NYR 1 HAHAHAH-- I mean, yes.
The things Yuletide will do to me. I flex my writing muscles outside of my normal fandom! WHAT. Written in one sitting, this hopefully will not make Tolkien roll around in his grave (too much).
Written for Jedi Buttercup!
Title: Reunification (Yuletide NYR2008)
Fandom: The Silmarillion with references to The Lord of the Rings
Characters: Elrond, Gil-Galad, cameo by Glorfindel and even more cameo-ish cameo by "Aragorn".
Rating: G
Warnings: I haven't exactly gone canon-dipping for a while. *sheepish*
Roughly 1700 words, but I don't trust Microsoft.
Gil-Galad was an Elven King.
Men, men do not live forever.
Of him the harpers sadly sing.
They cannot choose whether or not to die. Men have fate written into their bones: they do not have to make it, as those who live forever must; instead they seem to fall prey to it. Men wish to live forever: if not in body, then at least in song, since their spirits have no known immortal home, since they do not know or inherit the Halls across the sea. Men - are men weak? No. Too strong, sometimes. They remember the wrong things.
The last whose realm was fair and free.
Imladris. Cleft in the valley; valley in the world; sometimes hole in the ground. There had been so much mockery - playful, and often two months apart, coming on paper - when it was first being built. A melancholy place, a hidden place, a safe haven, a shelter, a young place. Born in the second age, carved out by the Noldorian elves still on this side of the sea, Noldorian elves who had never seen the Light. He had called this place infantile every time news was set across the Ered Luin. Still a cave-place for the young cave-elf. "Growing", Elrond would write back. "Imladris - and I - are both growing."
Between the mountains and the sea.
They had never discussed what for. Watching the carving of the halls and the shelters and the armouries and stables disguised into rock wall and river, Elrond had more than enough reminders, in those dark days, exactly what Imladris was for. "How is your child?" he would enquire, and Elrond could sometimes, if he closed his eyes, imagine the look in those age-darkened eyes. "Is she growing still?" Laughter. There would have been laughter, if he were not across Eriador. "She is about to get up upon her feet," Elrond would write back. "Soon she will run swifter than your gulf-halved realm."
His sword was long, his lance was keen, his shining helm afar was seen.
That was then. Now the world is filled with men, and weakened men. Once their fight for eternity seemed noble and admirable; Elrond has seen too much of it now. He has seen men fall for pride. Pride. Pride bought on battlefields and in blood - it once took the Elves thousands of years to learn the worthlessness of that end, and these short-lived creatures do not have the advantage of years. Men only remember battle - not the peace before, not the carnage after.
Elrond is half-breed, one of both, but he forsook that part of his heritage long ago, in hopes of running from it. Now it toddles before him, finding its own feet once again. One day, Elrond knows, it will run swifter and farther than this realm of Rivendell. Blood will echo blood and inheritance will echo inheritance.
'Estel,' he touches the forehead of the baby attempting to eat the edges of his robe. Wide, grey eyes look up at him, momentarily distracted. Young, so young, and yet placidly aged even at six months, clutching on with tiny hands and a teething mouth. Elrond shakes his head, and picks young Aragorn up to place him on his breast, at once to hold onto, at once never to let go of, at once to cherish this one thing: hope.
The countless stars of heaven's field were mirrored in his silver shield.
Elrond knows Estel will become Aragorn will become King. If the child will be anything like his blood, he will be nothing if not ambitious.
"Imladris thrives," he had written back, that age ago. "And awaits your inspection. You will find yourself disappointed - she is fairer than Lindon."
They had joked in those dark days. Elrond does not regret it. Those letters had been protection and balm both: correspondence that brought them close over the miles and years. In the steady, flowing script that grew increasingly Sindarin as the days passed, they found solace in words and laughter and forgetfulness. It was not bad. It was not wrong. It was joy when happiness could not be found. Dark days; but from his room Elrond would read the letters to him from Ereinion Gil-Galad and remember friendship, safety and love instead of lineage, danger and fear.
But long ago he rode away.
Imladris did grow strong. It had not mallorn trees nor the calming song of the sea, but it had halls that were homely and walls that were strong. Sauron loomed, Men marched, evil destroyed; but Elrond built. Every once in a while there would be gift or blessing or praise hidden in the lines of sarcasm, wit and banter.
One year, Elrond remembers well, one year when winter came too swift and the stars (the Star) shone too cold and far away, he had woken to the sound of hooves cleaving earth, hard riding that brought a white stallion bearing a swift and hooded rider down the hidden pathways to stop right before his hall. A song of praise had come from the hidden sentries - this is an elf lord, they cried, there rides in an elf lord of old.
He remembers, with some sadness, the excitement that had surged through him, as though he were young as he had never been young: the anticipation of someone great and loved riding through his gates to meet him now instead of at a time of troubles: Gil-Galad? a question in his heart, crying out and then falling into almost-painful silence when the one who reined in his horse and slipped agile from the saddle was not a Noldorian lord, but instead one who seemed almost one of the Vanyar, with hair so gold that when he pushed the hood of his elven cloak back it seemed to spill over his shoulders as light.
The two Trees are in his eyes, they said.
The beauty brought Elrond little relief from the acute pinch of disappointment. But it did bring awe, and a letter.
'For you,' the stranger said, bowing low with a smile on the edges of his lips, as though for all the wisdom that Elrond could see in his eyes this elf was beyond true grief. 'From Lindon.'
Elrond broke the seal on the letter and read the simple lines written there: "I tired of sending you words, now I send you Elves. Or an Elf, as it may be - but you will find Glorfindel worth more than a score of lesser men, and wittier besides. He comes from across the sea, and has my gratitude for giving to you the one thing I can never bequeath: your life."
Elrond looked up. Glorfindel, rubbing down his horse with a casual air that at once clashed with the entire weight of his history, looked up. 'Yes, my lord?' he inquired, quirking an eyebrow - was that, Elrond remembers wondering, a too-flippant expression, or the habit of one who has torn down Balrogs and now lived again to tear down the walls of younger, less glorious, baffled Peredhel? Damn Gil-Galad - for not coming - and bless him - for sending this messenger instead.
'Should I not call you that instead?' Elrond replied, folding the letter in an attempt at regaining his composure (which was too obviously lost, at this point).
Glorfindel laughed. 'I? I am but a youth compared to you. I have only lived so many years.' He patted the horse on the head, sharing with it his joke.
'In this life, perhaps,' Elrond replied, trying not to scowl, trying not to laugh. Ereinion had him on this one; there was no reply that he could send back across the mountains to compete with an Elf plucked from Mandos save perhaps a silmaril plucked from the sky.
'How many lives should one live, really?' the golden haired elf retorted. 'Gil-Galad warned me that you might leave me on your doorstep all night with questions. May I have a room first?'
Elrond did not flush; he tells himself this even now, but even now Glorfindel will shoot looks at him whenever odes to the Elven King are sung, and Elrond cannot find anywhere to put his head but in his hands.
And where he dwelleth none can say
What Elrond remembers now is not the other gift that Gil-Galad sent - a ring of blue - or the council that was held, or even the gathering forces or the flying years of one age slipping into the next. He does not wish to remember either the length of swords or the keenness of lances or the dull shine of helms across black battlefields, smashing, smiting, smote.
For into darkness fell his star, in Mordor where the shadows are.
He does not choose to remember the days where the strength of men failed.
Elrond stands, and leaves his library where there are books and old papers and words re-scribed a thousand times from old letters that still bear the blue and white starry emblem of his old friend, mentor, guide, King. Estel coos on his shoulder, giggling at nothing. Hope in his hands like gold that does not yet glitter. 'Gil-Galad,' Elrond sings quietly in his ear, 'was an Elven King.'
He walks out into the corridor, back to Gilraen's rooms to return to her her son. He regrets it with supreme immediacy. Someone, it seems, is back from abroad; dressed still in riding gear and with weatherworn boots he emerges from the wilderness to plague and embarrass once more.
'My lord,' Glorfindel says, as he said an age ago before Gil-Galad died. 'That song again?'
There is a smile on his face that Elrond dearly wishes to remove, by either force or order or witty retort that cannot be found even a thousand years on. Mandos must have returned this elf from exasperation.
Mandos, Elrond realises - not for the first time, not for the last time - will return other elves, in his own time. A smile crosses his face, just around the same time Estel starts to eat his hair.
'And you?' he says to his friend, as they walk side by side. 'Back again?'
Glorfindel starts, and looks to his right. Elrond's face is smooth with innocuous inquiry. 'Yes?'
Glorfindel pauses, to look and inspect with deep, wide eyes. Then he laughs, and Elrond laughs, and they do not speak about Ereinion, or what he said, or who he was, or how he died - they remember, with fondness, with joy, with wounds that have been healing, and which will heal again one day, far from these shores in homeland, in reunification.
Written for Jedi Buttercup!
Title: Reunification (Yuletide NYR2008)
Fandom: The Silmarillion with references to The Lord of the Rings
Characters: Elrond, Gil-Galad, cameo by Glorfindel and even more cameo-ish cameo by "Aragorn".
Rating: G
Warnings: I haven't exactly gone canon-dipping for a while. *sheepish*
Roughly 1700 words, but I don't trust Microsoft.
Gil-Galad was an Elven King.
Men, men do not live forever.
Of him the harpers sadly sing.
They cannot choose whether or not to die. Men have fate written into their bones: they do not have to make it, as those who live forever must; instead they seem to fall prey to it. Men wish to live forever: if not in body, then at least in song, since their spirits have no known immortal home, since they do not know or inherit the Halls across the sea. Men - are men weak? No. Too strong, sometimes. They remember the wrong things.
The last whose realm was fair and free.
Imladris. Cleft in the valley; valley in the world; sometimes hole in the ground. There had been so much mockery - playful, and often two months apart, coming on paper - when it was first being built. A melancholy place, a hidden place, a safe haven, a shelter, a young place. Born in the second age, carved out by the Noldorian elves still on this side of the sea, Noldorian elves who had never seen the Light. He had called this place infantile every time news was set across the Ered Luin. Still a cave-place for the young cave-elf. "Growing", Elrond would write back. "Imladris - and I - are both growing."
Between the mountains and the sea.
They had never discussed what for. Watching the carving of the halls and the shelters and the armouries and stables disguised into rock wall and river, Elrond had more than enough reminders, in those dark days, exactly what Imladris was for. "How is your child?" he would enquire, and Elrond could sometimes, if he closed his eyes, imagine the look in those age-darkened eyes. "Is she growing still?" Laughter. There would have been laughter, if he were not across Eriador. "She is about to get up upon her feet," Elrond would write back. "Soon she will run swifter than your gulf-halved realm."
His sword was long, his lance was keen, his shining helm afar was seen.
That was then. Now the world is filled with men, and weakened men. Once their fight for eternity seemed noble and admirable; Elrond has seen too much of it now. He has seen men fall for pride. Pride. Pride bought on battlefields and in blood - it once took the Elves thousands of years to learn the worthlessness of that end, and these short-lived creatures do not have the advantage of years. Men only remember battle - not the peace before, not the carnage after.
Elrond is half-breed, one of both, but he forsook that part of his heritage long ago, in hopes of running from it. Now it toddles before him, finding its own feet once again. One day, Elrond knows, it will run swifter and farther than this realm of Rivendell. Blood will echo blood and inheritance will echo inheritance.
'Estel,' he touches the forehead of the baby attempting to eat the edges of his robe. Wide, grey eyes look up at him, momentarily distracted. Young, so young, and yet placidly aged even at six months, clutching on with tiny hands and a teething mouth. Elrond shakes his head, and picks young Aragorn up to place him on his breast, at once to hold onto, at once never to let go of, at once to cherish this one thing: hope.
The countless stars of heaven's field were mirrored in his silver shield.
Elrond knows Estel will become Aragorn will become King. If the child will be anything like his blood, he will be nothing if not ambitious.
"Imladris thrives," he had written back, that age ago. "And awaits your inspection. You will find yourself disappointed - she is fairer than Lindon."
They had joked in those dark days. Elrond does not regret it. Those letters had been protection and balm both: correspondence that brought them close over the miles and years. In the steady, flowing script that grew increasingly Sindarin as the days passed, they found solace in words and laughter and forgetfulness. It was not bad. It was not wrong. It was joy when happiness could not be found. Dark days; but from his room Elrond would read the letters to him from Ereinion Gil-Galad and remember friendship, safety and love instead of lineage, danger and fear.
But long ago he rode away.
Imladris did grow strong. It had not mallorn trees nor the calming song of the sea, but it had halls that were homely and walls that were strong. Sauron loomed, Men marched, evil destroyed; but Elrond built. Every once in a while there would be gift or blessing or praise hidden in the lines of sarcasm, wit and banter.
One year, Elrond remembers well, one year when winter came too swift and the stars (the Star) shone too cold and far away, he had woken to the sound of hooves cleaving earth, hard riding that brought a white stallion bearing a swift and hooded rider down the hidden pathways to stop right before his hall. A song of praise had come from the hidden sentries - this is an elf lord, they cried, there rides in an elf lord of old.
He remembers, with some sadness, the excitement that had surged through him, as though he were young as he had never been young: the anticipation of someone great and loved riding through his gates to meet him now instead of at a time of troubles: Gil-Galad? a question in his heart, crying out and then falling into almost-painful silence when the one who reined in his horse and slipped agile from the saddle was not a Noldorian lord, but instead one who seemed almost one of the Vanyar, with hair so gold that when he pushed the hood of his elven cloak back it seemed to spill over his shoulders as light.
The two Trees are in his eyes, they said.
The beauty brought Elrond little relief from the acute pinch of disappointment. But it did bring awe, and a letter.
'For you,' the stranger said, bowing low with a smile on the edges of his lips, as though for all the wisdom that Elrond could see in his eyes this elf was beyond true grief. 'From Lindon.'
Elrond broke the seal on the letter and read the simple lines written there: "I tired of sending you words, now I send you Elves. Or an Elf, as it may be - but you will find Glorfindel worth more than a score of lesser men, and wittier besides. He comes from across the sea, and has my gratitude for giving to you the one thing I can never bequeath: your life."
Elrond looked up. Glorfindel, rubbing down his horse with a casual air that at once clashed with the entire weight of his history, looked up. 'Yes, my lord?' he inquired, quirking an eyebrow - was that, Elrond remembers wondering, a too-flippant expression, or the habit of one who has torn down Balrogs and now lived again to tear down the walls of younger, less glorious, baffled Peredhel? Damn Gil-Galad - for not coming - and bless him - for sending this messenger instead.
'Should I not call you that instead?' Elrond replied, folding the letter in an attempt at regaining his composure (which was too obviously lost, at this point).
Glorfindel laughed. 'I? I am but a youth compared to you. I have only lived so many years.' He patted the horse on the head, sharing with it his joke.
'In this life, perhaps,' Elrond replied, trying not to scowl, trying not to laugh. Ereinion had him on this one; there was no reply that he could send back across the mountains to compete with an Elf plucked from Mandos save perhaps a silmaril plucked from the sky.
'How many lives should one live, really?' the golden haired elf retorted. 'Gil-Galad warned me that you might leave me on your doorstep all night with questions. May I have a room first?'
Elrond did not flush; he tells himself this even now, but even now Glorfindel will shoot looks at him whenever odes to the Elven King are sung, and Elrond cannot find anywhere to put his head but in his hands.
And where he dwelleth none can say
What Elrond remembers now is not the other gift that Gil-Galad sent - a ring of blue - or the council that was held, or even the gathering forces or the flying years of one age slipping into the next. He does not wish to remember either the length of swords or the keenness of lances or the dull shine of helms across black battlefields, smashing, smiting, smote.
For into darkness fell his star, in Mordor where the shadows are.
He does not choose to remember the days where the strength of men failed.
Elrond stands, and leaves his library where there are books and old papers and words re-scribed a thousand times from old letters that still bear the blue and white starry emblem of his old friend, mentor, guide, King. Estel coos on his shoulder, giggling at nothing. Hope in his hands like gold that does not yet glitter. 'Gil-Galad,' Elrond sings quietly in his ear, 'was an Elven King.'
He walks out into the corridor, back to Gilraen's rooms to return to her her son. He regrets it with supreme immediacy. Someone, it seems, is back from abroad; dressed still in riding gear and with weatherworn boots he emerges from the wilderness to plague and embarrass once more.
'My lord,' Glorfindel says, as he said an age ago before Gil-Galad died. 'That song again?'
There is a smile on his face that Elrond dearly wishes to remove, by either force or order or witty retort that cannot be found even a thousand years on. Mandos must have returned this elf from exasperation.
Mandos, Elrond realises - not for the first time, not for the last time - will return other elves, in his own time. A smile crosses his face, just around the same time Estel starts to eat his hair.
'And you?' he says to his friend, as they walk side by side. 'Back again?'
Glorfindel starts, and looks to his right. Elrond's face is smooth with innocuous inquiry. 'Yes?'
Glorfindel pauses, to look and inspect with deep, wide eyes. Then he laughs, and Elrond laughs, and they do not speak about Ereinion, or what he said, or who he was, or how he died - they remember, with fondness, with joy, with wounds that have been healing, and which will heal again one day, far from these shores in homeland, in reunification.