All Eru's Children by Ulan

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Chapter 1

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"Elladan, if I am not mistaken."

The dark-haired Elf was sitting alone facing the wooden fence. That is, he was not so much facing it as he was sitting under it - he sat with his legs going under the lowest beam, feet dangling off the cliff overlooking the Sea. Another beam he had under his arms, which were folded in front of him, upon which he was leaning his chin with a listless sort of look on his face.

He did, however, look up when he heard his name called.

Ereinion smiled as the other Elf looked up at him with obvious confusion. After all, they have not yet been acquainted.

"Forgive me," he said to him with a humble tip of his head. "You look a lot like your father. The resemblance is uncanny."

"Can I help you?" was the curt reply. Ereinion's eyebrows lifted at the guarded glare he was given.

"Peace, my friend," he said as he calmly held up a hand. "I was only walking by."

Elladan seemed to wake all of a sudden, and he blinked up at Ereinion. In the next moment, he at least looked slightly contrite. "Nay; forgive me. I have forgotten where I am. For a moment I thought I was back in the old south of Gondor." At Ereinion's questioning look, he added, "Not all those who greet you there can keep their hands to themselves - or from your gold bag."

"Aah." Ereinion smiled again. "I have no interest in such things."

Elladan shrugged and looked back out to the Sea. Ereinion watched him for sometime, intrigued at this odd and unexpected guest. Of course, it was not that he thought the younger Elf was a voluntary visitor; he likely did not even know he was sitting nearly on someone else's backyard.

"You know," said the old king. "I have long known those fences, but I never thought to spend an afternoon with them the way you are doing now. It looks interesting; I ought to try it sometime."

Elladan looked at him again. He seemed to realise that Ereinion was not leaving, albeit he was standing still at a polite distance away.

"You could..." The Half-Elf seemed to hesitate, and while on most days, manners would let Ereinion leave alone somebody who evidently wished for solitude, he also somehow had some idea of what could be bothering this particular Elf. It was half concern, and perhaps also half intrigue. He stood his ground and waited until Elladan said, "Come join me, if you wish."

Ereinion smiled at the invitation. He approached him, but did not stand too close, instead leaning over another part of the fence, looking also at the Sea. It looked as vast and blue as ever.

"You do know my father has two sons," Elladan said after some time. He had his eyes forward again, his chin back on his arms.

"I heard that one had second thoughts about sailing," said Ereinion, his eyes also still fixed at the landscape in front of them. "When I find one son, therefore, alone, with a fog of melancholy about him, I thought it not too great a leap to assume which one he is."

"Well, if you put it that way..." A hint of wry amusement coloured Elladan's tone. "It looks like you put me at a disadvantage here."

From the corner of his eye, Ereinion saw Elladan look up at him. He therefore returned the look, for it was only polite. "Ereinion," he said, "though many here still call me Gil-galad."

"The high king?"

It was Ereinion turn for a wry smile. "One of them, at least."

Elladan's eyes widened and immediately moved to stand, which Ereinion quickly sought to stop.

"No, no. Please do not, and stay seated. There are no kings here save for the Valar, and even they seldom desire for us to stand on ceremony." He nodded in encouragement as Elladan hesitantly folded his legs back under himself again. "Besides, I was the one who cut in through your otherwise quiet afternoon. Thank you for inviting me, by the way."

Elladan sighed, and looked back out again. He seemed to reflect on something. "I just thought... some company would not be so bad."

"A stranger's company? For if you meant otherwise, this is quite far from the village, and is therefore not a very good place for company."

Elladan huffed out a low laugh. "I did not intend for it, but anyway, this is a different sort of company, which is a good thing. I have most likely ran my family's ears dry - well, that is, Elrohir's most certainly, and Grandfather's - Celeborn's, that is. Even Erestor's and Glorfindel's, maybe."

"Whatever thoughts weigh on your mind seem heavy indeed, if you have run the patience of even such old Elves."

"That, and also, I think that there are some things your family does not wish to hear."

Elladan paused at this, looking as though he was swimming deep again in whatever was on his mind. For a while Ereinion just waited for him.

"In the end, I did not die," Elladan later said. "By sailing, perhaps I never will. At least not until the very end."

Ereinion watched him. "You wish to die?"

"It was just an option." The Half-Elf shrugged. "It is not even necessary for it to be anything grand, like yours was. I thought that I even had the best way for it: the death of a Dúnadan, to sleep and never wake by your own choosing. Or rather, to sleep and wake already on the other side."

"You seem to have thought well about it, and yet you chose the way of the Elves."

Elladan sighed, and his eyes were thoughtful again as they stared out into the Sea. "I have always felt safe with certainty, and that world lacked it to a ridiculous degree. Between only a mere chance of following where Arwen and Estel went, and the certainty of being with Elrohir here in Aman, in the end I chose the one where I was sure of the ground to which I would alight. Plus, Mother is here, and of course Father."

"You chose based on family?" asked Ereinion. "What of you? Is there no other way to determine where your heart lies?"

Elladan turned slightly at him. "What do you mean?"

"I do not look down on decisions done for others, for I also do believe that people we love and for whom we do things are every bit a part of us as our moods and our preferences." Ereinion said all these in a calm sort of way even as he leaned more against the old fence. "However, I also do believe that there is always a place - in our minds or hearts, whichever you hold more affinity - where we are alone, untouched by any other. Is there no desire there that is yours alone?"

Elladan was quiet again for a while, though he seemed to be thinking on the question. "Father once said that we must make the Choice based on what we felt was right. I let my own choice delay, for by those words I mistakenly thought that the answer shall eventually come easily."

"It did not?"

Elladan's lips quirked and he shook his head. "Before I knew it, far too many ships have sailed, and as I tarried, I heard even Círdan himself wished to board his own ship. Our time just seemed to run out."

"What about them fascinated you?" asked Ereinion. "Elros, I heard, chose them after he met and fought with them in a war. I do not think your father was able to adequately convey what it had been like for his own brother, for having chosen the way of the Elves, he likely did not see things the way Elros saw them. You, from what I am hearing, spent much of your time in the lands of Men. You spoke ill of some of them earlier, but I realise now that that is more practicality than true spite, for otherwise you would not wish to be considered among them."

"They are a complicated people." This, however, Elladan seemed to say with fondness, for a look passed on his face that piqued Ereinion's interest once again. Part youthful, part lost in memory - somehow, Elladan had that look about him of being only half-present, the other parts of him elsewhere, far away.

"I'm afraid I have known few of them in Ossiriand, and even less in Lindon. We had many dealings with the Men of Númenor and they were even our strongest allies, but they had their own territories. For some reason, Men just tended to avoid the realms of the Elves in Eriador," said Ereinion, thinking back on his own time in Middle-Earth. "I suppose, too, that as Elves who were not gifted with the Choice of the Half-Elves, the thought of switching places with the Edain just never came."

"It is a gift, yes, but it does bring with it much heartbreak as well."

Elladan needed not explain how; so much of it had been written in their histories, after all, all partings and tragedies recorded and immortalised. Every generation, too, back in Lindon, they would receive missives from Númenor on the death of kings and the name of the next ruler.

"I think they are brave, these Men," said Elladan, pulling Ereinion from his own memories. The Half-Elf made that laugh again, just a single huff of air. "Well, I suppose we romanticise that; they are brave by default because they have no choice but to face death and all its uncertainties. It was interesting to watch their struggle; some were more beautiful than others, I admit, but all experiences had merit, for they were real enough for anyone who ever found themselves in such a situation.

"Faramir, the Prince of Ithilien - he was a good fellow. A wise Man, quite so in fact that at times I felt he was the older one of us. Estel was never really afraid of death, but neither did he talk about it much. It was inconsequential to him, something inevitable. He did not like to think about inevitable things, our Estel, for he had always been a Man of action. Things that he could not help nor change had no room in his mind.

"Faramir, on the other hand, could be locked in a room for the rest of his days and he would be content, for he could fill that time and solitude with his thoughts that ever overflowed. He was that person that you knew was silent not because he had nothing in his mind, but because he had too many, and the mouth is but a single outlet against the myriad of tributaries of the great river that was the whole of his thoughts."

"And there have been many conversations, I take it, between you and this Faramir fellow," said Ereinion.

This time, Elladan's laughter was real and hearty enough. "Well, the Man can hold his liquor."

He laughed again, lost seemingly in pleasant memories, so that it was a while before he continued. "Many times did it feel to me as if I grew old with Faramir. I rode through those years with him, and experienced old age through his eyes. Of course, I was there for Estel and Arwen, but Faramir was that person that I was acquainted with though there was no need for such an acquaintance - a friend, of my own choosing.

"In his old age, just a year before he passed, I asked him, 'How is it? What do you feel like?' And do you know what he said? He said, 'Lord Elladan, I feel young.'"

"Young," repeated Ereinion, when Elladan seemed to pause again. "How interestingly contradictory."

"Yes, I thought so as well. 'Young?' Of course I asked him. 'How can you feel young, when all your hair is grey and you can barely stand?' I have been told that we Elves tend to be rather insensitive of the frailties of Men. I believe this conversation is an example of it, but Faramir was ever patient with me.

"'Yes, young still,' he said, 'as if my mind is ever as it has been in the golden days of my youth. I feel as though I can still ride out, trace the invisible borders of these vast lands. But this is all in my mind. My body feels heavy and my knees are weak, and I cannot mount my horse as smoothly as I used to do.'"

"What a sad state of affairs," said Ereinion, frowning. He never thought much about the plight of Men - wondered about death as a natural course of things, yes, but even that had been a difficult thing for Elves to fathom. This was another level to it that he had not yet heard before.

Elladan continued. "Another time, he told me, 'You know how in the reckless arrogance of youth, we - and by we, of course I talk about the Men of these lands - we talk about how we believe we would die, or how we would prefer to die. Boromir, my brother - he had always wanted to die in battle. I, on the other hand, had preferred to die in old age, for though I knew of the finite nature of things, I mourn the days I will not see, at least not with these eyes that have grown so familiar to me. All the same, we talked about it often. Perhaps all of us has some morbid fascination with it.

"'Now, however, at the end of my days, I find I enjoy such discussions less and less, even if it seems as though I would get my wish and die an old Man. I find, Lord Elladan, that on certain days I am terrified of what is to come. I therefore wonder, in his last moments, did my brother think the same? There, finally, was death as he desired it, the taste of valour and martyrdom. Because of it, even now people speak his name with fondness and respect. But did he fight it? Did he cling to life, wished to survive it?

"'And so it makes me think, it is folly, the way we think this way. Perhaps one's preferred manner of death is not a true desire, but merely the choice of one resigned. We like to look brave, but is anyone ever really brave in the face of such unfathomable darkness? For myself, though I lingered here long, I fear the future still. What you feel about what lies there waiting depends on your strength on a given day. On a good day I can be fascinated by it. At my worst, the uncertainty is more crippling than the harsh cold of winter on my bones.

"'But do you know how, as a child on your first jump from the highest waterfall in the kingdom, the moment before the jump was always the scariest? This is even when you know the journey down ought to be fun. It ought to be, especially when you have tried everything else, and this is the last great thing to be experienced. I am hoping this is like that. There are days, too, the best ones, when I even grow excited, believing I shall soon see my lovely Eówyn again. How lovely would that be, if it were true that we shall reunite in death, and at the doors of Eru's halls she waits for me with her arms outstretched? Aah, to have that again. Then, on such days, I do not mind death.'"

Elladan laughed and shook his head again, but his distant gaze down the vast waters of the Sea was a fond one. "That old fool. For all his wisdom and experiences, he was still just that lovesick soldier in the Halls of Healing up to the very end."

"I think it is lovely," said Ereinion. "Truly, love still grants us strength in the most trying of times."

"Ah, but how terrible, I thought, to have to cling to hope!" lamented Elladan. "My father, how ever long was he separated from my mother, at least knew for certain that he shall see her again on these shores.

"How cruel, I sometimes thought, for Eru to sunder us eternally from our secondborn brothers who have passed. There is little I would not give to speak with my Uncle Elros, who was said to have loved the world of Men so deeply that he would choose them over his own brother, and even over the grace and glory of the Elves. I wish to ask him if it was all worth the choice, whether his faith was rewarded with an afterlife indeed superior to what the Elves know. If not this, then at least I want to know if it is true that all the years before the choice cannot be compared to the years after it. For Arwen said there is a change. As surely as she felt the cold in her fingers, so did the lands suddenly seem brighter and everything more precious. She treasured her days with Estel and Eldarion, her days with me and Elrohir, with Grandfather, with Glorfindel, Erestor, and even Legolas, who proved to be a true friend to Estel. People she had long known in her youth suddenly looked new to her and even dearer, more beloved, for always in her mind were the days when it all shall come to an end.

"And I loved my sister dearly. She was the jewel of Imladris, our most precious flower. Even Estel was the brother I never thought I would ever love as much as I do Elrohir, but even that child grew to be precious to me, and I loved him as though he were my own blood. They, too, played a great part in my lingering in Middle-Earth, for I thought I did not wish to be parted from them."

"Why did you not choose to go where they went?"

"Where do they go?" asked Elladan, not a little pained. "No one knows. Do they even go anywhere? Who is to say that where I will go will be where they went? This uncertainty... it is why so many of them feared death."

"Did you?"

"I wanted to know. I was curious. But I could not go past the fact that in that death, no one returns. No one. For all the foolish things I have done in my life, still I would say that I am a poor gambler. True, I was born in a world where there is no Aman in the West. But we had the host of the Valar coming to aid Middle-Earth in our histories, and even Elves in our houses who swore they fought alongside them when they came. Glorfindel came back, and even as we heard about Mithrandir falling in Moria, so soon as well did we hear of his return. We had proof of Mandos, proof of Aman. This place where the dead of Men go, no one returns from it. They say they dwell in Mandos, too, but they do not come here, do they? Are they really even there at all? If I search it deeply enough, will I find Estel and my dear Arwen?"

Elladan suddenly smiled that fond smile again. "They were beautiful, you know. In death, I mean. Estel chose his time well, and lingered for as long as he could for Arwen's sake. I cannot fault him anything, even to the very end. And dear Arwen, though she faded in grief, she felt no regret. She said she would make the same choice a hundred times over. I envy her her certainty." Again, though, Elladan sighed. "In the end, perhaps I am too much of a coward to even deserve to be counted among them. Lúthien, Elros, Arwen - they were brave."

Ereinion's heart went to him, this lonely Elf who seemed so disappointed in himself. "They were in love."

Elladan shook his head, though his lips also did quirk up slightly. "Again, that talk of love. Where is this love that strengthens the heart and rids it of fears? Why does it elude me? Even now, though I find myself in Valinor, in the most blessed and most beautiful of places, nothing has changed. I still sit alone on the edge of a cliff."

"Love comes when it will," said Ereinion. He looked at Elladan, and found reason still to smile. "Besides, you are not alone now, are you? I am rather fond of cliffs and difficult questions myself. It is probably why I built my house at the edge of a promontory." At Elladan's curious look, Ereinion pointed behind him at the direction from which he came. "My home is nearby, just beyond this turn. You do not see the house because of the curve in the path."

Elladan laughs. "I see. So this is your territory. It looks as if I was, in fact, the intruder of us."

"It is only an intrusion if it was unwelcome. I find, however, that I spent my day in an interesting conversation. Certainly not something you often hear from Elves."

Elladan laughed in return, shrugged his shoulders again in that self-deprecating way. He made a move to stand, and so Ereinion offered him a hand.

"I never found all the answers, not in all the years I spent in the other shore. Here, and what with all the time I am given, I hope to do so eventually. But most likely it will not be today, and I have taken up too much of your time." He grinned in a way that looked as one filled still with youth, despite having seen two ages. "Anyway, my choice has been made. This is more a thought exercise than anything else."

Standing face to face with him now, Ereinion could see that there was much similarity between Elladan and his father, but even so, there was much differences between the two as well. Elrond was an Elf without a doubt, so comfortable in it in fact that Ereinion never saw him as any different than any other Elf he knew. Elladan, on the other hand, had an air about him that was less refined, a little rougher maybe - a bit difficult to define, but certainly not something common among Elves. It was a curious thing. Was it his heritage being evident still, his choice being new and all, or all that time spent with Men? Perhaps it was even something else no Elf could name, so rare were these Half-Elves that have walked Arda.

"There are no wrong choices, Elladan," he suddenly found himself saying. "Regret, however, is another thing, and ever has it been our way to regret the paths we do not take. I pray that you will soon find happiness here, and contentment in the choice you made." Something occurred to Ereinion then, and he suddenly laughed. "That bastard Elrond, giving you such a name*. Now look at you, already in the Undying Lands yet you cling to your lost humanity."

Elladan, who was at first surprised by his companion's sudden mirth, seemed to realise what he meant. He laughed as well. "Well, my father always had an odd sense of humour."

His mood seemed lighter, or so Ereinion thought from the light on his face. Elladan also added, "You listen well, for a king."

To which Ereinion laughed again. "You sound surprised, but I have had good practice, you know. Would you believe much of my life was spent listening to people's complaints about the most inane of things? The off-colour of a year's yield, the lacklustre design of the tapestries that would hang along the halls of the new wing. It was all so tedious."

"You complain just like my father," remarked Elladan, shaking his head, though he did all these in jest. His smile was warm as he bowed his head. "Thank you, Your Majesty, for your time and conversation."

"Please. Call me Ereinion. I have not been a king for much too long a time."

The Half-Elf - well, a full Elf now, perhaps, and maybe it would be best to regard him as such - stood straight again, more confidently this time. Here in front of Ereinion was a prince again, shoulders out and even one hand to his waist in an open stance. "Then in that case, well met, Ereinion."

Ereinion nodded at him, returning that warmth. "Aye. Well met, Elladan."

Elladan made to leave.

"If you ever wish for a stranger's company again," Ereinion called out to him, making him turn, "then you are always welcome for tea. I would be interested should you ever find your answers. One never knows when we might find them sooner than we expect."

"Aye, but you would make a poor choice, wouldn't you?" answered Elladan with a grin. "You are not a stranger anymore."

"In that case, were you to just want for tea, then. I have been told that the view of the Sea is best from the back of my house."

Elladan laughed. Again, that youthful expression. "I look forward to it."

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Chapter End Notes

* Elladan's name means "Elf-Man". I thought that was an interesting detail, especially given the Elves' affinity for names. I also wondered if that alluded to the twins (or in this case, just Elladan) delaying the choice.

My grandmother once told me how old age sometimes confused her. She said that although her body had become frail, her mind was as sharp as ever, and that there were still so many things she wanted and thought she could to do. I was very young when she told me this, but I never forgot that conversation. Bless that lady.

And yes, existential dialogues in cliffs. Not my most subtle imagery, but I like the setting. Though, I guess it's starting to become Gil-galad's thing. I generally like seascapes, and have had the best conversations overlooking a great sea.