Ransom of the Fairy Twins by Rocky41_7

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Part 2

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VI.

           The twins had never lived in the woods before, and the Greenwood was far thicker and taller than those small clusters of trees which dotted the landscape rarely around Amon Ereb, and it was packed with many plants they had seen only sketches of before. When they neared the camp of the Iathrim, and they looked overhead and saw Elves running about the branches, they cried out with delight. The road there had been tense; everyone was keenly aware how dangerous travel had grown, and the adults all seemed to breathe a sigh of relief when they were back under the shelter of the trees, even if the foliage did not truly protect against attack.

           Oropher and his retinue led them into a dense cluster of tents, about which the Iathrim seemed quite busy. There were tables with maps laid out across them, things being skinned and smoked over fires, bows and other tools being crafted—a whole city shrunk down into one bustling camp. 

           “My lord,” came a relieved voice, from another man striding towards them.

           “Ah, Thranduil,” said Oropher, his face breaking into a smile. Away from Lindon, he seemed to do that much easier. “I trust all was well in my absence?”

           “Well indeed,” was the distracted reply. “But we are glad for your return.” Plainly, Oropher’s son could not get the badge of office back into his father’s hands quickly enough. The prince was a full head taller than his father, his hair a paler gold, and his eyes a piercing green. His face bore none of the levity which flashed across Oropher’s with some regularity, as if it had once been more at home there. He was broad about the shoulders, and like many of the Wood-elves, wore his hair loose. There were several tiny braids in it, drawing it away from his face and the graceful swoop of his ears.

           His attention went quickly to Elrond and Elros.

           “You brought the children?” he asked Oropher.

           Elrond stared, and stared, and stared, until Elros dug an elbow into his ribs. He gasped and then cried out in a high voice: “I’m Elrond!”

           “He lies,” said Elros casually. “I’m Elrond.”

           “No he isn’t!”

           Thranduil blinked at them. 

           “They wished to come,” said Oropher. “Well, certainly one of them is Elrond, and one of them is Elros!” The boys looked around them again. 

           “Do you live in tents?” Elros asked.

           “Never have we seen a settlement like this before,” Elrond added hastily, glaring at what he perceived to be his brother’s rudeness. 

           “I did mention our home was still much under construction,” said Oropher, which he had. On the road, he proved himself to be a great deal more talkative than he had been before Gil-galad. “So tents for now!” He smiled. “Worry not—they are quite warm, and dry.” Thranduil glanced between his father and the Peredhil. “Perhaps you can help them settle into our tent for now, Thranduil? There should be room enough.” The solemn, comely prince nodded. “Go on, Thranduil will show you the way,” said Oropher to the boys.

           “You are a Wood-elf too?” Elrond said after a few beats of silence, as they followed Thranduil through the camp.

           “Yes.” 

           “But you lived in Sirion?” said Elros.

           “Yes.”

           At these one-word answers, the twins grew anxious, and fell silent. Thranduil swept aside the flap of the residential tent where he and his father lived, separate from the one in which Oropher conducted the business of ruling. He began to rearrange things around the edge of the circular structure.

           “You may enter,” he said, casting a glance over his shoulder when he noticed the twins had not come in. “Leave your shoes at the door.” They quickly did as they were told. There was a beautifully woven rug laid out in the middle of the tent in bursts of red and blue, and around it, animal skins, so that the ground was indeed quite dry when they stepped in and curled their toes into the furs. In the center, in a small stove, burned the coals of a fire, the faint wisps of smoke wafting up through a hole in the roof.

           “Doesn’t rain come in there?” Elros asked reflexively. Thranduil shrugged.

           “Yes, some,” he said. “Don’t sleep there.” Elros looked at him a long moment, and when he understood this to be a joke, he flashed an astonished little grin. “You can put your things here,” said Thranduil when he had cleared a space. “We will get you sleeping rolls as soon as possible…for now perhaps one of you can share with my—with the king, and one of you with me.”

           “I would share with you,” said Elrond breathlessly. Elros stared at him with faintly disgusted confusion, as if watching Elrond pull a beetle off a tree and eat it.

           “He was telling the truth before,” said Elros. “He really is Elrond.” He wandered over to one of the tent poles, from which hung a few backs and bottles and other trinkets. He examined with wonder one of the charms there, a bear carved with such detail he could see the ruffles of fur. 

           “You may touch it, if you wish,” Thranduil offered. Elros did, running his small fingers over the carving, stroking along the bear’s back.

           “Did King Oropher make this?” he asked. Thranduil shook his head.

           “I made it.” 

           “What is it for?” 

           “It looks nice,” Thranduil answered. “To me.” A smile tugged at Elros’ lips, and Elrond came over to look at the bear as well, their fingers overlapping as they pet it.

           “Do you carve things?” Thranduil asked the twins. They shook their heads.

           “We were not supposed to have knives,” said Elrond. Thranduil stared at them a moment, then turned and dug into a satchel. He withdrew a small knife, which he offered to Elrond.

           “I will procure a second, for you,” he said to Elros as Elrond took the blade. They both looked at it.

           “Thank you,” said Elrond, before Elros could ask why they were being given these.

            “I will leave you to settle in now,” said the prince. “When you wish, you may come and introduce yourselves.” He made to exit, and then turned at the entrance to face them again. Inclining his head respectfully, he said: “Welcome to Greenwood the Great.”

VII.

           “Come in.” Elrond drew in a long, steadying breath, and pushed through the entrance into the King’s Tent. He stopped just inside, hands clasped behind his back, fingers brushing against the fabric of the entryway.

           “All the way in, Elrond.” 

           With a quiet exhale, Elrond slid off his shoes and shuffled nearer to the low dais, bedecked in pelts, where Oropher sat cross-legged. 

           “Do you know why I asked you here?” 

           Well, he had no shortage of guesses. But none of them he wanted to say aloud; he merely hung his head and rocked forward on his toes.

           “Elrond?” Oropher prompted him gently but firmly. 

           “Because I got in a fight,” Elrond mumbled. Oropher nodded sagely.

           “That is a way of putting it,” he said. “Do you wish to have a seat?”

“No, thank you.” His body thrilled with this defiance and tensed with his expectation of response. But Oropher only went quiet, and then said:

“Do you want to tell me what happened?” 

           “I…” Elrond fisted his hands in his trousers, hunched his shoulders. Wood-elves wore trousers more than the Fëanorians had; he supposed because of all the climbing. “I don’t know,” he said at last, stubbornly clinging to his refusal to explain.

           Oropher sighed. Elrond glared at the carpet. 

           “I am not angry with you,” said the king at last, and his tone was even, almost like that which he used to soothe a spooked animal. “But I am disappointed. I know you can do better than that, Elrond.” 

           The effect on the boy was immediate. Elrond’s head snapped up, wide eyes fixed on the king, and all the tension and fight went out of him at once, as if he had had the wind knocked out of him. 

           “Are you sure you don’t wish to have a seat?” This time, Elrond slowly accepted, folding himself down on the carpet before Oropher. “It’s alright for you to be angry,” he said. “But you may not exercise it however you wish. You should not have spoken to Gwass the way you did.”

           “I know,” Elrond murmured, lowering his gaze again.

           “Why were you angry with her?” 

           “I don’t know,” Elrond insisted. “I just…was. I did not mean to say those things, I really didn’t. I just…did.” 

           Oropher regarded him for a long moment.

           “I think, for one, you have reason to be angry,” he said at last. Elrond looked confused, so Oropher went on: “A great deal in your life has been unfair. None of which was Gwass’ fault, but we do not always choose the moment a feeling wishes to be expressed. Furthermore, I think you are entering adolescence, which is always an emotionally difficult time.” Like the Fëanorians, the Elves of Greenwood could only largely speculate on the biology of Peredhil. Dior and Elwing were the only two who had come of age among the Iathrim, and both had been lost before anyone could understand the lifespan of a half-Elf, nor could they necessarily assume that every half-Elf aged the same way. But some things, Oropher found, were true across the bounds of species. “You are almost fourteen years old now, correct?” 

           “Yes,” said Elrond. Then, anxiously: “Does that mean something?” 

           “Not that I know of,” said Oropher. “But I am afraid we know comparatively little about what your and Elros’ adolescence may look like. However, we shall endeavor to come up with more information, wherever possible.” The king smiled. “You need not worry too much. Thranduil was a terribly sulky adolescent, so you see, even Elves do not escape such things!”

           Elrond picked at the fabric of his pants.

           “What shall my punishment be?” he asked at last, unable to take any further suspense.

           “No punishment,” said Oropher. “But I think you should apologize to Gwass. And you should redo the work, as she asked you to do.” Elrond nodded quickly, tugging at his pant leg. He was permitted to leave, but as rose back to his feet, Oropher extended his hands to the boy. Elrond came nearer, and laid his hands on the king’s, and Oropher closed his hands gently over Elrond’s, warm and lightly calloused.

Then he said: “If you ever wish to speak of your feelings, Elrond, you are welcome to do so. You may find it a better outlet than other things. And in your home, you should always have a listening ear.”

Elrond only nodded hastily, unable to think of anything to say, and took his leave once Oropher had released him. He couldn’t say why this particular day he had felt so put-out by being asked to redo work he had done poorly, only that lately it felt at times like anyone who spoke to him was irritating him.

           Back in the home tent, Elros was sitting all-too cheerfully in front of the fire, carefully working over some clothing repairs with which he had been entrusted.

           “What are they going to do with you, since there are no floors to scrub?” he asked. Elrond made a face at him, and flopped down onto one of the skins a few feet from his brother. “I mean, if you had cursed at Maedhros…” They never would have, certainly not without Maglor there to intervene.

           “I…it was quiet,” Elrond protested.

           “The rest wasn’t.” 

           “I am not to be punished,” said Elrond, laying on his back. “Oropher said he was…disappointed.” 

           “Ugh.”

           “No, not like Maglor did. I think he…really was not angry.” Elros paused in his work, casting a puzzled look at Elrond.

           “He truly means not to punish you?”

           “No. I have to apologize, but nothing more.” Elros’ needle moved very slowly as he considered this. 

           “Well,” he said at last. “I suppose that’s well. It could have interfered with your inviting yourself on another one of Thranduil’s hunts so you can remind him that Lúthien is our relation.”

           Elrond picked the rudest way to tell Elros to stop talking that he could think of, and rolled over so his back was to his brother. With the fingers of one hand, he pressed and rubbed at the smooth chipmunk carving that hung from the belt of his tunic. They lapsed into silence, listening to the pop of the fire and the movement of the people beyond the tent walls, and Elrond resolved privately never to disappoint Oropher again.

VIII.

In Amon Ereb, chores were handed out as a punishment. Elros remembered scrubbing floors until his knees and hands and back throbbed or laundering until his eyes stung from the lye after any one of their escape attempts. In the Greenwood, chores were a matter of course. The kingdom was too small and too new for anyone not to pull their weight. The boys’ days were split between tasks for the group in the early morning and academic lessons in the late morning, then back to chores in the afternoon. The rest of the day after dinner was usually theirs to spend as they pleased, as were other hours if they expressed enough of a desire for it: the Wood-elves considered wandering amid the trees and taking in the experience of nature a necessary part of any healthy lifestyle, so few were keen to stop the boys from wandering.

(One day, Elros had decided they ought to see just how far they could go. When they returned well after dark, having been gone all day, prepared for a terror of a scolding, they received only amicable questions about what they had seen while they were out and faint admonitions about the potential for roaming troops of Morgoth.)

On one quiet evening, Elros finished cutting wood for the new apiaries several of the Elves were planning to build, and, being done with his chores for the day, went walking alone until he found a nice clearing where the sky was visible from the ground. The Wood-elves had been teaching him and Elrond to climb, but they were not natural at it after so many years on the ground, and he didn’t care presently to end up stuck somewhere, wailing for help. In this rare clearing, he lay back into the grass and watched the stars.

Mother used to say that they were never too far from Father, for the moon that shone over Sirion was the same one shining on Vingilot; it was a claim he and Elrond had recalled many times gazing through their locked window in Amon Ereb at night. As he watched the stars overhead winking at the moon, he found that strange and opaque weight, the one that felt almost like grief, drawing over him again. Elros was beginning to suspect he would forever carry the weight of questions unanswered, but he had not yet grown accustomed to it.

           In this case, he thought he might find a suitable answer, and so he went in search of his most reliable source of remembering: Elrond. Elrond seemed to have a mind as sharp as the Elves, and he remembered nearly everything (and he loved to gloat about it). Often it was irritating, but it also relieved Elros the responsibility of bothering to remember things: why bother, when Elrond would?

           He found his brother out back behind their tent, with the project he had been working on lately, which was a panel of wood inscribed with the full alphabet of both Daeron’s runes and the tengwar. However, he was not working so much as idly doodling about with the tip of his knife in the dirt, staring off at the ground in a daydreamy way. 

           “Elrond,” said Elros, throwing himself down in the dirt across from Elrond. “Do you remember what Father looked like?” Elrond didn’t look up, but his hand slowed, and there was a thoughtful tilt to his head.

           “He was blond,” he said at last. “His eyes were blue.”

           “I thought they were green.” 

           Elrond looked up, a slight purse to his lips. “No, I thought they were blue,” he said.

           “Okay, but…what did he look like?” 

           Elrond’s brow furrowed and his eyes were focused on the corner of the panel in his lap. Carefully, he set down his knife.

           “I remember he could lift us both, one in each arm, like Mother did. And the hair on his face scratched when he kissed us.”

           “But what did he look like?” Elros asked again, and this time, when Elrond met his gaze, he was startled to see his brother’s eyes had gone glassy, and his hand was trembling.

           “I…I don’t know. I do not remember.” It had been a long time since he had heard Elrond sound afraid.

           “I do not remember either,” said Elros softly. 

           They had learned years back not to bother adults with silly questions, unless they were drinking and in a good mood (drinking and in a bad mood was the worst time to ask questions), but gradually it had seemed to them that King Oropher did not mind questions, and so they sought him out. He had said when they met that he did not know their mother and father—but he had still lived in their city, so it seemed not impossible he could answer Elros’ question. They crept into the King’s Tent when it sounded quiet, and they guessed that Oropher was present, but not too busy.

           “Did you ever meet our parents?” they asked. 

           “Do you…”

           “…know what they looked like?” 

           Oropher observed them both for a moment with that sorrowful gaze that came over him whenever they spoke of the Havens at Sirion, and then he said: “I recall, but there is one who would know better than I. Come with me.” And he at once set down his work to guide them out.

           He took the twins to a woman currently bent over a loom, her hands moving with fantastic rhythmic speed. She was responsible for the majority of the garments in the village, though neither boy had yet been assigned to assist her. Elros had the sense she preferred to work alone, which was somewhat unusual for an Elf.

           “Esgaldes,” said Oropher, and gave her a moment to pause in her work before she turned to the king with a respectful nod. “Do you recall the appearance of Lord Eärendil and Queen Elwing?” 

           The woman considered, and then nodded.

           “Would you tell us?” Elrond and Elros cried at once, leaning towards her. Oropher put a hand on Elros’ shoulder.

           “Esgaldes does not speak,” he said. The twins must have looked crestfallen. Esgaldes made a gesture at Oropher. “She says we should leave her now.”

           Elros waited until they were likely out of Esgaldes’ earshot before he exclaimed: “My lord, how can she tell us anything if she cannot speak?”

           “Why does she not talk?” Elrond asked. Oropher shrugged.

           “She never has. Presumably she cannot. But possibly she simply does not wish to. However, she has heard your request, and I am sure she will have an answer for you eventually.”

           He wasn’t wrong.

           Parchment was not in common supply in the Greenwood. King Oropher seemed to have taken up Dior Eluchil’s feeling that the Iathrim would benefit from writing things down, but they were still, as a people, unaccustomed to it. There was little rhyme or reason to the things they did make note of—there was a scroll hanging in the King’s Tent which was nothing more than a list of the names of the people who lived in their village, along with what Elros supposed was their favorite flowers—and while they had picked up some knowledge of parchment-making while in Sirion with the Gondolindrim and the Men of the town, they had not made a craft of it much themselves yet, and most of what they produced was rough. Many still could not write, although Oropher mentioned that Esgaldes had taken quite quickly to both alphabets and was very keen on Oropher’s goal to collect more written materials of the Iathrim.

There was a small stock of parchment which they had traded for from others, and it must have been on this that Esgaldes drew. She delivered to the King’s Tent sketches by her own hand, labeled, respectively, “Lord Eärendil” and “Queen Elwing.” Oropher passed these onto the twins.

“Esgaldes did work for Queen Elwing over the years,” he explained. “Therefore she had much more occasion to see her up close. I hope these can help answer your question.” And he left them to examine the portraits privately.

           These, the twins poured over.

           “We really do have her eyes,” said Elrond softly, reaching out to their mother’s portrait, but keeping his fingers just off the surface, to avoid smudging the careful shading. 

           “And Father’s nose,” Elros said. His eyes skimmed from the countenance of Eärendil, face tilted upwards, eyes squinting slightly, as if he were looking onto a bright horizon, over to that of Elwing with her long dark hair and slightly withdrawn, wary expression, and he ran a hand through his own hair, tugging at the thick black locks. 

           These portraits they kept tucked safely in the base of a chest they had been given to store their belongings, and kept them close until they had crumbled apart with age.

IX.

           When Elrond and Elros were seventeen, they asked Oropher’s leave to return to Balar, and it was granted. They departed the Greenwood amid much fanfare and well-wishing, loaded down with gifts both practical and sentimental, and a pair of scouts to accompany them safely into Gil-galad’s territory. While the Wood-elves wished them to depart in cheer, however, even the young men could see they were anxious at the thought of the twins traveling far. It’s not safe, said the silent furrows of their brows.

           King Oropher embraced them both tightly before they went off, until Thranduil had to intervene to make him let go, at which point he was starting to cry. Thranduil presented them each with a new dagger, and touched the tops of their heads lightly, calling them little brother. The twins dragged him together into a hug. The Elves seemed amazed at how quickly they had grown, but Elrond and Elros were equally amazed at how far-off Amon Ereb seemed by the time they left the Greenwood. But then, they supposed, five years was nearly a third of their lifetimes. (They had discussed, once or twice, what was going on there since they had left, and agreed that it was likely the exact same things that had been going on when they left.)

Neither twin would admit to being misty-eyed as they rode away from the woods.

           They could not be wholly certain they were making the right choice. There was a heaviness of mood between them as they left the Greenwood, a sense that home was behind, yet neither could they shake the feeling they had more questions than could be answered there, no matter how much love was there.

           Gil-galad received them as well as he had the first time, but Balar had grown more crowded still since last they were there, and this time he had only one room to spare for them. Each kept to his own bed this time around.

           Furthermore, Gil-galad’s court had only grown grimmer and busier since their earlier years, and few could spare the time for idle questions. Therefore, Elrond and Elros spent a great deal of time in the library furthering their own lessons, when they were not assisting with whatever tasks about the castle by which they could make themselves useful.

           One year they planned to stay in Lindon, and then they were promised to each other they would go in search of what remained of the free Edain, in particular those of the house of Bëor. But Elros sensed, as they drew near the twelfth month of their stay in Balar, that Elrond had no plans to depart. Reluctant to fight openly with his brother about this matter, Elros first tried encouraging him: speaking of the great excitement of this journey, and the things they might learn of the Edain, and the wonder of seeing new things. When that failed, he wheedled, emphasizing how much he wished to go and see the Edain. Time continued to pass.

           While in Balar, they made contact with the former Gondolindrim, the most part of whom had retreated to the island after the sack of Sirion, and a greater part of whom had survived the event than the Iathrim, who had rushed to the front during the attack. They had only the dimmest memories—they weren’t even sure they were memories—of their grandmother Idril and their grandfather Tuor, but the Gondolindrim were able to provide more information about their father’s family and his people—and his life in Gondolin before he too, barely older than the twins had been during the destruction of the Havens, had been forced to flee his home. One of them had even sailed with Lord Eärendil, and Elrond and Elros hung onto her stories with breathless interest.

           At last, when the seventeenth month of their stay in Lindon drew near, with Elros’ temper growing increasingly sour, he could bear it no more.

           “This is not fair, Elrond!” he shouted into the quiet of the study. “You promised, and already we have been here half again as long as we had said, and you don’t even budge towards leaving! We haven’t even set a departure date! All this because you have developed feelings for Gil-galad!” 

           “That is not so,” Elrond said from his desk, flushing. “It is true we have been in Lindon longer than we planned, but do you mean to say you have run out of things to do here?” 

           “It is not a matter of having things to do, or no things to do,” said Elros. “You promised we would seek for the free Edain. Do you have no interest in them at all? They are our people too!” Elrond toyed with the quill in his hand. “You know this is important to me,” Elros said softer, pleading. 

           By the end of the next month, they had set sail from Balar, accepting fond goodbyes from Gil-galad and his court, in search of anyone nearabout their great-grandfather’s people.

X.

           Meera, who was chief of the village where Elrond and Elros landed, permitted them to stay so long as they worked. Unlike among the Elves, their names and their heritage garnered only mild interest. Few Men, it seemed, were willing to throw open their doors to the twins purely on the basis of their ancestry. 

           “I don’t mind!” Elros said cheerfully as they bathed one night, sluicing a great deal of dirt off their skin from a day in the fields. “I think it’s rather nice, isn’t it? At least you know when they appreciate us, it has nothing to do with someone else!” 

           Finding a place to stay at all had proved to be the first challenge. Nominally, all of Middle-earth was under Morgoth’s domain; there were only pockets of resistance, and he was continually seeking to stamp them out. Those that survived generally did so either by going beneath his notice, or being in a particularly difficult place to attack—such as an island. It took them time to learn the signs of a settlement which had bowed its head to the Enemy, but they began to recognize a particular defensive aggression and ill feeling among these places, a lack of trust among neighbors, a pervading disinterest in the goings-on of the world. These places they left as quickly as possible, or avoided altogether if they could.

           Elrond was reluctant to admit he missed the amenities of the Elves. Life among Men was harder, meaner. They were too cold, or too hot, or the food was too plain, the cloth too coarse, the houses dirtier. There were fewer books, and less time to read.

           Yet Elros’ enthusiasm reminded him there were other things: great music, and remarkable joy, and much that was unique about their cultures. Both twins were delighted to purchase their first Mannish costume, and each spent much of the day admiring himself by looking at his brother. There was this, too: It was the first time they had ever spent around other mortals. Both had underestimated the impact of this.

           They had never considered much—as they had been children in the bud of youth—what it meant to have spent their whole lives under the care of immortal beings. Even from childhood they harbored the sense the Elves looked upon them with pity, like candles about to be snuffed out. Among the Edain, for the first time, they saw how mortals celebrated life and mourned their inevitable deaths. For the first time, they saw what it was to have a relationship with death.

           They also encountered other youths. 

           There had been young Elves in the Greenwood, but no children, a situation not uncommon among Elves, particularly in such fraught times. Men seemed to have no such compunctions, which Elrond and Elros attributed to their shorter lifespan, until they were made aware that Men did not control their reproduction, something which shocked them and made the Men howl with laughter to learn the twins had not known.

           Naturally, they became objects of curiosity among many in the village, and were shyly approached by a group of teens to go swimming in a nearby pond one late afternoon.

           “Do you want to come with us?” offered one young woman with tight black braids and dimpled cheeks, who had introduced herself some days earlier as Deryn.

           They agreed at once.

           Swimming was something they were accustomed to after several summers in the Greenwood, although they could not help but feel they were being observed as they undressed for it. No one in the village had ever met a half-Elf before, naturally, and almost none of them had met identical twins before either.

“Did you make that?” Deryn asked, pointing to the owl charm attached to Elros’ bag with a bit of twine as he braided his hair back to keep it out of his face.

           “This?” He touched it. “No. It was a gift, from a friend.”

           “It’s quite lovely!” She smiled brightly.

           In the end, Men played much like Elves, and they passed a few hours in raucous games of chasing, splashing, and pushing in the muddy shallows. The Men were especially delighted to see how easily the Peredhil could heft them about, being stronger generally than most Men, though not as strong as many Elves. 

           As the sun moved lower in the sky, they climbed back onto the banks to dry themselves, and one of the young men stretched out in the grass and closed his eyes, bathed in sunlight and gleaming with pond water.

           “What’s he doing?” Elros asked, looking past Deryn. She shrugged, seemingly nonplussed by the question.

           “Taking a nap, I suppose,” she said. Elrond and Elros both looked at her. “What? We all finished our chores before we came out here,” she added somewhat defensively, as if she anticipated being chided for idleness.  

           “Is that…normal for you?” Elrond asked. “Sleeping in the middle of the day, even when you aren’t ill?” She looked at them like they were trying to trick her. 

           “Of course it is, just most adults take it for idleness,” she said, starting to look uncomfortable. “What, do you not nap?”

           Elrond and Elros looked at each other in silent conversation, then turned back to Deryn.

           “We do,” Elrond began.

           “But Elves don’t,” finished Elros.

           “They thought—”

           “—that something was wrong with us.” They had thus always internalized the sense that if they felt like napping, it was a sign something was amiss, and it warranted a measure of anxiety. 

           “Oh,” said Deryn. Then she laughed, although not all of the uneasiness faded from her face. “Well, it’s normal for us.” She too, then laid herself out in the grass, stretching her arms up over her head. “It feels nice, doesn’t it?” she murmured with a smile, closing her dark eyes. 

           Elrond and Elros joined her in laying out under the sun, but neither of them was calm enough to sleep—nor, on the whole, did they need as much sleep as full-blooded Men—so they simply laid about until the teens decided it was time to go home, lest anyone return to cranky parents.

           Back at their host’s home, Elros flung himself down on his bed, toweling off his hair with a dry undershirt.

           “That was nice,” Elrond remarked from where he stood combing his hair out. He cast a sly look in Elros’ direction. “Although I think I was invited only by association with you.” Elros blinked up at him.

           “What do you mean by that?” he asked.

           “I think Deryn fancies you.” Elros looked thoroughly shocked by the possibility.

           “No,” he disagreed energetically. “She was only being friendly! We’re new. They don’t see a lot of new people. It was kind of her to invite us.”

           “Did you not notice? She was watching you nearly the whole time,” Elrond pointed out.

           “It wasn’t like that,” Elros insisted, and he seemed so genuinely upset at the notion that any of the teens had ulterior motives for inviting them out that Elrond let it go.

---

Chapter End Notes

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