Pieces of the Stars by Nibeneth

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Chapter 8

“You’ll need to perform dissections.” Alagostor fixed Elrond with a concerned frown over the plate of cake in his hand. “You realize that, right?”

Elrond grimaced and started to mumble through the current situation—I know, I’m working on it, it will be awhile before we get around to that anyway—but Osgardir interrupted him with a hearty clap on the shoulder.

“I’ll do the mentoring, and right now my instructions for him are to enjoy his party,” he said, raising his eyebrows at Alagostor.

“Right. Sorry. Congratulations, I know you will be an excellent healer.” Alagostor grinned and toasted Elrond with his plate.

As soon as Elrond broke the news that Osgardir had accepted him as an apprentice, Maglor decided to throw a small party. The appointed day had come and Elrond enjoyed the attention, but there was a little dark cloud lurking in some corner of his mind, and he couldn’t seem to shake it out. Being reminded about the eventual dissections hadn’t helped, but that wasn’t it, and the apprehension dissipated somewhat when Osgardir steered him back toward the food table.

The men of the household, plus a few others who had been attracted by the excitement, had descended upon the hearth to put together an all-vegetarian feast. Hestedis had opened a small barrel of aged mead, one of very few that had survived the earthquake, and Maedhros had taken the initiative to ask Alagostor to keep him from drinking any. Elros tied garlands of leaves and flowers over the food table before the party and now kept the mood light by feigning a series of outlandish injuries and asking Elrond to fix them. Elrond gladly helped himself to carrot fritters and fried onions and pie filled with spinach and cheese and played along when people joked around with him, but the dark cloud still lingered.

He wasn’t nervous. He’d wanted this for nearly a year, and whenever he thought about his future as Osgardir’s apprentice he only looked forward to it, dissections notwithstanding. Whatever was scratching at the back of his mind like a shoe against a blister, he would not let it ruin this moment.

 

Elrond packed up his things and moved to Osgardir’s house a few days later. It was then that he finally began to feel like this was real: he was no longer a child, but a member of the community. Learning his chosen craft from a seasoned veteran was his right, and it came with the responsibility to study and work as diligently as he could. His elders had been telling him this since he started as Osgardir’s student, but he had not quite grasped it until he was carrying a basket of his clothes down the street with Elros and another basket in tow.

Osgardir lived next door to the infirmary in a small stone cottage with a shingled roof. The earthquake had reduced his old house to kindling, and everyone tried to never even mention what would have happened to the community if he’d been at home at the time. A sign next to the door commanded wipe your feet! in precise Tengwar. Elrond self-consciously scuffed his feet on the braided rope mat before Osgardir let him in.

“I don’t spend much time at home,” the healer said as he showed them inside. “The infirmary is open to the public from dawn until midday, during which time they can come by when it suits them. After these hours, we are only open for emergencies or arranged appointments. After sundown, the infirmary is closed, but we’ll get knocks on the door for emergencies. That is not too common. The loft will be reserved for your use, but you won’t spend much time there either.”

The house, with its spare furnishings, confirmed his words. There was a hearth and dining table in the front room, an equally plain bedroom at the back, and a ladder leading up to the loft, which was empty except for a well-stuffed pallet. There was little food in the house, just a few sacks of grain, a basket of eggs next to the hearth, and some bundles of dried herbs. A mail coat on a rack in the bedroom—the only point of interest in the house—caught Elrond’s eye as he started up the ladder.

“I’m going to spread all my things across your side of the room as soon as I get back to the longhouse,” Elros announced. The two of them had been locked in an intense border dispute over their respective territories for years. It had cooled down somewhat recently, but the reminder made Elrond smile a little.

“At least now you can’t touch my things,” he retorted, which just made Elros bury his hands and face in the basket of clothes and make an impudent show of touching everything.

“I’m getting them all gross. Make me stop.”

Normally Elrond would have tackled him, but there wasn’t enough room--the idea was to rough him up, not violently launch him out of the loft. Instead he grabbed a handful of Elros’ tunic and wiped his nose on it. “I can always be grosser than you,” he said, but Elros did not escalate the taunt further.

“Of course you can,” he said, affecting fastidiousness as he smoothed his tunic out where Elrond’s fingers had wrinkled it. “You’re naturally grosser than me.”

“Hey!”

With Elrond’s things stored in the loft, the two of them descended the ladder once more. “I’m ready!” Elrond said brightly, planting his hands on his hips. “What am I going to learn first?”

Osgardir chuckled. “There will be plenty of time. Why don’t we start this afternoon? Get one last bit of sloth in while you still can.”

Elrond turned to Elros, but he had already wandered away without saying a word.

Elrond had wondered what would happen if he and Osgardir found each other intolerably annoying outside of the infirmary, but sharing a house did not prove difficult. Osgardir seemed to fade a little once the infirmary was closed in the evening, and he usually went straight to bed until it was time to open it up again in the morning, giving Elrond some free time if the day’s work hadn’t left him too tired. They were otherwise each conscious of the other’s privacy and shared cooking and cleaning duties without issue.

The first few months passed much as the previous ones had, with Elrond working alongside Osgardir to maintain the infirmary and learning new procedures once he could perform the simpler ones without error. At last, he began learning how to treat small wounds and administer simple medications, and he realized that even after the past year of study, he barely knew anything.

In addition to his free time in the evenings, Osgardir let Elrond set aside time during the day to explore his gift.

His control mostly extended to keeping the intrusive visions at bay, and even then, it still sometimes took all of his strength. He felt energy and life all around him, just out of reach, but close enough to tickle his nose and make his eyes water. He could strain his mind as far as it would go, but then he snapped back into his own shaking, exhausted body without anything to show for it.

He was so close, and yet…

His mind was clearer in the woods, but the absence of other minds clustering around his made the gulf seem even wider. Inside the compound, the teeming mass of thoughts and feelings and dreams and memories clamored even louder when he reached out. His control wavered. On the other side, the visions threatened to break through and drag him back down, far away from the light he had fought so hard to regain. If he could only pierce that barrier, single out one thread in the tapestry, and pluck it like a harp string.

“It’s time to talk about your dissections again,” Osgardir announced one morning, and Elrond immediately made an effort to look busy cleaning.

“It’s so dirty over here,” he said gravely as he scrubbed. “Hygiene. Important for cleanliness. And health. I have to finish this.”

Osgardir just crossed his arms and said nothing, but his silence brooked no argument. Elrond paused, procrastinating, and then shuffled to his feet. “It’s normal to be uncomfortable at first,” Osgardir said once Elrond was paying attention. “You’ll have to get over it in order to be an effective healer, and you’ll have to become very familiar with internal anatomy.”

“I don’t think something should have to die just so I can cut it open and look at its insides.” Elrond spread his arms earnestly. “At least when people eat meat, they use everything. The carcass won’t be of any use to anyone once I’m done picking at it.”

“Knowledge is a valid use,” Osgardir said firmly. “One purposeful death will help you prevent many senseless ones. You will perform animal dissections according to our discipline. I’m sorry, but I won’t change my mind about this.”

“Isn’t there any other way I can learn it?”

Osgardir paused for a moment. “In Aman, Estë in her power provided bodies of flesh without spirits for dissections. Once we came to Beleriand… well, there was no shortage of natural specimens. Men, elves, orcs—at least the slaughter provided us with some new knowledge.” His smile was shallow and did not reach his eyes. “How do you feel about dissecting an animal that died of other causes? An accident or illness, or a mercy-killing following the same?”

Elrond grimaced and shrugged. “That sits a little better.”

“I understand your discomfort. I truly do. In this case, it isn’t a bad thing to become a little desensitized. You’ll need to be able to look at your patients’ bodies without flinching while still showing compassion for their suffering. You have the second, but you need the first.”

Elrond often hated how deeply sensitive he was, even without the visions making it worse, and the reminder did not make him feel any better about it. “Don’t worry, it isn’t as bad as you’re thinking,” Osgardir continued when his silence thickened between them. “I’ll be a bit let down if this is all that proves too difficult for you after the last year.”

Maglor had never actually forbidden Elrond from borrowing his pipe and pinching samples from the various jars of cannabis in his room, or so Elrond rationalized as he trotted out of the longhouse with the contraband burning a hole in his pocket. Osgardir disapproved of using it as anything but medicine, of course, but Elrond also rationalized that away by deciding that it could be a medicine for the barrier in his mind that he had yet to breach.

Beyond the palisade and tucked into the wooded hills, Elrond found an ancient stone ruin covered in moss. It was only a small circle of crumbling walls and what remained of a stone floor: an old watchtower, he decided, though he had no way to know for sure. A great crack split the floor from north to south, and the fresh, jagged edges told him that this damage was a remnant of the earthquake. The rest, all the erosion and decay since the watchtower was abandoned, came from long before.

It became a common pilgrimage. Maybe the broken stone held remnants of ancient memories within itself, and maybe the surrounding forest still had secrets for Elrond to uncover. It was quiet but buzzing with life, enveloping him in the harmony of nature reclaiming what industrious hands had once built to last forever. It was his sanctuary, and it was where his questions seemed closest to pulling answers out of the cloth of reality.

He lay back on the moss-cushioned stone with one hand behind his head. The air was still cool and damp this time of year and the sunlight was still pale. It occurred to him that it had been a whole year since he had run away in his misery. He had made leaps of progress since then, but it was not enough. Exercises and lucky accidents were only boats bobbing atop the waves of an ocean of potential.

He inhaled smoke, held it for a moment, and then let it out like he was releasing the grip of a vision. Smoking alone in the woods was an indulgence he enjoyed even without meditating on his gift, but it did help him think. He knew it was possible to turn his gift toward healing, but he did not know how.

He had learned to release the visions on his own, acknowledging and redirecting them instead of trying in vain to force them out. Was his intervention with Midhien simply another redirection, or was it a channel he had yet to explore? Were there really separate channels? He knew that panic involved both the mind and the body. Were the mind and body truly separate, or had people forgotten that they were the same? Or were they truly the same, and had people forgotten that they were different? And where did Elrond fit into it? Was his gift an expansion or a flattening of normal perception?

Why him?

The web of mysteries was woven so thick as to be a net he couldn’t escape. Each question ran into the next, but he kept asking.

The pipe was spent. Lazily, Elrond tipped the ashes into a pile on the stone beside him. Like dew, he felt as if he was sinking into the moss under his body, becoming one, giving back. What was buried would come forth like mushrooms carrying their essence out of the rich, damp earth. It was springtime, and Elrond perched on the edge of blooming like flower buds reaching toward the sun.

 

The forest grew warm and lush as the spring days lengthened. Elrond hiked to the old watchtower whenever he was able, but a breakthrough remained just out of reach.

A rustle in the bushes drew his attention just as he was about to smoke. He looked up, suddenly gripped with the notion that it was Maglor coming to scold him for taking the pipe or Osgardir coming to scold him for smoking recreationally, but it was neither. It took a moment for Elrond to recognize the figure as Elros emerging from the trees. Elros frowned when he noticed him. “What are you doing here?” he asked, sounding much too loud and sharp for Elrond’s smoke-softened mind just now.

“Smoking.” He put the pipe-stem to his lips and took a puff.

“I thought I was the only one who knew about this place.” It sounded like an accusation.

“Look at it, it’s old.” Elrond shrugged. “I’m sure everyone back at the compound knows it’s here. Or used to be here.”

“Can’t a man have anything of his own?” Elros groused, but he came and sat next to Elrond on the moss. Elrond stared at his open hand for a moment, uncomprehending, until he realized Elros wanted the pipe. He passed it and lay back with his fingers laced behind his head, watching the fluttering treetops while Elros smoked in silence.

“Why are you out here, anyway?” he asked.

“Because I felt like it. Why are you out here? I thought you were busy being a healer.”

“I’m trying to learn how to handle my gift. Osgardir gives me time for it.”

Elros only huffed a little. Elrond didn’t know why he was in such a bad mood, but at the moment he didn’t care to ask. “I’m so close to being able to jump from my own mind...” he extended a hand into the air above him. “...into someone else’s. Once I can do that, the possibilities are endless.”

“You seem to have everything figured out.”

“Hardly. I’ve only just figured out what I’m looking for.”

“At least you have a path.”

“You could have one too,” Elrond said earnestly. “You just haven’t found it yet.”

“Yes, that is a comforting thought, isn’t it?” Elros’ voice held a salty tang underneath his usual agreeable demeanor.

Elrond, wondering if he had said something wrong, did not respond right away. “What’s upsetting you?” he asked at length, propping himself up on one elbow.

“Nothing.” Elros took one more puff of the pipe before giving it back to Elrond. Without saying anything else, he got up and walked back into the woods, leaving Elrond with more questions than ever and something like a cold, dark hole in the pit of his stomach.

“Elrond, I have something for you!” Osgardir called from the front room. “Come and see!”

Elrond paused, a sense of foreboding prickling at the back of his neck. He set down the linen hamper he had been about to take outside and went to the front room. There he found Osgardir holding a large crock and grinning, and at his side stood Caedor.

Elrond shuddered slightly as an image flashed into his mind—darkness, voices, sinking deeper and deeper from the light—

Not now , he thought as he released the vision with his breath. It lingered for a moment, hot and sticky, but trickled away as he came closer to Osgardir and the crock. “What is it?” he asked, already dreading the answer.

“Your first practical anatomy lesson.” Osgardir set the crock on the table. A briny odor rose from the opening when he removed the lid and inspected its contents.

“It’s a baby pig,” Caedor said, sounding apologetic. “He was born just a little too small and didn’t live long, but he didn’t suffer. It happens sometimes.”

“Oh.” Elrond swallowed a gag. “All right.”

There was no escaping it now.

Osgardir let Elrond wait and bolster himself for the dissection until the morrow, but he almost wanted to get it over with as soon as possible. He was grumpy and jittery for the rest of the day, and what little sleep he got was tinged with unsettling dreams.

It wasn’t just the disgust or even the idea of coldly cutting into a piglet that had never even had a chance. What if memories of the ill-fated pig slaughter—now almost two full years gone—came back to cripple him with renewed visions? What if it brought him back below the surface of sanity? What if he lost all that he had fought so hard to control?

“Poor little fellow,” Osgardir said the next morning as they prepared for the lesson. “That’s why pigs have so many babies in a litter, though--only the strongest ones will survive. It’s how nature manages itself.”

Elrond said nothing and only continued setting up his workstation: a tray to hold the specimen, string to hold it in place, tweezers and scalpels to cut it open and examine its insides. He was ready. He knew he had to do it, even if the thought had fueled his cold-sweat awakenings of late.

Osgardir grasped his shoulder and gave it a tight squeeze. “Now, are you ready?”

Elrond sat. He nodded once. His mentor lifted the tiny, pale piglet from its crock, drained it of brine for a moment, and then laid it on the tray. There it was. Part of his training, and he had to keep reminding himself that it was nothing more.

“Tell me about its external features.” Osgardir took a seat across the table from him. “How do we know if this pig is a male or female, and how do the structures compare to those of an elf?”

As soon as Elrond began to describe the piglet, it became easier. It was a lesson, no different than examining Osgardir’s bone collection and inspecting them for differences. He hadn’t seen them as anything sinister, only as objects, for all they had once belonged to living people and animals. Finished with the lessons and quizzes on the outside of the pig, Elrond took both the scalpel and a deep breath.

“Make a single cut along its belly,” Osgardir instructed. “Not too deep, just through the skin and fascia. We don’t want to puncture any organs.”

At first, it felt as if Elrond was watching himself dissect the pig over his own shoulder. Osgardir’s voice kept up a calm presence in the back of his mind, telling him what to look at and which structures to identify, and Elrond talked through his actions until everything once again felt all right. It was only skin and bones and organs, no longer a sentient creature.

“The nerves connect the brain to the rest of the body,” he said, pointing to where they radiated out from the spine.

Osgardir nodded. “What does that mean for us?”

“Everything is connected.” Elrond looked up from the pig. “Right?”

“Well, yes. What implications might this have for treating pain or a prolonged depression?”

“The mind and body aren’t really separate, are they? The health of one affects the health of the other.” He suddenly remembered how thin and ill he had become when the visions were at their worst. Of course it made sense. “So it isn’t really helpful to only pay attention to treating just one side of it.”

Osgardir nodded again, obviously pleased. “Exactly. Now let us open the skull and examine the structures of the brain.”

By the time he finished the dissection, Elrond no longer feared slipping under and drowning in visions outside of his control. He still didn’t enjoy the idea that his knowledge came from another creature’s death, but at least he had been able to learn from seeing and touching what had been only theoretical until now.

“There, now you can tell Elros you dissected a pig and it went just fine,” Osgardir said once he had called an end to their lesson.

Elrond just shrugged and continued cleaning up his things. Osgardir raised an eyebrow—Elrond had not really expected him not to notice. “Would he not be interested?” he asked, leaning back and clasping his fingers over his stomach.

“He’s been weird toward me,” Elrond said.

“What kind of weird?”

Elrond shrugged again. “I don’t know. Cold. Insincere. He hasn’t said anything that would make me feel like I’ve offended him, but… it still feels like I did something, and I don’t know what.”

“Hmm.” Osgardir’s other eyebrow joined the first. “Interesting.”

Elrond dropped each instrument back into the tray with a clatter. Neither of them said anything, but he could feel Osgardir watching him, and soon the silence started to press in on his head to the point where he could no longer stand it. “We tell each other everything!” he burst out. “We share everything—even our clothes! If we have a disagreement, it’s never important and it never lasts! I don’t know how to fix it!”

Osgardir rubbed his chin. “You’ll need to find out what’s wrong before you can fix it.”

“But I don’t know what I did!”

“What if you asked him?” Osgardir smiled. “Don’t overthink it. You two love each other.”

“But… it’s never been like this before,” Elrond said helplessly.

Osgardir reached across the table and took the tray of dissected baby pig. “I have no siblings,” he said. “But I am very old. And I can tell you the same thing that I once told my children.” Elrond looked up, surprised. He had not known that Osgardir had any children. “You are growing up,” his mentor continued. “You are learning and changing, and so your relationships are changing as well. We don’t always relate to each other in the same ways that we did when we were children, but if your relationships are important, you will learn how to maintain them into eternity. Now, we may not know whether you two are mortal or immortal, but the same principle applies. As you grow up, you will discover who and what is most important to you, and you will discover how to keep them close.”

Elrond couldn’t think of anyone or anything more important to him than Elros, but the thought of negotiating these inevitable changes filled him with dread. He already had too many questions without answers. Too many paths branching into darkness before his feet.

“And, if I may, something I did not tell them enough,” Osgardir continued. “Tell him you love him now, not later, and make sure he knows that you will love him no matter how your lives may diverge in the future.”

Elrond nodded and said nothing. He did not need to ask what had happened to Osgardir’s children: Himring was enough of an explanation, and it was only one out of many Noldorin strongholds that had become tombs without graves.

 

Everything is connected. It remained in the back of Elrond’s mind as he continued his exploration, and it soon became clear that as long as he restricted it to the old watchtower in the forest, he would never make the leap.

“I think I need to try some practical experiments,” he said to Osgardir when his mentor asked after his progress.

“What sort?”

It was often difficult for Elrond to narrow it down into words, but it was easier when he reminded himself to keep his ambitions simple for now. “I’m still stuck inside my own mind,” he said. “The only times I’ve been able to reach out to another person’s mind were accidents. If I try to reach out to different people, I might eventually figure it out. Maybe I could ask people to participate when they visit the infirmary?”

“That sounds reasonable.”

Encouraged, Elrond spent the next few days thinking up a plan. He even memorized a little speech to give when explaining his research to a patient and asking them if they wanted to participate. He scribbled scraps of ideas on a wax tablet until Osgardir placed a blue linen-bound book in front of him, followed by a pen carved from antler. “Research is a well-established part of the healer’s craft,” Osgardir said. “Writing it down helps to direct your experimentation and others to learn from your discoveries.”

The pages were blank on the inside. Elrond ran a careful finger down the smooth hemp paper and looked up with his heart beating in his throat. “What if I mess it up? I’ve only ever written on slates and wax.”

His mentor shrugged. “Doodle it out on wax first, if that would help, but don’t let perfection keep you from working on it. All research is a work in progress. Write, draw diagrams, ask questions, explain your methods, whatever comes to you.”

“Thank you.”

“Your research will be thanks enough.” Osgardir smiled. “Oh, do you know how to write with a nib pen?”

“Um…”

“Never mind, I’ll teach you that as well.”

 

Elrond’s first opportunity presented itself when Faervel the weaver came to the infirmary to pick up some elanor pills.

“Now, I believe my apprentice is conducting some research, if you don’t mind hearing him out,” Osgardir said once their conversation was finished.

“Not at all.”

Elrond stepped forward, consciously refraining from fidgeting. He knew he could do it, he just needed to replicate and record his results. “As you probably know, I possess the ability to perceive other people’s spirits,” he recited. Faervel smiled and nodded encouragingly. “I am trying to refine this ability in order to use it in conjunction with conventional healing techniques. May I practice with you for a moment?”

It sounded silly and awkward to his own ears, but she didn’t laugh. “You may. What are you practicing?”

“Right now I’m only trying to transfer the influence of my thoughts to another person in a controlled and consistent manner,” Elrond said. “If you will hold out your hand for a moment?”

She did. “What can I expect?”

“It should just be a light touch. When… um, if you feel something, I want you to tell me what it felt like and where it was. It won’t hurt.” Hopefully. He still worried that his gift would pull away from his control again and snap a patient’s tendons, or something. Once he had more experience under his belt, he would feel better.

“I am ready.”

Elrond looked down at Faervel’s hand. He let his eyes slip out of focus and reached, as he had practiced, beyond his own skin. Her pulse beat just below the surface of her wrist. He held that in his mind until the rhythm became clearer and sharper and he could sense what lay beyond it: the delicate branches of the veins and arteries nestled among muscles, tendons, ligaments. The nerves buzzed under it all, and when Elrond looked deeper, he found the solid foundation of the bones. They radiated outward—he drew back a little, perceiving the complete picture of her palm.

He focused, just gently, on the muscle within the ball of her thumb.

“Oh! I felt that,” Faervel said.

Elrond blinked and released the connection. He looked back up, shivering a little at the taste of success. “Where did you feel it?”

“Just here.” Faervel touched the heel of her hand, rubbing slightly as if the shadow of it still lingered.

“What did it feel like?”

“I don’t know. It was like a gentle touch, but at the same time, it felt as if it was coming from my own body. An outside action, but without an outside stimulus. Does that make sense?” Her brow wrinkled. Elrond nodded eagerly: it matched the spirit of Midhien’s account.

“Thank you. That’s fantastic. I appreciate your time,” Elrond said. His fingers itched to write it down.

“What was it supposed to feel like?”

“Exactly that!”

“That is fantastic!” she grinned. “I’m glad I was able to help!”

 

I am now able to consciously affect physical sensations in others. I have only had one successful experiment, so more research is necessary before I can know more about the limits and applications of this. I also need to practice reproducing the same experiment in several subjects in order to determine whether the results are subjective or whether I am influencing their expectations in some way. As usual, I have more questions than there is daylight to answer.

Osgardir’s voice broke through Elrond’s concentration. “Elrond, I need you to clean the instruments for my appointment this afternoon. Indir is finally having me look at his toenail.”

Elrond lifted his pen from the paper and wrinkled his nose. Indir’s ingrown toenail looked horrible, but he was understandably reluctant to let Osgardir cut into it. “Finally. Do you think he’ll want to be a part of my research?” he asked as he stood and walked toward the steam-kettle.

“You can ask him. Whether you do it before or after the procedure may affect the outcome, since the circumstances are different. You’ll want to record everything.”

“Of course.”

“And once the instruments are in, I have a pig skin for you to practice your sutures.”

Elrond set the lid of the steam-kettle aside with an unhappy thud. “Why is it always pigs?” Since the piglet, he had dissected a squirrel that had run afoul of the dogs, a cat that had chewed on the wrong plant in someone’s garden, and a dead frog he’d found behind an outhouse, but pig parts kept coming back to him for various lessons, and he was always uncomfortable.

“Their physiology isn’t so different from ours. And there’s always an easy supply of them.”

As it happened, Indir did not want to have one more healer than necessary poking and prodding at him, and declined to participate. Elrond swallowed his disappointment and committed himself to Osgardir’s instructions for the rest of the day, but he could not keep his mind from wandering toward his research. He had finally breached the barrier, and possibilities towered over him like a cresting wave.

Elrond continued asking every visitor to the infirmary, but his research flourished once he put out a call for volunteers.

He could pick out individual muscle fibers from the larger system. He could sense fluids rushing to fill bumps and blisters. The energy that filled the nerves and prompted every movement, both voluntary and involuntary, hummed through his consciousness and left him wondering what exactly it was.

It didn’t work every time. Sometimes the image was softer and wobbly around the edges and Elrond couldn’t pick out one detail over any of the others. He would squint and strain until everything was a blur and the effort left him with a piercing, throbbing headache that made him slink into the darkened storage loft to recover, and he couldn’t even tell why it hadn’t worked. Was he doing something wrong? Was the subject resisting him on an unconscious level? Or was he just mistakenly trying to force it where he should be working on flowing along with it? He knew that it would not be forced, and attempting to direct it only worked so well.

Perhaps he had to learn to listen to the music that was already in motion and identify the individual notes as they struck his ears. Maybe his gift was meant to add his own counterpoint. He had to know the rules, and he had to understand the harmonies that already swirled around him, so perfect as to go unnoticed until he learned to pay attention.

It all had to have an explanation, and the more he understood, the more he would be able to treat. He had not yet been able to recreate the calming influence he had passed to Midhien, but he knew it was there. He only had to unlock it.

“I’m starting to realize just how many things I could do as a healer,” Elrond said. He had come to dinner at the longhouse, but his plate lay cold and mostly untouched as he talked about his research. “I could stop bleeding. I could dull pain. I could locate internal injuries. I’m making progress in sensing all the different structures inside the body, but it won’t be of any use without more research.”

He paused for a breath, but the table remained quiet for a moment. Maglor was watching him with a curious wrinkle in his brow, unconsciously stroking his temple.

“That is remarkable,” he said. He lifted his chin and looked over at Maedhros, who cast a shadow at the head of the table. A spark of understanding passed between them, but neither brother spoke for a long heartbeat.

“The Noldor have always been fascinated by the mysteries of creation,” Maedhros said at last. “All our crafts are attempts to extend the boundaries of our knowledge. No one embodied this like our father did.”

“Curufinwë Fëanáro, the most skilled of all the Eldar,” Maglor murmured. “In the end, the same spirit that fueled his craft burned him from the inside out. All his ambitions, his passions, even his family are now only embers. Soon they will be nothing more than ash. Never let your love of your craft rule you, Elrond.”

Whatever response Elrond had been planning, it was only breath when he opened his mouth. How would he know if he was letting his craft rule him? Was he already heading down that path? Would they have thought to say anything otherwise? “I’m not trying to,” he said. “There are just so many things I could know. As it is, I know barely anything.”

Maedhros raised his head. “Why are you seeking knowledge? Is it for its own sake, or to help others?”

“Can’t it be both?” Elrond asked with a shrug.

“You may decide that what was important to you at the present is not the same a century from now. What happens when one is not enough?” Maedhros fixed him with a pale, piercing stare, and Elrond looked down at his plate. “You must keep asking yourself that question. It is not in me to be a healer, but I have seen enough to know that single-minded obsession destroys everything in its path.”

 

Elrond feared the worst when Maedhros appeared at the infirmary one day. He hated being under a healer’s scrutiny and therefore usually needed to be forced to sit for treatment after deliberately harming himself. It had been some years since the last time, but he seemed to exist in a constant state of passively wanting to die. It could flicker into a crisis in an instant.

Old pain, however, was what brought him in this time. Elrond’s relief almost immediately melted into shame at being relieved; it must have been excruciating to drive him here in the first place.

“For once, it’s well for all of us that this is all I’m here for,” Maedhros muttered while sat and let Osgardir prod at his right arm and shoulder. “No knife, no poison, no noose…”

“And may we never have to see you like that again,” Osgardir said firmly. “Well, I can give you medicine for it, but you already know more healing exercises than I do. Ah, my friend, if only you had a healer besides a conscripted midwife to turn to.”

“Do I not?” Maedhros lifted his chin and looked up at Elrond.

At first, Elrond did not realize Maedhros was talking to him. “Me? I’m just a green apprentice,” he said after a heartbeat of confusion. He looked back at Osgardir. “I don’t even know anything.”

A smile tugged at Osgardir’s lips. “Maybe you can find out where the pain is coming from,” he prompted.

“And I am already used to sitting as an experimental mouse,” Maedhros said. “Go on! See what you can find.”

“All right. Um, if I can just see your arm, please.”

Elrond had expected the patchwork of new injuries upon old that rose to meet him when he blurred the barriers of Maedhros’ arm and shoulder, but he had not been prepared for just how deep they went. The bones had been broken more than once and had healed badly. Every body had its own music, but the rhythm tripped over crooked seams and uncomfortable angles in the collarbone, shoulder blade, and upper arm. It was all shot through with scar tissue. The joint ground where it should have rotated smoothly—another disturbance.

“There are many points that could be causing it,” Elrond said, drawing back slightly.

“I live with pain.”

Elrond refocused. Pain lived in the nerves, and he could sense it snapping and twisting more ferociously in some areas than in others. He wanted to linger and explore the extent of the damage and the layers of knowledge it could provide, but he remembered Maedhros’ personal request and moved on, slightly chastened. Relieving suffering was his task as a healer, and all his research should serve that end. His curiosity should not come first.

Pain was like the shimmer of heat around the mouth of a forge. Elrond kept following it, trying to soothe it as he went. Smothering the sparks would not calm the fire. He had to find its heart.

The heat centered on a cluster of tension deep in the muscle where his shoulder met his neck. He encountered some resistance in the tissues: scars, tension, stress. It didn’t flow like it should. An obstacle somewhere in the pathway. Too many fluids, angry swelling, nerves trapped where lumpy bones and muscles clashed. It was a tangle, and not one that Elrond could set right, but the root of this pain lay in that compression. He thought he might be able to release some of the pressure, at least, but it resisted even more when he tested it. Don’t fight, he thought gently, and applied a little more focus, diving down between fibers and pressing outward. Smooth it out, pull everything back into its place, lower the alarm. An old ache, not a new injury that needed urgent attention.

The knot slipped. All at once, Elrond felt the rigidity drain out of Maedhros’ body all the way from his neck down his arm and back.

“That’s it!” Maedhros suddenly exclaimed in a voice so unusual that Elrond almost did not recognize it: relief brought out warmth and hope, and when Elrond looked back at his face, he was astonished to see that all the wrinkles of pain had melted away. “I don’t know what you did, but you did it!”

“Does it hurt less?”

“It almost doesn’t hurt at all!” Maedhros rubbed his shoulder. “That bitch has been bothering me for weeks!”

Osgardir clapped Elrond on the back. “Well done. I know how long you’ve been working on that.”

Elrond could not deny enjoying the glow of pride that filled him at their praise, or the way it spread all the way to the tips of his fingers and toes when Maedhros—surly, reclusive Maedhros—began relating the story to anyone who would listen. Maybe Elrond couldn’t erase all the old injuries that troubled him this many centuries afterward, but after so much time spent meditating and exploring and testing the limits of his gift, he had finally been able to relieve some of the pain. That alone was its own reward, and everything else was like honey on warm cake.

The only person not impressed, however, was perhaps the one whose opinion mattered most to Elrond.

“Sure, that’s impressive, but I still remember watching him try to put his pants on both legs at once,” Elros sniped, and he shuffled off with his arms crossed and a dark cloud lurking around him.

 

Elrond planned on sitting down with Elros and having a good conversation. Maybe they would smoke at the watchtower, or maybe they would ride their mules down to the lake and go for a swim. He pictured them having the kind of uncomplicated fun they had always had while they talked it out like adults. It would be easy once he started it, he told himself, but his own tongue betrayed him as soon as he opened his mouth.

“What is your problem?”

“I don’t have a problem,” Elros said. His dark eyebrows arched in clear displeasure. “What’s your problem?”

“Nothing! I just want to know why you’re acting so…” Elrond gestured at nothing. “Weird!”

Elros tucked his thumbs into his belt. “I’m acting the same as I always do.”

“You aren’t.”

“How so?” The way Elros lifted his chin seemed almost defiant.

“Everyone is talking about how I figured out how to help Maedhros,” Elrond said, immediately hating how it sounded, but his mouth just kept going and it kept getting worse. “You’re just… acting like nothing happened! You haven’t said anything!”

There was a nasty wrinkle at the corner of Elros’ nose. “Should I? Does your special power only work when people talk about it?”

A heartbeat of silence. Something slipped into place in Elrond’s mind. “Are you… jealous?”

Elros paused just long enough for the spark to kindle into a flame. Unthinking, Elrond advanced on him a few steps. “Are you actually jealous?” he said again, this time with prickling heat in the back of his throat. “That is such… you’re such a stupid idiot!” The fire was consuming his reason and his words, one by one. “You’re an idiot child!”

That brought an angry flush to Elros’ cheeks. “Am I?” He jabbed a finger into Elrond’s chest. “If I’m a child, then so are you! We’re exactly the same age!”

Elrond jabbed him back. “I’m twenty minutes older!” That wasn’t the root of his frustration, but it was the first thing that jumped out of his mouth. Elros just laughed nastily.

“Of course you are! You’re the first! You’re the best! You’re the smartest and most talented! You’re the one everyone talks about and fawns over and asks after because you’re just! So! Special!” he jabbed Elrond even harder for emphasis. “You have a calling! You have a gift! You have your entire life figured out because you’re a fucking prodigy!”

“I never had a choice!” Almost of their own free will, Elrond’s hands flew up and shoved Elros back a few feet.

Elros shoved him back. “Of course you didn’t! It was just handed to you!”

He never meant to do it, but it happened anyway. Elrond’s hand curled into a fist and flew straight forward into Elros’ eye—he could feel his knuckles grinding into the curve of Elros’ cheekbone, and then all the wind escaped him when Elros’ knee rammed into his stomach. He fought through his muscles spasming as he tried to draw breath and yanked Elros to the ground by his braids, and then the two of them scrabbled in the dirt, throwing punches and digging their knees and elbows into soft spots and yelling incoherent insults as they bloodied noses and pulled hair and tried to bite each other’s ears.

“Take it back!” Elrond pulled hard at a hank of Elros’ hair that had come loose. “Take it back!”

Elros snarled with pain and ground his fingernails between the bones of Elrond’s wrist—Elrond yowled and pulled free but Elros only went for Elrond’s ribs instead. “Make me! Fight me for it!”

Only a wordless scream of rage escaped Elrond’s throat as he fought harder, grabbing and rolling and trying to get the upper hand, but they were as evenly matched as they had ever been. Elros’ consistent sword training had conditioned him, but Elrond had strength that came from hauling laundry baskets and water buckets all day, and he would never let Elros forget it. He grabbed him by the hair and smashed his face into the ground, and Elros’ yell of pain brought their brawl to a halt.

The sight of the bloody laceration across Elros’ cheekbone extinguished all the fight in Elrond’s heart, though his arms and legs still burned with exhilaration. “I’m sorry,” he blurted out. “I never meant to!”

“You threw the first punch! What else could you have been trying to do?” Elros gritted his teeth and gingerly pressed his sleeve to the wound as he pushed Elrond off and staggered to his feet.

“I never wanted to start a fight.” Elrond reached for Elros’ face, but Elros shooed him back out of arm’s length.

“It sure seemed like it.”

There was no way around it: Elrond knew that he had been the churl in this situation. He’d had a plan and ignored it. He’d said all the wrong things. He’d thrown the first punch, and now he had turned Elros’ face into a gory mess. “I wanted to just talk to you, but I acted like a barbarian,” Elrond said miserably.

“Great. That’s better. Instead of fighting because you weren’t getting enough attention, you wanted to ask me to give you more attention,” Elros snapped. He winced. “Damn it all, that hurts!”

“It’s not about attention!” From there, it all came out in a flood of words. “You’ve been acting weird ever since I started as Osgardir’s apprentice, and I just wondered if I did something to upset you. And then I asked you about it at the watchtower, but you wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. I don’t want you to be upset with me, and if I did do something, I just want to know how to fix it.” Elrond took a deep breath. “I don’t like not knowing things. And I don’t like to think that I could be hurting you without trying.”

Elros sighed and leaned against the wall, sliding down until his knees were under his chin. “Why do you always have to be such a hero?” he said after a moment, but the anger had gone out of his voice.

“I’m not trying to be a hero. And anyway you rescued me in the woods, so you’re probably the hero out of the two of us.” Elrond sat down next to him. The two of them sat in silence for a long moment, Elros with his sleeve pressed to his cheek and Elrond staring dejectedly at the dirt in front of him. Well, they were talking, but it had come too late, and it was his fault.

“Truthfully, I am jealous,” Elros admitted at last.

Elrond looked up and frowned. “Of what? My terrifying hallucinations?” Maybe he was being a barbarian again, but that was a sore point. Elros, out of anyone in the compound, should know that what his gift had done to him was not something to envy.

“No! Stars, no.” Elros scratched his tangled hair. “Never mind where your gift comes from. You found a purpose in it after going through everything you did—that’s amazing. Of course it inspires everyone around you. I would never ask to be in your position, but at the same time, I want to have a calling of my own. I want people to admire me for my own gifts as much as they admire you for yours. That doesn’t make me a bad person, does it?”

“No.” Elrond gripped his shoulder tightly. “You are the very opposite of a bad person. I might not be here without you.”

Elros fixed him with a long, sharp look, like he was trying to read something in the veins of Elrond’s eyes. “Is that my purpose? Shit, I just…” he glanced away. “You are my brother and I would do anything for you. I hope you know that.”

“I do.”

“After all that, who am I as a person? Is it only my purpose as the second twin to hold you up and keep you safe and healthy without a thought for what I want to do? Am I a bad person for wanting something of my own?”

“No!” His words stung Elrond’s heart, but he thought he finally understood. He slung his arm around Elros’ shoulder and gave him a companionable shake. No words seemed sufficient, but he tried anyway. “You are not a bad person. And it’s not a race. There has to be something out there for you.”

“I just feel like you’re leaving me behind,” Elros muttered.

Words abandoned Elrond entirely at that. He just sat, arm clamped firmly around Elros’ shoulders.

Maedhros and Maglor, as brothers, did not seem to provide a useful example here. They were not twins, they had different but equally well-established skills, and the days of their fame lay in long-dead centuries. Elrond and Elros had not yet come into manhood as far as the elves were concerned, and who could tell what the Secondborn would even make of them. No wonder Elros was frustrated: they walked a path that was neither lit nor mapped, and Elrond did not know how to help him. But, at this moment, he did have some way to patch up some of the damage he had caused in their mutual confusion.

“That cheek looks pretty bad,” he said when Elros peeled his sleeve away from the wound. It was still bleeding. “We should take it to the infirmary.”

 

“We got in a fight. It was my fault,” Elrond said, one arm still wrapped around Elros’ shoulder.

If Osgardir had intended to lecture the twins, Elrond’s blunt confession took the wind out of it. “Come on in,” he said with a long-suffering sigh. “Let’s take a look at it.”

He only had to examine the cut for a moment before ordering a few stitches to help it heal cleanly. Elrond fetched the necessary tools: towels, clamps, a curved needle, silk thread, scissors, a syringe, salt water, numbing salve. Once everything was ready, Osgardir instructed him to carry out the procedure himself as both penance and practice.

“I’ll talk you through it. Don’t be nervous now—it’s only your brother’s handsomeness on the line.” He flashed an unhelpful grin and took up a post at Elrond’s side. “You know what to do first.”

When Elrond looked back at Elros sitting on the table with the cloth pressed to his cheek, he felt like everything he had learned in the past months had been sucked back out through his ears. “Um… should I just…”

“Salve and then wash the cut.”

“Right.” With the reminder, he scooped out a bit of numbing salve on a spatula and peeled back the cloth from Elros’ face. He had practiced this, and Osgardir wouldn’t have him do it if he wasn’t ready. “This will sting at first,” he said, and then began smearing the salve in and around the cut as gently as he could.

Elros’ face twitched. “Ow.”

“Give it a moment.” Elrond put the spatula back on the tray. He vaguely realized that he was sweating as he took up the syringe in one hand and the clamps in the other and began squirting salt water into the wound and sponging it away. Osgardir nodded approvingly when the syringe was empty and Elrond went for fresh clamps and the needle, but Elrond still felt as if he was running headlong into a huge mistake. “Does it hurt?” he asked.

“A little.”

“That’s about as numb as it will get,” Osgardir said. “It will still pinch a bit, but you paid a dwarf to put a needle through your nose, so it shouldn’t be too much for you. Try not to move.”

Elros took a deep breath. “All right. I’m ready.”

Elrond knew what he had to do next: start putting stitches in Elros’ cheek. He knew how to do it. He’d practiced. He could see the technique in his mind, but he stood frozen with his tools in his hands, barely daring to breathe. “How many sutures would you say he needs?” Osgardir prompted.

“Three?”

“Is that a question?”

“Three. One in the middle, and then one on either side.”

“Good. You are doing just fine.”

Elrond steeled himself and pushed the needle through one edge of the cut. Elros suppressed a wince, and Elrond knew he needed to get this over with as quickly as possible. He brought the needle up through the other side, tied off the thread the way he’d been taught, and clipped the ends short. “There! I did it! Did I do it right?” He looked at Osgardir, anxious for feedback.

“I would have stopped you otherwise. Let’s start on the second one.”

Bolstered, Elrond placed the second stitch, and then the third. At last, he clipped the ends of the thread one last time, sponged off the closed wound, and placed his tools back on the tray. “It’s done,” he said, and all the tension drained out of his shoulders when he said it aloud.

“Good work. That should heal up very nicely indeed.”

“And if it doesn’t, I’ll just be hideously mangled for life and it’ll be your fault twice over,” Elros added. “Ow. It hurts to smile.”

“Don’t smile, then,” Elrond retorted. “Remember, you busted my chin open. We’re finally even.”

“I did, didn’t I? Do you have any sweets? I was brave.” Elros winced again.

Osgardir chuckled slightly and went to his desk, where he pulled a wrapped taffy out of the jar next to the candlestick. “You were. And many people find scars attractive—you can tell them you got it saving a baby from a bear. Works like a charm.” He gave his own scarred eyebrow a knowing tap.

“Maybe I’ll make up something even more heroic every time someone asks.” Elros tucked the taffy into his unhurt cheek. “Hey, can I have more? One for every stitch?”

“Oh, why not.”

“You don’t need to make up anything heroic,” Elrond said quietly. “You already are.”

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