ar lma-vandá enyalaz

hands, trembling and perfect pressed to heated skin, stuttering along burns emblazoned into flesh, how their song falls over him like silk against skin. aching to return that tenderness, the first lick of flame across him and it had felt, for the barest moment like a homecoming, easy as answering the call of your name. for all that he's left bits and pieces of himself strewn along dirt roads and in village gutters this he holds onto, when he's long since left his identity drifting along in some stream - lost. philanthropist of self, his mud caked titles and names, his patchwork living, little by little he's unraveled himself with his own hands, and here, these dying bits of personhood respond with an old longing. kindness, like new sprouts pushing through soil.

tell me, like an overburdened leaf, wet with morning dew, bowing to the weight of a new day, have you learned like i have, that you must bend before you break? does the dew dry all at once?

their song and it feels like the burbling of a brook, quiet and self contained, as if any jubilance that was once felt must be harvested. sat here, soothed, and what kind of beast is he, that music affects him this way? and what kind of beast is he, here and dreaming of blood? wondering if he'll leave the space rust stained. bloody. if it will just be wyll asking, how much blood is too much? a pint in the stomach will make you sick he knows, he's experienced it, but a few drops here, there, will that ruin the softness? will that stain the cotton? how many people, good, bad, how many people rest their heads on bloody pillows and sleep well?

his hand, unshaking, catching the threads of shadow and moonlight spilled around him like ink, or the first edges of an oil spilled night. the strands are fine and soft against his skin, and he's careful, so careful not to pull, not to tug, already, always, feeling something of a bumbling fool in his eyes. as maglor so carefully wove a healing into song, wyll threads their hair back, tucking it into the heavy plait it's fallen from.

but it is the touch that has them halt. barely a brush, not even touching their skin. the smallest shift in the weight of their hair as a piece of it is returned to its place. they look up and for a moment it isn't wyll before them but little atarinkë. laurë, he demands, laurë, hold still. the voice is so clear in their head, their breath gets caught in their throat, and though it fades quickly as it came, it takes a moment for maglor to recover, to hear what the other had said.

❛ every story is worth its time. ❜ the objection comes in equal quiet. the elf looks over their finished work, then up to wyll's eyes, which albeit of a similar hue, seem so much brighter than their own. younger, yet knowing. ❛ and some scars with great stories become only a mark of regret. ❜ they smile faintly. ❛ but let us hope. and this one will pass and be forgotten. ❜

the night seems heavier for the absence of song, and the elf has reached his soothing's end. after all, that is all he knows: to draw music and blood. he retreats, kneels to rinse his hands in a small basin and tries to understand what tenderness is again. he looks at wyll and sees no beast but something valiant and almost familiar, uncertain what a friend is but knowing he might've once liked to be his.

He has a wound on his face, he remembers, that hasn't healed quite right, so the smile hurts. He drops it.

He imagines himself looking like a Man, those who take so little pleasure in pleating and braiding it out of the way instead of shearing it off at the first sign of filth and damage. It is humbling, in a way; never did he think himself invincible but it would almost have been a mercy to die chained to that rock, to grow old and feeble and let his corpse feed the vultures. Men have that privilege of passing on that he and his kind do not.

I can shave it, Kanafinwë offers, and even though that's for the best he feels something twist in his gut. It isn't even vanity or pride that makes him hesitate, it is the idea of losing yet more parts of himself.

"Shave it," he asks softly, feeling some comfort at the idea that it is Makalaurë doing this and not the others. He wouldn't dream of demanding this of the twins, or even Turcafinwë or Morifinwë or Curufinwë. There are things they should not be exposed to.

Even so, it pains him to demand this of Kanafinwë. It is almost as if he is pleading with them to relieve him of the other hand.

"I can't stand how it touches my neck and my ears," he confesses with a degree of frustration, tinged with both grief and revulsion as it leaves his sore throat. He considers asking them to leave some length up top, but that feels too raw, as well. "It disgusts me. Take it off," he asks, and adds another; "Please," as if it would make it easier.

there are many things in nelyafinwë's voice then, revealing perhaps more than ever he has about his fëa's state since his return. what before they only ever read in his eyes, in the asking itself, now clearly lines the decisive demand. it melts away all hesitancy, any concern over how more ghostly, hollowed, he would appear with his hair shorn so short one could see the skin of his scalp. it is all suddenly left by the wayside, if only to relieve maimo of this ache. in so many things he stands helplessly by; this at the very least he can do for him.

kanafinwë obliges not his king, but his brother, whose hunched position almost makes him look even smaller. ❛ then let us be rid of it all. ❜ they trade their scissors for a smaller, sharper pair of shears. the silence grows oppressive even to makalaurë then, though they take care to work as quickly as possible without nicking his skin. a thinner, final layer of croppings settles around them. when they step around to look at him from the front, something shifts in the dark of their eyes.

❛ it's all gone now, nelyo, ❜ he tells him softly, glad to finally disturb the silence again, though he cannot quite keep the faintly fatigued smile from colouring his voice a slightly higher hue. ❛ you may look, if you wish. ❜ as if to give him privacy, káno averts his eyes, sets down the shears and wipes over his hands, his garment, sending a quiet scatter of hair like snowfall to the ground.

Maedhros answered: ‘But how shall our voices reach to Ilúvatar beyond the Circles of the World? And by Ilúvatar we swore in our madness, and called the Everlasting Darkness upon us, if we kept not our word. Who shall release us?’ ‘If none can release us,’ said Maglor, ‘then indeed the Everlasting Darkness shall be our lot, whether we keep our oath or break it; but less evil shall we do in the breaking.’ Yet he yielded at last to the will of Maedhros, and they took counsel together how they should lay hands on the Silmarils. [...] But the jewel burned the hand of Maedhros in pain unbearable; and he perceived that it was as Eönwë had said, and that his right thereto had become void, and that the oath was vain. And being in anguish and despair he cast himself into a gaping chasm filled with fire, and so ended; and the Silmaril that he bore was taken into the bosom of the Earth. And it is told of Maglor that he could not endure the pain with which the Silmaril tormented him; and he cast it at last into the Sea, and thereafter he wandered ever upon the shores, singing in pain and regret beside the waves.

He reaches up to feel his own face, streaked with scars and drained of its blush, only to be met with an absence of touch before he remembers that his right hand is gone. Ah, he thinks, I will have to get used to that.

His brother remains by his side like always and aids him in any way he knows how. Makalaurë says nothing so as to not speak to soon, or too harshly, or to hurt his feelings; he is diligent and careful as a good brother would be. Nelyafinwë finds the silence oppressive and nauseating, the repetitive snip snip snip of the scissors even more so. He half wants to shear his scalp clean, half wants to ask them to stop cutting the matted, filthy mess of hair so that he can at least pretends to look somewhat like his old self.

He puts the mirror down abruptly, viciously sickened by the sight of himself... Amya wouldn't even recognize him like this. He remains hunched over as he sits before them, his breaths even and quiet and almost mimicking the same rhythm as Makalaurë's lungs in a desperate attempt to not vomit up the small amount of food he managed to keep down.

"Cut it shorter," he demands of them, his voice gentle yet heavy. He wishes he could comfort him, he sees how hard this is on him — the subtle pitying looks, though better than the expressions of horror and grief on the others, are still not lost on Nelyafinwë.

He pauses a moment, his tone growing quieter even than the crackle of the hearth. "Please," he adds in a whisper.

yet when nelyafinwë commands shorter, there is almost an echo of the old him, passing by the window as a shadow of night. though gentle a demand as it was, it startles kanafinwë, yet he says nothing. obediently, the younger returns to work, unraveling his vision to bring it closer to whatever agony chokes his brother's voice to a whisper. larger chunks fall again as they begin at the base of the neck, working upward, cropping closer, until their fingers no longer fully disappear in the shocks of dull crimson. ❛ like so? ❜ he asks then with an equally gentle quietude, holding out a hand to offer to hold the mirror, so that maitimo might feel with his remaining hand the length of it at the back.

for a while already kanafinwë has known that the old maitimo will never return. but it is only now, that he stands in the piles of his hair at his feet, its snippets littering his hands, arms, garment, until later he will scrub it from his skin with a quiet sob, that he truly understands this.