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“Beautiful,” he coos, and she tries not to hate him.
Her marriage-bed ought to be a place of joy. What self-respecting nís of such predilection would dislike having a handsome nér’s nimble-fingered hands in her hair? He is handsome, the one who will be her husband, soon. He looks upon her hands, worn by craft, her spirit, honed to strength, her eyes, keen and bright, and finds them beautiful.
But her hair…
He is Ñoldor, her husband, whatever that is coming to mean in these days. Such things matter, now, there is meaning in hair loosed from taming cap and practical veil, meaning in tresses tumbling down to where they would be in her way, were she at work.
What Ñoldorin husband does not look upon his wife’s hair with awe and desire, when let down?
She could like it well enough, she thinks, if it was truly her that he was seeing.
It is telling, that it is her hair he is praising. Not the shape of her body, the generous curves, the part of her legs—she has hair down there too, and she wonders, in her bitterness, if that will merit such worship. If he will think to praise those curls, when his hand trails through them. If he will even notice.
What good is hair, in the end? If it is long enough, it can be cut and spun, to sturdy bowstring, to solid warp, to shining weft. The finest thread, the fairest rope. That is what her hair means to her.
That is what it would have meant. Back then. Back there.
“Beautiful,” he breathes again.
If it would do a single damned thing, she would hit him.
Instead…
She smiles, coy, as if she does not know how badly her words will cut him. As if she is simply being sweet, sensual, flirtatious.
“It runs in the family,” she says.
It hits home. His eyes darken, anger and grief stirring in their depths. His hands tighten in fine silver-white strands, and she does not wince.
It is a terrible thing, Míriel Þerindë thinks, to always be second-best.
~
Nerdanel is pacing, and she cannot stop.
Her husband is worried. He knows she saw the healer, and he knows she is with child, and he knows there is something she is not telling him. But Fëanáro trusts her and her body enough, by now, to listen when she says she only needs space, not care. He is willing enough to take their little horde of five on some adventure and leave her to it, though he still worries.
He always will.
The back door creaks, and she turns, a caustic, quelling rebuke rising to her lips. If he has decided that she has not adequately proved that she is not fragile, oh, she will make him regret it.
It is not Fëanáro. Her father slips into the room, soft and mild despite his bulk and strength. She takes after him in everything, they whisper, save temperament.
Nerdanel sighs. “Fëanáro told you.”
“He did not have to,” Mahtan says. “That boy wears his heart on his sleeve and his pain on his face.”
“Nothing is wrong,” Nerdanel insists. “I’m perfectly healthy.” She waves a hand. “That was the third healer, and that’s what they’ve all said.”
Mahtan settles on the couch. He is exuding calm, and Nerdanel would very much like to borrow some of it, but she cannot, she cannot, she cannot, because her sixth—her sixth—her sixth and final child—
“Peace, yenya.” Her father is watching her, solemn, but not worried.
Nerdanel thinks—irrationally—that he is too ignorant, right now, to be worried. She is struck by the urge to prove that she is not overreacting—she is not—she is not.
“Twins,” she says abruptly. “Twins. He does not know yet, but he will be unbearable once he does. I am unbearable now. Twins.” She flings out her arms. “What do you have to say to that?”
Mahtan tips his head, considering. He does not seem to react badly; that is the extent of it for perhaps half a minute.
“It runs in the family?” he offers finally, as uncertain as she has ever seen him.
Nerdanel gapes. When she finds her voice, she says hoarsely. “I never knew—yours? Ammë’s?”
“No,” Mahtan says softly. “His.”
~
When he is holding his daughter, Thingol thinks he has found as much wholeness as he ever will again.
Granted the process was one he cared for not at all, messy and brutal and painful and primal as he was shaped by other forces, by the realities of flesh and spirit, in a way that he has only ever shaped himself.
It is sweeter to remember, now that he can flatten his chest again with no residual soreness, now that the ache has faded from between his legs, now that he can look in a mirror and see someone he recognizes. He can now have the entirely astounding memory of existing as the genesis of something new and special and everything, she is everything, while also being only himself as he knows his body to be.
And now he can watch her, and she is whole too, a whole person who laughs like music and sings like the sea and dances like wingbeats and weaves like a distant dream.
“She is good with the loom,” Melian notes beside him, cool and curious and resonant, as always, with the harmonies of the world. She has never understood these things, how wood and twine and metal can be turned to physical purposes; things of spirit that are, nevertheless, wholly real. It is different, for the Maiar, who can touch the warp and weft of the world as easily as he can reach out and touch the fabric of his robes. It requires—isolation of self, of purpose, to touch within the world, to imbue with the self and not beyond. It requires separation, and that is something that Melian still finds unfathomable.
It is natural to him, and, for all her inheritance from her mother, it is natural to Lúthien.
But the craft itself is not something that comes from Thingol’s hands, and that is its own unwholeness.
Can you see what I have made, néþa? The craft of my hröa and fëa? You always saw so far, and this is something that both of us thought would only be yours, not mine.
“She is.” Thingol smiles. “It runs in the family.”