*pales, gripping the side of the tub, while breathing slowly through his nose*
“Get. Out!”
The maia watched Maedhros maneuver his clothes with a mixture of curiosity and admiration, but made no comment. For a moment it appeared as though he would disdain this offered garment as well, but he thought better of it— there was something perversely delightful about wearing the robe offered to you by an enemy.
It was by no means the right size for Sauron’s shoulders or arms; he made a marginal effort of tying it closed at the front (a strangely quaint gesture for one so massive), and let it hang almost entirely open at the chest. He looked down at himself, then back up at his unwilling host. “Will this do, master Noldo?”
By his look, it would not do, but Sauron ignored it blithely and continued into the waiting chamber, where he made a point of picking up and examining a selection of Maedhros’s books.
The Noldo moved quickly with apparent efficiency, trying only partially to hide how every muscle in his body was ready to spring into action. He never let the Maia out of his sight. Even as he opened the door to his chamber and brusquely walked to the desk. There he took one chair apart from the others, the one he had hidden his dagger under the cushion of, and leaned on it wituout sitting, looking coldly toward the Maia, his hand near the pommel of his dagger.
From the beetroot the aroma of whatever oil Thauron had used still wafted into the room, incredibly strong given the few drops he’d poured.
Trying to ignore the considerable portion of the Maia’s fàna left uncovered Maedhos looked at him with narrowed eyes.
“I’m afraid it doesn’t, Thauron. But this is hardly the point. You are not welcome here” The Noldo forced his tone into a semblance of calm.
“Oh I’m well aware of that, to be sure.” Sauron thumbed through the pages of a tome on geology, only half interested. “But you see, in our large and impermeable fortress (with which you are acquainted), opportunities to discuss matters of construction or theory are a rare gift… I find I have no one with whom I to bandy ideas with, no one to offer me revisions or suggestions; no second mind whose perceptions might build new, unthought of bridges between disparate concepts…"
The maia gave a short huff, and shut the book in his hand with a snap. “So, I have made a risky, ill-advised, and as you say, wholly unwelcome, trip across enemy lines to ask an elf how he might reproduce the fluid mechanics of a wave using rigid, inflexible materials. I am building… or I wish to build, a series of devices that mimic organic movements, but as these devices have absolutely no practical function or military application—” and here Sauron began pacing to relieve the pent up aggravation of some past argument, ”—I have had few enough moments to concentrate on their equations myself, and no one, NO ONE with whom to share my progress! Believe me when I say I would not have come here were I not clawing the walls of my workshop with frustration.” He stopped, tilting his head at his unwilling host, skeptical.
"Surely that isn’t comfortable, sitting on your dagger like that?"
As the Maia flipped through his book Maedhros covertly let the towel on his arm fall over the cushion on the back of his chair, using it as a cover to slip his hand underneath it and discretely slid his dagger out of its hiding place. Likely the other would know about it, still it didn’t hurt to try being discreet. Keeping his hand still under the towel and resting over the back of the chair Maedhros listened to the Maia, his expression a careful mask of untrusting watchful calm, only the intensity of his gaze to betray far more feeling than any other detail of his expression
At the last question he arched one eyebrow, a barely visible ice-cold smile appearing on his lips as he answered curtly. “My dagger is perfectly comfortable where it is. Thauron.”
Still, despite knowing who was before him, despite the hate, even despite the hard won knowledge of what could lie in wait behind every syllable when one was faced with this Maia Maedhros felt a part of him itching to talk. It had been so long since he had had contact with anyone capable to speak about such things with cognition of cause. Immediately thoughts of elastic materials, sound waves, viscoelasticity and the two waves light carried started to flood his mind. The real problem would not be wave propagation, but reproducing turbulence. Maybe the crystals inside a solid could be made to… A light pulse of pain from his shoulder had the Noldo blink and come back to himself. He gritted his teeth.
"It is quite peculiar, Thauron, that you would try to insult my intelligence while pretending to flatter it.” Maedhros spoke slowly, careful to keep his tone the coldest and calmest he could, which, thanks to the temptation to talk and the realisation his mind had wandered wasn’t much. Besides his dripping hair were almost sure to have him ache before the day was over.“Those tricks of yours I, sadly, know well."Straightening his back the Fëanorion let his hand, and the knife, slide in a position where they would be unhindered in their motion. "But, even supposing me utterly unfamiliar with resonance or aeroelastic flutter, and you well intentioned.” The Fëanorion’s gaze made clear what he thought about this hypothesis.
“Even in that case, why should I wish to make you, of all beings, less frustrated?”
Moving slowly the Noldo widened his stance, readying himself to react.
”…Because you are an anomaly here. Because you too have no others to share the cathedral of your mind with, and pursuits that you have had to but aside in favor of war. It is tiring…“ The maia’s yellow eyes creased with something like sympathy. Neither the dagger nor the tightly wound stance of the Fëanorian giant seemed to worry him, naked though he was.
"Wouldn’t it be satisfying just to experiment and build again? Ainu and Eld, teaching, expanding, learning? Just as Aulë might have done–"
Then he swallowed, gaze turning suddenly to a distant point on the floor; finding himself exposed more thoroughly than just in skin.
"You are right of course. This was a truly farcical error…” He chuckled, mirthless. “I suppose we ought fight, then. Just for the sake of propriety.”
He shrugged off the ill-fitting robe and struck a wrestling stance.
MisbehavingMaiar: Tumblr Archive 