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echo-bleu · 7 months

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your veins are empty of dust

Nerdanel stays behind and sculpts. Also on AO3. Title from The Amazing Devil's King.

There is no need for statues to remember, in a world that doesn’t forget.

Nerdanel likes to carve birds and rabbits and flowers and leaves. Transitory wonders. When she is commissioned to sculpt people, she shapes new features, never before seen, or she captures the ever-changing fánas of barely-there Maiar.

She has hanged painted portraits and sketches of her children at various stages of growing all over the house, but no marble likeness.

They are right here to look at, after all.

After Alqualondë, Nerdanel retreats from the world.

The darkness and the absence permeate everything. Elves discover the grief of impermanence. In Tirion, there is no court left to appear at, no councils to lead, no strolls to take at the end of the day to admire the Mingling. No news from the ones who have left.

Anairë finds her late one day in her workshop, surrounded by slabs of stone larger than her. She is hammering forcefully at one of them, the barest hints of an elven shape already taking form in the marble. Bitter, stinging tears run down her cheeks and into her collar, and her arms ache with exhaustion.

The body is only barely sketched, but the face is already chiselled, smooth curves and angular cheekbones.

Fëanáro emerges out of the marble, looking like he’s about to take life.

(Across the sea, her sons lead a funeral.)

It’s Anairë again who comes to her, when Arien first sails across the sky. Nerdanel is rearranging her workshop to take advantage of the new light. The windows were designed for the glowing of the Trees.

Anairë nearly collapses as soon as she passes the door.

“Who?” Nerdanel asks her, supporting her to a chair. It’s covered in white stone dust, but neither of them cares.

Fëanáro’s finished statue looms in a corner of the workshop, just out of the light. He looks like he did when she first met him, young and passionate and determined, before the world shrunk around them and suffocated him.

“Arakáno,” her friend weeps.

“Oh, Anairë,” Nerdanel murmurs. “Your youngest.”

“Would you—”

Nerdanel had no intention of ever doing it again. “Of course,” she says.

It was overly optimistic of her, she supposes.

Arakáno looks painfully young and hopeful under her chisel’s tip.

For centuries, there are no news. Nerdanel’s art escapes toward the abstract, great shapes of wind and water and fire coming out of the stone in ways they never had before. Arafinwë crowns himself king, and Anairë busies herself with the day-to-day workings of the court and the administration.

Nerdanel doesn’t think about her sons across the water. She doesn’t wonder how Maitimo looks with a crown on his head. She doesn’t wonder which new instrument Makalaurë has taken up. She doesn’t wonder what new animal languages Tyelkormo has learned. She doesn’t wonder if Carnistir still wants to write his book, or if Atarinke is coming close to the skill of his father, or what little Tyelpë has grown into. She doesn’t imagine Ambarussa running into danger with every new day, so far away from her.

(Except on the days when she can’t think about anything else.)

Somehow, against all of her instincts, life goes on.

There is no twinge from the bonds in her fëa, no sign of any change. She’s almost ready to think them safe, over there, maybe even thriving.

And then Anairë comes back.

Little Irissë used to follow Tyelkormo around everywhere. Fëanáro would watch her childish infatuation with much more indulgence than he ever afforded Findekáno and his friendship with Maitimo, perhaps because neither of them were their fathers’ heirs.

Where is Tyelkormo now, with his little shadow gone? Is Maitimo free to live his love for all to see? Have any of her sons married? Atarinke’s wife didn’t go into exile either, though she wants nothing to do with Nerdanel. The others left unpledged to anyone but that oath they all took.

To the everlasting darkness.

What if they fail?

Nerdanel has never truly wondered what will happen then, too busy missing them and cursing Fëanáro for it all.

Irissë’s marble figure looks back at her accusingly. All the arrows in her quiver are fletched with Tyelkormo’s special technique.

It’s fifty more years before she carves another face, but the question haunts her.

(Ñolofinwë looks grander and colder in stone than he ever did in life.)

Eärwen didn’t come to her when she lost Angaráto and Aikanáro. Nerdanel heard it through Anairë and mourned, but she can’t blame her. Eärwen never forgave the murder of her brothers – how could she – and she avoids Nerdanel if she can help it. She has only recently moved back to Tirion and rejoined her husband.

Arafinwë doesn’t publicize the death of his sons. He could call for city-wide mourning, but he keeps their grief private and personal. Few can see the bags under his eyes as he holds court as normal in the wake of his loss.

But a few weeks after Findaráto’s death, Nerdanel finds Eärwen at the door of her workshop.

The news come with rumours of a great battle, of spouses and parents and children all over Tirion feeling the loss. Anairë’s shoulders are hunched over with the weight of grief.

The white marble makes Findekáno’s skin seem almost transparent, compared to the warm brown of her memories.

She grieves for Maitimo as much as she grieves for Anairë. Her son could never hide from her his devotion for Findekáno, the depth of his feelings. Did Findekáno ever forgive him for the burning of the ships? Did they find some happiness together?

She will never know.

She tried, long ago, at Fëanáro’s bequest, to sculpt Míriel’s likeness from the body resting in the Garden of Lórien. She could never make her look alive.

Arafinwë waited years to commission a statue of Finwë. He put it in his throne room. Nerdanel hasn’t stepped foot in it since.

10.

She feels the bounds snap, snap, snap, only minutes apart. She collapses in the street, and the paint buckets in her hands spill around her, yellow and blue flowing into her red hair like a painting.

She comes back to herself on a couch in Anairë’s bower. For days, she only has the strength to weep until she makes herself sick.

Tyelkormo. Carnistir. Atarinke.

She locks herself inside her workshop. It is no refuge, only pain aggrandized, only grief carved into her soul. She can’t stand it. She keeps going.

When she finally emerges, after her father, worried, has come himself to find her, there are three new statues at the back of her atelier.

It doesn’t feel like it’s enough. It never has.

She doesn’t step inside the workshop again for several years.

11.

When she does, it’s for Anairë, who has now lost everything.

12.

She sculpts her twins together, in each other’s arms, inseparable even in eternal stillness.

(She can barely stand to look at them.)

13.

She knows now what her sons did over the sea. From the young Sinda girl and her strange husband, she has heard how they died. She has wept for their deeds as she wept for their deaths, and she weeps still for the two who live now on borrowed time, hunted and haunted by their own hand and the terrible Oath her husband had them swear.

Arafinwë has gone to war. Nerdanel wonders if Eärwen will come to her, when he doesn’t come back.

14.

Maitimo is beautiful, towering over her, his half-braided hair cascading down his shoulder. She can almost see the colours in the white marble veins, her own bright red reflected in his, the delicate tones of his skin.

Like her husband, he burned bright until the fire engulfed him entirely.

She falls to her knees at his feet. She has no tears left to weep.

15.

“He didn’t look like this, any more.”

Nerdanel turns sharply, to find Findaráto leaning against the door of the workshop.

He doesn’t look like he did under the light of the Trees, either. His face is a study of scars and new lines that didn’t fade in Mandos, and his gaze is heavy with pain. Nerdanel wonders what Eärwen did with his statue.

“He lost his right hand during his rescue from Angband,” Findaráto says, nodding at Maitimo’s likeness. “And he was heavily scarred.”

Nerdanel swallows around the lump in her throat, and runs a dusty hand through her hair. Does she want to keep her son unmarred in memory, as he no longer is?

She takes a breath and hold out her chisel. “Show me.”

16.

There are six statues at the back of her atelier. It is now clear of anything else, clean and aired and unused, her chisels and hammers put away in their racks.

Between the second and the third statue, there is an empty space. And in the middle of the workshop, a single slab of stone, waiting.

17.

It stays untouched.

18.

“Ammë,” her son murmurs as he collapses into her arms, fresh off the ship that brings him over the sea, after two ages of wandering.

He looks nothing like she remembers. He’s so thin that he hardly weighs in her embrace, half-faded, his face marked with age as no elf’s should be. He barely has a grip on where he is on a good day, and he is lost in time more often than not.

She doesn’t care.

And if she finds him in her workshop sometimes, talking to the statues of his father and his brothers as if they are alive, well. People have said that her likenesses look more real than real people.

(Makalaurë, standing still in the empty space that long awaited him, makes a better marble than live body.)

19.

One day, maybe, they will come back to her from Mandos, alive and safe. One day, maybe, Makalaurë will live again in the present more than he is in the past. One day, maybe, she will no longer be surrounded by faces of stones, and she will be able to stop grieving.

For now, she will bask in the presence of her last son and her grandsons – Tyelpë, all grown and only just re-embodied, and Elrond, who brought her Makalaurë back.

And she will wait.

#nerdanel #silmarillion #tolkien #silm fic #anaire #finrod #maglor #maedhros #feanor #celegorm #curufin #caranthir #ambarussa #echo's fanfiction

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thesummerestsolstice · 2 months

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My Headcanon Crafts for the House of Fingolfin:

Anaire: an architect. Very elegant in style; she designed a lot of Valinor's most beautiful classical guildhalls and ballrooms. She first met Fingolfin when she sought him out because she need a really nice stained glass window for one of her projects. She proposed to him by showing him a plan she'd made for their house.

Fingon: a glassworker like his dad! Unlike Fingolfin, instead of focusing on stained glass murals, he preferred more free form glassblowing and making sculptures. Other than some really flashy abstract stuff, his favorite works were little glass animals he liked to make for gifts. The first ones he made were two (slightly squished) doves for his parents.

Turgon: an architect. His designs were a lot more maximalist and fanciful, often based off of extremely beautiful and slightly surreal sketches. He designed basically everything in Gondolin, and the city was seen as the absolute peak of Noldor architecture, because everything there was legitimately awe-inspiring, from gravity-defying bridges to a minecart-based public transit system.

Aredhel: a hunter. But beyond that, she was well known for her incredible plants lore. From medicinal herbs to poison berries, she knew it all, and often made great use of it in the hunt. She often brought home fresh mushrooms and wild vegetables along with her latest kills for family dinners. She could also make a mean spiced rabbit.

Argon: an animal healer. He's a caring, gentle soul by nature, even if he's a bit excitable, and he's very good at getting animals to calm down. He always liked working with them, and decided that helping them was what he wanted to dedicate his life to. He'd often come home from the woods as a kid with an injured bird or rabbit and big pleading eyes.

Bonus! But sadder this time. Fingolfin left his little glass dove with Fingon before he went off to challenge Morgoth. It eventually ended up in Galadriel's hands because she was one of Fingon's only surviving relatives, and ended up inheriting a lot of his things. She gave it to Finarfin so he could take it back to Valinor and return it to Anaire. The doves were reunited. Eventually, so were their owners.

Headcanon Crafts for Finwe and his Children, the House of Feanor, the House of Finarfin, and the rest of the House of Finwe.

#silmarillion #silm headcanons #house of finwe #house of fingolfin #noldor #noldor crafts #fingolfin #anaire #fingon #turgon #aredhel #argon #galadriel #finarfin #gondolin #Turgon voice *would you like to hear about efficient and accessible mass transit?*#I need to post more about Turgon ppl are so mean to him he deserves to be a silly little guy more

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tanoraqui · 2 months

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Teen and Up Audiences | Graphic [but often poetic and/or supernatural!] Depictions of Violence | Gen

Words: 8,619 | Chapters: 1/1

Relationships: Finarfin & Galadriel, Finarfin & Maedhros

Characters: Finarfin, Morgoth Bauglir | Melkor, Galadriel, Anairë, Maedhros, Eönwë, Maglor, Celebrimbor, Celeborn, Amarië, Irimë |Lalwen

Additional Tags: War of Wrath, I tagged everyone but really it's about Finarfin, kingship, and personal and collective vengeance/justice/trying to kill an unkillable dark god

“I wish you wouldn’t do this,” Lalwen complained in greeting. “Two brothers I have already lost, blindly charging that place. Must you add a third to my tally?”

“Maybe,” Finarfin said bluntly. It was still gentler than the truth on his tongue: It’s my turn.

(Or: in which Finarfin is, after all, the third son in the fairy tale.)

I worry that I’ve hyped this up too much by having it as a WIP for so long, but Here it is at last: Finarfin’s due shot at 1v1-ing Morgoth (more or less), a cornerstone of my personal elaborate tapestry of Arda headcanons! (I regularly forget that the sword isn’t a canonical legendary weapon.)

#the silmarillion #finarfin #arafinwe #galadriel #maedhros #war of wrath #morgoth #melkor #eonwe #anaire #lalwen #maglor #amarie #celeborn #celebrimbor #fanfiction #my fic

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cyraes · 3 months

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late night quick doodles - Nerdanel & Anairë

#nerdanel #anairë #anaire #the silmarillion #the silm #the silm art #tolkien elves #tolkien art #tolkien fanart #art #the silmarillion art

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thestaroffeanor · 3 months

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Anairë, the Holiest

#my art #silmarillion #anaire #house of fingolfin #house of finwe #tolkien #because earwen needs her best friend #and fingolfin needs one too #one more down for the family tree #silm art

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ela-draws · 2 months

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After posting all the portraits here's the whole family tree ! Fingolfin's family <3

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elficially-done-with-life · 3 months

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I didn't include Elrond & Elros since they basically have their own houses

For everyone asking, for me Gil-Galad is the son of Orodreth since that is the "newest" version of him. It's what tolkien decided for last (though we don't know if he would have changed his mind again), and he also almost certainly decided that Fingon never had any children at all. (Look up The Peoples of Middle-earth, there are some notes on the parentage of Gil-Galad in that, which I base my assumtion on) -> it is obviously up to interpretation, but that is how I see what Tolkien wrote, so to me Gil-Galad is an Arafinwëan.

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kitcat22 · 5 months

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So sometime towards the end of the third age not long after Fingon was reborn Anaire finally gets round to asking Fingon if Gil Galad is actually his son.

Fingon who has heard these rumours before, denies it saying that Maedhros was the only one he ever loved and he would never have married or fathered a child with another. Even if their relationship was only a rumour to those outside their family, the idea of him marrying another is both insulting and infuriating. Fingon has never met this Gil Galad guy but as soon has he’s reborn Fingon plans to confront him on his lies.

At which, Anaire points out that technically Maedhros was not born a man and it would be entirely possible that Gil Galad was both of their’s.

At this Fingon kind of pauses. He hadn’t really considered that before. He doesn’t think its likely, afterall most of the times elves have to be trying to conceive in order to get pregnant. But… it’s not unknown that moments of passion and heightened emotions can lead to happy little accidents. Aredhel, herself was one of those happy little accidents. And the last night he and Maedhros spent together was certainly passionate. A moment in a time before what they thought would either be their greatest victory or worst defeat.

Fingon doesnt like this idea, doesnt like the idea that he left the love of his love alone and pregnant and hurting in a dying continent. But… if there was even the slightest chance that Gil Galad was his son then Fingon had a duty to find out.

So Fingons starts investigating hunting down those close to his supposed son and anyone else he thought might have information. Not many Feanorians stay in Valinor and certainly not those who closely served Maedhros. Most remain across the sea or in the Halls of Mandos and as he is forbidden from sailing and knows that Mandos would not be particularly pleased to see him again, he doesnt have very many people to ask about this.

Its not until Elrond travels across the sea that Fingon really has hope of getting any answers. He gathers his courage and marches to the house of the child his lover kidnapped, to ask for his help. For someone who by all rights should hate Maedhros, Elrond is suprisingly helpful. He looks kindly at Fingon and grants him access to the letters Maedhros kept in Amon Ereb. There isn’t much in these letter but one of them written by Celegorm reports something had been safely and secretly delivered to Cirdan.

He thinks it’s really quite likely at this point that Gil Galad is his son but the final confirmation comes when Elladan and Elrohir arrive in Valinor bringing a haggard half faded Maglor with them.

#fingon #maedhros #russingon #ereinion gil galad #russingon as gil galads dads #elrond #anaire #maglor #trans!maedhros #trans maedros

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