Fic: Explorers, Past and Present, Glorfindel/? PG 13
Title: Explorers, Past and Present
Author: Erfan Starled
Pairing: Glorfindel/?
Rating: PG 13
Beta: Malinornë(Generous to the end - thank you very much indeed.)
Disclaimer: The characters are from Prof. J.R.R. Tolkien’s writings; the story is written for entertainment only.
A.N. Written for Empy, LotR SeSa 2010.
Prompt: Any character (or a pairing of two!) of the following would be lovely: Haldir, Glorfindel, Celeborn, Faramir, Beregond, Boromir or Eomer. Can be slash or gen. No specific prompt, though something set in winter would be lovely.
Glorfindel stared at his glass. Then he downed his wine in one go and poured another, before meandering over to the windows, uninterested in the food laid alongside in profligate fashion for the haphazard evening gathering. This house, Elrond’s house, abounded in food, friendliness, lively talk, music and more. A warmth of interest in himself, he could see for what it was - the kindly welcome of people wanting to make him feel at home without intruding too personally, too soon. Yet as he looked around, he felt the pressure of all the questions which had been civilly repressed since his return a few months ago.
Weighed down by their carefully considerate good manners, he turned to watch the snow fall outside the eaves, flakes floating lazily to lie thick and pristine, a layer of crystal sparkling in the light from the windows. The untrod expanse tempted him with its promise of snow-decked woods - and solitude. With a decisiveness at odds with the sense of detachment he had been unable, so far, to shake off, he retraced his steps across the room, gathered up a bottle and sought the door, careless of any warmer cladding.
Erestor stood nearby and smiled gently in his direction, without moving to waylay him. They knew each other of old and Glorfindel hesitated to pass without a word, but Erestor nodded and moved away into the room, making it easy for Glorfindel to make his exit.
Outside, cold air bit sharply in his throat as he breathed in, sharp contrast after rooms filled with people, and heated by hearths ablaze. He paused on the threshold. The snow smelled like the high mountains of his last home on these shores. On that thought, Glorfindel strode away from the house though he knew he could not outpace memory.
Those forsaken mountains were to most of these people the stuff of history, buried long since beneath waves washing over a land ruined by the most terrible of wars. Glorfindel shuddered. Such a grand reworking of the world was almost impossible to conceive, yet with his own eyes he had seen the cliffs and coast where land that should have continued for half a continent now gave way to Ulmo’s fief.
He walked on southerly, until he reached the crest of a small hill. There he looked back. It was beautiful, the sprawling house tucked into this sheltered valley, with its muddle of rooftops and the red and yellow light in the windows flickering brightly as candles and hearth-fires within wavered and leapt in the drafts.
Yet darkness and the hushy vale drew him on through the clean snow, glad to be alone, and glad, too, of the effort it took to step through the calf-deep drifts. His feet sank through the powdery mass, kicking up little clouds as he went.
In the frozen cold, there was little to betray the life of the winter woods, just a feather shed from some restless crow, and in the shelter of a thicket, the outline of deer, statues coated all in white. Only the stag moved, alert on sensing Glorfindel. The stately beast turned a quiet eye to see the elf on his way, faithful in his watch over the herd’s huddled respite.
Glorfindel moved on alone through the woods. Badger and fox were below in their dens, and the pine-marten and weasel were similarly abed. Only Glorfindel’s footsteps crunching underfoot kept him company, and the white ghosts of his breath in the midnight air.
Down the side of the rise and uphill again he walked, until he could go no further upwards. Here, along a ledge, the little path gave up higher aspirations and turned to go downhill. Overhead stretched the impassable cliffs of the valley. In the slight shelter of their overhang, Glorfindel set his back to the rock and faced the curtain of night and snow that hid the west from view.
In clear daylight, the eye could roam miles of forest from these heights, but his mind ranged further than those woods, and further yet, past the mountains of the coast. Beyond lay Beleriand, subsumed under the twin weights of the living ocean and so many - so very many - years, and it was hence that Glorfindel’s thoughts bent their way.
Try as he might, he was failing to adjust. The wrench through time was part of it, but more than that, he was not done mourning. To him, the dead past was alive, and faces, voices, songs, streets all marched across his mind and on through his heart. To those around him, the years of his death were filled with life and memory. Now it was this present which laid claim to him, but he was not ready to assent.
He took another drink and stared into the heavy, feathered flakes and the night beyond, the land new-made in winter white. Gradually, the wine and the fresh cold and the quiet worked their peace in him and he relaxed.
By the time he heard, or sensed, someone else close by, he did not mind; anyway, it was only Erestor, a white-spattered shadow among the shades of hollies and laurels.
“Shall you come in again soon? You’ve been out a while. Elrond is - concerned.”
“Kind of him,” he said, meaning it, “and of you, to come out after me.” But what he wanted, he could not have and no-one’s care could give it to him: to go back and see things through, or at least for others to have made the journey safely across the lost mountain paths, safely through the years and wars that followed.
He hefted the bottle a little. There wasn’t much left. He looked up at Erestor, who was standing there patiently.
At least between Erestor and himself there lay the ease of long acquaintance, dating back to Valinor’s halcyon times. It had never quite been friendship perhaps, but it had never needed to be for trust to develop. Erestor had always been civil, undemanding company, an amusing companion and a restful one, when events threw them together.
When Glorfindel stayed where he was, collecting his own personal drift of snow, Erestor sat down beside him, unconcerned by the lack of amenities in Glorfindel’s chosen retreat. Admittedly, he was more sensibly cloaked and booted for his walk. Glorfindel wriggled his toes; he could still feel them, so that was good enough.
“Elrond thinks you drink too much… He worries about you.”
Glorfindel tipped the now-empty bottle up. A few drops made little splotches which were quickly covered over. He shrugged. “Elrond is right. He stocks good wine, though.” There didn’t seem much to add. Nor did Erestor give the impression of needing to say more. Elrond’s message delivered, they relapsed into silence. Glorfindel found himself glad Erestor was there, but words to bridge time, and place, eluded him.
When he was wet enough, and cold enough, and had had his fill of letting snowflakes melt with their cold-hot burning touch on his face, Glorfindel led the way back to the house and found another bottle to take with him to bed.
Erestor bade him goodnight and left him to it.
*** *** ***
“Erestor, we are not just going to let him go on drinking like this,” insisted Elrond, indignant at what he mistook perhaps for indifference.
Erestor did not correct him. “What do you intend to do, then? Are you going to stop him?”
“I thought you could. It’s you who know him, after all.”
“Know him? You really think that, Elrond?” Erestor gazed, surprised, at Elrond.
Glorfindel had been through what no-one here had experienced. Who knew what he remembered from his time dead to the world? And who here could imagine what his last battle had been like, or knew how long ago, or how recent, it seemed to one so mysteriously returned to this side of the Sea?
“Do you realize how old he is, Elrond? He is older even than I know.”
“But you are old, Erestor! You came from Valinor and lived through all those centuries - surely you are as aged as he?”
Erestor smiled. “Well, I am old, but not as he is. Not old as one who has seen the earliest of times…” He fell silent then, abstracted. He was half aware that Elrond wanted to question his train of thought, and fluttered a hand to delay him.
Erestor had the germ of an idea. Slowly, he said, “Elrond, can you trust me for a while? I may not know the answers, but of this I am sure: right now, he needs to make his own choices, including what company he seeks out and how much he wants to drink. Give him time, is my advice, if you must have it. I do have one idea to try…”
There they left it, for a time.
Elrond desisted in raising his concerns, and Erestor left Glorfindel to his own devices for the most part, though he kept intermittent contact - a hello here and there, the occasional game of ducks and drakes, the odd long walk over the high scarps to the north. Meanwhile, he had penned a missive, and asked a younger and more restless soul to deliver it for him. Then he all he could do was wait.
His answer, when it came, arrived in person…
*** *** ***
“It’s freezing out there,” said a new voice, one with accents clear enough to cut across the crowded room. A piercing pair of blue eyes scanned the faces before him. Long fingers flung back a hood, as Erestor and Elrond hurried to greet this visitor.
“Celeborn! Welcome. Well come indeed!” Elrond glanced at Erestor, and hesitated a fraction. “What brings you here?”
“A visit to old friends, if you will have me - that is if you have room for yet another body among such a throng. A corner will do…” The solemnity of his face was belied by his eyes, which were lit with gentle irreverence regarding his own status.
Elrond snorted. “We are not so hard-pressed for space. You shall stay as long as you please, and in proper comfort, as you well know!” He looked again at Erestor, and made his excuses; clearly, they had much to say to one another.
Erestor ushered Celeborn toward a fire and pulled up a short bench before it. There they sat, lit in the glow of the flames. Pale hair, tossed back from his face, hung from his shoulder, burnished first red, then gold, in tricks of the shifting light. Slender hands warmed themselves in the heat, but already the two elves had their heads bent together, deep in talk.
They were still there, much later, when Glorfindel wandered in. They had finished their earnest conversation and were sitting desultorily exchanging a word now and then, but mostly listening to the music others were making. Celeborn, all attention, watched as Glorfindel fetched himself something to drink and settled out of the way, joining, but not making himself part of, the gathering.
Lórien’s lord looked at Erestor, and raised his brows. “I do see what you mean. He is changed…”
“Were any of us not changed by the burdens of that Age? And to find himself here, no matter what has passed for him in the interim - to be so far from all he knew as home…”
Celeborn was listening closely, but it was Glorfindel his eyes rested on. “We were all changed, but we have travelled with the years. Ours has been a gentler chance to be reconciled; or if not gentler, surely less wrenching.”
He added more softly, “You did right to tell me of this, Erestor. It was well done.” With that he stood, and turned more than one head as he left the fire, perhaps for reason of his grace alone, or perhaps it was his blue eyes and silver-blond hair. Maybe it was simply his presence, for this was a lord who would be noticed even if no-one knew who he was, though everyone here did know who he was - or thought they did.
Celeborn, as Erestor was aware, had never been an easy elf to know, and the Sinda had become still less so after the tragic fighting that sundered the peoples of Middle-earth, before a larger strife sundered the world itself. Celeborn was, however, very easy to trust, and as Erestor watched his progress, he felt himself relax in hope for their strangely-come lostling.
Elrond came over to stand beside Erestor. “Why Celeborn?” he breathed, apparently fascinated by the Sinda’s otherworldly grace.
Erestor sympathized. It was not that Celeborn seemed out of place here, but rather that he brought a sense of his own power with him, not on show but out of sight and intrinsically part of him. Somehow, there was an ancient feel about him, as if the elder forests and his own life force had mingled, and in mingling, merged.
“Instinct, really,” answered Erestor, giving Elrond less than half his attention. “They knew each other, before…”
“Before? In Doriath? But that cannot be, surely.” Elrond rejoined, puzzled.
“Long ago, before any of our people had left these shores, they knew each other.”
Erestor was not the only one who fell quiet, as Glorfindel straightened up, open-mouthed in surprised delight before smiling wide. Graciousness had never abandoned him, even in his earnest pursuit of solace in Elrond’s wines, but this was one visitor for whom mere courtesy was clearly redundant. He set down his cup and put both hands out for Celeborn to take while they gave each other the kiss of greeting.
When they let go of each other, Glorfindel gestured toward the door, and with Celeborn’s ready agreement, they took themselves away from the public environs.
Erestor waited for questions, but it was a few seconds before talk in the room resumed, and longer before Elrond himself spoke.
When Elrond did summon his thoughts, he said with quiet conviction, “It seems your idea was a good one. My thanks…” He squeezed Erestor’s shoulder by way of relieved emphasis. They said no more, content to bestow a similar discretion in their conversation as the privacy the other two elves had sought by their departure.
Time would tell, and time was, perhaps, at last on Glorfindel’s side.
*** *** ***
“Celeborn, how do you come to be here, of all places? You are still wearing your cloak - you’ve just arrived?” Glorfindel looked around the empty hall, as if wanting to conjure from the air anything Celeborn might want, or need, after such a journey.
Celeborn studied the strong face, the large eyes more green-flecked than his own and so a deeper shade altogether, and the creases between the long eyebrows. Glorfindel was unambiguously pleased to see him, but shadowed in spirit, his visitor thought. He knew from Erestor’s letter how things had been going.
“I’ve just been here long enough for Erestor to dry me out, warm me up and ply me with a drink or two, and some food. I’m very well, my friend. And you?”
Wryly, Glorfindel answered, “I’ve been plying myself with a drink or two, as well. They take good care of me here, but…” He shrugged and then in a brisker tone, he asked, “Erestor hasn’t shown you to a room? Let’s sort that out first, then.” And with an efficiency unlike his absent expression before while downing his third cup in the hall, an expression which Celeborn had noted with some concern, he arranged with some of the household for Celeborn’s pack to be brought in, and for comfortable quarters to be assigned.
That done, and Celeborn declaring himself very well satisfied, they sat in the guest-chamber and took stock of each other.
Glorfindel was the first to speak. “It has been so long, old friend. Such a long, long time…”
“Even as we reckon it,” Celeborn agreed, pensively. “And with so much that has happened in the meantime, I cannot imagine how strange this must be for you. You know the histories? Since you were last this side of the Sea? Erestor says you have been here long enough to become familiar with the tale of the years, and all their toll.” The words felt strange to utter, for the reference to Glorfindel’s curtailed life and what followed was to conjure the most personal of wartime strife, and to bring to mind its failures as well as its successes.
“I know them,” said Glorfindel, briefly. Frowning, he touched his head. “I know them here, clearly enough.” Touching his chest, his face showed his pain, “But here, I cannot take it in. I can hardly believe what I saw with my own eyes, let alone what are to me mere tales. Beleriand is gone, and so many of our kin besides, in the history of that Age. Celeborn…” Glorfindel, in his utterance of Celeborn’s name, hid nothing of his confusion, and nothing of his grief, either. He broke off.
He looked around the room. “Can we go out? Do you mind, in the cold?”
“It will be like old times,” returned Celeborn, serenely. “I can always dry my boots out a second time…”
“Or borrow a pair,” Glorfindel offered, clearly pleased with the prospect of getting away from the house.
Was it the four walls, wondered Celeborn, or all the people? Or just that Glorfindel always had been wont to seek wide horizons? The woods had sufficed for himself, in the end, though there had been a time when he, too, had hovered on the brink of an earlier shore and looked toward a promised land.
That land, no matter what its promise, revisited on his death, had not brought Glorfindel peace. Back he had been sent, to find his answers. For what reason this unprecedented return had been ordained, Celeborn did not know, and did not ask. Glorfindel himself was his focus, not the workings of the Valar, or Eru, or even of fate, if ever such a thing played a part among all the rest.
He had wondered about that, more than once, as he walked the woods by night. He gave himself a little shake. He was growing as pensive as Glorfindel. It was Elrond’s woods he would walk tonight; he would walk them in the snow, and Glorfindel would have room to breathe.
“Boots,” he said, “Yes, lend me a pair, of your kindness.” Thus, when they left the house, they were shod and clad for the weather, though their minds wandered far afield as they walked, to warmer climes, when clothes of any kind were all new to them.
*** *** ***
Glorfindel looked sidelong at Celeborn. “I’m amazed to see you, truly. Erestor asked a lot of you, to come for my sake. I’m amazed,” he repeated, shaking his head.
He led them along the valley bottom, where the river, icy at the edges, still ran swiftly in the middle, and where the trees grew thick and tall. They passed quietly through the night, only bestirring a ground-roosting pheasant along the way to rocketing alarm. The pheasant startled them as much, and they laughed, and carried on, their voices travelling across the snow like heralds going before them - only their talk was of the past, not the future. It was Glorfindel who mostly did the talking, sporadically, as if words welled up from cloudy waters finding a direction by the light of the stars now that the clouds were passing.
The air grew colder, but neither minded. Celeborn listened, knowing this was what Erestor had brought him for, but he would have done so in any case and gladly. This golden-haired elf had trod the banks of the Cuiviénen with him, naked together in the warmth of their birthplace, and after that, they had travelled the breadth of the world in each other’s company. Oromë had led them in those days, and they had never yet seen snow, or ice. They had never dreamed of so much water as the Sea, and it had left them breathless when at last they reached it. How many years had that journey taken? There was no measuring it by years of the sun. Only the stars had revolved in the heavens and they had been clock and light alike for them.
Their arrival at the Sea was by any count a great passage of time after their Awakening; long had they tarried in the woods, content.
They had tarried too on the Shore, and when Glorfindel left, and Celeborn had stayed, it was the end of an era for them both, as surely as the passing of any Age reckoned in the histories. His mind had wandered, and he touched Glorfindel’s arm, interrupting him.
“It is very good to see you,” he said, simply, staying them both in their tracks. “It is very good to see you…”
Glorfindel stared at him, breath suspended for a moment. When his eyes glittered, it was not perhaps just the first flakes of a new snowfall. “The world was different then,” he answered, shakily. “And it is different again now than Gondolin, and before that, our Crossing and the years that followed. So much of fighting. Too much, and yet necessary. This land was never made for so much blood-shed.” He glanced around. “It is too beautiful for all we brought to it.”
Steadying himself, he carried on, more thoughtfully now than impassioned. “Valinor was oddly strange, wonderful and magical, but even then - I missed the rivers and forests we had known, you and I. I was glad to return, desperate though our cause was.”
“And now? Are you glad to be here a third time?”
“I suppose - yes,” said Glorfindel wonderingly, looking around him anew. “Yes, I am. But to find so many have died, so much destruction wrought - can you understand? I’ve behaved badly, I suppose, but to see it gone, all the west, drowned, and they tell me first drowned in fire, before the ocean came to wash it clean at the last.”
He gazed blindly into the trees, and said more softly, “And now I think I face another trial and of what ilk I do not know…” He laughed, painfully. “Why else would They return me here, Celeborn?”
“Who here would believe it, do you think, if I told them I am afraid? Their living legend, their mystery visitor, sent by the Valar themselves?” He stopped there, and when his eyes rested on Celeborn, they were no longer shadowed, but showed the heart of his cares. He had already made so many new beginnings, but this was the first one that Glorfindel had feared.
“Was it so very bad,” Celeborn asked, “in Gondolin, at the end?”
Glorfindel nodded. “Oh, yes. It was terrible.” He said no more, but Celeborn thought that he might, in time.
“So here we are, with a new future before us all, and still the past dogs your steps, is that the size of it?”
Glorfindel laughed, more lightly this time. “Yes,” he said, with more assurance than pain. “Yes, and what is coming, we will need to be ready for, I think.” He paused, and then summoned light, which coalesced around him. Celeborn drew in a sharp breath. It was beautiful, and yet awesome, and it removed Glorfindel from the realm of the ordinary with no mistake.
“Once, the Trees could impart power to those who beheld Them. And I have been returned with that same power. Hard times are coming, I think, and I don’t have a single clue about what I am meant to do.”
They were still standing in the cold, unmoving. While both of them pondered the riddle, of one accord they moved on, silent until they found the rushing waters at the head of the valley, where a fault in the sheer rock let the flood through. On the path beside the steep channel, the river’s endless fall deafened them, but still they stood and listened to its song.
“Do you remember the Falls of the Cuiviénen?” Glorfindel asked, drawing Celeborn back from the edge of the height so they could talk in the relative quiet. “The river stored up endless mysteries for us to find, and we came upon each one in such wonder.”
“As when Oromë found us gawping at the hippopotami, when they emerged from nowhere like gods of the river, huge and mysterious?”
“More like mud gods,” retorted Glorfindel.
Celeborn laughed. “Oromë came screaming down upon us to get out of the water and we stared at him and the hippopotami stared at us - and then one of them opened its mouth to yawn…”
“And we scrambled for the bank, water flying everywhere while those great hulking animals deciding whether elf offered a tasty morsel! How could I forget? Everything was new, in those days. Every day was a discovery.”
Celeborn pinched his cloak between finger and thumb. “Do you remember Oromë trying to teach us to spin, and weave?”
“We had to follow the wild sheep and pick their wool from the bushes, as I recall - and the rams would chase us away if we got too close. Even the flat of those horns left prints for days. They sent me flying.” Glorfindel rubbed his backside in rueful memory.
“Yes, but when we did scavenge a pile of that wretched, wiry hair, Oromë tried to spin it as he had seen it done, and was so puzzled! ‘But it looks so easy,’ he said, and took himself off for lessons once he got over his pride and admitted he was getting nowhere but knotted into hopeless wads of the stuff.”
“We couldn’t care less. There was never any hurry,” smiled Glorfindel, “except when we were running away from things. I can’t remember us being bothered about clothes in those days.”
“We ran away from so many things, didn’t we? Snakes, hippos, crocodiles, tigers…”
“Running away, or hiding,” agreed Glorfindel. “Those tiger cubs bit to the bone and when the mother found us trying to play with them, that was almost the end of some of us.”
“We learned to run fast, and climb faster,” said Celeborn, too solemnly, and then they both broke out laughing. “Isn’t that why we grew interested in the business of clothes? So much more comfortable than scratches from bushes and bark, or sitting bare on muddy leaves.”
Glorfindel glanced at Celeborn. “It wasn’t all running away, was it? There was so much to wonder at… Dragonflies the size of birds and birds the size of your thumb.”
“We learned about ourselves, too, and each other. We were curious about everything.” Celeborn appraised his companion, smiling slightly to see him looking less solemn. “Those were good times, don’t you think?”
“Simpler times,” answered Glorfindel, but when he sighed, it could have been as much in remembered pleasure as with sadness.
Celeborn’s smile broadened. “Come now, old friend. Only simpler?”
“Simpler,” restated Glorfindel, firmly. Then he looked sidelong and laughed at the other’s expression. “Oh, very well - simpler, sensuous, stirring, stimulating - are you satisfied?”
“Not quite,” said Celeborn, openly teasing. “Not yet.” More seriously, he made his point. “You, of all the people I have ever known, were made for joy.” He hesitated. “As for fear, perhaps the time to ready yourself has been granted on this side of the Sea? I am thinking that I might stay awhile. If you can put up with my company?”
Glorfindel had a smile playing round his mouth which refused to quite go away. Now it spread to his whole face. “Nothing would please me more. Perhaps you might be of a mind to revisit some more of the past, and those explorations you were mentioning? About each other, you were saying? I will be in need of some new interest, if I desist in testing Elrond’s hospitality. It would not do to drain his reserves quite dry.”
“You terrify me. Am I to be this new interest? I hope you don’t propose to drain me dry, like your bottles of wine?”
“Not quite like those,” answered Glorfindel, drily.
“Perhaps we should find out just how much has changed over the years, do you think?” The mock-hopeful look on Celeborn’s face brought outright laughter to Glorfindel.
“Perhaps we will,” he answered. “Perhaps we will, though more likely, we might find some things change very little…” Linking his arm with Celeborn’s, he turned their steps toward the house.
Before they retired upstairs to explore Glorfindel’s intentions - and Celeborn’s - more thoroughly, Glorfindel took a moment to visit the hall. Erestor was still there, and Elrond. Perhaps present times were simple, too, because when he said ‘Thank you,’ their expressions showed very clearly that they understood and no more needed to be said.
Glorfindel led the way upstairs. Celeborn, more than willing to explore times present as well as times past, followed him.
*** The End ***
Author: Erfan Starled
Pairing: Glorfindel/?
Rating: PG 13
Beta: Malinornë(Generous to the end - thank you very much indeed.)
Disclaimer: The characters are from Prof. J.R.R. Tolkien’s writings; the story is written for entertainment only.
A.N. Written for Empy, LotR SeSa 2010.
Prompt: Any character (or a pairing of two!) of the following would be lovely: Haldir, Glorfindel, Celeborn, Faramir, Beregond, Boromir or Eomer. Can be slash or gen. No specific prompt, though something set in winter would be lovely.
Glorfindel stared at his glass. Then he downed his wine in one go and poured another, before meandering over to the windows, uninterested in the food laid alongside in profligate fashion for the haphazard evening gathering. This house, Elrond’s house, abounded in food, friendliness, lively talk, music and more. A warmth of interest in himself, he could see for what it was - the kindly welcome of people wanting to make him feel at home without intruding too personally, too soon. Yet as he looked around, he felt the pressure of all the questions which had been civilly repressed since his return a few months ago.
Weighed down by their carefully considerate good manners, he turned to watch the snow fall outside the eaves, flakes floating lazily to lie thick and pristine, a layer of crystal sparkling in the light from the windows. The untrod expanse tempted him with its promise of snow-decked woods - and solitude. With a decisiveness at odds with the sense of detachment he had been unable, so far, to shake off, he retraced his steps across the room, gathered up a bottle and sought the door, careless of any warmer cladding.
Erestor stood nearby and smiled gently in his direction, without moving to waylay him. They knew each other of old and Glorfindel hesitated to pass without a word, but Erestor nodded and moved away into the room, making it easy for Glorfindel to make his exit.
Outside, cold air bit sharply in his throat as he breathed in, sharp contrast after rooms filled with people, and heated by hearths ablaze. He paused on the threshold. The snow smelled like the high mountains of his last home on these shores. On that thought, Glorfindel strode away from the house though he knew he could not outpace memory.
Those forsaken mountains were to most of these people the stuff of history, buried long since beneath waves washing over a land ruined by the most terrible of wars. Glorfindel shuddered. Such a grand reworking of the world was almost impossible to conceive, yet with his own eyes he had seen the cliffs and coast where land that should have continued for half a continent now gave way to Ulmo’s fief.
He walked on southerly, until he reached the crest of a small hill. There he looked back. It was beautiful, the sprawling house tucked into this sheltered valley, with its muddle of rooftops and the red and yellow light in the windows flickering brightly as candles and hearth-fires within wavered and leapt in the drafts.
Yet darkness and the hushy vale drew him on through the clean snow, glad to be alone, and glad, too, of the effort it took to step through the calf-deep drifts. His feet sank through the powdery mass, kicking up little clouds as he went.
In the frozen cold, there was little to betray the life of the winter woods, just a feather shed from some restless crow, and in the shelter of a thicket, the outline of deer, statues coated all in white. Only the stag moved, alert on sensing Glorfindel. The stately beast turned a quiet eye to see the elf on his way, faithful in his watch over the herd’s huddled respite.
Glorfindel moved on alone through the woods. Badger and fox were below in their dens, and the pine-marten and weasel were similarly abed. Only Glorfindel’s footsteps crunching underfoot kept him company, and the white ghosts of his breath in the midnight air.
Down the side of the rise and uphill again he walked, until he could go no further upwards. Here, along a ledge, the little path gave up higher aspirations and turned to go downhill. Overhead stretched the impassable cliffs of the valley. In the slight shelter of their overhang, Glorfindel set his back to the rock and faced the curtain of night and snow that hid the west from view.
In clear daylight, the eye could roam miles of forest from these heights, but his mind ranged further than those woods, and further yet, past the mountains of the coast. Beyond lay Beleriand, subsumed under the twin weights of the living ocean and so many - so very many - years, and it was hence that Glorfindel’s thoughts bent their way.
Try as he might, he was failing to adjust. The wrench through time was part of it, but more than that, he was not done mourning. To him, the dead past was alive, and faces, voices, songs, streets all marched across his mind and on through his heart. To those around him, the years of his death were filled with life and memory. Now it was this present which laid claim to him, but he was not ready to assent.
He took another drink and stared into the heavy, feathered flakes and the night beyond, the land new-made in winter white. Gradually, the wine and the fresh cold and the quiet worked their peace in him and he relaxed.
By the time he heard, or sensed, someone else close by, he did not mind; anyway, it was only Erestor, a white-spattered shadow among the shades of hollies and laurels.
“Shall you come in again soon? You’ve been out a while. Elrond is - concerned.”
“Kind of him,” he said, meaning it, “and of you, to come out after me.” But what he wanted, he could not have and no-one’s care could give it to him: to go back and see things through, or at least for others to have made the journey safely across the lost mountain paths, safely through the years and wars that followed.
He hefted the bottle a little. There wasn’t much left. He looked up at Erestor, who was standing there patiently.
At least between Erestor and himself there lay the ease of long acquaintance, dating back to Valinor’s halcyon times. It had never quite been friendship perhaps, but it had never needed to be for trust to develop. Erestor had always been civil, undemanding company, an amusing companion and a restful one, when events threw them together.
When Glorfindel stayed where he was, collecting his own personal drift of snow, Erestor sat down beside him, unconcerned by the lack of amenities in Glorfindel’s chosen retreat. Admittedly, he was more sensibly cloaked and booted for his walk. Glorfindel wriggled his toes; he could still feel them, so that was good enough.
“Elrond thinks you drink too much… He worries about you.”
Glorfindel tipped the now-empty bottle up. A few drops made little splotches which were quickly covered over. He shrugged. “Elrond is right. He stocks good wine, though.” There didn’t seem much to add. Nor did Erestor give the impression of needing to say more. Elrond’s message delivered, they relapsed into silence. Glorfindel found himself glad Erestor was there, but words to bridge time, and place, eluded him.
When he was wet enough, and cold enough, and had had his fill of letting snowflakes melt with their cold-hot burning touch on his face, Glorfindel led the way back to the house and found another bottle to take with him to bed.
Erestor bade him goodnight and left him to it.
*** *** ***
“Erestor, we are not just going to let him go on drinking like this,” insisted Elrond, indignant at what he mistook perhaps for indifference.
Erestor did not correct him. “What do you intend to do, then? Are you going to stop him?”
“I thought you could. It’s you who know him, after all.”
“Know him? You really think that, Elrond?” Erestor gazed, surprised, at Elrond.
Glorfindel had been through what no-one here had experienced. Who knew what he remembered from his time dead to the world? And who here could imagine what his last battle had been like, or knew how long ago, or how recent, it seemed to one so mysteriously returned to this side of the Sea?
“Do you realize how old he is, Elrond? He is older even than I know.”
“But you are old, Erestor! You came from Valinor and lived through all those centuries - surely you are as aged as he?”
Erestor smiled. “Well, I am old, but not as he is. Not old as one who has seen the earliest of times…” He fell silent then, abstracted. He was half aware that Elrond wanted to question his train of thought, and fluttered a hand to delay him.
Erestor had the germ of an idea. Slowly, he said, “Elrond, can you trust me for a while? I may not know the answers, but of this I am sure: right now, he needs to make his own choices, including what company he seeks out and how much he wants to drink. Give him time, is my advice, if you must have it. I do have one idea to try…”
There they left it, for a time.
Elrond desisted in raising his concerns, and Erestor left Glorfindel to his own devices for the most part, though he kept intermittent contact - a hello here and there, the occasional game of ducks and drakes, the odd long walk over the high scarps to the north. Meanwhile, he had penned a missive, and asked a younger and more restless soul to deliver it for him. Then he all he could do was wait.
His answer, when it came, arrived in person…
*** *** ***
“It’s freezing out there,” said a new voice, one with accents clear enough to cut across the crowded room. A piercing pair of blue eyes scanned the faces before him. Long fingers flung back a hood, as Erestor and Elrond hurried to greet this visitor.
“Celeborn! Welcome. Well come indeed!” Elrond glanced at Erestor, and hesitated a fraction. “What brings you here?”
“A visit to old friends, if you will have me - that is if you have room for yet another body among such a throng. A corner will do…” The solemnity of his face was belied by his eyes, which were lit with gentle irreverence regarding his own status.
Elrond snorted. “We are not so hard-pressed for space. You shall stay as long as you please, and in proper comfort, as you well know!” He looked again at Erestor, and made his excuses; clearly, they had much to say to one another.
Erestor ushered Celeborn toward a fire and pulled up a short bench before it. There they sat, lit in the glow of the flames. Pale hair, tossed back from his face, hung from his shoulder, burnished first red, then gold, in tricks of the shifting light. Slender hands warmed themselves in the heat, but already the two elves had their heads bent together, deep in talk.
They were still there, much later, when Glorfindel wandered in. They had finished their earnest conversation and were sitting desultorily exchanging a word now and then, but mostly listening to the music others were making. Celeborn, all attention, watched as Glorfindel fetched himself something to drink and settled out of the way, joining, but not making himself part of, the gathering.
Lórien’s lord looked at Erestor, and raised his brows. “I do see what you mean. He is changed…”
“Were any of us not changed by the burdens of that Age? And to find himself here, no matter what has passed for him in the interim - to be so far from all he knew as home…”
Celeborn was listening closely, but it was Glorfindel his eyes rested on. “We were all changed, but we have travelled with the years. Ours has been a gentler chance to be reconciled; or if not gentler, surely less wrenching.”
He added more softly, “You did right to tell me of this, Erestor. It was well done.” With that he stood, and turned more than one head as he left the fire, perhaps for reason of his grace alone, or perhaps it was his blue eyes and silver-blond hair. Maybe it was simply his presence, for this was a lord who would be noticed even if no-one knew who he was, though everyone here did know who he was - or thought they did.
Celeborn, as Erestor was aware, had never been an easy elf to know, and the Sinda had become still less so after the tragic fighting that sundered the peoples of Middle-earth, before a larger strife sundered the world itself. Celeborn was, however, very easy to trust, and as Erestor watched his progress, he felt himself relax in hope for their strangely-come lostling.
Elrond came over to stand beside Erestor. “Why Celeborn?” he breathed, apparently fascinated by the Sinda’s otherworldly grace.
Erestor sympathized. It was not that Celeborn seemed out of place here, but rather that he brought a sense of his own power with him, not on show but out of sight and intrinsically part of him. Somehow, there was an ancient feel about him, as if the elder forests and his own life force had mingled, and in mingling, merged.
“Instinct, really,” answered Erestor, giving Elrond less than half his attention. “They knew each other, before…”
“Before? In Doriath? But that cannot be, surely.” Elrond rejoined, puzzled.
“Long ago, before any of our people had left these shores, they knew each other.”
Erestor was not the only one who fell quiet, as Glorfindel straightened up, open-mouthed in surprised delight before smiling wide. Graciousness had never abandoned him, even in his earnest pursuit of solace in Elrond’s wines, but this was one visitor for whom mere courtesy was clearly redundant. He set down his cup and put both hands out for Celeborn to take while they gave each other the kiss of greeting.
When they let go of each other, Glorfindel gestured toward the door, and with Celeborn’s ready agreement, they took themselves away from the public environs.
Erestor waited for questions, but it was a few seconds before talk in the room resumed, and longer before Elrond himself spoke.
When Elrond did summon his thoughts, he said with quiet conviction, “It seems your idea was a good one. My thanks…” He squeezed Erestor’s shoulder by way of relieved emphasis. They said no more, content to bestow a similar discretion in their conversation as the privacy the other two elves had sought by their departure.
Time would tell, and time was, perhaps, at last on Glorfindel’s side.
*** *** ***
“Celeborn, how do you come to be here, of all places? You are still wearing your cloak - you’ve just arrived?” Glorfindel looked around the empty hall, as if wanting to conjure from the air anything Celeborn might want, or need, after such a journey.
Celeborn studied the strong face, the large eyes more green-flecked than his own and so a deeper shade altogether, and the creases between the long eyebrows. Glorfindel was unambiguously pleased to see him, but shadowed in spirit, his visitor thought. He knew from Erestor’s letter how things had been going.
“I’ve just been here long enough for Erestor to dry me out, warm me up and ply me with a drink or two, and some food. I’m very well, my friend. And you?”
Wryly, Glorfindel answered, “I’ve been plying myself with a drink or two, as well. They take good care of me here, but…” He shrugged and then in a brisker tone, he asked, “Erestor hasn’t shown you to a room? Let’s sort that out first, then.” And with an efficiency unlike his absent expression before while downing his third cup in the hall, an expression which Celeborn had noted with some concern, he arranged with some of the household for Celeborn’s pack to be brought in, and for comfortable quarters to be assigned.
That done, and Celeborn declaring himself very well satisfied, they sat in the guest-chamber and took stock of each other.
Glorfindel was the first to speak. “It has been so long, old friend. Such a long, long time…”
“Even as we reckon it,” Celeborn agreed, pensively. “And with so much that has happened in the meantime, I cannot imagine how strange this must be for you. You know the histories? Since you were last this side of the Sea? Erestor says you have been here long enough to become familiar with the tale of the years, and all their toll.” The words felt strange to utter, for the reference to Glorfindel’s curtailed life and what followed was to conjure the most personal of wartime strife, and to bring to mind its failures as well as its successes.
“I know them,” said Glorfindel, briefly. Frowning, he touched his head. “I know them here, clearly enough.” Touching his chest, his face showed his pain, “But here, I cannot take it in. I can hardly believe what I saw with my own eyes, let alone what are to me mere tales. Beleriand is gone, and so many of our kin besides, in the history of that Age. Celeborn…” Glorfindel, in his utterance of Celeborn’s name, hid nothing of his confusion, and nothing of his grief, either. He broke off.
He looked around the room. “Can we go out? Do you mind, in the cold?”
“It will be like old times,” returned Celeborn, serenely. “I can always dry my boots out a second time…”
“Or borrow a pair,” Glorfindel offered, clearly pleased with the prospect of getting away from the house.
Was it the four walls, wondered Celeborn, or all the people? Or just that Glorfindel always had been wont to seek wide horizons? The woods had sufficed for himself, in the end, though there had been a time when he, too, had hovered on the brink of an earlier shore and looked toward a promised land.
That land, no matter what its promise, revisited on his death, had not brought Glorfindel peace. Back he had been sent, to find his answers. For what reason this unprecedented return had been ordained, Celeborn did not know, and did not ask. Glorfindel himself was his focus, not the workings of the Valar, or Eru, or even of fate, if ever such a thing played a part among all the rest.
He had wondered about that, more than once, as he walked the woods by night. He gave himself a little shake. He was growing as pensive as Glorfindel. It was Elrond’s woods he would walk tonight; he would walk them in the snow, and Glorfindel would have room to breathe.
“Boots,” he said, “Yes, lend me a pair, of your kindness.” Thus, when they left the house, they were shod and clad for the weather, though their minds wandered far afield as they walked, to warmer climes, when clothes of any kind were all new to them.
*** *** ***
Glorfindel looked sidelong at Celeborn. “I’m amazed to see you, truly. Erestor asked a lot of you, to come for my sake. I’m amazed,” he repeated, shaking his head.
He led them along the valley bottom, where the river, icy at the edges, still ran swiftly in the middle, and where the trees grew thick and tall. They passed quietly through the night, only bestirring a ground-roosting pheasant along the way to rocketing alarm. The pheasant startled them as much, and they laughed, and carried on, their voices travelling across the snow like heralds going before them - only their talk was of the past, not the future. It was Glorfindel who mostly did the talking, sporadically, as if words welled up from cloudy waters finding a direction by the light of the stars now that the clouds were passing.
The air grew colder, but neither minded. Celeborn listened, knowing this was what Erestor had brought him for, but he would have done so in any case and gladly. This golden-haired elf had trod the banks of the Cuiviénen with him, naked together in the warmth of their birthplace, and after that, they had travelled the breadth of the world in each other’s company. Oromë had led them in those days, and they had never yet seen snow, or ice. They had never dreamed of so much water as the Sea, and it had left them breathless when at last they reached it. How many years had that journey taken? There was no measuring it by years of the sun. Only the stars had revolved in the heavens and they had been clock and light alike for them.
Their arrival at the Sea was by any count a great passage of time after their Awakening; long had they tarried in the woods, content.
They had tarried too on the Shore, and when Glorfindel left, and Celeborn had stayed, it was the end of an era for them both, as surely as the passing of any Age reckoned in the histories. His mind had wandered, and he touched Glorfindel’s arm, interrupting him.
“It is very good to see you,” he said, simply, staying them both in their tracks. “It is very good to see you…”
Glorfindel stared at him, breath suspended for a moment. When his eyes glittered, it was not perhaps just the first flakes of a new snowfall. “The world was different then,” he answered, shakily. “And it is different again now than Gondolin, and before that, our Crossing and the years that followed. So much of fighting. Too much, and yet necessary. This land was never made for so much blood-shed.” He glanced around. “It is too beautiful for all we brought to it.”
Steadying himself, he carried on, more thoughtfully now than impassioned. “Valinor was oddly strange, wonderful and magical, but even then - I missed the rivers and forests we had known, you and I. I was glad to return, desperate though our cause was.”
“And now? Are you glad to be here a third time?”
“I suppose - yes,” said Glorfindel wonderingly, looking around him anew. “Yes, I am. But to find so many have died, so much destruction wrought - can you understand? I’ve behaved badly, I suppose, but to see it gone, all the west, drowned, and they tell me first drowned in fire, before the ocean came to wash it clean at the last.”
He gazed blindly into the trees, and said more softly, “And now I think I face another trial and of what ilk I do not know…” He laughed, painfully. “Why else would They return me here, Celeborn?”
“Who here would believe it, do you think, if I told them I am afraid? Their living legend, their mystery visitor, sent by the Valar themselves?” He stopped there, and when his eyes rested on Celeborn, they were no longer shadowed, but showed the heart of his cares. He had already made so many new beginnings, but this was the first one that Glorfindel had feared.
“Was it so very bad,” Celeborn asked, “in Gondolin, at the end?”
Glorfindel nodded. “Oh, yes. It was terrible.” He said no more, but Celeborn thought that he might, in time.
“So here we are, with a new future before us all, and still the past dogs your steps, is that the size of it?”
Glorfindel laughed, more lightly this time. “Yes,” he said, with more assurance than pain. “Yes, and what is coming, we will need to be ready for, I think.” He paused, and then summoned light, which coalesced around him. Celeborn drew in a sharp breath. It was beautiful, and yet awesome, and it removed Glorfindel from the realm of the ordinary with no mistake.
“Once, the Trees could impart power to those who beheld Them. And I have been returned with that same power. Hard times are coming, I think, and I don’t have a single clue about what I am meant to do.”
They were still standing in the cold, unmoving. While both of them pondered the riddle, of one accord they moved on, silent until they found the rushing waters at the head of the valley, where a fault in the sheer rock let the flood through. On the path beside the steep channel, the river’s endless fall deafened them, but still they stood and listened to its song.
“Do you remember the Falls of the Cuiviénen?” Glorfindel asked, drawing Celeborn back from the edge of the height so they could talk in the relative quiet. “The river stored up endless mysteries for us to find, and we came upon each one in such wonder.”
“As when Oromë found us gawping at the hippopotami, when they emerged from nowhere like gods of the river, huge and mysterious?”
“More like mud gods,” retorted Glorfindel.
Celeborn laughed. “Oromë came screaming down upon us to get out of the water and we stared at him and the hippopotami stared at us - and then one of them opened its mouth to yawn…”
“And we scrambled for the bank, water flying everywhere while those great hulking animals deciding whether elf offered a tasty morsel! How could I forget? Everything was new, in those days. Every day was a discovery.”
Celeborn pinched his cloak between finger and thumb. “Do you remember Oromë trying to teach us to spin, and weave?”
“We had to follow the wild sheep and pick their wool from the bushes, as I recall - and the rams would chase us away if we got too close. Even the flat of those horns left prints for days. They sent me flying.” Glorfindel rubbed his backside in rueful memory.
“Yes, but when we did scavenge a pile of that wretched, wiry hair, Oromë tried to spin it as he had seen it done, and was so puzzled! ‘But it looks so easy,’ he said, and took himself off for lessons once he got over his pride and admitted he was getting nowhere but knotted into hopeless wads of the stuff.”
“We couldn’t care less. There was never any hurry,” smiled Glorfindel, “except when we were running away from things. I can’t remember us being bothered about clothes in those days.”
“We ran away from so many things, didn’t we? Snakes, hippos, crocodiles, tigers…”
“Running away, or hiding,” agreed Glorfindel. “Those tiger cubs bit to the bone and when the mother found us trying to play with them, that was almost the end of some of us.”
“We learned to run fast, and climb faster,” said Celeborn, too solemnly, and then they both broke out laughing. “Isn’t that why we grew interested in the business of clothes? So much more comfortable than scratches from bushes and bark, or sitting bare on muddy leaves.”
Glorfindel glanced at Celeborn. “It wasn’t all running away, was it? There was so much to wonder at… Dragonflies the size of birds and birds the size of your thumb.”
“We learned about ourselves, too, and each other. We were curious about everything.” Celeborn appraised his companion, smiling slightly to see him looking less solemn. “Those were good times, don’t you think?”
“Simpler times,” answered Glorfindel, but when he sighed, it could have been as much in remembered pleasure as with sadness.
Celeborn’s smile broadened. “Come now, old friend. Only simpler?”
“Simpler,” restated Glorfindel, firmly. Then he looked sidelong and laughed at the other’s expression. “Oh, very well - simpler, sensuous, stirring, stimulating - are you satisfied?”
“Not quite,” said Celeborn, openly teasing. “Not yet.” More seriously, he made his point. “You, of all the people I have ever known, were made for joy.” He hesitated. “As for fear, perhaps the time to ready yourself has been granted on this side of the Sea? I am thinking that I might stay awhile. If you can put up with my company?”
Glorfindel had a smile playing round his mouth which refused to quite go away. Now it spread to his whole face. “Nothing would please me more. Perhaps you might be of a mind to revisit some more of the past, and those explorations you were mentioning? About each other, you were saying? I will be in need of some new interest, if I desist in testing Elrond’s hospitality. It would not do to drain his reserves quite dry.”
“You terrify me. Am I to be this new interest? I hope you don’t propose to drain me dry, like your bottles of wine?”
“Not quite like those,” answered Glorfindel, drily.
“Perhaps we should find out just how much has changed over the years, do you think?” The mock-hopeful look on Celeborn’s face brought outright laughter to Glorfindel.
“Perhaps we will,” he answered. “Perhaps we will, though more likely, we might find some things change very little…” Linking his arm with Celeborn’s, he turned their steps toward the house.
Before they retired upstairs to explore Glorfindel’s intentions - and Celeborn’s - more thoroughly, Glorfindel took a moment to visit the hall. Erestor was still there, and Elrond. Perhaps present times were simple, too, because when he said ‘Thank you,’ their expressions showed very clearly that they understood and no more needed to be said.
Glorfindel led the way upstairs. Celeborn, more than willing to explore times present as well as times past, followed him.
*** The End ***