Wealth Enough of Joy by StarSpray

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Wealth Enough of Joy

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O time of rapture! time of song!
How swiftly glide thy days along
Adown the current of the years,
Above the rocks of grief and tears!
'Tis wealth enough of joy for me
In summer time to simply be.
- “In Summer Time” by Paul Laurence Dunbar

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TA 130
Summer

Celebrían’s pregnancy and the birth had gone as smoothly as such things could, even with twins. Elladan had been born just as twilight had settled over Imladris, turning the sky purple and welcoming the first brightest stars. Elrohir had followed very soon afterward. Both were small and wrinkled and red-faced, with wisps of dark hair, and both were so alike that Celebrían, laughing, had Elrond tie different colored threads around their little wrists. Elladan had blue, and Elrohir green.

“I can tell them apart,” she said, quietly smug as she cradled them both, one in each arm, “but others will certainly need the help.”

Elrond sat on the bed beside them, and smoothed a wayward tuft of hair on Elrohir’s head before leaning over to kiss Celebrían. This was a moment to relish and savor, and tuck away in his memories to revisit; all too soon it would end, and they would be surrounded by their household and by Celebrían’s parents, all clamoring to see and hold the two newest additions to Imladris, and offer their congratulations and praise. But for the moment it was quiet, and the twins were sleeping, and outside the moon shone down bright into the garden.

“Is the evening star out?” Celebrían asked.

Elrond rose reluctantly and went to the window. “It is,” he said.

“Take them outside, then,” she said. “Let their grandfather see.”

It was unclear to everyone just how much Eärendil might see when he passed overhead in Vingilot, bearing the Silmaril. In their childhood and youth Elrond and Elros had liked to pretend that he could see everything through some marvelous magic of the Valar, and the habit of stepping outside some evenings to raise a hand in greeting had persisted into adulthood. Elrond carefully gathered up the twins, and stepped outside into the garden. The air was warm and fragrant with niphredil and roses, and the sound of flowing water drifted through the valley; in the distance merry voices could be heard, laughing and singing in celebration of the twins’ birth.

Overhead the moon was peeping over the hills, and Gil-Estel gleamed. “There is your Grandfather Eärendil,” Elrond told the twins, who continued to slumber in his arms. “It is not everyone who has a star for a grandfather, you know.” Neither infant was at all impressed. Elrond turned his gaze back upward toward the star, wondering once again whether Eärendil really could see what was happening below him.

He returned inside to Celebrían, and soon after Celeborn and Galadriel came in. Galadriel had been present all through the birth, of course, but she and Celeborn bickered good-naturedly over which one of them got to hold which twin first.

.

A few days later, Elrond and Celeborn were outside to take a much-needed moment to stretch their legs when a burst of laughter and singing from the trees near the path leading into the valley alerted them to new arrivals. Elrond paused to listen for a moment, and smiled, hearing the names Eluréd and Elurín. But it took longer than he expected for them to appear in the courtyard where he and Celeborn awaited them.

Celeborn looked them up and down as they approached, and said, “Why is it that whenever we meet, you are limping, Eluréd? I would have thought the son of my fleet-footed niece would not be so clumsy!”

Eluréd grinned, but Elurín looked chastened. “It wasn’t my own unfortunate lack of grace this time!” Eluréd said. “We had a bit of a run-in with a stone giant in the mountains.”

“It was my fault,” Elurín said. “It was my idea to try to talk to the giant—”

“What in the world did you do to provoke a stone giant?” Elrond asked, torn between alarm and amusement.

“He wasn’t trying to do any harm,” Eluréd protested. “He was very young—”

“We think he wanted to keep Eluréd as a kind of pet,” Elurín said. “But he wasn’t very gentle about it.”

“Sit down, then,” said Elrond, “and let me look at your ankle.”

“It isn’t broken,” said Eluréd as he obeyed, sitting on a bench and sticking his leg out for Elrond to unwrap the splint. It was bruised and swollen, but not broken. It would have been healed already if Eluréd had not walked on it all the way from the Misty Mountains to Imladris. “I shall be perfectly fine after a few good nights in a proper bed. But you might want to send a party out to clear the road through the High Pass. That same giant as using it as a shelf for his favorite boulders.”

“I shall ask some dwarves about it, the next time a party from the Ered Luin comes through,” said Elrond. “Meanwhile—you’ve chosen a good time to visit us!”

“Have we?” asked Elurín, surprised. “But we’ve missed the Midsummer festivities.”

“You’ve missed more than that,” said Celeborn. He moved to Eluréd’s side to help him up. “But you’ll learn more about it once you’ve cleaned up and eaten something.”

“Well, that’s not fair!” Eluréd said. “How am I supposed to enjoy the bath I have been dreaming of for the last week when you’ve got news you won’t tell me?”

“I’m sure you’ll find a way,” Celeborn said.

Galadriel appeared as they escorted Eluréd down the hallway once inside. “What in the world happened to you?” she asked, hands going to her hips. “Eluréd, you look as though a mountain fell on top of you!”

“Oh no,” Elurín said brightly. “He looked much worse than this when that happened!”

“That wasn’t my fault either,” Eluréd muttered.

“Leave poor Eluréd be,” Elrond said. “At least until he’s washed the mountain off of himself.” He left them then, with Elurín laughing and Eluréd attempting to look put-upon, and went to tell Celebrían of their arrival.

“Well,” she said when he told her of the stone giant, “at least their tales are always interesting!” She sat beside the wide open window in a patch of warm sunshine with the twins in a shared cradle by her feet. They had tried separate beds, but the babes had cried until they were put together again. “Is Eluréd really all right?”

“His ankle is only bruised,” said Elrond. “He’ll be fine once he stops walking on it for a time. And if he refuses, I shall have Elurín sit on him.” Celebrían laughed. They both knew that Elurín would do it, and happily, since sometimes Eluréd’s idea of rest was not precisely the same as everyone else’s. “How are you feeling?” Elrond asked Celebrían.

“Oh, I’m all right.” She smiled at him, radiant in the sunlight in spite of the dark circles lingering under her eyes. “I’m tired, of course, but with two new babies I shall be tired for quite a while! You needn’t worry about me.”

Elladan began to fuss. Elrond scooped him up, and of course Elrohir roused and began to cry too. Celebrían picked him up and both settled again. Elrond settled himself more comfortably on the window seat. Somewhere out in the garden a meadowlark sang, and closer at hand smaller birds cheeped and chirped at one another in competing chorus. The roses by the window were in full bloom, and beneath them snapdragons waved gently in the breeze. After a little while Galadriel appeared in the garden, and came up to sit on the bench just outside the window. There was little conversation, except to remark on the babies and on the fine summer they were having—not too hot and with just the right amounts of sunshine and rain. The afternoon felt very lazy and very perfect. Celebrían dozed, catlike, in the sun; Galadriel took Elrohir and rocked him gently as she sang a song that, she told Elrond afterward, her mother had once sung for her far away and long ago on the shores of Eldamar.

Eventually Eluréd and Elurín appeared, Eluréd on a pair of crutches, also out in the garden. They stopped abruptly and stared for a moment before Elurín demanded, “Where did those babies come from?”

“I should hope that someone has explained the method to you at least once before now,” Galadriel said primly.

“I beg your pardon, Cousin Galadriel,” said Elurín, bowing, “what I meant was whose babies are they?”

“Ours, of course,” said Elrond. “I did try to send a message to you a year ago, but you have this terrible habit of not telling anyone where you are going!”

“I suppose this is what Cousin Celeborn meant when he said we missed more than Midsummer,” Eluréd said. He hobbled over to join Galadriel on the bench, while Elurín perched on the windowsill just at Elrond’s elbow. “What are their names?”

“This is Elladan,” Elrond said, “and that is Elrohir. Would you like to hold them?”

Both Eluréd and Elurín agreed that they would. As he cradled Elladan, Elurín said, “I must warn you Elrond, that as we never got the chance to spoil you as a child we shall be making up for it with a vengeance.”

“I would expect nothing else,” Elrond said. It was a warm thought, that his uncles could finally be the uncles they never got to be, and that his children would know more of their kin than he had growing up. The world was a safer and brighter place these days. Elladan and Elrohir would grow up in joy and peace and would, he hoped, never know the kind of fear that had once gripped the world.