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sunflowersupremes · 4 years

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Grandmother

Celebrian bonds with her grandmother (not that one, the other one).

Characters: Celebrian, Nerdanel, Turgon, Finrod,

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“Are you just going to sit there?”

Celebrian thought to reply that she was, in fact, planning to just sit there. It was enough that she’d gone into the gardens (although that had only been because her uncle had threatened to carry her there if she didn’t go herself).

“That’s not going to solve anything you know,” the woman continued, marching over to stand beside Celebrian and squint down at her.

Finally, Celebrian looked up and then pulled back slightly at the sight of the woman in front of her. Although they’d never been formally introduced, she knew immediately who she was speaking with. There was a short list of people who had her fiery hair, and only one that Celebrian could think of that would be inside the royal gardens. “Lady Nerdanel?” she asked in surprise.

The sculptress huffed, “And you are Lady Celebrian, yes?”

“I- yes.”

“Then I will repeat my question: are you just going to sit there Lady Celebrian?”

“And if I am, Lady Nerdanel, what does it mean to you?”

“Sitting there won’t solve anything.”

“It makes my uncle happy, and that’s enough for me,” Celebrian replied. Nerdanel seemed to give up after that and retreated back to where ever she had come from. Celebrian tried to pretend she wasn’t sorry.

Finrod failed to get Celebrian to the garden the next day, or the day after that or the day after that. When threatening to carry her failed to make he tried to make good on his threats, only to have her cry out in fright, pulled into her past, remembering the last time she’d been carried against her will.

He’d left her alone after that, sending Turgon in his stead, attempting to bribe her with sweets. She’d locked her door, but the former king found a key and let himself in.

She was hiding in her closet when he found her, and he gave her the sweets wordlessly and sat with her in silence.

The next morning, Nerdanel marched into her room, threw open the curtains, and announced, “You need sunlight to sculpt.”

Startled from her sleep, Celebrian stared at her from the bed. “I don’t know how to sculpt.”

“Which is why I am here. You can’t learn sculpting from your uncle. Believe me, I’ve tried to teach him.”

She tried to teach Celebrian as well, once she got the younger woman out of bed. But Celebrian seemed to have her uncle’s talent for sculpting, which was Nerdanel’s way of saying she had no talent for it at all.

“It looks like a frog,” Nerdanel said, looking at the sculpture Celebrian had struggled with for hours.

“It’s my son,” Celebrian protested, although she was aware of how weak her protest sounded. She wasn’t even certain which of her sons it was meant to be, although that didn’t really matter seeing as how they were twins.

“Your son looks like a frog.”

For a moment Celebrian just stared at her, unable to believe anyone would say such a thing. Then a soft giggle erupted from her lips. “I suppose.”

“Mine tried to eat one once.”

“A frog?”

Nerdanel nodded. “Tyelkormo snuck it into the house and he and Atarince thought to convince Carnistir that it was a delicacy.”

Celebrian tried to picture what Nerdanel was describing. Maedhros and Maglor she had heard kind things about from Elrond, but the middle three seemed to be the most hated (or feared). “He believed it?”

“Oh he was a stupid boy,” Nerdanel said dismissively. When Celebrian gaped she explained, “He knew his way around books, certainly, but lacked any common sense. Eating that frog was one of the smarter things he ever did.”

She seemed saddened by that, as though recalling the other foolish things her sons had done, but at last she shook her head and said, “Next we’ll try painting, surely you can manage that.”

“I know how to paint,” Celebrian protested.

“Who taught you?”

“My mother.”

The older elf merely snorted. “Then I can only imagine what a travesty it will be.”

Nerdanel came the next day, as promised.

Celebrian was expecting her, that time, and was already sitting up in bed. “Not even dressed yet?” Nerdanel asked, raising an eyebrow. Finrod trailed behind her, offering excuses for Celebrian still being in her nightgown. Nerdanel ignored him. “I wasn’t planning to start with nude paintings, but if that’s what you want-”

Celebrian threw a pillow at her before stalking to her bathing chamber to dress. Once she was dressed she emerged to find Nerdanel positioning Finrod by the window, pushing flowers into his hair and swatting his hand away when he tried to assist.

“Wouldn’t it look better-” he began.

“You’re here to be pretty, not use your brain,” she retorted. Celebrian hid a grin. Finrod opened his mouth to protest and Nerdanel shoved a large blossom into his mouth. “Last time you tried to do more than just be pretty you got yourself eaten by a wolf for your trouble.”

Whatever protest he might have come up with was abandoned when Celebrian started laughing. After that, he sat silently and allowed them to paint him in peace.

Celebrian’s painting ability was marginally better than her sculpting ability. “I’ve always been better at landscapes,” she said by way of explanation.

Nerdanel was having none of it. “Any fool with a bit of paint can make a landscape. Capturing expression is where talent lies.” She looked at Celebrian’s painting and shook her head. “From what I’ve heard, your uncle looked better when he was dead.”

Finrod spit the flower out of his mouth. “I beg your pardon?”

----------

“Are you coming tomorrow?” Celebrian asked as Nerdanel packaged her paints.

“No.”

“No?”

“I can’t very well keep lugging all this up to your tower every day, now can I?” The sculptress shook her head. “If you want more lessons you’ll have to come to me.”

“Come… to you?” Celebrian’s heart twisted in her chest.

“I live just outside the palace. Have your grandfather or one of your uncles give you an escort.” She threw a bag over her shoulder. “Or just ask anyone in this city where the crazy old woman lives. They’ll point you true.” With that, she was gone.

It took only two days before Celebrian decided she was going to see Nerdanel again, no matter what it took. She crawled out of bed, wrapping herself in one of her more heavily layered gowns. It did little to disguise the weight she had lost, but she pretended that it had.

Setting her shoulders she placed her hand on her door and pushed.

She found her grandfather easily enough. Finarfin was where he usually was, in his study, sitting at his desk, pretending to be working. Anyone who didn’t know him would have thought he was diligently working for the good of the realm, but he’d confided in Celebrian (in an attempt to make her feel more at home) that he kept a stash of novels and poetry books in his desk.

For as many years as he’d had the crown, he never seemed wholly comfortable with it.

“Not now Findarato,” he said without looking up, clearly enjoying his book.

Celebrian cleared her throat.

His head snapped up in alarm. “Celebrian.”

“I’d like to visit Lady Nerdanel.”

For a long moment, he gaped at her. She hadn’t expressed any interest in leaving the palace since she’d arrived, and then she had been half carried through the halls. But he didn’t question it, snapping his mouth shut and quickly saying, “Of course.”

She ended up with a rather large escort since none of them could decide who got the honor of taking her.

Finrod had pretended he didn’t want to take her, “not after the paint incident,” he had claimed. But the glimmer in his eye was evident.

After that, they’d only intended to take Turgon, but he was having tea with Fingon, and once they had both of them it seemed cruel not to take the rambunctious Argon.

“Just please don’t break any of her sculptures this time, please,” Fingon begged his youngest brother.

Celebrian still wasn’t used to all of them.

They were people of legend in Middle Earth. Everyone had heard tales of them, and even though she was related to them they had someone never seemed real. But they were real, and it was just as real that Argon had picked up a spider on their way to Nerdanel’s house and shoved it down Turgon’s shirt.

And yet watching them was saddening, knowing they were all that was left of their family. None of Finrod’s siblings had returned from the halls yet, and it seemed unlikely Aredhel would leave without her son. Fingolfin, too, had not yet returned.

But most obvious as they stepped through Nerdanel’s carved gates, was the absence of Feanor and his seven sons.

The laughter stopped.

Turgon stopped trying to get his hands around Argon’s neck.

Finrod and Fingon stopped shoved one another in their attempts to be the one to lead Celebrian by her arm.

“She… doesn’t invite visitors often,” Finrod explained.

I can see why, Celebrian wanted to say. But even without her uncle and cousins going silent she would have known who the statues in front of her depicted.

“All seven of them,” she said softly, staring down the line. The gardens seemed neglected, with vines wrapping around the pedestals, moss growing in their clothes. Their faces remained clean.

“No,” Fingon said softly. He pointed to the nearest statue. “That one is our Uncle.”

Celebrian’s eyes trailed down the line. Now that she had a better idea of what she was looking at, she could better guess who each one was.

There was Feanor as Fingon had said.

Maedhros with his beautiful features and long hair.

Celegorm held his bow.

Caranthir perpetually scowling.

Amrod and Amras, perfectly identical.

“She didn’t carve Kanafinwe.”

Before any of her escorts could say anything, Nerdanel’s voice floated out of the overgrown bushes. “Why should I?” She emerged from the mess of brambles, her red hair full of leaves and tucked behind a headband. “They’re markers for the dead. He’s not dead, just stubborn.”

“He might as well be,” Turgon muttered.

One look from Nerdanel was enough to silence him.

“I told you to bring one escort,” she grumbled to Celebrian, “Not an army.”

“They’re more like a flock of wild geese,” Celebrian said softly.

Nerdanel gave them a tour of her home after that, and although she complained bitterly about having so many people to tramp mud through her halls, it was clear to anyone watching she was enjoying herself.

The home was full of creativity. Half forgotten projects were tucked into corners, including one that Nerdanel squinted at and muttered: “Ambarussa never could finish anything.”

And yet for all it was full of memories of the dead, it didn’t feel like a shrine. It felt like it was frozen in time, as though it was waiting for her long lost children to return home, pick up their paints, and resume their projects. Somehow, that was worse.

“She rarely stays here,” Finrod murmured to Celebrian when he saw her staring at one of Feanor’s inventions, a bird that tapped its beak in water over and over again. “She lives with her father, outside the city.”

After their tour, Nerdanel turned on her guests, something strange glinting in her eyes. “I’d offer you food but I hardly have enough for the lot of you. And I can't speak for Celebrian, but I'm ravenous so make yourselves useful.”

Finrod was sent to a bakery. Fingon to a candy shop. Argon she sent to a butcher shop. “You go with your little brother,” she told Turgon. “I don’t trust him not to break anything.”

“It was one sculpture, Auntie!” Argon protested.

“Don’t call me auntie,” she retorted, shoving them all toward the door. “I can keep an eye on your lady, of all of us I have the best record of not being dead.”

She offered Celebrian a mischievous wink. Perhaps her words would have been funnier if it were not for the tapestry that Caranthir had embroidered looming over them.

“Why are you here?” Celebrian asked as their voices faded down the hall. “You don’t live here. This house hasn’t been used in centuries.”

“Your husband was very dear to my sons,” she said after a moment. “And they’re gone now. I might as well make a marker for Kanafinwe, for all the good it will do me to deny that he’s most likely dead.” She let out a soft sigh, glancing at Celebrian through the corner of her eye. “I don’t plan to be making a marker for you girl.”

“I’m not going to fade,” Celebrian whispered. No matter how tempting it was to curl into her bed and let all of her problems disappear. She couldn’t let herself want that.

“I know,” the sculptress grinned. “I won’t let you.”

#silmfic #silmarillion #nerdanel #maglor #celebrian #elrond #turgon #ecthelion #feanorian #feanor #series: Nerdanel #my writing

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