#tyelpe

Elrond and Celebrimbor’s first meeting must’ve been insane. Everywhere he goes, people look at Elrond with barely veiled pity. He gave up ages ago on trying to explain to them that, no, his childhood really wasn’t that bad. They would stare at him in bafflement and then shake their heads sadly, because how the bloodthirsty sons of Fëanor possibly be the loving fathers he described? But then he meets Tyelpe, and finally he has someone who understands. Because those loving fathers Elrond talks about? Those are Tyelpe’s uncles. The real ones, that he knew in Valinor. The uncles who braided his hair, and sang him to sleep, and played with him. Not the shades they’d become by the end, twisted by the Oath and grief and their own bloodstained hands. Tyelpe wants to cry because he thought he’d lost those uncles forever. At times he felt like he must have been imagining them. How could his kind and cheerful Uncle Nelyo be the monster who slaughtered the people of Doriath? How could Uncle Laurë, who wrote a song for him every year on his birthday, have led the attack of Sirion? But then Elrond comes along and he brings all these stories of his fathers, and Celebrimbor regains a tiny piece of those beloved uncles.