Commission

thyinum:

She’s the only one who left

melestasflight:

He is Your Song

Findekáno would never stop loving Maitimo, he understood that now. He could not rip that love from himself lest he tear a piece of his own soul. But it did not mean there was no place for others in his heart.

Findekáno goes to Alqualondë to heal his heartbreak, Maitimo quickly regrets sending him there, and the Arafinwëans do what they can to deal with the drama.

This is my @tolkienremixof@senalishia’s sweet fic If This Is Love!

This was a super fun challenge and a first in many ways - grateful to senalishia for letting me play around with their original fic and introduce a Trans Falmari OC.

He is Your Song can be read on AO3 here.

And here’s senalishia’s original fic If This is Love.

This is a beautiful, sweet fic with a fantastic OC and setting ❤️

Welcome to the family, little sister

being brilliant in mind and swift in action she ahd early absorbed all of what she was capable of the teaching which the Valar thought fit to give the Eldar…

“You know,” my father said to me a hundred years ago, “there’s a way that some of the Ñoldor err. They think every problem in the world can be solved with enough cleverness. And they set themselves to solving it with a diligence and creativity that would be commendable – if not for the fact that not every obstacle in the world can be outsmarted.”

He might have been talking about his brother. He might have been talking about me. He might just have been talking, he does that. Either way I remember the moment, because I profoundly disagreed with him then and I still do now. 

Every obstacle in the world can be outsmarted, if you’re really genuinely smart. 

I took my masterwork examinations in mathematics in the late spring of 1399, at the age of 37. They had to build a special podium, as I was still not half-grown and too young to see over the normal one. I was not the youngest to receive a masterwork – that would be my uncle.

Iwas the youngest to receive my second, in 1406, in history, and the first to have three by the time I came of age.  I’d have had it a year sooner if I hadn’t focused on athletics because I was finally tall enough to have a shot in the annual running games and I wanted to win that before  my majority put me in the same bracket as men who had a thousand years on me. The third one was in chemistry.

“What are you chasing?” Angaráto asked me when I asked him what he advised I take on as my fourth.

If most people had asked that I’d have told them to shut up and go join the orcs in Utumno, so elaborately they wouldn’t realize that was what I’d said. Because most people followed that up with “you’re a beautiful young woman, there’s a lot more to life than learning” or the more straightforward “your father married at your age” or the abominable “it’s unbecoming of a princess…”

But Angaráto had never said anything like that so I gave him the benefit of the doubt. “I am chasing absolute understanding of the universe.”

He threw his head back and laughed. My father says that the Lindar laugh to be heard and the Ñoldor laugh to be seen. The former are expressing emotion, the latter performing it. If that’s so, I’m a Ñoldo after all, because laughter and humor and grace and charm have always been performances for me, learned only by calibrating my movements to the disapproval of the people around me. But Angaráto has our mother’s unselfconscious sincerity, and even while he was laughing at me I felt warm.

“Now?” he said. “That seems like a project for the end of the ages. The world’s still new, what are you going to do once you’ve finished understanding all of it?” 

“Imagine if we’d never put numbers to parchment,” I shot back, “thinking arithmetic a problem for the end of ages, and not knowing – because we’d never begun – that every new invention in mathematics invites a dozen more questions, harder ones, more meaningfulones.” 

Angaráto never studied arithmetic. It’s considered a woman’s art. There are men who do it, at university, but they all have a peculiar sort of performative indifference to peoples’ assumptions which my second-oldest brother could never muster. Angaráto is never indifferent to anything, and bristles at assumptions, and would have made himself miserable studying mathematics.

I still wish he had.

“So do research in mathematics,” he said, “take that masterwork certification of yours and go to Valimar and throw yourself into whatever they’re arguing over. Or ask Turukáno if he’s still looking for tutoring –”

“He was looking for tutoring?” I said, astonished. My cousin Turukáno seemed even less likely to develop a passion for mathematics than Angaráto. Stiff, patient, quiet, a person who moved slowly. I did not dislike him but we had nothing in common. 

“Wants to impress a girl, I think.” 

That made more sense. It also made my interest in tutoring him evaporate immediately.

“I’ll come back to mathematics once I’ve learned everything else,” I said. 

He nodded absently. “Metalworking? Embroidery?”

Both …politically charged subjects in this family, to put in mildly. “No.”

“Suppose not. Glassblowing? Music?” 

“I’m more interested in theory than practice,” I said.

“I’ve noticed.”

That made me, briefly, reconsider. If he’d noticed that meant other people had noticed, and if people were thinking of me as a dilettante who knew everything in principle and nothing in practice then I’d never be taken seriously. “I could do glassblowing?” I said, knowing even as I said it that I couldn’t, it would be boring–

“What specifically do you dislike about the practical arts? It’s not the physicality –” 

It wasn’t that. I loved running, on a road or on a trail or through the fairgrounds of Tirion for the races. I loved sailing. I’d helped build the boat that had taken me to Tol Eressea, as was tradition, for my majority.

“You have to do things more than once,” I said, “even once you understand them.”

“That’slife, Artanis.”

I was sure it wasn’t a necessary part of life, though. It was like hunting, or sewing – only a feature of existence because we didn’t know how to do better. The Valar didn’t have to clumsily fashion bad pots to learn good ones, because they understood the nature of reality and clay took the form that they desired –

 Angaráto caught the tenor of my thoughts, there. I tended to broadcast them when I was distracted. People’d told me that it was like being caught in the middle of a lecture in a course they weren’t studying. “I think the Valar did learn how to shape clay, once,” he said gently, “and that their first attempts were disastrous. That was just a very long time ago.”

“I don’t want to study pottery,” I said. “Maybe botany, if Yavanna supervised? Less growing things, more understanding them and cataloguing them and putting it all together – why are living things pieced together so oddly, why are there plants that only grow if their seeds catch fire, why are insects bigger in the south –”

“That’s hardly Yavanna’s domain,” he said.

“Yes it is, she explained it to me once, only I was stupid, and didn’t make sense of the explanation and can’t piece it together now that I’m not quite as stupid. There’s whole blank chapters in the books of chemistry we’re writing –”

“How astonishingly wasteful.”

“I don’t mean literally, I just mean, that’s the magnitude of the things we don’t know, and one of them relates to plants which are the domain of Yavanna and also airs which are the domain of Manwë and also the reason insects are larger in the south and I don’t understand how it all fits together but I would, if I were only paying attention –”

“Next masterwork in environments, the interactions of plant and animals, whatever it’s called?” He scratched his head. “There’s a new Ñoldorin word for it – there’s probably three new Ñoldorin words for it –” 

“I can’t possibly study under Oromë!”

“Why on earth not? You’re not a bad rider, you’d be able to keep up –”

 “Irissë’s doing that!” 

“Did you two have a fight?” 

“In fifty years I don’t think we have ever had an interaction that was not a fight. She’s my least favorite – she’d be my least favorite cousin, if Curufinwë hadn’t any children.”

Curufinwë had seven, so this considerably softened the declaration of dislike for Irissë. Angaráto, who got along well with Irissë and splendidly with several of Curufinwë’s brood, nonetheless managed to look wholly sympathetic. “All right. No studies under Oromë – you could still do environment sciences, though, with Vána or something –”

“Can’t,” I said, “that’d mean all of my examinations so far have been with Valier or female Maiar, what will people think–”

“That you’ve studied mathematics with Ilmarë and chemistry with Arien and history with Varda Herself and you are an astonishingly capable young woman who embodies all the hope and promise of the Blessed Realm,” he said solemnly.

“No, they’ll think the first Finwean granddaughter is getting special treatment, and a princess can just go around having her masterworks rubberstamped by the Valier, shying away from the real arts –”

 “They would have to be astoundingly cruel-spirited.”

“Most people are.”

 “I’ve noticed how you feel about that. You’ll notice I haven’t suggested sociology or rhetoric or politics –”

“Ewwwwwwww.”

He sighed. “Once you’ve discovered the secret to everything, are you going to use some half-living construct to shape the world to your designs, as it’s said Aulë did before the Elves awakened? Because otherwise, you’ll have to talk to people.” 

“That’s not fair. I can talk to people,” I said. “I am said to be compassionate and good-spirited.” I was, through deliberate practice – but then, wasn’t that more impressive than having a natural instinct for it? “I will study politics and learn the principles of governance and be a just and capable ruler. Just – not yet. Do you know what I’ve been congratulated on most, in the letters and gifts celebrating the certification and my majority? My hair.”

“Well, it is uniquely beautiful hair,” he offered, twirling his own around one finger.

“All of my achievements are unique,” I growled.

“Marine biology? Ossë’d probably agree to help you, maybe not if you went to him with a long list of questions but certainly if you fell into the ocean while trying to verify your answers.”

“That might do,” I said slowly.

He chuckled again. This time I wasn’t sure he was laughing at me, and oddly that made me less comfortable. “What?”

“I greatly enjoy talking with you,” he said, “but it’s astonishingly freeing to make a suggestion that isn’t shot down within five seconds. And so rare. Refreshingly rare,” he added hastily at my crestfallen expression. “You know I love a good challenge.”

“I’ll ask Amil,” I said, “she’ll be pleased.”

She was.

My mother and I did not see eye to eye. That was not just because at 50 I was already a head taller than her, or because my studies kept tugging me up the mountain to Valimar which bewildered her or Tirion which she disliked. It was also not because she’d named me ‘Man-Maiden’, as a particularly persistent rumor in the city had it, though it was related to some differences in our outlook that were also related to why she had given me that name.

 The King had, at last count, thirteen grandsons and two granddaughters. People said that was why I was competitive and arrogant and friendless, and why Irissë was reckless – too much male influence in our lives, too many brothers and cousins. The poor King, to have gotten men in all but looks when at last he’d been granted granddaughters. 

Carnistir studied mathematics and embroidery and Findaráto spent all of his time looking pretty and shopping for clothes and jewelry and everyone knew Findekáno flirted with men and yet no one called them girl-princes or wondered if they’d been warped by too many female influences. It was infuriating.  

Andnone of the boys were married and I was only fifty and people were already saying things and –

“Dear?” said my mother, and that was when I realized I’d gotten lost in thought in the middle of persuading her of my new course of study, and failed to notice any of the many signs of boredom and disappointment that the Eldar display during conversation, such as foot tapping and deep sighing and eye movement.  

I’d described the way people behaved to Ilmarë in those terms once, and she’d found it delightful. The Ainur catalogued like that, as well, and found us utterly confounding. There’d been many dreadful confusions until they’d learned all the odd ways the Eldar behaved. 

Sometimes I wondered if I was really meant to be an Ainu and Eru’d held my essence back at the beginning by accident – maybe it’d gotten caught in his sleeve – but of course that wasn’t the sort of thing that one could say to people. 

“Dear.”

“Sorry, I was just thinking.”

“For a change.” She was smiling.

 “I honor our people and our relationship with the sea by doing a study under Ossë,” I said, “and I’ll be close to home and it’ll let me figure out all the things I don’t know – it’ll compliment my studies in chemistry, I mean – and I’ve been thinking that we need better language for capturing the interesting features of a set of data, which will be a mathematical endeavor, but I need data that has interesting features first, and I can collect that in the ocean, so really it’s the perfect integration of my previous areas of study while also being applied science so no one can say I’m just a dilettante theorist, and it’s not under a woman.”

“That’s a problem?” 

“People will think I’m getting special treatment,” I explained.

My mother pursed her lips in the manner that communicated she didn’t like my priorities and considered herself virtuous for not criticizing them. I hated it, because I didn’t mind being criticized but I loathed being patronized.  There are very few things that frighten me but being surrounded by silent, polite disapproval is one of them.

“I think marine biology is a lovely subject of study,” my mother said, “and I’m proud of you.”

 I’d spent decades fighting to hear those words from my parents, but now they said it all the time and it didn’t reassure me in the slightest. I think because they had realized it mattered to me and so were saying it because that was good parenting, not because pride in me was an emotion that they were actually experiencing.

 The King favors Curufinwë. Everyone knows it except Curufinwë, because no matter how much anyone fawns over him he navigates social situations like a rabbit surrounded by starving wolves and he would not notice adoration if it kissed him on the lips. With tongue. 

The King hasn’t quite done that but he bursts with pride whenever Curufinwë is in the room, pride-the-emotion not pride-the-parenting-skill. His eyes flicker around the room like he wants to know if everyone else sees it, this achievement, this astonishing achievement of his firstborn son, and he looks at Curufinwë with the total absorption of a Vala at their work, and he blazes with pride. I am not sure there is anything at all I could do to make my parents feel that kind of pride. Give them grandchildren, possibly, which is the one thing I am determined never ever to do. 

“Artanis,” my mother said gently, and I wondered how much of that she’d heard. 

“I’ll go talk to Ossë,” I said, “once I have a good project proposal and won’t be wasting his time, and I can have one in a week if I start now. Or – I suppose I really ought to visit Tirion and find out the state of the field, but I can work on the road and still have it in two.”

“Or you could give yourself some time off,” she said, but I vigorously shook my head. 

“It adds up. You say to yourself ‘this is a project of eight years’ work, what’s a week here?’ but a week here, a week there, and now it’s a project of nine years’ work, and –” 

“And you finish it in nine years!” she said. “The world will endure for many Ages, Artanis, and it is said that we will grow weary of it before the end. There’s no need to rush it.”

“I think,” I said, “I’ll only weary when I stop rushing. May I leave for Tirion tonight?”

“Of course.”

I say I was friendless, but that wasn’t quite true: I had three adoring big brothers, and they had friends, and I got on well enough with all of their friends except the ones who were our cousins. Our cousins are something of an acquired taste, see, and I had no desire to waste the time acquiring it. So there were quite a few people to say good-bye to, all of them affecting horror at the thought of going off to Tirion again, hadn’t I just gotten the place out of my lungs?

My father, who grew up in Tirion and left before his majority (and, if it were up to him, I think would never have gone back) smiled broadly at me. “We’re proud of you,” he said. 

“Thank you.”

“Will you be disappointed if you write up a proposal and Ossë declines you? Your mother said you were unwilling to ask Uinen –”

 And they’d had a conversation worrying about how I would cope with rejection. That spoke louder than a thousand declarations they were proud of me. I felt an unhappy lurch in my stomach. “Of course I won’t be disappointed. Angaráto all but said that Ossë’d refuse me but that if I spent a couple years hard at work he’d come around.” He had said, actually, that Ossë’d refused to sponsor me but would rescue me if I fell into the ocean while conducting field work. But I found myself suddenly unable to force words about my incompetence through my teeth, even joking ones that hadn’t hurt when my brother had said them. “And I’m not unwilling to ask Uinen, it’s just – you don’t go around petitioning the Maiar for aid in a list – ‘my preferred candidate turned me down, but you’ll do’ -  they’re the agents of Eru in this world, and the makers of it! It’s an honor! I’ll prove myself worthy of it and Ossë’ll agree and it’ll be fine.” 

“All right,” he said. “Ride safe, will you?”

Our grandfather grew up in the Outer Lands, where a minute out of sight of your family could mean you would never be seen again. Centuries ago, that had been, but there are scars that are slow to heal even here in the Blessed Realm, and whenever someone leaves his field of vision he flinches, even if they are only scurrying off down one of the palace hallways. I think he remarried so quickly after the death of his first wife because he fears being alone the way I fear being unimportant.

My father has no similar excuse. “What’s going to happen on the way to Tirion,” I asked, “will I fall off my horse?”

“Accidents happen,” he said, which was true only in the most vacuous sense. I hadn’t fallen off a horse since I was ten, and even then I’d barely scratched myself. Scars on the body, rather than those of the heart, healed so swiftly here it was hard to remember that they occurred at all. 

“I’ll attempt to stay atop her.”

“And stay on the road, it’s easy to get turned around –” 

It wasn’t easy to get turned around. The Trees blazed from the West like the world itself had cracked open to spill its divine energies out across the plains of Aman. One could not possibly get lost with their eyes open, and even with eyes closed the Trees beat their brilliant print into your eyelids.  “Yes,” I said, “Sometimes on the way to Tirion I find myself a thousand miles south in a nest of cobras; on this trip I shall aspire to avoid that.”

“’Ride safe’”, said my father, “is an endearment meant to communicate that someone loves you and will think of you until you are reunited.” 

“Oh,” I said. “In that case, ride safe.” 

“I’m not going anywhere.” 

“The way you defined the phrase, my use was proper!” 

“Artanis, you should be more polite and less pedantic when you’re speaking with Ossë, he won’t appreciate being second-guessed and snarked at.” 

I didn’t answer that. The answer was “of course I won’t do that to Ossë, he knows more than I do,” but that made it perfectly obvious that I didn’t think my father knew anything I didn’t. And it would probably hurt him to hear that. He might have inferred it anyway, because he sighed, deeply, and said “have a joyous and relaxing journey.” 

“No,” I said, “I plan to spend it developing project proposals. I wanted to do something with coral but it grows too slowly – algae grows so fast, but it’s not particularly interesting – anyway, it’s a week’s travel and I’ll have the time to organize my thoughts and perhaps start rehearsing the proposal.”

“Have a productive and satisfying journey,” my father said, and even though I still felt like there was something missing between us I couldn’t think of any objections to that one.

I left as Laurelin waxed, the ocean glimmering golden behind me.

Tirion is a walled city. For peace of mind, I suppose; no monsters stalk these plains, and none ever will. But the walls, though ornamented, are very definitely functional. They’re also rather striking as you approach the city: amidst the surreal, idyllic, perfectly-crafted hills and valleys and fords of Aman, a city shining against the horizon so white it is hard to look directly at it. You would get the entirely wrong impression of the Ñoldor if the only thing you knew about them was that they had built this city.

The palace would give you a better sense of them. The central building is as much magic as stone, raised with the aid of the Valar in the giddy early days of our arrival in the Blessed Realm. The walls are translucent marble, through and through except where there’s detailing in precious metals; it sustains its weight only by divine intervention. By Laurelin’s light it is like walking through a dreamscape; by Telperion’s, the floor is like a pool of molten silver. I arrived at the Mingling, and padded down the glimmering gilded hallways feeling like a Vala before the making of the world.

The outer buildings were built later, and obey the basic principles of architecture, though they push them to their limits. My cousins’ family home is a solemn dark grey; the music hall is mahogany, so smooth you can see the whole city reflected in its face. There is a great glass tower between them. The libraries are held up by intertwined columns, the gold detailing is striking against a glassy black rock. They stretch for two blocks even though a single book requires a years’ labor to produce.  The Ñoldor are extravagant, obsessive, obnoxious, the people of engineering and invention. They love stories and they love their own reflections.

 I am a princess of the Ñoldor but I’m not really one myself. My mother is Lindar; my father’s mother is the King’s second wife, Indis of the Vanyar. One-quarter in blood, less than that in looks, but nine parts of ten if tribal membership were measured in temperament. I’m certainly stubborn enough.

If I’m speaking to someone who seems to think I am not a Ñoldo I aggressively demonstrate that I am; if I’m speaking to someone who thinks that I am, I set out to show them how wrong they are. Angaráto, who is the only person who has noticed that I do this, says it is a very Ñoldorin thing to do. But then, what would he know?

 
I ran into Melkor in the back hallways of the palace, on my way to the library. It did not occur to me until much later to wonder what he was doing there, but it was a terrible convenient coincidence. 

“Blessed friend,” I said, and drew against the wall but did not bow; when Melkor begged the pardon of the Valar he abjured all his titles, and pleaded to be let into the world as the humble servant of the smallest creature, so he could right some measure of the wrongs he dealt the world. The parole had been granted, and here he was, servant to the humblest creatures. But you didn’t have to be the most brilliant of the Eldar to feel like there was something wrong with the whole thing, and in any event I was the most brilliant of the Eldar, and I thought that there was.

“Lady Artanis,” he said, his expression troubled but clearing at the sight of me. “I think there was a betting pool on how long it would take you to return here after you passed your exams.”

I’d meant to make my apologies and keep going, but people talking about me was upsetting, and what if – “and whether I passed the exams?” I asked, forcing my features into an absent smile. 

He shook his head. “Who’d take that bet?”

“Well actually,” I said – I always had to explain this to men - “unless everyone is precisely in agreement about the likelihood I’ll pass my exams, there ought to be odds at which someone would take the bet – even if those odds are a thousand to one. Claiming that no one would take a bet is just claiming that everyone had exactly the same probability estimate, which speaks poorly of you all but also is not the compliment to me that you evidently intended, since you could’ve all thought I only had a 90 percent chance -”

 “We all thought you were guaranteed to pass your exams,” he said.

“Because none of you know any theory of probability. It doesn’t – look, if I’d offered you all the kingdom if I failed an exam in exchange for a single grain of sand if I passed it, would you take that bet?”

His eyes were dancing with something – the Valar were impossible to read. Distraction? Amusement? “Yes.”

“Then you don’t think it’s guaranteed,” I said. “Which is fine, I didn’t think it was guaranteed. It’s really absurd to say that there is anything you are so sure of you would not take ten thousand to one odds against it; the world is new and we are just beginning to learn of it. And I can tell you a dozen stories of people who were utterly certain of a working of the world went out and tested, and found themselves embarrassed and astonished… what if someone had asked my grandfather when they lived in terror beside Cuivienen what the odds were that his people would soon build this?” I took a deep breath. “Not that I don’t appreciate the thought. The mistaken thought. I know you just meant that everyone knew I was qualified for a master’s title in chemistry. Though you could have just said that. And the betting pool about how soon I’d be back really does mean something.” But the whole conversation had left me more insecure than I’d started it. And now there was a Vala who probably thought I was obnoxious. I tried to fix things with another absent smile. “It brings me joy to see you here and so evidently busy,” I said, “may your thoughtful advice bring peace to you and many boons to our people.” There. That was pretty good. Wise and compassionate, that’s Artanis Arafinwiel, I had to stop lecturing people just because they were wrong and thought they know everything…

He’d now stopped doing facial expressions entirely, which mostly only happened to the Valar when I really confused them. I made an apologetic half-curtsy and slipped by him before he remembered he could use his muscles to move his body. It felt like something was eating at me all the ways to the bookshelves, but I couldn’t tell whether it was something I should have noticed or just my overactive sense of embarrassment, anguished at the thought that I was the subject of gossip in the city.

Gossip because I study so quickly and do so well, I told myself firmly. That’s exactly what I want. And I plucked off the shelves every scroll that involved marine biology, until the unease was buried in the soothing smell of parchment.

The thought that must have crossed Melkor’s mind – the one he was so astonished did not cross mine – was that if I bet him the kingdom that I would fail my exams I would surely have met an accident the morning of. It did not cross my mind because I was making the same foolish mistake as the bettors: I was treating some things as utterly certain, utterly secure. I’d been born to paradise, and I believed in it.

“We have countless Ages,” everyone said. I doubted them about everything else, so why the Void did I not doubt them about that?

Angrod near Rivil’s Well in Dorthonion.

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