Examined Lives by sallysavestheday

Examined Lives

Erestor has never really appreciated beaches. The sand sticks between his toes, and he dislikes the exposure of the strand. In the summer it is too hot to wear his customary black, and the sea and sky conspire to confuse him with their wavering, sizzling light. Even without the memories of Alqualondë and Losgar, he would rather stay tucked away in the hills, where the air is drier and his skin never crusts over with salt.

But Pengolodh was born in Vinyamar, and the sea calls him. Tenderly, for the most part, but there are still times when the longing drags and he grows restless and irritable and pale. Erestor packs their bags and closes the house in Tavrobel with an easy heart. Temporary migrations can be pleasurable, when one has a habit of care.

And it is worth it, to see Pengolodh bloom. Salt water is his element, odd combination of Noldor and Falathrim Sindar that he is, blending the old world and the new in one slim, elegant frame. He slips in and out of the waves like a seal, sleek and graceful, then charges up the beach to shake cold droplets all over Erestor, laughing.

“It wouldn’t feel so chilly if you would just dive in, old man.” Pengolodh flicks another bead of water at Erestor, then leans in to nip at his ear, slipping cool hands under his shirt to make him gasp and writhe. “If you swim out past the breakers I’ll accept all your edits on the Tale of Lalwen and Cirdan,” he grins, as those long scribe’s fingers tease and slide.

It is an old game now; a far cry from Erestor’s arrival in Tol Eressëa, when he had stalked off the ship in a righteous fury, eager to seek Pengolodh out and enumerate the long list of errors in his works. Such a head of steam he had built up, then! Closely controlled in Rivendell, but roiling under the surface every time the tales were trotted out and his own memories sang against the grain. Elves and Men alike learned to question under his fierce tutelage, absorbing his mantra: not everything you read is true.

But Pengolodh received him with an easy grace, that light spirit and curious mind opening, instantly, eager for an exchange. Erestor’s own tenets tripped him up: listen, look, learn. He fell into those wide brown eyes without hope of retrieval. Into a rhythm of comfortable argument, into closeness. Into bed. After seven thousand years in the cautionary role of the Faithful Retainer, he slid sideways into a romance, his own tale turning beneath him from duty into joy.

They have crafted a life together out of the elasticity of truth. What each knows is shaded and shadowed by experience and perception: Erestor’s long loyalty to the House of Fëanor; Pengolodh’s deep embrace of the survivors of Doriath, his life in Gondolin and Sirion. Their debates at the Guild of the Lambengolmor in Tirion are famous affairs, standing room only as they dance their rhetorical dances and strike their figurative blows. Over bright wines in Rúmil’s rooms, afterwards, they dissect the arguments tenderly, laughing at each other’s stumbles, finding the light that glows through the cracks in their respective armor.

On days when the old wounds lie too near the surface, tender and sore, they speak Khuzdul, unable even to manage artistic comparisons of the geometries of Tengwar and Cirth. But those days grow fewer and farther between, and the new lore they are creating together smooths the edges, softens the blows.

Erestor sighs and lets Pengolodh pull him to his feet and into the sea. The water is warmer than he had remembered, and the waves are a soothing caress. He holds his breath, and Pengolodh’s hand, and dives.

The world shifts with time, making new meanings out of old intentions. Their love remains a fixed point in the tale, a true and accurate record. It is that rarest of things in the murky craft they share: a pure, incontestable fact.