A soft huff escapes Telvo’s lips, a hand coming up to swat in vain. Being the youngest of seven certainly had it’s perks— there was so much more mischief that he was allowed to get away with, brothers, parents and grandparents alike seemingly turning a blind eye to his more harmless antics. On the other hand, being the youngest also had it’s drawbacks, such as even eldest brothers playfully bullying him.
Expression pouty, Telvo cranes his neck to look at Maitimo properly. His eldest brother’s height was simply unfair. When he was small, it was fun. How tall and lofty he felt as he was placed on Maitimo’s shoulders and paraded around. Now, however, his brother’s height makes him feel so small in comparison, especially in times like this.
“I know my record is terrible, but I assure you, I have held things for more than a week. I did sculpting for nearly two months,” he protests as soon as he’s able. Of course, he’d only done so for his mother’s sake, and in the end, that was as long as it could keep his interest.
Gaze lowering, he bites his lip. “It does. I haven’t the… the passion that everyone else seems to have. I fear I won’t ever have it, and will be condemned to be a silly flirt for the rest of forever. I fear breaking mother’s heart and father’s disappointment, and what everyone might say.” His fingers curl into his russet locks, and he tugs on them gently. “I fear I’m broken.”
There was always a moment in the lives of Maedhros’ younger brothers when, suddenly, mindless reassurances just no longer worked. And it always crept up on him. Suddenly his soothing tone and vague declarations that ‘everything would be well’ and ‘there is nothing that you must fear or worry about’ were not only useless, they were resented. Suddenly their worlds were complex and they needed truths, even the hard ones. But... it seemed an even crueller task when it was their gentlest Telvo, their kindest, who had to hear them.
Nelyafinwe gave a heaving stormy sigh and rounded the table to loom over his brother without barrier. There was a pause, one that his family was accustomed too, knowing their Maitimo to always choose words wisely and with the mind of an orator. But he did speak eventually and his voice thrummed from somewhere deep, “I will tell you three true things. You must let me finish all of them because they are all irrefutable. And you should accept them, for they will all give you some peace, I believe.”
His head tossed, the mane of red tumbling back over his shoulder and his eyes were unblinking and assured, seeming to lack even a hint of insecurity when he began. “The first; Our Father’s disappointment toward six out of the seven of us is inevitable. If avoiding it is too precious to you, you are likely to chase that tail to Arda’s end and beyond.” A truth Maedhros had learned long ago. It was not that Feanaro was a bad father or that he loved any of them less, of course. Indeed, he was protective and loving as any father should be. But parenthood had simply not been to his expectation, his children too driven and un-malleable unless the path he chose was too their liking. Lucky Atarince.
But he plowed on, letting Telvo linger for only a moment. “The second; You are in no way passionless, the opposite in fact. Your passions are just not what we would give value too. Undefinable, unseeable and without clear product. Difficult, therefore, for our mother to understand.” Once again, as both he and Telvo would vehemently attest, one could not ask for a more loving mother. And Nerdanel had been more prepared for all that children might bring. Still, she was driven, she had expectations, she worried and she viewed the world through her hands.
“And the third is that you are made exactly as you should have been.” Is his final truism, one that he emphasised by taking Telvo’s upper arms in wide hands, looking over him with a gaze that almost edged severity in it’s intensity. “If someone musters the gall to claim otherwise, they will find me not so much the reasonable and tame Feanorion I am known as.”
