Time Enough by Keiliss

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Time Enough

I know they only spoke Quenya at this point, but I went fully Silm and used the Sindarin version of names throughout because the alternative felt a bit like writing a bunch of OCs. Don't judge me!

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The wind was a permanent companion, like a determined flute playing chase with the grumbling and cracking of the ice. Glorfindel pulled his fur tighter. He had won the fur squarely, fighting off and killing one of the great white bears, but he still felt awkward about it when he caught others looking in envy.

It was day, or what passed for day on the Helcaraxë. Glorfindel was young enough to feel a need to divide the time into the old familiar terms but settled for just day and night - there was no mingling now, that belonged to the Trees, and the Trees his grandfather had braved the Great Journey to see were gone. Instead there were star patterns to work from, when the mist rolled back enough to see the sky, and a sense that his body called sleeping and not-sleeping. Aegnor told him he had an over-active imagination, but then Aegnor was intensely practical and had no use for imagination.

The sky was painted green today, with swirling green waves that leapt and coloured their world, and the icebergs gave back the colour in sickly dull green shot through with yellow and streaks of purple. It wreaked havoc with gauging distances. When this happened, the king called for the ropes to be used again, caught round the waist of every third person in an attempt to keep everyone together, away from obvious cracks and fissures that appeared without warning on the great ice bridge. They used to rope everyone together but that only happened now during snow storms, the risk of an entire line being pulled down into the freezing water when the ice cracked was too real, too present, had happened too often before. Few volunteered to be that third soul with the rope around his or her waist.

"What are you dreaming about?"

He hadn't heard Aegnor come up behind him, but that was all right. He was part of the crowd for now, not on watch during one of the rest periods, and no bear could have crept up on him unseen. They were less bold these days anyhow, having learned the danger of sharp knives and swift arrows.

"Just standing here, not thinking of anything in particular," Glorfindel said with a shrug. "The air feels wrong, I was waiting to see why and then the lights started."

“Damn lights." Aegnor pushed back blond curls while looking around. Glorfindel loved his hair, it was thick and wiry and wild and there was a lot of it. To tame it Aegnor kept it short, just below his shoulders, and it framed his face, strong and golden and unruly, which was a fair description of Aegnor himself. "You can't see where you're going like this. But anyhow, the good news - we got a few of those soft skinned things Turgon says are called seals so there'll be meat for a change."

Glorfindel pulled a face. He had an idea he might not eat meat again once they were free of this place and somewhere vegetables grew, and fruit, and berries, and nuts… “Don’t you get tired of meat? And fish?”

“The worst fish in the world, all bones.” Aegnor grinned briefly. The fish were plentiful, bony and oily, and everyone hated them but ate them anyhow. “Galadriel thinks the fish are servants of the enemy, meant to drive us to despair. She might be right.”

Glorfindel shrugged. “She’s always right, just ask her. Why would this be different?” He liked Galadriel with her quick mind and caustic wit, and Aegnor knew it, so it was all right to mock her a little. Her brothers were protective of her though – he had no idea why, she could protect herself and them as well if she liked – and it wouldn’t be the first time some stray humour about her had ended with bruises and occasionally blood, like the time Angrod broke Lencano’s nose. That was before he met Eðellos of course, she wouldn’t let him get into fights, she said it was undignified. She was from Alqualondë, which probably explained it.

His mind skittered away from thoughts of the town on the coast, bathed in lamplight and blood when last he saw it.

“When do we stop, do you know? The main body’s still well behind and everyone just seems to be milling around right now.”

Aegnor leaned against him, not in an obvious way but close enough that what little body heat they had was shared. “They’ll have to stop now so the seals can be skinned. We might even have fire, there’s no new snow on the air. I don’t like the idea of eating them uncooked.” He was trying to keep his voice and look casual, but Glorfindel felt him shudder anyhow: they had eaten raw seal before.

“Do you want to share my fur?” he asked, letting it fall open a little. The wind pinned him like a spear, ice cutting through his clothes. He had leather over his tunic though, his grandparents had insisted he would need it, so it could have been worse. It was a long time since anyone had taken a second glance at people sharing a cloak or a blanket, you took warmth where you found it, but even so he felt his eyes sliding to left and right, trying to see if anyone was watching. Because it wasn’t like sharing a coat with someone like Aredhel, who he had known forever and sometimes forgot was a girl. This was Aegnor, and Aegnor was – different. Made him feel different.

“Hate this light,” Aegnor said after a bit. Everyone hated it, this was on a level with talking about the weather in a place where this hell of ice and freezing water and endless wind were impossible to imagine, prepare for. Though the Mighty knew, his grandparents had tried.

“Just walk slow, make sure you’re roped. You’ve been on the hunt, you won’t be as quick.”

“Don’t fuss at me,” Aegnor snapped. “Eðellos does it all the time, as though younger brother means ‘not very bright’. And who in their right mind comes on a journey like this with a baby in her belly?”

“Shhhhh,” Glorfindel hissed, although none of Aegnor’s family were in sight. Angrod was slow to anger but when he got there it was a fearsome sight. “Anyway half of them are families, many with young children. No one knew.”

No one had known, certainly. Not the parents looking for a new life in a place of legend, certainly not Angrod and his wife, whose babe, Orodreth, was born in a makeshift shelter and swaddled in Aredhel’s second best cloak and some silky thing Galadriel gave but refused to identify. No one had known how long this endless crossing would take. The elders amongst them, those who had come from the east and were curious to return, said the distance had increased, but then they had not crossed over on the Ice either.

Aegnor rested his chin on Glorfindel’s shoulder, eyes half closed. “We need more hunters,” he said. “And if they can’t even hunt, how will they fight when we get to the other side. If we get to the other side.” The last part was spoken softly, no one said it too loud though many thought it; the Ice might go on forever, round and around, never leading them to sold ground, a final gesture from the Valar who had turned them out without a second thought when they showed a little independence and some righteous anger.

Glorfindel leaned his head against that mass of springy, strong hair, the only part of Aegnor not slimmed down, hardened by the journey. Back in Tirion Aegnor had been broader, more obviously muscled than him, now they could have shared clothing, had there been spare clothing to share. “It ends,” he said. “How old the children will be by that time, I can’t guess. And I suppose they will learn to fight.”

Or die trying, he thought. His grandfather would say that. His grandfather was very old. The colour was leached from his hair so that it was almost Telerin-fair, and he had strange designs on his skin, tattoos, the old clan markings forbidden to the children of the Undying Lands. He still recalled, though seldom spoke of, life on the other shore, a life of darkness and danger and fell things creeping in shadow. The Eldar had been fighters then, they had to be for their lives’ sake. Once they reached Aman, that need had ceased, and generations had grown up not knowing one end of a sword from the other. But times had changed, become harsher, more uncertain, and those who had been raised in darkness and threat recognized this as a thing they could feel on their skin.

One day Meldien had called Glorfindel to him and shown him a new thing, though it was very old, a sword forged on the eastern shore, a dull grey thing with strange markings etched on it and a hilt wrapped with aged leather. It was nothing like the brilliant, jeweled artifacts coming from Fëanor’s forge, rather there was a chill about it, a sense of purpose lacking in those new creations. “It is time you learned this part of your heritage,” his grandfather had said. And then, after a pause: “Don’t tell your mother, the Minyar never had sense for these things.”

He let Glorfindel invite a handful of friends to join them, which included Aegnor and even after a time Lalwen’s son Gildor, who heard of it from Galadriel, who always knew where her brothers were. And while Fëanor’s sons were still swaggering out with their jeweled and enameled swords and their finely crafted scabbards, Meldien, once of the clan of the White Crow, taught his students to use the sword as a weapon of war, to thrust and slice, to dip and twist and hack. Not necessarily pretty like the displays that were becoming popular. But deadly.

“What are you thinking now?” Aegnor asked quietly, his voice near Glorfindel’s ear.

“Thinking about my grandfather,” Glorfindel replied, watching green light, purple edged, flash up and out in jagged waves. The sky was almost as invisible as it was when the mist came up, making it impossible to see more than a few paces ahead. That was how his cousin Elenwë had died….

“Your grandparents were the wise ones, they got a whiff of how this looked and turned back with my father.”

Glorfindel frowned. Up until that moment Aegnor had spoken of his father’s decision with barely concealed disdain, though publicly he followed the family line which was that someone needed to shepherd those who wished to go back after their encounter with that dark-cloaked figure who could only have been the Doomsman himself, and who better than the youngest of Finwë’s sons. “You’re sorry you didn’t go back?” he asked carefully.

Aegnor stayed put, which surprised him. He had expected movement, anger – Aegnor was angry a lot of the time, at the mist, the ice, the eternal wind, the ghastly noises that were the backdrop to their lives for however long it had been – it was years, he supposed, but his sense of time was not what it had been. “I don’t regret coming any more than anyone else,” Aegnor said, still quiet. “That monster killed my grandfather and broke our world. But I hate everything about this and Turgon was right, we should have tried building our own boats, it could hardly have taken longer. And people, good people, have died, who would have been safe back at home…”

“In the dark,” Glorfindel reminded him.

Aegnor made an impatient gesture. “In the dark yes, but with fires and warm cloaks. Anyhow. I just think we should have thought first, found a better way of doing this. We will reach the other side eventually – Orodreth will probably be old enough to take a wife by then at this rate – but we will all be too weak and worn to be much use against the enemy for a while, or what’s left after my uncle gets through with him.”

Fëanor never failed at anything, it was impossible to believe he would now.

“Then we’ll rest and find good food and grow strong first,” Glorfindel said with a confidence he didn’t feel. The wind was strengthening again. He pulled the bearskin closer about them. “Isn’t that what Finrod says?”

“My brother says a lot.” Aegnor hesitated. “He says our uncle is more interested in catching up with Fëanor than anything else though and – I mean, we all feel a bit like that, but this was about finding Morgoth.”

Aegnor was not much known for his calm reasonableness nor his singular focus on one goal. “Has something happened? Something more, I mean?”

“I’ve been thinking, that’s all. I do that sometimes,” Aegnor said, trying and failing not to sound defensive.

Glorfindel snorted, amused. “Yes, I’ve seen the results. And you’re right, it’s more personal for Fingolfin, but it’s his brother – our king - who left us to fight our way through the snow and ice.”

“He probably thought we went home. I thought we’d go home… back then, the best moment in the world for me was when we didn’t. I hate leaving a thing half done. Just – we should have thought first.”

“Sometimes things have to be left half done, sometimes there’s no alternative,” Glorfindel said. “There’s not enough time or responsibilities get in the way or people…”

Unbidden he was back in Tirion, in the Great Palace, in a curtained alcove with a window seat, a few books and a view of gardens and white steps and a trail of water artfully made to look like a real waterfall rather than a clever feature. He and Aegnor standing there, so close, touching close, eyes locked. Drawing nearer till he could feel Aegnor’s warm breath on his cheek, count his long, unexpectedly dark lashes. And then there was Aegnor’s hand on his arm, high up and then on his chest, and full lips brushed his. And the whole world stopped, there was no sound of bells or falling water or voices from the rooms beyond, just them. He pulled Aegnor to him and their lips crushed, parted, tongue tasting tongue, pressing, sliding. Aegnor made a feral sound low in his throat and a hand quested under Glorfindel’s tunic, finding the skin at his waist with a touch like fire…

“People get in the way,” Aegnor said as though reading his mind. “And time. And stupidity and wrong priorities.”

The room in Tirion vanished and they were back in green-shot darkness, where ice ground against ice and the low-wailing wind filled their world. Eerie light licked sullenly at the edges of the ice field and the sea sounded louder. That usually meant a storm was coming.

They looked at each other. “All of those,” Glorfindel said. “And not taking time to say I’m sorry about the people, the misplaced priorities.”

It was Aredhel and Celegorm who had disturbed them that time, coming in to the outer chamber on a cloud of treelight and fresh air and green, arguing as they always argued, giving them just enough time to catch their breath and step away. Glorfindel had pretended to examine a book, he remembered. If that had been Aegnor, no one would have believed it. The next time they were interrupted by Aegnor’s mother looking for a letter she had been reading in the pagoda near the ornamental pool. The time after that, friends had come looking for him to go hunting. Glorfindel was no great hunter but had gone anyhow, to avoid questions.

There were whispers of attraction between members of the same gender, and some long looks at Fëanor and Fingolfin’s eldest sons, but it went against the will of the Valar, or possibly was one of those things they couldn’t understand and therefore chose not to countenance: whatever the reason, they were both careful to let no hint fall in public of those few encounters that sent the blood pounding and wiped out any sense of right or wrong because it felt so good.

“Can I say I’m sorry now?” Aegnor asked, grey eyes taking on a greenish sheen from the sky and ice. He tugged lightly at the bear skin. “I saw you make that kill and I thought – he will die out here and never know….”

“Either of us could die,” Glorfindel said. “When you tried to help Raito’s child and nearly drowned with him, when that sheet of ice broke off and missed you by a hand’s breadth – there have been so many almosts.”

Their fingers twined, their hands fitting together well: cold, rough, but a perfect match. Glorfindel was about to point this out, quickly before anything else happened, but he could see from the way the ever-present coils of mist spread out closer to the ground that the group rounding the ice hill were just the forerunners of what was left of the great company of Noldor who had chosen not to turn back with Aegnor’s father, Finarfin.

“More people coming than either of us can ignore,” Aegnor said, with rueful amusement.

“People and time,” Glorfindel said. “Once again. But we could still talk after dinner – if you want.”

Aegnor hesitated, then nodded. “I don’t understand most of it, of how I feel,” he said, disengaging carefully from Glorfindel at the sight of golden hair appearing out of the low mist – one of his brothers, it was impossible to see which in that light. “But we never had time to give it words, and I need them, we both do. I’ll find you later.”

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There was no snow and the mist sat light enough for fire-making. There was little enough to burn after so much time, but there were people whose affinity was to fire, so after the initial spark they could keep the flames fed if conditions were dry enough. The seals smelt strange, but Glorfindel told himself several times that this was food and that all their bodies were desperate for something stronger than a few mouthfuls of fish and some lembas crumbs.

He sat with Aegnor without being obvious about it in the midst of the crowd that always formed around Finrod and his siblings. Aredhel had joined them, little Idril on her lap, a quiet child with haunted eyes since her mother’s death. Turgon wandered over halfway through mealtime to check on her and stayed, seated by his sister. The wind was blowing – the wind was always blowing, but they had found shelter in the lee of a shelf of ice and it was almost warm. There was very little to eat, just a few mouthfuls and some snow water because the kill had to be spread between so many mouths and the leaders’ families had no more than anyone else, but the simple act of gathering together over food and around a fire was enough to lift anyone’s mood.

It was near time for Glorfindel to take his turn on watch, guarding against the ravages of ice bears and the great tusked creatures that sometimes thundered down from icebergs and trampled and howled through the camp, sometimes leaving broken bodies in their wake. He wiped his fingers, getting ready to leave. Aegnor caught his eye briefly, looked a promise. He smiled back, about to say something innocuous that would pass unnoticed when Galadriel, sitting a little apart, her arms round her drawn up knees, said, “What’s that?”

She had to say it twice to get their attention, unusual for the girl accustomed to holding centre stage. Heads turned to follow where she was looking. A quick glance showed Glorfindel other groups rising to their feet, a couple with hands shading eyes for clearer sight. Finrod had not been with them but he was on his way back from one of the other fires, walking backwards, his eyes on a space just beyond the hill.

To begin with there was just a hint of something different against the darkness, but as they watched the sky began to grow lighter. Glorfindel had no memory of standing but he was, Aegnor next to him with a hand gripping his arm hard enough to leave marks.

“What in the Pit is that?” Aegnor’s words were almost invisible in the din of voices.

Glorfindel shook his head. “I don’t know – but it’s coming out of the West,” he said with ill-concealed awe.

The area of sky grew brighter and then slowly and majestically a great, glowing ball of white rose into view. Voices rose with it, some shouting that it was the work of the Enemy, others that it was beautiful Telperion recreated. The light was odd and harsh, throwing stark shadows where there had been none, creating corners of deeper gloom. The ice glittered under its face, sparking off rainbow colours like the facets of a gem. Glorfindel stood transfixed until a hand hard on his other arm got his attention.

“Over there,” Gildor said urgently. “To the east. Look. Tell me my eyes aren’t playing tricks on me.”

“Oh by all the gods, is that land?” someone – he thought it might be Angrod – asked almost reverently.

The trumpets playing the Call forced people’s attention from the sky, sending them in a general rush to retrieve the baggage. No one dawdled when the Call sounded. Fingolfin could be seen consulting with his sons and a couple of the elders, and while Glorfindel watched, Finrod joined them. Eventually Fingolfin left them and walked alone to a central point in the camp. People fell silent and all eyes followed him. He was tall and dark haired and even after all this time and all these hardships, he was an imposing figure.

He came to a halt in the middle of a well trampled circle of what had been snow, his standard raised beside him by a boy hardly old enough to hunt without a parent present.

“People of the Noldor,” he shouted, and the wind dropped slightly almost in a show of respect while the mist eddied around him, haloing the small fires and smaller lamps in the strange silvery light while the ice kept up its grumbling and cracking. “What that light is, we do not know, though nothing so close to the pure silver of Telperion could be the work of the Enemy. It comes out of the West and more importantly it lights the east like a great lantern. Look!”

He pointed dramatically in the same direction Gildor had brought their attention to. The voices that had died down rose again now, louder and with an edge of incredulity. “Land,” someone said flatly. It was Finrod, back with Galadriel and Aredhel, who held Idril up to see the strange landmass ahead, covered in snow and ice but nonetheless more solid looking than anything they had known in years.

“Gods, it really is land,” Aegnor muttered. “After all this time and then – just like that.”

In the background they could hear Fingolfin giving orders for the fires to be either put out or, where possible, carried in pots, and Fingon shouting for the safety ropes; no one needed to be told they would be moving fast on this the final leg of their nightmare crossing.

“We won’t be talking after dinner now, will we?” Glorfindel asked Aegnor ruefully. “This is bigger than people and responsibilities, right?”

Aegnor gave him the lopsided grin they saw too little of in this place of horror, a place still bathed in silver, throwing up a harsher tone than the flickering sky lights ever had, but it was closer to the light of home and Glorfindel knew he would adapt. “A bit bigger yes,” Aegnor agreed, finally, reluctantly, releasing his arm. The light had drawn the gold from his hair, it looked as leached as Glorfindel’s grandfather’s. “But we’re finally getting off this god-forsaken wasteland. And then there’ll be time to rest and grow strong, just as you and Finrod said. And talk. We will have more than enough time to talk.”

“All the time in the world,” Glorfindel agreed, nursing the little knot of excitement in his stomach. “All we have to do first is walk.”

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Chapter End Notes

Beta: Red Lasbelin