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On Himring, above the wasteland below the fortress Curufin thinks about Nargothrond. She thinks about Finrod.
She, the foolish king, had died for what? The idea that hope could exist in the cruel and violent land? This land of ashes that ate whatever it held, tainted the very air they breathed in and twisted their spirits? For a useless, cruel, barbaric monster who would die in a few decades time? For her own sense of moral superiority?
Finrod may have fufilled her oath and showed off her so-called rightousness to the world, but she failed in the end. Nargothrond was gone, Finduilas was gone, Orodreth was gone, Celebrimbor was and soon the spawn of the man she died for would join them. Nargothrond stood once more as an empty cavern, decorated with burn marks and trails of dried blood dancing over the walls. Its murals were broken, it gold plundered, its foundations ruined.
Snow fell down around Curufin, landing and melting in her dark hair. It wasn’t as raven black as her atya’s, but it reflected the dying moonlight like silver swords in the night. It was cut short, unusually so. Some might have said it was for grieving. That was a noldor tradition, but that’s not why she cut it. Long hair was an easy target for errant hands. The memory of those calloused paws, pressing and pressing until her lungs screamed, until her voice was nothing, until the world turned hazy… It was practical to cut it.
Her brothers were all self-centered, as such she was the only one to do so. It was almost if they didn’t want to survive this upcoming battle. (Maybe she didn't...no. She is not Miríel.) In Maedhros’s defense, he looked like he was ready to step into Mandos’s halls anytime soon. His face was consumed by a haunted look, but there was still a fire in his eyes. They burned to look at.
Some would think he was mourning a fellow ner or the great idea of the Union, but Curufin knew he wasn’t. She knew like how plants leached poison from the ground. Every heavy step he took in the creaking halls, making his carved way to the war room wasn’t a sign of some dying part of Matimo resisting where they will fall further. Matimo died long ago. Lunámírë died long ago. When they met there in that room, a shared expression crossed their faces.
There is nothing to mourn unless we fail. If our fires go out—silver and silver—then it was all for naught. The void will lie for us, Its gaping maw ready to take us and wither until It shattered what we were. We will mourn if we win. We will be sorry that none of them could see us with the silmarilion in our hands, to see us triumph over the gods and their dooms. That we mourn. If blood must stain our hands, so be it. There is a great goal at stake then some moriquendi lives.
Although he was her least favorite brother; the greatest egotist of them all hidden under the veneer of Angband, he was perhaps the only one who truly understood their duty. Celegorm for all his virtues had not yet come close to their understanding. For how could he? Maedhros the inheritor of their father’s vision and Curufin the heir of his flame. Celegorm could survive failure. They would become wisps, grand forests fires turned silent in a moment; forges left cold and bereft of their masterpiece, the flame of life swallowed by the unending dark.
They will not fail. This she swears, vows, begs the heavens with the last bit of faith and patience she had. Her atar would be ashamed but she is only a nís, it is natural she would give in to her emotions. Someone in this family had to create a back up. That’s why she carried poison on her (foxglove, water hemlock, nightshade); Enemies and Orcs were abundant. She would either kill them or herself rather than be taken captive.
A harsh wind, echoing screams she long shut out, dragged along the sky. The cold cornered her and reminded her that she was just one animal standing in a fortress a thousand meters tall, and the fall from it's cliff would be deadly. With those words the winter winds bit at her skin. (Was this what the Helcaraxë felt like? Did Finrod once look up at the dark, cloudy sky and shiver the same chill she felt? This thought is not important. Finrod is dead.)
For the first time Curufin wished she wasn’t practical, and that instead she was more feminine and superficial, yet the cut was important. Not only would it help with her survival, but she also looked…right. However she will grow it out once they win to look proper. The noldor take great pride in their hair and it's length. Nerí and nissi wore both of theirs long, though nerí often wore more practical styles. Only one ner that Curufin knew of cut his hair short in Aman. She looked like him.
It was honestly a bit hilarious how her short hair had nearly tricked half of her brothers into thinking she was Atya. Curufin of course wasn’t him, but she was his near perfect copy. She had his silver eyes, sharp nose, angular face, and height. If only she had figured out a way to bind her breasts, she could become nearly his other half. Then again she went by Curufin and not Fëanor, so that was a striking difference.
Curufinwë, Fëanor, never really liked that name. He was proud to be Finwë but something about it was off. Perhaps it was the possession, for it denoted him as of Finwë. Perhaps it was the adjective—could it not have been heir or something that put him closer to his father? Curufin wanted his name, she wanted to consume it and become it (and him), to have his love and power. She was devoted to his memory. So after his death and when asked what her name was, Curufin didn’t care about gender or what her mother named her or what her brothers called her; She was Curufin. Curufin was Curufin and she consumed the legacy of that name because it was hers and his.
She carried it on, through both blood and name. Though her creations were lost and she had no great smithing legacy—her forge remains cold since Nargothrond—this is how her atya and haru will be remembered; So beloved others killed for them, so great that the silmarillion belonged to them. They will be remembered. Curufin may not be known as inventor or smith as she once desired, but she will be known as Kinslayer (she will be remembered), rather than forgotten. The title of murder was for some ill reason, preferable to that of Mother of Celebrimbor.
Damn them all. Damn that moriquendi witch and that blonde teleri whore for whispering their poison in her ears. Curufin was fëanoriel. She was fine with that title, ecstatic even for she is related to Fëanor. Curufin shouldn’t be questioning this. The two of them were wrong about her ill fitting relationship with her natural role in life. Curufin has no problem with it nor with her lack of power. Yes, she has less respect and control than her brothers, but the only reason the two of them would speak badly about it is that they’re jealous of what she has. Yes, Lúthien and Finrod were envious of the power, wisdom, and strength afforded to her by her status of a noldë and fëanoriel.
Anyway, she was the only proper elleth out of all of them; Their opinion did not matter. Curufin sighed into the icey air, the cold rushing in with her inward breath felt like the very knives she trained with. They were not her Angrist, but steel was steel and anything that could take down an enemy was better than death. As such she trained with all she could get her hands on. Swords, knives, axes, spears, anything so there was no chance of failure.
None of her brothers aside from Celegorm practiced with her, or at all until the past month. They would say to her that the wars had given them enough—wars she wasn’t allowed to fight in—but she knew they were lying. Yet despite their hesitance, they did not want her, who had prepared, to go. It was only after arguing the merits of her inclusion and stating the fact she was heir to their father just as they were, did they let her join.
The grey clouds covered the sky for some moments before dissipating like ash. Short strands of her raven hair danced in her periphery, the sun’s golden light playing within them. Her hair still wasn’t shorter than Finrod’s. Finrod, the last time she saw her, had it cropped as short as possible and close to her skull—even more than that beast had. It was unbecoming of an elf but Finrod was an Indisson, and as such breaking norms was in her blood. Curufin had only even seen such short hair on corpses or what counted for the living flesh shambling out of Angband.
Finrod died close to the place. Sauron must have been mad that he couldn’t humiliate her by cutting her locks. Curufin let out a huff at that image. Those jadeite eyes of hers would harden and she’d spit the hidden venom held within her fëa at that Ümaia. Finrod would flaunt the fact he knew nothing about her; She was always so proud of defying others expectations and acting without care of the order of the world.
Finrod was prideful, headstrong, determined yet so kind. Curufin bets while her group was being torn to pieces, their very souls ripped apart, that Finrod soothed them with her strong words about their righteous cause. Oh how she’d love to hear those words of her death bed, ordering her to stay and live; Curufin would not get better. Then Finrod would realize how little control over the world she had, how they all had, but the dream is good despite that. Her hands would trace the wounds marring Curufin’s face, dripping blood down onto her chapped lips, and call her handsome. But then this image shifts.
Her breath catches in her throat and there is his—Beren’s—hands on it, pushing down and whispering. At first she can't make out those words, only the vicious tone; Mocking her, insulting her, demeaning her. Then through the pulsing of her blood she heard him speak. “You are powerless, an animal crawling and begging in the floor for dignity and respect. Do you truly believe you’d get anywhere letting the world step over you?” A flash and he is gone, replaced by someone long dead. “Letting them trample you into the elleth lying under the tree in the garden, beautifully fading into the background?” Her father spits. He sits over Curufin, fingers wrapping around Curufin’s throat and strangling. Fëanor looks down with disgust and anger, flames on his arms and caressing Curufin’s skin. Off to the side Finrod stands tall in the melting woods. The sun halos her like a god, like Námo with his judgment on the waves proclaiming the Doom. Maedhros says nothing as he looks down upon Curufin, blankness over comes his face and he cannot muster up any pity.
“You are mine—me and yet he, more barbaric and bestial than you, lesser, somehow gained strength and power and you still have nothing.” The spirit of fire hisses and crackles. His breath fans over Curufin’s skin, burning the flesh there. Maedhros turns away, unimpressed as he always has been with Curufin—the weakest of them all. The worthless daughter who could not even do her job and keep the heir with them. “You are nothing Curufin, no one, unless you take something” Atya ends. Tighter he grips and the world fades to black.
“How pathetic” Finrod, beloved dearest of Wisdom High-Above and Out of Reach, whispers as Curufin awakes from that nightmare. She pants, gently tracing her throat with shaking hands. Irmo is cruel. He inflicted this…this perverted illusion on her. It must be a sign they are close to achieving their goal. Why else would the Valar not want them to regain what is theirs? The gods were already possessive of what they couldn’t have, it makes sense they would try to stop her and her kin from getting what they’ve always deserved.
If not, then it is a lingering infection from Finrod. With the same mouth that soothed her companions in their death, she dripped poison into Curufin from the few sinful kisses they shared. That is why Curufin is like this. Truly the line of Indis ruins everything they get their hands on; kingship, political relationships, her son, herself. (But then again, Curufin has always been rotten, ever since she was born. Why else would she hate the title of daughter and her eru-given flesh?)
It is shameful to snakes to compare Finrod to them, rude even for those creatures follow the natural hierarchy of the world and do not linger behind in stained memories unlike she. Finrod was like a bug, an emerald creature that bored into the wood of Arda. She marred it, destroyed the world for a taste of a life she could never had. Then heavy on its sap she died, leaving behind a rotten carcass for the rest of them to live in.
Standing in the chill of Himring, Curufin comes to the conclusion that there is not much more life can give her, nor can she give it, aside from the silmarillion. She has given her blood in a thousand different ways, (body, creation, child, bodies in the ocean water), her fire to their cause, and her will to the future (to betrayal). And what has this world given her? A wooden body like the tree Finrod once loved that was rotted by parasites, her own beloved son Celebrimbor, and her own sickness. Now she was left standing, leafless and bereft of most purposes in life. Her forges are cold; Fëanor's heir dead, blood streaked across the red horizon—a omen foretelling tomorrow. She had no place in this ecosystem anymore. The only role she could play was kindling, and by her atya’s will, she will burn. Just like her brothers, like her father, like she always wanted to. Menegroth as kindling, her own aching soul as the spark.