Further Tales Of Elbereth's Bounty

Title: Further Tales Of Elbereth’s Bounty – Rohrith’s Tale, Part 4
Author: Gloromeien
Email: swishbucklers@hotmail.com
Pairing: multiple OMC/OMC, Tathren/Echoriath, references to Legolas/Elrohir, Glorfindel/Elladan
Summary: This is a companion piece to Of Elbereth’s Bounty, which takes place between the action of the final chapter (16) and the epilogue, set centuries in the future. Some of the characters from OEB deserved to have their own stories wrapped up outside of the actual narrative of that tale. This particular tale, along with Ciryon’s Tale, concern the majority rites of two of Tathren’s triplet brothers.
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimers: Characters belong to that wily old wizard himself, Tolkien the Wise, the granddad of all 20th century fantasy lit. I serve at the pleasure of his estate and aim not for profit.
Author’s Note: While I think parts of this story can be understood on their own, I think it better to read the whole cycle, or at least Of Elbereth’s Bounty, to completely understand the world I’ve created and the character histories. The series is as follows: Part One is ‘In Earendil’s Light’, Part Two is ‘Under the Elen’, and the vastly larger Part Three is ‘Of Elbereth’s Bounty’.
Feedback: Would be delightful.
Dedication: To Eresse, as always.

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Further Tales Of Elbereth’s Bounty

Rohrith’s Tale – Part Four

Three Months Later

His hoarse, raving cries ripped through the cavernous hollow beneath the cascade, their resounding echoes a cacophonous symphony of keens and wails drowned out by the roar of the falls that walled in their hideaway. Moisture oozed off the teething stalactites, the mouth of the cave like the venomous fangs of a serpent poised to strike. Their hot, heaving breaths misted the chill air of this late autumn season, though the effluent spill of water trapped some humidity within, enough for a verdant tongue of moss to slither over the stone shelf, blue-tinged tendrils of lichen to snake up the craggy walls, phosphorous yellow barnacles spread like scales across the ceiling. The cushy bed of bracken massaged his back as he was pummeled into, the contrast of soothe and stab only incensing him further.

Mighty with bluster and fume as a thunder-deity soaring above the sea, Dioren clamped a mauling hold on his violet-swell member and deftly steered him, with sure, singeing strokes, through waves upon waves of sundering pleasure. His divinely inspired lover’s iron-brute shaft cleaved into his meaty buttocks, spearing manically into his core as if mining his flesh for merciful relief. His red skin blazed as if flayed by whipping, sweat steamed from his every pore. The scars, bites, and strips from their maiming foreplay sizzled, stung. The bays and howls this feverish rutting wrenched from him went beyond any semblance of elven dignity or poise; their fucking was primordial, elemental, crude as the very ore of their instinct. Yet with every thrust, every pound of that excavating erection, the gutting ecstasy of Dioren’s sex wrecked him, ravaged him, *owned* him as surely as any binding compact.

His fingers were scraped bloody as he scoured for a hold in the corrugated rock of the wall behind, his spine contorted as suffering the peredhil’s consuming passion became nigh unbearable. When the first rumblings of his climax shook through him, he quaked, then spasmed, then thrashed as if possessed by some debauched fertility god, until his back arched at an impossibly acute curve and he volcanically erupted. He spewed a fierce, scalding gush over Dioren’s sleek abdomen, which poured down the wash of his stomach such that he lost all manner of sense. With a last stab into the silken heat of Rohrith’s still seizing body, Dioren spent himself, cursing wildly at the force and impact of his blistering orgasm.

Once his lover’s gorgeous, crushing weight collapsed over him, he sucked in desperate gulps of the misty cave air. He carefully shifted them into a more leisurely spread, but hardly thought to move out from under Dioren, who already grumbled out the rough snores that announced his oncoming nap. Rohrith wrapped a loose embrace around his leonine frame and nuzzled a ruddy cheek into his golden mane in a cursory show of tenderness; the violence of their coupling would not be too easily dismissed by the trivialities of after-care.

While the steadily increasing voracity of their erotic encounters disturbed him greatly, he could not rightly forgo any opportunity to be one with his Dioren, maddened by his scorching touch and crazed by his caresses. Each second he was not writhing in those luxurious arms, he craved to be so embroiled with an unyielding intensity. Whether indulging in the torment of slow, sensuous penetration, the rigors of ardent, athletic play, or the carnivorous rapture that had just devoured him, their loving was becoming a vicious addiction. Through every chore or activity of their day, desire simmered within, such that he at times feared that he was loosing the purer tenor of his affection for his dear friend.

That their company of loyals was not appraised of the newfound intimacies of their relationship did not aid much in the keeping of his composure. Indeed, the necessary secrecy only served to bait his impetuous streak, causing him to be more willful in his demands of them, more domineering in debate, and more protective of his private time with Dioren. Their companions were quick enough to connect this covetous behavior with Dioren’s delicacy in these vital months of his peredhil development; if any suspected a more personal motive, none dared speak of it. Yet Rohrith’s grappling for the prime position within their set, which he had ever been granted regardless, only proved his own susceptibility, his own vulnerability to the irascible self-doubt that plagued him as a result of their molten coupling sessions and the strange behavior this evoked in him.

It was a testament to their honorable repute that they had not yet been caught out. After flirting surreptitiously the day long, their nights were smeared scarlet. Never had he bowed so fervently in worship of another’s glories and graces, such went against the fiery flint of his nature. Never had he given himself so entirely to another’s will, nor submitted himself to another’s dominance. His very essence, though fiercely self-controlled, was untamable. Yet time and again in their bed-play Dioren overtook him, ravished him, *had* the whole of him. Rohrith could not reconcile himself with the ease in which he was cowed by a flick of tongue, a teasing smile, a saucy squeeze. He often felt he would do anything in the name of giving Dioren pleasure, as evidenced by the frequency with which they were bedded and the relentlessness of their mutual need.

In the few ponderous moments left him, Rohrith would stare at the buttressed ceiling of his bedchamber and wonder what he had become. Perhaps he merely recognized the flaws of the elf he had been; prideful, tending to flatter himself with false pretences of power, and pining for an ephemeral phantom of a love, strident to a fault and ignorant of the damage left in the wake of his blind charges forth. Yet his malleability under Dioren’s too salacious ministrations terrified him; that his mental stability could be so beholden to another’s touch, that he could achieve fulfillment while being wholly overpowered, that… that he liked to be ridden more than he enjoyed riding.

His only consolation was that Dioren was less convinced of his own preferences and routinely urged him to vary their positions, intensity, or favored acts. That Dioren had developed into such a giving, mature, yet insatiable lover was a continuous blessing to him; he did not demand Rohrith’s obsessive regard, nor did he yet feel worthy of such meticulous attentions, no matter how he reveled in them. If ought, Dioren did everything to deserve them – concealing his desire when in company, doting upon him after their more riotous sessions, attending to his every complaint with kindness - which only endeared him more. That Dioren was only too aware of his sacrifice would perhaps delay their eventual breaking some, but not indefinitely. Rohrith had no idea how he might come to stomach such a blow, after months of hallucinatory bliss between them. He could not, however, give Dioren up, not even if his own sanity were at stake; as well might become the case.

Overall, his own naivety in this exploratory undertaking was becoming all too apparent. His earlier lovers had satisfied him, but none had been so entrapping a lust as to shackle him to some hulking slab of steel, waiting to be cast overboard by his restored lover and, after his eventual rejection, unceremoniously sunk to the ocean floor to await suffocation. He dared not think of the troubles that might beset him if the love for Dioren he thought long fled was yet imprisoned within the dank cells of his heart, lest fear provoke him into further, unadvised declarations. Best to forget the softer emotions entirely, instead feeding on the famished physicality of their coupling, whether sweet, rough, or rowdy.

Best to focus on the moment, and leave the rest to fate.

He broke from his silent musings to discover Dioren’s clear blue eyes observing him, his head perched atop two arms folded across Rohrith’s own slick chest. The tenderness that shone from those tranquil pools was deceptively sincere; though Rohrith was ever-vigilant against ensnarement, he could not entirely dissuade his cheeks from blushing. The smile that resulted brimmed with unchecked emotion, enough for him to quietly mourn the loss of their pure friendship, for he believed their cunning and complicity would be irretrievable, once their relations had ceased. The silky kiss that softed over his lips only made this eventual truth all the more unbearable, such that he was forced to pull away, to swallow back a sob.

“You are fraught,” Dioren whispered, his eyes wet with penitence. “I have been too rough with you.”

“Nay,” Rohrith assured him, rather unconvincingly. “I adored your roughness such that I crave it still. I may have taught you male-bedding, but through your own innovation you have mastered the art such as I had never conceived of. My body sings with approval.”

“Yet your soul is shroud,” Dioren countered, with no little concern. He shifted his brawny weight to Rohrith’s side, curled dotingly against him, his conversation peppered with caresses to his ear, temple, neck, and shoulder. “Think not that I have forgotten the burden you ever bear, though I know our coupling does nurture this feeling some. If you, dear one, need reminding of my gratitude, I would be more than glad to recall it to you with tender care, this night. I am not such a brute that I cannot bring your pleasure through patient, indulgent stimulation.”

“I know only too well of your talents,” Rohrith murmured approvingly. “But will you not let me attend you, this eve?”

“Tis you that are sorrowful, moren vain,” Dioren gently objected. He soothed a lingering touch down the side of his wolfine face, met the adamant black eyes with steady confidence. “Let me care for you, Rohrith. I see well how your faculties are wearied by the stress of our explorations, though you would never admit to any such weakness. Perhaps… perhaps I ask too much of even one so resilient and willful as you. Perhaps we should desist, for a time…”

“You wish to break with me?!” Rohrith rasped, his features instantly clenched with pain, though inwardly he cursed himself for his too-evident vulnerability. If Dioren had sated himself of their lust, then he must face the consequences as boldly as an enemy front.

“Nay, nay!” Dioren exclaimed, claiming his lips to calm him. Yet inwardly, he worried at how easily Rohrith was riled, how the slightest mention of slowing their ardor some launched him immediately into near hysterics. He would be twice as sweet to him, this night, doubly caring and triply warm. “I think only that we both might require some… some distance, from our fervor. My desire for you is as ever – it rises as we speak – but I am moved as much by regard as by the realities of my condition. Unless a separation is forced, I will want your attentions day and night. But for you, my darkling dear, for your peace… perhaps you should reconsider your Adar’s invitation and join their hunting party. Twould replenish you to journey awhile with your family. The forest wilds, too, will restore you, allow you to properly digest the overwhelming events of the last few months. Then you will return to me calmer, more centered… and, hopefully, ravenous.”

Rohrith had been scowling, but could not help but smirk roguishly at his last remark.

“Tis but a ploy to have me gagging for you,” he taunted. “I know explicitly of your Sinda wiles, maltaren-nin.” After some consideration, he came to see both the reason and the need for a brief respite from their voraciousness. Absence, after all, was known to make the heart grow fonder.

“As I am only too sharply aware of your stubbornness,” Dioren repeated. “Thus I will reiterate that tis in your best interests to comply, my proud Noldo companion. Else I will complain to your grandsire of sudden fits of cloying fatigue that overcome you, and suggest you be confined to the Healing Halls for a time.”

“Are you certain there is no other you would indulge with in my absence?” Rohrith raised a pointed brow, though well understood the jesting implicit in their tone. “One of the melon-muscled builders at the colony, perhaps, or some brash, seafaring paramour from the coast, come inland for a tryst.”

“I swear, your absence will torment me nightly,” Dioren promised him, his pained face in glaring earnest. “But you cannot claim all the glory. I, too, must make some small sacrifice to ensure your health and cheer. Tis the least I can forfeit without tempting madness myself, and so I must. And so I will.”

“They depart on the morrow,” Rohrith reminded him, his features fluid with tenderness. “You must indulge me with all your skill this night, Dioren, so that my dreams might sate me in your absence.”

“I will worship you the night long, dear one,” Dioren vowed rakishly. “Yet why tarry till evening, when the afternoon’s still bright and balmy?”

His ice-blue eyes shimmered with such keen desire, than Rohrith was instantly, irrevocably lost.

************************************

The last days of autumn were uncommonly lush in the woodlands to the south of Telperion. Both bountiful foliage and forest paths were colored in hues of amber, vermilion, rust, and ochre, fringed by dark evergreen pines. Though the wind was crisp with mountain chill, the air was rich with the scent of mulch. Dozy sunlight rippled in peachy and pink ribbons across the lake by which they had staked camp, the dusky cobalt of the water sign of winter’s incipient sweep down from northern climes.

The yield of their hunt had been plentiful. While Ciryon built up the fire, Tathren and Tinuviel skinned the various hares, quintails, boars, and the few deer they had caught, leaving the meaty carcasses to Brithor’s conservation treatment. Their fathers had consistently reminded them to hide their quarry in a far off cave and they in turn recalled to their overprotective elders that the shores of Aman were free of the usual, carnivorous predators of Arda. That their industrious family worked as a sacrosanct, though unabashedly mercurial, company, whether on the hunt, settling camp, or traveling through the wilds, was a source of enormous pride to its sires, who nightly nested their strapping clan by the fire and basked in the ruddy glow of their faces. When Elrohir or Legolas did speak, it was to encourage one to continue with a ribald tale, to vivify an anecdote, or to tut at some sly jest; they thrived on the warmth and fraternity between their children as bees on flower pollen.

Rohrith deeply admired that his fathers regarded their parenting success as a symbol of the strength of their bond, of the peerless feeling that still besot them. For there was no mistaking their mutual adoration, the stolen looks, stealthy caresses, wry smirks, and brimming kisses that told of their longtime complicity, in mischief and in love. This private holiday with family allowed them to both express this fondness without fear of impropriety, yet the presence of their children kept them uncommonly chaste. Though this was hardly a true stress for them, Rohrith had a new appreciation for how it must prick them some to be surrounded by relentless reminders of their cause for marital celebration and be unable to revel in such blessed fortunes.

Implicitly aware of such undercurrents in his fathers’ relationship, he was unsurprised to discover Legolas, when he was bidden fetch them to dinner, lazed against a tree by the crystalline lake, in rapt observance of Elrohir as he bathed. When still unnoticed, Rohrith stopped to observe him awhile, himself captivated by the complex, complimentary mixture of emotion in his golden father’s eyes. An effluent love was the most potent feeling within those shimmering aquamarine pools, melded with reverence, fierce respect, a drop of nostalgia, and a constant, rushing flow of desire bubbling bright. At times, the gaze was as distant as the vast expanses of ocean, as if Legolas were at once seeing his childhood companion, his friend, his first lover, his beloved, and his mate all at once; Elrohir through all the ages of his eternal life. At times, they shone pure as a cliffside beacon, luring the vessel of his heart to its tender berth within him. Rohrith could not imagine how his darkling father bore such a worshipful stare, even from twenty paces away; if a lover foist such a devastating regard upon him, he would be bowed before him to swear his heart away.

Curious, his own gaze flickered over to Elrohir, occupied with nothing more illustrious than lathering his ebony head with the syrupy liquid soap Tathren had brought, an innovation in adventuring hygiene from the alchemists at Gondolen. The even-cut ends of his velvety hair hovered above the surface, when not slithering down his bare back or over his broad shoulders. As both Dioren and Tathren, his sire was a peredhil, but his darker hue did fascinate a son so lately admiring of the differences between pureblood elves and the hybrid breeds. Not that the hallowed elf-knight of Imladris was in any way diminished by his manly lineage. If ought, the thick, black bracken that covered his taut pectorals, thatched in the cove of his arms, and stripped sparsely down to his navel was an even more potent image of peredhil virility than the wispy gossamer pelt that adorned half-elves of Sinda or of Dorian ilk. As an adolescent, he had shrewdly compared his maturing frame to his sire’s, ever-conscious of how much of his mannishness may have been bequeathed to him.

Little, in reflection, as his limbs were lithe and his skin sleek; though if in the secret moments that he did concede to himself the fact of his own beauty, it was ever-linked to his parents’ graces. He knew he had his mother’s lushness, her buttery skin, obsidian eyes, and wolfine features. Yet his luxurious raven hair, limber build, and the sheen of inner light that glistened over the whole of him was all elf-knight, the eloquent Noldor countenance given life by the union of bold Earendil and ethereal Elwing. His starlit graces has unwittingly seduced enough suitors for Rohrith to recognize how such regal characteristics were coveted by wantons, but only in the burnished stares of Legolas, Glorfindel, and Ivrin upon their respective beloveds could he earnestly recognize the font of his own comeliness, even if he instantly dismissed this trait as unworthy of one who preferred the cultivation of the mind.

When Elrohir dove into the lake’s frigid depths to rinse himself of the soap, his golden father broke from his fervent admiration and, with a curling whistle, beckoned him forth. Instead of rising, he patted the ground beside, motioning for his son to join him. Rohrith was a bit dubious as to the continuing chastity of the circumstances between his two fathers, but nevertheless heeded to his desire and plunked down, reclining against the giving bark of the tree.

“Twas a mighty stag you felled, this day,” Legolas praised him, weaving an arm around his slim waist and drawing him near. “For a sword-lover, you make a fine archer.”

“Tis Tinuviel who is the true talent among us,” Rohrith easily shrugged. “My stag was perhaps a lucky catch, but little yield against her five hares, two birds, and three fearsome boars. Her gifts in archery are fierce. She is your heir, Ada. A pity there are no more orcs to slay, for she would extinct them all from Arda.”

“I pray her talents will be put to far better use, in peaceful times,” Legolas quietly replied. “I pray that all my rabid-eyed children find completion in a task of their preference and choosing, not a quest, an irrefutable call to arms, with odds so overwhelming as to terrify even the wisest minds among our elders. I fought so that none of you would be forced to defend our people, so that we might enjoy such a golden time as this hunting trip.”

“And I have relished every second of our journey, Ada,” Rohrith assured him. “Indeed, we must resolve to steal our family away more often. Tis well to traffic among loved ones, after such harrowing times as have beset me of late. The instant we crossed the lower river, I felt such ease overtake me! I have not felt so free, and yet so secure, since elflinghood.”

“I am glad of it,” Legolas smiled softly, plucking a kiss from the crown of his hair. “Though we have struggled mightily not to interfere… your Ada-Hir and I have been rather anxious for you. By all accounts, your are experiencing a peerless time of leisure with one quite dear to you, yet… I fear all is not frolics and ravenous nights.”

“I assure you, Ada, there are ravenous nights aplenty,” Rohrith smirked, to hide his encroaching sadness. “I was startled by… the fever of it. How entirely and unyieldingly the rapture possesses you. I never thought I would… it worries me, at times.”

“The loss of self?” Legolas considered. “Aye, tis a startling thing. As ellon and as warriors, we are taught strength, implacability, and the clever use of force from our swaddling beds. A soldier’s ways become our own; in wartime, there is no place for pliancy, for exposure, for submission, yet in a lover’s bed, these elements are key to experiencing the headiest forms of pleasure, to sharing oneself with a beloved. As one who has embraced the rigors of swordsmanship to the extreme and one who tends to lead stridently on, I am not… entirely surprised that you find such sensations mildly distressing.” He thought a moment, then added: “Especially when you doubt your lover’s heart, whilst your own has been longly ensnared by him.”

Rohrith sighed, then murmured: “Your aim is ever true, Ada.”

“Then perhaps you will heed some of my longtime warrior’s wisdom,” Legolas responded, with some amusement. “Though I am hardly as accomplished an advisor as your Ada-Hir, who seems to divine motivations from the clean air itself, I know something of reservation, when embroiled in the scarlet thrall of a constant lover’s bed.”

“Go on,” Rohrith insisted, lifting his head to better read his features.

“When first your Ada-Hir and I were bound,” he related. “Though I loved him madly and we passed the years in bliss, the Shadow’s threat ever loomed over our relations. We knew even before our binding that I would be called to arms, that the very purpose of my begetting was to undertake my quest with the Fellowship. When one is bred for such a dreadful task… embracing a love with every speck of one’s soul is a monumental challenge. While I loved your father with my whole self and gave the flame of my soul to our binding… I never expected to survive the quest. I thought him the prize before my fall, the early recompense for my impending sacrifice. While I relished him and reveled in our bed… I could never indulge in thoughts of the future, as he was prone to do. In every kiss that I pressed to his lips was an urgency I could not control; if I devoured him, it was to take every last taste I could bear. Every love-act between us was shroud by the knowledge that one day there would be a last, that there was a limit to our bliss and so our rapture must fire with twice the effulgence, thrice the blaze. At times, I abandoned all sense of decency and gave myself to his most rakish desires. Though he did not mean to debase me, I allowed him past my own limitations and gave everything I had, whilst I could give it.” Rohrith had grown terribly still, his father’s words striking a sharp chord within him. “Yet my compliance frightened me. I wondered at the elf I had become, if I even enjoyed some of the debauchery we undertook together. Over time, your father saw brief glimpses of my reluctance, of my sadness afterwards, and because he is the most intuitive and caring mate imaginable, he cautiously questioned me. Twas he who advised me to live in the present moment, to forget the quest awhile, to slow the manic pace of our carnal relations and to nourish myself with gentler affections. Through patient trials, I learnt what pleases me best, and what areas might be explored in the future, once more confidence was gained. Twas not that I did not enjoy some aspects of submission, but that my stoic nature made me abuse myself for the pleasure I took and thus such acts must be performed with my delicacy in mind.”

“Do you… enjoy these acts presently?” Rohrith questioned hesitantly, stunned by his candor.

“Ever with caution,” Legolas impressed upon him. “There are nights when I crave them, there are nights when I cannot stand the thought. Now that the quest is past and I have learnt to embrace the peaceful time, I am more inclined towards daring in our bed-play, though the years after the Shadow’s fall had their own lessons for me, as well as the fraught time of Tathren’s begetting.”

“Yet ever were you supported by the constant love of a binding mate,” Rohrith noted morosely. “I am not blessed with such a luxury.”

Legolas fell silent, meticulously considering his following statements.

When he spoke, it was with winning conviction: “I do not believe that is so.”

Teeming black eyes flew up to lock with his father’s, Rohrith’s resigned and Legolas’ adamant.

“Ada-“ he attempted to object.

“Dioren is in a perpetual fugue,” Legolas remarked. “But even through such a dense fog, he saw the light of your friendship. Even through the haze of conflicting desires, he fell into your bed. Now that the mist has nearly burned off, he will not fail to mark your vigilance, the glorious aura of your heart. To whom does he run, when his stormy spells lurk about? In whose home does he reside, in whose bed does he nightly lay? Your love envelopes him in the promise of peace, of rapture, of the care he has ever longed for. Once whole… he will no longer be immune to your devastating charms. Fret not, my brave one. He will love you.” Legolas tucked a stray strand behind his pensive son’s ear, grinned like the wood-elf he was. “If he has not already suffered such a joyous revelation, and keeps the knowledge from you, lest it spoil your honey-time.”

Rohrith scoffed at his characterization of their rather molten togetherness, but could not help but essay a smile of his own. He prayed his father was not mistaken, but could not yet truly absorb such a notion, such incendiary possibilities for his uncertain future.

When Legolas’ iridescent eyes turned back to the vision in the lake, he was startled to see said vision striding up to join them. Elrohir’s silken skin still glistened with beads of moisture and his sopping hair was strewn fetchingly over his bare shoulders, as he had not bothered to put on more than his breeches. Yet he scowled mirthfully down at his golden mate, as his lissome frame was raked over by a roguish, unrepentant stare.

“Gawk all you will, bereth-nin,” Elrohir chided him, with obvious affection. “Indeed, why do you not summon all our children to the lakeside, so they might bear witness to the boldly lecherous way their father looks at his five-centuries husband in their tender presence.” After a rather Elrondian huff, he hastened to addend himself. “Verily, Legolas, tis scandalous how you appraise me!”

Both Rohrith and Legolas himself laughed belly-deep at his feint, the son wisely rising to quit his fathers before their quarrel turned severe. He also thought to assure them some privacy, as, after his husband’s rousing taunt, Legolas’ glare had gone somewhat predatory. In answer to his mischievously hectoring husband, he leapt to his feet, strode imperiously towards the smirking elf-knight, and winched such a decadent kiss into his mouth that, after his tongue had been sucked purple and their chests pressed hotly together, it nearly left him winded.

“You best advise your siblings not to leave camp for a while,” Legolas instructed his son, but did not take his wanton, dagger eyes off his panting mate. “Lest they be *scandalized* by a most distressing sight. They might especially keep from the slope over the far bank.” He mauled another kiss over Elrohir’s shivering lips, which could not quite yet form the words to object to his husband’s brazenness before their son. “Do not bother to hold dinner for us, we will have our fill of each other. We will return before midnight. Do not fear, in the blackness, the wilding sounds that might cry out; but stay among your brothers and keep your sister mirthful.”

With a final nip at Elrohir’s red mouth, Legolas led his husband off for loving. Rohrith could not help but be heartened by the fire that lit his fathers’ devotion, by the smoldering sensuality that sustained their eternal bond.

That night, he prayed with uncommon conviction that his immortal life might be so blessed.

*****************************************

Twas the icy streak of warning up his spine that woke him, the spiky, tingling sensation that pricked the elven half of his body alert. The chill air shocked him live, as he rolled over the coarse ground and grappled to his feet; though once risen he swayed brusquely, like a willow in a gale. Bare-chested and barefoot, clad in but a ragged pair of clammy breeches, he staggered over to a supple-barked elm and pressed against its slender trunk, hoping to draw some warmth from the consoling tree. Shuddering fiercely in the cold, he begged for the ancient one’s guidance, as to how he came to sleep in a bumpy bed of its gnarled roots, where he lost his raiment and weaponry, what kindly wood was this that secured him, and, most vitally, if there was any trace about of his identity.

For he did not know himself.

Another shriek of foreboding flared within, such that he recoiled as if from the lash of a whip. A wilding wind howled through the gloomy wood, braised the tender skin of his torso a violent red, as he tottered and flailed through the near toppling gusts. He drunk in gut-heaving gulps of the fetid stench of decay, of freshly flayed viscera, as the air about thickened to a treacly murk. Shadows stretched their spindly, ominous fingers out from beneath every looming bough, until he was so unnerved by the unnatural feeling about him that he fled the frigid thatch of elms and raced into the dense nest of the weird forest.

He felt keenly that some nebulous enemy was after him, that there was some lone, rickety sanctuary about, if he could only rally his confusion-clogged mind long enough to intuit the way. Yet he dared not halt his progress, for the exertion focused him; the only certitude he clung to was that to stop cold was to court an attack he was pathetically unprepared to defend. He sensed that the ghost of memory was ever but steps behind. As his extremities began to buzz, his periphery blurred and his itinerant lunges grew lugubrious. He knew that the fugue, if not the lurking threat, had caught him up. Soon he was lumbering over the mulchy grass like a drunken swain, wandering through the mist with listless arms hung about his sides, his glassy eyes despondent.

The elfling had taken full, strangling possession of him.

Although Dioren alternately hurled and stumbled about the perfectly serene woods, the true battle was being waged by two sylph-like spirits within the ephemeral, abstracted confines of his enfeebled mind. As the haunted echo of his former self fought to sing of the wintering of his first soul, the second, embittered conjuration struggled to mark his woeful refrain, to blend his too-eloquent sorrow into a sole harmony without loosing his own autumnal lament to ether, to an eternity’s awaiting. His simpering eyes saw only the Mirkwood about him, his senses shivered with the glacial frisson of impending attack. His lap felt crusted with seed, as if he’d just woke from a giddy tumble with his lover; indeed, hovering beneath the death-reek was the lofty fragrance of ederwood and waterfalls, of Hirlorn’s steady, smoldering presence at his side.

Aflight in the rush of memory, he knew again the intoxication of this first, forbidden love, an elf of the esteemed Imladrian guard who had stolen off to Mirkwood to be with him. They had met cute, that calamitous day in the gloaming woods; their unexpected reunion and their future’s promise so monumentally affecting that they had shed their garments where they stood and fallen straight to loving. He had gleefully been rid of his innocence, until the trees about – not yet ensorcelled by the shadow’s thrall – had screeched with emergency of some befouled interloper’s stealthy approach. They had dressed with scattershot haste, parted with an incendiary kiss, though neither could ever have imagined it would be their last.

Gutted with grief at his greener self’s heartbreak, Dioren slammed into the carcass of a fallen oak, doubled over his quaking legs, then vomited a bilious spew up from his very innards. This vicious purging allowed him a moment of clarity, a frail hold over his spinning sense; his warrior’s instincts took instant possession. He must remain lucid within the cyclonic visions of this final, lethal spell, he must seek out the only sanctuary that might save him. To keep sane, he made a tally of the days he’d spent since Rohrith’s departure. Though he counted four, he could by no means be certain that he had not lost the last few, that he had not been slipping in and out of purposeful consciousness for the entire stretch of time. His whereabouts were itchingly familiar to him, but he could not place himself within the vale’s topography, not when memory scratched at the back of his eyes and all he saw before him was Mirkwood gloom.

The skittish flap of a bird’s wings to the west became the fleet whiz of an arrow shot by his ear; before he could blink, he was flung back to his first elflinghood.

Though not a sniveling wretch was visible, they both knew they were surrounded. The rank, oily smell of orc’s blood had soaked into the air about, their snarling breaths were too heavy to mistake, to muffle from elven ears. Hirlorn grabbed him by the arm and guided him through the trees, his gallant was too shrewd to lead heathen straight to the city gates, through they had no other means of escape. He knew, then, that they would fight and fear staked into his swollen heart, where only minutes before it had been ripe with wonder at love’s illumination. Yet Hirlorn was a fighter of some renown to have been apprenticed to Lord Glorfindel himself and Dioren’s sword was like his sixth appendage. Orc bands were rarely more than twenty odd scoundrels, of considerable opposition but hardly daunting to two young elves. As their pace quickened, his jowls pooled with the metallic taste of adrenalin, with salivary yearning for some blood sport, for the slaying of seething orc flesh.

The naming of the Balrog-slayer roused him anew from memory’s bleak cast. He must veer towards Glorfindel’s talan, he must anchor himself to the base of the stair, he must call him down from its vertiginous heights and collapse into his arms, as only he would be clever enough to slap some sense into him, if he must. Only when the fierce tremors of fast, pounding steps knocked against his drowsy face did he realize that he already clung to the quavering mithril banister, that he was huddled up on the bottom stair and that Glorfindel himself dashed down to him.

The frosty wind had blanched his skin a spectral white, though he sweat as though he was roasting on a pyre. Though limp with exhaustion, Glorfindel could barely pry him off the rail; once freed, Dioren slammed him back with a stunning blow to the chest and sprinted off into the fog only he perceived. Glorfindel, once recovered, tracked him easily enough. Catching him without causing undue harm would be another matter entirely.

An urgent, insurgent tattoo throbbed through Dioren’s veins, as he wrenched his sword from its leather scabbard and sliced his first victim in twain. The menacing horde was about them, a dozen blades of treacherous talent, but not yet swift enough to even graze one of elven speed. When not a hissing orc, but a demon-eyed man, fell dead before him, when he was glutinously spattered by the hot spray of his red, mortal blood, only then did the weight of recognition crush into him. The brigands had disguised their scent, drenched themselves in orc innards to fool the elven patrol sure to investigate the bludgeoning of two hapless younglings, though Dioren’s sword had yet a slash or two in protest of such a tragic outcome. Indeed, though he could not guess at what incited the men to act so witlessly against them, he had not time to mull over this strange circumstance as he dodged, stabbed, and blocked their hacking blows, every muscle in his strung body poised to mangle, maim, and murder. Yet even though he would rather be gutted by these turncoats that see Hirlorn fall, the mannish half of him mourned the needless killing of his own kind, tensed at the thought that the very mortal ire that fuelled their fatal blows now spurned him on to vengeance against them.

A cry rang out amidst the spits and growls of the battle, his name was cursed aloud. Some black-cloaked creature, more wolf than man, roared as he swung his venomed blade at Hirlorn, lopping his very head from his neck in a suffocating instant. His lover’s body, which he had smoothed so reverently over just moments before, spasmed and writhed as it slumped over, the severed head fixed in a look both fevered and forlorn. The army froze in rapt witness of their captain’s action; Dioren gaped in sundering astonishment, unable to speak. He sank to his knees, as the chieftain stalked over, towered above him, his face yet shroud by the inky hide of his cloak.

When the hood was cast off, when his wiry yellow braids snaked down, when that sterile, iron stare bore down upon him, Dioren knew he was already conquered.

“Ada,” he bleat, though it was not a plea for mercy, merely evocative of his colossal disbelief. “They told us… they thought… you *fell*.”

“I owe you naught but abolishment from this sacred earth, scourge of my blood,” the chieftain spat. “I have wrought you. I will rid this land of you, half-breed.”

“*Ada*,” he challenged, to provoke him further. He was nearly desirous of death, of the lethal swing of his broadsword, if only to brand this man the monster that he was in the eyes of those allied to him. “I am your child. I have done you no harm! Ever have I struggled-“

“No wrong?!” he simmered, but would not bother to boil for one so base. “We come upon you glutting yourself in elven perversion, flagrantly mating with one of the snobby starchildren, a *male* of the species, and you claim no injury upon the High Clan of Dunedain which sired you?!”

“How did you come to be so sick with hate?” Dioren asked, with feigned innocence. “You showered me with warmth, ere I grew to infancy; Nana told me so.”

“That wretch is a sorceress,” he snarled. “And you are the spawn of her seduction, her treachery! Be gone from my sacred earth, you hopeless thing! Go to Mandos, and wait for doomsday, for he will keep you till the world’s end!”

He was so fired with anger, he did not feel the strike that slew him.

The clutch of Glorfindel’s arms seized around him, then all was black.

***

With a grunt of frustration, Rohrith worked the head of the arrow loose within the torn flesh, then dug out the crimsoned flint. The terrified fawn twitched and buckled, unconvinced that his attacker had now become his rescuer. A gush of blood spurted up, streaking down his flank and staining his trembling hide. Rohrith stroked a gentling touch down his long back, marveling at the downy softness of the pelt even as he struggled vainly to soothe the wounded creature. He ripped off a swatch of leather from his own raiment to staunch the bleeding, though the fawn continued to mewl in panicked protest.

Rohrith hummed a lilting childhood lullaby, as much to comfort himself as the tense animal he had struck down. He prayed Elbereth would forgive him this injury to one too young to prey upon. The Valar allowed the hunting of mature stock for their survival, even for some savory meats to please them, but not the witless strike upon one of such tender age. He did not rightly know what had come over him. He had been stalking a fat, testy boar, to practice the technique Tinuviel had just that morn improved in his bow-handling, when the woods about him had grown sinister, strange.

Loosing sight of the boar, he had crept stealthily about the wilds, alerted to the slightest quiver of leaf, ripple of grass, or breath of wind. He had been mightily unnerved by the feeling of acute devastation that had gripped him, an emptiness such as he’d never known before. The loneliness of the forest haunts was echoed by the hollow within him, as if the viscous flow of his blood had stilled and his bones had been cored of their marrow. He had wafted, phantom-like, through the stark winter trees, until what he’d thought was a flash of skin had livened him. That the marauder was more fleet than an elf, that there were no brigands in the woods of Aman, had not registered in his reason-flown mind, so bereft had he been at the absence gouged within him. Instinctively, he’d shot at the intruder, had been aghast at his error when the fawn fell with a dull thump to the forest ground.

The creature’s movements grew sluggish, its eyes wandered, its hide stiffened. Nearly choked with remorse, Rohrith wrapped his arms around the fading fawn and begged its forgiveness in a quavering whisper. He poured every last ounce of the warmth within him into the dying animal as its body laxed and its whimpers ceased, his tunic so soaked with violet gore that it appeared some epic battle had raged between them.

Twas thus that Elrohir discovered him, some time later, still entangled with the fawn’s leaden carcass.

The elder guessed quickly enough what had transpired, though it was not like Rohrith to shoot so foolishly. Legolas had judged their brashest son fairly heartened by their quiet conversation the previous afternoon and it was unlike his husband to mistake in such conclusions, especially where their children were concerned. Yet the image before him was so tragic, Elrohir prayed it was not some onerous portent.

With a firm but caring grasp, he pulled his grave-faced son from the fallen fawn, weaving a steady arm around him but wisely choosing not to coddle him outright. The symbolism of the mistake, as well as the empathetic nature of Rohrith’s reaction, spoke volumes of his vulnerable state of mind. He was relieved to see his son had not wept; his face was sallow with regret, but his cheeks were clean and pale. His weariness was palpable, almost fierce, and in no way the fault of the deer’s slaying. The worried father had not before reckoned how the burden of Dioren’s care, how the weight of Rohrith’s feelings towards him, might so perilously quash his resolve; he had thought his love as sustaining as it was draining, but his grieving over such a minor fault caused him to suddenly believe otherwise. Yet all he could think to do was stand by him, hold him upright, keep vigilantly by his side; as he had done with Elladan so many centuries ago.

“I must build an altar, and offer him as sacrifice,” Rohrith decided morosely. “Do you think tis proper, Ada, to do so?”

“Better that you consume him,” Elrohir remarked, never one for ornamental piety when some use could be made of a kill, however accidental. “His hide will make a fine swaddling blanket, and his flesh will be a rare treat. I have not dined upon fawn since my days in Rohan. Elladan will be quite jealous!”

“They feast upon such younglings in Rohan?” Rohrith asked, incredulous.

“They eat whatever they kill,” Elrohir explained. “They had not the luxury of sacrifice, not when scrounging for whatever quarry they could lure into the open grass. We are far more privileged than they, which is why we should not waste him. You may glower over your meal if you wish, ioneth, but the rest of us will marvel at his succulence. We are on the hunt, after all; our intent on this holiday is to provide for our people. If we mourn him, then we should mourn them all.”

“Well reasoned,” Rohrith murmured, still beset by guilt. “Will you help me carry him to camp, Ada?”

“I would be most glad,” Elrohir assured him, with a heartful squeeze. “And if you will all attend us, your Ada-Las and I will recount to you, by the fire’s glow, of our times in Rohan.”

“I confess, you have intrigued me,” Rohrith essayed a smile, burrowing further into his father’s warm embrace. “Hannon le, Ada, for your wise counsel.”

“Tis *my* privilege, nin-pen-ind,” Elrohir fondly responded, cinching his hold upon him.

Yet he feared his son was still not completely out of the woods.

***

Elladan parted the diaphanous curtains, unlatched the rickety shutters, and eased the tinted pane of the window open. A frigid wind whisked into the stuffy bedchamber, refreshing the stale air with the cottony scent of snow, though none had yet blanketed over the forest ground of crisp leaves and brittle branches. Even at such a late hour of the afternoon, twilight descended as blithely as a filmy brume over the vale; her smoky grays swathed around sage Taniquetil, heralding the winter season.

An elongated exhalation sounded from behind, as lungs drank deep of the cleansed air. The pale figure snugly wrapped in the woolen sheets of the bed grappled out of his cocoon, though in the dusk one could hardly tell his ivory skin from their blanched material, nor his spill of brilliant gold hair from their gossamer fringe. Not wanting to crowd his patient, Elladan loomed by the window and watched the night drift down, the ghostly hollows of the forest beyond always held for him a gloomy splendor.

“Rohrith?” a hoarse throat questioned from the bed.

Dioren struggled to work himself out of the cloying sheets, but was too out of sorts not to be confounded by the endless lengths of white on white. The elf-warrior went to him, brushing a soothing hand over his brow and urging him to recline back into the plump pillows. He perched on the edge of the mattress, wanting to observe his charge awhile before deciding on the state of his wellness.

“Nay, tis Elladan,” he announced himself. “Rohrith is yet on the hunt, with his family.”

“I am glad of it,” Dioren smirked tentatively, both at the thought and at the steadying arm planted by his side, the other still occupied in warming him with tender, patient strokes. With eyes still muted by sadness, he met Elladan’s own quicksilver pools, and was heartened. The black memories still rippled beneath the surface of his calm, but he was now master over them. Yet he was not too proud to request comfort when he required it, and beseeched his guardian with a timorous look. “Would I be too brash… might I ask of you…? I know I am not your child, but…I would like if you…if you would hold me.”

With a wide, effluent smile, Elladan nodded, then shifted his position to allow Dioren to lean against him and be enveloped by his arms. The peredhil sighed longly once berthed there, as if sinking into the embrace of a fond parent. The poignancy of the moment was not lost on the elf-warrior, who had fathered too many babes not to recognized the telltale signs of the need for succor. He was glad to see Dioren was fairly centered, if yet somewhat unnerved from the violent assault of his memories earlier; though when one was subjected to the revivified recollection of one’s own slaying at a father’s hand, twas a marvel he had weathered the trials so well and was indeed blessed by some newfound serenity. Still, a proper caretaker could not be too cautious.

“How do you fare?” Elladan gently inquired.

“Well enough, I suppose,” Dioren estimated. “When are they expected to return?”

“In three days time,” Elladan informed him, not needing to clarify whom exactly was to come home. “Legolas just this hour sent word by dove-courier that they will be extending their stay a day or so. His letter could not have been more glowing nor descriptive, his very script rounded so officiously one would think the missive a formal writ. It seems Tinuviel was especially keen on the hunt and they require another horse to transport their yield. We have charged Orinath with the task he was only too eager to perform; he left just moments ago, proud as a peacock. Between the beaming of one terribly pleased father and one madly admiring suitor, the forest will blaze with a bonfire’s light. We will mark their approach from miles off!”

When Dioren chuckled wryly at his jesting manner, his stomach growled in protest of its cavernous state. This only made him laugh all the more fervently, a sign of health which Elladan secretly relished.

“It seems my hunger can also be heard at twenty paces,” the peredhil grinned sheepishly. “My stores may need some replenishment.”

“It bodes well, then, that I have come to fetch you to supper,” Elladan gamely remarked. “If you prefer, I will have a servant bring your meal here, but if you feel well enough to join us at table, you are more than welcome. Twill be a merry party, as my sons will be in attendance, and you will be in heartful company, as they are both pining over their absent beloveds: Tathren on the hunt and Miriel visiting with her Naneth in Tirion.”

“They will cheer me well, then,” Dioren acknowledged, as Elladan helped him to rise.

His stance was surprisingly solid. Indeed, if one did not know of his earlier torments, one might believe him the very vessel of elven grace and mannish fortitude, so radiant was he. As he changed his bed-clothes for his tunic, Elladan could not help but remark his resemblance to Glorfindel; though where his Balrog-slayer was gloriously golden, Dioren was incandescent with the shimmer of starshine. Once the young peredhil was readied, he offered him his arm.

He was equally surprised by his sudden hesitation.

“I know not if you recall, Elladan,” Dioren timidly began. “But we have known each other before… in the earlier times of my life.”

“Have we?” Elladan started, unaware that their paths had crossed in Arda.

“Twas long ago,” Dioren explained. “We were both but striplings, barely past infancy. I suppose I remember that time for… for your kindness to me. My Naneth and I had just escaped from the enslavement of my Adar’s Dunedain band. We sought shelter in the Homely House, whilst she sent letters to request our safe passage home, to ask her kindred for too-necessary aid. Lord Elrond was most glad to offer us sanctuary, as I was a peredhil. He must have known all these years… must have kept his tongue so not to wrongly influence my progress.”

“Twas you, Dioren?!” Elladan exclaimed, astounded at the revelation. “But my friend’s name was… Derion. Ai-ya! I see it, now.”

“The Lord thought it best, for our protection, that we conceal our true identities,” he elaborated. “Imladris was open, in those times, to a great many tradesmen, any of which could have unsuspectingly carried word of our whereabouts back to my Adar’s kin.” He paused a moment, realizing how perilous such knowledge had indeed proved to be. “Though I had ever had my Nana’s love, she was the only comfort to me among the Dunedain. I was shunned by the other children, hated for my strength and though odd for my slow development. When I came to Imladris, friendship was unknown to me. If not for you and Elrohir… do you recall the games we would play? The mischief we wrecked upon the valley! I think your Lord Adar was only too glad when my grandsire sent an escort from Mirkwood… but that summer changed my life. I would not have flourished so among the Sinda people without the friendship you so effortless bequeathed to me in that troubled time. And now… you gift me again with your support, your constancy. Your entire family has been… such a blessing to me. I would quite honestly have been lost without you, and I must thank you for... for each and every kindness.”

Elladan blinked dumbly, still overwhelmed by crude shock. The ways of the Valar were unremittingly mysterious, that he should be thusly reunited with his childhood friend, even one he had enjoyed for only a season; that said friend should be a charge of his, beloved by his very nephew! His mind reeled at the peculiarity of the circumstance, of the sheer elvishness of the situation. Little wonder the other races of Middle-Earth had been so goggle-eyed at their ways and customs.

“Forgive me, I am yet… astounded,” Elladan confessed. “This latest spell has polished up your memory to a sterling acuity, mellon-nin.”

“I have broke through, at last,” Dioren told him, with no little pride. “I know I am not alone in my struggles, that the gloom has cleared, that the woods I now inhabit are awash with sunlight and the elves that surround me are true. I know of myself; who I have been, who I am, who I must strive to become, at all costs.” He grasped Elladan’s arm with a sure grip, his sharp eyes alight with new confidence. “I know that I am loved.”

As the clang of the supper gong echoed through the hallway beyond, Dioren latched arms with him and lead his long-lost friend to table.

*********************************************

On the eve of their return to Telperion, the chill lady winter had skipped through the vale, sweeping her billowing skirts over vast fields and forest ground. Overnight, the paths, roofs, and woodland hollows were tucked snugly under a downy blanket of snow, their fringes bejeweled with spindly icicles. The heels of his fleet boots emitted a muffled crunch and his bulky cloak flapped furiously behind, as he strode across the glade towards his bough-berthed talan.

Ciryon and Ivrin strolled leisurely a few paces back, huddled conspiratorially together, still gooey-eyed from their reunion. Rohrith could not reach the sanctuary of his sober apartment soon enough. Elrond had held a lavish supper to welcome his road-wearied family home, at which even Brithor had a loose-knickered serving maid to flirt with. Though his holiday had been quite fortifying, Rohrith could not help but be pricked by the constant, effusive displays of affection between the various couples in his family. His fathers, beaming with pride at the beauteous children before them, had been uncommonly demonstrative. Ivrin and Ciryon were less so, but the look of palpable relief that had overtaken the seafarer’s handsome features at their arrival had been unmistakable. Orinath had been effulgent with Tinuviel’s triumphs since catching up with them in the wilds; all were certain they would bind within the decade. Despite his true enjoyment of his younger siblings, Tathren had suffered some anguished nights away without his Echoriath’s sweetness; he had not relinquished hold upon him until their plates were served and he had no other choice but to release him. All the other celebrants were matches of star-crossed compunction: Cuthalion and Miriel, Erestor and Haldir, Elladan and Glorfindel, Lalaith and her suitor Glingal, even his grandparents flirted in their own, poised and elegant fashion.

Dioren’s absence had hit him like a hard blow to the chest.

His grandsire had muttered some excuse regarding documents of considerable import come late that afternoon from a Gondolen messenger, that Dioren had not wanted him to cut short his holiday and so was preoccupied with their revision, but this did not help abate Rohrith’s suspicions. His unnerving sense that some errant fact or essential tidbit was being deliberately kept from him by his elders, that his desolation was being calculatingly postponed until all had recovered from their tiring journey home. Ever since the fawn’s killing, he’d known within that the air about him had thickened with portent, that some bitter truth awaited him here. Who else could this involve but the one who constantly haunted his thoughts, the one who obsessed and relentlessly attracted him, the one whose succor he craved above all the loved ones collected at the Lord’s supper table.

After nearly a fortnight in the company of forlorn lovers, mooning and pining over their absent companions, Rohrith wanted nothing more than some patient, indulgent lovemaking. Not the furious throes of the last three months, but the peerless care of one who adored only him. If he had his wish, he would be greeted at the doorstep by one fretting over his whereabouts, lured with coos, kisses, and giddy inquiries into their cozy home, into enrapturing arms. They would sprawl across the bed and he would be meticulously undressed, as he recounted his adventures to a clever, inquiring mind. No longer would he have to search his lover’s face for the faintest spark of complicity, to battle against invisible, ambiguous woes, to deny himself a thousand touches, clasps, caresses in the name of caution. He would be free to love, with daring, with conviction, his heart unleashed.

The craggy wood face of his entranceway door dispelled these fanciful notions; a vacuous darkness lurked behind. With an elongated sigh, he steeled himself for the slap of stagnant isolation, hunching his cloak further about his shoulders though he was about to go indoors. He carefully pushed the door open, then knocked his boots on the step, only dreading the formless black more for its apparent endlessness.

After shutting himself in and unlacing his cloak, he was startled by a peal of droll laughter sounding out. Once vested of his weathering gear, he noted a mellow glow emanating from the common room, while the dimmer cast of candlelight flickered from the bedchamber. Following the echo of lively debate to his salon, he was stunned to discover a small company of his loyals assembled around his desk, Dioren chief among them. Rohrith loomed beneath the archway, absorbing not the familiar sight of his friends working, but the remodeled room. Dioren had taken a few liberties with the design in his absence, though these were so sage and suitable, Rohrith would not protest.

He had never been one to slave over décor, to the point where his apartment was sparsely furnished; oft judged rather puritan, if alternative opinions had held any sway. Dioren had rearranged the layout of the room so that the dining area had its own regal stature and the hearthside a plush allure, while the study was demoted to a quaint crook of the alcove. Walled off by teeming bookshelves, the nook remained spacious enough to receive a few guests, but larger groups would be forced to lounge before the fire. The documents were obviously not the only booty delivered from the chests of Gondolen tradesmen, if the russet throws, maroon carpet, ornate lanterns, and rich violet blankets that adorned the exotically colored space were any testament to the gifts bequeathed them from the southern valley. Yet these vivid hues were not garish, but cordial, as if the vivacious, hotheaded, and often impassioned nature of their debates were painted on the very seats they reclined upon. As he wandered through his own salon, Rohrith could not keep his hands to himself, testing out every supple and bristly texture for its luxuriousness.

He was so lulled by the brush of one velour throw against his cheek, that he barely registered the elated cry that rang out from the study behind, until he was tugged away from the velvety thing and crushed in the heartful embrace he had earlier craved. With relish, he drank in the cottony smell of fresh fallen snow, sunk into the blithe arms that enveloped him, the surge of feeling at this timely reconnection chocking off any last, doubtful gasps at the sincerity of his reception. Before he could even get a decent look at his lover, Dioren was culling thick, heady kisses from his too famished lips, their tongues flicking and flattering playfully.

Twas a considerable while before he remembered their friends were about, so content was he to bask in Dioren’s amply displayed affections.

He broke off quite suddenly, cheeks flaming, when he happened to steal a glance at the study and saw them both risen to greet him, though was somewhat disturbed to remark that they in no way seemed unnerved by the unprecedented show of physical ardor between their formerly chaste companions. He caught the curl of Dioren’s smirk out of the corner of his eye, as the peredhil was still molded quite flagrantly to him and was nipping flirtatiously at the lobe of his ear. Ianthir and Bregorn waited as casually as if in a receiving line at a binding rite, as if twas commonplace for their two friends to grope in their presence.

“How I have wanted for you, nin bellas,” Dioren whispered, for him alone. “Over endless nights, I played and replayed this moment, craving its fulfillment, and now that it has come I almost fear to release you.”

“Yet you best, Dioren, else our friends grow stricken,” Rohrith warned him, peeling gently away. Dioren’s hand lingered on his arm, as he bowed to their companions, though neither seemed shocked nor embarrassed by their behavior. None so much as he, at the least.

“Mae govannen, Rohrith,” Ianthir formally intoned. “We’ve had word the hunt was plentiful.”

“Twas indeed,” Rohrith rasped, still somewhat bashful.

“I, for one, am glad of your return,” Bregorn continued. “If only to see Dioren smile again. We’ve had a time ensuring his good cheer.”

At his troubled countenance, Ianthir descended the few steps of the landing and clapped a fond grip on his arm.

“Do not look so solemn!” he chided affectionately. “We guessed long ago.”

“Though we are hardly of the towering intellects standing before us,” Bregorn added. “We are not so witless as to mistake the brimming atmosphere between you for anger, or upset. The advent of your mutual adoration was made clear by autumn’s fall.”

Rohrith, for once, was speechless. He sputtered some wordless syllables, as Dioren wove a firm hold around his waist and winked saucily at their friends.

“Then you will now appreciate our keen desire for some privacy,” he remarked capriciously, to which both elves chuckled heartily. “Though I wish our leave from diplomacy could stretch on a few days, tis unfortunately not remotely within the realm of possibility, given the sudden summons from Gondolen. We will meet you, then, after noontime tomorrow in the Council Halls, to work out the intricacies of their request?”

“Come as late as you please,” Bregorn told them. “We will take the documents with us and review long into the night.”

“Aye, take your ease,” Ianthir agreed. “You both deserve some indulgence.”

After some further instructions from Dioren, they went on their jovial way, wishing them a sultry night of the most scarlet revels. Rohrith was still inwardly agape as he was lead back to the entranceway, Dioren’s fingers teasing and twining with his own. He only managed to blink away his astonishment once their companions, and the sharp chill of winter, was locked out, when Dioren foist eyes of scintillating luster upon him and claimed his mouth anew. A rough, ready tongue massaged his own into purring compliance, the sugary taste of him quite maddening. Dioren, for all his imposing frame, was sweeter, softer than before. Twas not the only change Rohrith noted in him, but he could not yet tally them into a totalizing theory, as his dizzy head was somewhat intoxicated by the molten pleasure coursing through his weary body.

“You are cowed by fatigue, lirimaer,” Dioren commented, his hot breath ghosting over his cheek. “Would you sleep awhile?”

“Nay, nay,” Rohrith insisted, not entirely convinced himself. “I will suffer fiendish dreams without your balming touch to finish me.”

“Perhaps a soak, then, would replenish you,” Dioren considered. “Shall I draw a bath?”

“Will you join me?” Rohrith queried, nibbling at his lip.

“Nay, I must tidy some,” Dioren sighed. “But I will prepare our bedchamber.”

Rohrith was again dragged along behind, as if lost in a fugue of his own. He fumbled to undress himself, until Dioren had poured the bath. He was then stripped with gleeful flair and commanded into the steamy waters, those iridescent eyes live with rapt appreciation of his buttery skin and sinuous frame. He still could not quite make sense of his lover’s ethereal grace, how his radiance had somehow been amplified during his time away. Yet as he immersed himself in the sweltering depths of the bath, he forgot all but his own withering exhaustion, the strained muscles and the aching bones that the treated waters would likely remedy.

When at last he swaggered, primped and patted into his usual wolfine swarthiness, into his bedchamber, the eloquent room was a sight to behold. Dioren had not restricted his revamping to the common room, but also blessed this sanctuary with his improving eye. What was once a plain and practical room was now a sumptuous oasis of satin, cashmere, and gauzy tulle, so opulent to the eye that he was almost roused by merely gazing upon the lush bedchamber. While moonlight streamed down in diaphanous beams from the skylight above, a panoply of candles was spread about their bed. The filmy blue sheets were of finest silk, the pillows voluptuous, the new coverlet painstakingly embroidered in a most telling portrait. A majestic reproduction of hallowed Imladris merged into a dulcet reminiscence of Greenwood the Great at the height of its splendor. Rohrith recognized the skilled needle of both of his grandmothers, which led him to question just when thought of these renovations had been conceived of.

Yet he could not long linger on such frivolous details, as a figure of pure, devastating beauty wafted out of the shadows, to respectfully present himself.

Dioren was a vision from his most burnished dreams of love. Though his majestic frame was feral with leonine potency, in the starlight he was luminous with otherworldly shine. His crystalline eyes glittered becomingly, his white-gold hair shimmered in unruly, cascading swaths. Where once a cold, distant countenance reigned supreme, a bedazzling radiance had been perfected. Nothing spectral, nor vaporous segued from this realm into the ether, he was a vital, visceral being before him: a presence, a power, a force. One that sought to snare him, one that bared him without a tug at his drooping sarong, one that moved forward with a bejeweled gaze that sought to mesmerize.

Rohrith was breathless, shivering with anticipation, but Dioren halted, tantalizingly, inches before him and pierced him with a stare of such bald worship, he thought he might spend. The air between them sizzled with promise, with vows writ only in sweat and in seed. He could not reconcile Dioren’s gentled eyes with the brute takings he had known, could not keep his own from glowing with insatiable longing for him. His cheeks burnt with shame at the nakedness of his desire, as if his chest had been flayed open and his heart exposed to one who would wring it dry of loving. Dioren simply laid a tender hand on his breast, then, for a moment of such quiet intensity Rohrith thought himself spelled, he let the constant beats reverberate through his outstretched arm, echo through the flesh, muscle, and bone of his reverent body.

A smile of such beatitude lit his starlight features, Rohrith could not longer keep still, nor rightly sane, if he was not nude, earnest, free of all inhibitions. If he did not kiss Dioren with such fever as to drive one witless, if he did not lash the flush pelts of their skin in a delirious friction, if he did not pillage the molten cavern of his mouth as if a barbarous marauder laying siege to a somnolent port. Dioren’s rumbling chuckles became ragged moans, as the length of him was fondled and petted with salacious abandon, until they were both beautifully, emphatically engorged.

When Dioren wriggled out of his arms and eagerly knelt before him, Rohrith veritably thought his legs might give out. Through the miracle of carnal intuition, he was guided over to the bed and urged to recline back on his elbows, before lips of exceptional pliancy and vigor lavished their plump curves over his violet-veined erection. He could not have been more sensationally devoured. Dioren made quite a show of tormenting him to the furthest limits of his capacity; gingerly laving a rabid tongue over his spuming tip, only to pinch him back to momentary sentience and begin his manic licks again. Rohrith was soon so desperate to shoot that he’d chewed his cheek bloody. With a wicked glint, Dioren recognized his need and, snarling decadently, swallowed him down. He spent into that gorgeous throat with a force that shocked him, his thrall lasting so that Dioren was still drawing jolts of pleasure down his thighs, up his chest, and over his clenched buttocks for long minutes after, as he trembled, groaned, and quaked in the wake of his release.

Dioren’s eyes were giving as ever, when he brushed their ruddy faces together, sipping honeyed kisses from his tipsy lips. Yet the incredible troths he whispered after were enough to incense even the surest mind to madness.

“I fear your beauty will be my undoing,” Dioren told him. “My shepherd to Mandos’ halls, if my heart is not met with equal fervor. If I cannot name you forever my own, melethron.” Rohrith nearly swooned at the impact of the doting appellation, at the very potent meaning behind his torrid words. “You must have me now, Rohrith, love me slow and deep. I want to know you. I want to burn with you.”

As Rohrith fought to digest this momentous revelation, he was rolled about even as his mouth was plundered anew, until he pressed quite hotly over Dioren’s strung, sculpted frame. Legs snaked temptingly around his waist, as his lover opened to him, ready to know him raw, sharp, braising, if that was necessary to win him. Yet the body prone before him was peredhil, not elf, whose viciously swollen girth prodded adamantly into his abdomen, gone unsatisfied since the start of their bed-play. He gazed down into eyes brilliant as the silmaril, that begged to be ensorcelled by smoldering seduction, and knew his lover’s brutish ways reformed.

He saw his heart there, shining immaculate.

The rest was scarlet, consuming sensation. The slick of salve over his brick-red member. The plunge into scalding, velvet heat. The throb and pulse of his manic thrusts, the giving flesh, the curses and cries, the effulgent surge of ecstasy between them, as their soul flames conflagrated into an ancient and primordial fire that would outlast eternity. When, after cresting for what might have been ages flowing past, they collapsed into a blissful, sated, and slightly drunken embrace, Rohrith shook such with the loss of that rapturous fire that Dioren had to swiftly drag up the coverlet and cocoon them tight within.

Dioren was proving far too amused for his liking at his mush-minded confusion, though as he placated him with naughty laps, licks, and tongue-tickling kisses, he did not protest overmuch. To ply him even further before their next tumble, he fetched them flutes of miruvor, though from whose cellars he stole the rare commodity, Rohrith dared not inquire. He saved his few questions for more pressing matters, such as the sudden, miraculous turn of events in his fortunate favor. Nor did any starry notions of romance keep one of his strident nature from putting these well-earned inquiries to his newfound beloved, once his mind had cleared enough to espouse their composition. He simply did so in a manner suited to their activities, whilst suckling the lean, muscled slope of his neck.

“Forgive me, melethen, for spoiling such a wondrous eve,” Rohrith murmured breathily against his slender collarbone. “But I must ask… what awesome reversal occurred in the last week to convince you of my worthiness?”

“*Never* question your worthiness, dear one,” Dioren instructed, his face pained at yet another reminder of the grief he had caused his love. “Twas I who… whose wits were so muddled by my tragic fate, I did not see what’s been plain since the first day of our acquaintance.” He caught Rohrith beneath the chin and lifted his face so that their dewy eyes met sweet. “That you are my intended. My salvation. Mine to have, eternally. Mine to love.”

He kissed him such that they were embroiled for quite a time, until Rohrith shook his head in protest of this diversion.

“Ever have I been yours, Dioren,” Rohrith agreed. “This is well established between us. But, nin ind, what spurned the change within you? What made you recognize, and so suddenly… our belonging.”

“Twas not so sudden as you believe,” Dioren replied, seeing he could no longer distract him from the truth of it. “I have treasured these last months as no other time in my long lives. The more fervent our desires became, the more I chastised myself for treating you so crudely. I hated that I was forced to do so for my own peace, when you would have none if I broke off our relations. Yet as early as… as before we fully experienced bodily loving, I sensed that I could never rightly break with you. That you *were* my peace. As the weeks passed, as all the beauteous shades of your character were revealed to me, I, in turn, came to understand that… that healing meant embracing my love for you. That I would not achieve oneness until I opened my heart.”

“When did certitude come?” Rohrith asked. He knew he was quibbling over details, but a sudden desperation overcame him. He had to know the toll of it, had to map out every nuance of feeling within his beloved one. “When were you sure of your heart?”

“Melethron,” Dioren soothed him. “Does it not matter that I am here? That we are coupled in love this night?”

“Aye, Dioren, quite dearly,” Rohrith conceded, his black eyes wet. “So dearly as you can scarcely imagine.”

Seeing the acuity of his distress, Dioren hastened to reassure him.

“I knew…” he exhaled heavily, then soldiered on. “I felt the first flames of it… when you lay injured at my hand. I knew that I could not survive without you; more, that I did not wish to. I suppressed the feelings swimming within me, for I could not conscience plunging you into a love relation with little chance of future, when the resulting loss might drown you. When our ‘explorations’ began, I fought against the tides of affection that swelled around me whenever we lay together, but after only a few weeks, I could no longer deny myself, no longer ignore the waves of love that broke over me when we… released. Yet still I held the knowledge close, out of fear that I might not survive the melding of my souls. If there was a chance that you might be saved by my kept tongue, then I kept it gladly.”

“But you have this night revealed yourself,” Rohrith softly challenged him, intent on his shroud face. “The threat of melding live as ever, yet your secret’s known. Seared into my skin, no less, by your most edifying caresses. Why?”

Dioren barely stifled an impish grin, savoring the moment. He kissed him once, then twice in quick succession, revving up to his climactic revelation.

“Can you not guess?” Dioren beamed, his glory lit by the autumnal aura of the moon. “My moment of crisis passed this very week, and I am better for it. I am whole, melethron.”

The cry that wrung from the darkling elf could have shattered glass, so sheer was its elation. Dioren found himself toppled anew, as hands, mouth, teeth, and gluttonous tongue assaulted him. After some shrewd gropes of his own and no end of giggles, he flung his lover over, then pounced atop him, wanting to avail him of one other development before they grew ravenous anew. He had never seen Rohrith so crazed with contentment, so absolutely gaudy with delight.

This, however, did not entirely mean that he enjoyed being held against his will.

“Let me loose!” he trilled, wiggling like an elfling beneath him. “You cannot rightly think to temper me after such a revelation! I must have you, Dioren, now that you are my very own. Prize. Treasure. Beloved!”

“Aye, and have me you shall, after you heed a small request,” he insisted.

“Which is this?” Rohrith inquired, batting his eyelashes lasciviously.

“Have me not just now, but forever,” Dioren elaborated, suddenly hoarse with emotion. “Too much pain has passed between us, too much misunderstanding and too many threats of grief to forgo our eternity for a second longer. I would not loose you for reign of the entire kingdom of Arda, melethron. Rohrith… bind with me.”

Rohrith quit his writhing, agape.

No force in this Blessed Realm, nor sage order from the Valar above could have kept him from singing out his joy; indeed, most of the vale was instantly alerted to his incendiary ravings. He ravished his beloved until the first rosy rays of dawn and well into the golden morn, claiming with explicit care and feverish devotion the love of his eternal life.

*******************************************************

Midsummer, Year 837, Fourth Age

The ancient, ageless elven city of Vinyamar sprawled out before them, its walkways, alleys, and canals swimming with opalescent glow, as revelers kitted with sparkle-lanterns and tipsy-stepped celebrants frolicked through the streets. The pinky orange flames of a cherrywood bonfire tongued up towards the violet heavens, as the last, rosy embers of sunset sunk below the far horizon. On this, the longest day of the year, even such an archaic city would not know a wink of rest, as evidenced by the ruddy aura of the view and the vivacious dancers kicking around the ritual pyre.

The High King had summoned nobles and dignitaries from across Aman to pay homage to the summer solstice in this, the eldest of elven cities; only the stoics of Laurelin had dared refused him. Threatened somewhat by Gondolen’s growing reputation among the young as the premier site of activity for this peaceful, flourishing generation of elven culture, the High Court had organized a fortnight of conferences, markets, performances, and debates, with the intent of honoring the hallows of elven history. This potent theme had attracted two distinct contingents, the veterans and the revisionists, both of whom were given equal opportunity to stage whatever display, whether artistic, intellectual, or otherwise, might best persuade their audience. This resulted in a wealth of truly phenomenal talent coming to the fore of public awareness: oldtime philosophers whose works were rediscovered, recent innovations in craftsmanship were admired by larger numbers, gifted new composers on the musical, literary, and theatrical scene were presented to wealthier benefactors. Each day’s prepared schedule was burnt by nightfall, when old and young alike threw themselves into festivities such as the venerable city had never seen before.

The most scintillating star of the High Court’s debate series and newly crowned champion of the oratory competition, one whose politics were reputed to bridge the gap between the veterans and the revisionists to move towards a cohesive vision of elven government in the imminent fifth age, observed the whirligig revels below from the lush climes of his bedchamber balcony, a pensive frown curdling his butter-skin brow. Unlike others of his relatively youthful age, the stunning grandson of the Lord of Telperion had spent the day not in attendance of any upstart theatrical performance, nor strolling the trade markets for fine-spun linens, nor trolling the galleries for that rare sculpture by an as yet unheralded artist. Instead, the young master had been shepherded through a series of secretive appointments with rulers, councilmen, and diplomats by the dozen, each courting him with ridiculously indulgent powers, capacities, titles, and offices aplenty. His dominance of the many assemblies on essential matters of morality and of justice, his patronage to only the most ingenious performers and artisans, the overwhelming evidence of his swiftly burgeoning leagues of followers, as well as his climactic speech to the High Court on the previous afternoon, had fed a frenzy such as none of the elders had witnessed since Ereinion’s coming to majority so many ages ago.

In whispered corners his loyals had even bequeathed him the second name of Gil-Romen, the uprising star, though the strong, silent, and silken peredhil who was the ethereal spirit that ever haunted his side preferred another, more familiar appellation.

Bereth.

Twas rumored among their Telperion loyals that Gil-Romen was not one single elf, but a hallowed alliance between bonded mates. That Rohrith was just the brash, keen, and fascinating front for their revolutionary partnership, that when they acted or chose it was in rapt synchronicity, that whatever decision was taken on the couple’s future residence, title, or office, the bolder one would not acquiesce without the quiet other’s compliance. Those that understood this subtlety had the greater influence, for they knew that the more cunning strategy would be to court not just the speaker himself, but his ever-present, composed and sage advisor, also his faithful husband. While Dioren had no love for the spotlight, nor for the theatrical flourish of oration, his sparse and seldom statements were weighted by the colossal respect Rohrith’s loyals deigned him. Although they were aware of only the barest scraps of fact in what had transpired between them, the trials of his early life experience had blessed him with the cachet of renown resilience, while Rohrith’s adoration gifted him with the laurel of love’s triumph over tremendous adversity. Though in Telperion their life was relatively sedate, here in Vinyamar they had taken on the pungent stench of celebrity. As such, they were nightly inundated with invitations, any banquet that boasted their attendance an instant success. Their opinions had taken on a grotesque level of import, such that they felt compelled to mock themselves in close company.

That their binding was not a pluck strained by this strangeness was a fierce testament to their love. As he wove a securing arm around his husband’s slender waist and lay a doting head on his shoulder, Dioren could not help but conjure up the florid image of the previous day’s transcendent speech to the High Court. Rohrith’s face had shone with the light of Elbereth herself, as he preached temperance among the young, patience among the elders, and unity among all elven people. He had told proudly of his mixed family, of his so oft-persecuted lineage, and had adamantly insisted that their struggles should not be in vain. He had sung gloriously of his fathers’ selfless acts of valor during the long ages of war, of how naïve those Valinor-born were to so callously forget such recent history. He had pleaded with older elves to cast away grudges, prejudices, and forgive wrongdoings in the name of their hard-won peace. Resounding through every mellifluous statement was the siren song of their shared heart; the warmth, succor, and fraternity born in their bed inseminating the fertile-minded masses through his pregnant, hopeful words.

Dioren was still so flush with feeling, he felt as blazing as the bonfire below. Their furious coupling the night before had only made their early morning, endless day of meetings, and supper invite to the High King’s table all the more excruciating to wait through, despite the need for acute attentiveness to the offers of each covetous solicitor. Indeed, he had, at times, felt the bilious surge of jealousy within, when some diplomat’s bedazzled eyes insinuated what his treacle words only underscored: a barely veiled attraction to Telperion’s brightest starchild. Fortunately for inter-realm relations, he had managed to keep his head level, though he yet hoped to lure some of those pompous cads to the gambling tables and exact a more rewarding form of purse-lightening revenge.

His tickled smirk straightened, however, with a glance at Rohrith’s shroud face. His husband was painfully serious for their one night of privacy; having refused all flattering invitations and not particularly interested in any of the drunken goings-on about, they had taken refuge in their luxurious rooms for an evening of decadent reconnection. Which was, at the moment, proving all too sober for Dioren’s liking. He pulled Rohrith away from the rail, into his supple embrace. When eyes swirling with over-thought confusion met his own twinkling blues, he knew desperate measures were called for. He smoothed a flirty satin kiss over rose lips of wolfish snarl, which gladly parted to allow sweet, soothing laps of tongue. Their caresses bloomed into long, nurturing draughts from the other’s sultry mouth, as the resplendent heat of Rohrith’s soul flame fed ravenously from his own. His tender one groaned throatily when his lips moved off to skirt up his cheeks and over his brow, silently grateful for his husband’s meticulous care of his weighted heart. He bowed to allow further nips, sips, and culls to flatter his forehead, cinched Dioren tight against him.

“What sense have you made of the myriad offers laid before us, melethen?” Rohrith inquired, eager for them to choose and thus be lifted of the burden.

“You are more generous in your esteem, my brave one,” Dioren remarked, with some amusement. “I fear there is little sense to be made of such thoughtless overtures. Few among them spoke with any trace of true reflection. Glory-mongers, all.”

“You are sharp with them,” Rohrith chuckled, though did not counter his estimation. “You did not like, perhaps, how they flattered me. How some flirted so overtly before my mate.”

Dioren laughed aloud, then kissed him soundly, more tempted than ever to drag him to bed and be done with the silly matter of his ignoble suitors.

“Do you think me so uncertain?” he queried, underlining his confidence in their bond with a luscious kiss. “There is no other in Arda or Aman who has proved their love so embattled, so deserved, or of such sterling regard. If I do not have your heart, bereth-nin, then nothing is sure, proven, or real, then all is fluid and formless.”

“I am yours alone, Dioren,” Rohrith agreed. “If truth exists, then this is surely one.” He returned him a kiss of simmering promise, but swerved their conversation back to the political. “But tell me, what think you of… of Gondolen’s proposition?”

“Are you vying for a Lordship, then?” Dioren teased, then gave his honest answer. “Tis almost too extravagant to be believed. A seat on the High Council and the title of Guildmaster to the House of the Eagle, then with the dawn of the new age that comes too swiftly, rule of the valley entire? Should not Echoriath refuse the privilege, before we even dare consider it?”

“He may have already,” Rohrith considered. “He would not so thoughtlessly quit Tathren, not with their family nearly begun.”

“Would you be well so far from our kindred?” Dioren questioned, surprised by this line of reasoning. He had not even bothered to ruminate on Gondolen’s offer, not when Elrond wanted to name Rohrith his successor and retire to his experiments in the healing arts.

“Nay, I would suffer it,” Rohrith admitted, though seemed somewhat depressed by his ambition’s lack. “Neither could I allow you to abandon your Naneth’s company, with her so recently returned to you. The pair of you are too sweet for words, when bent in complicit confidence.”

“Perhaps our Lord’s inheritance might be postponed awhile,” Dioren suggested, which did brighten him some. “Perhaps… we might undertake a brief period of adventuring, to sate the more strident streak in your bold spirit, before settling in to the easy rule of our beloved vale. What say you?”

Rohrith’s resultant, radiant smile was patently ensorcelling.

“I say you are a treasure, melethron,” Rohrith beamed. “A friend, mate, and lover of purest element, and the dearest one to me.” Yet even such lofty troths could not long hold off his eagerness. “What challenge might we undertake? To what foreign land might we venture? Verily, you have thrilled me with your remark! Surely you have some particular course in mind?”

Dioren laughed most heartily at his relentless excitement, hugging tightly to him to feel his sinuous body aquiver.

“I fear I had none but your immediate and thorough ravishment, moren vain,” he purred, as desire flamed between them. “But I am sure one of your bristling mind will light upon some dream-heralded adventure for us, before long. For now, let us not loose this cherished night to planning and debate.” He slunk out of their hot embrace and glided back towards their bedchamber. “I want my husband.”

“He is forever yours, my golden one,” Rohrith smiled, then followed his hard-won mate to bedding.

Within their bonded bliss was the adventure of an eternal lifetime.


The End


A/N: It's a sad day for me, having to let go of all these characters who have given me so much joy! Fear not, however, there are many more tales to come concerning Elladan, Elrohir, Legolas, Glorfindel, and Eresetor, just not in this particular universe. There is an Epilogue that has been added to the end of the main post of 'Of Elbereth's Bounty', which you might want to check out as it is set centuries on in the future. Each one of my beloved characters makes an appearance, and there's a special treat for those who were devoted to Tathren and Echo.

Thank you so much to everyone who has read through everything, or even parts, of my sprawling opus; I am blessed to have such fine adventurers on the journey with me!! I would especially like to thank Eresse, Kitty, Keekercat, DeathAngel, Karen, MR, and Anoriell, who have been fabulous with the feedback. Every word, and squeal, was endlessly appreciated, dears!! I hope you will follow me on to other tales, as I go back to the beginning, in a way. My thanks for the gift of your readership.

On a last note, from now on my fics will be posted both here and on my LJ, www.livejournal.com/users/gloromeien, so you might want to check there for more up-to-the-minute updates.

-G. ;D