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If anyone asked later, he’d say, quite truthfully, that he hadn’t planned any of it. The plan had been to go hunting.
He wasn’t supposed to be hunting right now – the silver light of Telperion was just starting to wax, and he was supposed to be sleeping – but the advantage to a first story bedroom was the ease with which he could slip out the window, whisper thought the courtyard, and tiptoe out the gate.
It would mean half dozing through Maitimo’s begetting day tomorrow, but it would be worth it if it meant another chance to run after the horns of Oromë through the pale shadows of the wood. The Hunt would ride close tonight, and his legs were stronger than ever before. If he could run just a little faster to join the wild calls –
That was the plan.
It did not in any way change the plan if, while slinking as quietly as possible through the courtyard, that his ears, trained to catch the faintest whisper of prey, could most definitely hear the shouting coming from his parents’ window on the second floor. If he listened closely, he could probably catch the words despite the muffling glass.
He did not want to listen closely.
It did not in any way change the plan. In fact, it only made him want it more; he wanted to move faster, to slip through the gate and run until his legs were long and strong enough to catch one of Oromë’s horses and pull himself into the saddle, to cry out with the hunt until all other sounds were lost in the noise.
It didn’t have to be his problem. It was not as if it was his brothers’ fighting; no one could possibly suggest he had any responsibility to make this his problem. It would almost certainly only make things worse if he did attempt to interfere.
And things would be better by morning. It would all be over by the time he slipped back down the path, whether he was covered in glory or covered in mud. It would be as if it never happened by the time the Trees' light shifted to gold.
There was still a nagging sense in the back of his mind that he was abandoning some responsibility.
The gate creaked temptingly in the wind.
He made it deeper into the forest than he had ever gone before – made it to where the trees seemed to scrape the sky and the roots of the great trees came up almost to his waist, and he wove around them as he ran.
But as fast he was, he wasn’t fast enough to outrun the nagging worry in the back of his mind that finally pushed itself to the surface.
Tomorrow was Maitimo’s begetting day, and Amil and Atar were shouting in their room.
Which meant that no one was in the kitchen to prepare the celebration.
Like the shouting, it wasn’t his problem. No one would even begin to think to blame him for it. There was no reason he couldn’t just keep running toward the sound of hoofbeats up ahead. No reason he couldn’t keep racing the rushing water of the stream he could hear echoing somewhere beyond the tall, pale roots. No reason he couldn’t -
No reason he couldn’t finally stutter to a stop at the place where the stream finally became visible as it curved, and he finally admitted to himself that while he might be fast enough to catch up to the hounds of Oromë now, he was not yet swift enough to outrun the guilt.
If it had been for anything or anyone else -
But it was for Maitimo.
He could hear the howls of the dogs so closely now. He could just see the flicker of movement up ahead as a tail vanished through the silver trees.
He could catch up. If he had been at all able to convince himself that Maitimo would do the same in his place, he would have caught up.
But Maitimo was infuriatingly responsible and infuriatingly selfless and sometimes just plain infuriating, but less so lately, and –
And if he hadn’t heard the shouting, he could have run and caught up and probably been exhausted enough that he didn’t even notice the strain in Maitimo’s smile tomorrow.
But he had heard. And he had stopped. And the howls were getting progressively farther away.
He leaned against a tree to catch his breath.
The bush in front of him swayed again, and a dark snout that looked high enough to rest on Tyelkormo’s head peeked out.
“Huan,” he said respectfully. Great hound, since he didn’t know this particular one’s name, though he did recognize him; he had gotten just close enough to catch glimpses of Orome’s hounds before, and he could have sworn he had caught this one looking back once or twice in an encouraging sort of way.
He was more confident of that after watching what the hound did next; the dog sprang free of the bush and leaned down to prod at Tyelkormo’s shoulder hopefully, as if trying to push him toward the hunt.
“I can’t,” he said, casting one last longing look into the depths of the forest. “I shouldn’t have come this far. I have other prey to be attending to tonight.”
He wasn’t sure if he could properly count baking a cake as a hunt but it helped to think of it that way. He wasn’t abandoning the pursuit; he was just turning his attention to more urgent prey.
And maybe if he thought of it as a hunt he’d have a better chance of figuring out how to actually do it.
Huan considered this for a moment before leaning forward again to sniff at him thoughtfully.
He couldn’t afford to wait to see what the hound would make of it; if he could smell the disappointment slowly giving way to determination or just a thin layer of earth and sweat. “Someday,” he promised, to both Huan and himself. ”Soon.”
Then he turned back to his own trail and took off running once more.
It only took him a few paces to realize Huan was right behind him.
He stopped. “I’m not – I’m not going the right way for you. Your hunt’s the other way.”
Huan regarded this patiently and then pointedly nudged him again, this time in the direction of home.
He did not have enough time to argue with one of Oromë’s hounds.
He took off running again.
Breaking in through Makalaure’s window was pitifully easy. The latch had been broken ever since the Harvest Festival, and Makalaure, always so quick to fuss over the slightest nick to his precious instruments but a little careless over most everything else, hadn’t bothered to fix it.
Getting in did end up involving breaking off said latch entirely, but he did so without difficulty before slithering in and making the short drop to the floor.
He couldn’t hear the shouting from Makalaure’s room. Possibly because it was on the other side of the courtyard from his parents’ room, possibly because Atar had done something to Makalaure’s room to keep them all from being woken up every time Makalaure jolted awake with a great idea, or possibly because Makalaure was apparently in the middle of one such great idea, and it involved a respectable number of war drums.
He threw the window latch at Makalaure’s head.
His brother’s hand snaked up to bat it to the floor before he twisted around with a frown.
“You have a problem,” Tyelkormo informed him, neatly dropping the issue of Maitimo’s begetting day into someone else’s lap.
“You have a dog,” Makalaure said, eyes locked on where Huan had just stretched his neck up a little to fit his head through the window and begun rather fruitlessly to try to worm his way in.
Tyelkormo frowned. “No, I don’t.” That was quite true – Huan had followed him, but that didn’t mean Huan was his - Huan was probably his own and possibly Oromë’s, and either way quite likely to be offended by any statements otherwise.
Makalaure gestured at where Huan had somehow managed to wriggle through the window and thump triumphantly to the floor.
Tyelkormo narrowed his eyes a little because he was quite sure Huan looked smaller than he had before, closer to Tyelkormo’s shoulder than his head, and a little – less – somehow than he had been in the forest, as if he had cloaked some part of himself somewhere, shrunk in on himself in more ways than one.
Which possibly explained at least part of Makaluare’s confusion but didn’t really refute Tyelkormo’s point, so he ignored it and returned to the most urgent thing at hand, namely: the begetting day.
Makalaure’s expression indicated that he didn’t agree with Tyelkormo’s priorities, but that was Makalaure’s problem, not Tyelkormo’s, and there were only so many problems he could solve for his brothers at one time.
The problem with delegating the problem to Makalaure – other than the fact his brother was still strangely hung up on the dog issue - was that Tyelkormo hadn’t been the only one avoiding rest after the Mingling. Tyelkormo didn’t know how long the idiot had been doing it for, but his brother was plainly riding the last waves of desperate energy before the crash.
They would need to appeal for further assistance.
. . . Which was probably for the best, actually, since Carnistir was the only one who could actually bake unless Huan was hiding talents hitherto unrevealed.
He probably was, come to think of it, but he doubted they had to do with baking.
The problem with waking Carnistir was that it took several minutes of sustained effort and a short and uncharacteristically shriekingly bad solo from Makalaure to accomplish.
The problem with that was that it not only woke a horrifically grumpy Carnistir, it also roused Curufinwe next door.
And both of them refused to do anything useful once they spotted Huan until they had gotten some kind of explanation (mostly Carnistir) and gotten to pet him (unfortunately both of them).
“He wanted to come,” Tyelkormo explained as briefly as possible. “ . . . and I don’t know if you can pet him. I don’t know of any elves that have tried.”
It turned out they could pet Huan, and that Huan was undisguisedly excited about this, which admittedly distracted Tyelkormo well enough that he didn’t notice Curufinwe sneaking off to wake up the Ambarussa to help plead his case that he should be allowed to help with the illicit baking too.
Tyelkormo looked at Makalaure.
Makalaure looked at Tyelkormo.
They both looked at where Curufinwe was heaving in deep breaths in order to protest the unfairness of being left out, and at the two sleepy bundles of chaos who would almost certainly start crying if someone started shouting.
“Sure,” Tyelkormo agreed. “You can break the eggs.”
“Eggs!” Pityo said cheerfully.
“Eggs, eggs, eggs, eggs!” Telvo agreed before he finally noticed the presence of Huan. Sensibly, unlike his brothers, Telvo accepted reality as it was, only asking, “Ride the puppy?”
. . . They probably could.
“No,” Makalaure said firmly. “You’ll hurt his back.”
Tyelkormo was not actually sure that was possible and was pretty sure that Huan looked disappointed by this proclamation, but he probably owed it to Makalaure to listen to him at least a little in front of the littlest ones.
He swung both of them up onto his hips as a consolation prize, huffing at the weight. He felt a little vindicated by the way Huan nosed at them a little disconsolately.
“I’ve got them,” he said stubbornly when Makaluare automatically moved to take one. “Let’s do this.”
“I hate you so much,” Carnistir grumbled.
He was heading to the kitchen, though, so he figured it would be fine.
Makalaure successfully stayed awake long enough to get the necessary kitchen equipment off the high shelves.
Then Carnistir made the mistake of not giving him something to do for long enough for him to sit down, with the natural result that when they turned around, he was fast asleep.
“We could let him nap for a while,” Tyelkormo conceded reluctantly. Getting the knives down had mostly been what he had needed for Makalaure for anyway.
“If I’m awake, he’s awake,” Carnistir snarled, and. Well.
They really needed Carnistir awake.
Tyelkormo went to look for some water to pour on his brother.
Helpfully, Huan went over to sit on him before he had to.
That woke up Makalaure quickly enough.
Curufinwe had found a roll of cloth from . . . somewhere . . . and had decided to make a sign with it to wish Maitimo a happy begetting day.
The cloth looked suspiciously like the sheets from Carnistir’s room, but they weren’t Tyelkormo’s sheets, and it was keeping Curufinwe away from the knives, so Tyelkormo thought it was probably fine.
He wasn’t entirely sure what Curufinwe was planning to write with, and was also slightly uncertain that Curufinwe could spell, but the sign was just extra, so that didn’t really sound like his problem either.
Unlike Pityo, who was very efficient at breaking eggs, but not at all good at doing it in the “right way,” at least according to Carnistir.
Tyelkormo had to admit that it made sense to want the yolk and the shell in separate bowls, but they’d picked all the little bits of shell out eventually, so it was probably fine.
. . . Although in hindsight, maybe letting Huan lick the pieces of shell out of the bowl with surprising daintiness hadn’t been an idea Amil would approve of. But it wasn’t as if Huan was a normal dog, and he had looked so pleased with himself for helping. It was probably fine.
They had run out of things that needed breaking, though, which meant it was time to find something else for Pityo and Telvo to do before they got too creative.
“Sticky,” Telvo said, holding his hands up to Caranthir. Said hands were covered in . . . something, he was honestly unsure what. Maybe whatever had been in that jar that had fallen over earlier.
“Definitely sticky,” he agreed, looking over his brother’s hands with a critical eye. “Good word, Telvo.”
“Help him with it,” Carnistir hissed from where he was beating the batter like it was a particularly annoying cousin.
He looked back at Telvo. “Do you want help with the stickiness?”
Telvo licked his hand cautiously. “No,” he said, chubby cheeks lighting with delight at the taste.
“Telvo!”
Oh, right. “Telvo, share with Pityo,” Tyelkormo reminded him.
Telvo obligingly offered his other hand to Pityo for licking.
“Tyelkormo!” Carnistir said, and he really should probably stop hissing at this point, it was getting loud enough that he might as well go ahead and shout. “It’s not clean.”
Cleanliness was something he normally only took stock of at the end of an activity, not the middle, but he had to concede that cooking was not like hunting, and that Carnistir’s expertise currently both outweighed his own and was less expendable than the dubious help of two toddlers.
Especially since Carnistir’s temper was already hanging by a thread after Makalaure had, once again, somehow managed to fall asleep. Tyelkormo was starting to get concerned about just how many nights Makalaure had spent awake.
That made him the oldest brother involved, thought, and however necessary it might be for Carnthir’s temper and the general principle of cleanliness he did not fancy trying to take the sticky sweet stuff away from the twins.
“Come on, runts,” he said cheerfully as he scooped them up. “Let’s get you to Maitimo, hm?”
Curufinwe looked up sharply. “I thought this was a surprise?”
“Oh, it is,” Tyelkormo assured him. “This is a diversionary tactic.”
For everyone involved, really, but that was a fact no one else particularly needed to know.
He showed up at Maitimo’s door with two hyper toddlers still busily licking each other’s hands. Why they were licking Pityo’s hands, he was less sure, but it was keeping them quiet, so he wasn’t about to stop them. Squirmy was bad enough without adding shouty to the mix.
The door was thankfully cracked, so he could just slide it open with his shoulder instead of pounding on it with his foot until Maitimo came running.
There was a small chance his eldest brother was asleep, but he had glimpsed the candlelight when he’d been sneaking through the courtyard, and Maitimo’s room was closer than anyone’s to the shouting. The odds had been in his favor that the scene would be exactly as it was: Maitimo bent over a book by his desk at the window, shoulders hunched a little too high around his ears.
He turned as soon as the door open and sprang up when he saw who it was. “Tyelkormo! What happened?”
“They had a nightmare,” he said, since they were too busy to contradict him, “so I got them a snack. And now they’re like this, and I’m making it your problem instead of mine.”
Maitimo was already easing the twins from his arms. “You can bring them straight here next time,” he offered.
“I’m not completely incompetent,” he snapped. All present evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. “I just can’t get them back to sleep.”
“I know,” Maitimo said. “I didn’t mean it like that; I only meant you need your rest. You’re growing so fast.”
The last bit was a little wistful, but Tyelkormo couldn’t imagine what for; if there was anyone who’d had their share and more of growing, it was Maitimo.
Still, he preened a little, stretching his spine to show off just how far he had grown.
“See?” Maitimo smiled. “Taller all the time.”
Unfortunately, the stretch had shaken loose a yawn.
Maitimo’s smile softened. “Go get some rest. I’ve got them.”
He nearly argued before he remembered that was the whole point of all this.
“Alright,” he agreed.
When he left, he was careful to close the door.
If there was shouting, there was shouting, and if they heard it, they heard it, but there was no reason for Maitimo to be making it easier for the sounds to reach.
He got back to the kitchen just as a neglected Curufinwe fell off the stool he’d climbed up on and knocked a sack of flour into the fire.
Tyelkormo dove forward, but Huan got there first, lunging ahead and pushing Curufinwe backward from the blossom of flame. Tyelkormo turned for the pump instead, grabbing the bucket beneath it and throwing the water forward onto the hearth.
With little to burn, the fire died as quickly as it blossomed. It was fine. They were fine.
And Makalaure was awake again, apparently, and looked wild enough around the eyes to remain so for some time, so that was something.
He was whisper shouting, which was less ideal, because while it was reasonably quiet, it was still shouting, and Tyelkormo still had vivid memories of the time Makalaure had gotten stressed enough that his shouting had broken half the windows in the house.
The current topic of the shouting seemed to be something about waking him the next time they wanted to burn the house down around their ears, and it didn’t seem to require much response, so he turned his attention to more important matters.
They could . . . probably . . . manage to clean the hearth up well enough that no one would notice the scorch mark. It was a stone fireplace, there was no way they had done any permanent damage.
It was fine.
Probably.
He didn’t particularly want to start dumping water over it until he was sure they wouldn’t need to start another fire, though, and he very much suspected they would need to start another fire.
“You want in on the arson, got it,” he told Makalaure. That made him sputter for some reason, but at least that gave Tyelkormo an opportunity to add, “So can we just stick the cake pan in here, or . . . ?”
That got Carnistir to bustle over from where he’d been frozen in horrified shock and do whatever actually needed doing to the cake pan with Makalaure coming with him to supervise.
He’d had no idea Makalaure liked fire so much. Huh.
Or he might just be worried about their safety or something, but he’d give his brother the benefit of the doubt and assume it was the less boring thing.
He didn’t seem to be needed to get the fire stoked back up, so he turned to Huan and Curufinwe.
“Thanks,” he told Huan quietly, brushing a hand over the hound’s fur to check for scorch marks.
Huan whuffed happily.
Curufinwe had recovered enough to fiddle with some kitchen implements to make something that looked suspiciously like it would fit right into their father’s workshop.
On second glance, that was definitely a gear, so at least half of this was stuff that probably had been nicked from their father’s workshop.
“What are you making?” he asked, crouching down. It looked like the fire hadn’t caught quite all the flour because he was definitely getting a thin layer of it on his boots right now, but that was a problem for later.
“It’s to hang the sign up with,” Curufinwe said enthusiastically.
They could just grab a couple of chairs and hang it up themselves, but this would keep Curufinwe busy, and it wouldn’t make his face crumple up like telling him to stop would.
Huan seemed to have settled in to watch him too, so he could probably trust that taking his eyes off Curufinwe for a few seconds wouldn’t lead to immediate disaster.
He turned around to see Makalaure watching the baking pan with uncharacteristic grimness, and Carnistir attacking a bowl of butter and sugar, presumably in pursuit of frosting.
He drifted closer, one hand reaching out –
Carnistir smacked his hand with the spoon.
Fortunately, some of the proto frosting had crept up the handle. Tyelkormo licked his smarting hand contentedly.
“You’re as bad as the twins,” Carnistir muttered.
He huffed in offense. “I came first,” he reminded his brother. “So what you really mean is that they’re as bad as me.”
Hm. Speaking of the twins and their example of sharing . . .
He snuck his other hand into the bowl and ducked back before Carnistir could give more than an outraged shout.
He retreated back to the corner of the kitchen where Huan was watching with interest and held his hand out in offering.
He thought Huan had probably earned it. For Curufinwe, and for being there, and for following him in the first place, whyever he had done it.
Huan regarded it carefully before letting his tongue sneak out for a small taste.
The next lick was much more enthusiastic.
By the time morning came, they had an only slightly lopsided cake and a beautifully hung sign.
If they also had stubborn soot stains clinging to the fireplace, puddles of water clustered around the pump, and tiny gears from the smashed remains of Curufinwe’s doomed and possibly malicious prototype machine stuffed inside the nearest cupboard, that was no one’s business but their own.
The point was that when Maitimo came down the stairs with two grumpy toddlers clinging to his arms, Tyelkormo was ready with a cake snatched from Carnistir and a wide grin.
“Happy begetting day!”
Maitimo blinked at the chorus of voices.
“I’m the one who actually made it,” Carnistir grumbled, arms crossed.
Tyelkormo did not dignify this with a reply, especially as the pan was still warm enough that it was distinctly uncomfortable against his hands.
Pityo tugged at Maitimo’s tunic. “We helped,” he said confidently.
“You – “ Carnistir caught himself. “Helped,” he conceded with a sigh.
Maitimo’s eyes flicked back to Makalaure. They shared one of their looks that always seemed to imply about a dozen things Tyelkormo couldn’t be bothered to figure out before Maitimo’s mouth twitched into a delighted smile.
“It’s wonderful,” he said. “Thank you, Carnistir. And the rest of you. I can tell you worked very hard.” His eyes swept over the rest of the kitchen. “Is everything – “
Makalaure hastily began strumming his lute in a traditional and coincidentally very loud celebratory tune. Maitimo stopped talking.
Tyelkormo set the cake down with some relief and stepped back so that someone else could cut it. The others circled around it quickly, which meant he was the only one who saw his parents at last entering the room.
They were together, at least. And his mother’s hair was braided in the complicated way it only ever was when she let Atar do it.
He slipped over to them before the others could notice . . . and before his parents could take in the full extent of the damage.
“We’ll clean it up,” he promised preemptively.
“You will,” his mother said firmly, but she looked more amused than upset. “How early did you wake up for this?”
He hummed non-committedly. He didn’t think ‘yesterday’ was the answer she was looking for.
His mother just shook her head. “I’ll get plates,” she promised. “Before your brothers just start eating out of the pan. Feanaro, could you start something that isn’t cake?”
“Certainly,” he agreed. His gaze, unlike Amil’s, was locked on the soot stains around the fire that were still clearly visible despite their best efforts to clean them up.
Tyelkormo winced. “We were careful,” he promised.
Which was . . . maybe an exaggeration. But they had tried.
“We’ll have more lessons on how to cook safely,” his father said, which was not quite an acceptance but was good enough as a compromise. “Starting now. Did you leave any eggs unsmashed?”
“Pityo couldn’t reach all of them,” he assured his father, leading the way to where the remaining eggs waited. He shifted uncomfortably after passing them over. “Is . . . is everything okay now?” His eyes darted over to his mother’s hunt through the possibly slightly disheveled cupboards. Hopefully she wouldn’t find the prototype. He had a horrible suspicion it had still been twitching despite Huan’s excellent efforts at smashing it.
Curufinwe’s concerning penchant for cursed artifacts aside, he thought things might be alright now. The hair was a good sign.
But people weren’t always as easy as animals when it came to understanding what they meant.
His father stiffened for a moment before deflating. “So you heard that,” he said, carefully keeping his voice below the babble of the others.
Tyelkormo decided it was best to be tactful about just how many of them had heard just how much of that.
“The younger ones didn’t,” he said.
His father winced. “I’m sorry.”
Tyelkormo shrugged.
“It is alright,” his father promised. “Your mother and I may not agree on everything, but that won’t ever change anything important.”
His father gripped his shoulder until Tyelkormo nodded.
“Good.” He reached around Tyelkormo for the butter that had been churned yesterday.
Tyelkormo blinked when he saw what was behind the dish.
There was another pan. A pan with a perfectly even cake, just waiting to be warmed and frosted.
Oh.
His father saw him looking and smiled. “I’m glad it didn’t get smashed in your adventures this morning. Let’s save that one for lunch, shall we?”
Tyelkormo nodded mutely, heart suddenly much lighter.
It hadn’t been his problem after all. He could have slipped right out the gate, run until he caught Orome’s hunt, slipped back in the morning, and everything would have been fine. He could have been yawning despite the buzz of success humming through his veins for entirely different reasons, and there still would have been cake and a proper celebration.
But there would be other nights to run. Other chances to prove himself. And he couldn’t entirely regret the memory of what he had done instead.
After all, now there were two cakes.
There was also a very large hound still sitting happily and almost suspiciously unobtrusively in the corner, which his father’s eyes finally caught on.
“Tyelkormo,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose, “why is one of Oromë’s hounds in our kitchen?”
Tyelkormo had considered that matter himself.
“Carnistir wouldn’t let him lick the bowl of frosting, so I think he wants to stay until he gets his share of cake.” Tyelkormo’s own small offering of frosting was not quite a sufficient prize after such a long hunt.
Hopefully Orome wouldn’t show up looking for him any time soon. Even with two cakes, he wasn’t sure they had quite enough cake to split it with a Vala and the rest of his hunt.
“And how,” his father said slowly, “did he get here in the first place?”
“Through Makaluare’s window,” he said promptly. “The latch broke last festival.”
His father looked at him.
Tyelkormo looked back.
Huan yipped affirmatively.
“He was very helpful with the cake,” Tyelkormo added which was maybe a slight exaggeration, but - “And he made sure Curufinwe didn’t get burned by the fire.”
His father quite visibly bit back at least three sentences before he said, “He can have some cake. And I’ll fix the window. But next time, you will tell me if a Maia is trying to enter our house. No matter what I am doing.”
“Alright,” Tyelkormo agreed easily. He didn’t think it would come up, but – well, he still wasn’t sure what about his own ‘hunt’ Huan had been so interested in, exactly, and if Huan did end up liking the cake, he supposed it might be relevant.
His father still didn’t look happy, exactly, but he squeezed Tyelkormo’s shoulder again, and Amil was smiling proudly at them from across the room, and that made Atar’s shoulders loosen a little more, so –
So maybe things really were alright after all.
Or, if not alright – if a little scuffed and scorched and stained with a few too many things hastily stuffed away to be hidden in the cupboards – maybe they were close enough. They could clean the rest up later.
They had forever, after all.
And in the meantime, he needed to go claim his and Huan’s share of cake.