On the Starlit Sea by Idrils Scribe

Chapter 4: Breakdown/Comfort

Their strange journey ends here, in the moonless dark on this deserted beach where the desert dies down into the sighing sea. 

For weeks, Elrohir has refused to think about their destination. He allowed Glorfindel to lead him, numbly setting one foot before the other for no other reason than it seemed better than laying down by the roadside and giving up. 

He slumps down in the sand, his face to the churning waves, and waits for whatever happens next. Behind him is nothing to turn back for. Before him only darkness and uncertainty. Life or death. He does not know, and is not sure that he cares any more.

Glorfindel sets their packs beside him. He has carried all their belongings down to the beach, including Ot’s saddle. The thing is nothing special - standard imperial issue, looted off a dead Umbarian - but Elrohir had it for many years and he is childishly relieved that it will not be left behind to bleach and crumble beneath the desert sun. 

Relieved of his burden, Glorfindel takes up a restless vigil, pacing up and down the waterline with the agitated energy of a caged lion. Even now he will not remove the Elvish glamour veiling their true faces. Some seabird screeches in the dunes behind them, and at once Glorifndel’s strange eyes dart this way and that as if he expects the Imperial Guard to fall upon them any moment. Not a far-fetched fear - they are awfully exposed on this empty beach. 

Despite his numbness Elrohir takes note. He has seen this Elf brave the deep desert, wage war against the Umbarian Empire, and defeat a Ringwraith. All of it done without faltering, without complaint, utterly fearless. Only now, at the very cusp of victory, it seems Glorfindel’s nerves of steel are spent.  

He sees Elrohir looking, and at once the tension uncoils. Even with his Umbarian face he somehow smiles that golden smile. “Not long now,” he soothes. “They will be here soon.” 

Elrohir has but the faintest notion of who, exactly, Glorfindel is talking about, or how the Elf would even know where ‘they’ are, but he finds he no longer cares. 

He digs his hands into the sand beside his boots. It crumbles warm between his fingers, the day’s sun-baked heat caught in the soft grains. He closes his fists around the only land he knows, and lowers his head to his bent knees, bowing beneath the knife-sharp pain of a sudden certainty: he will never return here.

This vast desert he knows so well, where lie the bones of so many friends. Her bones. He will never see it again. 

At a soft rustle of sand, he looks up to find Glorfindel kneeling before him. The Elf does not touch, but his voice is very gentle. “You are not alone,” he says. “You will never be alone again. You are so loved, even if you cannot see it yet. You will come home and be healed and become what you were always meant to be.”

Elrohir does not answer. A shapeless nothing sits inside his chest, a dark clump of pain that grows by the day. Hope and joy have been pressed out of him, like a grape beneath the press crushes to a formless nothing. Soon there will be no space left for heart and breath. 

Glorfindel lays his hands on Elrohir’s shoulders and leans forward singing. Elrohir has heard it before, this strange song Glorfindel hums into his ear, but he cannot say where, or how long ago. 

He has little left of that grey Elvish tongue, just enough for the song to draw him away from here, away into falling water and the clean scent of pines. In that place he can see Elladan’s face, clearer than ever before, and other, half-forgotten ones, a sweet promise of life and light and laughter. 

When the song ends Glorfindel remains, his hands warm on Elrohir’s shoulders as he watches the horizon and the beach behind them. 

The stars have wheeled in a bright arc overhead when at last he leaps to his feet. Elrohir looks up, stunned. 

Out in the bay, all sleek swan-shaped whiteness against the dark waves, Glorfindel’s improbable Elf-ship proves very much real.

A dinghy, foam-white and fair with its own birdwing carvings, releases itself from the ship. Feather-shaped oars go down, and the rowers are making good time indeed. 

The dinghy bears neither lantern nor light, and yet as they draw near a shimmer, like the light of the moon above the rim of the hills before it rises, seems to play about the Elves within, outlining their slender, grey-clad shapes against the night sky. The waves stir strange and silver-bright about the bow.

Fear falls over Elrohir’s heart. These are the White-fiends of song and story: bright-faced and fell-eyed and beyond human. They snag children and return changelings, turn strange the minds of men and possess the bodies of the unwary. Glorfindel has led him like a lamb to slaughter, and now these creatures will take him and turn him and whatever he will become at their hands will no longer be human. 

For a brief, terrifying moment he wants to run and hide in the desert like a rabbit down its hole, because dying of thirst might be a kinder fate.  

Glorfindel has taken off his boots and waded into the surf with Elrohir’s saddlebag. He passes it to the Elves, standing knee-deep in the water. Elrohir watches his belongings disappear swiftly into the boat. 

When Glorfindel turns to take the final pack, he sees that Elrohir has not moved. At once he drops it and comes, his face solemn but kind as he stands before him, barefoot in the sand. 

Somehow he sees Elrohir’s terror for what it is. “Take heart,” he says, all kindness and compassion, and holds out his hand for Elrohir to take. 

Glorfindel’s eyes meet his own, and within them his golden spirit shines bright and warm as the sun. Elrohir gasps, because Glorfindel drops every last one of his mind’s defences so Elrohir can see all of him, down to where the white fire of his heart burns fearless and full of joy. 

It is shocking to be so trusted, and Elrohir only looks long enough to see Glorfindel’s love for him written clear across his mind, without malice or deceit. 

Trust me. I will not lead you to harm.

The dark night seems to grow lighter, and Elrohir's fear lifts as if a heavy cloud has been withdrawn. 

His fingers close around a rock in the sand, a rough-edged thing the size of a grape. A piece of Harad. He puts it in his pocket. 

Then he takes Glorfindel’s outstretched hand, and is pulled to his feet. Glorfindel sings a single thrilling, silver note and Elrohir feels his Umbarian disguise dissolve like morning mist at sunrise. 

“Come,” Glorfindel says, smiling his real, unveiled smile, “let us go home.”