Up from the Ocean's Cup by StarSpray

Chapter 1

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The journey back to Alqualondë after facing the Valar a second time was quiet and tense, and by the end of it Eärendil felt ready to claw his way out of his own skin. Elwing had been quiet and sullen the whole time, and they’d spent the last day and a half not speaking at all.

He couldn’t tell if she was angry with him or if there was something else bothering her—or both. Elwing was not one to keep quiet when she was angry: like Thingol, her temper was explosive, though by all accounts it took more to get her to that point than it had ever taken him. But whatever it was, Eärendil couldn’t read it, and he was too tired to really try.

“Are you going to tell me what’s bothering you, or are we just never going to talk again?” he asked finally, as they crested the Calacirya, and sprawling Alqualondë came into view, rainbow beaches glittering in the noonday sun. Even from there they could hear singing rising from the docks.

Elwing took a breath. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “Am I ever going to see you again?”

He looked at her. “What does that mean?”

Her scowl was sudden and fierce; so she was angry. “You’re going to sail off again, this time into the sky,” she snapped, waving a hand toward the clouds. “You didn’t even think before agreeing to it, and—”

“I’m coming back,” Eärendil protested. “Between voyages, I’ll come—”

“You made me choose life or death for the both of us, and then decided to just leave—again—”

“Did you expect me to be content just sitting around for the rest of eternity? You know me better than—” Eärendil broke off as Elwing kicked her horse into a canter, heading down the road toward Alqualondë in a cloud of dust. He huffed a sigh and trailed after her. His gaze strayed skyward, as it had often since leaving Valmar. He had no idea how the Valar were going to enchant Vingilot so she could fly through the stars instead of sail the sea, but the very idea had captured his imagination and would not let go. He would always love the sea—his parents had named him well—but a large part of that love had been the thrill of exploring something so vast and mysterious, of seeing heatings no one else had ever seen before. And he had; in all his voyages, he’d seen so many things. But all of those wonders and adventures had been tainted by the desperate need to find a way to the West, by the knowledge that everyone he knew and loved at home—in Sirion, on Balar—was in ever-growing danger, and that someone needed to get help before it was too late.

And he had been too late, in the end. But now, though—thee wasn’t anything to hover at the back of his mind anymore, no urgent errand that would cast a shadow over whatever he would see out there. He would be on an errand, serving the Valar’s purposes appearing as a star to those in Middle-earth, a symbol of hope, a sign that the Valar had listened and were not idle. But all Eärendil had to do to accomplish that was take Vingilot’s helm again. He wouldn’t be searching for anything except whatever he happened to find. A huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders, and the relief had been enough (was still enough) to make him giddy.

Elwing, however, apparently didn’t see it that way.

When he reached the palace, he got all the way to his horse’s stall before realizing he wasn’t alone in the stable. When Olwë’s younger son Ëarion’s head appeared, upside down, from the loft with straw clinging to his hair, Eärendil flinched so badly he dropped his saddle bags. “Sorry,” Ëarion said with a smile that said he wasn’t sorry at all. “Did something happen in Valmar? Elwing came through looking like Ëarwen in a temper.”

Eärendil sighed. “Do you know where she went?” Hopefully their chambers, but if she wasn’t there…

“No, but Ëassalmë might. Or Isilmë; she’s been following Elwing around like a duckling.”

So many new names to remember. Eärendil patted his horse’s neck and stepped out of the stall. He thought he remembered Ëassalmë—Ëarion’s sister—but… “Which one is Isilmë?”

Ëarion grinned. “The littlest one. Are you two all right?”

He had no idea. “Yes, of course. Thank you.”

Elwing wasn’t in their chambers. Eärendil stared at the bed for a while, wondering if he should just give up and sleep for a few hours (or a month). Then he sighed and changed into fresh clothes. He still wasn’t sure why he and Elwing were at odds, and the sooner they figured it out and resolved it, the better.

As it happened, he nearly tripped over Isilmë down the hallway, where she was holding court with a series of dolls and wooden animals. “I beg your pardon, milady,” he said, smiling down at her and trying not to think about the games his sons had played. “Do you happen to know where Elwing went?”

“Oh, she went down to the beach,” Isilmë replied brightly. “Will you be joining us for dinner tonight? I’ve never been to Valmar; what are the Valar like? Were you afraid of—?”

“I don’t know about dinner,” Eärendil said quickly, “but I’ll tell you all about our journey after I find Elwing. Thank you, Isilmë.”

“You’re welcome!”

He found Elwing sitting on the sand, staring out at the horizon. There were drying tear tracks on her face, and she didn’t even turn to look at him when he sat down beside her. The sand was warm beneath his hands, and the waves were gentle as they washed up toward their feet.

Nothing like the pounding waves of Sirion.

Finally, Elwing took a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” she said, voice shaking only a little. “I know you, and I know how you love Vingilot, and sailing, and discovering, and—”

“I’m sorry, too,” Eärendil said. He reached out and covered her hand with his, twining their fingers in the sand. “Would it help if I said it’s very hard to even delay an answer when facing the Manwë directly?”

Elwing’s mouth twisted bitterly. “You don’t need to tell me that,” she said. “I just.” She took another breath. “When you leave, I’ll be alone again. And Alqualondë is so big, and the Teleri are so different from the Sindar, even if we are kin, and…”

“You could go to Tirion,” Eärendil suggested lightly. He held up his fret hand when Elwing gave him a look. “I’m joking. Though you are more familiar with the Noldor than the Teleri, and you’d know Ëarwen…”

“There is very, very little here that is at all familiar,” Elwing said. Eärendil grimaced. Elwing had never wanted to leave Middle-earth. He was sure that if she’d been born before the Great Journey, she would have chosen to remain by Cuiviénen.

And because apparently Eärendil was a glutton for punishment, he pointed out, “You know if you’d stayed on the damn ship like I asked you to, you’d be going home with Erellont, Falathar, and Aerandir.” That earned him a punch in the arm. “Ow.”

“I wouldn’t care if this place had purple grass and a pink sky and was populated by dwarves, if I wasn’t going to be alone,” she snapped before starting to get up. Eärendil grabbed her hand and tugged her back down. “Let go, Eärendil, or I’ll punch you again.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Elwing, look—I’m not going away forever. I’m coming back. And this time I really can promise that. And anyway,” he gestured vaguely, “what would I do if I wasn’t off sailing somewhere?”

Elwing crossed her arms. “You’ve family in Tirion,” she said.

“Yes, we could move to Tirion and live in a palace haunted by the ghosts of all my mother’s kin,” Eärendil said. “And get dragged into Noldorin politics, to boot. No thank you.” He leaned back and watched Elwing watch the waves. “You could come with me,” he said, though he knew what her answer would be even before he spoke.

She shook her head. “I’ve spent enough time aboard Vingilot to last me a lifetime.”

“Don’t forget, our lifetime is now that of Arda itself.”

“How can I possibly forget that?” She gave him a withering look. “I chose it, remember.”

And that was another source of tension—as though Elwing didn’t realize that Eärendil knew her well enough to know what she’d choose even be for the Valar finished presenting the idea. At the time he’d been so drained that choosing what to eat would have been too big of a decision for him, but even now Eärendil thought he would have gone with Elwing’s choice anyway.

She wasn’t the only one who’d lost everyone else, after all.

But he couldn’t think of a way to say all that in a way that wouldn’t start another fight or earn him another punch in the arm. Eärendil sighed. “I’m not going to apologize for leaving again,” he said, “because I’m coming back, and I think after a century or so you’d be begging me to go fetch you a handful of stardust anyway—”

“You don’t know that—”

“D’you remember when we first talked about getting married? Or the idea of it? We weren’t even courting yet, not even close.”

“We agreed we’d make a terrible match,” Elwing said, a small smile tugging at her mouth at the memory.

“Or the perfect one, seeing as we’d hardly spend any time together,” Eärendil replied. The conversation had been mostly tongue-in-cheek, and probably his first glimpse at a lighter side of Elwing instead of the one that scowled at him all the time. “I’m not saying we were right on either point, but both of us knew what we were getting into, didn’t we? I can’t stay still, and you can’t stand the thought of leaving the land. That was always going to be the case.”

They sat in silence for a long while, just watching the sea, and the seabirds wheeling overhead. Eärendil tried and failed not to imagine this scene if Elrond and Elros were there—their loss was yet another thing of tension between him and Elwing, because neither of them could actually talk about it.

He regretted a lot of things. Not being there for his sons was directly at the top of the list.

Finally, Elwing got to her feet. “I told Ëassalmë we’d join them for dinner.”

“And I told Isilmë I’d tell her all about the Valar.” Eärendil stood and pulled Elwing into his arms. “Are we good?” he whispered into her hair.

“I don’t know,” she sighed, voice muffled by his tunic. “But I think we will be.”

 

A week and a half later, Eärendil clung to the deck railing and watched Alqualondë and the Bay of Eldamar drop away beneath him. The Silmaril flamed on Vingilot’s mast, and the pair of Maiar appointed by Varda to sail with Eärendil laughed out of sheer joy as they turned toward the night sky, and the stars.

Around his neck hung a deep green emerald, the color of the forest in high summer. It was a gem taken from the remains of the Nauglamír, set in mother of pearl by a Telerin jeweler at Elwing’s behest, and pressed into Eärendil’s hand as she kissed him goodbye.

They were good.