It is not a word by AdmirableMonster

It is not a word

Read It is not a word

Rivendell lay beneath a white blanket of snow, its red roofs hidden like all the rest of the valley in the embrace of winter.  More snow was still falling and had been since the very early morning.  The lord of Rivendell paced in front of his window, peering out.  He had woken to the tread of soft, careful footsteps over the frozen waters of the Bruinen.  Elvish footsteps, but not a company—two Elves leading two horses, their movements weary.  More refugees, probably.  There had been a steady trickle arriving from Eregion for the past months.  Elrond was very tired, though he knew he could not be as tired as those who made their way here, seeking safety.

He dressed and made ready to welcome the newcomers, as he made a point of doing for all who entered his newly-founded refuge.  He had few attendants; truth be told, he did not desire any. One relief of expending an enormous effort to carve out a place for himself in the wilds was that he no longer had to stand on the ceremony required of him at Gil-galad’s court.  For all the danger and difficulty, this was his place, and there was joy in that, no matter how dark the shadows grew.

The two travelers reached the main house a few hours after they had crossed the Bruinen, a few hours before noon.  Elrond was waiting in the main courtyard, shading his eyes, as they rode in.  In front was an Elf that he did not recognize, golden-haired and carrying himself like a warrior. 

“Welcome to Rivendell!” Elrond called.  “I am Elrond—” and then he cut himself off as he recognized the second rider, who was blinking at him, squinting through the heavy curtain of falling snow as they attempted to read his lips.  With a slight effort, Elrond began again, this time signing along with his words.  “Welcome to Rivendell, loremaster.  It has been a long time.  I have not met your companion.”  They and Elrond had never been close, both treating one another with a wary deference arising from the ways in which their painful histories sometimes clashed, but now Elrond’s heart swelled as if greeting an old friend.

The snow lay thick on Pengolodh’s hair, turning it from silver-threaded black to white.  They gave him a weary nod.  “Well met, Elrond, lord of Rivendell.  My companion is Glorfindel, once lord of the Golden Flower in Gondolin and now returned to Middle Earth beyond all hope.  We beg leave to shelter here for the time being.”

“Of course.” Elrond caught himself for a bare moment, his eyes wandering curiously to the almost-mythical Elf Pengolodh introduced with a simple wave of their hand.  “Come in and I will get you both settled.”

“Thank you for your hospitality, Lord Elrond,” Glorfindel put in, then swung himself down from his horse and put out his hand for Pengolodh to take.  Elrond noticed that he also wruxled his words with the more complex gestural system that Pengolodh employed.  Pengolodh slipped sideways off their own mount, landing awkwardly; Glorfindel steadied them.  A warm look passed between the two of them, and Elrond paused, considering.

“Will you want one room or two?” he asked politely.

Glorfindel and Pengolodh stared at him.  Pengolodh, always reserved, merely kept a very straight face, but Glorfindel had to hide a smile behind his hand.  “Two, thank you,” he said, his grey eyes twinkling.

Elrond’s cheeks flushed, and he felt suddenly young and awkward and unprepared.  “I’ll see to it,” he said hurriedly, and made his escape.

* * *

The winter day was waning when Elrond saw Pengolodh again.  He had settled them into one of the newly-built rooms on the first floor, with a magnificent view of the Bruinen’s falls and the wild woods that surrounded the growing settlement.  Now they had clearly taken the time to put themself together—instead of the simple traveling garb they had arrived in, they were formally attired in the old Gondolindrim style, their hair covered in the Noldorin fashion with a white kerchief. Over a pair of soft leggings, they wore a long, full-sleeved teal waistcoat embroidered with small renditions of sea creatures.  Elrond found himself momentarily distracted by the fact that all the tiny stitched animals seemed to be unique—he caught sight of a dolphin, a minnow, a tiny tentacled thing that Elrond had only seen once and that Maglor had called a sea wasp, and was that a walrus just at the line of Pengolodh’s collar?

“Good evening, Lord Elrond,” Pengolodh said, matching their formal attire with a formal bow, hands moving elegantly.

Elrond forced his concentration back to the loremaster themself, rather than their outfit.  “There’s no need for such formality here,” he said awkwardly.

Pengolodh’s face might have been carved from marble.  “Perhaps not,” they agreed frostily, and Elrond suddenly realized that what was to him a cage might be to them a refuge.  The old Gondolindrim style, indeed.

“Um,” he said, feeling wrongfooted and off-center again.  “My apologies—I only meant that I did not expect it.”  Elrond, you buffoon, the faint mental echo of his brother teased him.  “Dinner will be laid shortly, may I offer you something while you wait?”

“I don’t need to be entertained, Lord Elrond.” A pause.  As Elrond slowly noticed that their hands were shaking slightly, they continued, in a slightly more conciliatory manner, “Could you just show me to the library?”

“Of course.”

Well, that could have gone better, said a voice in Elrond’s head that could have been his brother’s but could just as easily have been his own.

* * *

The preparation of dinner took longer than Elrond had expected.  Somehow, the roasted walnuts caught on fire, which delayed everything by a good half hour.  Glorfindel, who had arrived a few minutes after Pengolodh took themself off to the library, provided timely and invaluable assistance.  Once things had been set to rights and dinner was being served, he also offered to fetch Pengolodh, who had not reappeared.

“I’m sure they’re lost with their nose in a book somewhere,” Glorfindel said, and Elrond nodded distractedly, an unexpected pang of jealousy striking his heart.  He missed the days when he could lose himself in such a way.

When Pengolodh returned with Glorfindel, they were wreathed in smiles, their usually fierce or foreboding face relaxed and almost cheerful.  Elrond half-thought he saw them waggle their eyebrows in response to a quickly-signed remark from Glorfindel that he didn’t quite catch.  As soon as they turned their attention to Elrond, though, their face was instantly schooled back into an impassive, polite mask.  Chagrined, Elrond was forced to confront the possibility that Pengolodh was not such an insociable scholar as he’d thought.  Maybe they just didn’t like him, a thought which bothered him more than he was willing to examine.

You are the host, he told himself sternly.  Act like it.

He welcomed the guests and settled everyone at dinner.  The first few minutes of conversation were encouraging, if a little stilted.  Then Glanvéril, Elrond’s steward, brought out the wine, and Pengolodh scoffed subtly, a gesture of disdain that, while quickly hidden, was clearly noticed by the young woman, who flushed.

“It is the best wine we have, sir,” she said tightly.  Pengolodh leaned towards her a little, frowning in concentration, and it occurred to Elrond that he ought to have instructed his household in more thoughtfully employing gestures while this particular guest was in attendance.

“It is only that I am accustomed to drinking wine at the king’s table,” Pengolodh said, drawing the gestures long, exaggerated, and pointedly.  Elrond ground his teeth.  They could try, surely.  The girl had not deliberately insulted them, and she wouldn’t have said anything at all, if they hadn’t been so obviously scornful.  He opened his mouth to deliver a cutting point back, but paused to raise his hands and before he could say anything, Glorfindel cut in.

“Shouldn’t you try the wine before declaring it’s no good, Lendalwed?” he said, hands moving effortlessly along with his words.

Both Elrond and Pengolodh glared at him, but Elrond took the opportunity to bite back his own rejoinder.  It helped that he was distracted by realizing that Pengolodh had another name and realizing he had never heard the amilessë before.

“Of course,” Pengolodh said, shooting a glare in Glorfindel’s direction.  They sat back.  Glanvéril glanced at Elrond, who gave her a subtle nod, then moved in and poured a half glass.

“It was chosen to accompany tonight’s dinner,” she said, but she wasn’t looking at Pengolodh when she said it, and Elrond winced slightly.  Glorfindel waved—nearly catching his own wine glass a powerful wallop as he did so—and repeated her words in gestures.  Pengolodh’s lips thinned slightly more, and Elrond winced.  They took a sip, and their eyes widened slightly, flickering from Elrond to Glanvéril and back.

“Is it to your liking?” Elrond asked, signing every word with perfect precision.  Pengolodh’s hand tightened on the glass.  Their face wrinkled briefly, then smoothed.

“I suppose I had better try more to be certain.”

This was enough of a victory for Elrond to be able to let go of his own wax-tight anger before it formed a wick to be sparked to greater flame.  The conversation passed on to types of currency. Rhúnwaeth, who had carved out a living for a long time as a trader in Lond Daer, was easily induced to discuss the different types of wampum beads that the Dunlendings used for trade.  

Dinner wound on.  Elrond tried not to keep too close an eye on Rivendell’s newest guests, but he could not help but noticed that Pengolodh, after his first glass of wine, had a second, and then a third.  Based on their body language, Elrond suspected that Glorfindel was signing to them beneath the table, and it made him wonder again about what sort of relationship the two of them had.  It might not be romantic, but it certainly seemed close.  But then—they had both come from Gondolin, had they not?  He had been so busy worrying about how to welcome them he had spared little thought for Pengolodh’s words, Now returned to Middle Earth beyond all hope.

Elrond did not often think of his own connection to Gondolin, tenuous as in some ways it felt.  He had no desire to study the history of his people; he preferred to concern himself with their future.  But a less attentive pupil than he would have had to fight not to hear the stories of the famed Glorfindel, hero and balrog-slayer, who had sacrificed himself so that Elrond’s own father might escape across the mountains.  

The stories he had heard of Glorfindel’s plunge into the depths came to his mind along with the image of another figure falling, falling.  He shut his eyes and breathed deeply.  If Glorfindel had returned, then perhaps the tales of Mandos were true.  Perhaps he could ask him.  Perhaps—

The Void will take us, whispered an old memory of a cracked voice, and Elrond shook his head to banish the wandreth that threatened at the edges of his soul.

There was a noise across the table, and Elrond looked up.  Pengolodh had deliberately slammed their wine-glass down, and they were staring at him intently, their usually blank countenance replaced with an intensely scrutinizing look that might not have been out of place on one of Elrond’s foster fathers.  

“Why did you choose as you did?” they demanded, hands trembling a little, motions imprecise.

“Choose what?” Elrond echoed, startled by the sudden assault.

Pengolodh waved a drunken hand, then pointed at him before answering.  “To live.  To keep on going.  Why did you not choose as your brother, a mortal life?”

Elrond’s breath caught in his throat, his chest squeezed as if in a great vise, all the irritation and frustration of the day compressed together to wake the old unending anger and pain.  If Pengolodh had wielded a bow or sword, they could not have cut him harder to the quick.  Why did you not die with him?  Did the loremaster truly hate him that much?

He rose from the table too quickly.  “Excuse me, I need a breath of air,” he heard himself say from a far distance, and he was also distantly pleased to note that he signed it at the same time.  He caught one last glimpse of Pengolodh’s startled brown eyes before he was sidestepping his way through the door of the dining hall.

He did not stop, though, fleeing as a warlock from an oath.  He did not even bother to navigate to the impressive—and heavy—main doors, instead hopping up to the window that looked out on the exterior courtyard, unlatching it, and swinging his legs through, then sliding down outside.

A freezing cold wind caught at his whole body, and he let it push him back against the walls of his hall.  Paradoxically, the buffeting discomfort cleared his head a little, the clear cold violence of it soothing down some of the walming feelings inside him.  He leaned back, palms flat against the main hall of Rivendell, against the home he had built himself and tipped his head up.  After a moment of rough breathing, he lifted his hand to the Wain, as if he could reach beyond it, beyond the world, beyond the Void, beyond everything, and clasp the hand that had been sundered from his, irrevocably, until the end of everything.

He focused on the numbing cold, let it leech the warmth and pain both.  Slowly, the solidity at his back drew him to the present.  Stars, he was tired.

“My lord Elrond?” The voice issuing from the doorway had him whipping around, some blind instinctual part of himself trying to identify a hiding spot.  

It was Glorfindel, his grey eyes worried.  Elrond fought not to spit sharp words at the hero who had saved his father, clenching his fists and aching with loneliness, with a hole that could not be filled.  “Yes, Lord Glorfindel?” he eventually returned coolly.

Glorfindel tramped out the door, blowing on his hands.  “A cold night out,” he observed.  

“Yes,” agreed Elrond.  Then, defensively, “I like the cold.  I’m not coming back in.”  He winced a little, hearing himself—he sounded like a whining child.  Maglor would have chided him.

“I don’t much like it,” Glorfindel said, but he came out and shut the door behind him.

Then why don’t you go back inside and leave me alone.  Elrond took another long, deep breath, welcoming the knife-edge cold of it.

“They’re sorry,” Glorfindel said gently.  “They sent me because they didn’t think you’d want to see them, after that.  I’m sorry, as well—I didn’t think they’d get that drunk—and you’re well within your rights not to accept the apology, but they wanted you to know they didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”

Elrond stared at him.  “How else should I take it?” he demanded, then wished he hadn’t spoken.  He shouldn’t have allowed himself to be drawn in at all.  He was the lord of Rivendell, if a poor excuse for one.

“Not all of it is my tale to tell,” Glorfindel said slowly.  “But they were—searching for a way forward.  Not all death is as literal as the gift of the Secondborn.”

“A way forward?” Elrond echoed, the fierce drawing-down of Pengolodh’s brows taking on a new light—that of someone searching very hard for an answer.

“I met them in the harbor when I returned to Middle Earth,” Glorfindel explained.  “Like many in the wake of Eregion’s fall, they were bound for Valinor.”

“Valinor,” Elrond echoed, bemused.  He could not see how any of this connected with the question that had lodged, aching, beneath his breastbone.  

“We had known one another at the end of Gondolin.”  Glorfindel shifted slightly, one hand rubbing slowly over the other.  “Not for very long, I suppose, but I’m sure you know that harsh circumstances beget rapid camaraderie.  And I returned from Valinor.  It turned them aside from their intention to leave these shores, but—” he gave Elrond a crooked smile, “I was sent back.  I didn’t just—choose.  I think they wanted to know why you stayed.  Of course, they chose the worst possible way to ask.  Hence, the apology.”

Elrond took another long, deep breath.  “I see,” he said, after a moment. Something tight and horrible in his chest unknotted—that sudden and terrible conviction that the world was ugly.  Glorfindel’s explanation made sense, and a thoughtless desire for knowledge was better than a targeted cruelty.  He had known already that he and Pengolodh did not see eye to eye—it had always been Gil-galad who kept the peace between them, but Gil-galad was far from here, leading an army against a darkness that threatened to swallow them all.  “Yes,” he repeated.  “I see.”  He pushed himself up from the wall and bowed to Glorfindel.  “You can tell them that I accept the apology.  We will speak tomorrow.  For tonight, I think all of us need rest.”

“With that, I agree,” Glorfindel said, clapping a hand to Elrond’s shoulder.  “Come then.”

Suffering himself to be led inside, Elrond found that his teeth were chattering, his ears and nose so cold that he could not feel them.  Erestor—who had been away all week supervising construction of some of the outlying structures—hurried up as Glorfindel turned away, probably to seek out Pengolodh.

“My lord,” he said, pulling off a traveling cloak nearly as snow-covered as Elrond’s dinner clothes must be by this time.  “What on earth have you been doing to yourself?” 

“Oh, nothing,” Elrond said, with a weary smile, combing his hand through his hair to dislodge some of the snow.  “It’s good to have you back.”

“Hm,” said Erestor, which was Erestor parlance for, it’s good to be back.  “Who is that?” he asked, staring after Glorfindel’s retreating back.

“Lord Glorfindel of the House of the Golden Flower,” Elrond told him.  “He arrived today with the last loremaster of Middle Earth.”

“Hm,” said Erestor again, his tone this time colored with a hint of judgement.

* * *

The next day, Elrond was pleasantly ensconced in his study when Erestor, this time overflowing with judgment, came in to tell him that Pengolodh was asking to speak with him.  Although it dampened his mood a little, he was much more secure within his stronghold, and the crawling, awful fear of the day before had entirely loosened its grasp.  He was once more aware of Pengolodh as the sometimes irritating acquaintance whose company he had been forced to keep a great deal at the end of the First Age.

It was not the First Age now; they were well into the Second.  Elrond forced himself not to think longingly of the gossipy conversations he used to share with Elros and instead told Erestor he was perfectly willing to receive Pengolodh.

The loremaster was once again in a long, full-sleeved waistcoat, their hair bound up in a white kerchief, but this outfit was older, more threadbare.  They bowed low to Elrond, and when they looked up, he was startled to realize there were tears gathering in their eyes.

“Glorfindel told me you accepted my apology, which was kind of you, but if you wish it, I feel that I also owe you an explanation,” they said without further preamble.

“I…would like that,” Elrond acceded after a moment during which he rapidly came to the conclusion that if he followed any but his first impulse he would be trying to reach a decision for the next month.

A swift nod from Pengolodh; they reached up and brushed away the tear.  “I am married, Elrond,” they said.  “My spouse remains in Khazad-Dûm, while I am barred.  We are sundered.”

Elrond frowned.  “Khazad-Dûm?” he echoed.  “There were reports that the Dwarves had closed Moria after Eregion’s fall.”

“They did more than that,” Pengolodh returned swiftly.  “Everyone not a Dwarf was cast out—Elves and Men alike, though there were more Men than Elves there, merchants and traders.  The doors are barred, the gates are shut.”  For an instant, they pressed the heel of their hand into their mouth.  “We had little enough time to say our goodbyes.”

“So your spouse—”

A slight, sharp nod.  “Yes, Lofar is a Dwarf.  So you see—” a crooked little smile, “—why the thought of myself and Glorfindel might be amusing.”

“I see,” Elrond allowed gravely.

“I made my way to the Grey Havens, intending to board a ship that would carry me away to Valinor, Rúmil’s mythical land where all hurts are healed.  I thought, this time I am done, I have had enough of tragedy.”

“And then you met Glorfindel,” Elrond supplied.

Pengolodh nodded.  “Glorfindel, bearing despair and hope in equal measure.  And I realized I was so tired of doing nothing but surviving and fleeing in the wake of one disaster after another.  I have little to offer: I am a scholar and not a warrior or a healer.  But my spouse is here—every home I have ever known has been here.  I do not desire to leave it, either.”

Taking a deep breath, Elrond favored them with a bleak smile.  “Nor do I, I suppose.  I know you do not require an answer to your question any longer—if you ever did—” he suspected now that, far from an attack, Pengolodh’s drunken, painful question had been something closer to a sideways plea for a kindred spirit, “—but if I were to answer, I think I would say that my brother was an optimist, and I am—not.”

The loremaster’s shoulders slumped slightly, but they nodded.  “So you could not leave because you fear what would become of Middle Earth in your absence?”

“Something like that.”

Another nod.  “The journey has been harsh.  I must rest—and I commend you for making this hidden place of refuge, my lord.  But once I have rested a little more, if you have need of me, call on me.  I will do my best.”

“Thank you,” Elrond said.  “I hold out hope that Gil-galad will make his way here, and in the meantime, perhaps your friend Glorfindel can keep us from wanting to kill each other.”

Pengolodh laughed at that.  “It is good to see you again, Elrond,” they told him.

“You as well, Lendalwed.  Be welcome here.”

A deep bow, and no indication of surprise at his use of their given name.  “You are very kind, my lord.”

As they turned to leave the room, Elrond thought to himself that if the future had gotten immeasurably more annoying, it had also gotten a little brighter.

---

Chapter End Notes

A few more notes:

Many thanks to Saelind, whose Leaves of the Dunedain series inspired, in a roundabout way, this fic. Thanks also to my spouse Dzašyn, who patiently helped me work out the middle of the plot despite not being remotely in the fandom, and to dulaku, Anérea, Zomburai, moiety, bloodwingblackbird, and marimochi for cheerleading, as well as to the SWG community for everything they do for the fandom.

The names Lendalwed (prosperous journey) and Glanvéril (shining white rose) come from Chestnut_pod's invaluable name list.

Title from "It is not a word" by Sara Teasdale:

It is not a word spoken--

Few words are said,

Not even a look of the eyes,

Nor a bend of the head;

But only a hush of the heart

That has too much to keep,

Only memories waking

That sleep so light a sleep.