I started this for Day 2 of @februaryficletchallenge - the prompt was "baggage", then I promptly stalled the whole thing because I couldn't find a decent way to tie it off. It seems a bit daft to be carrying on a February challenge in April, but damn it all, I want to write something. So here's my favourite nerd team, talking collabs and ancient history.
“So this is the study of the famed Celebrimbor.” Narvi cast his head from side to side, taking everything in at one long glance. Then he paused. “I expected something tidier.”
“Oh, hush,” said Celebrimbor, flushing. “I know where everything is.”
Narvi chuckled. “Only jesting, friend. You should see my workroom. This is a bower by comparison. May I take a look around?”
“Certainly!” He put out a hand, gesturing towards the whole chamber. “That is why you’re here, after all.”
Narvi flashed him a grin that shone right through his beard, then crossed straight to the desk, hauling himself up into Celebrimbor’s own chair. He pored over the scattered sketches and plans pinned upon the sloping drawing-table, picked up the various parts of half-realised projects that lay upon the bench and turned them over in his clever hands, examining them with a keen, appreciative eye. Celebrimbor smiled.
“It has been a long, long time since I have had the honour of sharing my workplace with a Dwarven wright.”
Narvi looked up from the explosion of gold and silver filigree branches in his hands — a model of the Two Trees which he always meant to finish one day, definitely — and his gaze was mild, understanding. “Well, that is what we are here to mend now, isn’t it? Trade and collaboration to sweeten all the old bad blood.”
“I would like that of all things. I know too much of bad blood, and — well, I feel in some way it is my duty to do my part in mending the bonds that have been sundered.”
“How so?” asked Narvi, with a faint frown touching his brow. “I have always heard that your own folk were great friends to the Dwarves. It was to your father that Telchar gifted Angrist, was it not?”
“So it was,” said Celebrimbor, with the sigh that always seemed to rise to the surface when his kin were mentioned, up from that deep place in his heart where all the old griefs and angers lay. “But it was a Silmaril that was the seed of the first great bloodshed between Elves and Dwarves, and thus the great hatred.” Softly, half to himself, he went on: “Indeed, it often seems to me that though they were hallowed by Elbereth herself, those jewels possessed some ill power to blight the desires of any heart who beheld them.”
“Why should that be?”
He gave an uneasy shrug. “Some influence of their maker, perhaps? My grandsire was peerless among smiths, but there was, I think, always in his heart some great fear of being supplanted — unwanted. It drove him to find greatness, but it also cast that shadow of jealousy and wrath that led to so much grief.”
Narvi heard this in grave silence, then, at last, he gave a slow shake of his head. “Aye. I can see how that might come about. Though it seems to me that the blame is not all on your side — the side of the Elves, I mean. I have never thought that the Dwarves of Nogrod behaved with much honour, if the tales be true. No matter how haughty and insulting an Elven-king may be, it’s a poor return to spill his blood in his own hall.” Now he glanced up, and there was a little gleam of laughter in his eye. “Mind! I have never said so much aloud before, for fear of getting my beard pulled for it.”
Celebrimbor laughed — freely, the old shadow passing — and made a low bow in the Dwarven fashion. “I deem myself honoured by the confidence, friend Narvi.”
Narvi, too, was grinning. “As well you should, Master Elf!”
“Perhaps,” said Celebrimbor, “that should be the crux of our collaboration here. Something ceremonial, yet also secret, something that can be shared between our two realms as a confidence is shared between friends.”
Narvi leaned in to listen more, and his smile was a conspirator's smile. “Well, and what did you have in mind?”
