Hands off my son!

Year 25 of the Fourth Age in Valinor.

It was still early morning in Formenos, yet most people living in the city had already gotten up and were finishing to get away for their work. The same in the big villa belonging to the House of Fëanor.

"Rûsa? Are you awake?" called Maedhros from the other side of a closed door. Inside the chamber, a young elfling no older than perhaps fifteen years old, awoke at the sound of her voice and tried to roll out of the nest of blankets and pillows in his bed.

"Almost…," her son answered, still somewhat half-asleep, while rubbing the sleep away from his eyes with a hand. Yawning big, Rûsa tried to not roll down on the floor as he tried to free himself from the blankets.

"Master Rumil will arrive for the first school lesson in a hour, try and be ready then."

Hearing his mother walk down the stairs to the floor below, Rûsa went to wash his face so he woke up properly. Making a face at seeing the mess his thick hair was as every other morning, he chose to quickly wash then dressed in his everyday clothes before trying to brush out his hair so it looked nice. Just because he had far better health nowadays in his second life than what he ever had in Angband, it still did not mean that Rûsa refused to keep check after anything that could reveal his true past as a former slave in Angband. As such, he had a habit of looking over his face, neck, and arms for possible scars from whips every morning.

"Good… nothing like a permanently bruise around my throat caused by a slave collar or something… and the only minor injuries I have currently is from when I somehow got some of the forge working toys on me while we cleaned out the forges…"

Making a face because of the sharp pain at touching the still very sore bruise just between his throat and collarbone, Rûsa took out some healing salve he had gotten from Curufin's healer wife Astarë and carefully applied it on the bruise to help speed up the healing.

As Rûsa came down for breakfast, still trying to get the hair brush free from his hair as it had gotten stuck because his hair simply was so thick, he saw his mother frown at a dress she held up in her hands. It was a pleasant cream colour which did not seem too odd against her copper-red hair, but it was far too low-cut over the cleavage for her taste along with a terribly revealing side cleavage as well. And the skirt had a knee-high slit which would reveal her long legs as she walked. Rûsa started with wide eyes on the dress, he may have been used to see nude slaves in Angband because they had nothing else than worn-out rags to dress themselves into, but the mere idea of his own mother being dressed like that…

"Ammë, if you ever wear that dress among people and the moral guardians see it I will hear no end of the stupid rumours that you are promiscuous."

Maedhros gave him an annoyed look at his words.

"As if I even plans to try it on!" she said. "Whoever it was that sent it has no knowledge about what size I need on my clothes: it is far too small for me! And there is no way I would wear a such revealing thing like this; as a princess of the Nolder, I need to think of how I dress! And I am not exactly following fashion from Tirion anymore nowadays… I do not longer enjoy being dressed up as I once were…"

Her son shuddered, understanding that the events in Angband and the deep scarring of her first body had forever torn away the former joy, even if vain, of being the prettiest lady on a festival or ball dance.

"If it is meant as a joke, it is not very funny. If it is meant as a confirmation on all the idiotic rumours about my behaviour because I am not married to your father for very private reasons… ugh!"

With a angry snarl, Maedhros tore apart the offensive dress in two pieces with her bare hands and tossed the pieces into the kitchen fireplace where the tea water currently was boilding in the kettle. She was still doing weapon training out of habit from the First Age and as such, was one of the strongest female warriors in Formenos. A deadly beauty, as some of her former soldiers called her now when she was reborn.

"Good morning. Have our parents already left?" greeted Caranthir from the stairs in a unusual cheerful voice, which normally meant that he must have been having a nice dream about his marriage to Haleth.

"Morning, little brother. Hope you had a better morning than I do."

As Maedhros told her third brother about the horrible dress she had been sent by a unknown person and Caranthir's face became flushed in barely hidden anger on her behalf over the insult, Rûsa took to eat his breakfast so he would be finished in time. Today he and master Rumil had planned to spend the day on the market since Rûsa could not stand sitting for several hours in the class room.

~X~X~X~X~X~X

Rumil was easy to spot in his teal-coloured which robe he always wore as a sign of his rank as a lore master, and he smiled at seeing his young student running towards him at the place they had agreed to meet. He had looked forwards another day with Rûsa since the young son of Maedhros was an unusual challenge as a student, for even if Rumil had learnt the truth about him and knew that Rûsa had spent pretty much all his first life as a slave in Angband, it did not mean that it was easy to teach him. Rûsa had a sharp mind, but he also had a minor learning disability which could prove quite disastrous if it was revealed.

"Good morning, master Rumil! Guess what happened just before breakfast today…"

"Speak slowly or you will only end up babbling nonsense," Rumil smiled in respone. As his student told him about the horrible dress Maedhros had gotten, the lore master took care to help Rûsa pinning his dark red braid into a braided bun with a few hairpins. It was rather hot for being only early summer and many adults worried about that the children would be affected by the sudden heat. As such, all the inn and café staff around Formenos had been requested to be ready with cold drinks just in case it was needed.

"Can we be around the water fountains because of this heat?"

"Of course, pretty stupid to run around during this warm day and risk getting a heat stroke."

Grinning, Rûsa took it as permission to hurry towards the biggest water fountain in Formenos, which was big and shallow enough to become a small swimming pool for Elflings during warm days like this. Rumil calmly walked close behind, picking up a book from his bag where he tended to write up small notes about how Rûsa behaved around others since it could be helpful to give more insight about his character and personality.

Some other Elflings, most of them Noldor and a couple of half-Avari like Rûsa, were already in the somewhat cool water. Being dressed in simple summer dresses and tunics that could take a lot of wild water plays, no one could claim that it was improper for them to play together.

"Hi, Rûsa! Get into the water, it is wonderfully cool!" one of them called with a hand wave above his head.

"Hi, everyone! Give some room for me over there!" warned Rûsa before jumping high into the air and landed into the water, laughing in joy as he surfaced again. He had grown braver around larger bodies of water during the fourteen years since his rebirth and quickly had grown to truly enjoy the feeling of being actually clean. Such a difference to Angband where really clean water was rare and only the outside-born slaves had ever known what a bath meant. Slaves born in Angband, like Rûsa himself, only used water to clean wounds and for drinking, never for bathing.

"Don't give yourself a self-caused concussion, kid," Rumil said while having his eyes focused on his young student and writing in his book with a quill with his other hand since he was used to taking notes without looking. "Your mother is still crossed with your blond uncle for not watching you better at the horse race you two did last time he watched you."

"I only fell off my galloping pony because I was too busy in looking backwards over my shoulder on my uncle, I did not hear his warning about that low-hanging tree branch in time," Rûsa muttered for himself as he pushed away his wet hair from his face to see better. In return, Rumil raised a eyebrow in silence as a waitness from a café beside the fountain offered him a free glass of unsweetened lemon-water with some ice cubs to keep it cool.

"May I sit down here?" asked a new, rather deep-sounding female voice and the Elflings turned around to see an extremely rare figure here in Valinor:

A Dwarrowdam, looking even more exotic since she was dark-skinned with surprising white-blonde hair and beard along with stricking green eyes. Dressed in a green dress with some Dwarven patterns stitched in an light-blue thread and sandals, she also wore a transparent face veil of the same color.

"Good morning, young ones," she said politely.

"Morning, miss Narvi!" they greeted, swimming closer to the edge on the fountain where she had sat down. Since her arrival to Formenos with Aulë last summer, Narvi had insisted on staying with Celebrimbor since they actually were a married couple even without a offical ceremony and wanted to live together as a married couple should do. Or, according to the sounds that sometimes could be heard from Celebrimbor's forge at times, had a lot of "catching up" together since her death in the Second Age.

"Where is my cousin? I thought you two were going to shop together?" Rûsa wondered in confusion. He had gotten used to the fact of his older cousin having Narvi as a wife, even if it still felt odd to see them together at times.

"Narvi, the seamstress have your new clothes ready!" Celebrimbor called from a building a bit away. Smiling, Narvi excused herself so she could get the new clothes she had needed. Although Rûsa could have sworn on that he did hear Narvi mutter for herself:

"Reborn in a new body, and they still could not make Celebrimbor look less like a boy with that youngful face and instead give him a nice beard or something…?"

~X~X~X~X~X~X

After some more minutes Rûsa climbed out of the fountain.

"I am only going to borrow a towel to dry off myself with from the wash house, I will be back," he said while trying to squeeze out as much water he could get out from the knee-length tunic he was wearing.

"Do that, I will wait here," Rumil nodded, planning to buy a iced drink for Rûsa during that wait and then take them on a small walk to watch the different stands on the market. He had seen some more easier-to-read school books for sale that would suit Rûsa better than the complex ones he currently had such trouble reading and it would also spare Rumil the extra work in having to write down a easier version of the school texts late in the evenings. Not that he minded the work, but sometimes it could end up being very late into the night when he finished.

Living in Formenos for the past fourteen years had Rûsa learn where to go if he needed something, and this day it was no surprise that many borrowed a towel to dry themselves off after a quick bath to cool off a bit.

"I think I saw one here… yes, this one is small enough to be my size…"

Freeing his hair from the braid, Rûsa tried at dry off his hair as much as possible so it would not be too wet during the rest of the day. He was also looking forwards the market and did not want anything to spoil this fine day. Once his hair felt dry enough, he picked up a comb from his pocket and started to fix some minor tangles he had gotten. Suddenly getting a bad feeling akin to how he would sense danger just before seeing Sauron in Angband, Rûsa quickly turned around.

But he was not fast enough because in the next moment two different pairs of hands were grabbing hold of him, one hand covering his mouth to prevent him from screaming for help.

"We better hurry out of the city with him before they notice!"

The voice of a male Elf? Rûsa thought. It sounded like a voice he may had heard in the royal court of Tirion three years earlier.

"How can the Valar allow that kind of sinful woman to be reborn, let alone having a child without even having a husband in sight!" another voice muttered. "No, this child is far safer in a proper foster family of good social standing who can correct his behavior instead of acting like a savage…"

Now Rûsa remembered: the voices belonged to a married Noldor-Vanyarin couple among the more strict moral guardians in the Noldorin royal court, those people who claimed that his ammë was immoral and who had no right to be a mother because of her past as a a Kinslayer in the First Age. Realizing that they actually planned to kidnap him and take him away from his family, all because of Maedhros "maternal unsuitability", Rûsa began to panic. Memories of Angband took over his mind for a moment and he acted out of instinct by biting down on his hand covering his mouth as hard as he could.

"OW!" the husband yelled in pain, jerking away his bloody hand. Using the surprise it bought him, Rûsa gave the wife a hard knock on the jaw by throwing his head back, forcing her to release him.

"I will teach you to give my wife the proper respect, you horrible little… hey! Get back here!"

But Rûsa's old surviving instincts from Angband had awakened in his panic, and the more childish instincts of his new body also told him to find his mother for protection against this new danger.

"AMMË! AMMË! UNCLES! HARU! GRANDMOTHER!"

The panic-filled shouting which came from her son, made Maedhros freeze in the middle of a training movement with her sword, stopping only a few centimeters from the wooden dummy. She tried to train as much as her duties as Fëanor's heir and motherhood could allow, for she did not want to lose her battle skills now when she was reborn in peaceful Valinor. It also gave her a sense of doing something that would be extra needed one day.

"What on…" started one of the shocked guards who was training with her, but another one said:

"It came from the central fountain!"

No one was surprised at hearing Maedhros suddenly letting out a stream of foul curse words and hurrying away from the training grounds to find her son while still holding the sword in her left hand. Everyone hoped that nothing had gone wrong and that it simply was a case of a spider getting a little too close to his face for poor Rûsa's comfort given how terrified her was of spiders.

"Let's come along if the princess needs help."

"Aye!"

And naturally the shouting from their youngest family member seemed to have drawn the attention from his many uncles and grandparents as well, seeing that they all came running from whatever it was that they had been doing at hearing him scream in such panic.

Rumil had also heard the screams from Rûsa and seeing a unfamiliar couple trying to get hold of his student who clearly was in panic mood; and took hold of the first thing he got his hands on. As a result, his book went flying straight in the face of the husband, knocking him out by a mixture of good aim and bad luck.

"Let go of my student!" Rumil yelled, charging toward them. He was quickly joined by Narvi, who used her smaller height and noticeablely bigger body weight to literally knock the female elf off her feet.

"Hands off my cousin… uff!"

Celebrimbor got interrupted by Rûsa, who had spotted the closest relative he could find at the moment, and as such threw himself on his older cousin and clung around his torso with both arms and legs for dear life. Celebrimbor stumbled back a few steps, but managed to keep his balance without tripping over.

"What is going on here!?"

Maedhros arrived, stopping to take in the scene: her son clinging like mad to Celebrimbor with his tunic wet as if he had been cooling off in the fountain earlier; Narvi sitting on a protesting, and rather squashed, She-elf on the ground; and Rumil checking on the unconscious husband. Hearing Maedhros' voice as she came nearer Rûsa began to babble wildly, telling her what he had heard them saying.

"A Kinslayer with blood on your hands like yourself have no right to be allowed to be a parent! A Fëanorian offspring like that boy should not even be around a such immorally tainted mother!"

Maedhros grey eyes grew ice-cold as she heard the She-elf accuse her. As if this woman, who had remained back in Valinor and thus never seen the true horrors of Middle-Earth, could have any right say that she was a bad mother.

"Excuse me?" the copper-haired Fëanorian princess asked in a icy voice as she turned around, which her family and her former soldiers knew too well. Being told that her son nearly had been kidnapped in the very heart of Formenos was not a good promise for how she would react on this.

"Narvi, would you mind remaining seated on that lady for a while?" asked Celebrimbor as he tried to push a still-terrified Rûsa off. "I think you are doing a better job at keeping her down for my aunt still than what the guards would do at the moment." Unfortunately the younger cousin had a rather tight iron hold on him, caused by his earlier panic attack, so it was a little bit tricky for him to let go at the moment. By now, the guards also had managed to awake the husband, now spotting a bloody nose from the book thrown at his face, and held him in a tight grip to prevent him from escaping.

"Oh yes, this pillow just happens to move around and be rather noisy for being a pillow to sit on," Narvi answered as she shifted her weight around, her comment causing Maedhros to smile a thin smile. Sending Celebrimbor and Rumil away to another café a bit away to get some soothing camomile tea for Rûsa, Maedhros' aura suddenly changed the moment her son was out of earshot. Those who once had served under her in the First Age knew that her maternal instinct to protect her child had awoken the fearful warrior-side of her personality and that meant danger for anyone who was the target.

~X~X~X~X~X~X

"Feeling better now, Rûsa?"

Celebrimbor got a faint nod in answer. He had managed to make Rûsa sit down in his lap instead of clinging to him. No doubt that his younger cousin was in slight shock from someone trying to kidnap and place him in a foster family.

"Here is the tea," said Rumil as he came carrying a cup with chamomile tea. Beneath his calm veneer the old lore master was burning in fury. He had seen many signs on how emotionally vulnerable Rûsa was thanks to his past life as a slave, and as his mother Maedhros was a pillar of emotionally support for him. To lose her and the rest of his family, especially if he suddenly was taken away from them, would not be good—he'd collapse in shock.

A loud shout of pain was heard in the air.

"Sounds like aunt Maedhros brought out the old discipline among her soldiers to make that couple confess to why they tried to take you. Given how Narvi sits on the wife, I think she may be doing a couple of not-so-light smacks on their feet. People who are not used to that kind of punishment tends to break down pretty quickly."

"Mm-m…" Rûsa could not give a proper answer as he currently was focusing on trying to drink the tea without his hands shaking too much from the shock. He was not too scared of whatever it was that Maedhros was doing as punishment on the couple for trying to kidnap him, he knew that it would be pretty harmless by the standards in Angband.

"I am not in the right mood for visiting the market anymore…" Rûsa admitted with a certain sense of guilt in his voice, not that it surprised either Celebrimbor or Rumil given what just had been close to happening.

"Maybe it can be a school lesson back at our home today, Narvi mentioned something about showing some more dances from her home in the Orocarni."

Rûsa made a faint smile at hearing that, he loved when Narvi revealed the cultural differences between Valinor and her first life in Middle-Earth. She was especially fond of showing the eastern Dwarven culture from the Orocarni, where she once had been born in the year 750 of the Second Age.

"Speaking about which, look who is coming."

"Hi there, guys, heard you mention my name. Maedhros is currently letting that couple enjoying the nice heat by leaving Formenos in their birthday suits so everyone can see them."

Celebrimbor could not hold back a laugh; that was precise something he could imagine Maedhros doing as a punishment, a very public humiliation.

"Well, shall we go to your house then? I would be most pleased to learn more about how different the Stone Children of Aulë is from us Eldar," suggested Rumil with a smile. Finishing his tea, Rûsa was ready to go too.

When Maedhros returned a few hours later after handing over the Noldorin-Vanyarin couple to the city guards and sent away a very furious letter about the attempted kidnapping to her grandfather Finwë in Tirion, she become a little more happy at seeing her son taking a nap with Celebrimbor and Narvi in their hammock under a tree, the Dwarrowdam still dressed in a dancing dress from the dance showing earlier. A letter from Rumil told her that he had left to seek shelter from the sun somewhere else as it was a private garden after all.

"Let's go home for today for today, sweetie. Hopefully this event will learn people to not try and take you away from me like that again."

Carefully, Maedhros managed to take up Rûsa in her arms without waking him up and carried him home after using Rumil's letter to tell her sleeping nephew where her son was when he and Narvi would wake up.