Heget's Blatherings

A quick explanation of a line in this fic- 

Aegnor hands his brother the drinking horn of Edain beer with a hidden grimace, wiping his hand on the tartan wrap across his shoulders, then frowns at the stain on the green and yellow fabric. He goes to ask the matron of the house about adding the garment to the laundry, as it was a gift from Boron’s wife and thus one of the first gifts that Aegnor received from a member of Bëor’s family, holding for him a particular sentimental value.

Angrod hides his own smile and turns to Belegor to inquire after the reason behind this impromptu and boisterous party. The brother of the Lord of Ladros replies in a more than mildly inebriated voice that the engagement between his oldest son and a woman with very annoying and parsimonious parents has been annulled, to which Angrod replies he did not know that -an annulment of engagement- was a cause for a celebration. Belegor laughs, jostling the drinking horn in Angrod’s grip, and says, ‘It would be if you knew these potential in-laws!“

At this point Aegnor returns to interrupt the conversation with an even more pained expression on his face to ask if Belegor knows about the men outside trying to steal his cattle.

---

Iron-grip he must be, for Angrod must hold his baby brother tightly. Keep him grounded as Aegnor’s rages and new-found fatalism turn the Fell-Fire as dangerous to himself as his enemies. Grief and impotence against the unchangeable realities of the world make Angrod’s brother bitter. Faced with a gulf that love cannot ever bridge, the anger curdles inward, the despair lashes out. Aegnor becomes almost mortal in his ways - changes that frighten Angrod.

Angband looms before them, the iron and sulfur reek on the wind, that stinging wind that blows eternally from the north. Up here on the slopes of Dorthonion its lords cannot forget or ignore the enemy. There is no northern peace, but only the long truce of the sentry ever-watchful for the next enemy foray.

The tension binds them, but none more so than Aegnor who no longer sees what to live for beside death. Death for the enemy, death for himself. Angrod thinks this must be how the Firiath, the mortals, feel. This certainty of their death with every breath, the inescapability of it.

Angrod knows he and his brother will die on a battlefield against the forces of Morgoth, that he will return to his father and mother through the embrace of Mandos. Then he will join the people he could not protect from the enemy, the ones who fell on the Grinding Ice, his uncles and cousins from Alqualondë. His sorrow is strong, but stronger is the shame for failure, rage for murders, the guilt that he allows for crimes to rest unanswered.

But reckless Aegnor courts his inevitable death in lieu of the mortal maid he cannot.

Angrod knows he must not blame the adaneth, this Andreth. Angrod has lived with the Edain, the people of Bëor, for four generations, befriending them, fighting at their side, watching them wilt and die. Their greatness, their strange fascination with the world around them, like they are hearing pieces of the Song in notes too high or too low for his ears, how they surprise him with what they can say or do. Finrod is right, such odd and intriguing sources of new knowledge they are. How the mortals are so frightfully fragile in hröa and fëa, and yet bear under stresses Angrod knows he could never take. It must be a special flame from Ilúvatar, and how can he fault his brother, Aegnor, for being so badly burnt?

But oh, how Aegnor gives no heed to his duties or safety anymore. Angrod must restrain his brother, hold him back from this assisted suicide by Morgoth. “Iron-grip” he must be, with the strength of Tulkas himself, to hold Aegnor from his doom. To pretend to those that he has sworn allegiance that nothing is amiss. To inform his oldest brother, both liege lord and family head, that their dear baby brother has tasted the sweetness of love, but it was bitter before it left the tongue. A mortal poison. Finrod tried to soothe the pain with philosophy, explain away the cruelness of the divide, the unfairness of knowing such mortal beings. That Aegnor’s grief would scar over, would become a gentle grief and wisdom. Nienna’s song. Any true healing and erosion of pain could only come in Mandos, they all knew. Or at least Angrod thinks in this he sees clearer than his older brother. Only Mandos, maybe. But Angrod lies to Finrod and says Aegnor’s grief does not affect his duties as Lord of Dorthonion. Lies to Aegnor by never mentioning a woman in Ladros who sits in honor next to the lord’s place, the mind who drafts the yearly tithes that supplied Barathonion, hands that weave the cloak Aegnor wears. Lies to himself.

In desperation, any battle with such foes as orcs and balrogs would be welcome, for as strongly as he grasps, Iron-grip can not hold.

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