To Waves by hadastheunseelie

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To Waves

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It is a month after the wedding and a year after Aragorn has been crowned king that Elrohir finds his brother in Osgiliath watching the Anduin swirl blue, and white, and green, and black.

The city around him is being rebuilt. Sharp-cut white stone is being hauled from the mountains to fix the bridges. Up the river there is a market sprung into being, full of craftsmen. Around Elladan, in between the cracked stones, grass has begun to grow, and tiny white flowers are blooming.

Elladan is not looking at any of them.

When Elrohir approaches Elladan he finally turns, and though for three thousand years they have dreaded this choice it does not make the beginnings of the pain any worse.

Elrohir speaks first. "I will not attempt to dissuade you from your choice."

Elladan nods, and it seems for the moment that is all there is to be said, but he speaks before the ripples in the river have twisted again.

"My brother-" he pauses, "I will see you again before the end."

Elrohir nods, for that is all that can be put into words, and they clasp hands.

Elladan untwines a silver charm from his hair, and presses it into Elrohir's hand. In return, Elrohir unbuckles his dagger, and gives it to his brother.

They watch each other's faces, both attempting to memorize the particular way the other's forehead creases above the eyebrow, or the scar just under the jawbone from an ill-fated sparring match. When the twins walk away from each other they each feel as if their chests are being torn in two. Elrohir takes the pain, and holds it close as he rides back to Minas Tirith.

 

Three hundred years pass, and his sister's face becomes wrinkled and gray, and is finally encased in white stone. She is laid next to Elessar, and the two of them lie immortal under the marble arches. Elrohir watches their legacy rise, and rise, and rise. Somewhere along the line of dark haired, grey eyed, and noble browed heirs they begin to die quicker, and their eyes become dull.

An age later Gondor falls, and the Valar are called for surely, surely it must be Morgoth or Sauron come from the void. But Eonwë comes, and there is no dark lord. There is only a long line of kings that have turned the lands black and barren, and laid waste to all Middle-Earth.

Eonwë brings Ulmo, and when the Vala is finished Elrohir sees a glassy expanse of water where the Anduin once was.

He sings then, a song of loss that his father sang when his mother passed away to Valinor. He sings, and it is a song he will never sing again.

He goes to the coast.

The world is broken now, Eriador has become an island, and the grey havens are on a smaller one beyond it. When he reaches the place where Mithlond should be there is only a single worn white stone left on a black, rocky beach. The ocean stretches to the west, endlessly grey, icy, and unyielding.

 

For an age he wanders on the coast, and watches the waters change. Blue to green, green to grey, grey to black. The new seas rise and fall, and the civilizations follow. There are libraries made, and spires and statues made of white stone. Orchards stretch for miles, and milk and honey flows in abundance. After a century the orchards are overgrown, the spires and statues are weathered, and the libraries have burned into charcoal.

Still no ships come from the west.

Until they do.

But the ship that comes is made of brown wood, and shaped like a tub. He sits in the harbor, on the edge of a dock so long abandoned that the rotting wood has gone black and is falling, sliding into the sea. He sits on the very edge of it, and watches the sun that is not the sun he knew cross the sky.

When he goes into a bar that night he hears that the sailors have found a new land, a land with oceans the color of bright blue glass, and treacherous waters, and islands where the sun is ever shining. For a moment he begins to make the plans of a ship, and starts calculating the expenses. Then he sobers, and pulls himself out into the air that is not quite stinging, and wanders the streets searching for a place to sleep.

 

He is in Berlin after the eighth "War to End All Wars." The bridges are broken, and the water is so very still and green. He stands, and stares, and does not move. No one pays him any mind.

It is only when a man with green eyes yellow star emblazoned on his chest comes up behind him does he remember anything but the river.

"Sir," the man says, "Are you alright?"

And Elrohir knows the correct words back, but he does not know if he means them, because who is he to know what is alright?

The man understands his silence as a no, and leads Elrohir back to a winding street in a neighborhood. Elrohir, to his own surprise, does not resist.

The house is tiny, shoved in a back alley between an apartment building, and a grey-streaked house.

There is a woman in the kitchen when they enter. She is cast in warm light, her hair is long and dark, and she has the same eyes as the man.

She smiles at the two of them as they come in, and pulls up a chair to the tiny table on the side of the room. The woman pours them both bowls of watery soup. Almost automatically, Elrohir begins to eat. After he has finished the soup the woman takes him aside, combs his hair, and chatters to him mindlessly. That night he sleeps on a bed, and his dreams are not of the sea.

He wakes to dingy morning light. The woman is still there. She greets him, and asks him how he is, and when he does not say anything back she smiles, and gives a half nod to acknowledge his decision.

He helps her peel potatoes that day, and when the man (who he learns is named Joseph) arrives home that night and throws a newspaper on the table, and begins to yell, he watches as the woman rises, and talks to him in a low, quiet, voice, in a language that is not German.

"Yosi, we will be fine. We have weathered this before."

"Yes! Did Noma-leh weather it? We will be her this time."

"And? What is the other option? The neighbors will hear your yelling and decide to solve our problems for us? The world is unfair, Yosi, we know this. Hashem will help us."

"In truth? Do you believe this?" Joseph is quieter now, but his eyes are bright, burning, "Did Hashem help those in Russia? Are they not being killed as we speak?"

It seems to be a well-rehearsed argument to Elrohir.

As Or turns from Joseph he watches the resemblance in the set of their mouths, and the arch of their shoulders, and notice the way they both stomp more with their foot when Or stalks out of the room and Yosi stamps over to the falling apart armchair in the corner.

"They have torn our land from us," Joseph mutters to him from the corner, "they have stolen our books, our temples, our rights. They will take all we have, and then more."

Elrohir watches him, and then carefully, slowly, using a voice not used in years, and a language barely known, "Do you have no refuge?"

Joseph jumps, looks up at him, and swears.

"Ai, I did not expect you to speak like that." Joseph shakes his head to clear it. "Look around," he says, gesturing at the room. "We have no money to get to a haven. We are strangers in a familiar land. We are outsiders here, and there, in Israel? We would still be outsiders. At least here we have a home. And we cannot even get there! Only the rich have the money and time to apply for land."

Elrohir nods, even though he does not understand, and Joseph sighs.

He stays for months, paying his keep in slight ways. He fixes what he can, he helps Or, and sometimes when he feels that it is not enough he goes out and comes back days later with stacks of bills. Joseph and Or never ask him where they come from, and he never tells them.

That November Elrohir comes home and sees the house burning. He roots through the remains, tearing at the coals that burn red until he finds Joseph and Or’s bodies burning with heat, and crushed by the rubble.

Above the burnt house, on the back of the building behind it is scrawled "Jüden" in big black letters.

Elrohir leaves.

 

The ship to America is a hulking metal monster, and of all the ways he has thought to go west this was never one of them. It creaks and groans beneath his feet, but the creaks and groans are not the noises of a ship singing in the wind, they are the noises of a ship that spews smoke from its innards, turning the sky behind them black.

The waves are grey, and the ship is an oily, shiny grey, and the people are grey, and wrinkled.

When he finally leaves the grey building on the shore he is a citizen of the United States, and this seems somehow significant to him, so he stays and explores the city. On the streets he finds a dog with electric blue eyes that follow him. He kneels down, and says hello to it in a language that rolls off his tongue like it has not been thousands of years since he has spoken it. The dog barks "Hello" back, and follows behind him as he walks the streets of the city.

When he remembers it must have a name, he gives it the appellation "Dog," for that is what it is, and nothing else.

He and Dog leave New York, and follow each other up to Maine. They walk at night, under the stars, and Elrohir listens to the trees, and spins stories that fall out of his mouth like they have been waiting to be told.

Dog walks with him, and together they slip in and out of the waking world of others.

It is different here in America, quieter. The history is that of the birds, not the trees, and the river's only stories are of the bears, and the moss.

He sleeps in beds of ferns with Dog circled up beside him. He drinks untouched spring water clear as glass, and gives it to Dog when the banks are too slippery. When he reaches the far north of the United States the two stop. And they live.

 

Until the two of them don’t.

He buries Dog underneath the green of the moss. He builds Dog a cairn of white stones, and all around it scatters the seeds of purple wildflowers.

He says goodbye. Then he finds a train.

The world speeds by next to him, a yellow-greenish blur with a yellow-bluish blur above. America is made of cornfields, he finds. Miles and miles of them that stretch from the girls who are wearing teal and magenta in a cheap jewelry store to the old man that he buys a croissant for just outside of Colorado.

The Rocky Mountains are big, and young. He is safe inside his tunnel under the rock, inside the metal box that is warm and full of light, and laughter, and stressed people who are full of too much coffee and too little sleep.

People, he decides, have nearly perfected the art of making up for lost sleep with every substitute known to man. In Virginia he wanders into a Starbucks, and watches the exhausted people que for the caffeinated drinks. On a whim he orders the strawberry frappuccino and finds it to be to be the worst thing he has ever tasted. In Denver he finds them to be the greatest discovery of the 21st century.

When he gets to Los Angeles ("The Angels". He decides he likes the name, though he has never given much thought to angels before) he finds the city a disappointment. It is warm, and sunny, and full of people, but the ocean is far, and the docks are crowded, and hot. He heads north, steps off the train in Portland, and spends only two weeks there before moving on.

He wanders his way to the sea, without even meaning to do it.

The beaches are cold, and grey, filled with rocks that fill in turn with water when the tide comes in. Elrohir breathes in the salty air, tastes the wind on his breath, and walks among the waves.

In this land of grey there is little distinction between dawn and midday, but both come, one after the other in turn, passing over his head eight times.

On the ninth dawn he sees a girl standing in the distance watching him. The wind whips at her dark, tightly wound curls, her brown cheeks are tinted pink from the cold, but her grey eyes are piercing, looking at him the way he used to imagine Uinen would.

“Hello,” she says, but she is not using English, and yet there is no way she should know the language that she is speaking, for when Elrohir looks at the tips of her ears they are rounded.

“The dawn rises,” he remarks, in return.

“Aye,” she says, “And the day with it.” With that she turns and walks, slowly enough that it is clear she expects him to follow.

He catches up alongside her, and the sky clears for the first time.

The rocks covered in water and salt shine, the ocean glitters, and seagulls fly above them.

Elrohir stands for a moment, and watches all of it. He sees the shore, and his footprints leading back into the distance where the ocean already washes them away.

And he begins to sing.

It is a clear and high song, and he knows it is for the sun, but he has forgotten all but the melody.

The girl closes her eyes, and tilts her head up to the rising sun as he sings. When he has finished his song, she begins one of her own. One that twists and turns between languages stealing phrases, and words. In the end he understands most of it, and it comes out to about:

“The sun that rises in the east

Casts its light upon the west,

And we here at world’s new edge,

Do kindly take her end to rest!

To new days! To new dawns!

To the sea and sky!

We use her day and grant her glory,

As she passes by.

To the sun! To the sun!

Fair are you!

Fair do we call thee!

Bring fire, and light, and be free!”

Soon after they round a curve in the shore, and next to a small boat house is a figure in white staring across the sea.

“Go to him,” the girl says, “He would see you if you are willing.”

Elrohir is indeed willing, and though he dares not hope for fear of disappointment, he sees the figure in white and remembers the spires of Mithlond, and the air heavy with flower’s perfumes.

He bows to Cirdan, and Cirdan to him (though they are both lords of naught but themselves).

Cirdan shows him the stacks of planks piled against the boathouse, and he knows what he has come here to do.

There will be time for talk later, but for now they build. The girl joins them, and she sings as they lay the foundations, she sings as they attach the planks, she sings every night in front of the fire as she sews the sail.

Elrohir watches her at night, finds himself spellbound by the way she moves and talks, by the way the firelight glints of her hair, and slowly he begins to remember the way his sister sat while sewing the banner for her love. It is as he remembers Arwen, as he remembers the way her hair fell, or the way she would speak as low and smooth as she could when she required you to pay attention, it is as he remembers those things that he. Prices a ring on the girl’s hand.

The ring is gold, with two serpents on it and a green gem.

The girl sees him staring, and must think his eyes look hollow, because she smiles warmly at him, and says, “We have survived a long time without you, Elrohir. It is not your duty to look after us anymore.”

He relaxes, and though he knows he failed his mission, and broke his promise to Elladan in his heart he is relieved, and he feels a great weight lift off his chest.

The next day, and the day after, and after, and after, they work in tandem. Words slip between the three of them like waves on the shore, and then there is a boat.

The sail is finished that night, and the girl (for he has never asked for her name, and she has never given it) puts her last stitch in as the first star comes out in the sky.

The next day they push the boat into the water, and Elrohir notices that it looks more like a seagull flying among the waves than a swan, and he smiles.

The sun is shining as the hoist the sail, and the water glimmers blue, and grey, and yellow, and green all at the same time. The seagulls cry around them, as girl wades back to the shore, and stands on the beach.

He and Cirdan cast off, and as the boat flies farther across the waves he hears a cry from the girl. Elrohir looks back, and smiles, for the word she yelled was, “Goodbye.”

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Chapter End Notes

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