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“Lady Curufin, I must remind you that I am still your king and as such you will respect my power,” Finrod hissed, only leaning away from Curufin’s face after speaking.
Curufin laughed, the red rich fabric she wore wrinkling with the force of it. Finrod had caught her outside of the forge, clean after a long day of work. As such she only wore her finery.
A weapon itself, along with her devastating beauty.
Eru she was infuriating, and had been since childhood.
If she ever had a problem, she would run to her father and he’d fix everything. Jealous of another nis’s outfit? Her father would then make her a new set of jewelry. Irissë rightfully called her a cold-hearted and callous jerk? Anarië would then punish her for causing a problem since Fëanaró started an argument with Ñolofinwë over it!
Or the cruelty she’d say to them;that being herself, Irissë and Galadriel. Calling them more boy-ish than her brother Maglor (though Finrod never had a problem with that comparison) or complaining that they were always leaving her out. Then she would get her father and they would also have to play inside, because she didn’t like the mud.
Or saying that they were all marred.
Ai! There were only three times Finrod could say for certain that Curufin actually dealt with a problem herself. The first being any forge work, second; her son’s birth and the third was alqualonde.
Though it was, admittedly, a distracting sight to see her fuller bosom rise with every breath.
“My dear cousin,” Curufin drawled, “who has ever heard of a nis being a king? If that was true then Findis would have taken over Valinor, not your weak-willed father; the source of your power. Aren’t you simply his regent, since he is the so called rightful king of this land?”
She then started to walk forward into Finrod’s space, stalking like the lion in velvet she was. Though Finrod held still. Curufin, for all the ways she tormented her, had never managed to intimidate Finrod. Thus they ended standing face to face, Curufin having to look up to see the blankness of Finrod’s expression.
“Oh Fin-Finrod, you may play at king with your tea-courts, I mean council sessions, with simpering fools and by acting like your brothers, but you’ll never be a king. Nor will anything great come from you line, seeing how you and Nerwen can’t even-“
“Be quiet, you wretched snake! Ai, not even a snake for they do not purposefully antagonize others! If you dare mention my family again, I will throw you out into the cold with only a shift on you,” she shouted back.
Finrod breathed in before acting, for despite Curufin’s lies, she was the king. The cave-hewer; creator of Nargothrond, who ruled over most of economic relations with Dioriath, who found the edain, Nóm and Felagund she was.
“Oh you would like that, seeing me shiver and shake, at your mercy,” Curufin shot out before Finrod could talk.
“Freak,” she hissed, “You’ve always loved playing with my brothers and Turgon, did you wish you were them? Did you think that dressing like a ner would make them respect you? Maybe that’s why you always cried when Arafinwë made you put on a dress or when Amarië offered to fix your makeup.
“Oh poor little Finrod, you know that’s not how the world works”
The hallway was filled with a tense silence for the few moments that came after. A draft breezed in, stirring up the ends of Finrod’s mannish-ly short hair and twirling Curufin’s skirts. Finrod let out a sigh, tired already of her behavior, her comments, and wanting to do something about it.
Curufin’s shoulders and back hit against the wall with a small noise. A gasp left her mouth, the red lipstick matching the growing flush on her face.
“I must remind you again, that I am the King of Nargothrond, not your cousin you could push around. Atya can’t make me indulge you anymore. Indulge your childish insults,” Finrod grasped her wrists and pulled them above her head, “or your stunted and cruel world view.”
Closer, Finrod pushed herself. A sharp rage grew in Curufin’s star-silver eyes but she did not test Finrod’s hold.
“Nargothrond runs how I want it, and I am its king. No pathetic cousin, who follows her brothers begging for scraps of power, can change it. Oh poor little Curufin, seeing me happy and powerful must make you hurt”
Finrod laughed at Curufin’s indignant expression. The mural on the wall stared into Finrod’s eyes, its deep blue color contrasted with Curufin’s dress. She stood out like a blood stain in clear water; out of place.
“You know so little of me Curufin, to think I did this for anyone else’s pleasure. Or that my lords are indulging my fantasy. Some of us—“ Finrod smirked before continuing—“ Some of us, I especially, care more for doing the right thing than existing in a so called right way”
Curufin glared. The cold of the wall seeped into her skin as she calculated her response.
Finrod was unrepentant and wrong, she thought. This is not how life for a nis worked. Of course Finrod, product of the marring as she was, refuted the truth.
You had to follow and obey your family, like iminyë did for imin, despite any ideas of her own. There was no power you could gain yourself as a nis, blood either spilled or birthed was how you won.
Curufin had won. She had a son, carried on the legacy of her house, raised him right no matter how must hate her. Only she alone was dedicated to her Atya’s cause, for how else would she ensure her survival?
“You disgusting failure. How could your mother, naturally kind as they all are, stand you,” she spat out.
“Try to fix me then,” Finrod challenged, “Fuck it out of me if you want, I know you can make whatever tools you need.”
“Oh you are foul,” Curufin then said but leaned forwards to kiss Finrod anyway.
Their lips crashed together, violent like waves in a storm. Desperate is what any outsider would call it. Finrod held onto her hands tightly, an anchor in the rough seas. Curufin bent towards her, straining to meld their flesh together. To create a better, stronger alloy.
Maybe others would call them shameful, for many different reasons, but this was the most free Curufin had felt in centuries. Kissing her enemy, a descendant of Indis, someone who refused to comply to expectation, a elleth king! In that moment she was finally back to Curufin, not Lady or Mother or representative of a cause.
Finrod, well, for Finrod hate and love were close emotions in her heart. She loved her parents and hated how they would never understand. The blinding beauty of the Helacaxë compared to the thousands left dead. Even the Edain, how she loved them and was still angry with how little time they had or understood. Arda itself was something she loved, yet found deeply unfair.
They coiled together as close as they could have gotten, spiraling like snakes before their venom hit the other. For at the end of the day they still hated. Hated each other down to the core of their fea, so much so that when they parted neither knew who drew the blood on their lips.
Finrod panted for a few moments before speaking,“Was that wrong then? I know it was not. Why deny what brings you joy, when no god or father exists here to claim it wrong? With how little time we have left in this land. I know neither of us will live forever, that is the nature of this song.”
For a few moments both elleths were silent, shocked by Finrod’s words. Fore-sight had a strange way of showing up at the worst of times.
“I am a good noldë,” Curufin began, looking down to her left, “I am a faithful daughter who did not abandon my family. I know my place and duty, what a daughter owes to her house and world. Unlike you, you who—you, argh!”
Curufin paused, ashamed to have stumbled over her words. Slowly her face rose to look into Finrod’s eyes. For a moment she stared at her bloodied lips, entranced perhaps by her mark, her ownership over something. Then she continued.
“You teleri whore! The least noldor out of all of our kin! Indis’s broken little copy! Pretending to be king, pretending that the laws of this world can be ignored, will get you nowhere. Do you what happens to nissi who break these laws?”
Finrod knew. She had lived her life with those effects. She loved many who also tried to escape, yet ended up married or in a convent despite their fight.
Aman may have claimed to be a paradise, and it was in someways, but unless it changed then those words rang false. However, she let Curufin scream on.
“Your cousin, that Lúthien can tell you. Locked up by her loving father just for falling in love with a beast. Or how everyone thinks auntie Lawendë is a raving lunatic! Or the thralls my brother has told me about, forced to birth and birth and birth…”
Her chest was shaking with the force of her breaths. An absolutely feral look of rage or maybe, fear, had appeared in her face.
“Curufin—“
“Ai! If your father sees you, he’ll lock you up in Lorien for this…freak show! Your power means nothing in the face of stronger kings. Finrod Felagund, you will die for this like any other nis. You will die chained and afraid”
Her star-silver eyes seemed to sparkle with something, before she looked away. It was a tragedy, the life of any being in Arda. There were so many chances for happiness and as more for destruction.
When you had the choice, Finrod thought while looking at Curufin’s shaking frame, why not choose what we made you happy? Why stick to eating your poison when jam was a reach away?
Finrod sighed, “I will not die chained Curufin, but I will die myself. Will you?”
“I will not die, I will not be forgotten!—“Curufin yanked her hands out of Finrod’s hold—“I won’t be left to rot underneath a tree in Lorien! My family will remember me, remember who I was! An inventor, smith, creator of weaponry that will humiliate Morgoth and his bastard legions!”
She paused, her hands griped tight onto her necklace, the star pushing into to her flesh.
“Who will remember you, Finrod? In a century after your death those stupid animals you love will not tell their children stories of you”
She tried to push Finrod away, tried to escape from her pitying stare. Who was she to pity Curufin?! She had worked her way up to be a master smith, had her son without any ner’s help, and was unconquerable. She was fëanáriel. Finrod, Finrod was a… Finrod would, oh Eru. There was nothing she could do to save her.
“Cousin,” she begged, “You will die for attempting to be a hero” Curufin shook her head slightly.
Then her tone shifted as she continued to speak. “The historians will write you down as Lady Finrod, a disillusioned elleth who tried to be a King. If they even write about you at all. For kingdoms fall but blood lives forever”
“For your oath you will die as well Curufin,” Finrod replied, with a grim determination in her voice.
“That may be true, but at least I shall be remembered and recorded.”
“And you shall only be known as your brother’s sister. Known as your son’s mother, but nothing more than a name on a family tree,” a few tears ran down Finrod’d face as she twisted the knife further.
”Already your own name is sign of that, Curufinwë. Your inventions forgotten, swords left to rust. Necklaces created deemed only a sign of vanity. Oh Lúnamírë, dark jewel. Aren’t you simply that? A pretty trinket in the house of Fëanaró”
After saying that, King Finrod stepped away. She combed through her hair with a hand and took a measured breath. Her chest heaved for a few moments before it calmed. Then, she left the hall.
Perhaps it was a trick of the eye, but the lanterns and their warm seemed to dim after she left.
Curufin seethed. However, back in her own room, all her mirrors were smashed. Someone, not Curufin or Lúnámirë, sobbed underneath the bed’s sheet. The feanorian star rising and falling like a heart beat.