Nothing in the World is Single by StarSpray

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Chapter 1

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And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea—
What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?
- Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Love’s Philosophy”

.

It was a beautiful sunset. Ribbons of cloud glimmered gold against a swiftly-deepening blue sky. Toward the darker east, the stars had begun to wink into view. On the western horizon, the waves shimmered pink and gold, and the westernmost sky still defied the coming night, awash in fire as Anor sank into the sea.

Eärendil stood on the shore watching it, unmoving, except for his hair that lifted on the breeze. Salt and sand crusted his legs up to his knees, and seawater stained his clothes. It was not often that he managed to come to the beach alone, and when he did he made sure it was at sunset.

He wasn’t sure why, only that he did not like moments such as this one to be broken by the presence of another.

At last, the last flames of the sun disappeared beyond the horizon, and twilight set in, the stars coming out in force now, flickering white and cold in the purpling sky, and Eärendil turned toward home. He picked his way up the hill with ease, familiar with every step of the path, every stray rock or clump of coarse grass that might threaten to trip him up, and came at last to the courtyard that stood between two houses – the one in which Eärendil lived with his parents, and the one belonging to Lord Celeborn and Lady Galadriel.

And Elwing. Eärendil stopped at the water pump to wash the sand from his legs, and caught a glimpse of her through her bedroom window, peering out of it, watching him. When she caught him looking back, she yanked the curtains closed.

It was five years, almost, since the Gondolindrim had come to Sirion. In that time, Eärendil had come to realize several things about Elwing daughter of Dior.

Firstly: she was very pretty, with eyes the color of the sky just before it snowed, and hair so fine it fell around her face and shoulders like feathery shadows that refused to adhere to any attempt at taming them with braids or ribbons, and features so delicate they reminded him of the crystal roses an artisan in Gondolin had crafted, that sparkled in the sunlight and cast dappled rainbows onto the wall.

Second: she never smiled. He thought she must have a lovely smile, because the rest of her was so pretty, but nothing seemed able to coax it out of her. She never wept, either – at least, not that Eärendil could tell. He never saw the sticky remnants of tears on her cheeks or the telltale red puffiness around her eyes or nose. She did have a temper, that made her body go rigid, and her eyes flash with sudden fire so she looked almost fearsome (and would look fearsome, when she was bigger), but this was a rare occurrence, and one that made Lord Celeborn sigh and mutter something about Thingol, to which Galadriel would murmur in reply something about Melian, or Lúthien.

And thirdly – and perhaps most importantly: Elwing, like him, was Halfelven. Not truly half, he had learned, when he had questioned his mother a few months after his initial encounter with Elwing – but close enough. Even in Gondolin they had heard the rumors of Lúthien, the most beautiful princess of Elu Thingol and Queen Melian, and Beren, the mortal Man of the House of Bëor, who had braved the depths of Angband and the presence of Morgoth himself to steal a Silmaril, which Thingol had demanded before he would allow his daughter to marry a Man. Lúthien and Beren, Idril told Eärendil, were Elwing’s grandparents, through her father Dior, who had married Nimloth, the niece of Lord Celeborn.

Tuor had shaken his head after she was done, and said, “It was lucky for me that Turgon did not demand such a high bride price.”

Idril had laughed (though not as brightly as she once had, Eärendil noticed; she never did anymore, especially when her father was mentioned). “You were Ulmo’s messenger, after all,” she said. “And it would have been rather absurd for him to send you on such a quest when no one was permitted to leave Gondolin.”

“Yes, well, he could have had me do something else nigh impossible,” Tuor replied, grinning. “Carving your likeness from marble, for example, when all I’m capable of is grinding it into marble dust…”

Their banter continued, but Eärendil stopped listening after that. What really mattered – to him, anyway – was that he and Elwing were the only two children in Beleriand, as far as anyone knew, with the blood of both Men and Elves running through their veins.

He’d hoped that they would become friends – and he had tried everything he could think of to draw a smile out of her, but nothing seemed to work. Oh, lately she was coming out of her room and smiling and talking with visitors – but the smiles weren’t real; they never reached her eyes, even after five years in Sirion.

“Eärendil, there you are,” Tuor said as Eärendil entered the kitchen. His father was busy preparing dinner along with Voronwë, who dwelled with them. “Set the table, will you? Annael is dining with us tonight.”

“Yes, Adar.” Eärendil grabbed a handful of plates and trotted into the dining room, where his mother sat going over some papers.

“You’d best wash up before supper, Eärendil,” she said, glancing up briefly, just enough to take in his damp, salty appearance. “Where have you been all day?”

“At the harbor.” He had befriended Aerandir, a young elf not much older – in maturity, anyway – than Eärendil, and they were building a skiff together, to sail around the bay. “And then I stopped to watch the sunset.”

“I saw it from the window,” Idril said, smiling as she gathered up her papers as he set the dishes down. “It was lovely.”

But her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. Maybe she thought Eärendil couldn’t tell – but he always could. He remembered when her smile always reached her eyes, in Gondolin before that fateful midsummer celebration.

(The Gondolindrim did not celebrate Midsummer anymore. The Sindar did, but kept their bonfires and wild dances away from where the Noldor lived, respecting the pain of those memories.)

Dinner that evening was a merry affair – it always was, when Tuor’s foster-father visited. Eärendil listened to and laughed at stories of his father’s childhood in Mithrim, because Annael delighted in telling them, and listened more quietly to news of Annael’s daughter Caleniel, who dwelt on Balar and had given birth to a baby girl a few years before.

After supper, Eärendil retreated to his room, which overlooked the sea, and he sat at his window, staring at the stars, and out over the horizon. On a moonless night, like this one, it was impossible to tell where the sea ended and the sky began.

He fell asleep at the window, and woke with a stiff neck when his father knocked on his door to call him to breakfast. It would be a quick affair, eaten hurriedly in the kitchen – at least by the adults. Today was the day the council met to discuss the affairs of the Havens. Eärendil had attended one or two of these meetings, and they were deathly boring, except when tempers flared – usually around issues connected to the tension still lingering between the Iathrim and Gondolindrim.

It was through these councils that Eärendil had learned why that tension even existed. Before that his parents had tried to keep from him the kinslayings, and the Sons of Fëanor and their terrible Oath. And because they were Noldor, there were some refugees from Doriath who distrusted those from Gondolin, though they had nothing to do with the kinslaying.

So Eärendil had the day to himself again. No lessons or chores, while the adults were busy.

He decided to pay Elwing a visit. She was the only child in Sirion close to his age – and the only one he was unlikely to outgrow in just a few years. But she wasn’t at home, and her nurse, Luinnel, had not seen her. “I think she might be in the garden, Eärendil,” she said, “but I do not think she is in the mood for company today.”

When was she ever in the mood for company? Eärendil went to the garden anyway. The roses were in full bloom, and the whole garden was filled with their heady perfume. He caught a glimpse of dark hair, and headed toward it – only to find it vanishing behind a clump of honeysuckle bushes, long past their flowering and now sporting bright red berries. He’d once eaten those berries, from bushes that grew in someone’s garden in Gondolin (he forgot whose, now), and had made himself sick. His mother had been concerned, but his father had just shaken his head and called it a lesson learned, and that they were only mildly poisonous – nothing to worry about.

Turgon had been there, and that had sparked a debate about varieties of honeysuckle in Middle-earth and in Valinor, where apparently there was a bush with berries that could be eaten. Eärendil had lost interest quickly; he’d been no more than five at the time, and had no interest at all in the flora of the distant West.

Now he was wondering what lay behind the honey suckle bushes, besides the garden wall, that would draw Elwing to them. He trotted over and crouched down to peer through the leaves, but did not see Elwing at all. “Elwing?” He pushed his way through, and found just the garden wall.

With a hole in it, carefully enlarged from what he supposed had been a small weakness when it had first been built. He shook his head. “So that’s where you disappear to all the time…” He poked his head through the hole and saw her vanishing into the wheat fields that lay between the Havens and the forests of Nimbrethil.

Without thinking, he followed, running into the wheat and just managing to keep her in view. She was so fast! Eärendil had thought she spent all of her time inside, locked away in her room or with her nurse, but apparently she slipped away like this often. She easily dodged those working the fields, and Eärendil followed her lead.

They were heading for the forest. Eärendil slowed down as she disappeared without hesitation into its eaves. The birch trees towered over him, waving and rustling in the breeze, their trunks like tarnished silver in the shade. Eärendil stared at them, spotting the occasional beech or maple tree, and remembered the last great forest he had set foot in.

Neldoreth had been vast, and filled with twisting shadows and thick underbrush. The shadows, it was said, were the remnant of Melian’s enchanted Girdle that had guarded the kingdom for so long. But she was gone, and there was nothing, magical or not, to stop them from passing through, except for the prickling feeling that they were not alone. There were ghosts in Doriath, people whispered, including Tuor.

And Eärendil could not argue. He’d been plagued with strange dreams all the time they were in Doriath, of music and of a woman’s faint laughter or singing, her hair like shadows as she spun, flowers blooming under her feet.

He was sure that it was Lúthien he’d dreamed of. Elwing’s grandmother. Neldoreth had been her forest, and it remembered her still. Nimbrethil, it seemed, was Elwing’s.

In the end, he followed her in in spite of his misgivings and thoughts of ghosts. There was nothing else for him to do, and he told himself he was being silly, worrying about ghosts. There were no ghosts in Nimbrethil, only a girl-child.

So he followed her.

The forest was a completely different world from the wheat fields, or from the beach where Eärendil spent most of his time. The sunlight was tinged with green, and shone on the ground in dancing, dappled patterns. It was cool in the shade beneath the trees, and smelled of rich earth and moldering leaves, and birdsong filled it all.

There was a well-trodden path that Eärendil thought must have once been a game trail, worn smooth by much use from someone with small, light feet. And dark hair. Eärendil found a strand of it dangling from a low-hanging branch where it had been caught. It was most definitely Elwing’s: she had hair so fine it practically floated around her head like feather-light shadows, no matter what Luinnel did.

Eärendil followed the trail slowly and as quietly as he could, not wanting to startle Elwing. What he would do when he caught up to her, he wasn’t sure. Now that he thought of it, Elwing more than likely did not want to be followed, and would probably be angry with him.

He found her crouched by a pond, which opened up so suddenly in the forest that he blinked at the bright sunlight glittering on its surface, flat and glassy and so quiet. He’d almost forgotten, after the Sea, that water could be quiet. Elwing knelt and was so completely still he might have mistaken her for a statue, if not for the movement of her hair in the wind. She was staring at something in the water, and did not seem aware of his presence. Eärendil stood for several moments, watching her, before deciding that he should leave.

But as he turned to go, she spoke. “I know you’re there.” And then she moved, turning and raising her head. “You’re awfully loud,” she said. Eärendil froze, and felt himself blush. “Go away, Eärendil.”

“Why?” he asked, turning back around and going to crouch beside her instead. “What are you doing out here?”

She glared at him, though it was half-hidden behind a fall of shadow-black hair. “I said go away.”

“And I asked why,” he replied, sitting down and crossing his legs. “You shouldn’t be out here alone, you know. Does Lord Celeborn know?”

Her face went white (whiter, if that was possible, she was so pale), and she sat back on her heels. “I like the forest,” she said. Then, after a pause, she asked, “Are you going to tell him?”

Eärendil shook his head, but the suspicious glare remained on her face. She didn’t believe him. He just stared back, knowing she could read in his face that he really wasn’t lying. He would not tell Lord Celeborn if she did not tell his parents – and he knew that was not going to happen. Neither of them should be out in the forest alone.

“Then are you going to go away?” Elwing asked finally.

“No.”

“Why not?” She shook her hair out of her face, still glaring. It was that glare that made Celeborn mutter about Thingol, and Lady Galadriel about Lúthien. Perhaps on one of their faces Eärendil would have quailed, but Elwing was still a child, however oddly she acted, and it was easy to withstand her anger.

In a few years, however, Eärendil thought that things would be different. “Why do you come out here alone?” he asked. It was one thing to be fond of the forest – Luinnel, or someone else could come walk beneath the trees with her. But to come out by herself – that was different.

“To be alone,” she said, and got to her feet. “I hope you can find your own way back, Eärendil.” And then she fled.

“Hey! Hey – wait!” Eärendil scrambled to his feet and ran after her. “Elwing!”

But she was gone, vanished into the underbrush without a trace. Eärendil swore with words learned from eavesdropping on sailors at the harbor, and then sighed. He supposed he should have expected something like this. “Fine,” he said, raising his voice, in case she was somewhere nearby. “I’m going back home, then. I promise I won’t tell anyone.”

He started to walk, but found himself going in circles. After a while he stopped, swearing to himself that he had passed that walnut tree at least a dozen times. He should have come to the edge of the forest ages ago.

He was lost.

Eärendil stopped, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. Somewhere, Elwing was surely laughing at him. He opened his eyes, and found a tree nearby that he thought he could climb. If he could see Sirion from its branches, he would know which direction to go.

As he started to climb, he heard rustling behind him, and froze. “Hello?” Silence. “Elwing? Is that you?” He dropped to the ground and turned around, heart pounding. This isn’t Doriath there aren’t any ghosts this isn’t Doriath don’t be stupid.

A hand landed on his shoulder, and  he yelled, spinning around and stumbling, tripping over a root and falling onto his back. All the air left his lungs in a painful whoosh, and he found himself staring up at Elwing. She stared back, her lips pressed together oddly, like she was trying very hard not to smile.

When he could breathe he gasped, “What did you do that for?”

“I didn’t think you would yell like that,” Elwing said. “You shouldn’t climb this tree.”

“Why not?” Eärendil demanded. He got to his feet carefully, chest aching. Elwing just pointed up. He followed her finger, and after a moment of squinting in confusion, he saw it: a bee hive. A large hive, absolutely crawling with bees. He stumbled backward again, and almost fell before catching himself. “Oh.”

“You’re hopeless,” Elwing said. “Follow me, or we’ll both be late and in trouble.”

Eärendil hurried after her. “I’m not hopeless,” he said. “I just – I haven’t had to find my way through the forest alone before. That’s all.”

“Hopeless,” she repeated without turning around.

He decided not to argue. Breathing still hurt, and Elwing moved swiftly and easily through the underbrush, following game trails and hunters’ paths. In no time they left the forest and raced through the wheat fields to that hole in the wall, hidden behind the honeysuckle bushes in the garden.

Once they were through, Eärendil turned to look at the bushes. “What do you do when winter comes?” he asked. The hole should have been visible once the bushes lost their leaves, and he would think that someone would have thought to repair it.

Elwing didn’t answer, and when Eärendil turned around again, she was gone.