Now, I'm Found by sallysavestheday

Now, I'm Found

The room is full of candles: warmly, richly, tenderly bright. So different from when they last touched each other, shivering and straining to meet fingertip with fingertip as the wolves bayed and slavered in their final approach. The dark claimed them, then: tearing, rending, sundering.

Reborn and restored yet still bruised from that cleaving, Finrod maps Edrahil’s new body with wonder and determination. It is an exercise in proof, an attestation. He is healed. He is here. He is whole.

Finrod molds the long muscles of Edrahil’s thighs and shapes the curves of his calves and hips, savoring the smooth unreeling of his remade skin. He traces Edrahil’s ribs again and again, verifying the sleek, strong arc of the unbroken bones. He cups the wings of Edrahil’s shoulder blades, testing their balance; measures the mended firmness of his arms; charts the tendons in the backs of his hands. He brushes the pad of each once-severed finger with reverence; tenderly touches every bare toe. He strokes the repaired softness of Edrahil’s belly and chest and the clean column of his rebuilt throat, palms wide and waiting to capture the rise and fall of his breath and the steady beat of his pulse between shoulder and jaw. He lines Edrahil’s lips with a gentle fingertip, marks his nose and his chin and his eyelids and ears.

Every touch is a testament. Each soft brush of contact confirms and caresses and blesses and prays.

Edrahil shivers and sparks under Finrod’s strong hands. His new form feels uncertain, not entirely real, but the warm glide of skin on skin grounds him, binding spirit to bone. The slow song of Finrod’s caresses reassembles him. His memories of anguish dissolve with that delicate touch.

The warm light soothes. Edrahil abandons himself to Finrod’s tender cartography. The borders of pain are behind them now. This new map of his body will carry them home.