#tyelpe

The day that follows is full of chores that Celebrimbor pretends were planned all along. Some of them really were, or at least ought to have been if they weren’t: things that Tyelpe has been putting off since they got back. 

First, after breakfast, Tyelpe takes Annatar out and introduces him to their most immediate neighbors, who politely pretend that Galadriel’s people hadn’t come around the week before loudly warning everyone of Annatar’s identity. The couple who live to Tyelpe’s south are the least intimidated, and are particularly unembarrassed about admiring Annatar’s braids, asking after the few that they don’t recognize. Then Finrod strolls up the street, setting a hand on Tyelpe’s lower back before Tyelpe has noticed his approach; Annatar loves the way that Tyelpe’s face breaks open in joy when he sees who is touching him.

“Findaráto!” he cries. “Sólano, Osphistë, have you met my fair cousin?”

“Many, many years ago,” Finrod answers for them, “during the flooding down out of the Pelóri, wasn’t it?” Because of course Finrod remembers people he had helped hundreds of years before, and he dazzles them all and then insists on helping Tyelpe and Annatar pull the weeds overgrowing their garden path.

They pick up a new chair for Frodo that Tyelpe had commissioned shortly before his first attempt to reach Annatar in the Void; this feels as if it must have been a year ago, but Tyelpe tells him with some bemusement that it hasn’t even been two months. Finrod carries it back on his shoulders, and looks to Annatar instead of to Tyelpe when he asks where he should set it. Annatar chooses a place near the fire, directly across from the dark green armchair that Annatar has started to think of as his own.

“Now,” Finrod says, “Tyelpe tells me that he bespoilt my braid the other night. Shall I do Grace again, or would you like to show off something different?”

Annatar has come to understand, as people over the past few days have commented on his hair, how intimate it is considered to wear the signature braid of a person who is not his beloved, so he does not ask for what he thinks of first. As the first son of one of the houses of Finwë, Finrod has a multitude of braids considered his own, because that form of adornment had been something that could be given as a gift to a proud lieutenant, or a grieving mother, or to anyone in the times and places where there had not been enough to go around. Finrod rattles off several – “I have a few favorites – mmm, there’s Wilfulness, but that might be misinterpreted. Brazen – same story. I don’t give Icebound to anyone who didn’t cross with us, or it would lose its meaning, of course. Oh, I could give you Dawn! Would that be strange, Tyelpe?”

“No, it’s perfect,” Tyelpe says. “No one could mistake the favor in that. Have I seen Icebound? I’m sure I must have, at Nargothrond, but I can’t say I know it by the name.” Finrod demonstrates on his own hair, briefly, until Tyelpe recognizes it, and then sits on the floor and gestures for Annatar to sit in front of him while Tyelpe goes to get them something to drink.

Dawn is a six-strand, but Finrod has obviously done it dozens or hundreds of times, because it’s done in less than ten minutes. It curves back around Annatar’s right ear, braided tight against his head so that he can’t hold it out in front of him to see it.

“It’s very weird to be in this room with you,” Finrod says cheerfully. “I’ve spent a lot of time in this room getting drunk and talking about you, you know.”

“I spent some time being noncorporeal in this room,” Annatar says. “Or noncorporeal-ish, at least. It’s odd for me, too.”

“Good, though, I hope?” Finrod asks.

“Very, very good,” Annatar says, perhaps too revealingly, because Finrod puts the back of one hand to his mouth and chuckles.

“Oh, I’m glad,” he says. “Ah! Are we talking about Annatar, now?” Tyelpe has brought back glasses of wine – two red, one white for Annatar.

“I just thought we deserve a bit of a break,” Celebrimbor says lightly, and sits on the floor next to them, their knees forming a lopsided triangle. “Odd to be here without Frodo.”

“I could call him,” Annatar says. Since getting back to Tirion, he has been trying to give Frodo space – Frodo’s uncle is quite unhappy about Annatar’s reembodiment, it turns out – but Frodo keeps reaching out for odd little things, like to show Annatar where he picks raspberries, along the switchback roads that wind down the broad flanks of Túna. Or to ask Annatar if he has a name for a certain star. He hadn’t had a name of his own for it, but he tells Frodo that the Eldar call it Rhandir. <i>Like Mithrandir!</i> Frodo had exclaimed delightedly.

“Do it!” Finrod says.

“If he’s free,” Tyelpe agrees, “we would love to have him.”

Annatar reaches out, giving a little nudge with his mind, and Frodo bounds into the shared space of their thoughts like an eager hound. Hello! he says. What’s toward?

Finrod came over to surprise us, Annatar says, and we miss you. Are you busy?

Frodo expands Annatar’s view so that he can see exactly what is about him. Frodo is nestled under a tree, a book in his lap. He also expands so that Annatar can see something of his state of mind. Namely, that he is tremendously bored, and has been thinking about going to find his friends but hesitant to disturb them, thinking they might need space as they make their home together.

Annatar barely manages to keep from showing Frodo his new chair, from mentally walloping him with a pillow and saying, You’re part of our home together. It would be selfish of him to show Frodo this when Tyelpe cannot also experience his reaction, but that is all that holds him back.

Come on! he says instead, and feels Frodo’s grin light a sunbeam before their connection drops.

“I take it that’s a yes,” Finrod says, amused, and Annatar finds that he, too, is grinning foolishly.

“He was bored,” he says, “but trying to give us space. In case we were christening all the surfaces, I think? He really seems to think we could just be going at it every hour of the day and night.”

“We could,” Tyelpe says something like wistfully, making Finrod snort and nearly spill his wine.

“That, Annatar,” Finrod says, “is the face of a man who has never tried. You may disbelieve me, but it gets dull after a few days at most.”

“Oh, really?” Tyelpe laughs. “Well, it’s true, I’ve never tried. I think we managed five or six hours, once, in our early days?”

Annatar considers. “I don’t know,” he admits. “Time wasn’t really… I didn’t have a good grasp on it, at that point in my life. There were certainly times when I had you, and then you went to sleep, and then I just had to wait until I thought you’d had enough sleep.”

Finrod turns his face and laughs into his own shoulder. “You know, it’s odd to say,” he says, “but I sort of love the way you two talk about before. I know it’s not as simple as you always show, but – I do wish I had known you, in those days, Tyelpe.”

“Sorry,” Annatar says a bit morosely, and then remembers he’s not supposed to actually apologize for literally killing Finrod, much less to do so halfheartedly or jokingly. “Fuck. I –”

But Finrod is laughing again. “It’s okay, it was funny,” he says. “You don’t have to worry so much that I’ll take things the wrong way, Annatar. I know you well enough to know when you mean something the way it sounds and when you’re just being an idiot.”

That is far more comforting than Finrod probably means it to be, Annatar decides, but he accepts it anyway.

Frodo arrives a half-hour later, bearing cider and lemonade. “This is from your neighbor,” he says, hefting the lemonade, “and this is from Uncle. He says it’s not for you, but I don’t think he means it,” he tells Annatar.

“He absolutely does,” Tyelpe says. “Sorry, Annatar.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Annatar says. “It is somewhat reassuring to have someone treat what we’re doing as odd, because it is.”

“He’ll come around,” Frodo says. “The other day I suggested he go talk to Manwë about it, and I think he’s actually going to.”

“How does one just… go talk to Manwë?” Annatar asks. Frodo shrugs.

“It’s Uncle Bilbo,” he says. “He’ll figure it out.”

Annatar still has not met Bilbo. At least, not face-to-face, in person. Not in this life. But from what he remembers of the mind of the creature who had found him in the dark, he can well believe that Bilbo would figure it out.