Days of Peace by bunn

The long chain of the mountains stretched misty blue and faint purple far into the south. Above them, three mighty peaks towered against the clear morning sky, snow-tipped and distant, high above the holly and the birchwoods of the lower slopes. The leaves of the birch trees were turning gold at the edges. Autumn was coming.

“Now what?” Galadriel demanded, turning the slim gold bracelet on her wrist a little nervously.

“Now we wait,” Celebrimbor told her. “It may take a while for our message to reach their king. My friends tell me that the main city is on the other side of the mountains. This is just the back door.”

“So we wait by the back door until their King has time for us?” Galadriel’s bright eyes shone in amusement. “For how long?”

“Until they decide it’s time. You won’t rush them: there’s no point trying, and it might cause offense. They will take a while to consider our message, I expect. I think it would be as well to set up our camp. I think we will be here for several days.”

Galadriel gave him a considering look. “Very well then. You are our expert on these Dwarves. I’ll follow your suggestion.”

Celebrimbor nodded politely and went away to his own people, to give orders about setting up his own camp a little to one side of Galadriel’s. She was, officially, the leader of this expedition. She was the daughter of the High King in Tirion, after all, and Celebrimbor’s House was famously dispossessed.

But Celebrimbor had brought more of his people with him than Galadriel had, partly because a good number of them, if left unsupervised in Lindon in company with elves who had once been of Gondolin, of Nargothrond and Doriath, would certainly get into arguments.

Here in the wilds of Eriador, he could probably leave them for an hour or so without trouble. Even those who had been with his uncles through every one of their kinslayings were unlikely to end up in a fight out here, and he thought that he had spotted something out of the corner of his eye that might bear investigation.

Once his people had begun setting up tall white tents and banners showing the star of his house upon the flat grassy land above the stream, he wandered away quietly up the stream that ran swift and noisy among the red rocks. He stopped from time to time to look at the wet and shining pebbles washed up in the shallows, until he came into the shadow of a low red cliff. He looked up.

“Good morning!” he said, in Khuzdul to the young Dwarf who was lying on the low clifftop, peering over the cliffs down towards the Elvish camp. The Dwarf jumped and stared at him. He bowed politely. “Celebrimbor son of Curufin, of the House of Fëanor, at your service,” he said.

After a long, wide-eyed moment, the Dwarf got up and bowed back politely enough.

“Narvi, of the Longbeards, at your service and your family’s,” he said, noncommittally, in Sindarin. Or was it he? The voice was lighter and clearer than Celebrimbor had expected, and looking more closely, he realised that this was one of the rare women of the Dwarves, and alone outside her city, which also was most unusual.

“I am delighted to meet you, Narvi,” Celebrimbor said, following her example and switching to Sindarin. “I have not met many Longbeards. Long ago, I knew some of the Broadbeams of Belegost and Firebeards of Nogrod, but those cities fell in the great war.”

Narvi thought about that. “Is that where you learned our language? I didn’t think any of the Lanky Folk could speak it.”

“Yes,” Celebrimbor said. “I was permitted to learn it in Belegost, when I stayed there with my father.”

“You went inside the city?” Narvi asked him, in obvious surprise. “I didn’t think Lanky Folk did that, either!”

“Some of our people have lived underground,” Celebrimbor said “Nargothrond was an underground city of the Elves, that the Broadbeams helped my cousin Finrod Felagund to build, perhaps you have heard of it? It was built along a series of very fine caverns where limestone had been worn by water running. It was very beautiful.”

“I have heard of the Felagund of Nargothrond,” Narvi said, her dark eyes bright with interest.

She sat down again on the edge of the cliff with her feet dangling over the edge, so she was only a little above Celebrimbor’s head. Her strong legs were bare between her boots and tunic, and covered in a sort of fur, the same colour as her beard, he noticed with interest. “I didn’t know Felagund was one of the Lanky Folk! I thought he was one of us.”

“Not surprising, if you had not met him. He was close in friendship with a good number of your people.”

“I didn’t think the Lanky Folk had cities, either,” Narvi said thoughtfully. “I thought they just wandered around in the woods, singing.”

“Some of us do that too,” Celebrimbor said, making sure to keep his face very polite and serious. “But my own people, the Noldor, prefer to live in cities, as a general rule.”

“Noldor. Is that a different sort of Lanky Folk?”

“The Noldor are... like a family. As the Broadbeams and the Firebeards and the Longbeards are families, each with their own cities, we have the Noldor, and the Sindar, and the Nandor. All of us are Elves, and are called Eldar because we went into the West. And the Noldor are called Amanyar too, because we went beyond the Sea to Aman.”

“And Elves, who are Eldar and Amanyar, are Lanky Folk?” said Narvi, with the determination of one intent on understanding.

“I’m not sure,” Celebrimbor said seriously. “I’ve heard your people call Men the Lanky Folk, and they are not the same as we are. Although I can see from your point of view that we are all roughly the same height.”

“Isn’t it a good thing that I’m up here?” Narvi said with a grin. “I may be the first person to study you at eye-level. Who knows what mysteries I shall discover?”

Celebrimbor laughed. “I think Men would probably say they had studied us at eye-level,” he said in Khuzdul. “And we have certainly studied them! For us, you are the mysterious ones, with your secret cities and your language that you are so reluctant to teach to others!”

“We did try teaching it!,” Narvi exclaimed in the same language. “The Lanky Folk said it was too hard! So we learned their languages instead.” She thought about it. “Or that’s what I was taught, anyway. Do you think it’s true? You learned it. I mean, you do have a peculiar accent. But then, so do the Broadbeams from the Blue Hills, and the Stiffbeards.”

“My family have always been particularly interested in languages,” Celebrimbor said, without going into detail about whether he was speaking of the Noldor, or of the House of Fëanor in particular. “Is my accent like that of the Broadbeams? It should be, but I have not had much chance to practice speaking Khuzdul recently.”

“It’s not quite like the accent of the Blue Hills,” Narvi said. “But you do speak it very well,” she said, encouragingly.

“Thank you,” Celebrimbor said gravely. “I hope you will correct me if I say something incorrect. I would take it as a great favour.”

“Would you? You are strange.”

“Yes, I am. I am a very long way from my home in the West beyond the Sea, and I don’t know much about this land,” Celebrimbor said. “I am hoping to learn all about it, and about the Longbeards, but I do not wish to cause offence.”

“Hm,” Narvi said. “All right then. I will tell you if you are being rude!” She thought about it. “I’ve never talked to any of the Lanky Folk before. Am Irude?” Celebrimbor was impressed. From a young dwarf, used only to speaking with her own people, it was a perceptive question.

“Not at all,” he said. “You are very friendly. Though I think to be strictly correct, it might be more tactful to say ‘Elves’ rather than ‘Lanky Folk.’ I think my cousin Galadriel, who leads our people here, might prefer that.”

“Elves. Hm. So you are not Lanky Folk, but Elves, and Eldar, and Amanyar, and Noldor, and House of Fëanor, and son of Curufin, and you are also Celebrimbor. You do have a lot of names.”

“I do. Where I come from, names tell you who someone is, and most people are a good many things at once. As you are Narvi, and a Longbeard, and a Dwarf.”

“Yes,” Narvi said, non-committal. Then she grinned at him confidentially. “I will tell you another name then, since you have told me so many of yours. I am Narvi, daughter of Bolthorn, who is a cousin of the king. Is Galadriel the name of your king?”

“No. Our king is... The High King of the Noldor in Middle-earth is called Gil-galad, but he has not come with us here.”

“Our king is called Durin,” Narvi informed him. “He lives in the city, of course, not out here in the west.”

“So I understand from the people of the Blue Hills. We have sent him messages. Gil-galad lives beside the Sea. Galadriel is his cousin, a lady of the Noldor who is the daughter of the High King beyond the Sea. She is Finrod Felagund’s sister.”

“Your leader is a woman?” Narvi was clearly surprised by that.

“Yes.” Celebrimbor looked up at her thoughtfully. “I did not think the ladies of your people went outside the cities.”

“There are some silly rules about that for wartime, I think, but it’s been hundreds of years since we were at war. My father is working near the Western gate at the moment, and I had to come too. It’s several days walk from here to the city.” She looked sadly at him. “The western end is terribly dull,” she confided. “There are only a few sleeping rooms, a goat farm, some pigs, and one little copper mine. And it’s not even very good copper! They have much better copper mines under the city. You Elves are the most interesting thing that has happened here for months.”

“Sometimes copper mines produce more interesting minerals once they are more fully explored,” Celebrimbor suggested.

“That’s what my father says!” Narvi said. “I hope he’s right. If he goes back without a good find of minerals, it will be very bad for his reputation.” She looked a little sheepish. “I should be helping him, really. That’s supposed to be why I’m here. But he saw I was bored, and said I could take a day’s holiday. I thought I’d come and have a look at the... the Elves, and then work on some of my own designs.”

“What do you design?”

“Stonework mostly, at the moment. For pillars and walls. I made a pillar-capital that was approved for use in the Third Hall last year. But then we had to come here,” Narvi said, and sighed. She must be older than he had thought at first, since she was producing stonework for public display. The Longbeards seemed to be a little taller and less broadly built than their western cousins, that was what had confused his eye: he was used to dwarves that were broader in the shoulders once they were fully grown.

“So you are drawing out designs ready to make up? I do a lot of that too,” Celebrimbor told her. “I have a book of them. They started as a set of ideas for various walls and buildings in my home in Tirion beyond the Sea in the West. ”

“Beyond the Sea where the lord Mahal lives?” Narvi thought for a moment. “Tirion is the name of your mountain, is it?”

“No, Tirion is the city. It’s not inside a mountain, but on a hill-top.” Celebrimbor hesitated. “I have met your lord Mahal, long ago,” he said. “We call him Aulë. My father studied with him. So did Galadriel.”

Narvi rolled her eyes. “Oh come on. You’re making that up. First Felagund’s sister, and now you have met Mahal himself?”

Celebrimbor shook his head. “Not at all. You said yourself that Mahal lives beyond the Sea.”

“I suppose so, but... Mahal? Really?”

“Yes. Honestly and truthfully.”

“Oh.” He was not sure if Narvi was convinced, but if she was not, she politely did not say so.

“I probably won’t be going back to Tirion for... various reasons,” he told her. “I used a lot of the designs in Mithlond, instead — that’s our king Gil-galad’s city by the Sea. It’s good to have a reserve of ideas noted down.”

“I shall have more than enough to build my own city, if my father insists we stay here in the desolate West much longer!” Narvi said. “Though I have come up with some new things while stuck out here in the middle of nowhere. That’s why I came out today. I thought I’d try drawing some representational ideas from the World Without. Trees and flowers and so on. I expect everyone in the city will think they’re terribly quaint and rural, but I like them.”

“My designs often include trees, too,” Celebrimbor told her. “We Elves like that sort of design a good deal. Perhaps we are quaint and rural by the standards of Khazad-dûm... You know, I was a little surprised to see you here all alone out here. Usually we see your people only in companies.”

“Oh, it’s quite safe. It’s not far to the back door, and there are almost never any wolves around here. Anyway, I have my axe. I made it myself. I’m quite proud of the balance, it’s light to carry but has the weight in just the right place to cut without effort.”

“May I look at it?” Celebrimbor asked. Narvi drew back, pulling her legs up over the cliff edge and suddenly looking wary.

“Tell you what,” Celebrimbor said. “I will show you my sword. I made it myself.” He drew the blade slowly, waited for a moment, then went over to the cliff and handed it up to her, hilt first. She looked at him cautiously for a moment, then took it and weighed it in her hand. “Nicely balanced,” she said, waving it experimentally. “Too long for me, but I like the way it fits into the hand.”

Her fingers were shorter and wider than any elf’s, but finely shaped, and her hands were large enough to hold the hilt easily. They looked strong and she held the sword and weighed it in her hand with a competent, measuring look. Interesting. You so rarely saw Dwarf women that Celebrimbor had had little idea what to expect from one, but clearly Narvi at least was well used to weapons.

“Does it have a spell on it?” she asked, rubbing at the back of the blade with a broad thumb.

“Several, “ he told her, and listed them. Some of them she knew, though they had to discuss for some time to find out which terms they had in common. The words they used here in Khazad-dûm were not quite the same that he had learned in Belegost.

“That’s another thing I didn’t know then,” she said after a while. “I thought it was only we who made spells! The Lanky Folk... no, you said that wasn’t tactful. What do you call the other sort? The ones who live in the wooden villages by the river?”

“Men?”

“Men. They aren’t much good at spells, my father says,” Narvi told him.

“Some of them are,” Celebrimbor said, thinking of Numenor. “But from what I hear, there are few who can say they rival the smith-work of your people. That is one reason we have come here. The Noldor also delight in making. We hope to live for a while in the land between the rivers Glanduin and Gwathló, to learn from your people.”

Narvi looked thoughtfully at the sword in her hand. “We don’t make anything quite like this,” she said.

“It would be a dull world if we all made things the same,”Celebrimbor said. “And there would be so much less to learn!”

Narvi nodded. Then she took the axe from her belt and handed it down to him. It was a simple thing, not obviously richly patterned or inlaid, but finely made to do its job, with no unnecessary flourishes, every ounce of weight in exactly the right place. It fitted into his hand as a near-perfect extension to the arm. He weighed it in his hand and felt the edge cautiously.

“I see what you mean about the weight,” he said, with honest admiration. “It’s beautifully balanced.” He gave it back to her, and received his own sword in return.

“I should go back to my people,” Celebrimbor said. “They will be wondering where I am. Would you like to come and meet Galadriel?”

“It might be a bit improper,” Narvi said thoughtfully. “My aunt might think so. But then, if your leader is a woman then nobody could carp at me for visiting her. It would be a politeness, really. Or at least, it would be if she were one of us, and if she is the Felagund’s sister then she almost is. And you say she studied with Mahal?”

“Truly,” Celebrimbor said. “I am sure she would be very pleased to tell you about him. I am afraid she does not speak Khuzdul yet, but she is very eager to learn about your people.”

“Hm!” Narvi said. “Well, if Mahal Himself has spoken with this Lady Galadriel, surely I should greet her too.”

“I’ll tell you about the time I met him, as we walk down to the camp,” Celebrimbor said. “I was too young to study with him myself, I fear. But I do remember meeting him.”

By the time Celebrimbor had been old enough to go away to study, none of the House of Fëanor had anything to do with any of the Valar any more.

But this merry young person, with her enquiring mind, elegantly curled beard and beautifully made axe, was nothing to do with that. She was entirely of Middle-earth, with no old shadows of guilt or grief or rebellion hanging around her. She did not remember war and destruction, only peace and joy and the art of making.

She had looked at the star of Fëanor that Celebrimbor wore on his shoulder, and had not even winced.

Outside in the wilds of Eriador, fair voices were raised in darkness, singing songs in praise of stars. Within the white walls of the tent under the clear blue light of Fëanorian lanterns, though, the day’s work had not yet ended.

“I think,” Celebrimbor said, pencil in hand, “that there should be a quay here beside the river, connected directly to the road from the gates.”

“But you’ve put the warehouses over here,” Narvi pointed out, her dark eyes narrowed in concentration as she looked at the plans spread on the table. “That means any goods you bring in by water would have to be carried right through the city.”

“Good point! That would make things very dusty, at least in the summer. Very well. The warehouses should move to here.” Celebrimbor said, bent forward over the table and scribbling. The table was more suited to her height than his, and he was kneeling on the floor. His long hair fell across the paper and he swept it back impatiently.

“That means I lose your archway again! No, I can move that as well. It can go to the east-gate, on the main route in from Khazad-dûm. But that means there’s a problem with the pipes again!”

“No, not at all!” Narvi told him. “Look, run the pipes along the inside of the archway.”

“Of course! That will put the water-tower in the right place as well, so we can still have the fountains in the main square. I thought I might be self-indulgent and make the fountain-heads myself. It’s been over a century since I last worked with bronze. So the pipes run this way...” The hair fell forward again as he drew corrections onto the plans.

Narvi looked at him in amusement, and then, on impulse, she moved behind him, gathered his shining hair together into a bunch, and began to twist it into a shape that could be pinned back.

He sat back on his heels and looked around at her over his shoulder, surprised.

“It seemed to be getting in the way,” she explained, twisting the long strands and feeling strangely flustered. His hair felt as silky in her hands as she had thought it might, and it smelled faintly of woodsmoke.

“It was. I must have dropped the clip somewhere,” he said. His ears had small delicate pointed tips, and now her face was nearer to them, she could see the shape clearly. The curved leaf-like shape might make a good pattern to use on the capital of a column, or perhaps it would be better on a door-handle, where you could feel the shape of it.

She should pin this silky hair in place and go back to the plans now.

Instead, she reached out a finger and ran it around the outside of his ear, oddly velvety to the touch, tracing the line up to that oddly-pointed tip. He made a small pleased noise and leaned his head back against her shoulder for a moment, eyes closed. Then he opened them again to look at her with grey eyes with that strange light in them, like lamplight on water running over dark slate. He reached back and ran his fingers down her beard.

“I wondered what it felt like,” he said.

“And what does it feel like?”

“Middle-earth,” he said. “It feels like life and death, like mountains. Growth and hope and change. Sun on stone.”

“Poet!” she said and laughed because surely a beard could not be all those many things at once. “Elves have so many words and most of them spoken lightly.”

She really should step away, but instead she was leaning against him, against his long lean back and there was hair like silk against her neck.

“I rarely speak lightly,” he said, and yet he was smiling. He ran one long finger down her face. “That’s what it feels like. Something new and unexpected and wonderful.”

Kneeling, he was of a height that she could kiss him, and so she did, a long lingering thoughtful kiss, for she had never kissed an elf before, and who knew how it might be different?

His mouth went slack with surprise for a moment and then he kissed her back with enthusiasm. It felt very good, but a little awkward, kissing like that, with his head half turned across his shoulder so after a moment she stopped and pulled on his shoulder. “Turn around so I can sit in your lap,” she suggested.

Celebrimbor blinked at her. “We don’t usually... I mean, I am not quite sure what customs...”

Narvi laughed at him. “Customs? Is there a need for customs? I am only kissing you, you ridiculous elf. Clearly you enjoyed it, so there is no need for complication or to produce a written plan! Given how long your legs are, a kiss is something of an engineering problem. But we’re good at those.”

He laughed too, looking rather awkward. “I suppose we are. But still, I don’t understand quite what... if one of the Eldar kissed me... like that and wanted to... sit on my lap and kiss me some more, that would be the kind of thing that is only done in marriage.”

He looked entirely serious, and so Narvi tried hard not to laugh.

“Well, among my people, talk of marriage would be running on far too swiftly,” she told him. “A kiss and a cuddle between dear friends does no harm, surely?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I can’t say it’s something I have tried. We don’t... that is to say, usually we don’t think of such matters in war-time.”

“But there hasn’t been a war in hundreds of years!” Narvi exclaimed. He looked so solemn and puzzled, she thought.

“Well, no. No, there has been peace for a good while now, I suppose. But then, I am so much older than you. It doesn’t seem so long to me.”

“Oh yes,” she said, and ran her fingers through his shining hair again, more thoughtfully. “You are very old, and very tall, and also you are very serious, by the standards of Elves, who usually are so frivolous! But you have never once kissed anyone for fun, you say, and for all the fine streets and the fountains and the stone buildings we are planning, you forget that we are not at war.”

“I didn’t forget, exactly,” he protested.

“I know what peace is, and I have kissed a number of people and I know just how to do it.” She had not kissed so very many people, not really, but if he had not, in all his long years... “Pretend you are one of us,” she said, making her mind up. “We can think about how the Eldar do things another time. Once you’ve had some practice.”

He was smiling again. He caught the end of her beard again and stroked it. “Without a beard, and even though I’m far too tall?”

“We can give it a try,” Narvi said, and stroked his ear again. He shivered and then smiled. “Very well,” he said, and shifted so that he was sitting on the floor, then a little tentatively, put an arm around her. She folded down onto his lap, feeling his long lean body warm against her own through his linen tunic and her leather coat, and reached up to kiss him again.

The sun was falling into the west under a sky that was a clear deep blue overhead, falling to shades of misty gold in the west, against which the slender arches and tall domes of the new city of Ost-in-Edhil stood outlined.

On the unfinished roof of the new building that was to be the House of the Jewelsmiths, Celebrimbor lay relaxed upon the golden stone, which still held a faint warmth from the afternoon sun, with his head resting in Narvi’s lap. The day’s work was over, and most of the other workers on the city had already gone to find food and rest, so it was quiet up there, high above the city. Looking out west, they could see the river Glanduin, winding away into the lowland fens, catch the golden light and shine.

Narvi had pulled the leather cord from Celebrimbor’s hair, and was running her fingers through its silken length. “I think we’ll have the roof finished by the winter,” she said.

“Mmmm,” Celebrimbor agreed. “Perhaps not all the stonework, but it will keep the rain out at least. And then next year...”

“Next year we can think about the workshops and the libraries.” Narvi agreed.

A speckled thrush flew up to the unfinished wall at the southern end of the building, flicked its tail and began to sing in a sweet, clear musical warble.

“Someone appreciates our work,” Narvi observed.

“I am pleased to hear it, though I admit, master thrush, I did not build it entirely for your convenience,” Celebrimbor told it, and smiled.

The thrush looked at them with bright dark eyes, and sang again. Celebrimbor looked up enquiringly at her. “I can’t make it out either,” Narvi admitted. “Probably something about snails.”

“We must plant more trees,” Celebrimbor said. “This city will need life in it, for the birds. And the snails!”

Narvi laughed. “Elves and their trees!”

After a while, the thrush finished singing and flicked away again, down into the city. The sun had set now, and a line of gold ran across the horizon, with a band of clear crystal green above it. High above them the sky was shading to a much deeper blue, and above the line of gold in the west, the first evening star was shining bright.

“Hail Eärendil, brightest of stars,” Celebrimbor said and raised a hand in greeting. “There, Narvi. You asked about my family, before. There is my cousin Eärendil.”

“Is this poetry, or some sort of Elvish joke?” she asked in amusement, twining shining hair between her fingers.

“Neither! He is my cousin. A rather distant cousin, I’ll admit. My great-uncle Fingolfin’s great-grandson.”

Narvi blinked down at him in surprise. “Your cousin is a star.”

“My cousin is a star. It’s not the easiest thing for his son.”

“Is his son a star too?” Narvi said, trying to come to grips with this idea, which seemed odd even by the usual standard of Elves.

“No. His son is the High King’s herald, Elrond. I have invited him to visit so you can meet him. You’ll like Elrond. Everyone does. It’s strange for him to have a father who he can see every night but never speak with, though. Or at least, Eärendil never replies, if he can hear us... I think he might be able to. I always greet him. He was a nice lad when I knew him, before he was a star. Everyone liked him, too.”

Narvi shook her braided head in astonishment, laughing. “Your family is strange indeed. It makes me feel much happier about how I introduced you to my peculiar uncle Neri!”

“Your uncle Neri’s beard is long enough that I barely noticed he had no clothes on! You worry too much. Compared with my father and my uncles, Neri is an uncomplicated delight.”

“I take it that your father and your uncles don’t walk around wearing nothing but a beard then. So what is so complicated about them? Are they all stars too?”

Celebrimbor sighed, sat up, and ran his hands down his face. “Nothing so simple. I don’t know where to start... My father had six brothers. He and four of my uncles are dead, and they did not die well. The other two... I don’t know. They vanished. I don’t know where they went. I don’t know if they are still alive. We had argued, but I still miss them.”

“I’m sorry,” she said and then because he looked so sad, she gave him a swift hug. “We don’t have to talk of it tonight. You have introduced your cousin Eärendil to me, and I should greet him.” She got up and bowed politely to the star burning crystal bright in the deep blue sky. “Narvi of Khazad-dûm, at your service and your family’s,” she said.

Celebrimbor smiled again and put a long arm around her shoulder. “I like your uncle, and your aunt, and your parents and your cousins,” he said. “They have made me welcome. A little eccentricity is nothing, to that.”

And far above against the darkening sky, Eärendil looked down upon Middle-earth, at his cousin Celebrimbor, who had found a wife and was building a home with her in peace, and he smiled, too.

Narvi liked to sit in this high-ceilinged room, with its tall windows and delicate pattern of blue and green tiles, and look out over Ost-in-Edhil on the warm summer evenings. Looking out at the spires and domes, made, Celebrimbor had said, in the style of old Tirion, standing golden before her in the warm evening light.

Narvi held out a hand, and Celebrimbor carefully set a warm cup in it, holding it just a little longer than he would have, once. Long enough to be sure that her old hands had managed to grasp it properly. The ring that he had made for her long ago would no longer slip over her knuckle, but that was all right. She was not planning to take it off.

“Do you remember that first day, when you took me to meet Galadriel, and I said you were all Lanky Folk?” she asked him, wrapping both hands around the cup to warm them. Of course, he did remember. Elves remembered everything. It could be very annoying at times, to be married to someone who could remember exactly what you had said a hundred years ago last Tuesday.

But there were compensations. He was sitting next to her upon the floor, lounging long and elegant upon a soft velvet cushion, with his strong slender hands wrapped around one knee, the way he did so that he would not loom over her seated in her chair. No stiff back or aching hands for him, drat him.

“Yes, I do,” he said. “I remember you sitting upon that lip of stone above the stream, looking down at me, so that I could admire your lovely legs. Then you talked of stonework and showed me that perfectly balanced axe, and I knew I’d met the woman of my dreams.”

She chuckled. “Liar. Never trust the words of Elves!”

“Well, perhaps it took me a little longer to admit it to myself,” he said and laughed. “I thought then I was too old to be thinking of taking a wife! But I was only waiting for the right person.”

“The right person, fleeting as a mayfly,” she said, testing.

His wide grey eyes looked more hurt than she expected, and she felt guilty. “Don’t.” he said. “I can’t help it any more than you can. You know I don’t think it’s any less important because it has to end.”

“Hm,” she said, and made her mind up at last. She had been a long time thinking it over, and now she thought about it, perhaps that had been a little cruel. But it was a hard thing to share, even with one so long-beloved.

“I’m thinking that — “ she said, and hesitated. Then she reached out, decisively, took his hand and wove her wrinkled, knobbled fingers through his smooth ones.

“What’s the matter?”

“There is a thing that can be done,” she said slowly. “But you must never speak of this to anyone, you understand? No-one at all must know. Will you promise, if I tell you, not to speak of it?”

“Speak of what?”

“Promise first,” she insisted. “Give me your word.”

“Very well, I promise,” he said seriously. “What is this about?”

“You know that when Mahal made my people, he made our bodies first, and then the One gave us life,” she said, feeling her way. This was not a thing that you told people about. It was a thing that those who were supposed to know, knew.

“Yes,” he said, looking at her, his dear fine-featured face puzzled. “I’ve heard the story.”

“So... this is a way in which we are not like the other children of the One. Our bodies were made first, and our spirits fitted to them. And that means... that means that we can, in time, make ourselves new bodies, in the way that Mahal taught us, and move our spirit into them.”

He blinked at her. “What?”

“We shape them from the rock of the mountain-root,” she said, relieved that the most difficult part was out of the way. She had said it, and the sky had not fallen and the ground was still firm beneath her feet. “And then we move into them. Leave the old body behind, and take our life to the new body.”

He was staring at her in astounded silence.

“Not everyone chooses it,” she said. “Some people choose to go to Mahal instead. Well, most people do, eventually. We aren’t made like Elves, to dance tireless down the endless years. And moving body is not easy, and it’s not quick, and it’s supposed to be... well, not always very pleasant. I don’t know about that, I’ve never done it. But I was thinking that I might choose that way this time.”

“Another lifetime?” Celebrimbor said and his voice was full of incredulous hope. And then with sudden caution “It’s the same sort of life?”

“Yes. Once it is done, the old body goes back to the rock, and the new one lives. But you see why you must tell nobody about this?”

Celebrimbor blinked. “Not really,” he said. “I understand it is a great secret, and I’ll honour that, of course...”

“No, it’s more than that,” she said. “There was a time when it was not a secret. I’m telling you something here from the most private lore of all our people...”

He squeezed her hand gently, and emboldened, she went on. “It was very very long ago.” She looked at his fair serious face and laughed at herself. “Perhaps not so very long ago, for you who can remember the first sunrise. But for us, it is the long past, time beyond memory for almost all of us. When we first met Men, when we taught them to make tools, when we showed them our language and they said it was too difficult, we told them freely what we could do. And they tried to take it from us. Our people were killed, people who had no second body waiting for them, people who had not yet made a choice to go to Mahal. And the Men, too, of course. They all died, and it was foolish, for they are not made like us: there was no secret that they could use... But they didn’t understand that. They believed it was something that could be stolen.”

“I see,” Celebrimbor said, thoughtfully. “So you keep it secret, lest more Men come to try to take it. You know, they aren’t all like that. I told you about my cousin Elros.”

“He chose the path of Men, yes, you told me all about it when Elrond came to visit. My memory isn’t quite that terrible! But enough of them are that we cannot have this known. They are eager enough for our gold and gems, without the prospect of a treasure that they prize far more highly. And so we keep it secret, where it cannot provoke a fight. We have no desire to slay Men for no good reason. So, I have told you this, which nobody who is not one of us has been told in all the long years since. Because you are a friend of our people, and I love you, and you, above all, should know. But you can tell no-one.”

Celebrimbor nodded. “I will say nothing of it. “Then he frowned. “But Eregion is full of Elves that know you,” he said. “They will surely notice if you are young again, and if you wish me to say nothing of it there may be speculation.”

Narvi smiled at him. “Nobody has noticed that we always have the same king,” she pointed out. “I shall go away, and then in a little while, a few years, I shall come back, and you will have another wife. Narvi the second, so like the first that few can tell the difference.”

“I think there might still be some comment... A few years?”

“I did say it wasn’t quick. A few years is nothing to you though surely: how old are you? A thousand years? More?”

“I haven’t been keeping count,” Celebrimbor said impatiently. “Anyway, it’s hard to work it out for the years before the Sun. But that’s not important. What’s important is that if I have only so much time with you, I don’t want to miss any of it. Can I not come with you?”

Narvi squeezed his hand. “No. You’re too tall for the places where I must go, and anyway, you’re needed here. I’ll go tomorrow. Be patient, my love.”

 * * * * *

Five years passed. It was a black winter, bitterly cold, with heavy grey clouds hanging low across Ost-in-Edhil, and snow on the ground. Celebrimbor was working, of course. He was always working now. It was a way to distract himself from old griefs and new ones, to throw himself into his work until everything else went away.

Just now he was making a fine silver coronet, worked with leaf-patterns, and set with gems the colour of the sunset, and when the door to the workshop swung open, he barely looked up.

“Not much of a welcome!” she said, and he started, eyes widening, and dropped a gem, which rolled across the floor and under a table. “No fire burning in the heart of winter, and no greeting at all from my dear husband!”

And there she was, muffled in a great thick cloak with snowflakes caught upon the hood, her eyes bright, her beard curled, and her dear face as unlined as it had been long ago when first he had seen it.

He threw himself to his knees, flung his arms around her, and kissed her.