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i-did-not-mean-to · 2 years

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hey would you be interested in writing about Fëanor and Nerdanel in their younger years?

It's Irene by the way, told you I'll be back 😈

Dear Irene...This is for you...

Another big thank you to the SWG server for helping me figure out where and when everyone was (I hope it's correct).

Also, Fëfë is far from good, but I also don't bash him needlessly. Please let me know if you think that the balance between 'unhinged' and 'loving' has struck you as off.

This is my first time writing this pairing, so...I don't know...

Words: 3k

Characters: Fëanor / Nerdanel

Warnings: It's Fëanor...so...no, should be okay. No blood, no awful things.

Nerdanel grunted upon seeing the man kneeling by the surface of the lake she had been trekking towards tirelessly; annoyance rippled through her like his hands paddled – stupidly, in her opinion – through the water.

Her plan had been to observe and sketch the delicate spectacle of the light wind moving the surface in intricate patterns but that was hardly possible now with that oaf of an Elf splashing around in so undignified a manner; his breeches bore dark stains, she discovered as she drew closer, and the sleeves of his fine coat were soaked. Careless!

“This is not how you wash, my Lord,” she said in a deceivingly sweet tone before even greeting him and almost stumbled back a step when he trained startingly intense eyes on her furiously blushing face, but she stood firm, her stubborn chin stuck out defiantly.

A shiver – simultaneously scorching and ice-cold – ran down her straight spine; he struck her as dangerous and bewitching akin to great heights and dark places that invited one to do something recklessly foolish but undeniably exhilarating.

“Dear maiden,” he replied – his voice smooth as her father’s creations and just as unyielding – with but a hint of a smile, “were I to wash, I would be in a state of undress quite inappropriate for a place where one might be interrupted by curious girls.”

Her cheeks puffed out in an unvoluntary admission of dismay; she resented the implication that it was she who was foiling any monumentally important plans of his when – according to the impatient zeal burning in her chest – it was he who was entirely superfluous and irritatingly disruptive. His very presence – and what an overwhelming one it was – made her skin tingle with emotions she could not quite disentangle while still under the spell of those luminous, unmoving eyes.

“If you are not engaged in a ritual of hygiene,” she snarled, “I would be most grateful to be left alone.”

A long-fingered, elegant hand was indolently waved at the path she had just left to cross over to the pristine body of water.

“I wish you pleasant travels,” the stranger said in a cheery tone drenched in mockery, “may the Valar keep you safe.”

“I need the lake,” Nerdanel shot back, knowing that – had this encounter taken place during her younger, wilder years – she would have loved to shove that impressive frame, uncoiling like the metal her father bent to his will, into the lake without qualms.

The thought of that venerated and skilful smith dampened her fury somewhat though; Mahtan had tempered her – his beloved daughter – with as much devoted patience as he applied to all his works. Nonetheless, just like the metals transforming beneath his strong fingers, Nerdanel remembered the fire and the raw power that had been hammered into another shape without ever being lost.

“And you shall try to take it away with you?” the man asked, his jeering now unveiled and infused with a sense of absurd self-importance, “May I witness this? I am a scholar of all things new and seemingly impossible.”

“Fool,” she muttered under her breath, but he had at least withdrawn his hands from the water and was now drying them off rather unceremoniously on his rich robes, “I am Nerdanel and I desire to study the naturalmovements of the lake’s surface.”

“The smith Mathan’s girl?” The eager surprise made him look suddenly younger and Nerdanel couldn’t deny that he had a fair face – well-balanced and beautifully angled – to look upon.

“I am not a girl,” she replied with vehemence, “but I claim my heritage proudly. Yes, he is my father.”

“I am Finwë’s son,” he then declared pompously.

Thinking aloud, she dismissed the two younger princes for the creature – now standing to his full height – glowering at her struck her as neither wise nor noble, and she did not hesitate to let him share these private musings.

“I am the skilled one,” he ground out, “the smart one.”

Whether he was as he described himself, she could not yet tell, but – as a sculptress and an artist – Nerdanel could no longer deny that the way his brows furrowed into an expression halfway between disdain and bleak anger made the lake’s minute undulations lose all its charm and lure.

Her fingers twitched impatiently; unlike her father who – using pincers and hammers – put his works into the fire to cow them to his will, Nerdanel needed to feel the heat pool in her palms and flow along her fingers. In Mahtan’s world, the flames licked on the outside of his creations, but – to her – it always came from within; she yearned to free it, to get – by carving and moulding – as close to that destructive and creative power as she possibly could.

“Fëanáro,” the man introduced himself and – when her palm met his – she could feel the heat shoot up her veins; there were peril and doom concentrated in his voice, in his smile, in his touch, and she flinched back in instinctive self-preservation.

Trying to perfect the illusion of life in her sculptures, she spent long hours watching things and people in movement to commit that one moment in which they were perfectly still to memory in order to try and emulate the magical intake of breath before accomplishing exceptional feats. This Fëanáro – his mother-name, which in itself was an interesting choice – was fiercely alive, and she was dying to try and recreate that watchful, slightly teasing, but ultimately breath-taking intensity in stone and clay despite the warning thrills echoing in her mind.

She’d never shied away from taking risks where her art was concerned, and she would not be cowed by the air of fatality that surrounded this man like the bittersweet stench of a flower he could not wash off. Maybe it would fade, she thought, and maybe she’d just grow used to it.

His eyes rested on her supplies – sketchbooks and small balls of clay – that she had already taken out of her pack and nodded, apparently finding himself to be exceedingly gracious as he said: “I see you have creative endeavours of your own; I shall content myself with theoretical calculations then.”

She was grateful, not only for the lake that no longer held any sway over her mind and that she felt herself forcedto watch idly now, but also – or especially – for the fact that he did not leave but settled by her side and started scribbling meticulous notes she could not decipher into a worn notebook.

To her surprise, Fëanáro turned out to be a good companion; occasionally, he would draw her attention to a particularly interesting pattern or – leaning over confidently – correct her approximate rendition with bold strokes on the paper in her lap. He had a good eye and a keen understanding; at some point, he volunteered the information that he had also come to study the movements – underwater currents rather than surface ripples – of the water in an endeavour that was more academic than artistic in nature.

Nerdanel shrugged – still a tad vexed and dimly aware of how inappropriate this complicity might have been – but it seemed that Fëanáro was indeed aware of how much she enjoyed his company; they worked well together and – for the first time ever – the abstract thought of having, for more than a few hours, someone other than her father to work with caressed her burgeoning, fertile mind.

Creation was what mattered most to her, it was the very essence of her soul, and this imperious, self-enamoured, cocky Elf not only seemed to understand this, nay, he clearly agreed with her and granted her the respect she had ever suspected she was owed for the strength of her imagination and the scope of her talent.

From that first chance encounter on, she would see him often; they’d explore the Mountains of the Pelóri and Oromë’s forest together, him questing for the roots and origins of all things and her entranced by all the moving parts. He seemed keen on changing the immutable while she attempted to capture and immobilise the fleeting; they were opposites and yet two halves that fit together almost too well not to startle her usually so rational and reliable wisdom into prudence and wariness.

Between their squabbles – for he was at times so haughty and impatient that she felt like throwing stones at him – they thus complemented each other perfectly in ways that would make the good people of Tirion pale. Nerdanel had never been a great beauty who would compete with the golden ladies lounging languidly on superb settees and it felt indescribably vindicating to roam through the wilderness at the side of a prince who challenged her to climb higher and dare more, never minding whether their garments were muddied and torn in the process.

“You’re a wild one,” he called up to her as she lay across a dangerously swaying branch to sketch the exact shadows cast by the wispy leaves only just unravelling; it sounded like a compliment from his lips, and Nerdanel smiled. She smiled a lot these days. Until he disappeared.

“Daughter, meet my new apprentice.”

She froze as if stricken by sudden illness. Had he only indulged her to gain access to her father’s genius? Betrayal sent smouldering tendrils of bare flame racing through her body, and Nerdanel was sure that she must have resembled her own statues so much in this moment that it was little wonder people talked to them, believing them to be alive and merely lost in thought.

Her father’s next words – blurry and vague – ran like rivulets of rainwater down the impassive, impenetrable marble her whole body had petrified into, but then the cursed apprentice spoke, and the shell shattered like ceramic under too much heat.

“Nerdanel,” he greeted, “I’ll try not to neglect our outings henceforth. What a joy to see you though, is your workshop near?”

He seemed earnest enough, but her tongue felt leaden and numb, so she simply jabbed a vague thumb into the direction in which her atelier lay – nestled within her mother’s luscious garden – and wondered whether he’d be interested in seeing it.

No, she thought in a flash of panic, he must never glimpse the bust hidden under sheets stiff and worn with age and use; ever since that first meeting, she had endeavoured to ban his likeness and its haunting charm into the lifeless, controllable medium of wet clay. Unfortunately, her hands had never known the shape of his brows and her fingers had never traced the curve of his lips, so how could she expect them to reproduce those exquisite lines from fantasy alone?

The first few days, she avoided both the loathsome, treacherous intruder and her father’s forge as much as possible, going so far as to lock herself into her own little realm to distract herself by chipping away at stone in hopes that it would lessen the weight pressing down on her own heart as well.

As the silver light of Telperion fell onto her bared shoulders like a caress one evening though, she slipped out of her sanctuary and into her father’s forge, thinking herself safe and alone after having seen everybody leave; Mahtan had casually let her know that he had finished the new set of chisels she had been dreaming about and she merely wanted to dip in and out of his workspace quickly before she returned to that infuriating complexion that haunted her every waking moment by now.

Not a romantic, silly kind of girl, Nerdanel did not question her obsession with Fëanáro – believing it to be purely aesthetical in nature – even though she found herself more inspired and more irritated than ever before by the way his objectively gorgeous frame and visage were animated with an essence so incandescent and unpredictable it took her breath away and made her stomach clench in apprehension of threats unknown.

Now though, as she looked upon his unclothed torso – the very situation he had jokingly referenced that first day – she realised that a bust would never do; he was broad-shouldered and of impressive stature, and she knew that she was indecent for not averting her eyes but the artist in her couldn’t bear foregoing the chance of studying such an example of excellent composition and pristine alignment of limbs.

The light of the dying forge fire mingling with the sheen of the tree falling through the open door turned him into a painting of flaming gold and cool silver; she had never seen anything quite like it and she would never be able to forget this sight.

He looked up at her and the expression of grim focus drained suddenly as his brows lifted in friendly interest.

“Nerdanel, have you come to chase me once more or am I tolerated by your side as I once was?” The smile melting and glowing on his handsome face like the metal they poured and stretched all day long in this place made her heart skip a beat; had it been cocky and arrogant, she would have rebuffed him mercilessly, but the open, almost boyish quality of it mellowed her instantly.

“I am just retrieving the tools my father says he’s made for me,” she replied slowly, hearing how her own words trickled sluggishly from her prickling lips, and tried to lick away the specks of pure heat that danced on them and drove treacherous colour into her high cheeks.

“Ah yes,” he grinned and bent down – granting her a surprisingly fascinating view on his backside – to retrieve the small bundle Mahtan had put aside for her; it was tucked away in their usual spot that they’d used ever since she had been barely big enough to open the heavy door to the forge by herself. When he had learned that his daughter had a creative mind too, he had put a small crate under one of the workbenches and henceforth, they’d exchange small tokens of their crafts by leaving them in it for the other one to find. It was their tradition and now his hands were all over that tender secret.

“I have taken the liberty of adding a few of my own design,” Fëanáro commented lightly when she frowned at the weight of the package he handed to her; untying the knots securing it, Nerdanel found a few interesting chisels – so unexpectedly delicate and expertly crafted that she gasped under her breath – that were, obviously, signed boldly as the work of the prince of the Noldor.

“Thank you,” she muttered and made to leave but a hand – hot and rough with metal flakes, ashes, and dust – wrapped around her wrist before she could take the first step.

“I love learning from your father,” Fëanáro hummed under his breath, “but I could have studied anywhere, you know that.”

“He’s the best,” she replied icily, “you’ve made a good choice.”

“He was the only choice!”

“For his skills.” “For his daughter!”

Her eyes widened; she knew herself to be ruddy and – despite not being entirely devoid of charm and beauty – hardly the kind of woman the first-born son of King Finwë should be wooing, hence, she could only conclude that he was mocking her cruelly.

“You’re a pretty girl,” Fëanáro complimented her with that easy grace that was more dangerous than his worst bursts of anger because it was so utterly winning, “but aren’t they all?”

He gave a short, mirthless burst of hacked-off laughter, expressing his bored disinterest in things that were purely decorative.

“You are useful,” he went on, that burning passion, that was so unmistakeably his, back with a vengeance, “you are fertile.”

And while any other lady of her acquaintance would have been insulted by his words, Nerdanel understood.

“What glorious beauty we could create,” he went on, unbridled force flashing hypnotically in his eyes, “you are one of a kind. So am I. Let those others be wise, noble, and so boring they lull themselves to sleep.”

Before she could answer, his lips were on hers and his hand – dirty as it was – tangled into her dark auburn hair, steering her with as much self-assured calm as he displayed when commanding his pen, his tools, and his whole body.

The groan she gave in lieu of an answer or appropriate reaction was as feral and hungry as her soul; her father’s daughter to the end, she’d plunge into the flames fearlessly to see what shape this ruthless genius would bend her into and – in turn – she’d run her hands over him until she could feel the fire burning deep within lick at her fingertips.

Not long after that, Fëanáro revealed his upcoming betrothal to his tutor’s daughter, and – even though there were many things they could never have foreseen at that moment – they were proven right in one thing, beyond the shadow of a doubt: the things they made together were of unparalleled beauty and charm.

“Nelyafinwë,” Fëanáro declared upon holding his first-born who – despite being perfect – would not stem the tide of rolling fire within his chest.

“Maitimo,” Nerdanel replied, exhausted but happy, staunchly convinced that the miracle they had put forth by strength of mind and through resilience of flesh would herald an eternity of bliss.

How little she had known then and how long she’d regret her naïve faith after she learned that fire and wrath – if not quelled or quenched – could reduce marble and clay to a dust so fine and stubborn, it stayed stuck, ever grinding and irritating, under swollen lids, making her eyes water forevermore.

I have no idea why everything is in bold, but I didn't dare change it for fear that the italics disappear haha...

Dear Irene, I hope you liked this...I am sorry it grew so long (as a reply to "would you be interested"...lol)

Lots of love from me ❤️❤️

@sorisooyaa maybe I can change your mind hahaha

#request #IDNMT answers #fanfiction #Fëanor #Fëanor x Nerdanel #before they were wed #prequel #happy #crack #love #doom

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