Chapter Text
Feanor is the one to find them because Feanor never lets little things like possible death stop him from being the one to go deepest into the woods, particularly when he has a new sibling on the way who will need food.
Nolofinwe is with him because he follows his brother everywhere he can, especially now that Feanor has gone and gotten married and shares a tent with Nerdanel instead of them.
It’s a tent he pitches right next to their’s, and he’s promised Nolofinwe that he and Nerdanel will keep following Finwe in their people’s slow trek across the land, ever in search of more food, instead of going off on their own as some do, but it’s still different, and he hasn’t quite managed to reconcile Nolofinwe to it yet. He just needs a little more time.
All of that slips to the back of his mind the moment they find the camp.
It’s a much smaller one than their’s, just three tents pitched by a small stream that runs burbling through the silent trees.
It’s also a much quieter one that their’s. No one’s fetching water from the stream. No one’s tending the fire that’s been allowed to burn down to embers. No one’s talking quietly within the tents.
There are hoof prints in the soft mud by the stream’s bank. There are other marks, shallower ones, that look like nothing he’s ever seen before, and suddenly the shadows between the trees seem darker than they were.
“Feanor,” Nolofinwe said, voice tight. “Look. The Hunter’s been here.”
“I saw,” he breathes, voice barely audible, just in case something is still lurking, but he has to know, so he still steals forward grimly to look into the tent.
Probably the grim Hunter has rode on. Probably he wouldn’t bother them anyway; he prefers elves who wander alone to elves who travel together, even if they’re only in groups of two.
Then again, he seems to have carried away the whole camp.
He’s glad when Nolofinwe sticks close to him.
The first two tents are empty of people, though there are blankets and food and a few other items they might take back, as sick as it makes him. They can’t afford waste.
The third tent is not empty.
The third tent has three children inside.
One is only an infant, tucked into the eldest boy’s arms. The third child is clinging on too. All three have wax or cloth stuffed into their ears, and the eldest boy looks at the others like he’s afraid if he blinks they’ll disappear.
His eyes go even wider when he sees them.
Feanor kneels down to put himself at their level, and Nolofinwe follows belatedly.
The eldest boy looks at them suspiciously for a long moment before slowly removing the blob of wax from his ear. He holds it ready to jam back in at a moment’s notice, though.
“I’m Feanor, and this is my brother, Nolofinwe,” he says. “What’s your name?”
The boy relaxes just a little at the mention of brother and even more when he hears the -finwe. Everyone knows of their father.
“Maitimo,” he says quietly. He hugs the other two children impossibly closer. He does not volunteer their names.
“What happened?” Nolofinwe asks.
Maitimo promptly bursts into tears.
…
(The story, as it comes out later, is this: Maitimo’s mother had gone to get water from the stream last night and never returned. Her brother, who was the youngest boy’s father, had gone to look for her. He hadn’t come back either. At that point, the remaining adults had known better than to send anyone else. They had known.
But then the whispers had started.
And then the screams.
Maitimo had blood on his fingernails from where they had dug into his father’s arm as he desperately tried to keep their last remaining protector from going outside.
His father had shaken him off.
Maitimo had clapped his hands over his ears before the whispers could turn their attention on him.)
…
Maitimo clings to his brother’s shirt as Feanor carries both of them back to camp, and he keeps a suspicious eye on how Nolofinwe is carrying his cousin the whole way there.
The baby in Nolofinwe’s arms frets.
But the middle boy, the one Maitimo calls ‘Laure in a soft, frightened voice - he doesn’t make a single noise.
Not once.
…
Their father looks older when they tell him what’s happened. The Hunter has grown bolder, and still they are no closer to finding a way to protect themselves from him, or any of the other horrors that lurk in the endless trees.
Nameless horrors aside, there are still three children that need looking after. Finwe manages to pry the names of the younger two out of Maitimo: Macalaure and Carnistir. His other question, if they have other family somewhere, fares more poorly. If there are others out there, Maitimo doesn’t know.
Feanor gets a curious look on his face as soon as it becomes apparent that they’re going to have to find someone to look after them.
…
(“Nerdanel,” he says, leaning against the tree that she is perched in the lower branches of, chipping stone into arrowheads, “you still want children, don’t you?”
Nerdanel does want children. She is, however, somewhat suspicious of her dear husband’s tone. “I do,” she says slowly, not quite committing to anything.
“How do you feel about three?”)
…
The three children are absorbed into the camp easily enough. Maitimo follows Feanor around like a second shadow, and Macalaure toddles after, one hand clutching his brother’s shirt. Nerdanel binds Carnistir to her back the way the other women do and sings to him as she works.
Feanor works hard to make sure all the children have enough. He will not have another Findis. Maitimo helps him solemnly, bright and quick and always watchful.
He never lets Feanor wander into the trees for even two paces alone.
Macalaure still doesn’t speak, but Feanor returns from collecting fruit with Maitimo one day to find him hiding behind a tree one day while Nerdanel sings to the baby.
When she stops, Macalaure starts quietly humming the tune.
Maitimo makes a soft sound, and Feanor looks down and, for the first time, sees him smile.
…
He doesn’t plan on it happening again, because finding children in the woods is never something you plan on, but he isn’t entirely surprised either.
After all, the woods grow more dangerous every year.
It starts with whispers this time. Whispers of something new in the trees - something that looks like an elven child but runs with wolves and has blood on its teeth.
As it turns out, that story is correct in every particular except for the part where it claims the boy only looks like an elvish child. Standing across from the child now and seeing the wonder in his eyes as he takes in Feanor’s bright clothes, Feanor’s pretty sure that an elvish child is exactly what he is.
Feanor takes a cautious step forward.
The boy bares his teeth and growls before he takes off running through the trees.
…
They can’t just leave him out there. It isn’t safe.
He folds up a gift of food in bright red cloth that Nerdanel has donated to the cause at the edge of their camp. Macalaure pats his shoulder and hums a questioning noise.
“I’m trying to bring you home a new little brother,” he explains, though he’s not sure if little is the right term or not. Maitimo has shot up these past few years, but Macalaure remains worryingly small.
Macalaure hums a happy note and offers up his small wooden horse to add to the pile.
…
It takes three gifts of food to lure the boy into their camp, and it’s the growing chill of winter that finally drives him all the way in to the warmth of their fire.
Nerdanel wraps him him in a blanket, and his growl seems half-hearted. He curls into the warmth, and when they wake up in a morning, he’s still there, safe in the middle of the pile of warm bodies the children inevitably make.
…
The boy doesn’t talk - or, no, as Feanor corrects the unwary sharply, he does talk, he talks perfectly well - he’s just speaking in the tongue of wolves instead of the tongue of elves. They’ve managed to teach him a few words already, but they can’t expect him to learn overnight.
Feanor listens to his growls and watches his body language and learns to speak his tongue while they’re teaching him their’s, just as he’s learned the meanings of every one of Macalaure’s wordless hums.
…
(The full story never does come out, for obvious reasons, but they can guess the outlines well enough - parents gone, child left alone, and, by some miracle, taken in instead of eaten by a pack of wolves.
They do not guess the unthinkable truth: That sometimes, a child may be left deliberately behind during a particularly hungry winter.)
…
The child’s original name, whatever it might have been, is lost. Maitimo calls him Celegorm after one too many days of him rising before the stars have reached the proper place in their dance, and for good or ill, the name sticks.
…
Three years later, when Nerdanel announces that there’s going to be another baby, Carnistir’s eyes swing towards the woods as if he expects his new sibling to come toddling out at any moment.
“I’m having a baby,” Nerdanel clarifies.
Feanor whoops and picks her up to swing her, laughing, through the air.
He doesn’t see the looks that the older children share.
…
Celegorm doesn’t think to be concerned, and Carnistir is still too young, but Maitimo works harder than ever, and Macalaure -
Macalaure goes and sits by his father’s feet and helps him work on the new type of bow Feanor has been crafting, and then he says, “Will you still want us after the baby comes?”
Feanor drops the bow and turns to stare down at Macalaure’s hunched shoulders because he can’t quite believe that the small, scratched voice he just heard was Macalaure. Talking. Actually talking.
Then the rest of what he says sinks in, and oh. He knows that feeling. He’d turned every ounce of it into jealousy and fury and hurled it all at tiny Findis.
“Till the end of the world,” he promises.
Macalure talks more, after that.
. . .
The new baby is small, but not too small, and Nerdanel is tired, but not, the midwife assures him, too tired. Everything is fine. Everything will remain fine.
Finding children in the woods is much less stressful.
They let the other children hold the baby one by one.
“Small,” Celegorm whispers in an awed tone. Little Curufin has caught hold of one of his fingers and refuses to let go.
“For now,” Feanor agrees. “Let’s go show him to your uncles outside.”
…
Technically, Feanor doesn’t find the twins in the woods. Someone else does that part.
But. Well. Apparently the given assumption amongst Finwe’s people is that any unclaimed children found in the forest are now his and Nerdanel’s.
Neither of them is going to complain about it.
…
(Two months later, Oromë shows up and tells them of a land where light shines like fire and the dead can still walk.
Feanor looks down at six of his seven children and immediately feels guilty for his heart’s pained twist.)
(Things don’t improve when someone brings up Miriel.)