It was an innocent comment from which sprang a great debate, insult, and a bloodied, broken nose.
“Your mom is really a bossy lady,” remarked Feanor. He had seen the Telerin girl arguing with her mother, some babble about the suitable color for a spring dress. She was wearing red -- dark, autumnal, and not to her mother’s liking.
“What is it to you, Noldo?” She turned her nose up at him. Neither was yet to their majority, though she stood a little taller than him. It did not take long for a few of her friends to join her, one wandering up from the nearby pond oft used for fishing and another with a sack of sweets dangling by the satchel’s string. When there were before him some seven other children, he did not slink away, but stood his ground on sheer principal.
“Was it not you who disagreed with her and reasoned her ridiculous before my own ears?” prodded Feanor.
“Perhaps, and yet, no one asked your opinion. Since given to me without my desire for it, shall I give you my opinion of yours?” The girl sized him up with a smirk. “You’re the brat son of the Noldorin King, I believe. The one whose own mother sleeps unwakingly in a garden untended, if the rumors are to be believed.”
Feanor kept his head held high, flinching at the mention of his mother. “Son, yes.” He gave no confirmation of the rest.
She gave him a little shove. “What do you know of mothers? Yours never loved you – she’s a ghost! She hated you at birth so much she chose to die instead!”
Feanor looked as if he might charge the group in his rage, but as he took a step forward in challenge, an older child, nearly an adult, stepped to the forefront, poking Feanor’s chest. “Why not go home and cry to your mother about it? Right, because you cannot!”
The whole group let out a peel of laughter, and with a growl, Feanor leaped onto the eldest one. He was promptly knocked down onto the ground, and two other boys took it upon themselves to grab his arms and pin him to the ground. Had the eldest boy not stopped to crack his knuckles menacingly, he might have seen another figure moving up from the pond. It was a gangly lad, only a few years older than Feanor, but he had some height and muscle on his frame. It was just enough, so that when he punched the older boy square in the jaw, he brought him right onto the ground.
His fist retracted and shot out twice again once he was knelt on the other’s thighs, and he held his blood-stained knuckls back, threatening another. It took only one word from him to scramble the children. “Go.”
“Thank—“
Erestor held up a hand before Feanor could continue, and shrugged. “Ada says I gotta do what I do well. Fightin’, I do well.”
Story Notes:
B1
horror: wraiths, wights, and ghosts
Feanatics: in Aman…the motherless child
life events: Birth
N38
waters: pond
horror: wraiths, wights, and ghosts
Feanatics: in Aman…the motherless child
life events: Birth
N38
waters: pond