cringe culture is dead (but ill see what i can do)

So.

A black cat with orange eyes slinks into Eregion in the middle of the night. No one sees it arrive, but it must be a furious hunter for the mice and the rats and the birds in Ost-in-Edhil all but vanish overnight.

The animals know he is not one of them. They flee before the flick of his tail, and the city is his.

It takes the elves some time to notice their visitor. The cat is strangely aloof and stalks along the tops of walls and the rooftops rather than roam the streets. It is never seen eating. Never seen sleeping. Never even seen grooming, despite how luxurious its coat remains. It is not merely quiet, but completely silent. It never truly interacts with the elves, and they are more than happy to ignore it until-

“Would you like to come in?”

The first words spoken to cat are soft, kind, and accompanied by an open door. The heat radiating out from the forge is warm and comfortable and familiar, yet the cat merely stares from its perch upon a roof’s edge across the street. The snow swirls between the two of them, grey in the moonlight, and it is not the cat who blinks first.

“I’ll leave the door open for you,” Celebrimbor offers, leaning down to set a brick against the heavy door, propping it open. He returns to his work, humming softly as he does so.

If he notices the cat slink inside the forge a few minutes later, he does not comment.

If he notices the cat watching him work over the next few weeks, he does not say anything.

If he notices the cat drift closer and closer as the days pass until he could almost reach out to touch it, he gives no indication.

Until falls asleep there, as he often does when he is too busy with his work to return home.

He awakens to find the cat staring at him, a massive ruby between its teeth which it promptly drops in front of him as if it were a dead mouse before fleeing out the door. The next time he accidentally slumbers within the forges, its gift for him is an equally large sapphire, the following the next by some beautiful white adamant stone. Celebrimbor is left rightfully confused, though he supposes if pigs can hunt truffles why can’t cats hunt for gemstones?

The nickname Celebrimbor gives the stray is well-earned. It is, after all, quite good at giving gifts.