darkness, someone whom I did not know. I watched him turn on me, and take my son away. I knew it would lead to his doom, and to my son’s, and he would not listen. I followed all the way to the shore – I did not intend to leave, only hoped to bring back at least my son – and I watched bodies lie motionless amongst the waves, their blood seeping into glittering white shores. And I watched the ships leave.”
“I turned back, and I went home into the dark, and I thought then that I might leave myself for the Halls and sleep forever, like the first queen – like your mother. I wanted nothing more than to lay my head down and rest. But – but I did not. Something stopped me.”
“I held to life, and then I felt my husband die, and our bond extinguish into darkness.”
“I remember little of those years, save when the star came at last to our shores, and the hosts of the Noldor left under Arafinwe’s banner. I could not go – I was little more than a wraith, then, barely clinging to life – but I pled with the king to save my son. And he promised me – he promised me he would do all he could. I believed him. He was – he was desperate to save whatever remained of his family.”
“The king returned, and they were victorious, but my son did not come home. He was alive, and he had renounced his father’s evil deeds, but he would not come home. I still felt dread for him, for I feared doom might still come to his path, but I also felt – something else. The same something that had stopped me from fading the first time. I decided if my son would live, across the sea, then I would too.”
“And so I returned to my craft, and to my family – who had so painstakingly cared for me, in those dark years – and to life in full. I helped to rebuild Tirion, and welcome home the returned, and build them homes. And we heard news, at times, from across the sea, and I knew my son had raised a great and beautiful city, and I was glad for a time.”
“And then I felt him die, and I wished to fall to the ground and never open my eyes again. But I did not. I persisted, and I did not quite know why.”
“And so many, many, thousands of years later, when all the light had been sapped from the world, and light had returned, and death had taken my family, death returned it – for my son returned back to me. Hale, and whole, and at peace. Beautiful and grown and alive. He is home,” Tyelpelinde said, her voice ringing.
“It once worked for Luthien, to blindly go into the dark with nothing more than an unreasonable hope. An unlikely one, and improbable one, a hope that had never been sought before. And, in a sense, it worked for me. I clung to an unreasonable hope, and I clung to life, and in the end, I survived. I lived, and forged a new life, and it was in this new life that I was alive and there to welcome my son back home.”
“And if there is still hope that my husband may return to life – as foolish a hope as it may be – then I will not stand in the way of it. I do not know how I feel about him, even now; my anger has burnt out long ago, but grief remains. Still, I find I cannot ask him to shut the door on hope for his life – even if it seems nigh impossible, with the blood on his hands. I cannot stand in the way of hope.”
“And, well, there is you, Feanor. You and your cakes,” Tyelpelinde added, almost as an afterthought.
“Me?” Feanor asked, looked down questioningly at the forgotten, beautifully-decorated cakes on their plates.
“Not the cakes themselves. Well, you are right they are my favorite, and I do appreciate them, and I will enjoy them. But it is not the cakes but – but that you are here, and you have brought them,” Tyelpelinde said, slowly.
“You, Feanor, who once was such a great, raging fire that none could stand in your path, who sought no counsel even before Melkor was ever released, save perhaps from Nerdanel the Wise, who in the end spoke such wisdom that you left her – and all wisdom with her.”
“And yet you are now here, speaking more wisdom over a cup of tea than you have spoken in all the years I knew you before. You would throw away all your pride for the sake of a chance for your son. You show respect – yes, truly, respect! – to me, and to my suffering, even when I might stand in the way of your son’s return. You bear a humble basket on your arm, and you will let neither pride nor wrath nor grief nor pain of any kind stop you from trying to save one whom you love.”
“So, Feanor, if you can do this – then could I not believe in hope? Could I not hope for a better tomorrow, even if the past is so full of shadows?” Tyelpelinde asked. “You have returned, again, and again, and again. And perhaps I have thought – here is someone else who hopes. And it may be a fool’s hope, but there are at least two of us fools, then.”
Feanor, his eyes dark with thought, nodded slowly.
“So there you have it, Feanor. Long I have spent in thought to come to this decision, but this is my decision in the end. You are free; you need not bring me cakes, nor tools, nor gems any longer. You need not come to my door to plead. I will not close out the door to life for my husband, not while even the most unlikely hope for it remains, even if all others have said no hope is left,” Tyelpelinde finished.
Feanor looked at her, and it seemed that his eyes glittered, not with fire – but with water, glistening in the corners of his eyes.
“You have grown great, Lady Tyelpelinde,” he said at last, “Not only for the works of your hands, but for the strength you have grown over these desolate years. I cannot – I cannot thank you enough, but I can say only this. Whatever I might do to help you carry your burden, you will have it. And - if you would have me, I would like to continue our visits. I would like to cling to hope with you,” he said quietly.
Tyelpelinde thought for several moments, then lifted one corner of her mouth, and inclined her head in acquiescence. The two of them silently sipped their now-cooled tea.
And so they sat quietly, nibbling at the cakes, and simply keeping the company of the other – another who, too, held onto a fool’s hope.