Backup of my GenPrompt Bingo fills

[nathair_nimhe]

All the stories I posted on AO3.

Al di là - Wildcard square, posted on 08/12/2016; Lost in a dream, Fëanor and Fingolfin find an unexpected way forward.

They walked side by side, their footsteps noiseless, the sound of their breathing disproportionately loud in the fleeting moments before it was swallowed by the quiet. There seemed to be no end to the dream, no exit into somewhere else, somewhere where the Valar couldn't reach them; it was hard to tell whether they were making any progress at all.

Fingolfin clasped Fëanor's hand, their fingers locked together like a complicated mechanism that held the answer to their plight. His heart still pounded if he recalled how they had become separated the last time they died. Death in itself wasn't that bad. Dying was just a momentary interruption in that never-ending dream, and whatever form it took there was no pain to mark it, nothing but a pang of breathlessness, the brief daze of a fall. But this time they had been separated before it happened, and Fingolfin had witnessed his brother's death from across a bottomless chasm, unable to do anything but stand and watch, and it had plunged him into a turmoil of grief and rage he couldn't shake off.

So now he gripped Fëanor's hand, protectively, as if they had been children and he the oldest, vowing to himself that he would never ever let go, never let anything pull them part, never feel as helpless again.

Fëanor tugged at his arm from time to time. At first Fingolfin had believed he was trying to capture his attention in order to tell him something, but Fëanor was never looking at him when Fingolfin turned towards his brother. Fëanor stared ahead of them unblinking, mumbling words Fingolfin couldn't quite catch. He might be thinking of his sons, or of his mother. For all that it had been hard to face Fëanor's anger or his scorn, coping with his aloofness was much worse, and Fingolfin was still at a loss whenever Fëanor sank into one of his gloomy moods.

He almost wished that the apparitions which plagued the dream would show up again, give them something to focus on, the possibility to fight. But after their latest death even the apparitions seemed to vanish.

There was blackness ahead of them, and behind them, invisible black walls at their sides. Faint lights seemed to outline a path, but they faded as they drew near them, and Fingolfin wasn't sure anymore if they had been walking in a straight line or if they were just going in circles, stuck in a labyrinth without a way out.

“Why is it all so quiet?” he whispered, halting abruptly.

Fëanor stopped next to him. He didn't reply, but he shook free from his thoughts and frowned. A shudder passed between their clammy palms.

“Are we stranded?”

“Perhaps,” Fëanor said, softly, after a time.

His eyes were blood-shot, ringed by deep shadows, his hair straggling messily all around his drawn face. Fingolfin reached out to comb it back and down, brushing Fëanor's face in the process, and couldn't help finishing with a kiss to Fëanor's forehead.

Fëanor looked up at him, the hint of a smile in the wrinkles fanning out from the corners of his eyes. “I do appreciate that you're here. It would have been so dire, alone...”

Fëanor's heartfelt admission was one of the many repetitions of the dream, but the only one Fingolfin would never complain about hearing time and again.

Fëanor tugged at his hand, this time deliberately.

“We can't stop at any rate. Let's go on.”

Fingolfin nodded his assent, and started walking again.

Still nothing changed for a long while, a rehearsal of eternity.

The rumble above their heads was abrupt, and deafening.

They both tensed; Fingolfin grasped Fëanor's hand even tighter and didn't release it even as he felt Fëanor's arm twitch in discomfort. Then the darkness overhead cleaved open and a piercing shaft of light blinded them. They sprang back at the sound of something falling through the opening and landing where they had been standing with a loud clank of metal and the more subdued thud of a body. A groan directed their gaze to the elf lying across their path, a shape illuminated by pure golden-white light.

“Nelyo!” Fëanor shouted, his voice rising shrilly in shock.

Maedhros writhed on the ground, wearing pieces from different armours dented and pierced in many places, and covered in grime – sweat, dirt and soot – from head to foot. The Silmaril clutched in his left hand deepened the scars on his face, blunt furrows that mapped his time in Beleriand.

The effect on Fëanor was much too expectable. He jerked forward with enough force to drag Fingolfin with him, and sank to his knees before his son.

“Nelyo! Oh Nelyo, is it you? Is it really you?” His voice hardly rose above a whisper, and was half-strangled by tears, because if Maedhros was there he had to be dead.

Maedhros looked up at his father, glanced sideways at Fingolfin, glossy, hopeless eyes growing wider with every passing second. Then his gaze fell on his right hand, large and perfectly shaped as if he had never lost it. He lifted it and struck his father across the face.

“How dared you!” he yelled, scrabbling to sit upright. “I – I...I needed you! You left us! And I wanted you! I –...I needed to see you!”

Fëanor broke free of Fingolfin's hold as if it had been nothing. His arms trembled visibly as he reached for his son, once again dishevelled by the blow. He tentatively caressed Maedhros's pale and haggard face, just ghosting his fingers over it at first. When he became absolutely sure that he could indeed touch him, that Maedhros wasn't a vision or a delusion, he drew him in an embrace, and all hesitation was gone.

Maedhros's left hand was caught between his father and himself, but his right arm remained free and he hit his father's back over and over, in time with his sobs, or his father's, Fingolfin couldn't have told.

Fingolfin's own vision grew hazy, but he quickly blinked his tears away as he noticed a tiny fissure in the darkness, quickly spreading.

The darkness splintered, jagged lines of severance crawling all over it until it shattered like glass and was no more, and in its place a never-ending field of poppies with a single tree in the distance burst into existence, green and red and white, a beacon beckoning.

Fingolfin rubbed his eyes dry, ignoring the sting in them. He knelt next to Maedhros and pushed Fëanor to the side, uncaring what his brother's reaction might be, because he too had cared for Maedhros, cared deeply and tenderly, and he too had to give vent to his happiness at seeing him again, joy of a kind he hadn't felt in a long long time. Maedhros accepted his embrace as he had his father's, burrowing into chest as if he belonged there, and likewise pelted his back with his closed fist, but Fingolfin accepted it, because he had given up, he had fled and left others with a burden he should have shared.

Then Fëanor opened his arms wide, and hugged them both.

Sweat it all out - Heatwave square, posted on 17/12/2016; The Fëanorians miss their flight (modern era+incest).

“Damn humans and their damned airports!”

Caranthir kicked his shoes off, flinging them towards the wall, and let himself drop on the bed with a grunt. He gathered his messy hair in a tighter ponytail, although the back of his head was already sweat-drenched, then bent to retrieve a pack of cigarettes from his small bag. It took him a while to dig it out from between a false identity card and his boarding pass, which ended up half-crumpled on the floor, which only added to his irritation.

Curufin, who sat on the bed next to his, paused in the act of fanning himself with a folded newspaper to give him a sympathetic look. Caranthir offered him a cigarette after sticking one into his mouth, but Curufin declined. He didn't like the taste, and had no use for the things – a distraction for whenever the hubbub of the mortal world put Caranthir in one of his contrary moods.

This time Caranthir's crankiness was quite justified. They had missed their connection by less than ten minutes thanks to a long queue at the security line and the fact that the staff there had not thought it necessary to let them jump said queue and thus avoid the crowd of passengers whose flights only took off in the afternoon. To make matters worse, there were no other flights to their destination until the next day, so they had ended up with two rooms in a hotel near the airport while their baggage flew on ahead of them.

Caranthir sucked forcefully on his cigarette. “How did we even think that flying was a good idea!”

He spun around, looking for the ashtray, and after he had jammed the half-finished cigarette into it turned towards Maedhros, who was looking out of the window at the other end of the room. Except that his head reached past the top of the window, and he had to bend if he wanted to see anything apart from the garbage-littered dingy courtyard.

Feeling Caranthir's eyes on him, Maedhros finally faced his disgruntled brother.

“Well, nothing went wrong the few times we travelled by plane in the past.”

“Using our own means of transportation is always better. And much safer,” Curufin said.

“But slower. We couldn't have tarried on those pristine beaches if we had chosen to travel by land and sea.”

“Yeah, but by now Pityo Telvo and Turco are waiting for us where we were supposed to be, whereas we're stuck in this poor excuse for a room in this shitty two-star hotel next to the cursed airport,” Caranthir droned, “with nothing for us to fucking do!”

“You know Moryo, perhaps if you hadn't started swearing at the woman at the security line we wouldn't have had to wait while she searched all our bags.”

“She did it only to piss me off, and we had already missed our flight anyway.”

Curufin nodded. Their father had gotten so angry that they had had to physically pry him away from a counter where he was deluging a terrified clerk in a machinegun-fast version of the local language before he could make a full-fledged scene, and thereby attract the attention of those among the passengers milling about the terminal who weren't looking at them already.

“Disgraceful,” Curufin huffed. He gave up trying to fan himself, his lips twisting in a disgusted grimace as he realised his clammy hand was painted grey with tar. He tossed the newspaper into the dustbin and hurried into the tiny bathroom.

The sound of running water along with the sound of Caranthir's lighter as he lit his third cigarette filled the narrow room for a few moments.

“We could go into town to –” Maedhros ventured when Curufin re-emerged after washing his hands and face, but fell silent the moment his eyes feel on his brother's naked chest.

“In this heat?” Curufin looked at him as if he had lost his mind. He took off his jeans and hurled them with his underwear towards the only armchair in the corner next to the window, then pulled the duvet off his bed. “We've been there countless times already,” he added stretching on the bed.

“Yeah, I don't want to see the place for the next fifty years at least,” Caranthir concurred, appreciating his brother's nakedness, “too grey, and far too crowded.”

Maedhros sighed and plopped down on the horribly soft mattress, the springs creaking loudly under his weight – it would be an uncomfortable night for him, especially length-wise – and reached over to caress his brother's smooth thigh.

Caranthir dumped one more stub into the ashtray. “Besides, I'm not going to run around and stink all through tomorrow.”

“Yeah, this heat is terrible,” Maedhros absentmindedly said. “Well, there's very little to do while we're crammed in this room.”

He stood up again and lowered the blinds, but opened the window fully, even though the air outside was still and heavy, and the summer sun shone right above the dismal courtyard. The a/c was either broken or so weak it might as well not have existed at all. Soon after, his clothing joined Curufin's on the armchair and he quickly took the three steps it took him to throw himself on his brother's bed and on his brother's body.

Caranthir reached for the remote instead and turned the TV on. After two more cigarettes and some fitful zapping through a variety of channels in a variety of languages, all broadcasting trite programs which couldn't even remotely compare to the sight of his brothers making out on the bed right next to his, he gave up. He glanced at his watch. It was still only 3pm. He grunted, thinking of how at that time they should have been on their way to some secluded spot in a forest or valley, free of human pests and unspoilt by their invasive lifestyles, and in a much much cooler climate to boot. Shaking his head, he undressed and pushed his bed next to Curufin's.

“Are these sheets clean at least?”

Maedhros rolled his eyes. “Moryo, please, we've lived through the plague.”

“Well, they won't stay clean for long, I hope,” Curufin said and nipped at Maedhros's right nipple, already drenched in his drool.

“Right, I guess I'll have fun making this room as dirty as possible.”

“That will fulfil your revenge against humankind? It'll just make life harder for the cleaners.”

“Harder? They're born to work reproduce work some more and die, and it wasn't I who made it that way.”

“...Moryo, I'm sure even Father has stopped bitching by now.”

“Go check for me, will you? I'll take care of Curvo.” Caranthir wrapped his arms around Curufin's waist and lifted him off of Maedhros. He lay back, pulling Curufin atop of himself.

Maedhros knelt behind Curufin and raised his little brother's ass.

“Do we even have lube?” Caranthir asked, pulling Curufin's buttocks open.

“Nelyo always has lube,” Curufin purred.

“Or you two can slick me up with your mouths if you can't do anything better with them.”

In the event, Caranthir and Curufin kept each other's mouths duly occupied while Caranthir tugged and grazed Curufin's nipples with his fingers and Maedhros got Curufin ready for his cock, and after Maedhros sheathed himself inside his little brother, Caranthir drew back and found a different occupation for Curufin and his mouth and throat. They hardly minded about the sweat and swelter while they fucked, exchanging positions several times, and stopped only when exhaustion fixed them in a sticky tangle on the joined beds.

Much later, when the sun had finally disappeared behind a stack of look-alike buildings and the heat let up somewhat, Maedhros was roused by a gentle rap on the door. When the rap came a second time, he disentangled himself from his brothers, and answered it wearing nothing but dried semen and love-bites.

The door let in Fëanor and Maglor, both primly dressed and smelling of lavender.

“I brought you your meals,” Fëanor said, standing on tip-toes to kiss Maedhros. “And a change of T-shirts and underwear, too.”

“The latest fashion, all bought in some of the best boutiques in the airport,” Maglor chimed in, archly, looking his oldest brother up and down in the quasi-darkness of the room, “...though it doesn't look like you'll need them.”

“Maybe you will,” Maedhros said, hugging him from behind.

Fëanor laughed, already trapped between Caranthir and Curufin where he had sat on Maedhros's bed. He put the plastic bag with the food on the floor while his sons vied for his lips, letting them have their fill.

Maedhros sat down opposite him, settling Maglor on his lap and nuzzling his head against his brother's chest.

“How are you so...fresh?”

Maglor laughed. “Well, unlike the three of you Dad and I spent the afternoon sleeping and only headed out at sundown.”

“It's Moryo's fault if we ended up like this.”

Caranthir protested with a mere mutter, far busier turning on the lights and then turning to the invitingly cold food-boxes Fëanor was unpacking from the bag, a seemingly endless pile of them. 'None of that insipid hotel stuff,' Fëanor was saying, earning a heartfelt nod from Curufin. Maedhros caught his father's gaze, held it for a kiss, then swept his gaze over his brothers, still feeling the treasured taste and texture of their bodies on himself.

“Come on, eat your fill,” Maglor said, “then maybe I'll give you dessert.”

Memory Box - Sadness square, posted on 07/02/2017; Takashi is feeling down and Nyanko-sensei tries to help.

Takashi probably believes he's being quiet as he crawls out of the futon and towards the corner where the box holding his grandmother's things stands.

Nyanko-sensei opens one of his eyes a sliver.

The light of the full moon fills the room and Takashi doesn't need any more illumination to open the box and rummage inside.

Nyanko-sensei, who doesn't need moonlight to see him clearly even in the middle of the night, observes him intently for a while.

Takashi seemed more aloof and taciturn than usual during the day, but kept tossing and turning in the futon so restlessly that Nyanko-sensei had been tempted to just scamper off and find another warm, less noisy place to sleep in. Nyanko-sensei hasn't known him long enough to be sure what the matter is with him, but he can guess fairly accurately. Takashi pulls his grandmother's things out one by one – a couple of dog-eared mangas, not the kind anyone would have expected Reiko to read; a straw hat that seems about to come apart; some hair clips; a hand mirror. Takashi turns them over in his hands, slowly, peering at them from every which angle, as if by doing so images of his grandmother would leap at him, as if he could fill the gap that separates them. He sighs whenever he's done with one of the objects and puts it on the floor.

Finally, he pulls out Reiko's school uniform, still neatly folded. He stares unblinking at it, crumpling the musty-smelling fabric where his fingers grip it.

“She was very beautiful, even in that odd garment,” Nyanko-sensei offers.

Takashi starts and hits the half-empty box with his knees. When he turns, Nyanko-sensei is standing right next to him.

“She looked frail, as if a gust of wind might have carried her off. But she was stronger than any human I've met in a very long time.”

Takashi's jaw clenches. “...then why did she die so soon?”

Nyanko-sensei shrugs. He had already been trapped inside the maneki-neko when it happened.

Takashi's eyes filled with tears.

“If you want, I can tell you about her.”

“You...you knew her well?” Takashi stutters.

“Better than anybody else, I dare say.”

Takashi takes a deep breath and buries his face in his grandmother's uniform, probably in order not to let Nyanko-sensei see as he blinks his tears away. When he lifts his head again his wan, sad smile is plastered on his face. “Thank you,” he says, as he puts Reiko's uniform back inside the box.

“I haven't even begun, don't thank me just yet!” Nyanko-sensei scoffs. He trots towards the futon and plops down on it, and Takashi follows him.

In Luck - Curses square, posted on 11/02/2017; Something is bothering Takashi.

Takashi and his grandmother are the only two people on the raised pathway cutting across the rice fields, under a sky streaked with frayed clouds in all shades of grey. The sun hovers just above the line of the horizon, like a giant orange spilling its light all over the fields, the woods and the hills.

Reiko meets him every afternoon where the town gives way to the countryside, so that they can walk the rest of the way to their small house together. That makes Takashi happy, normally, but today he can't bring himself to smile. He can't even bring himself to look at his grandmother, and doesn't pay any attention to the landscape and the flocks of birds dancing over the fields.

“What is it?” Reiko asks, turning towards him, her voice gentle, gentler than it is with anyone else.

Takashi stops and shakes his head. Without thinking, Reiko kneels down in the dirt in front of him and studies his face, even as he tries to sink it inside the thick muffler wrapped around his neck.

“What is the matter?”

Takashi worries his lower lip, but after several grimaces he lifts his head just enough to meet his grandmother's gaze, frowning, and mutters: “did...did Mother die because of me? Because I -...bring bad luck?”

Reiko flinches. “Who said that?”

“...the boys at school. They said my mother died because I'm a weird child and I caused her to die right after I was born.”

Reiko huffs. She heard all manner of gossip and malicious talk about her when she was younger – and she still does, at times – it was useless to hope that Takashi would be spared people's barbs. She reminds herself that unlike her, he isn't alone. She will do whatever it takes to protect him, to make sure he never feels as lonely as she did. She carefully wipes the tears that threaten to spill from his eyes, and tries not to show the anger that starts simmering inside her.

“That's not true. Your mother died of a illness. A stupid, commonplace illness.” She clasps both of Takashi's hands, giving them a comforting squeeze, then holds them gently in hers. “When you are older you will learn about it.”

“So we aren't cursed?”

“Of course not. Besides, even if we had been...a curse is not a permanent thing, I would have found a way to break it.”

“Then why can we see youkai? Isn't that a curse?”

“I'm not sure, but it's certainly not a curse. The things is, not all youkai are so terrible. There are decent ones, less good ones and very bad ones...more or less as it happens with humans. I have a couple of youkai friends too.”

For the first time in the afternoon, Takashi perks up. “Friends?”

Reiko grins and rocks his hands. “Well, one is more of a...staunch admirer. She's a female youkai, no less. And the other is a presumptuous snot, but he's kinder than he likes to let on.”

The descriptions seem to puzzle Takashi. A myriad questions floats over his face, but in the end he simply asks: “Can I meet them?”

Reiko's grin turns into a genuine smile, and the creases of worry smooth from her face, where actual wrinkles are still faint and sparse, as if age were afraid to leave its mark on it. “I think it'll be inevitable.”

She gives Takashi a kiss on each cheek before climbing back up to her feet. She spares just a moment to wipe the mud sticking to her trousers, and bends again to pick Takashi up.

“Don't pay any attention to the mean things your classmates tell you. You are a wonderful child, and I love you more than anybody else.”

Takashi circles her neck with his hands, and nods. They start down the path again. The sun is about to disappear behind the hills, and a chilly breeze blows over the fields carrying the scent late-winter snow. Reiko's nose scrunches against the cold, she narrows her eyes as if in deep thought and stops all of a sudden.

“I know!” she exclaims, whirling around so fast it makes Takashi's head spin. “We'll have nabe tonight. I'll let you pick the ingredients, what do you say?”

Reiko can barely cook, and it takes her longer than strictly necessary to fix even the simplest of dishes, but Takashi wouldn't exchange what she cooks for him for anything else. He beams, and gives her a kiss on the cheek.

Vision walls fall all revealing - The Tides of Time square, posted on 23/02/2017; Maedhros and Maglor find each other again at the start of a new life.

The Eldar no doubt reckoned them vanwë, castaways on the course set down by the Music at the beginning of Time, a course which had been punctually, precisely been given life by their own deeds. To Men they were but relics of the past, matter of songs, shadows their rapidly trickling years would soon sweep away.

Neither belief was devoid of truth.

When Maedhros found Maglor again, after his death and unforetold rebirth, he knew they were both torn out of the fabric from which the life of the incarnates had been cut.

Emerging from his cradle of light had been a vertigo of wonder at a world which appeared to him in all its infinite vastness – a vastness he could have held in the palm of his right hand. His new body didn't function like the one he had shed. He could move as he had moved before, but had no bodily needs. He felt no hunger, no thirst, no fatigue or drowsiness. His emotions too were keener, rawer, no longer shielded and dulled by the more immediate impulses that had overlaid them. Touching the bark of a tree was like being scalded, and the breeze that tangled in his hair had the force of a whip-lash. The bluntness of the world nearly overcame him as he took his first few steps in it like a toddler left to face a steep descent on his own, but he quickly learnt to use that bluntness to his own advantage.

He also learnt, as he listened to his brother's voice, that the Music was something that could be altered, or improvised, or simply played at a different tempo.

Maglor sang – a song that was a threnody, a fierce requiem in defiance of the Valar, of the crashing waves, and of his own agony. He sang of war, of defeat and never-ending rage. The Silmaril was clutched tightly in his right hand. All his lingering strength he seemed to have poured into that one gesture, even with his skin raw and oozing blood well beyond the wrist.

Maedhros listened from afar at first, his whole body basking in the notes that had led him to his brother.

Maglor didn't react to his presence, when Maedhros weightlessly trod upon the rocky shore where he stood, exposed to the wrath of the sea which had devoured Beleriand, with all its life and all its death.

The setting sun darted blazing rays over the rim of a jagged shoreline, tingeing everything red. Red, rich bright red. Blood and fire. Red and orange and yellow, like the bed of molten rock upon which Maedhros's body of flesh had been consumed in the same manner his father's had been.

Maedhros lowered his face onto his brother's jet black hair, dishevelled by the wind and smelling of sea-salt. Their curly texture sufficed to reassure him both of his brother's endurance and to confirm his own existence, to confirm that he was still himself with the oddly hushed, tender familiarity of the sensation it caused.

“Dearest brother of mine,” he murmured.

He had not been certain he had a voice, but when he attempted to turn his thoughts into sound, Maglor reacted to the words he formed. Maglor had always been particularly responsive to voices. He had studied their inflections and appraised them with the same deftness and relish with which their father had assessed metals.

Maglor's own voice rose to a cry. Maedhros crossed his arms over his brother's narrowed waist, over what remained of his armour, holding him gently.

Maglor's wounded hand throbbed, then jolted. Blood dripped steadily from it onto the ground, and it was the only mark of the passage of time Maedhros remained aware of.

He couldn't have told how long they stood there. The sea was unchanging in its ever renewed onslaughts, the unrelentingness with which it lashed the rocks in front of them, and soon he stopped paying any heed to the risings of the sun and moon. Time itself had ceased to matter to him. Time was a tangle of thread of which he now discerned both ends.

Sometimes he wondered what would happen if he pulled on either of those, and only secondarily marvelled at the fact that he was certain he knew how to.

Their father had wanted them to be free. What he had acquired was a liberty infinitely surpassing what his father had envisioned. Maedhros felt joy like an already half-forgotten quickened blood pulse. His father surely did too.

After what could have been days, months, or even decades, Maglor's opponent finally revealed herself.

Uinen emerged from the boisterous waves, the briny water casting a mantle about her like diamond-studded gossamer. She stretched her arms open, as if rallying every last particle of a long-nursed rancour. The sea swelled, and a wave much larger than the ones which had until then crashed on the shore reared towards them.

Maedhros wished for it to stop and the Silmaril flashed.

The wave broke before it could reach them, falling at their feet in a rain of shattered crystals.

Uinen's wrath turned to ice, and the sea began to freeze.

Maglor's song was undimmed, and the ice could not encase his feet. The last of his blood flowed out, drop after tiny drop, its echoing drip drip drip thundering in Maedhros's ears, and seeped into the frozen water, staining its purity with a dawn-like halo.

When he had sung all that he needed to sing, Maglor's voice quieted down, and died. The silence rippled through space, the very air seemed to come to a standstill and hung over that marred stretch of sea like a pall, crushing.

Uinen gave a deafening cry, splashing head first into the ice.

Maedhros knew what would happen next.

Their father's body had crumbled to a trail flickering ash, Maglor's slipped from his hold in a drizzle of golden petals that danced about him before melting into the ice as Maglor's blood had.

The Silmaril which was now part of Maedhros as much as he was part of it glowed to its fullest, in unison with the one his brother had held. They set sea and sky ablaze, brighter than any sunset or any conflagration, spilling brutal light into every tiny nook of the space around him.

He stepped onto the spot where Maglor had lived out the last instants of his first existence, and the mass of ice came to life in a sizzling rumble. Blocks split and crashed, lurched forward and sank into a liquid so dark and viscous it could have all been blood. A long ragged block surged like a giant killer whale, bearing Uinen with it, remained aloft for a split second and plunged into the sea again, carrying the helpless maia along.

Amidst the glare and cacophony, Maglor's fëa rose from the water. Maglor was water. Liquid, scintillating black into which anything could drown. Maedhros reached out towards the wave of obsidian, and it whirled towards him. Maglor took shape in his hold, long limbs no longer made of flesh but of the very same matter their father had brought into being. Maglor was remade, and stood pressed to him.

They stared into each other's eyes, giddy with triumph and new-born hope.

Then Maedhros kissed Maglor's mouth, a ripple of fire, lay his cheek against his brother's and smiled against his ear.

“Sing for me, Brother.”

Sun of the Shadows - Sun and Stars square, posted on 23/03/2017; Maedhros and Maglor regain the Silmarils, and much more.

Celebrimbor, bedraggled and almost as weather-worn as the bare rock of the cave he guarded, stirred in disbelief from his perch on a large boulder, nearly fell over, when he made out his uncles' silhouettes in the red-tinted distance.

Maedhros and Maglor scuffed up the steep hillside, holding two Silmarils, each in their left hand, like new suns ready to rise at the very end of the world.

Uncles and nephew faced each other without uttering a word, reluctant to even come too close. The harsh words Celebrimbor had hurled at Maedhros and Maglor before they left for the camp of the Valar still rang between them, but the very sight of the Silmarils kindled a new fire in Celebrimbor's eyes. His gaze caressed them, clung to them and the hope they bestowed. The gems were ill-gained, steeped in too much blood to ever come clean of it, and so would be his joy, yet no qualms of guilt and no burden of sin would undo the burning need for his father, the need to have him back and fill the distance that had separated them with whatever was at hand.

Maedhros and Maglor waited for him to draw aside, then turned to their task without any further delay, and no hesitation. Faltering daylight glanced inside the mouth of the cave, but as they progressed down the natural corridor the Silmarils took over, giving back shards of sunlight like embers floating inside the widening tunnel. Tiny fissures in the roof kept it well-aerated, but not a speck of dirt, not a stray leaf littered the floor or the caskets, lined one next to the other at the very back of the cave.

Three pointed ovals made of polished wood cradled Curufin Celegorm and Caranthir, frozen in breathless sleep. The twins, who had fashioned their brother's caskets out of the trees of Ossiriand, lay curled up against each other in a single, coarse rectangular box to the right. At the far left, a slender casket held all that was left of their father: an oblong mound of ashes.

Maglor let his bag slip from his shoulder, dropped his paired swords and the dagger buckled to his belt on top of it, and covered everything with his cape. Unburdened, he retrieved the Silmaril and sat down cross-legged in the middle of the cave, laying the gem down on the ground at his left, the upper tip of it pointed towards the caskets.

Maedhros bent over and surrendered his own, setting it down at Maglor's right with a light groan. Their father's will and Varda's hallowing had battled inside the gems, leading to abrupt spikes of ice-burning pain followed by spells of gentle soothing warmth. Maedhros looked at his hand, slightly reddened and still faintly pulsating – though the throbbing could just have been the echo of his heartbeat for what he was about to witness as much as a consequence of Varda's hallowing. He had endured much worse at any rate, and Maglor was not to one to be daunted by physical pain.

The brothers nodded to each other, and Maglor dropped his head, taking deep breaths as he got ready to sing a song, a song of power, a song of rebirth, in preparation for which he had been saving his voice ever since he had sung a dirge on the ruins of Doriath.

Maedhros was drawn towards the caskets, as if pulled by the very tether which bound his soul to the souls of his father and brothers. He surveyed each stiff and cold body, each one pristine as if death had been merely a ritual to crystallise it in its best appearance, then took off his gloves and, holding them in his left hand, approached Curufin's body. He crouched down next to him and brushed the fingers of his artificial hand on his brother's face.

The hand was a wonder, a contraption devised by Celebrimbor using the surviving scraps of his father's research, which Maedhros could control as a real limb. He wasn't used to it yet, and didn't trust to use it to brandish a sword, but it allowed him the intimacy of touch, poured the gelid smoothness of his brother's cheek up his arm. He twisted around to glance towards the mouth of the cave. Celebrimbor peeked in at the same moment, his eyes brimming with hope and desire against a backdrop of smouldering sunlight.

Maedhros smiled at him.

The Silmarils would not fail them: preserving the light of the Trees and dispensing that light's blessing were the least significant of the Silmarils' powers.

The link that existed between their souls would do the rest. Their mother had borne their bodies, but their father had nourished their souls with his: the most generous gift any living being could make. They had tied that bond tighter over the centuries, in body as much as in spirit, and soldered it with the Oath. The Oath had bound them all to one purpose and one fate, and if regaining the Silmarils had started as a quest for revenge, after their father's death it had become an inexorable necessity.

Maedhros's eyes narrowed, while he brushed his thumb over Curufin's blue smooth lips, recalling where that frantic need to regain the Silmarils had led him, the agony and the despair. And yet as long as he had been held inside Angband, Morgoth had hurt, hurt so badly that delivering Maedhros to Thangorodrim had been the only way for him not succumb under the burden of the Silmarils. Even that hadn't availed him much, in the end.

Maglor cleared his throat and his song spilled, like water bubbling up a newly opened fissure in the ground, forcefully growing into a mighty spray. Maedhros locked the memories away, in the corner of his mind he had confined it to so that it could not hurt him. He focused on Curufin's face again, then cast a glance in his father's casket, yearning to see the same face take shape anew from the ashes.

Maglor's voice rose steadily. The Silmarils picked up the power in it, the familiarity of it, the timbre so intimately similar to their creator's call, until their light spread in tendrils like paths for their father and brothers' souls to burrow themselves in their bodies again.

Caranthir was the first to wake, sitting upright with an abrupt jerk of his stiff body. Just as swiftly he twisted, glaring behind him as if he might have pierced the eyes of the cowards who shot him in the back in Doriath. Then he faced forward again, his head swayed to and fro and his eyes settled on the carvings with which Celebrimbor had whiled away his dreary, solitary watch.

The twins opened their eyes to smile at their mirrored face and slowly, languidly stretched, roused as it were from a brief nap.

Curufin's eyes met Maedhros's the moment they opened anew, wayward shards of grey coming to life in the light of the Silmarils. Curufin sucked in a wheezing breath, his nostrils flaring and his mouth falling open, and spat it out in a long whimper, followed by tears.

Trembling with crushing joy, Maedhros reached inside the casket and gathered his little brother into his arms. The return of life to Curufin's body tugged and plucked at the tether between their souls: memories thoughts and feelings flowing freely between them. Maedhros held Curufin tight, unconsciously rocking them both in those moments during which they could have been a single entity.

Over the top of Curufin's head he watched as Celegorm gripped the edges of the casket, sat up and shook the stiffness of death off himself as a wolf shakes his coat free of water.

After a time, measured footsteps heralded a call of “Father?”, barely audible under Maglor's song.

Curufin pulled back from Maedhros's embrace, craned his neck to direct his glossy gaze past Maedhros's shoulder, stared.

There were no apologies, no recriminations or accusations, not then. Celebrimbor gathered his father in his arms, lifted him out of the casket and sat with him on the ground, cradling him against his chest.

Maedhros patted the top of his nephew's head, a small reconciliation, and stood back. He had been surprised, when Celebrimbor arrived on Amon Ereb after Doriath, claiming that he needed to see them and not find his father with them, claiming that if he didn't do that he would never be able to accept his father's death and would keep hankering to see him. And hanker Celebrimbor did, twice as savagely, after Maedhros led him to this isolated cave in the Blue Mountains and showed him his father's corpse.

And now, they were almost all together again.

The twins were already perched on one side of their coffin, kissing. Caranthir cautiously rose to his feet, stepped out and blindly reached for Celegorm's arms when his knees buckled.

The ashes in their father's casket had started to flicker and float, and the light of the Silmarils wrapped around them as they rearranged themselves into the shape of an elf. Maedhros watched them, transfixed, and didn't immediately notice when Maglor's song abruptly stopped. He spun around just in time to see Maglor mouth 'I'm sorry' and slump forward, utterly drained.

“I will get you something to eat,” Celebrimbor said, before Maedhros had a chance to react. He let go of his father, and didn't look at his uncles as he hurried out to his stash of provisions.

Caranthir and Celegorm sat down on either side of Maglor, held his hands and snuggled close. Supported between his brothers, between those whose life he had restored, Maglor surveyed the one incomplete fruit of his song: an elf-shaped cocoon of cinders, flickering restlessly, like autumn leaves set ablaze by the setting sun.

Maedhros met his eyes with gratitude and adoration when Maglor turned to him, and held them until Maglor nodded towards the Silmarils. Maedhros understood, picked them up and put them in the casket, mindful not to touch the ashes.

“Where is the third?” Amras asked, coming to stand next to him.

Maedhros stooped to kiss him and then Amrod, who clung to his other side. “The Valar put it in the sky, a star which shines brighter than any Varda ever made.”

“Do you think we need that too, for father?” Curufin asked, holding onto brim of Fëanor's casket.

Maedhros wished, once again, that he could just mould the ashes into his likeness with his bare hands.

Maglor shook his head. “We just need time,” he said, his voice a raspy hiss, scraping on his brother's consciousness.

“When...when did Tyelperinquar come back?”

“When he found out there was a chance of you coming back to life, though he took great pains to make it absolutely clear that he disapproves of kinslaying,” Maedhros replied, a hint of mirth creeping into his tone.

Amras shrugged. “It's not like we had much of a choice.”

“But we did, remember?” Caranthir put in, mordant, “we were supposed to simply give them up.”

“And everybody else had plenty of valid reasons to keep them at all costs, yes.”

Celebrimbor's footsteps echoed from the mouth of the cave, and they fell silent. All light was gone outside, mist having risen to shroud the noiseless night. Celebrimbor set his bags of wild berries and dried meat down in front of Maglor, and took his place next to his father, the Silmarils bathing his face in untarnished radiance.

Dissonance - Trust square, posted on 31/03/2017; Celegorm and Maedhros talk soon after Celegorm and Curufin arrive in Himring.

“They attacked us first!”

“Did they? Can I trust you to tell me the truth?”

“We were crossing the forest, slowly, because the ground was rocky and we had never been there before, when the man suddenly threw himself against Curvo's horse and unsaddled him. He tried to strangle Curvo, but Curvo managed to stab him in the side with that dwarvish dagger he used to carry on his belt. Then Huan started to bark at us.” Celegorm stomps back and forth in Maedhros's small private drawing room in the main tower of the fortress in Himring, his arms crossed tightly over his chest, his shoulders hunched over with tension. “She bewitched him!” he snarls, knitting his eyebrows together. “Huan would never attack me.”

Maedhros nods, despite the many misgivings he still has about what happened in Nargothrond and after it. He can't ignore his brother's distraught expression. Celegorm huffs and his shoulders slump a little.

“I –...I couldn't attack Huan, so we had to leave, on one horse, since the valiant princess stole Curvo's horse, too.”

“And you went on to cross Nan Dungortheb like that,” Maedhros says curtly, reproachingly, still reeling from the mere thought of the danger his brothers faced, twice, once with their people and once on their own.

“It would have taken too long to retrace our steps and travel all the way around Doriath.”

“Why did you decide to come here by crossing Nan Dungortheb in the first place? So that you could come as quickly as possible to me and sell me your version of events?”

Celegorm snorts, and his mouth pulls up in a mirthless grin. “Carrier pigeons would have gotten to you faster anyway.”

“They did, in fact.” Maedhros tugs on Celegorm's arms to coax him into disentangling them and takes Celegorm's hand, while he goes over the message he received from Fingon in his mind, a long missive relaying Orodreth's complaints – apparently, Orodreth didn't even want to deal with any son of Fëanor directly anymore. “Orodreth places the blame for Finrod's death squarely at your feet.”

“Why? It's not like we pushed him out of the door.”

“For convincing his people not to go with him.”

“Ah that,” Celegorm gives a cackle, then shrugs. “Orodreth himself was defending the island with a strong garrison, but they were driven out. Even if Finrod had had an army with him they wouldn't have been able to retake it, and even if they had managed to make it past Tol Sirion they would have ended up being slaughtered or captured on the Anfauglith. Finrod's people should thank us that we spared them a good deal of suffering.”

Maedhros grimaces at the words, but when Celegorm opens his mouth again he silences him pre-emptively with a shake of his head. Celegorm isn't entirely wrong. One too many of their kings have ridden into the enemy's hands already. Besides, if Orodreth had been so concerned about Finrod's success nothing prevented him from going with him. “That is quite true...quite true indeed, and yet...Finrod probably placed his trust in you.”

“Trust? He knew the terms of Oath, he knew them quite well, yet he was ready to help a mortal steal our father's gems so that the man can buy his beloved from her father. Nelyo, if Thingol does get a Silmaril –”

“Shh,” Maedhros stops Celegorm before he can finish that thought, and sighs. He doesn't even want to take the eventuality into consideration. He will content himself with the fact that his brothers are safe, for the time being. “You look horrible, you should definitely take a bath, and rest.” He draws Celegorm towards himself and hugs him, wrapping his good arm around his waist and his stump around his nape. The one thing he rues the most about losing his hand is the fact that he can't ruffle his brothers' hair anymore when he hugs them, but Celegorm lowers his head on his chest and allows him to rub his cheek against the top of his head instead.