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Chapter Text

“When I tell you that the 

voice of the nightingale turns dark 

you have to understand what 

this love is trying to overcome, 

you have to know that if you ever leave, 

if you ever disappear, 

the sky would rip, and the 

stars would lose their way.”

...

The first thing Findis does after leaving Vanyamar is to weep. The tears come rough and hard, and for the first time in two years she allows them to come. She pitches sideways off the horse, crying too hard to control herself, and curls in on her torso. She stays like that for a long time, fingers dug into the dirt, face smearing with wet grass and mud.

Then she drags herself up, and wipes away the dirt as best she can, and gets back on her horse.

Where to? asks Calassë, her sweet, copper-toned horse, in a voice of high song. 

Findis would close her eyes if the Trees still shone, but they don’t, so she does not need to force the darkness on herself. Instead, she stares up at Varda’s stars, and she says, Away.

…

When she is born, her mother names her after Veassë, for the strength of her wailing and the bruises she left on Indis’ stomach while in the womb. Her father names her Envinyassë, for the healing he wishes her to bring to his home.

Nobody remembers those names now. 

They would not be honest anyhow.

…

Findis, eldest princess of the Noldor, grows swiftly, silver-eyed like Finwë and gold-haired like her mother. 

She is a quiet child, content to watch the world rather than reshape it, and it’s that which endears her to her brother; Fëanáro has always liked impressing people, particularly those that are not easily impressed: Findis, as princess and sister both, is good at pricking Fëanáro’s pride into producing ever finer objects. 

It’s him that starts calling her Findis. 

Her mother flinches when she hears the name, but Fëanáro flinches when he hears her called Envinyassë even deeper, and there are no battles here that Findis can win, from which she can escape as victor. There are only choices, each with their individual sorrows. 

(Perhaps Fëanáro had meant it as an insult. He is a wordsmith beyond compare; he would not have had to try hard for that. But among all the insults he could have offered her, the name Findis is not even the least. And if it is not worthy of Fëanáro’s insults, then it is not an insult; then, Findis can see it as a gift.)

Finwë had named her for what he’d wished her to bring to his home: life, and love, and the joy that Míriel Þerinde had taken from him. It had not been a gift so much as a burden. The ataresse had not been a gift to her so much as Findis had represented a gift to him.

It is Findis’ choice to name herself Findis, of the House of Finwë and the House of Ingwë, of both Noldor and Vanyar in equal measure. The first time Fëanáro hears it, he blinks; he does not smile.

His silence is enough to convince Findis to continue.

…

She does not sit idly in the forge; she listens to Fëanáro’s words, and studies his actions. She is his first true apprentice, decades before he is of age to take one; and though he is not a great teacher, he is a good one: Fëanáro has little patience in other matters, but he finds new reserves for Findis, and he does not treat her like she’s too young for the majority of her desires. Only teaches her the rules for safety, and the methods to go about crafting what she wishes, and the hours during which she can work.

“Two hours per day,” he tells her.

“Three,” bargains Findis. “And I don’t tell Father what happened to the steel bookshelves in the library.”

Fëanáro, who had melted down those bookshelves to make a breastplate but lost interest halfway through the project, looks faintly guiltily at the scraps decorating his discard pile. “Two,” he replies, “and you can keep the gemstones you filched from me last week, and I won’t even ask you what you’ll do with them.”

“If you forget and ask me anyways?”

“Then you’ll get a… week, with three hours allowed during that time.”

Findis tilts her head to the side. “Two weeks,” she says, and doesn’t grin at the frustration on Fëanáro’s face. 

…

For a long time, Fëanáro thinks she’ll follow him into forge-work.

Findis doesn’t.

…

She doesn’t ask him whether he cares. She doesn’t ask him much of anything, by then; Nolofinwë’s birth has driven a wedge between them that even Findis cannot cross. It does not help that he looks so dearly like their father. Findis’ eyes had been her saving glory, the only parts of her that belonged to Finwë and proved her mother’s faithfulness. Nolofinwë’s saving glory is himself: for he is the healing that Findis ought to have heralded, and he is the son that they have all wanted, and he represents everything that Fëanáro has always feared.

As he grows older, the hatred hardens. Calcifies. Meeting Nerdanel softens Fëanáro a little, and so does his apprenticeship under Mahtan, and so does the distance that accompanies both of them. But nowhere near enough.

Findis cannot stem that bitterness.

She does not bother either; she instead throws herself into finding what she loves. There’s a silence in the dance hall or the sparring courts that is forever absent from Findis’ family, and it’s that silence which she seeks more than anything else. 

Findis is young. She is selfish.

She changes over the years. Enough to lose one.

The other? 

That selfishness is woven deep into every last one of Finwë’s children.

…

Findis’ true problem is that she is good at everything she puts her mind to. Fishing, swordsmithing, dancing; she can hold a tune with ease, and paint without much thought, and even her hunting skills are not too shabby. 

When she takes up weaving, she stays with it for longer than everything else. The colors are beautiful, and her fingers are nimble, and there are images in Findis’ mind that ought to be shared with the world, images that she can weave into being with thread and needle. She rather loves it. It does not come easy to her, but Findis has never feared hard work.

To gain her Mastery, Findis weaves a tapestry of her father telling the elves of Valinor. The stars twinkle out from the darkness like studded gems, and there is no other light, just faint pricks of the people underneath. The Trees, after all, are not present in Middle-Earth. Ingwë’s golden hair, and Finwë’s silver eyes, and Elwë’s pale skin, and the passion on their faces is just visible. It is not the lesson of triumph that Findis has seen depicted time and again, nor the journey into the light that Finwë likes to tell so often. It is just darkness, with the promise of light. The faces of the elves are upturned like flowers to the sun. 

“For… inspiration,” says Finwë, when she gains her Mastery, and hands her a wrapped bundle. 

It is traditional to give gifts to the student, and so Findis accepts without much hesitance. Later, in the privacy of her rooms, she unwraps the covering to reveal a soft shawl. The colors remain jewel-bright despite the aged softness of the cloth, and the detail of the embroidery is stunning: every last thread is used to purpose.

When she pulls it over her shoulders, the fringes fall back to look like swan-wings, the cloth cut at a clever angle. 

And the detail of the shawl shifts as well, so Findis cannot so much as see the beautiful embroidery; she’s too caught up in the delicate, arching curve of the wings, which spreads down her back in a glory of silver and gold and white and grey.

At the very corner, she sees the sign of the weaver. A delicate Þ , curling and curved, in the deepest shade of ochre that Findis has ever seen.

She does not know what her father meant with this gift. Uncomplicated kindness? That Findis reminds him of his first wife? That Findis can never better his first wife in her own craft? 

Or this is not a wound meant for me, thinks Findis slowly, and wraps the shawl back into its neat folds. Finwë has never folded a single cloth in his life. Indis has, but she hadn’t been able to come to the event, too heavy with her third child. A shawl of Míriel Þerinde’s own hand does not belong in mine.

It belongs to Fëanáro, who, just two days previous, managed to convince Mahtan not to take Nolofinwë as his apprentice. Nolofinwë’s planning to go to Vanyamar instead, and learn under Ingwë, but Indis had- according to rumor- been furious with Fëanáro. Of course she’d send Míriel Þerinde’s shawl to Findis; it’s a compliment to Findis, and an insult to Fëanáro, and an easy, simple vengeance for herself.

Findis should, by all rights, give it to her brother.

But running her fingers over the cloth, she finds she cannot. Findis is her name, is it not? Findis, named by Fëanáro. She will live up to that name. 

…

Everyone always expected the world of Findis. By the time she grew enough to learn that, she’d already disappointed them: too quiet, too Vanya for her father’s family, too Noldo for her mother’s family, too angry for her mother, too kind for her father. Fëanáro had been the only one to offer her a name that belonged to the girl he knew rather than the girl he wanted.

Findis will always be grateful to him for it.

…

In the end, she is also Finwë’s daughter. She is also a princess, and she also has his indomitable will within her fëa. Fëanáro’s spirit is of flame, witnessed and named by his mother at his birth. Nolofinwë’s would be of earth, unforgiving and unchanging and nourishing in equal measure. Lalwen’s is water, chattering and cheerful, vicious and terrible, changing and lovely.

Findis is of air.

The cold air, howling and cutting. The warm air, stifling and deathful. The air remembers what it had been even as it remains unchanged. The air shines in Tirion, gold and silver, like the light of Findis’ gaze. 

In the end, Findis is also Finwë’s daughter, and she, too, has pride like blood in her veins.

If she cannot be the finest weaver in the land, then weaving is not her true calling.

…

The day she walks into the Guild of Songs, she knows she is home. 

This is her true calling. But it is not just any songs that call to Findis. She is alive, and she is fierce, and there are so many who are not. She is a princess of a people who died, though there are many who have forgotten that. 

Tirion is lovely, but Tirion is not all that there ever was.

…

“I see that you’ve chosen another craft,” says Indis. 

Findis finishes tying off her braid. She’s woven her mother’s hair with jewels in the Noldorian fashion, but they don’t stand out in her pale hair like they would in Lalwen’s or their father’s hair. It does not suit her mother very much. If Findis ever deigned to dress in such a manner, it would not suit her either.

“Weaving was something I enjoyed,” she replies calmly. “But there was something my heart yearned for, even deeper.”

“Amarië tells me that she met you in the Guild of Songs.”

It is a beautiful day. All the days are beautiful in Aman. Findis imagines the rain turning freezing on her skin. She imagines a heat so strong it could kill her. There are times, briefly, when the wind lashes at her face and steals her words, and she wonders if there are storms in Endamar that are stronger. She imagines that pride and that fear, and the silence of those who came ever after into Aman.

What could be so terrible as that?

“I have chosen singing,” murmurs Findis. 

“Singing?” asks Indis. “After everything- you have returned to singing?”

Singing is the first skill taught to children. The first, and the greatest, and the least as well, in its own way. Findis isn’t surprised by her mother’s surprise. 

“You thought I’d choose something else?”

“Bird-watching, perhaps,” says Indis wryly, and Findis laughs. “You’ve the patience for it, certainly. And the temperament.”

“Patience!” cries Findis. “Ah, do not insult me again with such accusations, Ama!”

“Ah, my Vanya daughter.” Indis turns, and gathers Findis to her breast, hands warm on the curve of Findis’ throat. “I’d forgotten that you bear half of your father’s temper as well. So. What brought you back to the minyacarme?”

“I remembered that songs need not have a purpose,” says Findis quietly. “That they can shape and reshape the world, yes, but not only that. I’d forgotten their beauty, Ama. How beautiful they can be, even if there is no purpose to them.”

“Findis,” whispers her mother. A mother’s premonitions. Findis had forgotten that, because her mother has never understood her very well all her life, for all that there is love, deep and inescapable, between them. “You did not choose just any mastery, did you?”

“No,” says Findis, soft as a falling feather. Soft as Míriel Þerinde’s shawl. “Not just any mastery. I chose… the old songs. The old histories. To love them, and to remember them, and to mourn them.”

Others sing of Varda’s stars. But it is the darkness of the sky that allows her to shine, and Findis has spent too long searching for the light to forget the beauty of the dark. 

“It is not an easy path.”

“I am your daughter,” Findis murmurs, and touches the jewels in Indis’ golden hair, the jewels that will never shine so bright for her or for her daughter, the jewels that Indis nevertheless wears for her husband and her husband’s people. “Never have you chosen an easy path, Mother. I will not have it said that Findis, daughter of Indis, daughter of Intyalë, is any lesser.”

…

For this Mastery, Findis tracks down the elves of Endamar, all of them that she can name. Those left behind, those that passed. It is a weaving of sorts. It is a history of sorts. There are so few now who remember, and even fewer willing to speak of it. Findis’ job is far more difficult than anyone would guess.

She sings them into being, their histories, their families. 

The Avari were unwilling, but they were, once, kin. There were others who had desired to see the Trees and perished on the path. There were families sundered by personal choice and accident across the entirety of Aman.

Perhaps it is that which drives Findis on: this proof, undeniable, that Arda was scarred far before Míriel passed and Indis fell in love and Findis was birthed.

The song is high and lovely and echoing. It is the kind of song that she will never again manage to construct. It is the best song that Findis has ever sung, piercing and flawed; perfected in the flaws. The cracks of the singer’s voice must be placed properly, but it is the silence that highlights the grief and heightens it.

She sings it in private, to the guild masters, and there is not a single dry eye in the room.

…

Later, Indis asks her to perform it to the court. Findis demurs: it will take too long, and the festival cannot be dragged on too far, for little Arafinwë is heading to Vanyamar at dawn. But there is a portion she can sing, she offers. A part of it. Of the thousands that she has sung into history, there is one that her mother might care for deeper than the rest.

Standing before the court, she sings to the Noldor of Intyalë, sister of Ingwë and Findis’ own grandmother. 

Intyalë the Bright-Eyed, who dreamed of the Trees before ever Orome found the elves, even in the darkness of Endamar. Intyalë the Golden-Tongued, who’d persuaded Ingwë to travel to Valinor and see the Trees, even when his own fëar would have borne him to remain. Intyalë the Loving, who had cherished her twin sister with all her heart and all her mind. Intyalë the Strong-Armed, who had marched into the abode of darkness when her sister and her sister’s daughter were stolen away, and brought them back. Intyalë the Grand-Hearted, who had passed into darkness on the slopes of mountains so high the air grew thin, and in her last moments, pressed her own daughter into Ingwë’s arms. Intyalë, whose daughter was named Indis, whose daughter was named Findis.

When she finishes, her mother’s eyes are filled with tears, and her father is white-faced. The rest of the court stares. Many of those who were there are weeping, and many of those that were not look stunned. Findis does not wait for either applause or criticism.

She sweeps a bow.

Not in the Noldo fashion, and not in the fashion of the Vanyar either. This is a bow she creates, from her own desires, of her own griefs. One hand to her breastbone. The other sweeping down her spine. For the people they have all lost, and the griefs that can never go away, and the memories that will remain.

A bow for remembrance.

With that, she leaves.

…

“Do not let their horror stop you,” says Fëanáro.

Findis tips her head to the side to look at him. The stars are shining, and she feels weighted with her mourning just as she feels freed with it. 

“I know you would not,” she murmurs. “But your decisions would not be any other’s decisions. You cannot fault me for my wariness.”

“You are my sister,” says Fëanáro quietly. “And all I can speak of to you is what I know. What I would do.”

“I did not know you’d returned to the castle.”

“Father wanted me there for Arafinwë’s naming.” 

“And you obey our father in all things.”

“I do,” says Fëanáro, and laughs, lightly. “‘Tis you who does not heed him, Findis. You, and when the mood takes her, Lalwen. But your mind is as immovable as a Vala’s decree when you decide on something.”

Findis ducks her head, hiding the smile. “Not so much as yours, I think. For I get my own stubbornness from Finwë, but you get it from both lines. It’s a good thing your own love outweighs your pride!”

“What a pair we make,” he sighs.

Findis closes her eyes. What a pair indeed. Fëanáro, whose brilliance of spirit will only ever intimidate his people, and Findis, whose choice of grief and mourning will only ever unnerve her people. Twinned blades, the two of them; those loved by family, but never truly understood.

“Indeed,” murmurs Findis. She rests her palm on his, and takes comfort in the soft, silver light of Telperion. “I wonder, sometimes- if Father ever truly tired of me, what would he do? He does not understand me, and I do not bend to him as you do. It is not in my nature.” Her voice drops, to barely a whisper. “There are tales of elves who do not belong to any single home. Who never find that peace to settle within their souls, and become as ghosts. As wraiths, moving through trees, endlessly, never content, forever searching for- for something.”

“Father would never,” says Fëanáro. He flips his palms over, and grips her own. There are calluses between them: of Findis’ weaving and her quill-sharpening, and Fëanáro’s hammer and forge tools. Indis’ hands are soft as baby skin. That is all that Findis can remember now: the choices she has made, all her life, which mean that there is love between her and Indis but no understanding, and understanding between her and Fëanáro but no love. All these choices, when she has chosen Fëanáro, over and over again, and never expected anything in return. Then she looks up at her brother, the only elder brother she will ever have, and his gaze is a terrible thing: soft, and kind, and warm. “But if he did, there shall always be room within my home for you.”

Findis swallows. It’s a grand thing he’s offering. Defiance, of the father he loves so well, for her, who represents everything he’s lost. A grand thing. Perhaps too grand of a thing. But Findis finds that she is not strong enough to keep her brother loyal to her father first. Not tonight at least.

“Bring me back,” she agrees. “If ever I get too lost… bring me back, Fëanáro.”

They hold hands until golden light starts to fill the sky, and for all the years that pass afterwards- for the grief, for the loss, for the fury- Findis never quite manages to forget that night, or the promises given then. Even in the darkest of times, she remembers that silver night and Fëanáro’s kindness.

…

She likes Nerdanel. 

Nerdanel does not like her very much.

No, that is not entirely true; Nerdanel does not see much in common between them, and does not seem overly bothered to go searching for such topics. But during the family’s parties that Finwë prevails upon Fëanáro to attend, Findis most often finds herself besides Nerdanel, sipping wine silently and companionably.

It’s not entirely surprising to Findis: Nerdanel is not lovely in the Noldorian fashion, hair too wild and too bright, strong-boned rather than statuesque. Even her words are not soft and tempered, as Indis tends to be in public, but blunt as the tools she wields. She holds many opinions, and is not shy about speaking them- but she has little of Fëanáro’s all-consuming pride, which can only be a good thing.

It isn’t until she insults Anairë into a frothing temper that Findis thinks she sees the true woman under the generalizations she’d built up before.

“A good choice,” she tells Fëanáro, and hands him the hammer he’s absently searching for. “Nerdanel, I mean. I wasn’t sure if she could handle you.”

“Mmm. Glad she’s proven you wrong.” Then he frowns, working through the implications of her words. “What’s she done?”

“Anairë was talking about how her father wouldn’t let her take up dancing, as she does.” Findis’ lips twitch, and Fëanáro grimaces. Anairë’s lovely, but completely unwilling to let go of the past, and it can get irritating in large doses. “Your lovely wife told her that it doesn’t matter what our parents allow us or enforce. There are choices that must be made by children for living their own life. She also called Anaire a sugar-livered, brittle-boned twit, but I’m fairly certain Anairë was too outraged by the previous sentences to hear it.”

“I’m not apologizing to Nolofinwë.”

“Did I tell you that you should?”

“I can see you working up to suggesting it.”

“Give me some credit,” says Findis wryly. “I’ve already sent Lalwen with Anairë anyhow. I’d suggest not coming to any more… functions for a few years, though. Anaire’s not one to forget quickly.”

“She is well met within our house.”

“As you’ve chosen well,” Findis tells him, “so has your brother.”

“And you?”

“As both of you have chosen,” says Findis, spreading her fingers wide, spearing the wooden block underneath with a knife hewn by Fëanáro in his youth, misshapen and unbalanced, “so have I. But as you have chosen to bond with women of your choice, I have chosen to bond with the air, with the music of my lungs, with the song that sings in Arda. There is no room in me for another love.”

“You do not love your craft deeper than I do mine,” says Fëanáro flatly.

“Then I am not so greedy as you,” retorts Findis, “to wish for more than my heart has room to give.”

There’s a strange light in Fëanáro’s eyes. “There are some who say the heart grows to encompass all that the mind wishes for it to love.”

“Then my heart is a shriveled thing,” says Findis coolly. 

She hands Fëanáro the tongs he’ll need in a minute’s time, pockets the silver flute she’s been eyeing for the past few weeks that he forged out of scrap metal, and walks out.

…

This is what they are, beneath their loves, and beneath their understanding: vicious, tearing, devouring beasts.

Findis has never known a grief she did not swallow whole and consume. Fëanáro has never known a metal he did not tear apart to remake in his image. They are cruel to each other and to themselves, these children of Finwë; they are those children born in the aftergasps of the first elves’ migration to Aman, those children born into the shock of Arda marred. Peace has never been in their blood.

Their love has never been a soft thing.

…

And amid all this, there are children.

…

Findis makes sure she spends time with each of them. Honing Maitimo’s tongue, and helping Makalaurë’s songs reach ever greater highs, and running with Tyelkormo until he dropped from exhaustion, and laughing with Carnistir, and pulling Atarinkë from Fëanáro’s forge when he spent too long in it, and dancing with Ambarussa for the full day. Helping Findekáno talk his father into spear training, and teaching Turukáno the history of the elves, and tutoring Írissë in the use of the bow, and persuading Nolofinwë to let Arakáno be fostered in Vanyamar with their mother’s kin. Teaching Findaráto how to weave his hair into proper Noldorian braids, offering a listening ear to Angaráto and Aikanáro, influencing Nerwen to reach for ever greater heights. Even their children, her grand-nephews and grand-nieces: Telperinquar, Itarillë, Artaresto. 

She is their aunt- often absent, cheerfully present. Firm-handed and gracious, with a sharp tongue and sharper eyes. Findis loves them all. 

She does not use those words lightly.

…

She travels, from Tirion to Alqualondë to Vanyamar to the forests to the plains to the mountains and back again. Findis loves, and is loved, and is free as a bird with wings spread open, as a bird who knows where its home remains. It is a good life. It is the best life that Findis has ever known, and the only life she has ever wanted.

Chapter Text

“Yesterday will always be entangled in my hair. The world

will always smell of salt. Fog and shadow, shadow and fog,

and yet we all keep questing for the one unattainable

shadow of love we know will always betray us in the end.”

…

There is a story of the first elves that Findis has heard, over and over again.

There are many versions of this story.

They all say that the first elf to love was a girl. She changes from story to story: her hair is dark as the sky in some tales, and silver as the stars in others, and scarlet as fresh-hewn blood in yet more. Her eyes are lotus-shaped, or slanted, or narrow. She is fair of face or tall of body or stunted, perhaps, for the elves who never saw the Trees could never grow so well as they did in Aman, could they? She bears a knife and a spear and a sword and a bow, and she runs so swift over the earth that the very wind calls her its mistress.

Who she is does not matter. Who she loves also does not matter. What matters is this: the girl loves a boy, and she is the very first of the Eldar to love someone in such a manner, and she loves him within a world that does not have words for such a love, that is yet too young to know such a word. 

This does not diminish her love.

The elders of the elves do not understand her. They cannot understand her. They discourage her actions. They attempt to silence her. But this girl loves with a fervency too deep and too deathless. She chases after the boy.

There are no words in their language, and she is no wordsmith: she is a hunter. 

The girl brings her love meats and furs. She carves the bones of the deer into something beautiful, and produces strange things that can make music even lovelier than the elves’ voices. She sits with him, and she speaks to him of things she finds beautiful- the sunset, the rushing water, the dancing deer- and tells her love that she finds him more beautiful still than them all. 

There are no words in their language for such a love, and still, she teaches the boy its meaning.

When the elders find out, they attempt to sunder them apart. They cannot understand the girl’s actions, and they do not wish to. But even forever distanced, the girl and the boy are together: for their minds- their very souls- are bonded deeper than any other elf had ever been bonded. 

So much has been lost of that tale. There are just fragments of it left, each telling a different aspect, each contradictory. The boy’s name, the girl’s tribe, when love became a word of use within the elven tongue: all disappeared into ash.

But this is what they all agree on: the girl’s name was Dis, and her name, ever after, has always meant deceiver in their language.

It also means bride, and it also means woman, and it also means a hundred other things. 

But the oldest meaning- the cruelest meaning- has always been deceiver. 

…

This is half of the name that Fëanáro gives to her.

…

No. 

This is half of the name that Findis chooses.

…

Fin- means dexterity. Skillful dexterity. It means creation, and clever, the way light-fingered can mean both delicate work and thievery. It means hair, too, sometimes, but that is a relatively novel development, borne of Finwë. In the most ancient of languages, therefore, findis is not just the joining of her parents’ names. Findis does mean something, to those who are willing to go look for it: it means skillful deceiver, or perhaps clever thief, or perhaps just woman-who-does-not-belong. 

…

This is the name that Fëanáro gives to her.

No: this is the name that Findis chooses.

…

Remember that: there are people who flinch from the truth. There are people who cannot bear it. There are people who never quite recover. There are some names which are forgotten. Sticks and stones may break my bones, and words can always hurt me. There are some names which cannot be forgotten.

Findis, of Tirion and Valinor, Songstress of Grief, Sister of Fëanáro, Daughter of Indis, Daughter of Intyalë: she chose.

…

It is high summer when Findis returns to Tirion. The stables are empty of everyone when she rides in save for Anairë.

Findis slips off her horse. 

“Sister,” she says, with genuine feeling. “It’s been too long.”

“You’ve missed too much,” murmurs Anairë, embracing her. Into Findis’ ear, she whispers, “Far too much.”

“Has Irissë gotten any better at her bow? I would-”

“There is a battle brewing,” says Anairë quietly, and Findis pulls back, sees the true worry on her face. “Between brothers: my husband and Fëanáro. And not as it was in the past, of bitterness but no hate. I fear what is to come, Findis. I fear what I am seeing.”

“Let me see,” says Findis. 

She clasps Anairë’s shoulder. There are differences between them, certainly, but they are close as well; Anairë does not care much for Fëanáro, and still she would do anything to ensure the family is not sundered. And with Nerdanel so far, and Findis constantly wandering, the royal household is essentially Anairë’s responsibility. She’s enormously skilled at it.

“I’ll speak to Fëanáro,” Findis tells her. “If it’s as bad as you say…”

“It’s worse,” says Anairë, grimly, and guides her into their home proper.

…

It is, indeed, worse: Fëanáro spends more time in court than he ever has before, apparently jealous and selfish of the time Finwë spends with Nolofinwë; and the longer the time with his brother, the higher the flames of his fury are stoked. And when Fëanáro’s temper is high, he does not care for his words. Findis has known him to say things in a rage which he would never have said otherwise, and it is that which frightens her, beyond even her family’s careful silence: he speaks not against her family- Findis can mend stung pride or hurt wounds- but against the Valar, and that is not something that she can find a way to easily dismiss.

It leaves Findis uneasy. 

(“I do not know,” says Nerdanel. She sighs, and looks too tired. “I do not know what has changed. But those Silmarils- damn him! Damn them! Once they were hallowed… there has been something that broke in him then, Findis. Something of his has changed.”

“He does not act much like the brother I know,” says Findis cautiously.

“Nor the man I married,” agrees Nerdanel. Findis reaches out and touches Nerdanel’s hands carefully, and Nerdanel turns them, so she’s clutching Findis at least as hard back. “Bring him back if you can,” says Nerdanel. She looks so terribly weary. “Bring him back. But if you find you cannot... “

“If I cannot?”

“Then tell him that he is not my husband.”

“You will not tell him yourself?”

“I am afraid,” says Nerdanel quietly. Findis wonders how much that admission must have pained her: must have pained her pride. “If I see him again- life with Fëanáro is a song, a high and beautiful song, one that whirls you away on an adventure. But there are people beneath that song and they are easily hurt. Easily bruised, and broken, and he forgets that too often now. He didn’t used to before: but I am afraid that I will forget as well, if I see him again, and be swept up again in a song that I cannot help but admire.”

Findis sighs. “I am not afraid of songs. But…”

“You’ve never been caught up in his storm!” says Nerdanel. “That was what I admired of you, Findis. The world could be so admiring of him and so in love- Finwë, and my father, and the Valar themselves, and you would only see something that he made, and admire it for that. And oftentimes not even that! You always saw who Fëanáro was beneath his trappings.”

“It wasn’t easy! But I am a Songstress for a reason,” says Findis. “And I am good at what I do.” She pauses. “It will not be easy, Nerdanel.”

“No. None of this will be easy.” Nerdanel pauses. Then she says, quietly, “I know we have not been close. But if you would do this for me- I would be grateful. Beyond all words. Beyond all debts.”

Findis smiles and clasps Nerdanel’s hands in her own, and she says, “What are debts between sisters?”)

(There are others. There are so many of them. Finwë’s line has ever burned bright, and the Eldar have ever been fond of light. Findis spreads her hands over them, over them all, these women who are frightened and furious and hurting, and she promises them what protection she can offer.)

But she must leave for Alqualondë very soon after; Findis has promised Eärwen that she will accompany her back to Tirion after a summer spent vacationing there. It takes her every last ounce of influence and even more diplomacy, but she manages to wrest a promise out of Fëanáro not to act on anything further until she returns. 

…

She should have known he wouldn’t keep it.

…

They are returning- they are not much more than an hour’s ride from Tirion’s gates- when a horse thunders up to them: Aikanáro, pale hair wetted to his head with sweat, horse foaming at the mouth. He doesn’t even bother to use his mouth, and just opens his mind to Findis, pouring in what has just happened.

Findis feels the nails on her hand slice into her palm. There is blood there, soaking the leather of her reins. Eärwen is looking at her, alarmed, and Aikanáro is- while still too tired to truly react- also eyeing her closely. But this is her brother. These are her brothers. This is her family.

This is Fëanáro.

“Go to Tirion,” she tells Eärwen. Then, through their minds: What we have feared has come to pass. Tell Nerdanel and Anairë and the others. Take action as you see fit.

And what will you do?

Try to stop this, says Findis.

I do not think you can.

I do not either. Findis tosses her hair over her shoulder and grits her teeth. But I must try.

…

The ride is hard and fierce, because Findis must make up those leagues between herself and Fëanáro before they reach Valmar. She manages to meet them just before the light turns silver, and knows herself to look wild, all wind-tousled and white-faced. Then she sees Fëanáro, and her bones turn icy.

“Brother,” she cries, throwing herself off of Calassë and towards him.

Fëanáro turns to look at her. He is wearing deep, dark red; the color of dried blood. The collar is high on his robes and the deep color washes away the brilliance of his face to something sallow and exhausted. But at his side shines a sword, and with that Findis knows Aikanáro to have told the truth. 

“Tell me you did not,” she says, and steps forwards. “Fëanáro, tell me you did not-”

His sons, all seven of them, shudder restlessly when Fëanáro dismounts. His sons, thinks Findis, furious with herself. My nephews. As if she has lost all these years of knowing and loving them with their father’s stupid actions! But even Nolofinwë, pale and clearly exhausted, looks troubled. His sons are there too, along with Arafinwë; the Valar must have limited their summons, for Finwë isn’t there. Either that or he’d been necessary to keep the peace in Tirion.

Even the idea of that sentence sends a shiver down Findis’ spine.

“I did,” says Fëanáro. His eyes shine, glittering, like those damned jewels he loves so much. “I did it, sister, and I would do it again. I do not repent it.”

Nolofinwë sighs irritably, and Findis speaks before he can retort.

“It,” says Findis scornfully. “It. Name it for what it is: holding steel to an unarmed man’s throat, and harassing him into giving you reason enough to kill him. Your own brother!” She waits, and Fëanáro stares at her, and she shakes her head. “Very well then, if you shall not: I name it cowardice, Fëanáro. Cowardice and stupidity, and thoughtlessness besides. I told you to-”

“Cowardice is it, to ensure my place as our father’s heir is not stolen by that snake?” Fëanáro laughs, low and ugly. “Stupidity, to act against those who would see us chained and smothered? You know my name, Sister, and you know the nature of flame! If smothered, it dies. Would you see me die?” Something twists in his face. “As my mother Míriel Þerinde passed?”

Findis swallows. “You have lost your mind,” she says. “You know how deeply I care for you. You have never had cause to doubt that. But the Valar have never been unkind to us, and Nolofinwë has never been anything other than-”

“The Valar have never been unkind,” says Fëanáro lowly.

“They have given us a home-”

“Tell me what you have lost, then, Indis’ daughter! Let us compare our scars, let us-” 

How quickly I became Indis’ daughter, and that alone.

Still, Findis forces herself past the bitterness to say, “I told you not to do anything, Fëanáro. It was you that agreed. Until I returned from Alqualondë. Until-”

“-until you could silence me again,” he says, slowly, like he’s just realizing it. 

Maitimo shifts uneasily, looking like he wants to say something, like he’s going to do something, and Findis shakes her head at him sharply. Fëanáro will need someone he can trust at the end of this, and if he cannot trust in Findis, Maitimo is the next best. A poor substitute in Findis’ opinion, but it isn’t like she has many choices. 

“Silence you?” Findis demands. “Brother. I have never tried to silence you. Just given you the tools so our father would-”

“I will not be chained!” he shouts. “Not by you, and not by anyone!”

“And you are acting mad!” Findis shouts back, suddenly and entirely at the complete end of her patience. “You know why I asked it of you! I wanted to talk between-”

“Who asked you to play peacemaker?”

“Who asked you to act so thoughtlessly?”

“Thoughtless? Thoughtless!” He unsheathes his sword, and Arafinwë makes a high, hurt sound in his throat. Findis tilts her chin up. “Think you this was thoughtless? I forged it, and I poured my anger into it, and I poured my hate into it, and I poured my injustice into it. It is stronger than steel! I am my father’s heir, his only heir, and I will not allow those who speak otherwise to go about freely just because they carry his blood in their veins! This sword shall feel their kin’s blood if it must!”

“No,” says Findis, scrabbling back a modicum of calm. “No, there is no must here! There is only-”

“-me,” says Fëanáro.

“And me,” says Findis flatly. “And me, and I will not let you shatter us apart because of your short-sighted inability to-”

“Short-sighted-”

“Yes, if you think you are the best of us, then you can be certain to-”

“How dare-”

“I am not-”

The sword rises, and Fëanáro holds it to Findis’ throat, and the world goes completely silent. 

“Fëanáro,” says Nolofinwë, sounding shocked.

Distantly, she can hear some scuffling. She thinks Arafinwë must be holding Nolofinwë back; she wonders what’s happening between her nephews, who’s holding the other back, who’s straining to save her. But the rest of her is focused on Fëanáro, and the strange, shining gleam in his eyes.

“Will you kill me, Fëanáro?” she asks him softly. There is blood trickling down her neck, staining the pale silk of her gown, but Findis does not flinch away. “Do not tell me that my brother is so lost to himself.”

“I am not lost,” he spits.

“You are lost,” says Findis. “You have been lost. Ah, Fëanáro-”

She steps closer, turning so the blade passes from her neck and over her shoulder. There is something awful and terrible in Fëanáro’s gaze, and it hurts in her bones. 

“Do not come closer,” he whispers, “or I will kill you.”

“You will not,” says Findis. The anguish is slowly fading, leaving his gaze a little clearer. Findis steps forwards again, and catches his hands in her own, and she says, quietly, so only he can hear, “But you must listen to me now: do not make things worse for yourself.”

He leans in, close, closer. Findis looks up at him, and then the terrible twist of his face returns, like a star unearthed by moving clouds. And he does some complicated twist with his wrist that brings the sword off her shoulder. Arafinwë shouts something, wordless, and there’s a renewed burst of noise from their family, before they fall silent again.

Findis realizes what he’s done only when Fëanáro steps aside, and shows her the braids he’s chopped off.

Those braids capped with beads crafted by his own hand.

“You are not my sister,” he says. “My sister was not this quivering little lamb. I will not claim a sister so cowardly as you, Findis of the Vanyar.”

She is still staring at him. The shock is setting in. The hurt. Whatever their anger, whatever their hurts, they have never forsaken one another. Findis had believed they never would. But when she sees him now, all she can see is the satisfaction on his face, clutching that damned sword in his hands, her forged beads lying on the dusty road.

“Go, then,” she says. “Go, then, Fëanáro! If a sister you do not wish, I will not throw myself on you! I am not so lost nor so angered to think such foolish thoughts! But hear you this now: no words you say to me shall cleave us, not even if you are to place that sword in my breast and rend my heart from my ribs. Sire to pyre, I sung when we were close, and shall sing until the breaking of the world if necessary. When your mind is again yours, and not clouded in pain and confusion, come to me.”

“You speak madness,” says Fëanáro, stepping away, sword still unsheathed as he mounts his horse. “Gather yourself, Findis. It is not worthy of Finwë’s daughter to behave thusly.”

Findis tilts her head up, so he can better see the slash across her neck, livid and red and painful. It pulls at the cut, making it sting worse, but she welcomes the pain for now. Better that than the rending, aching twist of her heart. The pain feeds her anger, and she has enough to act on it rather than accept Fëanáro’s insults.

“I am not the one who has cut my sibling’s throat,” she tells him coolly. “Now, go: and know this, Fëanáro! Know that whatever the Valar tell you, and whatever our father orders, your wife has turned her back on you.” Fëanáro turns, visage as white as bone, and Findis smiles, savagely. “Nerdanel will not hear your pleas, nor any of your people’s pleas, not until I have spoken to your character. We have all seen the changes in your bearing, and it has frightened us, and I was chosen to be the one to speak to you- to determine your mind, and your madness.”

“Nerdanel would not do this,” he whispers.

“It is not just Nerdanel,” says Findis. “It is Anairë, and Eärwen, and Lalwen, and Ciryapandië and Meniëlwa and Nucumna as well. The women who have wedded into this family are afraid, as are those born into it. Take my braids, Fëanáro. Take them and forswear me! And see how silent your home rings, without the women to breathe life into it.”

She lifts her hands, and her voice goes rich with the power of her Song, a voice far stronger than any Findis has ever used before, thorned and stinging. A voice that has not been used as a weapon ever before. An unexpected weapon, and one more dangerous for it.

“Go!”

The horses startle and flee, and Findis is left alone, the dust still staining her skirts, the taste of ashes in her mouth. She can hear shouting in the wind: of course Fëanáro and the others will be angry. But Findis is angrier now than she has been in a very long time. Slow to anger and slow to fade. Her rage feels rather like a vine, torn and whipping around in a storm. She puts a hand over her throat, where the skin has been pierced, and murmurs a few words so the wound heals.

(There is a scar there. There will always be a scar there. A sword forged under Morgoth’s instructions will never leave its victims unscarred. Findis’ throat will never not be silver-scarred and ruined.)

Then she stands, and deliberately undoes the rest of the braids. 

The golden strands left on the dusty road no longer shine so brightly as her own hair, already stained with dust and mud and bits of blown grass. Findis drops the rest of the beads into the dust. She will not have it said that her brother cut off her braids. She will not be gossiped about to the rest of Tirion, her griefs and her joys, her family woes. Anyhow, the Noldorian fashions never truly suited her and her Vanyarin complexion.

Calassë was frightened off as well when Findis screamed, so there is nothing for it: Findis must walk back to Tirion. She grits her teeth and puts one foot in front of another, and paces the whole length back to her father’s home.

…

There, she is beset by servants fluttering about, all disarrayed.

Findis seizes one and drags them away. “What is going on?”

“Lord Finwë is leaving,” he gasps. “We must- we must be ready for his departure!”

“Departure,” says Findis slowly. “To where?”

“Formenos,” he replies.

“And why would my father wish to go to Formenos?”

The servant quails before her gaze, but manages to stutter out the last words: “To be with Lord Fëanáro.”

Findis stalks away.

…

Before she goes to her father, she goes to Nerdanel’s quarters, and sees them stripped bare as stone. So are Ciryapandië’s and Meniëlwa’s and Nucumna’s quarters. Anairë’s and Eärwen’s rooms- Findis is relieved to see- are empty of people but not belongings. Finally, Findis comes to her mother’s rooms, and sees Amarië guarding them, wielding a spear with an expression fierce enough to dissuade even the bravest petitioner. 

Of course she would; Amarië has been a faithful lady and friend to Indis for centuries. Her first loyalty has always- and will always- lie with Indis first, and only then any other, including Finwë. 

Findis approaches her. “Princess,” says Amarië, bowing her head. The brilliance of her gaze doesn’t dim. Quietly, so none other can hear, she says, “They are all inside. Carnistir’s wife has been inconsolable since we evacuated. I believe Eärwen is attempting to soothe her.”

“Irissë? And Artanis?”

“Artanis left for Alqualondë instead of staying here, with her brothers. Irissë headed out for a hunt. I think she wishes to speak to Tyelkormo before they return to Tirion.”

“The Valar have decided it is to be banishment, then,” says Findis heavily.

“To Formenos, my lady.” Amarië tilts her head up. “And King Finwë has decided to join him in exile.”

“Making Nolofinwë king now. Unless my father wishes to rule from there?”

“No,” says Amarië. “Prince Nolofinwë will be king. Lady Anairë will be queen.” She hesitates. “Queen Indis is… unhappy.”

“I can understand that,” says Findis. She nods. “Keep watch; I will send someone to relieve you soon. Until then do not let anyone in.” She hesitates for a long moment, then tells Amarië: “If any of them try to break inside, Amarië, do not hesitate to break their legs.” An even longer hesitation, and then: “And if Makalaurë tries to sing you to sleep, hit him on the head. Don’t stop until he stops, or you’ll be unconscious before you know it.”

She doesn’t wait for Amarië to nod before she leaves, to go searching for her father.

…

Findis has never been close with her father. 

They are very different people. At least Indis loves her; of Finwë, Findis isn’t certain of even that much. Findis loves him- she loves every member of her family dizzyingly, furiously - but she isn’t certain she likes Finwë, who’d never even made an attempt to understand her. 

In a way, what Nolofinwë had been to Fëanáro, Lalwen had been to Findis: she was easier to love, and less complicated in the doing, and a happier child. She also looked Noldorian, all dark hair and stormy eyes; she was quick to temper and quick to forget. Findis was- is- none of those things.

But she has just had Fëanáro cut her braids off, and she has just masterminded a quiet, furious rebellion of her family’s women, and her family is tearing itself apart. Findis had accepted that Finwë would not speak on the matter of his children no matter what happened, but this is not keeping his silence: this is choosing a side.

This is choosing the wrong side.

Fëanáro held a sword to Nolofinwë’s throat. He cut at Findis’ throat. He disowned them all. The Valar themselves have banished him.

How dare Finwë think of choosing him!

…

Later, Findis does not remember all that she screams. Finwë shouts back to her, though, and they are matched in their fury; they are matched in their ugliness, and their cruelty, and their knowledge of the others’ intimate, tender spots. Findis does not remember all that she screams or all that is screamed at her. But she remembers, well, that Finwë still leaves.

When she recovers, she is on her knees in her father’s study.

“Findis,” whispers Arafinwë. His eyes are very wide, and very gold, and he is touching her with only the barest tips of his fingers, as if he’s afraid to do anything more. “Findis. What happened?”

She looks around her. The study is a whirlwind; all the papers are scattered. The glass windows are shattered, and the shards glitter on the ground. Inks puddle and mix on the ground, staining the papers and the stone indiscriminately. Finwë has left his crown on an especially tall stack of books.

“I would like to know that myself,” says Nolofinwë, walking inside. 

He freezes when he sees the mess of the study. 

“I,” says Findis, voice cracking. Then she straightens, and forces herself to calm, and go cold like she hadn’t been before her father. “I fought with Father. He left with Fëanáro for Formenos.”

He’d thrown a paperweight at Findis’ head before he left, and Findis had responded by shattering all his windows. That’s the last sight she remembers of his face: the glass whirling towards him, all hell-bent on carving him open. The ink has spilled over a vast portion of the study now; Findis cannot be certain if she shed any of her father’s blood, or if it’s mixed with the dark wetness already.

She isn’t certain she wants to know.

The words they’d flung at each other had not been all accusations or insults. There had been a duel there as well, between father and daughter. Even now, there are bruises and scrapes on Findis’ hands and elbows that Finwë caused her. 

But she is certain that he has more, and it is that which makes her queerly satisfied, as satisfied as she is angered and ashamed.

“I don’t just mean that,” says Nolofinwë slowly. “I mean… I believe Carnistir and Tyelkormo both have broken bones, left by Amarië. And our wives are nowhere to be found.” He pauses, lips twisting, and amends, “We know our wives are in Mother’s rooms. What nobody’s telling us is why they won’t unbar the room or speak to us.”

“Because they’ve made their choice,” says Findis bleakly. She hauls herself up to her feet and ignores the crunching of glass. “They were afraid. I was afraid. Can you blame us? All of you men acting mad all of a sudden; who knows what might occur? Fëanáro forging swords, and Father allowing him, and you going to Valmar with him- we were terrified! And then we were angry.” She purses her lips. “Let me tell you, Nolofinwë: you will not like it if ever you make us all angry again.”

“I do not like it now,” he says flatly. “What have you done?”

“Our feelings have not been enough. Our words have not been enough. Our actions have not been enough.” Findis shrugs, a rolling motion of her shoulders, and looks up at Nolofinwë. “The only thing we have left is our presence.”

“And all of you have decided, is it?”

“Anairë began it,” says Findis softly.

Nolofinwë flinches. Well he might: Findis had said the words to make him flinch, because she wanted to see it; because he’d had Fëanáro’s sword to his throat, because he’d watched as Fëanáro held his sword to Findis’ throat, because he’d stood by and offered to forgive their brother for his sins even after he’d committed them. 

Her anger, Findis thinks, has not burned itself out yet.

Slow to anger, slow to fade.

“But we did this for Nerdanel, more than anything. For her, and for Makalaurë’s wife, and Carnistir’s wife, and Curufinwë’s wife; they who feared their own wills if their husbands were to convince them in the aftermath of Fëanáro’s madness. They wished for distance. They wished for peace. And so they all went.” Then she sees the bruise on Nolofinwë’s head, a proper purple egg growing on his forehead, just barely visible when the wind blows the hair away from his face. “I see it was not just Fëanáro’s sons who did not listen.”

“Amarië is good with her spear,” says Arafinwë calmly, before Nolofinwë can retort. “Better than any of us expected. But we would speak to our wives, Sister, if you would let them? Fëanáro’s sons have left with him, and so has our father. There are things that need to be done.”

“I’m certain,” says Findis dryly. She draws that sardonic amusement into a cloak and settles it into a cloak around her shoulders. “But you’ll have to give me time. It isn’t just Tirion that must be soothed: it is our family as well. We’ve all had a great shock. It will take time. Tell the stewards to do what must be done, and I’ll send Eärwen and Anairë out as soon as I can.”

She’s almost at the door when Arafinwë says, quietly, “Why are you not with them? I would have thought- Lalwen-” a pause, and then, “-or perhaps Irissë. But…”

“Because I do not bend,” says Findis, turning to him. Nolofinwë pales at whatever he sees in her face, and Arafinwë retreats a few steps, so there’s a large tower of papers between them. Findis tosses her hair back, so both her brothers can see the silver scar on her throat. “Because my love for you will not mean that I surrender to you. Remember that, too: the others had only their absence to bargain. But I am Finwë’s daughter, and Fëanáro’s sister, and I have more than silence to frighten you.”

She turns and walks out.

…

When she reaches her mother’s chambers, Amarië is still standing there, and there are bruises livid on her face. She is gripping her spear tightly, and growling something at Findaráto, who’s looking both alarmed and frustrated. Findis forces herself forwards.

“Aunt Findis!” says Findaráto. “I thought- I feared-” he shakes his head. “What is happening?”

“Stand down, Findaráto,” says Findis, as gently as she can manage. “There is nothing to battle here. I’ve spoken to my brothers- stand down, and this will all be finished quickly.”

She slips inside the door before he can answer. It is a heavy door, and good for muffling sounds; that is why she hadn’t heard it, the steady, aching wail coming from inside. Findis grimaces and shakes her hands out, striding inside, and sees them all arrayed on chairs and cushions, the women of her house, by choice and blood. It is Meniëlwa who is weeping loudly and inconsolably, but she is not the only one; Curufinwë’s wife also weeps, silently, into her buried hands. Indis has her hands tangled about Anairë, and Nerdanel is both paler and grimmer than Findis has ever before seen her, though she is dry-eyed.

“Mother,” says Findis quietly. They all go still and frozen, and turn as one to look at her. “Father has gone. I could not stop him.” I did not try very hard. “Fëanáro and his sons… I do not know what happened to them.”

“I do,” says Ciryapandië. She has a voice as rich as her husband’s, but not anywhere near his power; like all of Fëanáro’s sons’ wives, she is beautiful in the classical Noldorian fashion. She is even a distant cousin of Nerdanel, and met Makalaurë through a family party on that side of his family. Findis seats herself, and nods for her to go ahead. “It was very quick: I was in court when Fëanáro held the sword to Nolofinwë’s neck, and even before the Mingling of the Lights, the Valar had called for his presence. Then Eärwen came and told us to go to Indis’ rooms, and we gathered here; ‘twas Nerdanel who told Amarië to hold guard.”

“I knew her skills with a spear,” says Nerdanel. The faintest of smiles crosses her face. “And I do not think anyone expected her. But of course that ignorance is what comes when you ignore what is in front of your eyes. I do not think even Finwë knew!”

“Certainly not Carnistir and Tyelkormo,” says Findis wryly. “She left them with broken limbs, I heard.”

“We heard that,” says Ciryapandië. “They left Amarië with a few bruises of her own, but she was armed, and ready for them. Carnistir was angry enough for that… and then CuruFinwë came.”

“Here?”

“No,” whispers Nucumna. “He stood out there-” she gestures to the balcony, which overlooks the courtyard of the castle, “-and he shouted, so everyone could hear. He said, if you shall abandon me here, you abandon your son as well!” She straightens, and though more tears drip down her face, her voice does not waver. “Well. Here I am, with a  dozen of my family as well, all of whom had gathered here so we would not be alone with our heartbreak. Here I am, with Nerdanel the Wise, who stands to lose seven of her sons along with the greatest love of her life, and if she does not bend to her husband, who am I to forgive mine?”

“So she told him,” says Anairë. “She went out there, and she told him that she would not see him until long after the Valar had lifted their exile, for her forgiveness was not based on the Valar but her own grief.” 

“It was among the bravest things I have ever seen,” murmurs Eärwen. 

“We were all brave,” says Findis. She reaches out, and holds Indis’ hand in her own, and she whispers again, “We were all brave.”

…

The years pass. 

Findis sings of the Valar, of her grief, of her love. She weaves shawls for her mother, and forges jewels for Lalwen, and spends hours with her brothers, drinking wine, pointing out inconsistencies in their laws, laughing. It is not as joyful as fifty years before, but there is still joy to be found.

…

Fifty years later, the Valar ask for reconciliation.

Nolofinwë tells Findis when she returns to Tirion, and he looks wan beneath everything else. 

“I’ve forgiven him,” he says. “‘Twas done in anger and grief; I’ve forgiven Fëanáro his actions. But I was not the only one hurt that day.”

“Do not speak to me of that day,” replies Findis. 

“The Valar wish for him to come to Valmar. They will not hear of anything else. But, Findis-”

“My forgiveness is not being bartered as a price for removal of his banishment,” says Findis. “And I have told him already: until he comes to me, until his mind is clear, I shall not forgive him. He has cleaved us apart, and cleaved shall we remain.”

“He is our brother.”

“Sire to pyre,” says Findis, softening. She draws Nolofinwë into an embrace- her brother, her younger brother, despite all else that has happened. “Until this world is remade. Until beyond. But there are things that I will not allow him to do. There are things that I cannot forgive.”

“Will you be there?”

“No,” says Findis. She closes her eyes, and remembers how Fëanáro had looked, holding his sword to her throat, eyes star-bright and hair a lustrous fall of black behind him. Nerdanel trusted her to know her heart, even beyond the call of love and the call of forgiveness. Findis owed that strength to herself. “I will be with Mother.”

…

She is with Indis when the darkness falls.

She is with Indis when her mother screams.

She is with Indis when her father dies.

…

They are in Tirion. Findis pours poppy down her mother’s throat, unyielding and pitiless, and then she leaves her mother’s quarters for her father’s study. 

Finwë’s private study had been a tower, the highest in his home, overlooking all of Tirion. On the clearest days, it was said that a person could see Manwë’s eagles themselves, shining and flying about Taniquetil. But after he left for Formenos, Nolofinwë had no desire to sit so far from his people. He’d moved everyone away from the tower, and it remained all but abandoned now. 

Findis climbs it now, and remembers the last time she’d walked these steps.

The heavy stink of magic and power still hangs in the air. The windows she shattered have not been replaced, only covered over with heavy draperies that act just as well to keep the air and insects out. Findis throws them back and stares up at the stars. 

I am called Veassë for the life in my blood. I am called Envinyassë for the healing I represent. 

The old names. The names she was gifted at birth. 

Vigor, and healing. 

Perhaps this was what her mother had imagined when she birthed Findis. Perhaps this was what her father saw, and was kind enough not to say. Findis does not know. All she knows is that her father is gone, and Findis never spoke to him past his death, and all her guilts shall never be undone.

She closes her eyes and sings, high and fierce, throwing all her power into the words:

I am nothing great, Lady of the Stars. Varda Elentári, hear my cry: take my vigor! Take it and use it! Give my father back! Heal this pain within my people! Take my vigor and heal us!

The song shatters into silence, and Findis is thrown backwards from the magical recoil. She stands and wipes away the blood on her palms from scraped skin, and goes to the window once more, plants her feet between jagged glass and stone, and she sings again, louder, fiercer, angrier. 

Take my life! Take my memory! 

Silence again. Findis can feel the anguish again, rising up, like a wave too high for her to hope to outrun. Well. If she cannot outrun this wave, then she will use it: for Findis is Finwë’s daughter, eldest daughter and angry daughter and terrible daughter, and she has never not known to stop. A third time, then:

Take all that I am and ever will be and ever was-

“Oh, Findis,” someone cries, and then she is yanked back, and she thrashes, nails turning to claws, hands turning to fists, teeth sharp and grief transmuted to rage- 

“Sleep,” whispers someone, drawing their hand down her face, and against her will, Findis is pushed into unconsciousness.

…

When she wakes, there is a dim light over her bedside table, but nothing much more. Her head aches. There are bruises and cuts on her palms, as if she’d battled her father once more.

“We shall have to ration the oil,” she says grimly. 

Lalwen, curled over herself and dozing, jerks awake. “Oh!” she says, and presses a hand to her mouth, eyes shining. “Only you, you- you.”

“Only me?”

“Only you could use so much of your power to kill you and then talk about rationing!”

“I didn’t use that much.”

“It was like you were in- the eye of the storm,” says Lalwen slowly. “But outside of it was impossible- they heard you in Valmar, and as far as Formenos. Maitimo and his people were scarce an hour’s ride from the fortress when Father passed, and he heard you as if you were right there. The magic you used… oh, Findis.”

“Well.” She’ll need to think about that when she gets some time, though she does have a feeling that Lalwen’s exaggerating. It scarcely matters now anyhow.  “I was distraught. How did you hear me?”

“The castle was shaking,” says Lalwen. “It was terrifying. The first song was difficult enough; it was grieving, and painful- like it was shoving knives into my chest. But the second time you sang was so angry. And the third… I don’t know what you would have done if I hadn’t managed to stop you. It felt like you were going to rip the world apart.”

“Then it’s a good thing you stopped me,” says Findis wryly. She shakes her head, and then rises. “Tell me, how’s Mother?”

Lalwen sighs. “Not good.”

“I’m going to her,” says Findis. She reaches out, and catches Lalwen’s hand. “Will you come?”

“Yes,” says Lalwen, though the shadow of concern in her gaze doesn’t lighten.

…

Findis is with her mother when Fëanáro takes his oath, and she is with her mother when her nephews swear it beside him, and she is with her mother when Nolofinwë promises to follow his brother into darkness and ruin.

She will never quite forgive herself for that.

…

“You must stop him,” says Nerdanel.

“I do not know if I can,” says Findis wearily. She feels the words as an ancient, futile echo. “But I will try.”

… 

“Do not do this,” says Findis, and she reaches out, and she clutches Fëanáro’s wrist as tightly as she can. “Do not do this, Fëanáro. There is more to this life than vengeance. Do not do this.”

His hand is smeared with her blood, because Findis has not had enough time to heal her own wounds, so caught up in ensuring the rest of her family does not go where she cannot follow, and he uses that now to lift her chin, to look into her eyes.

“What do you know of this love?” he asks her gently.

“I know more than any other,” whispers Findis. “Tell me what you would have of me, brother. My pride? I will beg. My life? I will offer it. Do you need a hostage to bargain our father out of the Halls of Mandos? You have me. All that I am. All that I have ever been. All that I ever will be. I offer it to you freely. Just: please. Please.”

“The Valar will not listen,” says Fëanáro. “And I will not bargain with beings such as them. If I go to my death, then I go to my death.”

“And if you are taking our people to death with you?”

“It will be their choice, Findis. I shall not force any of them.”

Findis does not need to close her eyes to have darkness, but she does anyhow. And all she can see is flame and ruin, death a shadow spreading dark fingers over her people. Over her family. There will be pain; there will be anguish. The moments of light will be so few. The sparks of joy will be so few. The blood will be as a wave, washing over them all.

“Will you come?” he asks.

“Sire to pyre,” says Findis, shaking. “Sire to pyre, brother, I swore it to you. Hear my oath, Fëanáro, and Eru Allfather: when Fëanáro my brother passes into the everlasting Darkness wholly, so shall I, too, pass.” She bows her head. “My brother’s pyre shall be my own, and bright shall it be, brighter than even the Shining Mountain, brighter than Varda Elentari’s stars, this pyre of Finwë’s eldest children!”

“Findis-”

“But I shall not go with you,” she finishes, and lifts her eyes, and lets her brother finally see her tearstained face: and finally, she shows him that this is not Findis’ allegiance being sworn, but rather her farewell. “Not for love nor for law nor for grief nor for hate shall I follow you, Fëanáro. Not even if we are to be sundered for another ten Ages of this world.”

He has turned pale. “I did not want this,” he says.

“I did not want it either,” replies Findis. “But this is what we have. Go, Fëanáro. Go: I pray that you find contentment there in Endamar, though I fear that you will never know its meaning.”

“This is cruel.”

“This is what we have,” repeats Findis. “This is what you have left us with: ashes and dust, and dust and ashes, and the guttering fire that will go out too soon. I have loved you for all the years of my life.” She steps forward, and places a hand on his jaw, cupping it like Indis might have done for Nolofinwë, or Nerdanel for Fëanáro: soft, and unyielding. “Never doubt that. But also: never doubt that I loathe you, Fëanáro! For who you are, and what you have done to us.”

She kisses him, gently, slowly, on his brow and then his cheeks and then his eyes, so there is no doubting any of it. Then Findis turns away, and leaves, and she does not stop until she is in Indis’ quarters, Nerdanel’s hands in her own, and she is weeping deep, long, rattling tears.

…

They leave, and Findis forges items for them: a sword for Nolofinwë, of steel that shines like a star; a crown for Lalwen that gleams on her hair even in the darkness; a set of vambraces for Arafinwë that will outlast even the most deathless things in the world. For Fëanáro, she does not give anything. Already she has granted him her oath, and that is more than anyone else would have ever been granted.

(She keeps their father’s forged crown on the mantle of her forge, and only puts it on her head the day that everyone leaves.)

…

Findis remains behind, of course: there must be someone to care for the people left behind. 

She develops a method of judging the time based on Varda’s stars, on their rise and fall. She sets up a rationing system for the rest of the city, because crop growth had been dependent on the Trees, and without their light it is drastically slowed, to the point where they will need to start searching for other food sources. She has been left all the most stodgy and infuriating of the lords; Fëanáro took the most unreasonably liberal with him, and Nolofinwë all the most reasonably liberal people, and Arafinwë the most reasonably old-fashioned, leaving Findis with the dregs. It is not an easy path, ensuring she doesn’t insult them, but after a point she doesn’t care; never before have the Noldor faced such difficulties as these. 

When Arafinwë returns, she throws their father’s crown at him, tells him good riddance, and leaves Tirion with her mother and Nerdanel for Vanyamar.

…

It is not easy in Vanyamar, but it is quiet, and it is peaceful.

Indis recovers slowly. Findis watches, and keeps her silence, and offers her mother aid when she asks; keeps her distance when she doesn’t. Nerdanel offers Indis more solace than Findis has ever managed. Findis cannot find it in herself to leave, though. Something keeps her tethered to the mountain, keeps her silent, keeps her watchful.

…

And then, two years later, a spirit of fire passes into Mandos.

They all see it happen, for it is the brightest thing that any of them have seen since the Trees were darkened.

…

“Mandos states the spirit of fire to be Fëanáro,” says Ingwe, when he petitions the Valar for further information. He bows his head. “The King of the Noldor has passed into death.”

There is silence in the court for a long time, and then a great surge of noise. Findis watches their faces and sees, in turn: relief, joy, smugness. There is grief, there, too; but not for Fëanáro, she is certain. Only for what this means for their brethren. Perhaps there is some pure fea who believes all death to be an indignity. But none of them mourn for Fëanáro, her beautiful, brilliant, shining brother. Her brother who is dead.

I hope you hurt Morgoth, thinks Findis. 

She thinks she understands, at least, why Fëanáro had gone to avenge Finwë; there is some great, towering flame setting alight all of her reason in the face of this news. There is an anger in her now, and it is singing like a thrummed harp. There is a freezing, howling grief as well, and she does not know how she will release it without tearing Aman apart with her bare fists.

(When she goes to speak to her mother, Indis hands her a piece of Everlasting Ice, hewn from the Helcaraxë, and says, quietly, “He abandoned my son to this.” She looks up at Findis. “I will not forget that.”

My son, thinks Findis wearily. My son, and hers, and not mine. That is what you mean. You had not the courage to do this to the living man, and so you do it now, to the shade that cannot hear you.

The Everlasting Ice burns in her hands. Findis places it in her pocket, and sees Nerdanel, standing a little ways away. She is weeping, but then she raises her eyes to Findis, and there is no grief there. Just anger.

“My sons,” she says. 

Findis inclines her head, and says nothing more.)

…

For hours, the voices are not truly disrespectful. But then they change, turn to celebration. Celebration of the passing of Fëanáro, though none would ever dare to call it that. Findis sits on her balcony and listens to the words spat of him: deathful Noldo, prideful prince, rageful son. 

(She does not weep.

None of them will see her tears. None of them will understand her tears.)

…

(Findis had stayed for her mother, but Indis does not need her any longer. There are others that she relies upon more. Findis had stayed for her brother, but Fëanáro is dead. Findis had sworn an oath, but she feels no desire to throw herself on fire.

She is so tired.)

…

The first thing Findis does after leaving Vanyamar is to weep. The tears come rough and hard, and for the first time in two years she allows them to come. She pitches sideways off the horse, crying too hard to control herself, and curls in on her torso. She stays like that for a long time, fingers dug into the dirt, face smearing with wet grass and mud.

Then she drags herself up, and wipes away the dirt as best she can, and gets back on her horse.

Where to? asks Calassë, her sweet, copper-toned horse, in a voice of high song. 

Findis would close her eyes if the Trees still shone, but they don’t, so she does not need to force the darkness on herself. Instead, she stares up at Varda’s stars, and she says, Away.

…

Halfway there, she realizes where she wants to go. She abandons Calassë on the foothills and takes the rest of the path alone, trekking up and up and up. The highest mountain of Valinor is occupied by Manwë and Varda, but the second highest is left bare as stone and ice. Findis walks the path to that mountain, and does not let herself falter for pain or exhaustion. 

Then, at the very top of the mountain, Findis braids her hair back for the first time since Fëanáro cut her braids off. It is a shining, beautiful loop of gold. Findis’ Vanya heritage. 

“I swore to be beside my brother,” she says into the air. “I swore, and I cannot be now, for he has passed where I cannot follow. I cannot aid his children, for I swore never to set foot in Endamar. Fëanáro is dead. The Spirit of Fire has passed into the Halls of Mandos, but never did he have a pyre. Eru Allfather! Strike me down if you must! Allow me to follow him into this darkness!”

She waits, and waits, and waits, but there is no answer.

Findis had not expected one, not truly.

So she nods, once a night and a day and a night again pass, and says, “Then as my brother abandoned the Valar, so shall I. As Fëanáro left behind Aman for the sake of his pride and his rage, I shall leave behind my family for the sake of my love of him.

“I have spent a lifetime singing praises of you. Hear me, then, this one last time!”

Findis sings. She sings high and clean and pure, but without any of her power behind the words. This is a song to Eru alone. This is a song to herself, and to her past, and to all those she is abandoning. A song to her blood. A song of mourning. 

She takes a knife and, swiftly, cuts off the braid at the root. Coils it on the dust and stone, a glittering rope of gold. Then Findis kneels on the ground, and kisses it, once, and then she rises, and she leaves, and does not look behind her.

…

Chapter Text

There are endings so sad I want the morning light

to scourge the fields. Endings that are only what the river

dreams when it dries up. Endings that are constant echoes.

...

(Findis and Fëanor were never very alike, nor liked much of the same topics; Nerdanel cannot imagine what drove them to be so close, particularly when she’s Indis’ eldest child, born so close to Fëanor ’s own mother’s death, representing everything that Fëanor has lost.

Nerdanel learns, over the years of her marriage, that Findis is Fëanor’s sister in truth; it is well-hidden, her anger and her stubbornness, but Nerdanel has spent a lifetime seeing the possibilities of stone as much as she has ever spent carving it. Findis glimmers in her vision like uncut marble: there is much possible there, but little yet unearthed.

And then Fëanor makes the Silmarils, and Nerdanel sees him become someone different, and feels fear like she has never felt fear before. She’d had little compunction then about using Findis as a shield against her husband.

She should have remembered that Findis had never been what the world wished her to be.

A shield Nerdanel might have wished, but Findis had never been less than a sword. She had defended Nerdanel and Nerdanel’s daughters in law well and truly, and then she had swung that sword back upon them, disappearing into the darkness.

There is much that Nerdanel mourns. Findis is another of those burdens.)

…

Fëanor had told her of Findis’ greatest fear, once, when they were asleep in bed and Nerdanel had broached the topic. 

She fears disappearance, he had said. Ancient elves faded into less than nothing, once upon a time. They went into the wind and the stone and the stars, and were never seen again. 

So she fears becoming nothing.

She fears being forgotten. Fëanor had paused, and then he had continued, I swore to hold her to life. To bring her back, if ever she found herself gone too far.

There is much that Nerdanel mourns. Her silence, and her husband’s silence, and the gulf that grew between them until it became impassable. Her children- those griefs cannot be counted. But of all her mourning, the burden that sits heaviest on her soul is not of grief, or not solely of grief: it is guilt, smothering and dark and terrible. 

For Findis is gone, Nerdanel is certain of that. Gone into the water and the air and the sky above, as all those elves lost on the path to Aman, silently and peacefully and painfully. 

And it had been Nerdanel who swore to be Feanor’s partner. It had been Nerdanel who should have seen Findis’ grief. It had been Nerdanel who should have brought her back, but Nerdanel had been too lost in her own to see Findis. 

The other burdens are not Nerdanel’s to bear, but this one she holds and cherishes and welcomes. Findis, Songstress and Sister, Daughter and Queen. Findis, who loved and was loved and disappeared, into the black reaches of the night, never to be seen again. Findis, who of all of the people in Aman, Nerdanel should have saved.

…

Finrod is re-embodied in the First Age for his gallantry and his bravery. He is met with great joy from all his family- and there are so many of them, even now, despite the numbers yet crowding Mandos’ halls and Beleriand’s hills. It takes him some time to realize who has not come.

“Is Aunt Findis in Vanyamar?” he asks his father. 

It would not make entire sense even if she is there; Findis has never hesitated to travel before, and- had Finrod had to make some bets before leaving Mandos- he would have said that Findis would have been the third person to embrace him after his parents. Even Grandmother Indis has come to Tirion to meet Finrod and embrace him- even Nerdanel, who Finrod’s spent about five minutes talking to in his entire life.

The joy in his father’s eyes drains away swiftly. Alarmingly swiftly, into something scraped and worn thin.

“No,” he says, and bows his head, and clasps his hand to Finrod’s shoulder. “No,” he says, again, and nothing more.

…

Finrod tries to search for Findis, when he finally extracts the story from his father. He goes to Hyarmentir, and he sees the braid. It looks Vanya in nature, and it could be Finrod’s own, if even brighter; it is braided neatly, and coiled even neater, and there is no dust on it, despite all the years it must have been lying there. 

There is still the echo of a great song, hanging about the air, but none of the ozone and heaviness that remains in Finwë’s study. The air is thin here. Finrod closes his eyes, and waits for the sun to fall, and when he looks up to see the stars, it feels like he is close enough to touch them. The braid at his feet glitters like true gold. It is cold and the wind is fierce, and Finrod remembers, suddenly, that Morgoth had walked down Hyarmentir with Ungoliant to destroy the Trees. Findis has not purified this air- it had not been corrupted in the first place- but she has lightened it with this sacrifice, freely given, and untainted.

Briefly, Finrod wonders how Findis might have held up against Sauron. He’s never seen his aunt afraid, as Finrod had been in the darkness; he thinks, suddenly, with a surety that comes from deep within him, that Findis might well have been one of those people to be heightened and strengthened by her grief and pain, and not diminished. 

Fëanor had defied the Valar to leave Aman. Lalwen had led them through the Helcaraxe when even Fingolfin had faltered and wondered if it was worth it. Fingolfin had wounded Morgoth himself seven times over. Finarfin- as Arafinwë had called himself when he led the armies of the Noldor to Beleriand at the behest of the Valar- had been the commander to finally defeat and bind Morgoth.

Is it any surprise that Findis is not lesser than them?

…

There is a rite of passage for Vanya children now: to walk up the Hyarmentir, and to wash the hair on its slopes with water taken from the sea and the clouds and the streams, and then to return. There is another rite of passage for Noldo children: to walk the woods of Oromë and the mountains of the Pelori and search for Findis, daughter of Indis, daughter of Intyalë. 

Their screams echo for miles and miles. They are never answered.

…

Time passes.

Others return: Fingon, and Aegnor, and Maedhros, and even Galadriel from across the sea, accompanied by her son-in-law and two Ringbearers. The slain Noldor of Gondolin and Hithlum and Himlad and Nargothrond and Estolad and Lammoth and Arvernien; the slain elves of Doriath and Sirion, of Nevrast too. 

Others return, but not Findis.

…

When Caranthir meets his daughter in Nucumna’s home, he weeps freely. They all do: all of Nerdanel’s sons, kinslayers and monsters and broken-hearted, shattered men that they are. Nerdanel’s only granddaughter’s name is Verie, for the boldness that she fostered in her mother’s spirit when she was abandoned by her husband. She does not have an ataresse.

Carnistir bows his head, and gathers her into his arms when she allows him, and he refuses to name his daughter, to give her the ataresse that is her due. He only looks up at Nerdanel, face wet with tears, skin red, eyes hopeless and fists still dripping with hope, and he says, “Father should be here for this.”

…

Nerdanel has not allowed anyone to speak Fëanor ’s name to her in all these six thousand years. 

For six thousand years, Nerdanel has hated him for what he led her sons to. But her sons are back now, and she wants him back, too: her husband, her lover, her joy and her shining star. Her heart is a fluttering thing. Her heart is a fragile thing. She wants him back, and so do her sons, and she is so tired of this, of being strong and unyielding and alone. She wants Fëanor back.

…

When the sons of Fëanor go to petition the Valar for his return, Nerdanel accompanies them. 

When the sons of Fëanor go to petition the Valar for his return, they are accompanied by not only their mother: there are hundreds of their people at their side like black-winged eagles, dark and lovely and fierce. There are many that remain in Tirion, and many that refuse to take part out of rage or grief or righteousness, but they are not the Vanyar, to whom the Valar’s edicts have been their guiding principle.

(For everything that Fëanor had been, for everything he had done and he had caused, he had never not been loved. 

Through ruin and death, through blood and fire, there are many who will not forget that.)

…

“He drove your people to ruin and death,” says Manwë.

“We chose that,” reply the Noldor.

…

Fingolfin, newly re-embodied, catches Finarfin’s eyes. It is late night; everyone else is asleep. The fire is burned low and there are shadows everywhere, but the moon shines bright above them. It’s a grand celebration of all of his followers, finally returned to life, and their families are there besides them.

“I miss her,” says Finarfin.

“I know,” says Fingolfin. “She would have kept us safe. Or- no-” he shakes his head, and laughs, a little, low so that nobody wakes, “-that was never her nature. Findis would have whipped up an army and led them to Beleriand, and then she would have made- made- she would have made Lalwen wed a Sindar, and brought down Thingol’s walls with sweeter words than all the honey in all of Arda!”

Lalwen sits up, rubbing sleep from her eyes, at her name. But she is not so exhausted as to not send Fingolfin a disdainful look. “You are drunk,” she says, voice cutting like a swung thorn. It’s a new skill, one that she hadn’t had before she left Aman.

“Am I wrong?” demands Fingolfin.

“Yes,” says Lalwen, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “She would have wedded a Sindar herself before ever forcing one on me. And well she ought to have done, for I was not available for very long, was I?”

“Yes, yes,” says Fingolfin, waving a hand. “I suppose you didn’t need her encouragement at all- you were always the good sibling! You would’ve wed your nice Sindar soldier without any words necessary from her end, wouldn’t you?”

Finarfin chokes. “Wait,” he manages. “You’re married?”

Lalwen flushes, and Fingolfin laughs again, this time louder. Others wake, startled, and into the sputtered explanations and demands, there is a joy: of reunion, made sweeter by all the loss that preceded it and not embittered by it. And still the ghost of Findis and Fëanor sits around them, heavy, and blanketing, and unforgettable: their family, unhealed, despite all these long centuries.

…

“If not for his actions, Morgoth would never have received the Silmarils,” says Manwë.

“If not for his actions, there would be no light left in the world,” reply the Noldor.

…

“I am afraid,” says Nerdanel, haltingly, looking at Finarfin and no other, “that she is gone. That she will always be gone. That she passed into starlight and dust, and there is none that can call her back.”

“She is not dead,” says Finarfin. “Vairë has promised me that much.”

“Not dead,” says Nerdanel, “does not necessarily mean alive.”

…

“You owe him nothing,” says Manwë.

“Nothing,” reply the Noldor, “but our love.”

…

In the end, the Valar retreat among themselves. They discuss, for long, long hours. And when they return to them, they tell them very clearly: his fate is not theirs to decide. 

“Fëanor ’s actions did not touch the Valar so deeply as they touched your people. We shall abide by your calls. For recompense or not; for grief or not. But you shall need all the Noldor to participate in your decision.” Eönwë, giving the final proclamation, stands very tall before them, and hesitates, almost imperceptibly. Then he says, again: “All.”

Well. 

If the Valar feel getting the Noldor to speak about something is the greatest challenge they can throw at them to keep Fëanáro within their walls, it is not so much a challenge. 

… 

Or so they think, until they make their way up to Ilmarin and are- politely- rebuffed.

“You have not spoken to all of the Noldor,” says Eönwë. “We beg of you not to return until you do.”

Apparently there had been a number of elves hiding in Lothlorien, who only set sail with Celeborn their lord a good century after their lady sailed west, who bore some measure of Noldor blood. Celegorm had snarled something about Valarin rules-lawyering, and Finarfin had rolled his eyes very hard when he realized, and they’d all marched back up Taniquetil only to be rebuffed once more, with the same polite words.

…

“Who’s left?” asks Fingolfin, very flatly.

It is not that he wants Fëanor back; it is more that he wants someone to shout at back in his sight. There are unnumbered griefs he wishes to lay at his brother’s door, and he will lay them, but only when Fëanor’s in sight again. Six thousand years and more, and there are still words he must place on his brother’s shoulders. 

The Noldor are not all of a single mind, but the Valar did not ask that of them. They only asked that everyone be consulted. Anyhow, there is a reason why the House of Finwë is finally united. It has been a very long time since Fëanor ’s death: any further healing that Fëanor must do can be done alive, surely, where their family can at least move beyond the unanswered wounds left by his flight.

“We’ve tracked down everyone,” replies Finarfin. “Any Vanya with a drop of Noldo blood. Any Teleri with a Noldo ancestor.” He pauses, and then continues, “There’s even been a messaging system set up! Between Middle-Earth and Aman! I’ve spoken to everyone. Unless they want to talk about honorary Noldor now, and maybe people married into it, and then their families, but that would mean-”

“No,” says Finrod slowly. 

It’s a large gathering: Fingolfin, Fingolfin’s family; Finarfin, Finarfin’s family; Maedhros and his brothers and his mother. There are younger members as well, people that would not have been included before leaving for Middle-Earth: Idril, and Elwing, and Elrond and Elrond’s sons. Maeglin is there, and so are Gil-Galad and Finduilas. They all turn to look at him.

“No, we haven’t spoken to everyone, have we?” He stands, and comes up to the registers that they’ve been poring over endlessly. “We haven’t spoken to Aunt Findis.”

…

“Well?” demands Celegorm.

They’re in an alcove of Tirion’s palace, Finrod and Aredhel and Celegorm. In Finrod’s hands are two packs, stuffed with food and provisions. He hands them over.

“Findis is alive,” he says. “Or so the Valar think. And if she is alive, then she must be found. So: find her.”

“Six thousand years and you want us to just find her?” demands Celegorm. 

“The trails,” says Aredhel, “are going to be gone.”

“It’s your father,” says Finrod. “It’s Fëanor . The two of you are the best trackers and hunters we have. If you cannot find her, then she cannot be found.”

“Oromë himself couldn’t find her!”

“Yes, but,” says Finrod, smiling a smile full of teeth, “Oromë was not taught to hunt by Findis.”

…

They head out that night.

…

Finrod was right: Celegorm is quite good at this: no, that’s untrue; he’s the best at it. And he’s learned some new tricks in Beleriand that had never been necessary in Aman. With Aredhel helping him, he’s fairly certain they’ll find Findis- either that, or nobody will find Findis, because Findis is not there to be found.

Over forest and mountain, through lake and storm. Celegorm runs, and loses himself to the wild, ferocious hunt: his mind runs open, wide and questing, and his limbs are barely enough to keep up. Little enough prey has evaded him for long enough that he’s been in this state for longer than a few hours; it leaves him feeling wild, and unchained, and free like the wind streaking through his hair.

“Aredhel,” he says, when finally he stops. She looks at him, bright-eyed and laughing, and Celegorm smiles back at her, helpless to stop it. Unfettered joy has been so lacking in recent years; he’s learned to chain those moments up and lock them deep in his fëa such that none can hear it. “New strategy: we cannot find Findis by looking for her, so we don’t.”

Slowly, a smile spreads across her face. “Orc-hunting methods?”

“Look for stillness,” says Celegorm. “Look for silence.”

The orcs had learned their methods of monitoring and tracking, and developed their own methods of avoiding the elves over the long years in Beleriand. Particularly scouts- the inventive bastards had worked out a way to silence any external song or magic, rendering half their traps inert- but Celegorm had then realized that their methods silenced all magic, and used that to hunt them down pitilessly.

Findis is not an orc, but she would not know such methods. And of course Oromë would not need to use them- the world has never been silent to him, and he has never had to hunt down single orc scouts to ensure they don’t relay essential information to their superiors.

“Imagine,” says Aredhel, tossing her braid over her shoulder. “We find her, and must explain to the Valar and to the Noldor that the only reason they could not was for the lack of orcs in Aman!”

“Tells us why the Vanyar never found her,” grunts Celegorm, and takes off before Aredhel can either snap at him or laugh.

…

When they finally do find a patch of forest that doesn’t sing, Celegorm nearly passes it by: it is well-hidden, and there are strong magics woven around it that scream ignore, and unimportant, and pass-me-by, and it’s only his own instincts, ruthlessly honed for too long, that make him come back and inspect it.

“It is silent,” says Aredhel, very quietly. Then she reaches out and touches the bark of the tree. “Aman is never silent.”

“We’re close,” agrees Celegorm.

“Carefully, then?”

“Onwards.”

Gripping their weapons, they step forwards.

…

Sitting under a beech tree, hair wild and flowing and free, is Findis.

Her eyes are closed, and her face is calm, and she might have been sleeping if not for the perfect stiffness of her spine even through the billowing wind. Her face has changed a little, Aredhel thinks; it is thinner than it had been, and harder, like granite squeezed out of shale in the heart of mountains. But she doesn’t think that disturbing Findis’ meditation is a great idea just yet.

Aredhel looks around her: the clearing is beautiful, built into the shade of a mountain’s tall trees, almost at the very top. The stars will be visible over the side of the cliff, a little ways away, and there is a silver stream burbling off a little ways, though she cannot see it. There is a neat little garden, with herbs releasing a welcome scent and vegetables twined around thin splints. She does not see any house- but there must be one, for the mountains will otherwise grow so bitterly cold during winter, and surely Findis cannot sleep outside then?

“Aunt Findis,” says Celegorm, and Aredhel turns, startled, to look at Findis.

Slowly, she opens her eyes. They are bright, so bright that Aredhel can scarcely bear it, brighter even than those who yet have the Light of the Trees in their gaze, like some essential layer of skin and flesh has been scraped off to allow for the brilliance of her spirit.

“Oh,” she says, and raises a hand to her mouth, staring at them. Tears start to shine in her eyes. Then she says, very quietly, “Tyelkormo? Irissë?”

“Aunt Findis,” says Aredhel. She steps forwards before Celegorm can do anything else unwise. “Aunt Findis, it is so good to see you!” And she drops to her knees, staying a little ways away. “We have been looking for you for a very long time. We… a lot of us have been looking for you, for a very long time.”

“Irissë,” says Findis sadly. She reaches out, and almost touches her face- her fingers come close, so close, but don’t actually brush her cheek. “Oh, I had not thought that my mind would break like this. If anything it would be Fëanor to come, I thought; or perhaps my father. Not the two of you.”

“Are we so bad a replacement?” asks Celegorm dryly.

“Not so bad a replacement,” says Findis. “But an unkind one, certainly! For all these years and I still cannot yell at you, who do not deserve any of it.”

“I think I, at least, deserve some yelling,” says Celegorm.

“Aunt Findis,” says Aredhel, shooting a quelling look at Celegorm, “we aren’t some vision sent to you: we are real. We are very real.”

“Are you,” says Findis, but it is not a question, not truly.

She stands, and the wind reveals that her hair is not completely unbound; there’s a little knot of braids hidden there, right next to her ears, with little beads of red and green and gold glimmering in the thickness.

“Would your mind be this unkind?” asks Aredhel. “To bring us here, and not those you wished to come?”

“Yes,” says Findis, flatly. Then she sighs. “But I take your point: it does not matter if you are real or not. Come inside; there will be a storm, and mountains are not kind to those unused to it.”

Celegorm looks amused, though he doesn’t say anything; Aredhel feels quite the same. Surely no Valinorian storm could best the wild, terrible ones that accosted Himring and Hithlum! Even Mithrim had not been altogether very welcoming, not truly, for all that it had felt like some form of heaven after the Helcaraxe.

Findis doesn’t go far- rather, she steps inside a cave, not looking over her shoulder, and when Aredhel follows, she sees that the cave makes up Findis’ home. It is clean and well-lit, from a cleverly fashioned contraption of mirrors set into the nooks and crannies as well as a fair few lamps. There is a kitchen, with contrived shelves and rounded bowls and plates, and a slumbering fire-pit near a set of cracks in the walls for the smoke to dissipate; dried herbs hang from the ceilings, lending the cave the implication of less height than it has; a number of blankets are folded and kept on the other end of the room, which seems to make up the bed.

There’s little else. 

“Where’s the stream?” asks Celegorm abruptly. “I can hear it, but…”

“Behind that wall,” answers Findis, nodding to the corner that Aredhel had assumed to be her bed. “I had to push the stone in myself, and then sing it into being impassable; it took quite some time. But at least I got it done before winter! I would not have liked to have slept in that water during the snows.”

“Yes, well, we were wondering about that,” says Aredhel. “How’d you- well, see, Uncle Finarfin- Arafinwë- he petitioned the Valar for news about you, and none of them knew where you were!”

“What, all of them?” Findis looks startled. “Well, they wouldn’t: I forswore them, when I heard of Fëanáro’s death. And it took some time, but my song was very powerful in those days, and I sang songs of hiding and concealment for a very long time. And, of course, I never mentioned their names. It was not so easy in the early years- I kept having to catch my thoughts. But I managed.”

“Mentioning their names gets their attention?” asks Celegorm, frowning.

“Mentioning anyone’s names gets their attention,” says Findis wryly. She passes out a bowl each to Aredhel and Celegorm, full of a stew that smells remarkably good, and then takes her own before sitting down flat on the ground. “So, tell me: what has my brother been doing?”

“Ruling. He’s a good king.”

Findis lifts an eyebrow. “Now this is an apparition,” she says. “Tyelkormo Feanarion telling me that one of his uncles is good at something?”

“I don’t like Uncle Fingolf- Nolofinwë,” Celegorm points out, fairly enough. “It’s Carnistir who doesn’t like Arafinwë or his brood.”

“Pah. Six thousand years and you haven’t changed.”

“The world has changed,” says Aredhel gently. “Very much, Aunt Findis.”

“You would say that,” says Findis, very slowly. Then she puts down her bowl of stew, and closes her eyes, and breathes in and out, before saying, “I miss him, you know. I miss all of you. But I think it would be better if you left, now: you’re doing more of the hurting than healing. I’m not sure how much more of it I can take.”

“Aunt Findis-”

“I said leave,” she bites out, and her voice goes all harsh and cutting, like blade-sharp stones hidden under water. 

Aredhel braces herself. “No,” she says. 

Findis’ eyes open, and she stares, with those beautiful, terrible silver eyes. “No?”

“No,” repeats Aredhel. “You taught me the worth of family. You taught me the worth of love. You taught me that it does not matter if the world is terrible and large and dark: the moments of joy are worth all of it. You do not get to hide yourself away here now, after everything you did for all those years!”

“What,” asks Celegorm, “are you afraid of, Auntie?”

Findis’ face goes cold. “Myself,” she says. “And it seems I am right to have been afraid, for the first apparitions my mind sends me try to bring me out of peace! You know why I left, and you know why I cannot return, and I’ll thank you to leave now!”

“No,” says Aredhel. “We aren’t going anywhere.”

And before she can do anything- for she isn’t the wordsmith that Maglor is, or Maedhros, or half the others- Celegorm strides forwards, and grips Findis’ shoulders, and reels her into an embrace.

Findis does not say anything for a long moment, and she does not move either. But then her hand comes up, and presses flat against Celegorm’s shoulder, pulling him in closer, and she whispers, “Tyelkormo,” in a voice so soft it almost cannot be heard.

“Aunt Findis,” he says. 

Findis pulls away, sitting down, and she doesn’t look away from them. The anguish in her eyes dims them, but still she does not weep: just looks grieved, and tired, and sad.

“How did you come here?” 

“We tracked for silence,” says Celegorm. “And it is… Celegorm, now: my name. After Beleriand. In Sindarin, that’s what I called myself, in Sindarin- the tongue of the Moriquendi.”

“Celegorm,” echoes Findis. “It suits you. And you, Irissë?”

“Aredhel,” she says. “They call me Aredhel.”

“Hm. Well. I’m sure you learned things in that land that you didn’t know here, but- tracked for silence?”

Well, they’d tried to be diplomatic enough about it and not mention the orcs. Aredhel rolls her eyes and grins at Celegorm, and then she launches into the story.

…

“Will you come?” asks Aredhel, at the end of it all.

Findis closes her eyes, and then she opens them, and then she thinks, Sire to pyre, brother. 

She says, “Very well.”

…

“Uncle,” says Finrod suddenly, sitting upright.

Fingolfin looks over at him and his wide eyes, and gropes, instinctively, for the sword at his waist. There isn’t one; his sword’s on the far sofa, sharp and rustless as Fingolfin always maintains it, but he has a decently-sized knife tucked close to his chest. 

“Yes?” he says tonelessly, making sure to keep his voice devoid of all bloodlust.

“Celegorm and Aredhel are on their way back,” Finrod tells him. He smiles, and Finrod’s eyes are shining, shining, shining: like the sky, blinding and blue and true. Fingolfin feels his heart pick up. “They found Aunt Findis.”

…

The Findis that rides back through Tirion is not the Findis that had left Tirion, thinks Finarfin. This Findis is thinner, and paler, and there is a fierce, fell fire in her eyes that would be frightening to anyone unused to debating with Fingolfin or Maedhros for hours on end. She wears no fine clothing; her garments look rough and homespun, and there is little in the way of belongings on her horse, and even her hair is unbound, spilling like liquid gold down her shoulders. 

“Sister,” says Finarfin, stepping forwards and bowing.

It’s habit; the Telerin style of bowing to elders, even if as king Finarfin ought not to bow to anyone. The novelty’s enough to make him do it now that his family’s returned, and he has someone that he can, ostensibly, bow before.

There’s a moment’s silence, and then the sweep of cloth over stone, and then he hears her say, impatiently, “Get up, Aro. Humility’s never suited you.”

“Is this the welcome I get from my sister after six thousand years?” he asks, rising.out of the bow with a flourish.

“Yes,” says Findis, and throws herself at him. 

…

“Well,” says Fingolfin, later, at breakfast, “what are you going to say, Findis?”

Silence falls over the table, everyone watching her. Some of them are wondering, because they’d follow Findis in her answer no matter what it would be; some of them know what she’s going to say, she who loved her brother so well and deeply; some of them- those who know Findis has changed- take fortifying sips of wine.

Findis pops the grape in her fingers into her mouth. She chews slowly. 

Then she looks up, and she says, coolly, “I have some questions that need to be answered first.”

“That’s the easy answer,” says Finarfin mildly.

“It’s the only one you’ll get,” she replies. “I’ve things that must be done, and questions that must be answered. Fëanor … well, let me say this: he deserves a choice, and that’s what I’d wish for him.” Her eyes scrape over them, leaving half flinching, a little, at the eldritch shine in them. She rises to her feet and throws the worn woolen cloak over her shoulders. “Turgon: I’d like you to accompany me to the library. Hopefully by the end of this week we’ll be able to go to the Valar.”

…

The library is very large, and very quiet, and Turgon doesn’t know why he’s there at all. Findis sends him an amused look when he shuffles over to the architecture section, but doesn’t say anything else, choosing to get lost instead in a particularly dense, dusty tome of metaphysics. When he wanders back, she’s still reading it, and she’s also gained four other books, stacked haphazardly around her chair; two of them are open and clearly being referenced industriously; the last one looks like a dictionary, which rather makes Turgon want to return to the stacks and hide again.

“Aunt Findis,” he says. She makes a sound through her teeth but doesn’t look up. “Aunt Findis- it’s past lunchtime.”

“Oh,” she says, finally looking back at him. “I- well, I’m just about in the middle of this. I’ll have a big supper.” Then, pursing her lips, Findis says, “You go on, Turukano. Send someone by when the library will close- I’m still unused to Tirion’s streets, and would prefer not to get lost.”

“Sure,” says Turgon, and, still a little bewildered, leaves.

He sends Maedhros a couple hours later, when the sun’s going down, less because he wants to than that Maedhros is- apparently- the only person without a prior commitment and a deliberately unhelpful personality in their family at the moment. 

…

When Maedhros gets there, Findis is waiting outside. She smiles at him and lets him take the pack of books beside her without any further fuss, and they head back home.

“I’m sorry, you know,” Findis tells him. 

Maedhros pauses. “For what?”

“For not coming with you.”

Of all the things to apologize for…

“That isn’t what people normally say,” says Maedhros. 

“What do people normally say?”

“That I was wrong. That we were wrong. Morgoth was unbeatable, and we should have petitioned the Valar for aid instead of going on our own. We should not have slayed kin. We should have been more careful when we got to Beleriand. We should have-” he sighs. “Well. We should have done a thousand things, a thousand ways, and never the one that we did.”

“Perhaps our lives would have been better for it,” says Findis. 

The agreement sticks in his craw, stinging and unfair as it is- Findis, too, has never seen Beleriand; she has never had to face the choices they did; for all that Maedhros loves her, and has always looked up to her, she’s never had to go and walk in flame and darkness so deep even the memory of light feels impossible, and holding her to a higher standard than the rest of Aman is unfair-

“But I will tell you what I told my mother, when I chose singing as my mastery: never have we chosen an easy path.” Maedhros pauses, staring at her, and Findis half-smiles. “It was not victory that my brother wanted, Maedhros: it was vengeance. Did he not get it?”

“We all died.”

“Oh, yes, painfully. Terribly. I would not have wanted to be there. But I wanted vengeance as well, and that scared me enough to make me run from civilization for six thousand years. We all made terrible decisions then, didn’t we? Fëanor led you to ruin, but what glorious ruin! Defiance, unto the utmost pain, the utmost grief, the utmost loss! There is something lovely in the sun undimmed, perhaps, but is there not something even lovelier in the light of an ember that, though it flickers and dims and darkens, never goes out?” She touches his elbow very lightly. “And that’s why I owe you an apology: I would not have come with you, perhaps, but I should have come later. I should have led the force of the Noldor for the War of Wrath: I should have welcomed you and Maglor back home. I did not, and that was ill-done of me.”

For a moment, he does not say anything. But when he sees the way she looks, pale and slender and drawn, he remembers the time after the Silmaril had burned him, and Maglor had yet been by his side, and Maedhros was steadily leading them both to death. In the end he had thrown only himself into the fires, but Maedhros had not hesitated in the leading for that whole time. He looks at Findis now, and sees that same curved shoulder, and the same exhausted, grim determination. 

This is guilt, he thinks, with the firmness of experience.

“You don’t want Father back, do you?” asks Maedhros finally.

Findis lifts an eyebrow. She looks up at the sky, and then back at him, and then to the stars, again, slowly starting to shine. “What makes you say that?”

“You’re studying something,” he says. “And you’re refusing to answer Uncle Fingolfin. And… you look unhappy.”

The corners of Findis’ mouth tilt upwards. “As he was,” she says slowly. “As he was, at the end: mad, and angry, and convinced of the world’s treachery- no, I would not have him back as that. Not for anything in the world.”

Something sinks in Maedhros’ heart.

“That was him,” says Maedhros heavily. “That was him, pared away by grief and anger. Perhaps six thousand years in Mandos would have changed him, but- I do not think so.”

“Perhaps,” says Findis, and her voice is far lighter than Maedhros would have imagined it, hope ringing through it like a struck bell. “Perhaps. Perhaps can change the world, Maitimo: so do not fret! I am not lost of hope, and I am not stricken with silence. Perhaps, and little, and all the quiet kindnesses of the world: those are what shall create the Dagor Dagorath, and avert it time and over again. Fëanáro my brother was beloved by us all. I shall not have him back as anything less than that.”

She reaches up and kisses the side of his jaw, and then she says, “Would you like to accompany me to the temple?”

“Of the Valar? I don’t think I’ll be welcome there.”

“Stay outside, then, and mind my belongings.”

“Aunt Findis,” says Maedhros, but less whining and more amused.

Findis smiles at him and walks over to the temple they just passed, unhesitating for someone who’s forsworn the Valar. Inside, Maedhros watches as she kneels to Manwë’s statue first, then to Varda; she then goes to Aulë, and takes something long and thin out of her cloak to place before his pedestal, and bows her head over it. She barely pauses at Vána, Estë, Irmo, Oromë, Yavanna, Nessa and Tulkas; just prostrates and moves on. At Ulmo, she takes out something small and shining and condensed, and places that on the altar, too, bowing her head for long minutes. She bows to Námo in a peculiarly old-fashioned bow, one hand pressing above her breast and the other sweeping down her spine, and does the same to Nienna. The last person she stops at is Vairë’s statue, who looks out over the temple with a strange smile, a tapestry half-woven in front of her. She’s close enough to the door now that Maedhros can hear, if he strains to.

“I ask not for mercy, my lady,” says Findis, in the oldest of tongues; one that Maedhros scarcely remembers. One that he’s certainly not heard used in everyday life: likely, it is the one that Finwë spoke when he first came to Aman and saw the Trees, and loved the Valar. “I ask not for justice. But you know who I am, and you know my name. My names. Not of choice but of birth. Healing. That is what I ask of you now: the most ancient hurt, righted once more.”

She takes off her shawl, a lovely, cunningly-wrought thing in blue and white, and drapes it over Vairë’s shoulders with all the gentleness of a mother wrapping their child. 

Findis turns away and leaves, taking half her books back, and doesn’t look over her shoulder. But Maedhros does: and the offerings that Findis laid for the Valar no longer shine in the darkness. In fact, he thinks, a strange shiver making its way up his spine, they look as if they have all disappeared.

…

The travel up to Ilmarin is a joyous thing. Caranthir, especially- and Celegorm, and Lalwen, and even Elrond- look millennia younger as they make the long, winding trek. Finarfin thinks it’s a good look on his family.

(But Findis looks tired, the higher they go, and paler, and smaller; and she does not partake in their joy, choosing instead to watch the stars shine or the moon rise or the distant, faint lights of Alqualondë, glimmering on the horizon. Eärwen tells him it must be a change, returning home after so long in solitude, and to let her come to him, and Finarfin obeys. It’d been Eärwen that coaxed Angrod out of stillness and grieving when he returned to them: he trusts in her judgment.

Still, it sits uneasily in him.)

…

“Lord Eönwë,” says Finarfin, bowing. 

Eönwë, golden-winged and beautiful, bows back. “You have not yet consulted all of the Noldor, King Finarfin.”

“No,” says Findis, stepping forwards.

Finarfin struggles not to stare. She’d disappeared earlier that day, and only returned now, and she does not look like the elf that had left: Findis has changed out of her rags and into other clothes- well-made, but simple to the point of ascetism- and shoes of supple leather, and no further jewels. Her arms are bared, and Finarfin can see the way they have both thinned and hardened over the years she spent in exile, the muscle pulling the skin taut. But it is her hair that startles him, more than anything else: it is braided back for the first time since she returned, and on top of it shines a crown lifting into four delicate points.

She looks like a true queen of the Noldor, made finer for her lack of embellishment rather than less.  

“Princess Findis,” says Eönwë, and his voice rumbles through them all like a grand note of thunder. “Too long have these halls lain silent of your songs.”

She lifts her head. “I would speak to the Valar,” she says. “And if you shall listen, Lord Eönwë, after all of this is over: I shall sing, too.”

For a moment, Finarfin thinks nothing will happen. Then Eönwë turns aside, and bows, and the door to Ilmarin swings open.

…

“We mourned your loss,” says Este, when as many of them shall fit manage to enter. Her grey skirts flap in the wind. “That song on Hyarmentir, Princess Findis: it was lovely. Rarely have I wept for kinslayers in these long years: that night, I was inconsolable.”

“I thank you for your kindness,” says Findis, and bows, using that same strange bow that Maedhros remembers from the temple: one hand above her heart, and the other running down her back. “I mourned my brother well and truly that night. I have spent the past six thousand years mourning him. And that-” she spreads her arms wide- “is why we are here.”

“To judge him,” says Manwë. “But the Noldor have not heard your judgment, have they?”

“I was asked,” agrees Findis. “Thrice over: once by my brother Fingolfin, and once by my brother’s son and heir Maedhros, and now once by you, Manwë Súlimo. And thrice have I refused to answer, for my answer is not so simple as any you wish to hear.”

“You have answered Maedhros Kinslayer,” says Varda.

“I have answered only part of it,” says Findis. “But I shall tell you all what I said to him: if my brother is to return as he was at the end of his life, I shall not wish him to return. I shall not have my people cower in fear of him, nor shall I have my family afraid of his actions and his temper. None of us are selfish enough for that. But Fëanor was never just those last years of his life, was he, Varda Elentári?”

Maedhros swallows. Fingon, beside him, leans in the slightest amount, his side pressing down against Maedhros’ own in a line of warmth. He doesn’t know what Findis is doing, and- he’s realizing- nobody knows: they all simply watch, some more restlessly than others, some more fearfully than others.

“Fëanor was of greater mind and heart than any other elf in the land,” says Varda. Her eyes, deep pits of darkness studded through with light, do not blink. “But he must answer for his sins.”

“And he has not?” asks Findis. “Can you not think of a better answer than this: his sons slain, his family shattered, his people broken; the Silmarils that he loved so dearly lost by his heirs’ own decisions, recovered from Morgoth’s lair only by the aid of those he loathed?” Maglor, on Maedhros’ other side, stiffens. “Fëanor ’s suffering was his penance, and he suffered when he died, and he suffered when he was made to witness but not act upon the doom he’d led our people towards. He has answered.”

“If that person is who he is,” says Manwë, “if that person who he was at the end of his life was Fëanáro Finwion, what shall you do, Findis, daughter of Indis?”

“What would you have me do?” asks Findis. “Kill him myself? I often thought of doing that. But no: I swore to Eru Allfather, once, never to set foot in Endamar, and I could not kill Fëanor from such a distance.” Her lips twist at the barely-subdued gasps behind her. “But that is not what you wish to ask me.”

“No,” says Varda, rising until her height looks as vast and terrible and unending as the night sky. “For there is one mystery left in this tale, Vandatári: how you survived.”

“You do me honor,” murmurs Findis.

“Answer us,” snaps Námo.

Findis raises her arms, and touches her crown, unerringly running her fingers over each point. “There is a power in threes,” she says. “Thrice over was the technique discovered, and thrice over was it lost. Thrice, and four beings with the knowledge: twice in Aman, and twice in Endore, with the balance of all things.” She looks up at Varda. “When Fëanor created the Silmarils, he did not only create them. He-” here, she uses the old Quenya word for it, the oldest version, the one that she’d spoken in the temple: and Maedhros knows her to mean not just created, but also formed-from-the-heart, and poured-soul-into, and loved-beyond-all-loving, and created-with-one’s-own-flesh. “-them. And after that forming came the first true grievance that Fëanor had with the Valar, stoked by Morgoth and kindled by his mother.”

Varda is very still, and the rest of the Valar, too, stare at Findis like she’s just said something terrible. 

“No,” says Irmo, and he sounds stunned. 

“Yes,” says Findis. She smiles thinly. “Tell me, if a portion of your fëa is to be hallowed- and only that portion- with your own fëa the imperfect product of Arda marred- would you not go insane?”

Suddenly, it all clicks in Maedhros’ mind, and also in the majority of the Noldor. This time, the shock is not limited to gasps, but cries of both denial and pain. Maedhros hears Fingon mutter a low oath next to him, and he risks cutting a look towards Nerdanel: she’s white, but Anairë’s clutching her arm and saying something very rapidly into her ear, and she also doesn’t look too stunned by Findis’ words.

“Maglor,” whispers Maedhros, and his brother sends him a quick, bare recitation of how everyone else is doing around them: Celegorm and Curufin are too close to Fingolfin to do anything other than swear; Caranthir is occupied with his wife and daughter; the Ambarussa are being soothed by- respectively- Elrohir and Elladan. 

“Thrice over, you said,” says Nessa. “Thrice over this method was found?”

“Thrice,” agrees Findis. She looks calmer, now, than she had for the rest of the conversation, and stands straighter for it. “Once by Fëanor my brother, and once again by me, who learned to work a forge at his knee before he ever took an apprentice, and once again by his sole grandchild, who used the method to forge the Three Rings of Elven Lords that saved Arda for the long years of the Third Age.”

Celebrimbor?

“And with Celebrimbor came the knowledge to Sauron,” says Aulë.

“Yes. Twice in Aman and twice in Middle-Earth.”

“Fëanor made the Silmarils,” says Yavanna. “Celebrimbor made the rings. Sauron made his ring. What did you make, Vandatári?”

“A sword,” says Findis calmly. “A crown. Two vambraces. And I gifted them to my family who wished to leave: a sword of starlight to Fingolfin, and a crown of mourning and remembrance for Lalwen, and a set of vambraces of light, unbending steel for Finarfin.” 

Maedhros checks the three, and though Fingolfin does not wear his sword, Lalwen’s crown is a simple coronet of a strange material that shines no matter how she twists her head, and Finarfin’s forearms are clad in a similar, glinting armor. 

“You did not survive because of them,” says Varda. “Fëanor made his Silmarils, and yet passed.”

“I wished to pass,” says Findis, and her voice is too musical for such a terrible statement. “I wished to fade, into the stars and the wind and the stone and the rain, for I had seen what rage that matched my own could do to this world, and that terrified me. But I could not. It took me a long time to understand, Varda Elentári, what chained me to this world.”

She throws her hands up, and Findis’ hair shines in that moment, so brilliant as to be blinding, and underneath those locks of gold, Maedhros thinks he sees a chain of diamond-mithril, glittering and unyielding.

“An oath,” says Manwë. His voice rolls around them like stones shattering or the wind howling; Maedhros must resist the urge to cover his ears. “An oath sworn not to me.”

“No,” says Findis. “But it was witnessed by your consort, Manwë Súlimo! And it held, in chains of diamond and steel and silver: for six thousand years, and for all the years ever-longer. For Fëanor my brother has not passed into death with the entirety of his fea, and so long as his pyre remained unlit, so shall my own.”

She kneels, then, and Maedhros’ heart surges in his throat. Had she sworn that vow? Had she truly sworn to Eru that promise? Even Maedhros and his brothers had not been foolish enough to do that.

“And so I stand here before you: and I pronounce the fullest of my judgment for my brother: un-hallow the Silmarils, Varda Elentári! Let my brother recover! For he has paid, over and over and over again: for the original sin of pride, and the old sin of grief, and the mistakes of those that have come after him! Fëanáro, King and Father and Husband and Brother, has suffered enough!” She lifts her eyes, and they are eldritch enough to give even the Valar pause. “I say this, Lady of the Stars, as my judgment: give my brother a choice.”

The sound that rumbles through the castle feels like something shattering. Like a thunderstorm and a rockfall and an unearthly scream, all at once. Manwë’s hand clenches atop his throne’s arm, and Varda’s eyes shine so brightly they almost blind Maedhros.

“Even if I wished to,” she says in an awful voice that sounds too much like the winds that had howled around Thangorodrim, “I could not. Three Silmarils did Fëanor craft, and two are lost even now, by fault of his own heirs.”

Fault, thinks Maedhros, and cannot forget the pitiless expression that had glowed in Eönwë’s eyes as he and Maglor held the Silmaril’s chest, nor the fact that it took five thousand years for Varda and Manwë to release them of the vow that had driven Maedhros so close to madness. Fault, he thinks, and nearly steps forwards to say something.

He isn’t certain what, but surely- surely-

Fingon’s hand clenches down on his arm, keeping him frozen and still; Maedhros has enough of his mind present to do the same to Maglor before they get kicked out of Ilmarin for shouting at the Valar. He certainly recognizes the short, sharp breaths running through Maglor’s chest when he’s unhappy.

“Lost, yes,” says Findis. “And recovered, now, too.”

At that, finally, there is silence; it seems Findis has managed to stun them all so deeply they have no  words for her.

“Yes,” says Aulë. “One is recovered by your question of the deep things under stone and flame: in the heart of the earth. It lies in my realm still, and I have unearthed it.”

“And another in mine,” says Ulmo. “Given to me freely, in a hand anguished and scarred with pain. The water remembers, we say: and the water does not forget. There are many things lost to my depths that shall never see the light of day again, but for the free gift of someone who remembers: and Findis Vandatári remembered, and gave.”

Maedhros remembers the things she’d placed on the altars: the shawl, the narrow gift, the little clump. He does not even know what those things are.

“A flute of my brother’s hands, taken against his will,” says Findis quietly. “A chip of Everlasting Ice before the blood of my people ever stained it. A shawl of my father’s wife’s hands, one that kept me warm and safe for six thousand years.” An odd smile lines her face. “It was always said that I was less arrogant than my brother: but no, I think there was simply less that I was willing to fight for!”

“No,” says Vairë, speaking for the first time. Her voice is not melodious, not like her siblings, but her fingers rest in her lap, and they are elegantly wrought indeed. “For you do not ask for only that, do you?”

“There is a power in threes,” says Findis. “And so I ask three things of the Valar today: one, to heal his soul, and two, to give him his choice, and three: to heal his oldest, fiercest wound.”

“No,” says Námo. “I speak against this course.”

“Yes,” says Vairë. She shifts, adjusting her seat, and Maedhros sees the blue shawl about her shoulders, one of many- but this one looks strangely familiar. Her eyes are very normal, a pale green shade that shimmers like waving grass, but her hair is bound in a number of braids that are plaited together in a fashion that looks not unlike a rough tapestry, and her clothes are constantly changing, flickering with a patch of red and silver and purple that depicts some event occurring in the world. Right now, those eyes are fixed on her husband, and she looks as immovable as he. “I speak for this action.”

“Little pity,” says Nerdanel then, stepping forwards, her hair tangled and gleaming, her face damp with tears. “Little pity, but not none.”

“We have shown enough pity-”

“That is enough,” says Varda.

Manwë rises. “We shall tell you our answer,” he says firmly, “once we have decided it.”

“I look forward to it,” says Findis, pressing her forehead to the ground before rising to her feet. “We shall await your answer at your gates, King Manwë.”

…

Lalwen steps out of Ilmarin and breathes deeply. This high up, the clouds are clearly visible: they’re thick with rain, and the sun catches on them, turning them gold, and red, and gold once more; not the beauty of a metal but something scrubbed clean and pure and shining, a color that no shade caught by elves could ever match. Soon enough the clouds will cover over the sun and turn the world dark with rain, but for now there is this beauty: and it does not feel like it is less lovely for its fleeting nature.

Findis is the last elf to step outside, and she stands at the gates for a long moment, head tilted up and eyes closed to the wind. The first drops of rain start to fall, but she does not shrink from the cold.

When Lalwen approaches her, she sees that Findis’ face is far wetter than the beginning of rain should cause. “Sister,” she says.

“Sister,” replies Findis, voice shorn of all emotion. 

“None of us knew,” says Lalwen. She runs a hand over Findis’ hair, and then her shoulder, and then lays her own head on it, feeling the gentle vibrations of Findis’ throat on her forehead. “None of us knew what you were so afraid of.”

Or what you would have done for that fear.

“No,” says Findis. “I gave much so you would remain ignorant of that.” Then she whispers, so softly that Lalwen barely hears her, “I loved him so dearly. I loved you all so dearly: I felt when you died, Lalwen, and when Fingolfin died, and it was like something breaking afresh each day. I had heard the Doom; I knew that you would not return. I did not even expect it.” She closes her eyes. “If I had known, I would have come.”

“Would you?”

“Yes,” says Findis, and tangles her fingers in Lalwen’s dark hair.

The wind howls around them, and the rain lashes at their faces, cold and harsh. Lalwen does not let go of her sister, and she laughs: bright as the memory of the sun, which will rise in only a few short hours, and lets herself hope.

…

…

Fëanor makes his way up the mountain slowly. There is no rush: the sky is bright, and the wind is good, and even if it was not, he has survived worse. His rebirth had not been a quick process, and it had not been an easy one either; but then, he thinks that he is the better for it: unhallowed, of immortal spirit but not one of the Ainur, and aware, on a deep, unforgiving level of that fact.

If his rebirth had not been easy, the recovery after that has been one of the most challenging things he’s ever done.

Apologies, and silence, and the relief of that kindness: both offered and received. He’s never truly let himself have that time, to think and accept that. But Fëanor knows who saved him, for that story is one of the finest lays in all of Aman now- the story of Findis Vandatári, named by Varda herself, standing before the Valar for the love she bore her brother and the courage she held in her heart.

Nerdanel had offered to join him, and so had Celegorm, who goes to visit his aunt whenever he’s feeling hemmed into the city. If anyone else had known about it, Fëanor ’s certain they would have offered as well.

But this is a path he must walk, and a hurt he must heal. Findis had said it, had she not?

If a sister you do not wish, I will not throw myself on you!

The mountain is steep. Six thousand years did Findis inhabit it, and the magic she had used to lull the Valar into silence and ignorance of her presence still rests heavy on it: Fëanor feels the need, bone-deep and deeper, to hide. To turn away. There is nothing important here, whispers the very air and stone. There is nothing to see, or remember.

But he remembers, for Fëanor can do nothing less: the face Findis made, when he cut her braids from her, the light in her eyes when she swore her vow, the shine of her hair when he was finally re-embodied and she saw him, and embraced him, once and gone with the swiftness of a sparrow’s flight.

He has not seen her since that day.

So there is something to remember here: his sister. 

Fëanor’s sister, who saved him, and loved him- loved him so deeply she was willing to perish as well to be at his side, and loved him so deeply she was not willing to follow him into madness, and loved him so deeply she feared for the world when he passed.

Something to remember, and something to cherish. 

Fëanor climbs higher, and does not falter. He pauses, finally, when he comes to the copse that Celegorm had mentioned to him, of elm trees and beech, and the silver bark of aspen as well. For a moment, he pauses, and breathes in the thick scent of the woods. Then he steps through the copse, and into the clearing beyond it.

Findis is standing at one end, a hand pressed to her mouth, eyes shining. 

(Findis, Fëanor had named her: for her parents, and what he saw in her heart: for that tale of the first elf to ever love. There are many aspects of that tale that Fëanor ’s read over the years- all of them changed- but the first version had been of a sister bonding with her brother before ever she fell in love with another elf, and thereby creating the first idea of osanwe. It was the older love, the story had said, and though it was not greater or brighter than the fires of romance or parenthood, it was the steadier, and it was the one that, flickering and faded, had first come into the world. He had named her for that story, and no other: skillful sister, and loving sister, and also, perhaps, if he is willing to be completely truthful: sister-that-sings-in-my-soul-the-song-of-first-joy.)

“Sister,” says Fëanor.

“Brother,” says Findis softly, and reaches out, hand shining like a glorious song of forgiveness and wrath and grief and love.

“I missed you,” says Fëanor, quietly, and Findis’ hand reaches up, tangles in his hair, drags him to her with a firm, familiar hold, and she says, “Oh, oh-”

“Thank you,” he whispers into her ear.

Findis’ hair tightens on his hair, so tight as to be painful. She says, “Oh, Fëanáro, this is what sisters are for,” and laughs, and does not let go of him.