Home's Tale by Haeron

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Chapter 5

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Something was very, very wrong the next day at the dinner table and I knew it before we had even started our main course. Celebrían and Elrond had prepared a simple meal for us, shrugging off the propriety of Lordship and Ladyship for a time and favouring green salads over meats and all the trimmings. It should have been a most agreeable meal but I might have cut the atmosphere no easier than the cabbage leaf on my plate.

 

Elrond had told Celebrían about the day of the sailing and I knew she had, in turn, spoken with Glorfindel. He tried to meet my eyes often but I kept them affixed to the plate and the cabbage leaf and bid myself wait for a proper moment to confide in him now that the initial discussion had been taken out of my hands. We talked, idly, ignoring the oliphaunt in the room with us but there was a frustration to which Glorfindel was using his cutlery that set my nerves on edge and my core twisting with guilt. Elrond ate modest forkfuls and watched the pair of us like he might supervise his children, Celebrían nattered about her tulips and silver thread and I ate without saying much at all.

 

And then, fate being the callous thing it truly is, when I did speak - I lit a fuse; and it was golden.

 

The conversation had turned to travel and all the paths of Valinor that were open to us at last and all the footsteps we might retrace after Age upon Age of merely reading of them. Elrond and Glorfindel seemed enthused at the prospect whilst Celebrían and I shared a more homely glance across the table and the polished candlesticks. She made a jest, you could always lodge up here - I’d give you very favourable rates!

 

I, thrice curse myself, had missed the joke element and enquired - might we?

 

Elrond said my name and it was a warning. I felt Glorfindel’s gaze before I met his eyes and for a moment we glared at one another through the fog of our mutual frustration. I turned away with a huff of derision that was, more truthfully, panic.

 

‘Are you quite well?’ Celebrían asked me, looking from her spouse to my spouse.

 

‘I’m fine.’ I put my fork on my plate and regretted that I probably would not be able to finish my meal. The cabbage would go to waste and it rankled me to think of. What a ridiculous thing to be worrying about, Erestor!

 

‘He’s not fine,’ Glorfindel said, very much irritated.

 

‘Glorfindel,’

 

‘No. No, he’s not fine and he won’t tell me, he won’t admit it even though I know.’ Glorfindel directed his voice at Elrond , who was frowning, but his words had been meant for me.

 

‘You know?’ I scoffed. Impossible when I’d spent as long as I could remember preventing that very thing from becoming true. ‘Do you really?’

 

‘So you say now that there is something wrong?’

 

Celebrían had her hand over Elrond’s on the tablecloth and they stared at us both, transfixed by our sudden explosive ire. Glorfindel’s emotions are so free as to be contagious, no matter what they might be, and his anger served to fuel my own as they had done time and time again. But something was different tonight -- and it was not just our diet.

 

I should have bowed my head to him and defused the flames; he had the right of it, after all, and he was moved by love as much as desperation. But I did not. I let the bubbling annoyance travel up my body from the acid pit of my stomach until I felt it burn my throat.

 

‘Perhaps,’ said I, answering his question.

 

Glorfindel blinked and aggression gave way to great, heaving sadness for the briefest instant. When I came to replay the incident in my head during the nights that followed my heart would break to recollect his face, and more so to recollect that I had done nothing to soothe him. It was laughable, my treatment of him - how I had suddenly not been able to feel that what burned him was no true fire but only a need for communication too long gone denied.

 

‘Perhaps? Perhaps.’ Glorfindel laughed dryly. ‘That is all you offer me?’

 

I said nothing.

 

‘Erestor, I know exactly what it is that’s eating away at you. I know exactly what you’ve been fretting over, how many times have I t-’

 

‘Glorfindel,’ I made my voice low, but he did not heed it. A nervous tremor coursed through my veins at the thought of his knowing and at the thought of his revealing so at the dinner table.

 

‘I know what it is, who it is. But just how will you cope with this when we get to New Gondolin if you cannot abide even hearing his na-’

 

‘Glorfindel,’

 

‘You see? Will you be like this? Unable to have a proper conversation with anyone without sweating and darting your eyes to and fro, looking for the door and thinking up ways which you might sneak away?’

 

And I said nothing. Yes, mostly likely, thought I to myself but I could not very well admit that. I gaped at him and Celebrían might have been doing the same, but all that really existed in my plane of being were the blue eyes of my husband.

 

Glorfindel. He infuriated me so.

 

Because he was right.

 

‘Will you not talk to me?’ he asked and when it seemed that I would not, he raked back his hair with a hand. ‘I recognise you less and less with each passing hour, Erestor.’

 

His words terrified me. They were my own fears put to his voice and I rose from the seat, very likely giving the impression that I was incensed beyond words by Glorfindel’s impertinence. Better they think that, I thought as I pushed the chair from the table and strode from the dining room. No amount of will, not even that possessed by the sons of Fëanor themselves, could have moved me to look at Glorfindel’s face as I departed. I loathed myself utterly in that instance and would not have him see the depths to which I had sunk.

 

But he had already seen.

 

Up the stairs I went at a pace that was not quite the storming thunder of an elf spurred by venom, no, it was more a slow march of the condemned man. I asked myself why I had done it and answered that I did not know, but it was a lie and I laughed; how apt that I must begin lying to myself now that I had run out of lovers and friends.

 

The worst is yet to come. It was a thought I tried to quash as I fumbled with the bedroom door. It was no use, my hands were slick and the future falling fast, grotesquely distorted from the vision that had been promised me all my life in Middle-earth. Fix it, I pleaded, ah, but to myself or some other I cannot know, fix it all. Keep your promises and open up this Valar damned door!

 

Perhaps the Valar acquiesced to assist me -- the door flung open and bashed against the wall with a violence that came forth from me quite unexpected. My thoughts parted, dissipated like mist over the sea and I stared into the room I shared with Glorfindel. I had thrown what was left of my broiling rage into the door and now, looking upon our garments mingled together on the floor, all that was left in me was the urge to cry.

 

I did not know what was happening to me! Why it was that I had caged myself so and seemed content to ruin whatever it was that I touched, and all because of my pride - why deny it now? I closed the door and managed to stoke the fire before I slumped before it in such a weak swoon as had befallen me on the docks of Mithlond. Was I the only elf in Valinor who had not been healed of the ills they bore? Fix them yourself, keep your own promises.

 

Sound advice. I pulled my hair free from the loose braids and pushed the dark hair back behind my ears and then I did cry, silently, and I do not know how much time passed that I stared into the fire unthinking and unfeeling; a wretched thing.

 

A knock on the door brought me back. I wished it away but it persisted, leaving me with no doubt as to who stood behind and no doubt that I must answer his call. I moved myself to my feet and stepped over our clothes, retracing my steps to the door and turning the key. Slowly. He was there and I felt him, separated from me only by the door that I alone could choose to open.

 

It was beautiful appropriate, somehow.

 

I held the door open a fraction and saw the embroidery of his shirt before lifting my eyes to his face. Frustration, irritation; they were both there still in his eyes until he saw the lines of the tears that had fallen down my cheek. He said my name, so gently and with all the sweetness of his good heart that it was all I could do not to fling to door open as I had before and fall into him.

 

He asked me to let him in and I said no when I should have said yes. Tears brushed my lips, I clung to the door as he asked me again; I shook my head.

 

Did he beg? No, I tell you he did not. It was me who begged for him even through my denials, and on the fourth time he breathed my name and bid me open the door - I could not resist a moment longer.

 

Glorfindel pushed through and took me to him and we held fast to one another as though expecting a rushing wave to grasp and pull us under a smothering tide. We said nothing but knew that there was everything to say, eventually, his hands warmed my back before cradling my face and so we rested brow to brow. His heart beat under my hands that I placed on his chest and I drew my own life’s blood from it.

 

He said shush when I opened my mouth to speak, ironic given his words earlier but I forgave him his discrepancy for the love in his voice. He smelled of floral soap and the scent of a warrior that would linger with him always; travel and far places. I rediscovered how intrinsic he was to my own being, how his body, grand and protective, was a thing I was a fool to deprive myself of -- how apt that I thought so, did I not tell myself such during the first time we ever lay together? He murmured something I did not hear and his voice was honey.

 

Then, it was my own turn to speak.

 

‘I am sorry,’ and I was.

 

‘Why,’ he asked, and his voice, so gentle, led me to more tears. ‘What has happened that you have not seen fit to tell me?’

 

‘Much, much...’

 

‘Erestor,’ he kissed my brow. ‘Erestor, I feel that I am losing you. It scares me.’

 

The balrog slayer should never have cause to be afraid. No, not the man who had walked the Halls of the Dead and seen the secrets of beyond the beyond. He should not have been afraid on account of me.

 

I became afraid too, afraid for all the ills I might have put in motion, and he held me so I might weep on his shoulder.

 

***

 

Once our melancholy was adequately spent, Glorfindel suggested we do what we had once loved doing so much together; walking. A simple request it was but it gave me a small hope I could not afford to squander, and so I nodded my assent.

 

We took a slow stroll through Celebrían’s garden and down the small winding path through the groves of tress. Night had fallen and we walked, hand in hand, under a strange sky that somehow had all the same constellations mixed in with some new ones. The stars blinked down on us, old friends who had seen much of our courting, and I saw Glorfindel cast his gaze to the heavens a few times, too. We will always be children of the stars, we elves, and there is a truth indeed.

 

There was no need for small talk between us after the closeness we had just shared - our twined fingers were enough. Glorfindel seemed at peace (the kind that comes only after a storm; a cliché, I know, but judge me not) after some time out under the expanse of the firmament. He blinked slowly and regarded the trees and their leaves and the horizon, too, but it did not frighten him as it did me. His gaze was longing, and I found I had grown jealous. Jealous that he might stare off into the unknown like that, jealous that there was a serenity in him, a restfulness, that I would never know.

 

He looked to me, my god of calm, and pressed a chaste kiss to my brow which warmed the skin. I clung to him and silently wished for another; a wish he granted promptly, if only he might transfer some of his tranquillity to me in his kisses...

 

Certainly, he tried.

 

Glorfindel put his arms around me, evidently deeming that we had walked quite far enough and fanned out his hands on my back in such a way as he knew would keep me warm. A few tall trees with smooth silver bark shaded us from the light of the moon and the wind played the whistle through their leaves; it was not quite as hollow a sound as it had been in Middle-earth, no, the trees here would never be ordinary oaks or beeches.

 

Something nudged my thoughts.

 

You have to trust in me, Erestor, just as I trust in you. Aren’t we the perfect match? Didn’t we used to believe that?

 

I still believed so and smiled into his shoulder. We are, I told him and meant it, utterly, giving myself over to the kind of blind hope that sustained the most desperate heroes in the storybooks and ignoring astutely how it only made the lurking foreboding all the worse. The heroes usually got eaten by dragons or beheaded or ended up married to their sister.

 

But my dark foreshadow was of a different nature, one not so epic but mayhap just as tragic. After all, we would be leaving soon, would we not?

 

There you go again, thinking when you shouldn’t be thinking.

 

He kissed me then and took me by surprise so I did not respond right away. I felt him and took my time in doing so, for my delight has always been in our shared embraces. His eyes were closed and he kissed as he always did; with assurance, with beauty. My fingers stroked the softness of his neck and my thumbs brushed his jaw line.

 

‘Be with me’ he said, a wisp of a breath hot upon my lips. ‘Like this, tonight.’

 

I answered his kiss, and answered yes.

 

We went back to the house and to our room where the fire was burned low to crackling embers, but the night was not unpleasantly cool and we paid it no heed in our haste to reach the bedchamber. I must disappoint you, however, and say that we did not make love of any supreme quality or even at all -- a mark of respect more than likely influenced by the fact that Elrond and Celebrían’s room was just the other side of the wall.

 

Glorfindel lay upon my chest even so, between my legs and lavished my shoulders, my neck with butterfly kisses and I stroked my hands through his golden tresses. If I closed my eyes we might have been back in Imladris, lying together after the summer feasts and dances and taking simple pleasure in the quiet we could share.

 

It was not quite so idyllic, I assure you. There was always the threat of what might happen next or, I should say, what I might ruin for us next and Glorfindel sensed it and wore it to a minor concern with his whispered words and roaming hands. It was a mutual apology we were crafting upon one another -- the sort where words would not be enough; it was an apology of the soul and half of me thought I might end up weeping again.

 

Glorfindel kissed the pulse in my neck and whispered to me sweet nothings in the old language.

 

I will be with him, I thought to myself. Even if tomorrow means we might be apart.