Pieces of the Stars by Nibeneth

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Chapter 6

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“The forest is full of creatures that want to eat you,” Maedhros had said one day when the boys were small. Elrond did not remember what had prompted this lesson. “Most of them will not bother trying until you are already dead or weak enough that they can pick you off without a fight.” He was drunk, as usual, but instead of numb detachment he spoke with a raw, bitter sharpness. “The cold will kill you in hours. If you manage to find shelter, thirst will kill you before hunger does. The longer you are without food, the weaker you will become, and the less you will be able to hold off the scavengers waiting for you to die. Wolves will close in first, and bears will fight them for your body. They will begin to tear your flesh before you are dead. When you have finally succumbed to the shock and blood-loss, ravens will land among them and pluck out your eyes.” He stabbed his fingers forward for emphasis. “When the wolves and bears have had their fill, flies will land upon what's left and lay their eggs. The maggots will crawl over every last scrap of flesh until bleached bones are all that remain of you. That is what happens to little boys who stray too far from home and hearth.”

“Charming stories for children's ears!” Maglor had rebuked lightly, but Maedhros scoffed at him.

“Yes, we wouldn't want to live in a world where horrible things happen to children, would we?” he had said. At that he glanced at Elrond and Elros out of the corner of his eye before taking his drink out of the room.

---

Elrond was not alone in the woods.

First, a scent—warm and musky. He lifted his head and sniffed again. Close. A stranger's territory. He must be on his guard. Flecks of scent in the tufts of hair on grass and tree bark. He regarded them, suspicious, and continued on his path.

Maedhros' warnings brightened in his mind like a popping spark before blinking out in the darkness.

The wolf before him was patchy with the remnants of his pale winter coat. He was young and gangly, and he stared back at Elrond with a clear amber gaze. Elrond lowered his head and peered up through his eyelashes. The wolf's ears were up, his black nose twitching with Elrond's scent. If he wanted to attack, Elrond would not be able to escape it.

The wolf's muzzle wrinkled in a cautious snarl. “Skin-thief,” he growled. “You trespass here.”

“I mean no harm,” Elrond said.

The wolf's snarl deepened. “Do you bring food? Females? Anything besides your soft paws and blunt teeth? No! Begone!”

Elrond shuffled backward, stealing only the briefest looks at the wolf. “I am only lost,” he protested.

“Be lost somewhere else!” The wolf barked from deep in his chest. Elrond, heart pounding, scurried away with his feet slipping on damp leaves.

 

Perhaps he would end here, sinking into the cool embrace of past generations, his eyes becoming food for crows and his guts opened by wolves and his bones scattered for the teeming masses of life under the surface, silent but deafening. Food for the earth, that was best, elves and men may cast him out but the hungry earth would welcome his flesh and grow lush upon his clotted blood.

He could feel it all, every leaf and bud unfurling in the cool, damp air and every root stretching into the deep earth. It was an explosion of life, silent to ordinary ears, but he had mushrooms bubbling up along his spine and moss curling through his hair and seeds splitting and germinating under his skin, erupting up toward the light in a rush to receive the sun's warmth before any of the others. Worms and beetles wriggled between his toes and ferns sent up curling fronds that wound around his ankles like crisp green ropes.

Swift streams rolling down from distant mountains rushed through his veins. His very marrow pulsed with the beams of light piercing the forest canopy and calling up the things that slept through the winter, plants and animals and formless fungus alike. He was all of it, and the coat of flesh that he wore would not contain him forever.

 

The forest vibrated with the great awakening in the soil and shook more violently with the creatures that came to feed.

Did they only exist to die, to be eaten or to decay into the earth they crawled out of? Did they know how small they were? And the birds and snakes and insects that came to the feast—did they know that they too would fall to the foxes and owls and eventually sink below the tree roots with everything else?

The first chicks had emerged from their eggs, spindly and naked with closed, bulging eyelids. They screamed to be fed. That was all they could do, just scream and scream and wait for either their bellies to be filled or to starve. Their parents lived and died to the sound of their screaming. The birds competed for worms like the chicks competed to be fed, gulping down grubs for themselves between flights back to the nest. Only the fastest and most tenacious would survive. There was no room for hesitation.

Elrond dug into the dirt with his hands. The chicks were starving. They would scream themselves to death.

There! A worm! It tried to wriggle away, but Elrond grabbed it and pulled it from its burrow. He pulled himself up into the branches of a nearby tree and dropped the worm into the nearest screaming nest before scrambling back down. He had to keep going, the chicks were starving, and he could not rest until they were large enough to fend for themselves.

He searched on his hands and knees for another worm. The chicks were starving, but so was he, and no one would be there to feed them if he starved first. There, under the ferns! He snatched another worm before it could creep underground, and he swallowed it whole before another bird could take it from him. It wriggled in his throat and he had to swallow again and again to subdue it, feeling it fighting its fate the whole way down.

The chicks demanded more, more, more. They fought their nestmates, and their parents fought other parents, all of them locked in a race to stave off starvation for another day.

 

In his lucid moments, Elrond wondered if anyone had noticed his absence. Moreover, he wondered if anyone cared, or if his disappearance had come as a relief.

No more screaming! No more disruption! No more worrying about a mad boy they didn't want in the first place! Good riddance!

Insects kept darting at his scabby arms. He slapped them away. Already the creatures of the forest were picking at him, anticipating his inevitable expiration.

He did not know how long it had been, or how much longer it would be.

For hours on end he lay motionless on the ground, staring up at the sky. The hungry green things all around him stretched up before the eternal blue. It shifted into reds and purples, and the world shifted with it. Plants sank back to wait for the sun's return, and the pale, slinking things of the darkness began to wake. Round eyes searching for food. Amorous songs and calls to fight. Shrieks of terror silenced by talons that swooped in on noiseless wings as the fire of sunset blackened into night.

What had it been like before Elrond took every ripple of nature into his blood?

Where was the boundary between moonlight and his fingers?

He twitched. A variation in the rhythm. Something was out there.

A child's voice. “Is anyone there?”

He sat up and looked around. The forest, bleached of color by the darkness, betrayed nothing.

No. There it was—a child! Children!

There were two of them, silver-haired and silver-eyed and clad in tunics the color of stars. Elrond had thought that he and Elros were identical, but the children were nothing less than perfect copies of one another. They peered at him for a moment, but when they realized he had noticed them, they jumped up and ran deeper into the thick woods.

“Wait!” Elrond scrambled to his feet. “You shouldn't be out here!”

He ran after them, stumbling over protruding roots and prickly bushes. They were gone. He paused to get his bearings, and the flicker of a silver braid deeper in the thicket sent him charging after it.

 

In the darkness creatures pursued him, spreading their filth through the earth to infect the tree roots and silence them one by one. The corruption would not wait, it would not stop, it would only bring death and decay with it until the whole forest was exactly like its master. And what could he do? Fight it? No, he must only escape and hope to live another day in the light, not their half-world of wraiths and slavery.

He kept running. The children were still out here, somewhere, and he had to find them.

Footsteps disturbed the borders of his mind, harsh and heavy. Voices, lights—they were gone when he turned to face them.

He had to keep going.

 

A seed of blue-white light in the deep woods grew brighter and brighter, casting a glow that blurred the small branches and lit up the fog that had settled in around the underbrush. The large trees threw stark shadows as the light bobbed larger—no, closer.

They were coming. Elrond took off running in the opposite direction, deeper into the dark trees. The children, he had to find the children.

After-images glowed behind his eyelids when he blinked. He could not see where he was going—damn the light! He rubbed his eyes and kept walking. They had gone this way, surely he had to be close. They were only children, and who knew how long they had been out here. He had to find them soon.

Had he even seen them? Was it only a trick? He was so tired...

No. It was real. They were real, and he had to find them.

His eyes were adjusting to the darkness again, but while he strained to see, his stomach lurched as his foot sank into an unexpected hole—his ankle wrenched painfully and his leg buckled under him.

“Ow!” Elrond grabbed at a scrubby plant to pull himself up. His ankle throbbed, and it wobbled when he tried to put his weight on it, but it didn't seem broken. He had to keep going. The children were still out here.

He limped through bushes and over hills. His breath was coming harder and harder, but he could not see the bright light any longer, just the light of the moon and stars. By that light he would surely see the little twins' silver hair or silken garments.

 

Darkness swirled all around him as he hobbled further and further. The voices and footsteps were coming nearer. Elrond hobbled faster, trying not to lose sight of the children—he couldn’t see their silver hair in the gloom, but he thought he could hear their faint voices even as the louder calls drowned them out. The world pitched and spun around him but he stayed upright.

“This way!”

“Slow down!” he called. “I can’t find you unless you stay put!” He picked up his feet and ran into the darkness. Twigs scratched at his arms and face and mosses tangled in his hair, fingers of the earth reaching to snatch him up and drag him into the soft, wet darkness of decomposition. He could smell the maggots and molds and the worm-eaten bones in layers beneath his feet, shot through with the tang of salt and anxious sweat and old blood.

The forest closed in around him. The voices fell behind. The rustle of children’s feet upon the loam turned, and paused, and then faded. Elrond braced his hands on his knees, catching his breath.

“Come back! Who are you? Where are your parents?”

There was no answer but the hoot of an owl.

Elrond gulped several times. He couldn’t empty his lungs—each breath in seemed to fill his head with empty space. Stars flickered in the deep shadows all around him. The spidery hands of branches and vines wrapped around his ankles and brought him to his knees when he tried to continue into the woods. It was so utterly dark, a void of sight and reason but filled to bursting with sound and scent and terror—

There, a flash of silver in the underbrush. A braid, a pale face, eyes round and dark with fear. Another child peered out next to the first, nearly an exact mirror, and then they turned and ran.

“Stop! Wait!” Elrond lurched forward. His legs did not, and he crumpled. This time, he could not get up.

He lay, sound and darkness closing in upon him, and the children disappeared.

“Stop running,” he said weakly. His breath disturbed a tuft of grass before his lips as the dark trees and bright stars spun in a dizzying whirl around his head. No amount of struggling and clawing for purchase could bring him to his feet again, and finally he relented, panting.

The blue-white glow and shifting darkness came brighter and starker through the trees. Elrond could not look away. There were voices and foliage rustling underfoot, not the formless void he had expected to come and swallow him up. The calls came as if through water, muffled and distorted, growing sharper until they stabbed at the tenderest membranes inside his ears, too loud to understand.

“—you close? Can you hear us? Elrond!”

A quick, darting shadow fell over Elrond's face. Something soft on his hands, then his cheek. The light flooded over him a moment later, a star-bright blaze that blinded him to what little he could see in the dark. When his eyes cleared, he saw dark braids and gray eyes bent low over him, lips forming the shapes of his name and a gold ring twinkling in a familiar nose.

Elros.

“He's breathing! He's looking at me!” Elros looked over his shoulder. “His skin is cold!”

The light shifted again. It illuminated deep scars on a drawn face surrounded by a fiery halo. Maedhros. He held up what appeared to be a stone that glowed like blue-white fire. His breath was a pale mist when he sank to one knee next to Elros, but Elrond did not feel cold.

“It's about damn time,” he growled, but it did not quite mask the panic that seemed to flow off him like sweat. “Can you hear me, boy? Can you understand me?”

“Yes,” Elrond heard himself say. It came out as a dry rasp.

“Hold this,” Maedhros said to Elros, pushing the white fire into his hands. He fumbled with the thick cloak around his own neck and shoulders. “Can you walk?”

Could he? Would he be able to instruct his arms to pick him up from the forest floor, and his legs to carry him? Could he control anything? Could he ever? Could he even form the words to say yes, I can?

He didn't manage to say anything, but Maedhros was already picking him up and wrapping him in the cloak. Elrond struggled uselessly against his grip when Maedhros hefted him over his good shoulder like a sack of grain. “The children!” Elrond finally burst out. “I have to find them!”

Neither Elros nor Maedhros seemed to understand him. “Cup the lamp from behind so it lights the path in front of you,” Maedhros said to Elros. “Do you remember the way we came? That's all right, I do. No, I can see over your head. Yes. Go! Move!”

“They're still out here!” Elrond pleaded, but again, they did not seem to understand. He thrashed and kicked, but Maedhros' hold on him might as well have been made of iron. When he finally exhausted the last of his reserves, he relented, sagging bonelessly over Maedhros' shoulder, and let himself be carried. He could do nothing else. He could do nothing for the children.

The smells and sounds of the forest were now dampened by a faceful of Maedhros' wool tunic. He smelled like anxious sweat and still water. Elrond bounced gently to the rhythm of his heavy footsteps, and above them, he could hear Elros' lighter feet pattering more quickly ahead. They rustled through ferns and crunched over loose rocks. A stream burbled in the distance. A sudden scrambling and tiny whispers in the bushes—Elrond wrenched his head up and spat out a mouthful of Maedhros' hair just in time to see another flash of silver in the darkness.

“There they are!” he cried. “Maedhros! Elros!”

“All right, you little bastard,” Maedhros said, giving him a jostle. “You're lucky to be alive as it is. Do not bring everything that prowls the woods at night down on us.”

At that, Elrond could only let out a wordless scream of frustration.

“Shush! ”

Elrond fought him all the way through the forest, alternately slumping down with exhaustion and inciting a fresh struggle when he found another wind in him. Children's voices and flashes of silver whirled all around him, and no matter how much he protested, Maedhros and Elros did not seem to understand or sometimes even hear him. Time and distance lost meaning in the midst of his distress, and soon he found he could not distinguish between the children's voices and those of Maedhros and Elros as they navigated back along their path into the forest. Maedhros' cloak trapped his arms and seemed to constrict him more tightly every time he moved. Wool, hair, and foliage against his face scratched and burned and made him angrier and angrier—the children were still out there, they were going to die, and his captors were ignoring him!

Other lights and sounds materialized around him. More voices. Torches and lamps, though none as bright as Maedhros' blue-white stone. The trees thinned, familiar smells of animals and woodsmoke filled the air, and soon the children's voices were lost in the chorus of other noises. Elrond surrendered at last, and he wept, but no tears welled up in his burning eyes.

“He's alive?”

“You found him!”

“Give him space,” Maedhros ordered. “Call in the search. I'll tell you more later.”

“No, send them to search for the children,” Elrond said one last time, but a door creaked shut, muffling the crowd's voices and any hope of them hearing him. He was being lifted again and then placed down on something soft, but the ground still seemed to move with the rhythm of Maedhros' long strides. A cool, damp cloth touched his cheek and the scents of mint and lavender filled his nose. He flinched once, but a firm hand settled on his shoulder and he didn’t flinch when the cloth pressed against his forehead.

“Calm down, Elrond. Calm. It’s us. You’re safe.”

He recognized Osgardir. He was in his nightshirt with a robe tied hastily over the top. Behind him, Maedhros tucked the stone into a pouch and the blue-white light faded away. After-images lingered for a moment in Elrond’s vision. In them he saw fleeting silver reflections like stars winking out before dawn.

“The children are still out there,” Elrond said one more time, desperate. They could not fade into the darkness.

“Deep breaths. Speak more slowly—it’s all coming out in a jumble.”

What? He was saying it, why weren’t they understanding him? Still, Elrond took a deep breath in, held it, and then let it out through his nose. “The children,” he said, enunciating his words. “We have to go back for them.”

Maedhros frowned. “What children?”

“In the woods. All in silver. Little twins.” Elrond gulped and pulled away from Osgardir’s hand. “Someone has to go and find them before it’s too late.”

Maedhros stared at him, brow furrowed and mouth slightly open as if he were about to speak, but nothing came out.

“Do you have any idea how long we were searching for you?” Elros barked before Maedhros could say anything. “If there were any children out there, we would have seen them! Why would you ever wander off like that? What were you thinking?”

Osgardir’s eyes flashed. “Elros!”

“Who told you about the children?” Maedhros blurted out suddenly, his voice cracking.

“What?” Elrond rubbed his temples. He ached all over. “I saw them out in the woods!”

“Would you have been able to tell if they were one of your illusions?” Osgardir asked.

“I swear they were real!”

Maedhros was nearly smoke-white. “They couldn’t have been! It was… it was so many years ago!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

Osgardir, amazingly, was still trying to get rational answers. “Did you first run into the woods to look for them?”

“No, I just…” Elrond clenched his jaw. He wanted to scream—he couldn’t explain it, they wouldn’t understand it anyway, he hadn’t wanted to be found and the fact remained that Maglor wanted to get rid of him. There were children in the woods, and even though he had seen and heard them he now could not even convince himself that they were real. Was this not madness?

“Elrond, did you perhaps—”

“I just want it to stop!”

A ringing silence followed his shout, and a sense of clarity as clean and sharp as winter air in his nose and throat. Elrond opened his eyes and had to blink a few times before they cleared, and when they did, he saw Osgardir and Maedhros with their eyes squeezed shut and their hands over their ears, shoulders hunched as if flinching away from a blow. Neither of them said anything for one endless moment, and then Elros rushed forward, amazement written all over him. “Elrond! What was that?”

Elrond frowned. “What?”

Osgardir cautiously uncovered his ears and looked up. His eyes were watering. “Did you... do anything different?”

“I don't know what you mean,” Elrond said. He felt like he was begging, but he could not say for what.

“A push?” Osgardir gestured as if to illustrate a concept without words. “A... force? A reach?”

“I felt it,” Maedhros said. His poor scarred ears stayed flat against his head when he uncovered them, as if anticipating another sharp noise. “Your thoughts extending beyond your body. It's... words alone can't describe the feeling.”

Elrond stared at them both. “You... felt my thoughts?”

“It would seem so,” Osgardir said.

Elrond looked at Elros. “Did you feel it?”

Elros only shrugged, helpless.

“This is the way elves communicated before we learned to speak,” Maedhros said. A canny spark had entered his eyes. “In our day it takes conscious effort and years of practice. It does not happen by accident.”

“I didn't do it on purpose.”

“No... this is something else.”

Another silence. When Elrond looked around, he felt as if he had not noticed his surroundings until now: the infirmary, and the same cot he’d become very familiar with over the past months. Only one lamp was lit, and the remnants of an earlier fire smoldered on the hearth at the end of the long room, but otherwise it was dark. Dark and ordinary, with shadows that slept, unlike those in the deep woods. The familiarity now seemed strange, but the silence was so beautiful. He wanted to swallow it and breathe it all in until everything inside him was as dark and quiet as this room.

“We can puzzle it out later. You are dehydrated, I can tell just by looking at you,” Osgardir said after a moment, and it was only then that Elrond realized how thirsty he was. His physical body and its demands had seemed so distant. The healer went briefly behind his compounding table and emerged with a large mug, which he placed in Elrond’s hands. “This is just fresh water with some honey and a bit of salt. Drink it slowly—slowly, I said—and then we’ll try to get some food in you.” While Elrond drank, Osgardir departed to poke the fire.

“The mob wants answers,” Maedhros muttered while Elrond sipped the solution. It tasted like tears. “Elros, keep an eye on him.”

“I’ll keep both eyes on him.”

“Good.”

At last, a pause, and Elrond could think. Elros watched him intently while he drank from his mug. Instead of staring back, Elrond turned his eyes toward a polished metal tub on the opposite side of the room.

The figure that stared back at him was almost unrecognizable. He was like a skeleton. He had dark circles around his eyes and unmistakable circular wounds up and down his arms, and he shuddered when he touched one. His hair was a knotted, twig-tangled mane that had almost entirely escaped from its two braids. Only the gold ring in his nose separated him from a beast. Somehow it was like looking at a stranger, or like he had forgotten what he looked like until now.

He had stopped looking when the mirror betrayed him months ago. The reflection was not always his own, and sometimes he was not alone in the polished surface. He hid the mirror. Soon he began seeing things in puddles and cups of water. He flinched away from anything polished enough to reflect his face—or anything else—back at him.

The twins had spent a lot of time staring at themselves in the mirror once people began remarking at how tall and handsome they were becoming. Elros in particular spent a lot of time smoothing down the little hairs at his temples, rearranging his eyebrows, picking between his teeth, straightening his nose ring, experimenting with his clothes, and rebraiding his hair until he was satisfied. They shared one small mirror, so Elrond sometimes had to tackle him and take it after more diplomatic attempts failed, but he had more priorities than just his physical beauty.

He examined his face and ran his fingers over his cheeks and chin to see if he was growing any whiskers, but found none. Likewise, when he held a lantern behind the mirror to see if he could detect a faint iridescence reflecting back from his eyes, he saw nothing. His ears were slightly pointed and could have gone either way.

Whether the dreams and visions or the physical changes had come first, Elrond couldn’t say. He and Elros both sprouted like stalks of hemp under the sun. They started growing patches of hair where there hadn’t been hair before, and their voices boomed at lower octaves than ever. Elrond had been singing the first time his throat produced something closer to Rochael’s voice than his own. Maglor immediately heaped solicitous praise on his singing voice, assuring him that it was still lovely and that his voice was only becoming deeper as he grew older and don’t worry, it’s perfectly normal, every boy goes through this same process around your age! It was much worse than Maedhros’ approach to the situation: “You are becoming a young man,” he had said, unceremoniously tossing him a bar of soap. “You need to wash your armpits.”

Clearly they were changing as they matured, but Elrond had never heard anything about people normally seeing visions or hearing disembodied voices or smelling and feeling unseen sensations when they approached adulthood.

Elros finally took a comb from the bedside table when he had grown weary of silence. “You have leaves in your hair. Let me fix it.”

“I can do it myself,” Elrond said defensively, but Elros only brandished the comb.

“You need to drink your water,” he retorted. Normally Elrond would have argued his point, but now he just shrugged and rolled his eyes as Elros set about combing snarls out of his loose curls. Elros, of course, knew how to do it without tugging: he started from the ends and worked his way up, picking out plant matter and gently unraveling knots, and when it was all combed out into a soft, voluminous mass, he began braiding. It was the most reassuring thing in the midst of Elrond’s confusion.

“Maedhros went a bit mad when we realized you were missing,” Elros said once he had tied off the two braids. Both twins wore them long enough to sit on. “He went like this for a while,” he put his hands on his head and crumpled into a primal hunch, “and kept saying not again, not again. Then he got this... fire in his eyes and went around bellowing at people until he could make enough search teams to look for you. I couldn't tell you whether he's actually blinked in the last two days.”

Elrond frowned a little. “What did he mean, 'not again'?”

“I don't know. He tried to make me stay behind, but I said I'd look for you myself if he wouldn't give me a partner, so after that he took me with him so he could keep an eye on me.” Elros grinned at that, clearly satisfied with himself.

Osgardir returned with another large mug of thin porridge and a shapeless smock. “Here, Elrond, you can change and then drink this up as well. You, go check yourself for ticks,” he told Elros, who made a show of taking off his boots and peering between his toes, but otherwise stayed nearby.

While Elrond drank his porridge, Osgardir examined him all over and declared him much too thin, but otherwise healthy. His ankle was swollen and sore but not broken, so Osgardir just wrapped it tightly and told him to stay off it as much as possible. Afterward he made Elrond drink more water and porridge over the course of a few hours until he was able to urinate and the healer was satisfied with the color of it.

Elros, still wearing his cloak, had curled up on the floor and drifted off by the time Elrond came back out from behind the curtain, and Osgardir just chuckled and gently rolled him onto a pallet.

---

Elrond slept more deeply than he had in a long time, and only realized it when he opened his eyes to daylight and the scent of fresh spring air wafting in through open shutters. He pushed himself up on his cot and stretched, questions materializing on his tongue as he took stock of his surroundings. Elros was still asleep on his pallet, but Maedhros had gone. Instead, Maglor occupied a chair at the foot of Elrond’s bed, still in dusty traveling clothes and dozing over his folded arms.

There he was. Elrond ran through any number of things he would say, trying to think up responses that would come close to explaining what he was thinking and why he had done it but all the questions and answers buzzed into incoherence inside his skull.

Maglor’s head bobbed up at a small noise. His eyes were red and shadowed, but a renewed light came into his face when he saw Elrond.

“You’re awake!”

“Um, I guess I am.”

Maglor paused, open-mouthed, and Elrond braced for the inevitable demand to explain himself, but it did not come. “Osgardir wanted you to drink this when you woke up,” Maglor said instead, holding out another large mug of porridge. Elrond took it and dutifully took a gulp, even though it was room-temperature and he had to gag it down.

“I wasn’t in my right mind,” he said, anticipating an interrogation and trying to avoid drinking more cold porridge. “It was stupid, I know. I just... you were already going to send me away when you returned...” It sounded amazingly stupid when he said it out loud, and he looked down at his mug instead of at Maglor’s face. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize,” Maglor said, pain showing clearly in the lines around his mouth. “I do. I apologize for making you feel as if that was what I wanted. Nothing could be further from the truth. I was... trying to do the right thing at the wrong time.”

Elrond frowned. “What did you mean when what did you mean when you said it would be better for everyone when we are out of your house?”

“You were never supposed to be here. I know it was a long time ago for you, but in my memory it was nearly yesterday.” Maglor looked away. “I cannot look at the two of you without remembering my crimes. You deserve much better to be raised by those who...” he trailed off, unable to put it into words.

“We aren’t unhappy,” Elrond said. “You have kept us safe and taught us many things. I don’t know, but I’d say you’ve done all right.”

“It was never supposed to be me. It was supposed to be your parents and all the rest of their kin.”

“They aren't here. You are.”

“I am the poorest of substitutes.”

“I don't care.”

“I cannot... this cannot be permanent. You know this already. You must inevitably leave my house before you fall any further under the shadow of my Oath.” Maglor cleared his throat and looked back up at Elrond. “Wants are the enemies of needs.”

Elrond frowned. “Can we wait to talk about this until my mind is no longer trying to tear itself apart? I need you here now. I look to you for both my needs and my wants. Will you punish me for that?”

“No... of course not.” A long pause. Maglor smoothed the blanket on Elrond’s cot. “Maedhros was right. None of this was ever your fault. I would say that I will try to do the right thing, but that usually goes badly, so I will say this: I will try to do right by you, according to your needs at the moment. And if you need my support, then you will have it.”

A lump had formed in Elrond’s throat, and he could only nod.

Maglor fidgeted a little. “You seem better than you have been recently,” he said, changing the subject. “I turned back as soon as Maedhros sent someone to fetch me, but I still didn’t make it back until dawn. My brother and Osgardir explained what transpired last night.”

“Which parts?”

“All of it.”

“Even the part where they felt my thoughts, or whatever it was?”

“Yes.”

Elrond paused, considering his chances, and then asked the question that remained on his mind. “I saw two children in the woods, twin boys with silver hair. Maedhros asked who told me about them, but no one did, I just saw them. Did they tell you that part?”

Maglor nodded. “Osgardir did.”

“Were they real? I didn’t dream them up, did I?”

“You didn’t. They were real, though that wretched story transpired before you were born, and far from here. It would have been impossible for you to have seen them in the flesh.”

“Who were they?”

Maglor looked uncomfortable, and he hesitated before he spoke. “Children of Doriath. They were lost in the forest, despite Maedhros’ efforts to save them. It weighs heavily on him.”

That explained much, but Elrond had other priorities just now. “If I am seeing and feeling things that really happened, but that I didn’t even know about…” he frowned, examining his hands. When had they become so thin? “And if I can reach into others’ minds… maybe these illusions are other people’s thoughts. Maybe I’m experiencing them without even trying.”

“Do you think all of your visions can be explained in this way?”

“I’m not sure.” At that, a long-dormant memory sprang into his mind. “Wait—no! They can’t! At least I don’t think so. Just before the earthquake, I woke up feeling… anxious, like I was waiting for something important. I could… I don’t know if it was really… I woke Elros up, and then it hit.” He shrugged. “I just remembered it again. I don’t know if it was anything like the visions, but it happened.”

“Some of our kind have the gift of foresight. Our mother has it,” Maglor said. “It would not be out of the question for you to have foreseen the earthquake. But this is still a mysterious gift even to the very wise among us, and I wouldn’t know whether it is tied to the other things you have seen.”

It did not feel like a gift. “This will never go away, will it. This is just… how I am now.”

Maglor took a cautious breath in. “I couldn’t say.”

“I am so tired of no one knowing anything!” Elrond burst out, surprising himself and making Maglor jump a little. “I just want to know! It seems like a simple question! What is wrong with me? And why am I like this?” He immediately regretted it when Elros, still sleeping on the floor, jolted awake.

“Huh?” He rubbed his scrunched face. “Why are we yelling?”

“Sorry,” Elrond muttered.

“I’m not sure there is anything wrong with you,” Maglor said earnestly, leaning forward. “It may be that this is just something that needs to be understood, and we already know more than we did yesterday. We know you have seen the past. The present as well, when you experienced the pig slaughter as if you were one of the pigs. And the future, well, aside from the earthquake, there isn’t anything to confirm yet. Unless you remember something else.”

“Not yet. I’ll have to think about it.”

---

Maglor soon took his leave, promising to bring Elrond a clean set of clothes later. Elros stayed, and Elrond filled him in on what he had discovered through his conversation with Maglor, this time with a renewed resolve to gain control.

“It all stopped when I... jumped into your thoughts last night,” Elrond said. It was frustrating to not have the vocabulary to explain what had happened, but he was going to try anyway. “Everything made sense afterward. Well, I still didn’t know what was happening to me, but I could tell that everything was real and I wasn’t having any visions. If other people’s thoughts give me visions, maybe I can stop having visions if I push them back out.”

Elros shrugged. “That sounds logical, I guess. If logic even applies here.”

“I think it does,” Elrond replied, hoping that if he believed it strongly enough, it would be true. “The problem is that I don’t know how to do it on purpose.”

“Well, don’t ask me,” Elros said with a crooked smile.

“I probably just have to practice. It’s like sword training.” Elrond opened his hands. “See if you can send a thought at me. Or just think something really hard, and I should see it. Then I’ll try to push it back to you. Maybe imagine that there’s something in this room that isn’t normally here.”

“All right.” Elros met Elrond’s eyes and set his mouth in a firm line. “I’m thinking of something. Can you see it?”

Elrond looked around. There was nothing out-of-place around the curtained cubicle where he had slept, whether in plain sight or hidden anywhere he could think to look. He stood, wincing a little when he put his weight on his ankle—he’d forgotten about it—and hobbled out into the ward. Cots, curtains, tables, clay jugs, folded linens, nothing he wouldn’t expect to see in the infirmary. “Am I looking in the right place?” He peered under another cot and found it also empty. “Can I have a hint?”

“If you were seeing it, you would know,” Elros said.

“It isn’t working, then.” Elrond straightened up. “Maybe if I try a different—oh, perfect,” he said when Osgardir came in through the back door, carrying a basket of clippings from the herb garden. “Osgardir! Think something at me!”

“What?”

“I’ll explain later. Can you just... imagine there’s something unusual in this room? I’m performing an experiment.”

“All right, I’m thinking of something.” Osgardir smiled slightly and stood by the door while Elrond tried to get himself in the right state to let the vision manifest in his mind. Maybe he had to focus harder? No, what if he could only do it without thinking? Maybe it only worked on real memories and emotions, not fancies?

“I don’t think I can see it,” Elrond said, looking around the ward a second time. Nothing seemed to have changed. “I’ll need to try something else.”

“Well, keep at it. I have work to do.” Osgardir went to the compounding table. He paused for a moment, and then brought Elrond a wax tablet and a stylus. “Remember, the only difference between experimenting and fooling around is whether you write it down.”

 

Evening fell, and Elrond still had not managed to recreate a vision or test out his theory.

“There has to be a way. I won’t just accept that I’m at the mercy of the visions whenever they decide to show up.” He twirled the stylus between his fingers. “If I was able to stop the madness in its tracks last night, I can do it again.”

“I’m hungry,” Elros said from his prone position on the floor. “And I’m out of ideas. Can we work on it tomorrow?”

“That’s easy for you to say!”

Osgardir looked up from his desk at the back of the ward, from which he had left the twins to their experiments throughout the afternoon. “Elrond, if you are feeling better today, you should go to the longhouse for dinner,” he said. “Otherwise I’ll assume you’re still ill and you will have gruel.”

Elrond wrinkled his nose at that prospect. He could not remember the last time he had felt truly hungry, but now he did notice a petulant rumble in his belly, and he did feel better. If he knew anything about his condition, he knew that he should make the most of a good episode while it lasted.

He looked over the tablet one more time to see if there was anything obvious he had missed for now.

    Elros remembering something last week - no

    Elros remembering something three years ago - no

    Trying to see Elros’ thoughts while he isn’t paying attention - no

    Trying to see Osgardir’s thoughts while he isn’t paying attention - no

    Elros thinking something at me while I nap - no

    Trying to see Elros’ thoughts while he naps - no

    Trying to remember a past episode - no

    Lying on the ground and pretending I’m back in the woods - no

    Making a noise to irritate Osgardir until he tells me to stop - no

    Trying to scare Elros awake - no

Maybe I’ll think of some more while we eat,” he conceded, and left the tablet on his cot.

Dinner at the longhouse turned out to be distracting and uncomfortable, however, so he didn’t think about his experiment as much as he would have liked. The smell of grilled chicken put him on edge before they even came through the doors. Maglor sliced him up a breast with crispy skin, along with a large helping of cooked barley and new greens, but Elrond lost much of his appetite when he looked at the open muscle fibers in his meat.

The rest of the table was jovial, clearly happy that Elrond was safe and looking well. Still, they danced over what to say to him or about his condition, and he could tell that they were trying very hard to have a normal dynamic, but half of them stared too intently and the other half avoided looking directly at him, and between bites of barley he was also trying to think of a way to discreetly dispose of the chicken.

One of the dogs was wagging its tail and sniffing Elrond’s left hand under the table. There! He picked up a slice of meat, waited until all the attention was on Alagostor and a joke he was telling, and then slipped the morsel to the dog.

Its tail beat harder against his shin, and a wet nose and eager tongue on his fingers begged for another.

Elrond did not manage to escape from company until it was fully dark and time for bed. Everyone asked expectantly whether he was going to sleep in his own bed—rejoin the household, they meant. He was supposed to be well again. Fixed.

“It’s quieter in the infirmary,” he said, weary. “I’m not quite back to my old self.”

“Do you want me to stay with you?” Elros offered.

“I’ll be all right.”

Still, Elros walked with him to the infirmary, and didn’t turn back to the longhouse until Osgardir acknowledged Elrond’s presence.