Beyond Canon
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Airenen was a wonderful liquor -- it was the only one that could be overindulged in without the terrible aftereffects that most had. Instead of causing headaches and stomach cramps, there was only a little haze, but a pleasant one. The sound of Nerdanel calling up to her son was not as upsetting as it might have been if he had downed a liter of brandy instead of Airenen. “Coming, coming,” he mumbled as he pushed back the blankets. He lifted the bandage on his torso and found that the wound had healed over nicely, despite his picking at it over the past week. The skin was nicely pink around it, no longer red and swollen, and the scab that had formed looked as if it would hold.

Celegorm tumbled out of bed and snorted as he recalled the dreams he had had under the influence of the Airenen. His pants were a bit of a challenge, as he could not seem to find the holes. As soon as he figured out that he was attempting to put his legs into a shirt, things got much better.

He stumbled on the stairs, but managed to find the floor. His mother gave him one look up and down and shook her head. “Turgon promised me that you had not had the entire bottle.”

“He lied,” said Celegorm flippantly as he dumped himself into a chair. “What do you need, mother dear?”

Nerdanel gave Celegorm another hard look and then opened up the front door. “I need to go to the market. Everyone else is either off hunting or watching Fingon at the competition. You need to watch your brothers.”

“Which ones?”

“The Ambarussas – which others would need watching?” questioned Nerdanel back.

“I think all of them, depending. Maybe not Maglor,” rescinded Celegorm as Nerdanel wrapped a shall around her shoulders. “Maglor seems pretty able to watch himself. Even so… where are you going?” he asked as his mother exited the house.

“To the market,” she reminded him. “Your brothers are in the other room. Keep an eye on them. An eye on each,” she said when Celegorm squinted one of his eyes shut. For a moment, she reconsidered her decision to have him watch the two youngest, but decided that any danger that might be around was not very great, and that even in his state Celegorm could handle the task. As soon as the door was shut behind her, the pair of red headed twins ran up to Celegorm from the sitting room and stood before him.

“Are both of you here, or am I seeing double?” he asked, quite serious.

“We want to go outside and play,” announced one of them.

The other bottle that Turgon had left was sitting on a desk in the hall, and Celegorm reached for it. It took three tries to actually grasp it. “Sure,” replied Celegorm. “Do you know where the uncorker is for this?” he asked. He waved the bottle in front of them by the neck.

“Mother said not to let you have that,” they said in unison.

Celegorm did not look very amused. “Do you want to go outside or not?” The corkscrew was in his hands in less than a minute. “Good boys,” he said as he opened the door and allowed them to scamper down the stairs into the yard. He soon followed, and dropped down onto the bottom step with his bottle and the corkscrew. His inability to remove the cork as his brothers chased one another and played their games eventually led to him rolling the bottle under the porch for later. As an afterthought, he tossed the corkscrew underneath as well.

“Come play with us!” insisted the elder twin.

“Play ‘Competition’ with us!” called out the other. “You can be Fingon!”

“Ugh, no.” Celegorm yawned and rubbed the back of his neck. “Wait... Fingon is too old to compete,” Celegorm belatedly recalled. “How can everyone be off watching him?”

“He dances now,” informed the younger twin. The elder gave a twirl.

“Oh, no. No, stop that. ‘Competition’ is a horrible game,” he told them. “Fingon is a horrible person,” he added without any thought of self-censorship. “Play something else.”

“We can play ‘Valar’!” announced the twins in unison. “You can be Orome because you have a dog!”

“Maybe later,” said Celegorm as he lay down across the bottom step. “Tired now.”

“Awww.” The younger one pouted until he saw Celegorm’s eyes close. He motioned for his twin to follow him, and the pair cautiously approached their older brother.

The elder poked Celegorm’s shoulder. He only snorted and made some sort of indiscernible noise in his sleep. Then they lifted up his eyelids, one after the other, and looked at the glassy, blank stare for a moment before they giggled and scampered off in the direction of the woods. A few times they would stop and check to make sure they were not being pursued, but finally, they slipped beneath the bows of a tree and entered into the vast woods.

Under their bare feet, the light dusting of snow was scattered as they played a game of tag with one another. The breeze diminished here with the protection of the trees around them. They had no perception of how far they had ventured into the forest, which meant that they just continued to scamper further from their grandfather’s house and further into the unknown.

Despite the constant light of the two trees keeping Valinor bright at all times, the shadows were deepening, darkening, and closing in on the twins. Too caught up in the mirth of the expedition, neither of them noticed that they had reached a point where the winds had picked up and the trees were grown close together, in order to comfort each other.

When the sudden realization came to them both that they were much further in than they wished to be, they turned around, only to find that they were being watched.

Standing in their path was Melkor, a long, dark cape drawn closed and draping down from his shoulders. There was a pack of wolves gathered around him, though they appeared to bring no menace. In fact, they were quite calm, and the leader of the pack was leaned against Melkor, grinning happily, as he was scratched behind his ears.

Melkor held the gaze of the twins, who were frozen in place, for some time before saying to them, “Did your parents never warn you not to enter the forest alone? It can be a very menacing place for little boys. There are things here which you may not want to see.” As Melkor delivered this last line, he reached behind his neck to draw up the hood of his dark cape so that it covered his head.

Sensing the grave danger they were in, the twins ran as fast as they could from the tall hooded figure, saying nothing ever of their encounter to anyone.
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