Nerdanel stays behind and sculpts. Also on AO3. Title from The Amazing Devil's King.
1.
There is no need for statues to remember, in a world that doesn’t forget.
Nerdanel likes to carve birds and rabbits and flowers and leaves. Transitory wonders. When she is commissioned to sculpt people, she shapes new features, never before seen, or she captures the ever-changing fánas of barely-there Maiar.
She has hanged painted portraits and sketches of her children at various stages of growing all over the house, but no marble likeness.
They are right here to look at, after all.
2.
After Alqualondë, Nerdanel retreats from the world.
The darkness and the absence permeate everything. Elves discover the grief of impermanence. In Tirion, there is no court left to appear at, no councils to lead, no strolls to take at the end of the day to admire the Mingling. No news from the ones who have left.
Anairë finds her late one day in her workshop, surrounded by slabs of stone larger than her. She is hammering forcefully at one of them, the barest hints of an elven shape already taking form in the marble. Bitter, stinging tears run down her cheeks and into her collar, and her arms ache with exhaustion.
The body is only barely sketched, but the face is already chiselled, smooth curves and angular cheekbones.
Fëanáro emerges out of the marble, looking like he’s about to take life.
(Across the sea, her sons lead a funeral.)
3.
It’s Anairë again who comes to her, when Arien first sails across the sky. Nerdanel is rearranging her workshop to take advantage of the new light. The windows were designed for the glowing of the Trees.
Anairë nearly collapses as soon as she passes the door.
“Who?” Nerdanel asks her, supporting her to a chair. It’s covered in white stone dust, but neither of them cares.
Fëanáro’s finished statue looms in a corner of the workshop, just out of the light. He looks like he did when she first met him, young and passionate and determined, before the world shrunk around them and suffocated him.
“Arakáno,” her friend weeps.
“Oh, Anairë,” Nerdanel murmurs. “Your youngest.”
“Would you—”
Nerdanel had no intention of ever doing it again. “Of course,” she says.
It was overly optimistic of her, she supposes.
Arakáno looks painfully young and hopeful under her chisel’s tip.
4.
For centuries, there are no news. Nerdanel’s art escapes toward the abstract, great shapes of wind and water and fire coming out of the stone in ways they never had before. Arafinwë crowns himself king, and Anairë busies herself with the day-to-day workings of the court and the administration.
Nerdanel doesn’t think about her sons across the water. She doesn’t wonder how Maitimo looks with a crown on his head. She doesn’t wonder which new instrument Makalaurë has taken up. She doesn’t wonder what new animal languages Tyelkormo has learned. She doesn’t wonder if Carnistir still wants to write his book, or if Atarinke is coming close to the skill of his father, or what little Tyelpë has grown into. She doesn’t imagine Ambarussa running into danger with every new day, so far away from her.
(Except on the days when she can’t think about anything else.)
Somehow, against all of her instincts, life goes on.
There is no twinge from the bonds in her fëa, no sign of any change. She’s almost ready to think them safe, over there, maybe even thriving.
And then Anairë comes back.
5.
Little Irissë used to follow Tyelkormo around everywhere. Fëanáro would watch her childish infatuation with much more indulgence than he ever afforded Findekáno and his friendship with Maitimo, perhaps because neither of them were their fathers’ heirs.
Where is Tyelkormo now, with his little shadow gone? Is Maitimo free to live his love for all to see? Have any of her sons married? Atarinke’s wife didn’t go into exile either, though she wants nothing to do with Nerdanel. The others left unpledged to anyone but that oath they all took.
To the everlasting darkness.
What if they fail?
Nerdanel has never truly wondered what will happen then, too busy missing them and cursing Fëanáro for it all.
Irissë’s marble figure looks back at her accusingly. All the arrows in her quiver are fletched with Tyelkormo’s special technique.
6.
It’s fifty more years before she carves another face, but the question haunts her.
(Ñolofinwë looks grander and colder in stone than he ever did in life.)
7.
Eärwen didn’t come to her when she lost Angaráto and Aikanáro. Nerdanel heard it through Anairë and mourned, but she can’t blame her. Eärwen never forgave the murder of her brothers – how could she – and she avoids Nerdanel if she can help it. She has only recently moved back to Tirion and rejoined her husband.
Arafinwë doesn’t publicize the death of his sons. He could call for city-wide mourning, but he keeps their grief private and personal. Few can see the bags under his eyes as he holds court as normal in the wake of his loss.
But a few weeks after Findaráto’s death, Nerdanel finds Eärwen at the door of her workshop.
8.
The news come with rumours of a great battle, of spouses and parents and children all over Tirion feeling the loss. Anairë’s shoulders are hunched over with the weight of grief.
The white marble makes Findekáno’s skin seem almost transparent, compared to the warm brown of her memories.
She grieves for Maitimo as much as she grieves for Anairë. Her son could never hide from her his devotion for Findekáno, the depth of his feelings. Did Findekáno ever forgive him for the burning of the ships? Did they find some happiness together?
She will never know.
9.
She tried, long ago, at Fëanáro’s bequest, to sculpt Míriel’s likeness from the body resting in the Garden of Lórien. She could never make her look alive.
Arafinwë waited years to commission a statue of Finwë. He put it in his throne room. Nerdanel hasn’t stepped foot in it since.
10.
She feels the bounds snap, snap, snap, only minutes apart. She collapses in the street, and the paint buckets in her hands spill around her, yellow and blue flowing into her red hair like a painting.
She comes back to herself on a couch in Anairë’s bower. For days, she only has the strength to weep until she makes herself sick.
Tyelkormo. Carnistir. Atarinke.
She locks herself inside her workshop. It is no refuge, only pain aggrandized, only grief carved into her soul. She can’t stand it. She keeps going.
When she finally emerges, after her father, worried, has come himself to find her, there are three new statues at the back of her atelier.
It doesn’t feel like it’s enough. It never has.
She doesn’t step inside the workshop again for several years.
11.
When she does, it’s for Anairë, who has now lost everything.
12.
She sculpts her twins together, in each other’s arms, inseparable even in eternal stillness.
(She can barely stand to look at them.)
13.
She knows now what her sons did over the sea. From the young Sinda girl and her strange husband, she has heard how they died. She has wept for their deeds as she wept for their deaths, and she weeps still for the two who live now on borrowed time, hunted and haunted by their own hand and the terrible Oath her husband had them swear.
Arafinwë has gone to war. Nerdanel wonders if Eärwen will come to her, when he doesn’t come back.
14.
Maitimo is beautiful, towering over her, his half-braided hair cascading down his shoulder. She can almost see the colours in the white marble veins, her own bright red reflected in his, the delicate tones of his skin.
Like her husband, he burned bright until the fire engulfed him entirely.
She falls to her knees at his feet. She has no tears left to weep.
15.
“He didn’t look like this, any more.”
Nerdanel turns sharply, to find Findaráto leaning against the door of the workshop.
He doesn’t look like he did under the light of the Trees, either. His face is a study of scars and new lines that didn’t fade in Mandos, and his gaze is heavy with pain. Nerdanel wonders what Eärwen did with his statue.
“He lost his right hand during his rescue from Angband,” Findaráto says, nodding at Maitimo’s likeness. “And he was heavily scarred.”
Nerdanel swallows around the lump in her throat, and runs a dusty hand through her hair. Does she want to keep her son unmarred in memory, as he no longer is?
She takes a breath and hold out her chisel. “Show me.”
16.
There are six statues at the back of her atelier. It is now clear of anything else, clean and aired and unused, her chisels and hammers put away in their racks.
Between the second and the third statue, there is an empty space. And in the middle of the workshop, a single slab of stone, waiting.
17.
It stays untouched.
18.
“Ammë,” her son murmurs as he collapses into her arms, fresh off the ship that brings him over the sea, after two ages of wandering.
He looks nothing like she remembers. He’s so thin that he hardly weighs in her embrace, half-faded, his face marked with age as no elf’s should be. He barely has a grip on where he is on a good day, and he is lost in time more often than not.
She doesn’t care.
And if she finds him in her workshop sometimes, talking to the statues of his father and his brothers as if they are alive, well. People have said that her likenesses look more real than real people.
(Makalaurë, standing still in the empty space that long awaited him, makes a better marble than live body.)
19.
One day, maybe, they will come back to her from Mandos, alive and safe. One day, maybe, Makalaurë will live again in the present more than he is in the past. One day, maybe, she will no longer be surrounded by faces of stones, and she will be able to stop grieving.
For now, she will bask in the presence of her last son and her grandsons – Tyelpë, all grown and only just re-embodied, and Elrond, who brought her Makalaurë back.
I’ve always had this little headcanon that all the sons of Fëanor have necklaces with Fëanorian stars as pendants. Their father made them for them when they were born. Reminders that they were princes of a mighty line, and should carry themselves with that knowledge. They wear them every day. When Amras dies, Amrod takes it and wears it alongside his own, in memory of his fallen twin. When the three C’s are killed, Maedhros takes theirs before they’re buried, and wears them, too. He takes both from Amrod after his death, as well. And in the end, when he decides he can’t go on any more, he leaves them on the last ledge before the lip of the crater, lined up side by side, one by one, just like they used to be. And when Maglor finds them, he knows he’s found his big brother. Far, far too late. So he picks them up, and he dusts them off, and he puts them on, carrying his brothers with him as he mourns.
Celegorm: Lol. Heads up, if you try and make a candle with food colouring, it will just sink to the bottom of the glass, and when the flame eventually reaches the bottom, all the food colouring will catch fire and become one giant tall flame you cannot possibly blow out and then the glass will start to crack and then you’ll throw your tea on it in a panic and then the extremely hot food colouring will boil and then the glass will shatter. Just a heads up
There must be something about Fëanor being the only child in Aman whose birth resulted in his mother's death (unnatural for elves) & his later obsession with creating. Because he believes he might otherwise bring destruction with him. (but I'm not sure there is. Since psychology is not my specialty).
& if it is so, the tragic thing is that his worst fears later come to pass as his father dies defending his creations & his house, & was originally there because Fëanor was banished (& Fëanor canonically thought he could have defended him if he was there), then Fëanor destroys his & Nerdanel's marriage, & then, he probably wouldn't consider it as bringing destruction at the moment but he slaughters the Teleri & burns their ships (or maybe he did understand but just gave in to it, as in his view there was no escaping it.), also destroying a second chance with his brothers, & in a version, burns his own son, & in all versions, destroys all his sons, & puts a chain of events into motion that brought destruction upon all.
But talking about Fëanor's worst fears coming to pass, & him destroying his marriage; Finwë's second marriage after Míriel was at the time thought to be forever confined to the halls, & Míriel & thus Fëanor himself being replaced & forgotten left Fëanor traumatized, & now he himself is forever confined to the halls & his marriage to Nerdanel is dissolved & he has to spend his afterlife for eternity fearing Nerdanel would remarry & forget him.
I think Nerdanel leaving him also played to his possible fear of abandonment & being unlovable & not enough. 'Cause family is the first place in which we get unconditional love. But Fëanor's mother was dead & after Finwë's marriage, Fëanor felt the constant need to fight for Finwë's love. So he has never felt secure in Finwë's love. It was never unconditional for him. & I think that fear would never leave him.
So he would try to seek the family he didn't have when growing up in the family he & Nerdanel made (add it to the list of why I think he was a good father. He loved his sons. He also needed & thrived in the unconditional love they had for him.)
But their marriage's failure was his own fault. As was everything else. I don't know if his sons love would him less but they would certainly hate him more.
& it all began from the very same fear. It all began from the moment he drew a sword on Fingolfin. Because he was afraid of being replaced.
He did in the end bring destruction upon himself, everyone he held dear, everyone who could have been dear in his life, & everyone else.
Much like his greatest creations, the Silmarils, bright & burning, radiant & magnificent, remarkable & phenominal, holding a light & energy that could take the world trapped inside them, but leaving a trace of death & destruction behind them. destroying Fëanor's last remaining sons in the end.
His story is indeed a tragedy.
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