Pieces of the Stars by Nibeneth

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Chapter 9

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As he stared at the insides of the first mortal Man he had ever met, all Elrond could think was that this was like any of the other midnight emergencies he had attended over the first six years of his apprenticeship.

It had started sometime in the night, when he lay cradled in a dream of a warm summer sunset and ocean waves beneath him. A violent pounding shook him out of sleep and into the chill of early spring.

“Elrond!” Osgardir called, voice thick with sleep as he padded toward the door, but Elrond was already rolling out of bed and grumpily reaching for a clean infirmary tunic. When it couldn’t wait until morning, it usually meant that someone had gotten hurt doing something stupid, like drinking too much and falling down the stairs or breaking multiple ribs in the middle of some weird, boredom-induced sex act. Or it meant that Maedhros was in trouble again, and Elrond would gladly take a parade of weird sex injuries over that.

The gate guard was at the door, and Osgardir did not sound happy at whatever news he brought. “What do you mean, they don’t speak our language?”

“Just that. No Quenya, and only enough Sindarin to say they can’t speak Sindarin and that he needs a healer.”

“Did you find them under a rock?” Osgardir asked, audibly baffled.

“We’re working on it. My men are waking everyone who knows a Mannish tongue.”

“Good. I’ll see to them in a moment.” The door creaked shut. Elrond pulled on his pants and scudded down the ladder as Osgardir went back into his room to change. “We have visitors, both literally and metaphorically,” the healer said. Elrond turned aside to splash some cold water on his face while Osgardir wriggled into the fitted undergarment he wore to flatten his chest. “Two mortals approached the gates not long ago. The night watch intercepted them and I suppose they need a healer, but they don’t speak Sindarin or Quenya, so we will see how this goes.”

Elrond toweled off his face and moved to tie his braids up under a cap, as usual. “How did they find us?”

“I know nothing.”

Washed and dressed, they left the cottage and walked quickly through the darkened streets to the gatehouse, where a small crowd had gathered. Some of them had probably been summoned to assist, but others were clearly just curious. Osgardir unceremoniously nudged them aside. “Unless you are here to interpret, make way!” he barked.

Midhien was on duty at the wall and stepped up when Osgardir and Elrond approached the gatehouse. “They have no Sindarin or Quenya, and no one knows their Mannish tongue, but they do have some sort of Avarin speech,” she said quickly.

“We can work with that,” Osgardir said. “Go wake up Amrúnith.” Amrúnith’s mother was a green-elf, and of the handful of elves in the compound who shared their blood, she was the most skilled in their lore. While they waited, Elrond followed Osgardir into the guardhouse to see to the visitors.

Elrond wasn’t sure what he expected, but the two mortals in the guardhouse seemed both strange and familiar. There was a bearded man, whose lined face was tight with pain and beaded with sweat. Next to him sat a woman with wide, frightened eyes. Their clothes were patched and travel-worn over once-bright patterns, and they both looked as if they could use a few good meals. Their only animal, a laden donkey, had been hitched outside the guardhouse.

“We are healers,” Osgardir said slowly. He pointed to himself, and then to Elrond. “Osgardir. Elrond. Healers,” he said again, and at that, understanding lit up the woman’s eyes and she nodded. He reached out to the man to feel his forehead. He declared it to be a dangerous fever and spent a few moments trying to get more information from the woman, but she truly did not have any Sindarin. Instead of pressing the issue, Osgardir beckoned to her, using his authority as chief healer to allow them access to the compound and the infirmary, where Amrúnith would hopefully be able to interpret for them. Elrond lent an arm to the sick man as they walked.

Midhien reappeared as they approached the darkened building, with Amrúnith in tow. She appeared bleary-eyed and wrapped in a blanket but willing to help. Osgardir ushered her inside while Elrond lit lamps and Amrúnith began offering greetings in a few Avarin dialects.

“They have some Kindi,” she said after several tense minutes. “I speak a little, mostly Cuind and Hwenti, so we should be able to get by, even if we have to get creative.”

“Elrond, bring the large slate over here. I might need to draw pictures if language fails us,” Osgardir said. “Where in the world do they speak Kindi but not a whisper of Sindarin?

Amrúnith spoke simply and haltingly with the mortals for another moment while Elrond rolled the slate over. She had to try different forms of a few words, and occasionally she shook her head when the woman said something unfamiliar, but they understood one another at last. The woman covered her face briefly with her hands, shoulders shaking, but she lifted her head and dashed away her tears without hesitation. Elrond did not need to understand her words to understand the look of relief on her face.

“He is Videric, and she is Liuva, his daughter,” Amrúnith said. “She says they are from ‘the old place.’ I’m not sure if that is the name of their realm, but their people were only recently displaced by the war in the north.”

Osgardir frowned slightly, but nodded. “How did they find us here?”

Amrúnith and Liuva spoke together again. “She had heard rumors of ‘teachers’—that must be what their people called the Kindi—living in these woods. When her father fell ill, she followed the forest road to find us. She knew that we have powerful medicine.”

“She found us on a rumor?” Osgardir asked, aghast. “Do her people not have healers?”

“They are alone.”

Osgardir nodded. “I do not have very great knowledge of Mannish ailments, but I will help as far as I am able.”

With Amrúnith interpreting, he began examining Videric and asking questions about his symptoms. He listened to his breathing and heartbeat—they were rapid with pain. His forehead burned with fever. Liuva said that he became feverish and sick to his stomach several days earlier, but appeared to become well again before the illness returned even worse than it was before. Through Amrúnith he described the stabbing pain in his belly, and then something that made her and Elrond look at Osgardir in confusion.

“He says he fears that his liver is exploding?” Amrúnith said. “I’m not sure of the vocabulary. It is ‘liver’ in Hwenti, but it could mean a number of other organs in Kindi.”

Osgardir’s eyebrows shot upward. “Not his liver. Ask him where the pain is located.” He poked and prodded around Videric’s abdomen, asking more questions and speaking quickly enough that Amrúnith stumbled even worse over the translation. “Not the liver!” he said again. “It is the appendix—the short bit at the end of the bowel. It is inflamed. That happens sometimes in Men, and he is right to be afraid of it. If it were to burst, the infection would spread and kill him.” He reached for the slate. “Amrúnith, I’m going to draw a diagram while I explain the procedure. Just do your best. Elrond, start preparing for surgery. If he’s been sick this long already, we will need to operate as soon as possible.”

Elrond could not deny his nerves as he washed his hands and began assembling all the necessary tools, but his fingers were steady. It wasn’t the first surgery he had attended as Osgardir’s apprentice. All the others had turned out well, and this should be no different, even if it concerned a mortal. Still, he listened to the explanation and glanced at the slate while he worked, fascinated by something he had never considered could go wrong. Osgardir had drawn a man-shaped outline with a squiggly tube inside the abdomen to represent the bowel, at the end of which was a small nub that he had circled. There was also a simple face with a downturned mouth and a picture of a scalpel, and between Osgardir sketching as he spoke and Amrúnith improvising with the translation, Videric agreed to the operation.

“He says he dreads the pain, but will accept it if there is no other option,” Amrúnith said.

At this, Osgardir looked over at Elrond. “There will be no pain,” he said firmly. “You will have poppy-spirits, and then my apprentice will put you into a deep sleep. When you wake, all will be well.” Elrond set his jaw and nodded. He only hoped a mortal mind would receive his gift as usual.

“I translated that as ‘spirit magic,’” Amrúnith said with a grimace. “Sorry. That’s the best I could think of.”

“Whatever makes sense to them,” Elrond said with a dry chuckle.

Videric, in the end, agreed to Elrond’s gift. If he had reservations, he did not express them. What other choice did he have? Blood-sickness was a terrible way to go out, or so Elrond had gathered from Osgardir’s stories of the wars in Beleriand. With that in mind he tied a mask over his nose and mouth and distributed masks and aprons to the women while Osgardir helped Videric remove his tunic and lie down on the operating table. All the necessary tools lay, gleaming and organized, on a draped stand nearby. Bright-mirrored lamps illuminated the room. With their own masks and aprons in place, Osgardir and Elrond scrubbed their hands in silence.

Elrond moved to Videric’s side and released the last of his apprehension with a breath. He sank into the now-familiar rhythms of life around him, feeling for anything different that the mortals might have brought with them. It was strange and subtle, but he recognized it, and he reached out to Videric’s presence.

It was like standing at the end of a road and staring into formless darkness beyond. Elrond trembled—it had never been like this before. What if he wasn’t able…

He caught a glimpse of Osgardir’s sharp brown eyes watching from the gap between his cap and mask. An old lesson came to Elrond’s mind as clearly as if his mentor had spoken: a ll things considered, Men and elves have more in common than not. We’re similar enough to reproduce, after all.

Right . Elrond took another deep breath. Sleep , he coaxed, and closed his eyes. He thought about what it felt like to drift off into a deep, dreamless slumber, leaving all his cares until morning. Let the poppy take hold, relax, let every fiber settle down. No pain, no fear. Just deep, deep sleep.

Gently, he drew back and opened his eyes. Videric, far from resisting, was asleep. Elrond could sense the subdued pulses of his heart, lungs, glands, and viscera, but he did not twitch when Elrond pinched his fingertip with a pair of tweezers.

“Is he ready?” Osgardir asked while swabbing Videric’s belly with alcohol.

“Yes.” He would have to stay close to his spirit throughout the procedure to make sure he was still peacefully and painlessly unconscious. The dark mystery beyond the surface of his mind made that even more crucial.

“Good.” Osgardir passed the swab back. “Blade, please.”

And so Elrond watched and assisted while his mentor cut cleanly through skin and fat with a practiced hand as if this was a patient more ordinary than the first mortal Man that Elrond, child of three kindreds, could remember meeting. Stranger still was that Elrond himself did not find the whole thing unusual either. He was just another patient.

“I thought he’d be different,” Elrond remarked as he introduced retractors to hold muscle fibers out of the way when Osgardir divided them on his way to the bowel.

“Oh? How so?”

“I’m not sure. He’s just so… normal.”

“Yes, I thought the same thing when I first met a mortal. They have their own quirks that become more apparent the longer you’re in their company, though, like this nonsensical exploding appendix. Ah, here it is!” Osgardir eased the swollen, discolored appendix out through the incision. “Estë smiles, it hasn’t burst. Have a suture ready. There’s an artery I’ll need to tie off.”

“When did you even hear about this?” Elrond asked Osgardir as he clamped the artery.

“No matter their crimes, the Easterlings have a vast understanding of medicine.” Osgardir severed the artery above the clamp and knotted a length of catgut around the cut end with deft fingers. “The princes of the house of Bór often visited Himring in the years before it fell, and we shared our knowledge with each other. One of their retainers fell ill during such a visit, and naturally we all gathered around to see what a mortal healer would do for mortal ailments. Their surgeon showed us how the pain in his belly localized to the lower right and became even worse when palpated—classic presentation of an infected appendix.” As he had done with the artery, he clamped the appendix and accepted another suture to tie it off where it connected to the bowel. One decisive cut with the scalpel, and it came free. “As many of us would fit in the room came to watch him put the man under our own dream-vapor, cut out the appendix, and show us all the different steps of the process. We were such eager pupils, even though we had each been practicing healers before his earliest mothers learned how to boil willow for their monthly pains!” He gave a short laugh. “Fascinating creatures, mortals.”

Elrond provided needles with catgut for the membranes below the skin, and finally a length of silk thread for the skin itself. Osgardir closed the wound with fast, neat stitches, and when Elrond had clipped the last one off, he accepted a fresh swab to sponge the area clean. All the tools went into a basin, and finally Osgardir secured a bandage over Videric’s stitches with a bit of resin. It was over.

“He should recover quickly,” Osgardir said to Liuva, with Amrúnith translating as he and Elrond washed their hands again. “He’ll need to rest until he is well again, but he will be just fine.”

Again Liuva wept with relief and exhaustion. Amrúnith wrapped a comforting arm around her shoulders and said nothing further.

Using the table drape as a stretcher, Elrond and Osgardir transferred Videric to an empty bed. Elrond listened for any change in the rhythm that would indicate he was about to wake, but he still slept. Elrond left himself drift along the main blood vessels, sensing the different secretions that managed sleep and wakefulness, pain, responses to his illness. Just a tug—glands slowed their activity. A slight upswing in blood pressure. A withdrawal from the deepest sleep that had protected him during the operation.

“He will sleep a little longer,” he said, returning to himself.

Osgardir nodded. “Good. He’ll have more poppy-spirits once he wakes, and until he is better, they will be our guests.”

 

Afterward, linens went to be cleaned and tools went to the steam-kettle, and Elrond yawned as he stoked the fire on the hearth.

“I’ll take the first watch. You’re still a growing lad,” Osgardir said. “Go and get some rest.”

Elrond went up to the cot in the storage loft. He was asleep as soon as his head hit his pillow, and he dreamed of strange, bright figures surrounding him and speaking in a musical but unintelligible language. He was on his back. A shard of light appeared in the nearest figure’s hand, and it plunged it into Elrond’s belly where it burned like a white-hot knife.

He woke suddenly, drenched in cold sweat. It was still not quite dawn, he could hear the elves beginning to start the day’s work outside as the darkness began to lift. Even after all these years the nightmares had not gone away, and he was grumpy as he washed up and started going about his own duties outside.

“Why didn’t you tell me there were mortals in the infirmary?” came Elros’ voice from around the corner while Elrond shaved soap curls into the laundry cauldron. Elros himself came into view with curiosity shining in his eyes.

“Because they deserve their privacy,” Elrond said. “And they don’t speak Sindarin.”

“Even so! They could be our distant relatives. Did anyone think to ask them?”

“It didn’t come up,” Elrond said with a sigh.

“What are they like?”

Elrond shrugged. “Not too different from elves. The man had to have his appendix removed, so that was different.”

“His what?”

“Appendix. It’s a short bit attached to the bowel.” The water was steaming. Elrond dumped the dirty linens into the cauldron and pushed them under with the laundry paddle.

“There have to be more differences than that,” Elros coaxed. “How old are they?”

“Um…” Elrond scratched his head under his cap. “I’m not sure. The man has a beard and gray hair. The daughter is grown but her hair is still black.” He had noticed that there was an almost exaggerated difference between the male and female body shapes, but it didn’t seem polite to mention that. “They’re both sort of thin and ragged-looking. The war drove them from their home.”

Elros’ brow furrowed. “Is it getting closer to us?”

Elrond shrugged. The past years had followed the same pattern of seclusion and self-sufficiency that the compound had kept since before the boys’ arrival. They had all been content to lie low and stay safe for now, when interference would surely end in ruin, and Maglor had not sent any more scouts for the king’s people. There was no need.

 

Elros was only one of a large group that took to orbiting the infirmary, trying to coax information on the mortals out of Elrond and Osgardir as they went about their work. Amrúnith stayed close to interpret, and every time she left the building, her friends flocked around her with questions.

For the most part, Osgardir maintained a strict barrier between the infirmary and everyone else, but with the mortals’ permission he allowed Maglor access to greet them as regent of the House of Fëanor and ask after Videric’s recovery. Maglor turned out his most hospitable charms, inviting the two of them to stay at the longhouse while Videric recuperated, but they declined. There were always a lot of people coming and going, and when no one spoke their language, it would be overwhelming. Osgardir was happy to have them stay in the infirmary, but he did request someone to bring them nutritious meals to fortify them for their journey. Elros jumped at the opportunity. Twice a day, he brought a basket of fresh food from the longhouse and stayed to talk as long as he was allowed.

Despite all the stories of mortals being frail creatures who could die for the silliest reasons, Videric recovered quickly from the operation. He was talking and laughing not long after he woke, and he ate heartily, much to Osgardir’s delight. Elrond watched him, constantly wondering if the visitor’s wrinkled face reflected his own future. Maybe one day he too would fall ill and Osgardir would have to cut out his appendix--would he be able to use his gift of sleep on himself? Or would he have to face it awake?

They stayed for a few weeks. At last, Elrond clipped Videric’s outer stitches, and Osgardir declared him fit to travel. The elves packed their donkey with food and supplies and sent them along with well-wishes. Almost as quickly as they had arrived, Videric and Liuva disappeared into the forest, and the pattern of elvish life resumed its normal course.

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Everything Elros tried came easily to him, and he had flitted from craft to craft in the course of searching for his calling. He always lost interest after a few months and moved on. It wasn’t unusual to try many things before pursuing a formal apprenticeship, and the craftspeople never turned away his willing labor, but they seemed to find it perplexing. He barely had time to get his hands dirty before he decided to try something else.

To Elrond’s eyes, it looked as if Elros approached different shops because he wanted to learn how to do something in particular, not because he wanted to understand the entire scope of the craft. He wanted new sandals, and they would only be just right if he made them for himself. He worked with the hostlers for a season, learned how to teach Peguiel to jump over fences, and then moved on. Hunting was less about returning with wild game, and more about the opportunity to learn how to understand the language of the forest and mask the signs of his own presence. No one knew why any of it appealed to him. Elros, when asked, would just shrug and say that it seemed interesting.

His latest foray into pottery had yielded an ingenious tray-shaped grill with handles on either end and notches down the sides that would hold metal skewers over the coals below. The twins had spent much of their recent free time spearing and grilling anything that would stay on a skewer, now that it was summer and they could spend long, warm evenings smoking and talking as the coals died out. Elros already had the grill set up when Elrond pushed aside the trailing willow branches that obscured the crumbling watchtower.

“Did you find anything good?” he asked when Elrond tossed his satchel onto the ground next to him.

“Lots of squirrels’ bread, a chicken-of-the-woods, and two oysters. I thought I saw a morel, but it’s the wrong season, so I left it.” He sighed and sat down next to the grill. “I knew if I picked it, Osgardir would pop out from behind a tree and make me repeat ‘every mushroom is edible once’ all the way back to the compound.”

“I would have liked to have a morel.”

“You’d have to fight me for it.”

Elros grinned and poked the fire to break up the coals. “I’m a lover, not a fighter, and I’m too beautiful to risk my face again.”

Elrond snorted. “A lover of whom ?”

“Someone, eventually.” The two of them worked together to brush the mushrooms clean and cut the large ones into uniform pieces, which they threaded onto skewers and set over the coals. “You know what I’ve never been able to figure out? Whether you like boys or girls, or both.”

Heat flared in Elrond’s cheeks. “There isn’t anyone to ‘like’ here,” he said.

“Right. But in theory, if there were any eligible candidates within a day’s ride, who would you prefer?”

Elrond poked at the coals for a moment, stalling, while Elros wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. “I don’t know,” he said at last, exasperated.

“I know you’ve heard pillow-poetry before. Do you think about maidens with eyes like moonless night, slender youths like saplings in spring…”

“That might sound good in a song, but it sounds stupid in real life.” He did enjoy hearing it on occasion, but idealized verse wasn’t what Elrond desired. Something real, someone he could know in both flesh and spirit, a harbor and a partner, that was what he wanted, and from there everything else seemed superfluous. “I have seen the world through the eyes of men and women,” he said at length. “It’s sometimes hard to tell if any given thought or feeling comes from myself or another person. So I think I would have to know, without any doubt, that the attraction was truly mine before I could say who I’m interested in.”

“I guess that makes sense, even if I don’t understand it.” Elros reached into his own bag. “Did you see my new pipe?”

“No!”

“Tebedir made it for me when I helped with the kiln last month.” He pulled out a short-stemmed ceramic pipe with a bowl in the shape of a curled-up sleeping fox. “He saw what I’d been using and called it a disgrace.”

“It’s great!”

Elros went for his pouch of cannabis to pack the bowl. He offered the fresh pipe and a burning twig to Elrond. “I haven’t broken it in yet. The honor is all yours.”

“Thank you.” Elrond admired the stylized fox for a moment before lighting up. He took his time, listening to the evening sounds of bats and insects as relaxation settled into his shoulders. He sat for a moment, thinking, and then passed the pipe back to Elros. “Do you think we are elves or Men?” he asked. The question had been in the back of his mind for a long time before Videric and Liuva appeared at the gates, but since their arrival and departure, it had returned to the forefront and did not seem likely to subside.

Elros paused, glanced upward, and exhaled a cloud of smoke. “I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it?”

“What? You haven’t?” Elrond gave a short laugh. “I think about it all the time!”

“I don’t. The way I see it, we’ll find out eventually, and until then I intend to live my life as it happens.” He smiled and passed the pipe back.

“But it determines everything about us!”

Elros only shrugged. Elrond, frustrated, relit the pipe and took a long draw. They sat in silence for a moment, smoking and watching the mushrooms on the grill, before Elrond spoke again. “We are twenty-five years old. If we were Men, we would be nearing middle age. We might even have gray hair and wrinkles. But we’ve only reached our current height in the last few years, and the others still see us as youths.”

“It could be because they’ve lived so long already.”

“But they still recognize adulthood in mortals.” Elrond frowned. “Do you feel like an adult?”

“What’s that supposed to feel like?”

“I don’t know. Do you think of yourself as a man or a boy?”

“Hmm, neither. Something in between. I like my independence, but I’d be lost if I was expected to support a family tomorrow. I appreciate my elders’ guidance, and I’m aware that I do stupid things sometimes, but I don’t like being treated like a child.”

“I feel the same way,” Elrond said, relieved to have found an agreement.

“Our heritage is mixed, so I think it stands to reason that we wouldn’t have the same experience as any of our progenitors.” Elros tested one of the skewers and, satisfied, plucked it off the grill. “These are ready. It seems like…” he scrunched his nose. “The smoke is going to my head. I can’t think of the right words. Do you grow hairs on your chin?”

“I’ve had exactly two, but I plucked them out and they never grew back,” Elrond said, selecting a skewer. “And anyway, that doesn’t prove anything. Maedhros’ and Maglor’s grandfather has a full beard, and Maedhros starts growing one when he’s feeling too poorly to shave it.”

Elros, chewing on a mushroom tilted his head. “What about my ears? Do they look more pointed or more rounded?”

“They look pointed to me, but not as pointed as Osgardir’s. His ears are pretty long, though.” He knew, as he had been told, that the difference was not merely physical. Even Maedhros, who knew the Secondborn better than anyone else in the compound, struggled to explain how they were different, only that they were. Perhaps it was because he lived for centuries in the West, but then Amrúnith had no more insight for her centuries in Beleriand, encountering bands of mortals in the infancy of their existence. “What do you feel more like? An elf or a Man?”

“I don’t know! How would I even know?” Elros let out an exasperated laugh and lay back on the ground with his skewer.

Elrond did not respond to that. He could not deny that he sometimes found himself standing apart from the others for reasons he couldn’t explain—was it his age? His heritage? His gift, or merely his personality? Was he so different that he would never know what it was to be a part of either kindred?

“Are you going to smoke or stare at it until it burns out?” Elros asked at length, startling Elrond out of his thoughts. He extended his hand and wiggled his fingers expectantly.

“Oh. Here.” Elrond passed the pipe he’d forgotten he was holding. “Father was half-elven. Mother was closer to three-quarters. Wouldn’t she age more slowly than him?”

“Why are you asking me?”

Elrond blinked. “I’m thinking out loud, I suppose.”

“We’ll never know for sure unless we get to ask them someday. And even they might not have all the answers you want.”

“Don’t you want to know?”

“Yes. But I won’t mind if they can’t tell me.”

“I can’t stand not having all the answers. At least Maedhros and Maglor know that their friends have gone to the Halls of Waiting. What if we die and just… stop existing? What if we were an accident? What if the One never intended for us to exist in the first place?”

Saying it out loud opened a black pit of horror in Elrond’s stomach, but Elros just closed his eyes and giggled. “Here we are, whether he intended it or not.”

That was not reassuring. Rather than fall further down that pit, Elrond reached for a second mushroom skewer.

---

The greater disruption came after midsummer, when the warm air was still and heavy with moisture and everyone tried to do as little work as possible.

Elrond had taken advantage of a lull in his schedule to nap under a tree and dream of swimming in cool water. Thunder rolled in the distance. The summer squall gathered strength, bringing with it rain and hail as it loomed overhead, but Elrond opened his eyes and instead recognized the sound of hoofbeats.

“Elrond, come and see!” Elros was running up the street toward him, still wearing a dye-spotted apron for his most recent craft.

“What is it?” Elrond, still groggy, picked a blade of grass out of his hair.

“Riders! Elven riders!”

The two of them maneuvered through the gathering crowd to the gate, where they scaled the palisade to get a better look.

There were a dozen elves on sturdy-legged horses approaching the compound, all armed with swords and bows. Their mail and helmets were finished in a dark patina, and they wore the same shifting, earth-colored cloaks favored by scouts and hunters. Despite their camouflage, they unfurled a blue banner emblazoned with many-rayed stars on their approach.

Maglor’s vow to them came back to Elrond in that moment, veiled in murky memories of wet blankets and endless games of mancala: with whatever free will I have left, I will get you home safely. The king will take you into his care and this wretched episode will be behind us at last. I am sorry that this is the best I can give you.

This was always the plan. It was always going to end this way, though the earthquake and then Elrond’s illness put it on hold for a season. Still, it hadn’t seemed real, and even now it felt like he was watching the riders and their banner through a window of ice.

“It’s the king’s people,” he said quietly.

Elros looked sharply at him. “Are you sure?”

Elrond only nodded. He didn’t know what he had foreseen besides an endless forest, more lessons, more healing, more time spent exploring his gift—but twenty years to his elders meant practically nothing, even if this was nearly his entire life. What else could he have pictured?

The twins climbed down and joined the crowd as the strangers stopped at the gates.

“I come on the errand of Ereinion Gil-galad, High King of the Noldor in Beleriand,” the lead rider demanded of the guard on duty. “Where is the lord of this house?”

“You may treat with me.” Maglor parted the crowd on his way from the longhouse, flanked by Hestedis and Alagostor. “Come now, let us speak man-to-man. I won’t be scolded within these walls.”

The lead rider sat up higher in his saddle, perhaps contemplating whether refusal would be worth it, but after a moment he walked his horse into the compound. The others followed, and the host dismounted at the leader’s signal.

When he removed his helmet, he was handsome but stern and tall enough to look Maglor in the eye, which he did with unflinching intensity. Elrond realized with a jolt that they were kinsmen: the stranger shared Maglor’s smooth dark hair and something in the shape of his mouth, but otherwise he had a golden cast to his skin and a softer brow not unlike Elrond’s own, suggesting some Sindarin blood.

“It has been many dark days since our last meeting, Tyelpe,” Maglor said at last.

“I do not use that name,” the stranger said stiffly. “I am Celebrimbor, son of Ríel.”

“No matter what name you use, I still call you ‘nephew.’” Maglor opened his arms slightly, perhaps inviting a hug. Celebrimbor turned pointedly aside.

“Young lords,” he said with a deep bow. Elrond and Elros shifted awkwardly at the attention, but managed to stifle it once he raised his head. “It is for your sake that the king sent me, and on his behalf that I speak now. He mourned your loss dearly. He never forgot about you, and he bitterly regrets the mistakes that kept us from recovering you. I am close in his council, and please believe that he dedicated every resource he could spare toward bringing you home. Even so, he understands— all of us understand—that our futile efforts cannot erase the trauma that you have endured, and for that, he offers his sincerest apologies.”

Elrond and Elros looked at one another, and then back at Celebrimbor. “We accept his apologies, but I’m not sure we need them,” Elrond said with a shrug.

“Maglor kept us safe and happy,” Elros agreed. “Did the king think that he was keeping us in a cellar with the turnips?”

That seemed to ruffle Celebrimbor’s plumage a bit. “He had every reason to fear for your well-being, young master,” he said.

“Right. Well, my name is Elros—I’m the handsome one. My brother Elrond is the talented one, as well as the firstborn between us. No one has ever called either of us ‘young master.’”

“My apologies.” Celebrimbor’s voice softened, but his brow did not. “I’ll admit that none of us knew what you would be like after this long without contact.”

That set Maglor off. “I sent messengers! Scouts! Many times, over several years! I never meant to keep the boys from their people, no matter how it may look, but it was as if the king and all his subjects had vanished!” He stepped closer to the twins with the air of a wolf seeing to his pups. “Just when we thought we had the barest hint of a lead, the earthquake hit. It took us another whole year to rebuild. Why, if the king was so concerned about them, did he not make himself easier to find?”

Celebrimbor reddened slightly at the hint of a slur against the king, but he held his composure. “His first concern was for the well-being of the refugees of Sirion, whom you displaced,” he said. “They feared another strike if you believed Elwing had returned with the Jewel, and his host was already spread thin trying to push back the orcs who had come to scavenge. Do not suggest that any of this was his fault.”

“He knows well that it wasn’t.” All heads turned toward the gravel of Maedhros’ voice. He stood before the longhouse, unsmiling and ungroomed as usual but claiming authority with his head held high. “Celebrimbor,” he continued. “Your journey must have been long.”

Again Celebrimbor stiffened as if it pained him to acknowledge his uncles. “It was indeed.”

“There is much to discuss. Make use of my hospitality, and we will continue this when you are rested.” Maedhros turned back to the longhouse without waiting for a response, leaving Maglor to smooth the order into a request.

 

Celebrimbor’s men settled into the quarters made available to them as evening began to fall, and Elrond stopped back at the cottage to put on a long-sleeved shirt before joining the others for dinner. He tugged the cuffs down over the scars on his arms—circles and crescents, now healed pale gray-pink against the light brown of his skin—making sure they were out of sight. He did not usually worry about them, but the thought of outside eyes taking an interest made the back of his neck prickle with discomfort.

The feeling of unease did not dissipate. Elrond fought against it for some time before he recognized the unfamiliar angles as impressions of others’ minds, and he had to consciously untangle each thread like he had in the very beginning, like learning the notes of a new song.

He concluded that no one actually wanted to be there. Maedhros was physically present but otherwise absent from the proceedings to the point where even Alagostor didn’t try to make him eat. Maglor attempted to ask Celebrimbor about friends or relatives whose names Elrond didn’t recognize, but Celebrimbor only answered in short, frosty words that killed any conversation in infancy. Hestedis was drinking as much as Maedhros did. Maglor had summoned the retainers who had been at Sirion--Osgardir, Serecthel, Midhien, Amrúnith, Elhadron, and Gwedhon among them--to provide their accounts of the event if necessary, but all of them seemed ready to pounce on the first excuse to leave that they could find. Celebrimbor’s men were no happier to be there than the rest.

“There has to be some reason why neither of our parties could make contact with the other in the last twenty years,” Maglor said at last, visibly impatient. “From the beginning: what happened?”

Celebrimbor hesitated. He took another sip of mead before speaking. “The king received the messenger you sent just after leaving Sirion,” he said. “Rather, he received his message while our healers made his final hours comfortable. The orcs.”

“I suspected as much,” Maglor said with naked regret in his voice. “I did not know that he made it to you, however.”

Celebrimbor nodded. “It is well for all of you that the king at least knew you wanted to return the princes, even if the Taur-im-Duniath swallowed any trail we could have followed.”

“We have names,” Elros muttered. Elrond gave a huff of agreement.

“Again, my apologies,” Celebrimbor said. “I meant it respectfully.”

Maglor made an anxious gesture. “Please continue.”

“Balar was the sole elvish settlement of any strength after Sirion, and he realized he would not be able to defend it indefinitely,” Celebrimbor said. With a little mead in him, he finally relaxed enough to lean back in his chair and cross his legs. “He gave the order to abandon the island and take refuge in the far east. He tried to wait as long as he could in order to recover the p--Elrond and Elros, but he needed to act for the community. He knew he made the right decision once we saw the Jewel rise as the evening star. The host of the Valar landed shortly afterward, and their attack on Morgoth would only ruin us if we got in the way. We are lending what aid we can, but it isn’t much.”

Silence followed his words. So it was true, and it had come to this. The twins had heard many stories of Nargothrond and Dor-Lomin and Himring and all the other Noldorin realms in their days of glory, and if they had seemed far away before, now they seemed like little more than tales.

“A caravan of dwarves came through the forest some years ago and told us of this war,” Maglor said once the silence had become unbearable. “Did your people encounter them?”

“Usually from afar. They have no love for elves, as you know.”

“But you did see them.”

“We saw them disappearing into the mountains with their families. I wouldn’t know whether they were the same dwarves—the eastern roads are paved with refugee footprints.”

Maglor, impatient, tapped his fingers against the arm of his chair. “If you didn’t hear it from the dwarves, how did you know where to find us?”

“The king heard a recent story of Men who had encountered elvish healers in their hour of need,” Celebrimbor said. “The details matched: well-armed, well-hidden elves bearing the eight-pointed star, and the presence of twin youths. We tracked it to its source in one of the Mannish refugee towns.”

Videric and Liuva had made it after all. Elrond and Osgardir shared a smile when they met eyes across the room.

“So they did survive,” Maglor mused. “I wouldn’t have put money on it. Are there very many people settling in the east?”

“Everyone who is able to travel that far.” At this, Celebrimbor stood and addressed the assembled elves without asking Maglor’s permission. “After Sirion, the king extended his mercy to the kinslayers who joined him in the name of the greater good,” he said. “He renews the offer again. Any who will renounce the Oath’s governance and join him in building a new kingdom in the east may receive a full pardon for their past crimes. A new age is dawning, one without ancient grudges or ruinous death-pacts. This is also the will of the people, who only wish to have their lost brothers and sisters with them again. It will be an age of forgiveness on all sides.”

“It applies to Maedhros and Maglor too, right?” Elrond spoke up. He ignored Maglor’s placating gesture. “The Oath is unbreakable, but they could be the king’s allies again, right?”

Celebrimbor’s eyes narrowed slightly. “I cannot say, only that there can be no mercy without justice.”

“The king does not have the authority to pardon me,” Maedhros said in a low growl. “There is only One who does.”

An uneasy lull followed his words, and then Celebrimbor tilted his head. “I mean no offense, Elrond, but you lack context. There is no way you would defend them if you understood the full extent of their violence against your family.”

“ You lack context for what they have done for us,” Elrond shot back without thinking. Elros planted a firm hand on his shoulder, but Celebrimbor’s expression did not change.

“Kind deeds to a few do not define their impact on the rest,” he said calmly. “This is not my opinion, but a fact. It isn’t a personal flaw that you lack the perspective to see it.”

Elrond, in the depths of his child-brain, decided that he did not like Celebrimbor or his cold objectivity. He also did not like the crawling sense that he was being treated like a child, or the realization that he was indeed acting like one. He fell silent and looked into the fire, grinding his teeth until he could feel his heart beating in his ears, and then Maglor’s voice broke through.

“Does the king mean to rally the Noldor in the east and retake Beleriand once the Enemy is defeated?”

“You misunderstand,” Celebrimbor said, and finally his sternness began to fray around the edges. “There will be nothing left to reclaim by the time this war is over. Hithlum, Nevrast, the Falas—they’re already gone. Beleriand is crumbling into the sea.”