Just a quiet moment reading

[marriedanidiot]

Who: Nerdanel and whoever!
Where: Library & Garden
When: Various times between platform and next stop
What: Mama Elf is available for chats, hugs, and lullabies but technically she's working. She doesn't mind interruptions!
Warnings: n/a

Garden

As she so often is, Nerdanel can be found sitting in the garden, singing softly as she works on her sculptures. The first is now finished, standing no more than two hands tall, Maedhros looks up out of stone, almost as if he might speak at any moment. She works now on the second, but will not mind company.


Library

The library is new, and therefore interesting, and Nerdanel can be found at intervals browsing through the shelves curiously, flipping through books. Alternatively, she can also be found sketching - a bas relief is taking shape under her pencil - one of the train, by the looks of things. Feel free to interrupt her for a chat!

Comments

Garden

[utulien_aure]

"He's smaller than I am," Fingon can't help but remark.

A wry smile flicks across his face as he brushes his fingers against the statue.

"It's a strange experience- even in stone, it feels as though he should be taller."

Re: Garden

[marriedanidiot]

Nerdanel smiles at him with a laugh. "Well, I could do one of you! Then you could be of height with him again. Did you want to keep this one?"

[utulien_aure]

He smiles at the offer, but shakes his head.

"No, it's all right. You should keep your work... and I have plenty of memories, anyway."

[marriedanidiot]

"Alright." She smiles fondly at him.

"Although I mean to do one of you anyway. I think Maitimo would have liked that."

[utulien_aure]

Fingon snorts.

"Probably more than he'd like the existence of his own," he says ruefully. "He never was terribly vain, even before Beleriand."

A moment of silence, then he asks, "Would you mind if I asked whether anything particular inspired this?"

[marriedanidiot]

She chuckles softly.

"Can a mother help it if she has a favourite subject? I did not name him lightly, you know, and despite what people may think, I did not name him for the beauty of his face."

She named him for his spirit, for the fact that when he was born, she could not have said if there was anything she could ever make to surpass him. Her other sons proved her wrong, of course, not because they were better, but because they were also perfect, held for the first time in her arms, and she had understood then that there are many different types of perfect, although perhaps she was biased.

She traces a fond finger over the carving.

"Young Cassie - she is painting on the walls, did you know? She started with her family, but is slowly starting to do ones of her new friends, here. I thought it was a good idea."

[utulien_aure]

"Certainly, I've always thought him your masterpiece," he agrees.

And also Feanaro's- which does make the mad craftsman technically correct; a scion of Nolofinwe was absolutely trying to steal his greatest work.

"It's an interesting idea," he says nodding. "But I admit, my mind went elsewhere when I saw what you were doing."

To Feanor, in fact- and to that announcement made recently, of trying to preserve those who had left.

[marriedanidiot]

She snorts in quiet amusement.

"To my husband? I began before him, although you'll never hear him admit it."

[utulien_aure]

"He did make a production of it," Fingon agrees ruefully.

Looking over the statue again, he asks, "Do you plan to do all of them? Or simply Maitimo and Macalaure?"

[marriedanidiot]

"He always tends to." Feanor's wife says with weary tolerance.

"I think I will do them all." She nods. "It has been... a while since I had a mind to do them all. But... I would like to do them... as they were in Beleriand, I think. I might need some help with that."

[utulien_aure]

"Typical," he agrees (though given the drawings that ended up in his cabin, Fingon, you did encourage him).

His eyes widen a bit at as they were in Beleriand, but he nods regardless.

"I think I can be of some assistance there... though I'm afraid I didn't see the younger ones particularly often, after they went East."

[marriedanidiot]

She smiles at him, a little wanly.

"It will still be more than what I saw. I only had the tales of those returned and... few of those were kind."

[utulien_aure]

"Ah."

If Nargothrond lasted much longer... well, he supposed the folk of Hithlum might be rather eager to throw Celegorm and Curufin under the carriage, really.

"I think Carnistir found Men and Dwarves easier to deal with than his own kind, really, you wouldn't have heard those stories. And I never quite understood whether or not Ambarussa was supposed to be running anything in Ossiriand. But there's nothing from Himring or the Gap?"

[marriedanidiot]

Her eyes crinkle with fond amusement to know that Carnistir found people he finally got along with, and she smiles at the mention of the Ambarussar.

"Bits and pieces." She sighs. "But few people are willing to speak to me of those times. Most seem to want to... ignore it, really. I suppose it might bring up too many bad memories."

[utulien_aure]

None of them? With a frown, Fingon runs through a list of the senior officers of the marches in his head. Some were old and trusted companions of Finwe, still respected (if begrudgingly- the wounds of the old quarrel ran deep, in many quarters) in Barad Eithel.

He takes a breath. "I don't think...." he sighs. "I don't know. really. Things never seem solved by keeping silent, but the One knows many of the arguments we Noldor have had don't help either."

[marriedanidiot]

"Yes." She smiles a little tremulously.

"I sometimes think our memory is oft times as much curse as blessing. "

[utulien_aure]

"It's what we make of it, I suppose."

[marriedanidiot]

She gathers herself and smiles at him, nodding.

"That much is true. We could stand to learn a bit from Men, by the sounds of things."

[utulien_aure]

"Well," he says, huffing a laugh,

"Ingoldo always said as much. And I should hardly dare to question Ingoldo's opinion, according to many of my elders."

[marriedanidiot]

She chuckles at that, a little more real.

"Dear Findarato, he was always good at making the elders like him! It was only because you used to get into much more public scrapes, growing up."

Where Finrod was one of the 'good' kids.

[utulien_aure]

The standards were low, as all his cousins would have happily informed their elders.

"I was perfectly safe," he says, voice more amused than properly huffy.

"People simply fussed, that was all."

[marriedanidiot]

"My dear boy you once broke an arm trying to fly!" Every single relative is going to rub that one in forever.

Although at least Fingon didn't cause an explosion, like some of the others...

i grasp this isn't realistic medical science, but hey what is with immortals

[utulien_aure]

"I have broken an arm six separate times and died from precisely none of them," is his rejoinder, clearly making the argument of the year.

"And not only was I seven, but most of the subsequent attempts were far more extreme than anything I ever tried."

Re: i grasp this isn't realistic medical science, but hey what is with immortals

[marriedanidiot]

Nerdanel shakes her head with a laugh.

"And that is why your elders like Findarato better! Terrifying us all like that... although I will grant that you were not as extreme as Curvo."

Feanaro had been kicked out of the house for a solid week after she realised that it was his fault that a very young, impressionable Curufin had decided that attempt number whatever of Young Elves Seeking To Attain Flight should be attained with explosives, even if Feanaro had neither initiated the idea, nor deliberately allowed it to happen.

[utulien_aure]

"Trust me; all he is is better at hiding his antics. If they were here, I'd tell you to ask his brothers. Or Turno, if you could claw the truth out of him."