All Living Things by Keiliss

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Chapter Two

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Elrond returned with a couple of sturdy warriors as stretcher bearers. Eklach was  unhappy at their arrival, but Elrond said he would stay beside her at all times and this seemed to reassure her.  She held the baby protectively against her on the trip across the river, which Glorfindel thought was wise: the fear in the child’s eyes that had slowly been fading had returned magnified at the sight of more strangers.

Erestor had organised a bed, plus a table for the medical supplies and several lamps, but when they arrived Eklach grew agitated again, holding the child close. “Not go in bright cave,” she told Glorfindel through teeth gritted against pain intensified by movement. The warriors had put the stretcher down near the door and stood off at a distance. Incapacitated though she was, neither of them was about to take a chance. 

“You have to,” he told her, keeping his voice firm. “It needs to be bright so Elrond can see to remove the arrows and treat your wounds properly. It has to be done the right way and everything must be kept clean. He needs good light for that.”

“Take arrow out, is just pull,” she said, her face set in deep, stubborn lines.

Erestor listened quietly as they talked. Now he said, “Yes, well, I could have done that myself. I can see two are barbed – you’d lose a lot of flesh and it would get infected and you’d die and then who would look after your baby? Elrond will remove them properly, with skill I don’t have.” He repeated part of this in her own language for emphasis.

“Will pain,” Eklach said, a growl in her voice.

Erestor shrugged and looked less than sympathetic. “Probably. But they’ll make you sleep while he’s working. When you wake up it’ll be done.”

Eklach ran a swollen hand past a couple of the shafts wincing. “Take out, make right?” she asked finally.

“As soon as you’re ready,” Elrond told her, coming out of the shed where he had been laying out his supplies. “Hand the child over to Glorfindel now, it can’t stay with you, not while I’m working.”

Her broad brow furrowed and she closed her eyes. Glorfindel almost expected her to refuse but finally she opened them and shoved the now-squirming child at Erestor. “You watch,” she said. “Must pinch if bites.”

“We don’t really do…” Glorfindel began.

“No we don’t,” Erestor said with a sweet smile. “But it sounds like sensible advice. I will keep it in mind.”

Footsteps on gravel announced Celebrían’s arrival. She was out of breath as though she had been running and looked ready for a hunt, hair pinned up and dressed in a plain blue tunic, trousers and boots. She even wore leather armour over the tunic. It took a moment to realize this was possibly less about hunting and more in case the healing sleep did not fully immobilise Eklach. A hurt and confused orc could be deadly dangerous. None the less, he felt offended on her behalf.

Tucking back loose strands of silvery hair, Celebrían craned her neck slightly to get a look at the baby, then considered Eklach with a frown as though assessing a problem. “Elrond asked me to help with the healing sleep,” she said to no one in particular. “I only found out along the way that the patient was – somewhat unusual. I assume this is why the apprentice healers declined with thanks?” She sounded unnervingly like Galadriel sometimes.

Erestor, who had known her most of her life, looked amused. “I hadn’t realised your mother taught you this too, Bri. I thought she stopped at needlework and smithcraft.”

Celebrían’s answering smile was ironic. Both knew Galadriel loathed needlework. “I learned about the Sleep from my father’s people long before I was married,” she told him, laughter threading her low voice. “I just have very little chance to use what I know. We have to hope it works better than my embroidery skills.”

Eklach understood enough of this to find it unsettling and tried to sit up. Elrond, who had been talking with his assistant, returned and said firmly, “No getting up, please. You should not try and walk. Oh good, they found you, my love.” He beckoned the bearers back and pointed inside. “Hurry up please, this has already been left too long.”

Eklach was carried inside before she had a chance to complain, followed by Elrond, one of his acolytes, and Celebrían. The door closed. Dusk was approaching, the sky darkened as the sun sank beyond the mountain and a soft breeze ruffled grass and trees. The air was mountain-sharp and clean, carrying the final sleepy chirps as birds sorted themselves out for the night and the rush of falling water joining the river, all a part of the valley’s song.

Erestor and Glorfindel looked at one another over the child’s head. “And now?” Erestor asked. “What do we do now?” 

“We wait,” Glorfindel said. “Try it, you might enjoy it.”

“Should I try and organise some oatmeal for this one? Elrond said something about feeding her that, just not a lot because she’s not eaten much lately. What did you two talk about while you were waiting?”

“Gondolin. Ask at one of the houses, yes. They’ll look at you strangely but you’re good with that kind of thing.” Glorfindel had spotted a heap of logs possibly meant for fencing and went to drag two across for them to sit on.

“You told her stories about Gondolin? Really?”

“She was in pain.” Glorfindel tried not to sound defensive.  “I mentioned my city was burned and we went from there. Sometimes the best distraction is a good story.” The child started to whimper and he remembered the next task. “Oatmeal. Yes, I know you have to look after the baby. I’ll go. Just try and keep her quiet, we’ll have the whole settlement out here to see what you’ve done to her otherwise.”

-----o

The baby did not try and bite, instead she cried a lot. Loudly. She also did not want to sleep.

“She’s never been away from her mother before,” Erestor said. He was pacing up and down with the firmly wrapped babe in his arms, making occasional hushing noises. He had found through trial and error that even, steady motion seemed best to comfort her.

“No, no she hasn’t, and I’m not sure why we haven’t found someone with more experience with children to look after her now. Young things need sleep.”

“Maybe young orcs need less?” Erestor did not sound hopeful. “She’ll pass out eventually, children do, all children.  I’m wagering she can’t outlast Arwen, she was a terror.”

Glorfindel, only recently arrived back in Middle-earth, had not experienced Elrond’s children while they were growing up, but had heard enough stories to credit this. “She didn’t like to sleep?”

“Arwen? No, too scared she’d miss something. She always had to know what was going on around her. Celebrían would come and ask me for help sometimes and I would tell her stories.” He paused, his smile sudden mischief. “I used to bore her to sleep with long, detailed descriptions of the road into Ost-in-Edhil or the main reception hall in Gil-galad’s palace. All part of her family history in their way.”

“You probably scarred her for life,” Glorfindel laughed. Coming up behind him, he  slid an arm around Erestor and kissed him on the cheek. “Not sure that’s going to work here though. You wouldn’t like me to go ask…”

“No, I’m not handing her over to someone else. She was given to me to care for – that was like a promise. I keep promises. Here. You take her for a bit. I’m starving.”

-----o

Glorfindel slowly opened his eyes, blinking at the dawn light slanting in the open window and aware there was an unfamiliar pressure on his chest. He had fallen asleep leaning sideways across the bedroom chair, not the most comfortable of positions, and the orc child sat on his chest staring at him with big dark eyes.

“Morning,” he said, reaching a sleepy hand up to touch her cheek. She stilled, watching him cautiously, ready to jump. “It’s all right,” he said, trying to copy Erestor’s soothing tone. “You know me now.”

He heard the front door open, letting in the sounds and smells of an Imladris morning – water, rock, green growing things, woodsmoke – and then fall shut again. “I brought us food,” Erestor said, coming into the bedroom with one of the woven trays they sold at the market to transport food home. He placed it on the table while the child got excited and struggled to go to him, making loud babbling noises. “Bit of a mixture, but we won’t starve and it doesn’t need reheating. And little strips of dried meat as a treat for the girl over there. What do we call her by the way?”

“We can’t name her.” Glorfindel was as close to scandalised as Erestor could still get him. “She has a name. we can’t give her a new one.”

“We’re elves. Don’t we name everything?” Erestor came over and bent to drop a kiss on his cheek then prodded the child, which made a strange chittering sound and batted at his hand. “Is that a laugh, do you think, or is she planning to bite me as her mother warned?”

Glorfindel took in dark hair, slightly flushed cheeks – he had been hurrying, though he would never admit it – and sparkling amber eyes and all was right with his world: he often felt that way when he woke to find Erestor there, not a figment of his imagination. Admittedly he had not slept in a chair since they moved in together. “I don’t think she’ll bite,” he said with a yawn. “I think that was just Eklach trying to give her an added level of protection - my child can fend for herself. Why am I sleeping in the chair?”

Erestor shrugged. “You said you wanted to sit down for a little and rock her. Next thing I knew, you were both snoring. You looked so peaceful I put the spare blanket over you and went to bed. What else was I meant to do?”

For the first time Glorfindel noticed the blanket, a maroon creation with garish green and gold flowers. Erestor, who had consistently good colour sense, refused to say where it came from. “I thought you were looking after her?”

Erestor gave him a surprised look. “Well yes, of course. She was in my bedroom the whole night. Anyhow.” He came over and perched on the arm of the chair, offering rolled pancakes wrapped in a leaf to keep them warm. The baby started bouncing and grabbing out for them. “I don’t know if she can eat them, but I suppose it can’t hurt,” he said while handing one over and watching her try and cram the whole thing into her mouth. “Better have yours before she finishes that and wants more. She has days of leaves and grass to make up for.”

The little orc made chewing noises. Glorfindel shook his head and grinned, reaching for a pancake. She tried to snatch that as well and he pushed her hand away laughing. “Finish what you’re eating first.”

“I went to the cottage,” Erestor said with his mouth full. “Eklach had a peaceful night and is still sleeping. There was a junior healer and two of your captains there. They are really scared she’ll wake confused and run amok, which I very much doubt. Anyhow, she’s been patched up more than adequately and the healer said she should recover well, it just takes time, and they don’t know how fast orcs get over broken bones. They’re not like us.”

“They should be,” Glorfindel said. “After all, we’re from the same stock.”

“There are places it wouldn’t be safe to say that,” Erestor remarked, licking honey off his fingers. “It’s politically contentious to say we’re more closely related than absolutely necessary.”

“People,” Glorfindel returned, “need to grow up.”

-----o

Eklach continued to recover. Two of Elrond’s students volunteered to look after her and came down several times a day to check on her or change dressings. Everyone else stayed well away. The child thrived. She quickly became accustomed to Erestor and Glorfindel and stopped trying to burrow in against whichever one of them was holding her if strangers approached. They took her for short visits to her mother and to begin with she screamed when they had to leave but soon grew used to it. Once Eklach had recovered enough to handle being jumped on, the baby was able to sleep with her again which made everyone happy, especially Erestor and Glorfindel.

“What do you call her?” Glorfindel asked one afternoon when he stopped by to bring the child back from playing in the big meadow just down from the shed. It was more like a cottage by now, looking almost comfortable after the addition of donated items of furniture and a few colourful touches that came from the women in the Edain settlement who were famous through the valley for their weaving.

Eklach, who had removed the new cap the child sported and was inspecting it, looked puzzled. “Her name,” he said to clarify. “We can’t keep calling her the child or the baby. Or – something you’d like us to call her if sharing names is against your custom?”

She shook her head. “She Eklach-girl. She get own name when she bring new girl or boy.”

He frowned, puzzling it over, wishing Erestor were there. “You mean, she only gets a name when she’s had children of her own?”

“Girl make new orc,” she said, nodding hard. “Now she just girl.” She said something in her own language and then, “Eklach-girl.”

“And… the boys? Are the boys named?”

She made a dismissive gesture. “Boys make first kill, get name.”

“And girls don’t fight?” He wondered if he had not yet found the right books or if no one had taken the time to collect information on orcish customs. He suspected some at least would assume there were none, just an endless lust for blood.

The child had been exploring a new bag in the corner that contained bedding, previously used but in good condition, but she crawled back to the bed now and pulled herself up to land hard next to her mother. Eklach flinched and growled at her. “No food up top,” she said, pointing up in a way that indicated the moorlands above the cliff. “Must go out, hunt. Cook. Work hard. Not fight.”

“Not much fighting going on,” Glorfindel said. “The ones hunting and cooking are doing the real work up there.”

She frowned, working through what he had said previously. “Elf girls, small, have name?”

“All elf girls. Boys too. We name them when they’re born, sometimes just one name but sometimes a name from the father and one from the mother. Something pretty or something that says the kind of person they might become.”

Eklach caught hold of the child and turned her to take a good look at her. What she hoped to see Glorfindel could not begin to guess.

-----o

“And then Elrond came in to take a look at the arrow wounds – they had to cut really deep – and I escaped before I was asked questions I couldn’t answer.”

Erestor leaned up on an elbow. It was quite light in the bedroom thanks to the almost full moon, although colours were muted and grey-washed. It was very late. The sounds coming through the open window were of water and soft wind and the clicks of the little sand frogs that had colonised that side of the last homely house. “I know I read the fathers have very little to do with their children.”

Glorfindel reached out and ran a hand down Erestor’s arm, leaving it to rest at his waist. “Girls hunt and cook. Boys fight. And they don’t name them till they’ve done something like killing or adding to the population.”

“Break them down, treat them as things, property. That was Morgoth’s way, Sauron’s way. They wanted to eat her baby. A boy – they’d have taken it to learn to fight.”

“You can’t change the way people do things, Ery.”

Erestor lay down hard, then moved into the circle of his arm. “Can’t change everything but you can change what’s in front of you. There’s going to be a gathering, to discuss Eklach and the baby.”

“A gathering?” Glorfindel began playing with his hair, letting soft darkness flow over and between his fingers.

“We used to do it in the old days but there’s been no call for it in the longest time. The Hall of Fire wasn’t built, we’d do it outdoors around a fire – everyone in the valley who was interested, heads of families all had to be there too.” He had been involved with Imladris almost from its beginnings and knew its history. “And we’d debate a problem and decide what to do about it. Elrond wants to call one now, to see what we should do about them once Eklach’s fully recovered.”

The moon moved behind the mountain and the room grew dark. “When?” Glorfindel asked.

“Next rest day – end of this week. Elrond’s right, he needs to know how the rest of Imladris feels before he offers her a chance to stay here. And that’s how we’ve always done it.”

“I hope no one tells her ahead of the time,” Glorfindel said quietly. “She has enough to worry about without the added uncertainty.”                                                                                  

Erestor touched his cheek, palm resting cool and easy, following the curve of his face. “It’s good not to know everything,” he agreed. “I hadn’t thought you’d be quite this nice about her, you’ve fought so many of her kind…”

“She’s young,” Glorfindel told him. “And she’s doing her best. What’s not to be nice about?”  He wrapped a length of Erestor’s hair around his wrist and drew him in for a kiss.

-----o

A gathering open to all of Imladris would be too big to hold at the Council Circle, certainly too big for the Hall of Fire with its nooks and crannies, its alcoves and half rooms. Instead the meeting took place outdoors once more as had been the way back in the beginning before the Hall had come into its own. A good supply of wood was packed within a stone ring in an open space between the village and Elrond’s house, and as dusk fell they began to gather: from the House, from the village, from the little specialised settlements down in the valley.  Families and friends sat together, the unmarried warriors formed noisy groups. Children ran in and out of the crowd before finally being called to order or taken home by defeated parents.

Elrond arrived as the sky began to darken and took his seat on the low stool set out for him. Erestor as his senior councillor and old friend sat on his left. The third stool, to his right, stayed empty until the noise had slowly settled into low voices and general shuffling and then Celebrían arrived, brushing down the drapes of her pale yellow robe. Glorfindel hid a smile when he caught a glimpse of what could only be forge clothes under the demure outerwear.

The final person to arrive was Eklach herself and her daughter. She was still bandaged and moved slowly – broken bones heal in their own time, Elrond said – but she was neatly dressed in borrowed clothes, as was the child, and had found some red beads to work into her short hair. Celebrían showed her to sit near Elrond, a little to the side of the circle. Their appearance provoked more whispers and movement, but soon this too subsided.

Elrond rose and went to the fire, bending to light it in the conventional way with flint before standing back and allowing those with the gift to strengthen the little flame he had created until it ran hungrily over wood, the light throwing up shadows on the grass and giving its strange cast to faces.

“We are here to decide a matter that has not before occurred in this haven,” Elrond began, raising his voice just sufficiently to be heard clearly around the circle. “As many of you will know, a young orc, fleeing for her life and that of her child, fell from the clifftop into our valley. I am a healer, I do not question the ethnicity of those I heal, but now that she has responded well enough to join us this evening, we need to decide what should happen next.”

From somewhere across the fire, a hand was raised. “With respect, my lord, you cannot mean we should allow an orc to stay here, in our valley.”

A second voice said, “Hurt and in care is one thing, but those things are dangerous my lord, none of us would be safe.”

“Where would it live? What about my children?”

“It’ll not eat your children, Almárien, his lordship would never allow such a thing, but what of the sheep? They eat meat all the time I’d heard.”

Glorfindel was watching Erestor. He had his head slightly tilted and wore an expression of polite interest. In a closed council meeting everyone would know the ice had grown thin. Eklach sat very still. She had lifted the child up from beside her and it was now on her lap, the way it often sat with him or Erestor, bright eyes eager and curious.

“A point, my lord?”

Elrond, who would have been as aware of Erestor’s expression as Glorfindel, nodded briefly. “Yes, Councillor.”

“She, not it. Eklach is not an it.” The words were clipped, final.

“A little courtesy goes a long way, I agree. She. And there will be no eaten sheep, nor children. Next concern?”

“They are not like us, my lord.” A female voice this time. “Like should live with like, this is the valley of the elves.”

“They are not as clean as us either, Lord Elrond. When the water’s been fouled it’s too late to send it back up the mountain.”

Elrond raised his hands and let them drop, the age old signal for quiet. Before he could speak, Celebrian rose. There was a ripple of surprise, she seldom offered public opinions. “I hear concerns expressed based on tales we heard as children or   on experience during war. What I can offer is a smaller thing. It was my task to hold our guest in healing sleep while my husband tended to her wounds. At such times, there is always a sense of the person being held thus, of their true nature, and at no time did I feel anything other than pain and fear and concern for her child.”

Her voice was neither loud nor commanding, but she spoke with her mother’s absolute certainty.

The murmur of conversation started up again, not loud but very generalised. A couple of children tried to go closer to get a look at the baby orc and were pulled back and made to sit by their parents. Glorfindel had listened to any number of group consultations in Gondolin, he knew when the mood on something was generally unfavourable. The firelight made harder work of reading people’s expressions, but he could see how they were looking at Eklach and then away, or past her, the way heads bent close together. And everything about Eklach herself, sitting quietly with the child on her lap, said she knew the tide was turning against her.

He did not intend to speak until he did. “May I say a few words? While Erestor went for help after we found Eklach, I stayed with her, and it is my experience that when someone is in great pain, they show their true face. Even though she was hurt and afraid, even though she had been almost killed by her own kind and was now amongst what she knew as enemies, she never once in any way made me feel unsafe. Instead, she trusted me to help her with her child, we talked…” He did not tell them he had spoken about his lost home; it was a personal matter between him and Eklach.

“She is very young,” he continued earnestly, trying to reach out, make his own conviction carry to others. “A mother for the first time who had to fight for the life of her child when it was threatened with certain death and then for her own life. If we turn her away, where must she go? She is not a warrior, she has done no harm to anyone here. We are better than this.”

Voices rose as he sat down; there were arguments going on which was a good thing, he thought, because it showed not everyone was against her. “This is a decision we need a majority agreement on,” Elrond said, speaking over the noise. “I will not ask you to accept someone in the valley you have serious questions about. On the other hand, as Glorfindel has said, we are talking about a young mother and her child. Think carefully, this is not something to be decided emotionally.”

Glorfindel did not necessarily agree with that. Emotional decisions had their place as long as the emotions concerned were the right kind, not fear or rumour.

On the far side of the fire, he saw movement and then Logar, head of the Edain community rose and waited politely to be heard. He was elderly by their standards, a broad-shouldered man with hair that had gone grey and a full beard to match. When the buzz of voices failed to lessen, Erestor raised his voice and said, “We will hear from Logar of the Low Farm now. Thank you.”

Voices faded, laughter was cut off or quietened. Logar nodded and then looked around. “I see almost everyone here is of the fair folk,” he said, his deep voice carrying well. “When the Dark Lord brought his armies out of the east many generations ago to ravage Eregion, my people fled our villages ahead of destruction and followed Lord Elrond’s forces to this valley, where we were given refuge and safety. And when the war ended, we were offered the right to remain or leave, and my many times great grandsire and his people chose to stay.

“We are outsiders, not like the rest of this valley, but we have always known honest dealings and kindness in this our home. That young orc,” he said, gesturing towards her, “there with her child and no one else to speak for her, cannot go out into the world alone to live or die. We wish to say that if the Lord believes no harm will come of it, that she can stay in our settlement, amongst us. We once knew what it was to be outsiders and hunted.”

There was absolute silence when he finished speaking. The fire leapt and crackled, a soft wind made the trees and grass whisper. Glorfindel wondered what the forces holding them trapped within the valley thought the fire represented, it was too dark for them to make out anything else. Elrond sat with head bowed, thinking. Erestor had a faint smile on his lips. Celebrian had gone over to Eklach and was wrapping her own shawl around the baby.  Finally Elrond looked up.

“This is agreed amongst your whole community, Logar, not just your own thought on the matter?”

“We have discussed it, my lord, yes. There is one of her and a good deal more of us so safety is not a concern. We have food and to spare and honest work when her health allows. We can try it and see how she and we get along.”

Elrond turned. “Eklach?”

Erestor left his place and went to crouch beside her, speaking quickly with expansive hand gestures. Glorfindel was in the right place to see when she understood she had been offered a safe place, not sent out of the valley as soon as she was well enough to travel. The dawn of hope and then relief in her face was one of the most beautiful things he had seen in a very long time.

-----o

Eklach now lived at the end of a short row of homes built mainly for single men and women near the communal kitchen the Edain shared, which suited her as she had been persuaded to try her hand at bread baking and was up before dawn to get her share of the day’s supply into the oven. She left the baby at home sleeping: she told Erestor one of the neighbours would always come and tell her if she cried, but the child seldom woke before sunrise.

Glorfindel had not been in the cottage thus far, despite her having been in Imladris for several months. They met in the fields or near the well or wherever she and the child happened to be if he came past in the early morning or near sunset – as was the nature of her kind, she avoided full sunlight. This time, however, there was a reason for the visit beyond courtesy or a sense of responsibility.

She answered their knock and then stood there looking uncertainly from one to the other. Behind her there was a thud, a muffled shriek, and then padding footsteps.

“You fall again?” she asked, looking down. The child came to a halt next to her, holding on to the edge of her tunic and grinning widely at them. “She fall all the time now she starts to walk.”

“She’s grown again,” Erestor said. “They always fall over when they begin walking, all the time – elf children, Edain, orcs…. It’s how they learn balance.”

“If you’re not busy, Eklach?” Glorfindel asked. “We had some news we thought you might find interesting. Nothing wrong, nothing bad,” he added. “Just – a curiosity.”

The front room was small and scantily furnished: a table with plain wooden stools, two slightly worn armchairs, a sideboard with plain plate on the shelf, a lamp and some strategically placed candles, but there were brightly covered cushions, a knotted rug on the floor and sunshine-yellow curtains. The home of someone with very little and that all donated, but with a liking for bright, warm things.

The child made it to one of the chairs and pulled herself up onto it looking proud of herself. Eklach strode across and swept her off. “Chairs for visitor,” she told her firmly. “Cushion for babies.” She dropped one of the cushions on the floor as she spoke, and the child fell on it with a gleeful yelp.

She gestured awkwardly to the armchairs and then got one of the stools from the table for herself, waiting for them to sit before she was seated. The child pulled herself up and walked bow-legged to Glorfindel and hung onto his knee. He reached down to pick her up and set her on his lap. “Everything all right, Eklach? You have all you need?”

She nodded quickly. “There is food and warm beds and good work and no one shouts.”

Erestor had gone to some trouble to make sure she would be properly supported, he knew, though Erestor himself had said very little about it. “I’m glad of that, especially that the work is good.”

“Eklach bakes excellent bread, I’ve been given some to taste,” Erestor said. “And she knows we didn’t come here to talk about her baking.”

“You go ahead, it’s your news,” Glorfindel told him, amused. “You had to bring it yourself.”

Erestor gave an almost embarrassed toss of the head. “Eklach, have you thought about what will happen when the little one grows bigger, with no one else like her here? And you, with no one of your own kind?”

True fear touched her face for the first time in months. “My kind try kill baby, kill me,” she said, the words falling over each other in her haste though she kept to the common tongue, not falling back into her own language as she would have before. “See me, elf clothes, elf smell. Kill.”

Erestor quickly interrupted the flow of words. “No, no, no one’s sending you away. Lord Elrond would never allow that, you stay here under his protection. And right now no one can leave here anyhow – your former masters are still camped up on the moorlands, looking for a way into the valley.”

“They not come!” It could have been a statement, it could have been a prayer.

“No, they won’t come,” Glorfindel said. “We make sure of that.”

“That’s his job,” Erestor said, gesturing towards him with a look that was almost a caress. “No, we’re safe enough down here. But when this is all over, I learned something today. Not all elves live in our havens, some wander the land. One such told me about a place far from here, somewhere in the south, where orcs have started their own safe place – orcs like you who have left the service of the Witch King and even, they say, Sauron himself . It’s a place to live freely, where there are no slaves, no fighters, just people trying to make a place of their own.”

“When we lift the siege,” Glorfindel continued, speaking slowly, “and any time after that, even years after that, if you would like to go and look at that place, we will find someone to guide you there.”

“Eklach must leave?” she asked, looking confused.

Erestor laughed softly, going over to crouch down in front of her and take her hands. “No. Eklach must decide if she and the baby want to leave and find their own kind or want to stay here. No one tells you what to do. You decide what you want.”

“You can think about it,” Glorfindel said. “Just remember, it’s your decision. We’re happy for you to stay for however long you like, for life if you will. But we’re also happy to help you find a home with others like you. Just let us know – tomorrow or next year or time beyond that.” He had no idea how long orcs lived, he would ask Erestor later.

“Other orc,” she said in a low voice. “Orc that do not fight and beat?”

“Just – think about it,” Erestor said, getting up. “You have all the time in the world.” He scooped the child off Glorfindel’s lap and gave her a hug before setting her down on her feet and watching her toddle over to her mother.

“I make name for her,” Eklach said abruptly.

“And about time too,” Erestor told her.

“Hush, you,” Glorfindel muttered at him, unable to prevent a smile.

“Well she’s been wandering around for a year unnamed. What did you choose, Eklach?”

Eklach picked up her daughter and smiled down at her, her broad, plain face lighting with pride. “I make best name - sweet taste, colour like sun on wall. I name her Honey. Because our life now is – very sweet."

---

Chapter End Notes

Beta: Red Lasbelin

Artist whose prompt this was written for: Lindonwald on Tumblr/Misseuph on Ao3

Link to artwork - and please go past their blog and give some love to the rest of their stunning art!