Elendili by hadastheunseelie

---

Part One: Nick

---

They meet on the path along the stream.

                Nick is walking in the mostly-dark, listening to the stream, and watching the reflections of the lamplight from across the park on the path, avoiding where it shines, reflected by the spray. His hair is covered in golden glitter, enough that if he were to go out into the light, he thinks he would shine like something out of a storybook.  

                There’s another person there, on the path. They’re staring at the small stream, willing it to do something other than gurgle in its concrete channel. The person doesn’t look up as he approaches, doesn’t even glance at Nick, like he’s just a part of the scenery. Nick watches them as he walks, and he slips on the water, disturbing its reflection of the lamplight, and the stranger looks up. Nick almost falls, but the stranger grabs his arm. He is hauled up, and when he sees the stranger’s face it looks utterly terrified. At least for a second.

                Nick doesn’t say anything. The stranger doesn’t say anything either. The stranger’s right hand is still on his arm.

                “Thanks,” he says, and uses his free hand to push back his hair from where it had fallen in his eyes. When it comes away, it is covered in glitter.

                “No problem.” The stranger moves back, taking his hand off Nick’s arm, but Nick stays frozen, the stranger’s gaze pinning him down. He forces himself to look into the stranger’s gaze, like a deer looking into a car’s headlights, he thinks.

                The stranger’s eyes are gold.

                He takes a step back, and the spell is broken. He bends down to get his sketchbook, that he dropped when he fell, but the stranger picks it up for him.

                “Here.”

                Nick doesn’t move, and the stranger steps into the dim light and hands it back to him, pressing the heavy leather into his hands. Nick stands there, staring.

                The stranger is gorgeous. His hair is pulled back, waves and waves of deep red, not like fire, Nick thinks, more like rubies, cascading down his back. His face is pale, and his eyelashes are so very dark against his perfect complexion, and his eyes are very, very gold.

                “I-” Nick says, “Thank you.”

                “No problem,” the stranger says again, and Nick is struck by the burr in his voice, which just trips over the r, like he’s used to speaking English, but for a long time before that he wasn’t. He moves back out of the light quickly, and Nick is watching the way he moves, every tendon of every muscle measured to provide him with this catlike grace.

                The stranger stares back at him, and Nick looks down, ashamed for the way he was looking, like the person in front of him was a collection of jewels that he was appraising, and he thinks that the stranger will probably be gone when he looks up, back to staring at the stream. But he’s not, and Nick notices that the stranger is staring at him with something that Nick can’t quite make out, that’s hiding behind the eyes.

                He looks down at the sketchbook in his hands, and notices the water nearly soaked through it, and almost sighs. But he doesn’t, because he can tell that the stranger is still watching him, and he knows he’s not supposed to break the silence. He frowns though, and when he looks up the stranger is back to watching the stream, and he goes carefully by. And when he gets back to the grey square that passes for a dorm room, he puts the sketchbook on the small table whose third leg has already come off twice, and he falls onto his bed, barely remembering to kick off his shoes before he snuggles under the covers.

 

                Two days later, he has a biology paper due in the morning, and he’s already got three empty mugs lined up next to him, with his notes spread out to the left.

                The place is nearly empty, only one or two people scattered in the corners of the almost-coffee-shop, and he’s rubbing his eyes, trying to remember the difference between integral proteins and peripheral ones when the door opens, and the bell jingles, the sound hanging in the air long after the door has been closed.

Someone puts something down on the table in front of him, and turns to leave, and Nick looks up.

                The stranger senses his movement, and turns around, and without Nick having to say anything, sits down across from him, staring at him with golden eyes.

                The girl from the counter walks over, and with a tired glance looks at the stranger, waiting for him to order.

                “Chamomile tea,” he says, and she nods. Nick looks back down at the empty cups and his notes, before his gaze drifts to the object that the stranger put down on the table. It’s a new sketchbook. He looks up at the stranger, whose face is impassive, a statue made out of marble.

                The waitress comes back with the tea, and sets it down on the table. The stranger waits until she’s gone and pushes it towards Nick, he grabs the empty cups, and gets up. He comes back a few moments later, without the cups, and sits down again, watching Nick.

                “Drink,” he says.

                Nick looks at him, and towards the sketchbook, and then at the tea.

                “I have to finish this paper,” he says.

                They look at each other, and the stranger refuses to move. Nick sighs, and takes the tea. He looks back at his notes, and his laptop, and types out a few more words, the stranger still sitting across from him. Nick takes another sip of the tea, and writes a few more sentences, and the stranger is still there.

                Nick looks up, and the stranger’s face is still impassive, but he’s looking at the notes. Or no- Nick thinks, he’s looking at how the notes are spread out. The stranger says nothing, and Nick goes back to writing.

                They continue that way until he’s done, the tea almost gone, and the paper lacking only a few commas. He saves, and closes the laptop, gathering his notes together. The stranger is staring at him now, and Nick stares back.

                “Thank you,” he says, “For the tea- I mean.”

                The stranger nods.

                “And for the sketchbook- but I really can’t- mine is-“

                The stranger has a bemused look in his eye, and it almost looks as if he’s about to smile. “Keep it,” he says, “I have no use for it.”

                Nick slips the notes and his laptop into his bag, and then, hesitantly, he takes the sketchbook. The stranger has stood up, and Nick notices how very tall he is, and there’s a moment when he thinks the stranger knows what he’s thinking, because the stranger is looking at him, and a bit of amusement slips out from behind his mask and Nick almost fumbles with the clips.

                The stranger grabs the empty mug of tea, and puts it in the bin with the other dishes, and when he comes back, Nick is standing up, and he thinks that its funny, really, how he was waiting, but he doesn’t say it.

                They walk out the door together, and he’s hit by the cold, and he very nearly shivers, but he doesn’t, and he looks at the stranger, and the stranger is staring up at the stars the same way he was staring at the stream, and this time Nick knows that he’s waiting for something, but he doesn’t know what. Nick begins to walk away, but the stranger catches up with him.

                “I’ll walk you back,” he says, and then, with a hint of a smile, “We wouldn’t want you falling again.”

                Nick snorts, and then feels a little embarrassed, because honestly, he feels like he’s not supposed to do anything like that around the stranger. But he looks up, and the stranger doesn’t seem to mind, and the two of the walk in silence along the stream.

                They walk out of the park, and it’s only a few more steps until they’re in the full light of the electric lights of the dorms, and Nick turns to the stranger, and the stranger stops.

                “Thank you,” Nick says, “For walking me back, and the sketchbook, and-” he feels like he’s supposed to say something more but he doesn’t know what exactly, and the stranger leans down and kisses him. Nick is frozen for a moment, like before, but this time he knows how to respond, and they stay like that, until Nick pulls away, breathing heavily. The stranger turns away, and is about to go back into the shadow of the first tree when Nick asks him what his name is.

The stranger turns around, and Nick thinks he caught a glance of something sad in his eyes, something like what you would expect to see when you go back to your old house, but someone has torn out the hydrangeas and painted the walls yellow, but Nick blinks, and it’s gone, and the stranger’s face is impassive.

“Aidan,” he says, “You can call me Aidan.” And Aidan turns away and walks into the almost-shadows of the park.

And as Nick changes into his pajamas and climbs into bed he finds himself thinking that for someone whose cheekbones are so very fine and whose jawline is so very sharp, Aidan really has remarkably soft lips.

 

Three days later, and he’s back in the same coffee shop. It’s Saturday night, and Aidan is sitting across from him. There are no coffee cups lined up in front of him, or notes, and his laptop is in his bag. He’s messing with the handle on his mug, running his thumb over the dent in the glossy finish. They’re not in the corner, but they’re off to the side, and the lamps on the walls are dim, their light pooling and swirling like liquid gold on the tables.

Nick looks up at Aidan, who is staring back at him. Nick smiles, feeling awkward, and he absentmindedly pushes some of his hair back, and there’s definitely something like amusement dancing across Aidan’s half-lit features.

“What do you do?” He prompts, dropping his gaze back down to his mug.

“I work at the animal shelter,” Aidan says, after a slight pause.

“You like animals?” Nick looks up again.

Aidan snorts softly, and he looks up at Nick. Nick watches him drop his gaze, and thinks he saw a momentary flash of regret there.

“More than people.” Aidan runs his finger through the pool of light on the table. Nick watches the lamplight swim across his face.

The bell at the door rings, and a large group of girls trails in, one after the other. They’re young, maybe early high school, and most of them are chatting and laughing. Neither Aidan nor Nick speaks, and Nick doesn’t know why he does it, but he reaches out and touches Aidan’s hand, the one that’s not playing with the light on the table.

Aidan looks up, like he forgot that his right hand existed, and Nick isn’t entirely sure, but he thinks that he did the right thing, even if Aidan looks even sadder now.

The girls are ordering now, laughing and giggling as they pay. Some are already eating their food, teasing each other about letting ice cream melt. Aidan and Nick sit there, and Aidan intertwines his fingers carefully with Nick’s, as if afraid that Nick might break.

One of the girls forgets to pay, and there’s a great amount of shouting, but some are already drifting to different parts of the café, choosing tables and chairs, trusting that their groups will follow.

The rest of the girls drift over to their respective seats. There’s a few a couple feet away from Aidan and Nick’s booth, spread out across two tables. One of them is laughing, beginning to tell a story.

There are several questions that Nick wants to ask, but he settles for a “Where are you from?”

Aidan blinks, slowly, and answers, “Far away from here. There was a war, and some of us were victorious and some of us were not, but in the end we all lost, and we cannot go back.” He blinks again. “Where are you from?”

“Minnesota.” Nick glances down for a moment, “There were a lot of cows.”

When he looks up, Aidan is smiling, and he feels a bit stupid for being ashamed of where he’s from. Nick interlaces their fingers a bit tighter, and for the first time notices the girl.

She’s sitting with the group close to them, leaning back in her chair, taking up most of the background of the group, and Nick wonders why he didn’t notice her before when she was so obviously there. Her posture is relaxed, so carefully very carefully so that Nick thinks it might be engineered by a robot. Her hair is tied back in a very long braid, twisted up and away from her face. She’s watching the conversation, smiling when the others laugh, listening to the others talk, but every so often, for a few seconds, she’s not looking at them. She scans the room, and for less than a second her gaze rests on the two of them, and Nick knows she has seen them, that she is watching them. She is tracing a word out on the varnish of the table with her fingertip, it swirls, angular and fevered, and Nick thinks it must be either a prayer or a curse.

Aidan has noticed the girl too, and Nick watches their eyes meet. It is brief, a sliver of a moment, but there is a look passed between them, and Nick can barely catch a glance of the emotions hiding behind both of their eyes before the moment has passed and Aidan has stood up, everything hidden behind his marble mask. The girl has hidden herself as well, but Nick thinks that she has less of a mask and more of a clouded glass.

Aidan clings tight to Nick’s arm as they pass the girl, his movements no less careful, only more desperate. The door is pulled open with a jingle, and they walk out the door. Nick shivers, and Aidan pulls him closer, offering his cream-colored scarf.

“Sorry,” Aidan says, after they’re a few blocks away. He doesn’t offer any explanation. Nick does not ask.

Nick nods, and pulls himself a bit closer to Aidan.

The night is clouded over, and it smells damp. The streetlamps are dim, in the weak, electric kind of way. The kind that makes all lines harsher, everything harder in its light. The roads aren’t silent, not entirely, but cars are rare, people more so.

The two walk for a while, and both know that they’re not really heading anywhere, and know that the other knows it, but Nick is alright with that, because he’s breathing in the cold air, and he’s holding Aidan’s hand, and they walk off to the sides of the streetlamps, in the shadows.

They’re on the edge of campus, walking along the low old stone wall that divides the sidewalk and the grassy lawns of the campus. Oak trees stretch up above them, towering over the pair. Their limbs stretch up into the night, almost touching the clouds, and Nick wonders how old they are. He looks over at Aidan, and thinks that he looks as old as the trees, and then nearly laughs, because Aidan is so obviously not.

He notices Nick’s expression, and kisses him, and there’s no way to describe it. And it’s so, so much better than his memory, but Aidan pulls away, and they walk for a little longer, until the sidewalk curves onto the campus and they’re at the dorms. Nick is acutely aware that he doesn’t have a roommate, and Aidan seems to understand his invitation without Nick uttering a word, and they walk in together, and the door closes with a thunk.

They fall into his bed together, and fall asleep in the same way, Nick lying across Aidan’s chest, Aidan with his arm wrapped around Nick.

 

Tuesday afternoon, and he’s leaving his last class of the day, a seminar by a professor in mid-fifties who has thick glasses and eyes alternately watery and electric blue that seem to fade into the whites of his eyes. He’s sharp, or that’s what Nick thinks when he sees him, sharp, and with a quiet way of talking that makes it seem like every word is carefully evaluated to have the exact meaning he means it to.

The late afternoon sun is filtering through the windows, and he’s adjusting the strap on his bag when he sees a flash of dark gold hair, and there’s a hand around his wrist, almost dragging him into a side corridor.

It’s the girl, and she’s staring straight at him, hair pulled back in what resembles a coronet.

He’s backed into an alcove, with a window behind him, and she’s staring at him with dark-rimmed hazel eyes. The sun seems to be going right through her, like sunlight through amber, and it feels wrong. She is so very fiery, so very there, that it seems impossible that she’s about to break. But when he looks at her, he sees it, how the power she is holding has hollowed her out. She’s like a glass bottle, he thinks, glass holding fire too hot for it to stand.

“The elendili,” she says, “Do you know what they are?”

He says nothing, doesn’t even move, but he can see that she knows that he does not know.

She steps back, closes her eyes, and then opens them, looking down. She is very tired, Nick thinks, and very old. And then he can see why he thought Aidan and the girl were similar, because they both feel that way, old, and tired, only with Aidan there is something else balancing out all the rest.

“He’s going to destroy you, you know.” Her voice is quiet now, but it doesn’t quaver.

Nick shakes his head.

“I know you don’t think he will,” she says, and looks back up at him, pinning him with her gaze, “But he will. It’s how he’s made.”

Nick wants to say something, something that will quench the fire that his burning her out, something that will convince her that Aidan will not destroy him, something that will let him know why the girl is so tired, and why she is so very sure of what she says.

He says nothing.

“Do me a favor. Don’t-” she pauses, “Don’t give everything away to him. Keep something apart, something safe.”

She should be crying, Nick thinks, only whatever happened to her to make her like this stole all her tears, and all she can do now is look at him with tired eyes.

He nods, and she doesn’t relax, and she seems closer to crying, but she turns around and leaves. Nick doesn’t think about calling after her, asking her what she’s doing on campus, or what her name is, or why she seems to care, not until it’s too late.

He adjusts the strap on his bag again, and pulls out his phone. He is about to type Aidan’s number in, when he realizes he doesn’t have it, and he puts his phone back. He doesn’t see anyone as he leaves the building.

In the late afternoon light, under the leaves of the trees, yellow, but not orange, not red, not yet, he sees the professor and the girl walking together, and he thinks that even though she moves and breathes and hurts the same as Aidan, there might have once been something in her eye and words like the professors’.

 

It is another week before he sees Aidan again, and this time he meets him in the park again.

It is dark, and he is walking home from the art studio at what would be an unreasonable hour if he were ten years older, but he’s still in college, so even if he’s not partying he is up past midnight. Nick is on the concrete path, watching for water, when he feels Aidan take his hand, and he looks up.

Aidan wastes no time kissing him, devouring his lips, pressing him up against a tree like Nick has been gone for thousands of years, and Aidan has been missing him all that time. Nick manages to pull away just long enough to mutter a half-joking “What has gotten into you?” but it is only for a few moments.

As they kiss, and stumble their way to Nick’s room, and Nick is pinned up against a wall, he thinks of the girl, and her warning. Then he looks at Aidan, red-haired, fair-skinned and absolutely gorgeous, and he knows he should forget everything, and he nearly does, but he thinks of the way she looked like a glass bottle, and he does not forget.

 

He waits for the girl after class, leaning on one of the columns of brick by the door.

She is next to him before he notices, standing in the shadow of the column.

The girl shoves a piece of paper with an address and time scribbled on it, and leaves, quick as she came.

Nick peers into the classroom, and sees her sitting on one of the tables, watching the professor and a girl with blue hair talk. Her posture is perfect. He restrains the urge to shiver at her face, staring off into the distance, a perfect mask of serenity.

The girl with the blue hair leaves, and he mutters an apology when she bumps into him on the way out.

The professor turns to the girl, and in the instant before he does he watches her slump carefully, and turn her face to one of boredom so real he never would have guessed that it was calculated. She does not become more real, only less clear, but the professor does not notice any of it.

He stops watching, and leaves the building. The leaves have not turned red yet, or orange, but the yellow is almost ghostly against the sky.

 

There’s a small bookstore on Fourth Street a couple stores down from Marissa’s, the pseudo-coffee shop. It’s right next to Chinese place, full to the bursting with students tired of ramen on Saturday nights. He’s noticed the place before, a place with a brown awning and a bright red door with bubbled glass. He looks at the small shelf of bargain bookshelf books out front. They all have worn covers, and faded titles that were once bright gold.

The shop is almost empty as he pushes the door open. The woman at the checkout looks up at him as the bell jingles cheerfully, and back down again, more absorbed in whatever is on the screen in front of her than anything else.

The bell jingles again, and the girl enters. She looked at him, and tilts her head, telling him to follow her. Neither of them speak. The store is quiet, the peaceful kind of quiet you only get when everyone is trying to be silent, and the loudest noise is the crinkle of a page as it turns, or the sound of book being taken off the shelf.

The girl leads him to the back, behind a bookcase, and then up a spiral staircase so well hidden that he never would have realized that it was there. She pushes a large window open at the landing, and climbs out. He follows her.

They are standing on a small balcony overlooking a courtyard made of brown stones, with green plants growing every which way. There is purple, and pink, and even blue.

“Siberian Irises,” the girl points out, “And catmint. They don’t die in winter.”

He nods. “It’s beautiful.”

The girl smiles her bitter smile. “Yes, it is.” She looks as if she’s going to say something more, and then thinks the better of it.

“What happened to you?” He asks, and then realizes it sounds like she was in a car accident and her leg had to be hacked off. But it was, he thinks, in a funny sort of way, and doesn’t say anything else.

The girl thinks for a while, chewing on her lip, and Nick watches her.

“Sometimes,” she says slowly, “People are born different. Not in the downs syndrome way, or even the Albert Einstein way, but in something less human. And everyone born that way learns to hide it, or make it manifest differently, but it’s there. Like your art.” She looks at him.

He doesn’t say anything, and she continues.

“We get noticed by them.” She looks back at him. “Your boyfriend’s one.”

“He knew you,” Nick says.

She nods. “I’m too much like them now.” She pauses for a moment. “You asked what happened to me. That’s what happened. I’m fading.”

“I think I understand,” he says, and he almost does.

She sighs, and he thinks for a moment that her eyes look like the fires of a thousand suns all going out in a single moment with no one there to even remember their passing, and he looks away. But he looks back, and together with all that he sees a fourteen year old girl.

“No you don’t,” she says.

Nick looks back out at the garden. At the catmint, and Siberian Irises.

                “When you said keep a part of myself, what did you mean?”

                She keeps looking at the flowers. “When I met them, I gave everything I was away. Every word I had. Then they left. Your art, don’t give it up to him. Or else- or else you’ll become like me.”

                He doesn’t look at her, he can feel her beginning to crack, and a sudden notion takes hold of him that if he stays he will watch her shatter and there will be pieces of gold hair and green eyes all over the floor, and he almost retches. Nick backs away, and tries not to make it looks like he’s running away from her as he climbs back in the window and down the stairs, but he does run, once he’s made it out of the shop.

                He finds himself on a bench next to the stream where he and Aidan met, and he can barely bear to look at the water. He can’t look at anything, not the trunks of the trees, or the grass, or the concrete, and closing his eyes just brings to mind the image of the shattered girl, and he almost retches again.

                Nick takes his sketchbook out from his bag, and he is sketching something. Something that is not the girl, cracked, shattered, or broken, and it is not Aidan either, but it is in a forest, or a copse of trees, and the leaves of those trees are orange, and the light is fading. It is a shadow of a person, or a person, or maybe a tree, but he cannot decide or tell.

                Aidan’s hands are cold against his back before he hears the approach, and out of paranoia, or fear, or maybe it’s a warning voice that the girl convinced him to listen to, he slams the sketchbook shut. Aidan sits down on the bench beside him, and looks at him questioningly.

Nick does not answer, but instead shifts away from him. “How do you do that?” His voice is thin against the cold air.

Aidan inclines his head. “Do what?”

“You’re here. I was scared and you were here.” He doesn’t look Aidan in the eyes. “How did you know?”

He takes a deep breath, and looks up. Aidan is judging him, watching him. “You talked with her, didn’t you?”

Nick straightens his back and nods, trying not to feel like he is an insect in front of a hawk who has not decided yet what to do with the curious bug it has found.

Aidan is still staring at him. “I do not know what she told you, I only know what I see, and I see that you fear me. I cannot-”

 Nick looks at him, and under the mask he sees that Aidan is very, very afraid, and it strikes him that he is the reason Aidan is afraid.

“I’m sorry.” He moves to hug Aidan, as carefully and caringly and possible, and Aidan melts into the hug. “I was wrong.”

When he pulls back, Aidan does not let go of his hand.

“Can I sketch you?” Nicks asks.

Aidan nods, and Nick takes out his sketchbook. He flips through his other drawings, and notices Aidan looking at them with interest. Nick leans down to get a pencil, and when he comes up Aidan kisses him like Nick had almost died. Nick smiles into the kiss, and pulls away, and begins to sketch Aidan.

Aidan is so beautiful, he thinks, through sketching him, and the night, and the next morning, and all the days afterward.