Chapter Text
Feanaro liked to claim that his third son was born at dawn. “Just as Laurelin’s light crested the mountains,” he would say, gesturing with sweeping hands as if to illustrate the golden rays’ grand curve. A glorious welcome to a new life, as if the heavens themselves had blessed it.
The truth was far less glamorous. Nerdanel’s labor was long and arduous and it came to a close in that dusky, twilit space just before daylight, when darkness and a filmy chill still cloaked the sky. Feanaro’s third son came out covered in slick scarlet blood and he and the midwife, dead on their feet after a sleepless, stressful night, stood frozen around the bed.
And then he screamed. And screamed and screamed and screamed, until Laurelin really did rise over the faraway peaks. There would be no sleep for anyone that night, nor the one after that.
“Tyelkormo,” an exhausted Nerdanel named the child on his twelfth night of existence, pressing her sweat-beaded temple with firm fingertips. The screaming still had not stopped. “Hasty riser.” Whether for his temper or for the early hours during which he seemed to delight in squalling extra-loud, Feanaro did not know. Perhaps both.
Feanaro tacked on Turcafinwe for strength. And the not-quite-dawn child with strange silver hair and inexhaustible lungs screamed louder.
…
“Ataaaa ,” whined Kanafinwe, both hands clapped over his small ears. “Nelyo and I can’t sleep.”
“I’m sorry, Kano,” said Feanaro through gritted teeth, raising his voice so it carried over the shrill screams that permeated the thin walls. “Your brother is hard to placate, it seems.”
“What’s placate?” Nelyafinwe was lying flat in his bed with a pillow over his head, muffling his voice.
Feanaro ran a hand down his face. “It means to soothe. Just try to ignore the noise and go to sleep, okay? All babies cry sometimes. It’s just what they do.”
“Kano didn’t,” said Nelyo, sitting up. There were dark shadows under his eyes to match the ones under Feanaro’s own. His face shone pale in the moonlight, freckles standing out like dots of ink. “Not all the time, anyway. I remember.”
“I think there’s something wrong with Tyelkormo,” said Kanafinwe.
“There is nothing wrong with Tyelkormo,” Feanaro sighed. He was too tired to be having this conversation right now. “He’s barely two weeks old. Soon, you two will have a new friend to play with. Just be patient with him.”
“I don’t want a new friend--” Kano started to protest, but Feanaro was already closing the door. The screams were louder in the corridor, echoing down the hall like the shrieks of a banshee. Valar help me, he thought.
…
In conversation with others, Feanaro called Tyelkormo robust, energetic, a natural athlete. He bragged to his half-brothers about how quickly his third son learned to walk, then run, then swim, how spirited and hearty and every other synonym for his father-name he was. In private conversation inside his own mind, he called Tyelkormo a terror.
Tyelko liked to run into ponds fully clothed and pelt his brothers with handfuls of mud and dig in the dirt for worms with his bare hands. He liked to scream at the top of his lungs, not only when he was angry, which was often, but also when he was excited, which was just as often. Nerdanel found him sitting on the garden roof one afternoon, contently chewing on a handful of pine needles, small muddy footprints painting the white gutter he’d used to climb up. Tyelkormo screamed when she took him down and tried to wriggle out of her arms. “I’m foraging, Amme!” he yelled.
“How do you know what foraging means?” said Kano, who was sitting calmly on a bench with his small wooden flute. “You’re too young.” Kanafinwe had no great tolerance for his little brother, who liked to headbutt him in the legs and trip him during running races. He preferred to lock himself in his room with his sheet music and his books.
Tyelko stuck out his tongue at Kano, covered in chewed-up bits of pine needle, and relished the shrill “ Ewww!” he got in response.
“Look what I found in the garden today!” shrieked Tyelko later that afternoon, cupping something in his grubby hands. His hair, still that unnatural pale silver, was full of small twigs. Nelyo had wrangled it into a ponytail that sprouted straight up from the top of his head.
“Please use your indoor voice, honey,” Nerdanel sighed. “Amme has a headache.”
“But look!” he said, jumping up and down so energetically that the framed pictures on the side table rattled. “I found him all by myself!”
He opened his hands and a blurred something shot out and vanished. Nerdanel and Kano screamed in unison. “What was that?” Feanaro demanded.
Tyelko was already scrambling under the couch on his hands and knees. “Nooooo! Come back!”
Feanaro dragged him out by the back of his collar, noting with a grimace that his clothes were covered in grass stains again. “Tyelkormo Turcafinwe, you tell us what creature you brought inside this house this instant, young man.”
“He’s my friend,” Tyelkormo said, trying to wriggle out of Feanaro’s hands. “A big frog! He’s really nice. He likes to swim like me!”
Kanafinwe shrieked and clambered on top of the piano with a clang of keys.
…
It took a few years for Feanaro to realize that in every letter he received from his least favorite half-brother, Nolofinwe used the same turns of phrase to describe his daughter as he himself did for Tyelkormo. “Irisse is a free spirit,” Nolofinwe wrote, “determined… strong-willed… passionate.” They were almost exactly the same age. Feanaro shuddered at the very thought of the chaos they might cause as a team.
“There’s a letter in the mail, Atar,” said Nelyafinwe one afternoon, brandishing the envelope at him.
Feanaro slit it neatly with his thumbnail and groaned out loud after skimming the first two sentences of the card inside. “Is it something bad?” his oldest son asked seriously.
“No, not at all, Nelyo,” he amended. “We’ve been invited to a big party. You’ll get to meet all of your cousins.”
Tyelko popped out from behind the couch and screamed “YAY!” so piercingly that Feanaro thought one of his eardrums might have burst.
It took the better part of two hours to corral his sons into the carriage that would bring them to Finwe’s house, mostly because Tyelko decided to leap into a dusty haystack in his neatly pressed party clothes. Nerdanel wrestled him into her lap to redo his braids. “Behave,” she warned, pinching his cheek, “or you won’t get to have any cake.”
“There’s cake?” he cried, outraged that nobody had mentioned this crucial detail.
He spent most of the carriage ride elbowing Kano, drumming his feet on the seat, and babbling loudly about how his loose tooth was “dangling by a string!” Feanaro ground his teeth and said “That’s nice.”
When the carriage stopped, Nerdanel snagged her three sons before they could leap out onto the grass. “Be nice to your cousins,” she told them, looking at each of them in turn and lingering longest on Tyelkormo’s small shiny-clean face. “And be polite to all your aunts and uncles, and to Grandpa. We want to make new friends, don’t we?”
Kanafinwe was pouting. “I wanted to bring my harp,” he said. “I don’t like talking to new people.”
“That’s because you’re a scaredy-cat, Macalaure,” Tyelko said unhelpfully.
“Be nice,” Nerdanel said again, and opened the carriage door. Like a cricket springing free from a cage, Tyelko shoved past his brothers and was gone, a small blur tearing across the grass in the distance.
…
Feanaro was in the middle of a discussion with his half-brothers-- really more of a bragging contest threatening to verge into an argument-- when one of Finarfin’s miscellaneous blonde kids barged into the middle of their triangle and wailed, “Tyelko and Irisse are murdering each other!”
Everyone turned to look at the picnic tables, and sure enough, Feanaro saw his son swinging a large, muddy stick in the air as a small girl pelted him with handfuls of pebbles. Both were screaming shrilly.
“Hey!” Tyelkormo yelled when Feanaro pulled him away, wrestling the makeshift sword out of his hand. “I’m trying to duel, Ata!”
“ Why in Eru's name are you dueling your cousin?” Feanaro demanded. “You two are disrupting a nice family dinner!”
“He started it,” Irisse shrieked. Her white dress was streaked with mud. “He said I run like a girl!”
“Well, you are a girl,” Tyelko yelled, kicking Feanaro in the shin in his struggle to escape. “And you cheated, too!”
Irisse scooped up another handful of dusty stones from the path and hurled them. They rained down on Feanaro’s shoulders, clattering as they bounced off. “I did not! I beat you fair and square. You’re the one who runs like a girl!”
“Stop it right now, ” Feanaro bellowed, managing to snag the back of Tyelko’s grass-stained collar, “or neither of you are getting any cake later!”
Irisse froze, one fist pulled back mid-fire, and reluctantly let go of her handful of pebbles. “Fine,” she mumbled, kicking at the dust. “Wanna be on teams, then?”
Tyelko went limp and squirmed out of his father’s grasp. “I have a loose tooth that’s hanging by a string,” he said cautiously, by way of peace offering. “It’s super gross.”
“ I already lost my front ones,” Irisse said proudly, flashing a smile. “I tripped over the front step and they came out.”
“Was there blood?”
“Tons.”
They tore away across the meadow before Feanaro could interject a warning about playing nice, leaving a small cloud of dust in their wake. He slunk back to his half-brothers, brushing bits of dusty pebble off the front of his shirt.
Fifteen minutes later, when slices of the coveted cake had at last been handed out to each grandchild, a piercing screech tore through the air. Tyelkormo spit something out onto his plate with a clink. “My tooth!”
…
“I’m going to marry Irisse one day,” Tyelkormo announced on the way home. “I even gave her my tooth.” He looked very proud of himself.
“Ew,” said Kano, scrunching up his face. “She’s our cousin.”
Nelyo turned pink and pretended to look out the window.
…
Feanaro gritted his teeth. “I thought you guys were making cards for Amme and your new brother,” he said in as mild a voice as he could muster.
“I am!” Tyelko had an upside-down sticker on his forehead and looked like he’d been swimming in glitter. He held up a clump of torn papers stuck together with dripping glue. “I’m doing a collage.”
“Maybe you could sign it at the bottom,” Feanaro suggested, closing his eyes for a moment. He was far too tired for this. “Write ‘Love, Tyelko.’”
“I hate writing,” Tyelko announced, snatching the scissors out of Nelyo’s hand. “And babies. I want to go to the pond now. Can we?”
“No, you’re going to meet your new baby brother now,” Feanaro reminded him. “Remember to keep your voices down.”
Kanafinwe tugged on Feanaro’s sleeve. “I wrote a song for Amme, Ata,” he said in his most angelic voice.
“That’s poopy,” Tyelko said, smearing more glitter onto his collage. “Your songs are sappy and dumb.”
“Well, at least I know how to write my name…”
They scuffled quietly the whole way down the hall until Nelyo promised to give them each a piece of candy if they were quiet. Clustering around the white crib, they each took their turn peering inside. Feanaro lifted Tyelko up so he could see over, and he stared in a rare moment of silence at the baby’s scrunched-up face and tufts of jet-black hair.
“Why’s he so red ?” he said in a loud whisper.
…
Morifinwe, who Nerdanel named Carnistir, was a solemn, grumpy-faced baby whose default emotion seemed to be vague irritation, but after the deafening screams of his third son’s infancy, Feanaro counted himself lucky. Now there were two redheads in the family, three with dark hair, and only Tyelkormo stood apart with his jarring silver. He was rapidly proving himself an outlier in more ways than one.
Nelyo and Kano loved baby Moryo, and were happy to play with him in his pen, handing him toys to chew and smiling at the perpetual flush that gave him his mother-name. Tyelko preferred to run off into the woods for hours at a time and come back after dusk with scrapes on his knees, tracking leaves and dirt into the house. Nelyofinwe lived to please his parents and did whatever they asked, and Kano was brilliant, if a bit reclusive, with his books and his harp. Tyelkormo’s talents included tree-climbing, fistfighting, and a complete inability to speak in indoor tones.
If Feanaro was honest with himself, he would admit that he did little to stop his third son from coming and going. He savored the hours of peace during which Tyelkormo was outside and he was free to work undisturbed in his forge, and internally cringed when slamming doors and elevated voices heralded his return each night. And he rarely dwelt on what, exactly, Tyelko got up to in the forest for hours each day.
Until, that is, he barged into the dining room one evening for dinner, caked with mud as per usual, shirt torn at the hem, and trailed by a massive, shaggy lump of a dog that plunked itself down beside the table as if it belonged there.
“ What,” Feanaro said hoarsely, “is that?”
“His name is Huan,” said Tyelko around a mouthful of mashed potatoes, as if the name of the beast, as well as its presence in Feanaro’s home, was self-evident.
“I-I--” Feanaro spluttered. “I mean-- where did it come from?”
“ He was given to me,” Tyelkormo said proudly. “As a gift. From Orome.”
“You’re lying,” said Kanafinwe at once.
“I am not! Orome is training me in hunting. He gave me Huan as a companion.” He brandished his fork in his brother’s face.
“Please put down your fork, honey,” said Nerdanel.
Tyelko glared and dropped it with a clatter. “I’m not lying.”
“I don’t doubt you, hon, but I also don’t quite understand. Are you sure you mean Orome as in… the Vala of the hunt?”
“What other Orome is there?” Tyelko said stubbornly. “He’s teaching me how to hunt and he says I have potential, so he gave me Huan. You have to let him stay! He’s super gentle and he’s my best friend and I can understand him when he talks!” Beside him, the massive dog lifted its shaggy head in an almost self-righteous manner, as if to say it’s true.
Feanaro ran a hand down his face. “Why didn’t you tell us about this-- training-- at the start?”
“‘Cause then you wouldn’t have let me do it.” Huan thumped his fluffy gray-brown tail in agreement.
Moryo drummed his small fists on the table, looking mildly peeved as usual. Feanaro looked at Nerdanel and she looked back. “All right,” she said at last, “Huan can stay if you take care of him. But I’m not comfortable with the idea of you running around with a Vala in the forest all day, honey. You’re too young to be learning how to hunt.”
“That’s not fair!” Tyelko cried shrilly. Feanaro resisted the urge to cover his ears with his hands.
“You can keep training with Orome,” he said impulsively, overriding Nerdanel. “As long as it continues to keep you out of trouble.” Speaking over his wife’s incredulous sound of protest, he continued, “It’s not our place to contradict the will of the Valar.”
“Since when have you, of all people, cared about the will of the Valar?” Nerdanel demanded, but Tyelkormo was already pushing back his chair. “Bye!” he yelled, stuffing two dinner rolls into his mouth and vanishing with Huan at his heels.
Feanaro watched him go and told himself that he had made the correct decision for the family. The only decision.
…
That same summer, Feanaro finally completed his life’s work. Three gems, harder and purer than any substance in the universe, that gleamed and shone with the light of the Valar themselves. He wiped the sweat from his brow with a grimy cloth and called his family in to look. “The Silmarils,” he said with a flourish.
“I love them, Atar,” said Nelyo immediately, green eyes searching his father’s face for approval. Kanafinwe hesitated and nodded more slowly, unsmiling. The jewels sparkled and glowed, reflected doubly in Moryo’s wide dark eyes.
“Nice.” Tyelkormo echoed his brothers’ sentiments, wrangling Huan backwards. The giant hound moved with him, leashless and fluid despite his size, regarding the gems on the wooden table with a mournful glint in his strangely sentient eyes. “But… what do they do?”
Feanaro didn’t realize he was glaring daggers at his third son until he felt his jaw crack with the pressure of being set so hard. He opened his mouth to explain the gems’ thousands of essential properties and inexplicably came up blank. “How dare you?” he said instead, more harshly than he’d intended. “You dare disrespect the product of my years of labor, the life-source of my soul, the--”
But Tyelko was already gone.
…
The balmy summer dawn painted the windowsills chartreuse. Warm rain drummed on the glass panes. Feanaro squinted, bleary-eyed, at the tap, filling himself a glass of water. It squeaked when he switched it off.
The back door banged loudly, and he cursed under his breath as his glass sloshed over and soaked his socks. “Who’s there?”
The shutters were closed. Feanaro yanked on the cord, expecting to see a dripping Tyelkormo at the door, Huan in tow. Lately, the pair returned later and later every night from their training in the woods, creeping in through unlocked doors and open windows and falling into bed at one, two, three AM. Instead, a jarring sight greeted his barely-awake eyes.
“Irisse? What are you doing here?”
Nolofinwe’s free spirit had shot up in the years since she’d pelted Tyelko with rocks at the family reunion, now tall and spindly with wide eyes in a face of pale angles. She was wearing a soaked white nightgown and her dark hair, chopped unevenly at her chin, was plastered flat on her head. Her feet were bare.
“I came to get Tyelko,” she said. “We’re going hunting today.”
“At dawn? ” Feanaro tried not to show his frustration. It would be nice, he thought sharply, surprising even himself with the jaded tone, if his son would bother to communicate his plans with the family every once in a while.
“Yes,” said Irisse, not breaking eye contact with Feanaro. Her face seemed to pose a challenge, silently daring him to disagree. “Is he home?”
Feanaro wasn’t nearly awake enough for this. “Does your atar know you’re here?”
Irisse didn’t bother to answer. She slipped past Feanaro into the kitchen, leaving spongy footprints on the tile, and looked up at the ceiling. Someone-- more than one someone-- was bounding, crashing down the stairs, a chaotic mess of feet and paws pounding the creaky wood.
“Hold up, young man,” Feanaro demanded as Huan and Tyelko barrelled past him, and Irisse’s rain-soaked face lit up. “Where are you going? When will you be back?”
“The woods. Later,” was the only response he got before they were gone, door slamming shut so hard that raindrops sprinkled the muddy floor. Feanaro closed the shutters and trudged back upstairs, not pretending he cared enough to track them down.
…
Feanaro’s fifth son was born at noon, a blessed time. Everyone crowded around the crib, a tighter cluster than last time, more heads bowing down to look. Moryo sat on Nelyo’s shoulders and Huan wove around the forest of spindly boy-legs, wet nose and moppy fur tickling knees and calves.
“I’m going to teach him to hunt,” Tyelko said a bit too loudly, hanging over the side of the crib with a bright gleam in his pale eyes.
“He looks like you, Atar,” said Kanafinwe.
Feanaro had donned all three Silmarils, set in a special silver coronet, for the occasion, and he felt like the king of the world. “He does,” he said, bending over to see for himself. “Curufinwe is his name. Curvo.”
If he hadn’t been so fixated on his newest son, a perfect tiny likeness of himself, and the way the gems on his forehead glittered in his wide liquid eyes, he would have seen Nelyo’s face fall, shoulders slumping as he set Moryo back on the floor.