Chapter Text
Celegorm woke to the sounds of cheerful humming, followed by the squeal of a kettle and Finrod muttering, “oh no no no, you be quiet!” at the appliance.
He rolled over, propping himself up on the arm of the couch.
“Oh, good morning,” said Finrod, pouring the boiling water over a coffee cone. “I didn’t wake you up, did I?”
“Nah, don’t worry about it,” Celegorm answered. Although he and Curufin hadn’t closed up the brewery until two a.m. last night, and although he’d slept cramped on his brother’s couch, he felt refreshed. He could not recall the last time he’d woken up on January 1st without an ache between his temples and a churning hollowness in his gut.
“What time is it?” he asked Finrod.
“Ten-twenty,” Curufin answered, coming out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist. “You better clean that pillow,” he said, pointing, “you were drooling on it.”
Celebrimbor chuckled, drawing Celegorm’s attention to where he was hunched over his tablet solving some sort of puzzle.
“Happy new year to you, too, bro,” he said to Curufin, who waved him off — but a faint smile slipped across his features before he disappeared into his bedroom.
Celegorm cleared his throat and sat upright. Spending New Year’s Eve working hadn’t been as miserable as he’d thought — it was nice to be behind the bar, absorbing and facilitating the celebratory mood without having the evening slide into a drunken blur. All the same, he had the feeling like something was missing. The day demanded some kind of ceremony to kick off the year.
“Hey,” he said to the room, “what do you guys think of going down to the beach for a polar bear dip?”
“Absolutely not,” Curufin shouted from his room at the same time Finrod exclaimed, “Oh my god, yes please!”
“What?” asked Celebrimbor. “You mean jump in the ocean? It’s cold.” The kid crinkled his nose incredulously, suggesting he more closely shared his father’s opinion than Finrod’s… but was willing to be persuaded, perhaps.
“Yeah,” Celegorm said. “I used to do it all the time back in Valin, it was a big thing. You remember Curvo, the whole family would go down to the river! It was way colder there. Water here is practically tropical.”
“Hah,” Curufin said, re-emerging and crossing to the kitchen. “Tyelpe, you want toast for breakfast?” he asked.
“I already ate,” said Celebrimbor. “Uncle Fin made eggs.”
Curufin shot a glance around the partition wall. “He did, did he.”
“Yup,” Celebrimbor said, not picking up on, or at least not acknowledging, the spiteful tone of his father’s remark.
“I’ll go dip with you!” Finrod said, sipping his coffee. “You gonna come Tyelps?”
Celebrimbor pinched his lips together thoughtfully. “I’ll come watch,” he said after a moment.
“Better bring your swimsuit just in case, kid.” Celegorm winked at him. “Curvo, you coming?”
From the kitchen, Curufin groaned. “Fine. But only to document your idiocy. I am not going in.”
The first day of the new year was clear and sunny. Standing ankle deep in the ocean, his bare feet gradually numbing to the cold, Círdan inhaled deeply. He began every morning of the year this way — with a purifying, invigorating plunge into the womb of the world. Beneath the sea’s dark surface, where you could hear the heartbeat of the earth, was where Círdan found his faith.
All would be well.
Today he was not alone on this short strand of beach near Beleria’s downtown core. He watched the other swimmers stripping down to their swimsuits, elbows hugged close to their chests or protruding proudly from their hips as they feigned indifference to the cold. Splashing and shouts of “I can’t believe we’re doing this!” and “Don’t be a baby!” and, of course, incoherent shrieks carried over the calm water.
Círdan set his eyes on a group of four who were currently traipsing down the sand. At their head strode two blonds, one tall and broad-shouldered, already in nothing but his swim trunks and a towel thrown over one shoulder. He appeared from his animated gestures and cocksure gait to be boasting to the other, a smaller man still bundled in his winter coat, nodding along and seemingly unbothered. A handsome German shepherd wove around them, sniffing the sand.
Behind them walked a dark-haired man and child — ten or eleven, Círdan guessed — one a half-sized copy of the other. They might have been an uncle and nephew, Círdan thought at first, noting that the man looked quite young, still bearing himself with the uncertainty of youth. But no — there was something about how the child turned and looked at him, in the way of a young person seeking approval and permission from a parent, that told Círdan they were father and son.
The father nodded and gave the boy a push towards the two blond men, whose voices rose in a chorus of excitement when they noticed him running up to join them. The three of them stopped at a log near the water and began to undress. The two who had been clothed shivered and laughed. The young father pulled out his phone to film them.
The larger blond was the first to race towards the ocean, hollering and churning up the surf. The dog bounded after him. He dove in with a crash, emerging a moment later pink with cold and shaking out his hair. The dog paddled towards him and he urged him on.
The other blond stood at the water’s edge, hands on his hips. The child still hung back, as if reconsidering.
“Come on!” Círdan could hear the man in the water shout. “It’s fine when you get used to it!”
“Yeah right!” the man holding the phone shouted back. “You’re pink as a strawberry.”
The child laughed at that and turned to smile at his father.
“If you two don’t … throw you in!” came snatches of the reply from the man in the water.
Moments later, he cut his way back towards the shore with powerful strokes. The child shrieked — “Uncle Tyelko!” — as he was scooped into the man’s arms and carried into the water. The second blond man threw a broad grin over his shoulder at the one filming before he, too, ran into the sea and dove beneath the surface.
The child was already racing back to shore, expression shifting from panic to pride as his feet found the sand. His dad pocketed his phone, coming to wrap a towel around him. They sat together on the log while the other two attempted to outdo one another’s endurance in the cold water. The dog shook off his coat and barked from the shore, its efforts to summon the two men away from their self-imposed torment ignored.
Círdan chuckled to himself, imagining what ties, what histories, might have brought these four — no, five — beings together on this particular piece of earth. He spared a prayer for them, for a year as full of joy and laughter as the moment they were sharing now.
Then he waded into the sea himself and dove, silent and serene, beneath the surface.
All would be well.