Of Elbereth's Bounty

Title: Of Elbereth’s Bounty
(third in my unofficial series, after In Earendil’s Light and Under the Elen)
Author: Gloromeien
Email: swishbucklers@hotmail.com
Pairing: OMC/OMC, Legolas/Elrohir, references to Glorfindel/Elladan
Summary: The family celebrates the return of its boldest young elves, mysteries are solved.
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: It helps to no end to have read both In Earendil’s Light and Under the Elen before this, as otherwise you might not recognize any of the characters. Hope you enjoy, and thanks for keeping to the path thus far!!
Feedback: Would be delightful.
Dedication: To the moderators of Library of Moria, Melethryn, Adult Fan Fiction.Net, and other sites of their ilk for all their wonderful, tireless work and for keeping us up to our ears in fic.

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Of Elbereth’s Bounty

Part Thirteen

Even by Celebrian’s exacting standards, the intimate luncheon so hastily prepared for them was sublime in its perfection, the springtime sun, the balmy air, and the budding gardens around all conspiring with the ethereal matron to toast her grandsons’ return. Yet Legolas had no care, nor indeed much of an appetite, for the baskets of breads, pots of sweetly and salty preserves, trays of cold meats, and bushels of fruit laid out across the banquet table, for he could not quite bring himself to tare his admiring gaze from the privileged sight of his sons collected around him.

Though his features remained stoic as always, his aquamarine eyes roved over their jam-smeared faces with a connoisseur’s appreciation. He lingered on the most mundane aspects of their eating: how Ciryon sectioned his honey-buttered lembas *just so*, how Rohrith tore through his pulpy peach halves, how the full glass of oarberry juice teetered in Brithor’s overreaching hands. How reverently his Tathren also regarded them, his merry band of brothers, always ready with a knife to cut clean slices, a wet napkin to dab at a soiled shirt, a steady hand to guide a tipsy cup. These simple, patient gestures effortlessly obliterated all of the anxious father’s cloying fears; that his son would object to them, or that he would outright reject them as some strange, genealogical betrayal. Yet these night-dusk concerns seemed ridiculous on this resplendent day, with none more riveting, to his avid eyes, than Tathren himself.

Instead of berry tartness, the taste of ore, sharp and ready, was on his tongue, the taste of the adrenalin coursing through his veins. She would come soon, their wispy one; he could already hear the flutter of her heart through the ether. The wood-sprite in him, who was not so matured as to stay off a few tricks of his own, was nearly rabid with anticipation, both of her revelation and of his son’s unknowable reaction.

Legolas almost himself leapt up from his reverie along with the impish trio across the way, who, now fuelled for the day, could not keep themselves from dragging their blonde brother onto the nearby patch of lawn. Cuthalion and Echoriath eagerly followed suit. The elflings were soon so awed by the dearth of playmates available that they could not quite reconcile themselves to a specific game, so Cuthalion took advantage of their indecision and tackled his cousin with long-suppressed enthusiasm. Three identical pairs of obsidian eyes were soon locked on this gleeful wrestling match, though golden ones studied the triplets with undisguised intensity. Legolas smiled to himself, as he watched Echoriath’s nimble mind consider what he and Elrohir had pondered for nearly five years now: the incredible and indefinable connection between their three twinned sons.

Though each distinct personality, with some observation and experience, would be revealed to the keen examiner as an onion’s layers were peeled back from the bud, their indelible sameness was a constant distraction. While Elladan and Elrohir had been forcefully unique from their early years - or so Elrond had told them – a spectral link kept these three in close quarters with one another. They made communal decisions, quietly consulted each other on every concern, and acted upon their cares in blindsiding unison. If the Sons of Elrond had been independent-minded, yet complicit, Elrohir’s triplets were in all things as one. Rare was the occasion that they would allow themselves to be parted, or a gift went unshared; even at such a tender age, they were acutely aware of their brothers’ state of being. If one was sick, they gathered protectively around him. If one fatigued, they all took rest. Most astonishingly to their parents, if one transgressed, they all suffered the punishment. Their solidarity was a constant source of pride to Legolas in particular, as he felt the solidity of their mutual feeling was directly bequeathed to them by their courtly sire, his elf-knight and devoted husband. Each child’s individual qualities was, to his lofty eyes, but a deeper coloring of the shades of his beloved’s commendable character, as if Elrohir had been split into three. Though Legolas believed that, as the years passed, their sons’ bond would loose some and allow for autonomy, they would never be estranged, nor lonely, nor embittered towards one another.

A father’s heart could not pray for more.

His gauzy eyes broke from them when stealthy fingers slipped through his own. A silken sheath of hair brushed against his neck, as Elrohir sunk into his lap and snug a downy head onto his shoulder. The smell of him, heady ederwood, the faint musk of deep forest haunts, and something elemental, something purely his, overcame him. So suddenly for such a commonplace action, a torrent of love flood through the humble archer, such that he bit his tongue to swallow the spurt of fumbling, unformed troths that threatened to burst forth and to embarrass him before the company about. His grip on his elf-knight was such that Elrohir threw him a questioning glance, but read his brimming eyes well enough. He soothed him with a balming kiss, drank in some of his mate’s raging emotion and stopped his ardor with a soft lap of his tongue. With a sigh, he rested his head back into its nook, while beyond Tathren was giddily fighting off a full-fledged elfling assault.

“It appears our fears were grossly unfounded, meleth,” Elrohir commented lazily. “They adore him already.”

“They will keep him home awhile, I wager,” Legolas remarked, still flush with feeling. “Though I confess to some curiosity towards this settlement of theirs. Perhaps we might enjoy a summer there, in the coming years.”

“My brother and his mate are similarly resolved,” Elrohir noted. “Though I would not think on a journey until our little ones have seen at least twenty summers. Which is not a point I would deliberately chose to linger upon, as you well know. Too quickly will the years pass, and with them their childhood into legend.”

“Then we must beget more elflings, lest you turn maudlin,” Legolas teased him affectionately, eliciting a groan.

“Nay, melethron,” Elrohir muttered into his neck, as he bent to caress the taut skin. “I believe my paternity is permanently sated by these hallowed blessings before us. Thank Elbereth!”

Legolas chuckled, tucked his husband closer still. As he drifted into another daydream, he recalled to himself a time when the thought of siring them another babe veritably turned his elf-knight’s stomach over on itself. Yet as the years after Tathren’s departure stretched impossibly long, even for one of elfkind, Elrohir had secretly reconsidered the hasty choice made after months of unyielding sickness. He could sire babes just as well without the anguished trial of the lust-fever. The price to his bonded was as ever; Legolas was yet more than willing to pay the reasonable toll for their family’s expansion. A chance throw off an untested horse had rushed Nenuial into the Healing Halls with a fractured thigh-bone and into his darkling husband’s acquaintance during her subsequent convalescence. Legolas had himself recaptured, tamed, and tended the sprightly steed, who two summers later bravely carried a water-broken Nenuial back to the Healing Halls, to bear their glorious brood.

That night was yet a fugue in his mind, pierced only by a few sharp, vital images: Elrohir’s ropy frame knotted into a fireside armchair, waiting-out the endless hours of contractions; that first sight of Rohrith, red and wriggling in Elrond’s bloody hands; the jaw-dropping emergence of a third babe, Ciryon, when both he and Elrohir held bundles in their arms; Nenuial’s exhausted, despairing face when all three infants began to bleat for her arms, for her milk. How the three of them had toiled through the fractious days and nights that followed, that first maddening month of improvisation, of invention, when only sheer reverence for their miraculous babes kept them steady, standing. The elegant ellyth had proved herself their match in valor and in heart, as well as an invaluably mischievous partner-in-crime.

Indeed, as the lady herself wafted through the patio doors bearing a most precious cargo, Elrohir gladly laxed his hold so that Legolas could stand to greet her. His elf-knight was a ghost behind him, as they sprang up to her assistance.

***

With a wilding cry, the triplets peeled off him and raced back towards the table.

After grappling too quickly to his feet, Tathren swooned, staggered back. Cuthalion latched on to him, steadied him with a firm hold, fearful their trials had sickened the weary traveler. Dazed, Tathren lurched away, then halted, with a woozy smirk, to let his cousin center him.

Tathren felt he moved through the air around him as though swathed in a churn of cream. This was not the sultry otherworld of Echoriath’s familiar summons, but a weirded, overbright atmosphere, as if he was permanently stuck in the glaring reflection of Arien’s boldest rays. The world about him was saturated, nearly swollen with color; he momentarily worried one of his brothers, amidst their boundless excitement, had struck him too hard. He heard Cuthalion chuckle that he was punch drunk, but Tathren could only swerve his head towards the patio beyond and sluggishly observe the goings on there.

An ellyth of such dusk-shroud sensuality - that she could be no other than the naneth of his wolfine brothers - had made a quiet entrance, though her sons currently raced to her side. His fathers had unburdened her of several packs and bundles, so she knelt to welcome her bouncing boys into arms of such ample stretch, one might mistake her for bounteous Elbereth, were not the Lady reputed to be wrought of starshine itself. Black crucible eyes took in the outpour of affection from her lush brood, who curled about their mother cat like a pack of besotted kittens. Though their sleek raven hair and regal faces were pure elf-knight, their buttery complexions and exotic almond eyes were bequeathed to them by her luxurious beauty alone; indeed, Tathren had never seen her like in all the tribes of elfkind.

He was suddenly distracted from this sweetly scene of nurture by a strange, internal tug. The space about him thickened further; though Cuthalion strengthened his grip, Tathren felt that it laxed. His head swam around to seek Echoriath, but the sight of him only further stunned. His beloved’s eyes were bright as a beacon through the midnight fog, incandescent as sparked phosphors in the ocean deep. Yet, unlike other times of clairvoyance, he was cut off from their communion, his power cold, scowering his skin such that he was forced to turn away, to wrench even from unwitting Cuthalion. The otherworld, which drowned out all of his senses, grew glutinous as treacle, the bleed of uproarious color almost nauseating. Where was the tipple of his Echo’s outstretched mind over his peaked skin, the impatient, lascivious jolts up his spine from afar or the swarthy balm of his affections? The present had never before been so remote when he let his fea spread through the ether, as his beloved had taught him; the air so chill nor his eyes so burning from sight of his pulchritudinous surroundings. As he fought to take even the most feeble step, he thought he might faint away, until a close-held presence stilled him.

From the beyond, the lilting melody sounded out, lone and lulling.

He was warmed, impossibly warmed, by a tenor of feeling such as he’d never experienced before. The haunting voice, so rich, so eloquent, filled him with such emotion that Tathren thought he might choke on his own elation. Hot tears rolled down his ripe cheeks, blinded him such that he did not mark the advent of his father, until his overwrought senses located the source of the harrowing, angelic voice from within those very arms. Tathren blotted his eyes with fevered palms, eager to behold the cunning necromancer that has so ensorcelled him, for he was sure, somehow, the creature held his Ada equally in its thrall. He had sensed his sire there, in the otherworld, beside him, within him, though how he could not rightly fathom.

The song ended swiftly; he broke out of the ether with a startling slap.

With a ripping cough, he cleared his head. He was instantly blanketed by Echoriath’s acute concern, though the darkling elf remained cautiously aloft of him. Cuthalion also waited nearby, poised to hug or hold, should the necessity arise. With a rousing shudder, he found himself again, then foist absent eyes on his waiting father. The sight nearly sundered him.

There, tucked in his arms, was a… a bundle… the bundle from before… impossible. Inconceivable.

One of Elbereth’s most immaculate wonders, for certes.

“Tathen,” Legolas beamed, himself nearly overcome by the momentous circumstance. “This is my little nightingale… our Tinuviel.” He could not resist kissing the crown of the babe’s golden hair, like spun starlight, nor tickling her teardrop ear. “Your sister.”

Tathren could naught but gape at the precocious babe, not seven moons old. She was a pure Sinda pearl, as jewel-eyed and crystalline as the father and foremother in whose image she was so magnificently rendered. He himself must resemble her, Tathren realized with a start; the idea unknown, but not unwelcome. A *sister*.

“You are her sire, Ada,” he noted rather dumbly, reaching out a finger for her tiny hand. She eagerly clasped onto him, azure eyes alight, a smile quickened with the mercury of the Mirkwood line stretching out the bow of her lips.

“He is shrewd, my fair cousin,” Cuthalion snickered at him, though Legolas demurred.

“Shush, Talion,” Echoriath snapped, then wove a supportive arm around his beloved. “Meleth, would you not like to hold her?”

“I… I believe I would,” Tathren whispered, almost surprised at himself. “Very much.” Pleased by this, Legolas eased his precious one into her abashed brother’s arms, though Tinuviel herself took to him like a duck to water, gurgling merrily and gazing up at him with palpable adoration. As he was again infused by her peerless warmth, he bent to kiss her brow. Her softness lured his nose further down to her tummy, until he was nearly intoxicated by her downy scent. “She smells like springtime, like…” He sighed, then, and turned suddenly solemn. “Ada, I will not falter in her keeping. I will be the finest example to her, to all my newly kin, teach them acts of honor and gallantry, be tender with them, demonstrate compassion even in adversity, and-“

“We have no doubt of your valor, pen-tathar,” Elrohir grinned, as he linked himself with Legolas. “You are ever our firstborn and dearly son.”

Tathren blushed fiercely, overwhelmed as he was by his riotous emotions, but managed nevertheless to inquire: “But who is Naneth to this beauty, Ada?”

“I am Nana to all,” Nenuial smiled, as she joined their circle. Ciryon was folded tightly in her arms, his twins ambling along amidst their mother’s skirts. “Mae govannen, Tathren Legolasion. I have longed to make your acquaintance, and have my daughter know her last, elusive kinsbrother.”

“Tinuviel,” Ciryon murmured, as he slowly reached over to pet his sister’s hair.

Rohrith and Brithor, not to be left out, each sought the warm embrace of one of their fathers, instinctively judging their earlier raucousness unseemly at this hush moment. Their onyx eyes peered rapturously from father to brother, mother to second father, surrounded as they were by four noble eldar, who they intuited would love them without measure, eternally. Rohrith reached for Cuthalion, eager that his cousin to be included, while Brithor played with Echoriath’s braid over Legolas’ shoulder. The twins took their place among the gathering, neither daring to break the silence, pregnant as it was with unspeakable emotion.

Tathren greeted Nenuial with a soft peck to her cheek, as their extended family strolled down from the patio, to join the circle of their beloved ones.

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

On such a sultry afternoon, there was but one sight for his lazy, languid eyes.

Sunlight tippled through the waves of her silver hair like Arien’s giddy rays over the river swells. A face as ripe, round, and peach-kissed as a harvest moon beamed sagely at her newly granddaughter, though her skin was as smooth and milky as on their binding day. Gone was any trace of the grief that had dimmed the benevolent light of her soul flame, blanketed her in a numbing darkness not even his enduring love could penetrate. Surrounded, here, by all the colors of their extended family, she was of a more giving radiance than her own mother’s mystery-shrouding shine, peerless in her glory, in his adoring eyes as luminous as the Lady herself.

By some exceptional turn of fate, she was indeed his lady. His Celebrian.

Once dusky Nenuial was finished nursing, she indulged the covetous grandmother beside her and passed over her dozy daughter. The babe yawned daintily, then tucked sweetly into her shoulder. Elrond well knew the lure of that satiny nook; while he admired the three generations of elf-maid ensconced so serenely on the river bank - their bare, lithe legs dangling over the bushels of grass at the edge, their toes tippling the water – he longed to press his own face into that voluptuous bosom and bear a needful husband’s coddling. He vowed he would, before nightfall.

A brash spray startled him out of his reverie, as titanic twin shadows blocked out the sky. With a last flick of their sopping hair, Elladan and Elrohir collapsed onto the lawn beside him, as gamely as their elfling selves three-thousand years before. Both snickered with raucous mischief, knowing implicitly well whom their father was admiring and what scarlet thoughts his rapt mind so avidly perused. Elrond snorted, unashamed, and with the imperious cast of his eyes took a longly gander at the two strapping sons who blessed his union. Indeed, as the brethren quit their taunting and extended their sinuous frames for sun-drying, his gaze drifted over to the antics of their mates, elder children, and impish ones, yet roughhousing in the gentle of the river rush.

Haloes gilding their burnished manes as laurels might, the hallowed warriors Glorfindel, slayer of the Balrog, and Legolas, archer of the Fellowship, were opposing points on a pentagon, a fluid battlefield that included Cuthalion, Echoriath, and Tathren. All were quite merrily engaged in an ecstatic round of toss-the-elflings, with Brithor and Rohrith as willing, shrieking implements. Each sprightly one would be routinely launched into the air, landing either in the arms of an elder or in the water before them, only to be wrenched from the sea flow and thrown anew, towards another easy target. The mature elves were careful keep the play cheerful; each agile enough, from sparring, from training, to take care not to spook the little ones. To this end, the temperate Ciryon was perched on a nearby rock. He took more pleasure in gleeful observation than in participation, his cries, crows, and emphatic gesticulations often rolling him aft, into the deep. Legolas, luckily, kept a hawk eye on the most reserved of his triplets, batting an occasional whip of water from behind, to goad him, and repeatedly fishing him out of the current.

When Brithor gulped back too much water and began to cough, the vigilant father halted the play awhile. Elrohir perked his head up from the berth of his arm, but demurred when the little one hugged Legolas close. Rohrith was dredged out of the swells by Cuthalion, who, despite some protest, stayed him. Ciryon instinctively latched onto Legolas’ back, reaching out to stroke his recovering brother’s hair. Cuthalion swam the missing link over to them; the three were soon chirping mercurially at him, while they caught their respective breaths from the whirlwind excitement of the afternoon. A reverent Legolas had never looked so peaceful as among these jovial three, Elrond reflected to himself, not in all the centuries he’d known him.

His own ponderous gaze marked the worshipful argent eyes of his secondborn twin son, who drank in this quiet scene as parched land quenched by rainfall. The wry smirk that eventually twisted his lips caused Elrond’s shrewd eyes to switch back, in time for the most rapturous display of raw emotion he’d witnessed since last Legolas and Elrohir embraced, or Glofindel and Elladan together found a secret corner. Tathren and Echoriath, their wrought limbs entwined beneath the surface, had escaped to that quiescent space where only they could exist for the other, their mated looks smoldering with fondness, with regard. Elrond himself felt the heat of their eventual kiss, he doubted any in attendance would not think to their own mate in view of such a pure, elemental gesture of love. Hands moved over arching shoulders, through swaths of sodden hair, palms to cup faces and fingers to purr up ear lobes; the kiss was such that Illuvatar himself might weep at the potency of their incendiary caress.

In that hot minute, Elrond knew his growing concerns were founded in truth, not speculation.

The triplets, however, thought this sensuous act the most hysterical thing. With a cackle of such mischief a Lord could only be concerned for the future sanctity of their fair vale, the wilding three doused their brother and his betrothed in a flurry of slapping splashes, effectively rousing both their senses and their annoyance. Tathren, wicked-eyed in fever’s wake, spared little time in exacting his revenge; the echoes of which still sounded out a quarter hour later, when Elrond’s own twins yet lounged on either side of him.

“Whenever I dared to imagine our fates, in other, more troubled times,” he noted hushly. “I never thought you would beget me such a glorious brood, gwenyn. I must confess, their majesty unmoors me still. Indeed, I could not have prayed for more worthy mates, more beautiful children for my own tender ones.”

“You are kindly in your words, Ada,” Elladan praised him. “But not overgenerous. Our kindred are…” He paused a moment, unable to express the myriad emotions flooding his heart. “When Nana passed over, and for myself Glorfindel was so cold, and then so swift upon this heartbreak Arwen declared her choice… I had feared our family would never again know the wholeness of our early years. I feared even if the Shadow did not fall, we would never be together as before, without ghosts in the stead of Nazgul, without the specter of our golden time haunting us even in these lush glades, in this forever realm.”

“Times here are not without their own trials,” Elrond commented sensibly. “But with such ones to hearten us, how can we despair? Take the lesson, ion-nin. Valor does not go unrewarded. Our most secret cares are not forgotten by the Valar above.”

“Then Elbereth will grant us a daughter of our own?” Elladan questioned coyly.

“You long for a little ellyth to lighten the step of two lead-footed warriors?” Elrohir cunningly teased. “By Eru, Elladan, you verily are my own reflection! You cannot act without my example! First in the casting off of our minorities, then in love’s gentling, then into the throes of war, lately in the begetting of babes, and now in the potential siring of a maid-child! I wonder who you might have followed had I not been born to guide you?”

With an indignant, though mirthful, grunt of protest, Elladan countered: “If I have followed your example, it was but to better it. While you fumbled into majority, bedding willy-nilly what presented itself before you, I dedicated myself to the pursuit of excellence and won the heart of the Balrog-slayer himself. I firstly pledged vengeance on Nana’s injury, if I remember right, and to speak of fumbling, let us not even broach the subject of your firstborn’s accidental begetting. And mark well, gwanur, that it is my own bashful son’s beauty that keeps Tathren at home wherever he may journey, his harbor of geniality and of gentility into which your adventure-minded son chooses to weigh anchor for his eternity.”

“Methinks you are mightily deceived, gwanur-nin,” Elrohir shot amusedly back. “If not forthrightly deluded, if you believe a child of your Echoriath’s earlier timidity could possibly woo one such as my ebullient Tathren. What effort did he expend? What charms did he ploy? Nay, twas my son who drew out the elf in your admittedly lovely child, and it will be he who keeps them.”

“Echoriath bedazzled Tathren from the very minute of his birth!” Elladan insisted. “A glimpse of his eyes and he was bested.”

“*Ensorcelled*, by troth,” Elrohir underlined. “A natural necromancer the darkling one may be, but it was Tathren’s fine qualities that piqued his interest from early infancy. My son, though of a compelling comeliness, is no sorcerer and needs no otherworldly aid in seduction.”

“As attested to by the legions of bereft Dunedain ladies in his wake,” Elladan needled him to the sticking point. “Or have you repressed the shameful memory entirely of their assault on Imladris, *three years* before the elfling’s actual majority, to reclaim the one who blazed through their ranks when he was thought to be so innocently passing a few years roaming the northern realms with his mother and her tribe. And these but practice rounds for his true target: Elessar’s heir.”

“Let us then pass to talk of Echoriath’s ardent-loined twin,” Elrohir daringly retorted. “To speak of a fractious coming on of first majority! Of maids, elven and womankind alike, weeping out their cares by the glimmering pool of Ithilien.”

“Cease this mischief, gwenyn, before we blacken the repute of your foster brother *and* the dearly Neyanna,” Elrond finally intervened, but not without a smirk of his own. “And you both summon up the ire of the father that has praised your families fair and bountiful.”

“Forgive us, Ada,” they sang in unison, swallowing back smiles of glee the triplets would envy.

The flint of challenge was still in their argent eyes, but both brothers smartly stepped down. Their occasional sparring, though rarer in maturity, kept them both humble and their bond intact. Elrond knew this better than most, but also that they were not yet so wise as to refrain from eventually coming to blows, should their heavy-feathered arrows accidentally hit on a sensitive area. In any case, they had raised a matter than concerned him some.

Before he had a chance to voice this, however, Elladan himself inquired: “In truth, I am glad of this chance to speak with you, Adar. Might I court your counsel on a… a matter that affects both of our clans?”

“Certainly, my brave one,” Elrond assented. “What matter presses upon you?”

“You would speak of the spark,” Elrohir easily guessed, sobering himself. “The faint shimmer that crowns their irises, brighter than before. I have marked it, as well.”

Elladan nodded, his face uncertain of what emotion to portray, as he himself was not reconciled to a particular conviction.

“Think you, Ada, that they…?” he asked outright. “Not purposefully, for certes, but their circumstances were… of an uncommon extremity.”

“Indeed,” Elrond considered, having himself recognized the telltale shine in the eyes of his two besotted grandsons. Before passing judgment, he regarded each of his twins in turn. Neither seemed overly disturbed; they were naught but anxious that their children be righteously bound, but bound they would most definitively have them. “I fear the ways of the Maiar are yet strange to one born so late in the First Age, as I, when they had retreated from Beleriand and were entirely absent from Arda. In truth, I would both consult with Erestor and pose some questions to Echoriath himself, as his own experience of these uncommon powers are vital to our understanding of them.”

“His powers go beyond mere foresight, or mindspeak,” Elladan related to them. “Even through the ether, he can communicate with Tathren, know his experiences and emotions. The force of this information goes beyond a binding link…”

“And therefore cannot be immediately assumed to result from accidental binding,” Elrond reasoned. “These powers of Echoriath’s were in evidence before they departed the vale. While I myself had noted the flint embedded in their irises, its flicker is not of the effulgence of the binding hue. Though Echoriath is possessed of an overabundance of Maiaran potential, he is yet of elfkind. We are bound in love, in spirit, and in blood. If they have not performed the blood-rite, then they are but betrothed. Their souls are perhaps too intimately mated, but what of this? They will soon be properly bound, or am I mistaken?”

“We have yet to commence our negotiations,” Elrohir informed him, seizing up his twin with a wolfish gleam to his eyes.

“But I imagine we can resolve ourselves without too much bloodshed,” Elladan finished for him, grinning with similar mock-spite.

“Valar bless Legolas and Glorfindel with patience,” Elrond chuckled wryly, opening his arms to embrace his dear sons. “Though methinks tis your Naneth and I who are truly the blessed ones.”

“As we, by your heartening example, Ada,” they seconded, relaxing against their father as in times of old.

With a sigh, he tangled his lissome fingers in the ebony hair of the twin heads on his chest, reminded anew of another lively, languorous day of elflings by the riverside, three thousand springs ago.

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

Tathren crept down the hallway as through a patch of nettles, the gauzy veils of moonlight laced with intricate, willow bough shadows from their garden thicket. He left a choir of chirpy questions behind him, as he sought the quietude of his Adar’s candlelit study, a volume of Anestir’s verses and a mug of hot cider enough to still somnambulant the blood that yet galloped through his veins. After three long weeks of the wave-skipping ship and a day of startling revelations, he would have thought himself unable to stand upright at such a late hour, but his trio of brothers’ relentless energy was perilously infectious to one whom exhaustion so threatened as he. The chance to tell the triplets bedtime stories his verily present sire had once imparted to him had invigorated him anew, infused him with enough attentiveness to see well past the midnight hour.

Suitable company might very well elude him this night. Perhaps he should seek out his cousins?

As he padded into the hush study, he came upon a heartening sight if ever one there was. Before the flickering hearth was Elrohir, nested into the corner of their billow-cushioned sofa, Tinuviel cradled in his arms. The darkling elf whispered secrets to his drowsy daughter as he had once done to his golden-crowned son. Tathren knew his father relished these moments of complicity with his babes, a peaceful time of nurture, of communion with a child not of his siring, thus was reluctant to disturb them. Something within, however, stayed him a second too long, enough for Elrohir to spy him and to beckon with an ample smile. He thought but to perch nearby, but the elf-knight gladly folded him into his embrace; they twined such that both shared in berthing the little one. Tathren imagined that his father was particularly adept at this maneuver, as with this method both he and Ada-Las could take part in the coddling of their babes, yet took great comfort in their closeness, such that he soon rested a groggy head in the crook of his doting Adar’s neck. His father’s warmth enveloped him, lulled him, rich with balmy feeling and implicit love.

All three luxuriated in the serenity of their tight hold, one with the moment, with one another.

“My treasures,” Elrohir murmured, giving them both a gentle squeeze. “I adore you as my own, dears, never doubt you are my ones, the vessels of my heart’s love.”

“As you are the source of our security, Ada,” Tathren vowed. “Without your immovable foundation, we could not venture so boldly forth, nor… nor offer our own mates a true tenor of love. Not without your example, your peerless care.”

“I know it, pen-tathar,” Elrohir acknowledged softly, then kissed the crown of his golden son’s hair. “Sleep, if you would, ioneth. It would hearten me to keep you awhile. You must be weary.”

“Nay, I am quite awake,” Tathren insisted, though made no move to break from him. “But the hour is late for this twinkly one. Will Nenuial not soon come to fetch her?”

“She has, quite wonderfully, agreed that Tinuviel should spend her first night with her Adar,” Elrohir related to him with such contentment, that Tathren could verily sense the force of his smile. “Just the one, for she is yet too tiny to quit her Nana’s breast for long, but Nenuial was gracious enough to understand that… that to see our family reunited affected us deeply. That I will soon slink into your Ada-Las’ embrace and know all our babes are gathered here, with us. All our precious ones.”

“Ada, you will have me weep before long!” Tathren exclaimed, but did indeed swallow hard.

Elrohir chuckled fondly, kissed his crown again.

“Will you soon meet Echoriath?” he inquired, with blatant melancholy. “Could you not lure him here a night?”

“As our talan is yet closed, so we have agreed to remain apart,” Tathren assured him. “Grandsire has his ear, for now, and I could not dare suggest he keep Talion at bay until morn. But this is of little consequence to us, we have before us an eternity of nights. I wanted to stay in with my brothers. Indeed, I also hoped to court your attentions awhile, Ada.”

“You are fortunate, tathrelasse,” Elrohir teased him. “I am here to attend you. What is your will?”

“Though I trust the entire affair is meticulously rendered in your journals,” Tathren remarked pointedly, adjusting their hold that he might gaze upon his father’s regal face as he spoke. “I would know of the begetting of my, ahem, bushel of brothers, and this precious starling before us. If the subject is not too intimate… but surely there is a chaste version I might be recounted?”

“I would gladly impart the tale to you,” Elrohir nodded, with undisguised enthusiasm. “But first, ioneth, you must assure me that… that you do not fault us for taking such measures in your absence to expand our family. I know that, upon your last return, you encouraged Ada-Las to sire you a brother, but we were… *are* nevertheless concerned that these newly ones are not entirely welcome by you. That… that you might feel they replace you in our hearts. I would… I would like to assure you, in turn, that none could take the place of such a sterling son in our regard, that our hearts have merely expanded to encompass you all-“

“Ada, I am more than happy to find myself verily overburdened with siblings,” Tathren insisted, his smile broadening exponentially. “We have struggled in the past, true, to solder our relations, but before I departed I committed to the bettering of our bond and that commitment has not waned these last years. I feel that these new additions to our house can only enliven it, if the joy witnessed just this very day is any example. I admit to some astonishment at their revelation, who could not be shocked by such a thing, but they are… truly, Ada, they are already so dear to me. Indeed, I… I have also taken some measures to assure my place in their lives.” He paused a moment to collect himself, unsure of how to express his lately conclusions. “I spoke briefly with Echo after supper, but he had already guessed the matter of my conversation. We will not leave the vale for any great length of time until Tinuviel has reached her majority.”

“How now?” Elrohir gasped, startled by this timely decision.

“We marked Ada-Las’ conversation with Ada-Dan and Ada-Fin about the Sindar,” he continued to illuminate. “Eight years have passed and no ground has been broke for their housing. Surely they do not expect to return to Laurelin? They will feel more settled if they have homes, and we… we are the elves to build them.”

“I fear initial negotiations have not gone as hoped,” Elrohir sighed warily, impressed by his son’s ambition but wary of the task at hand. “With Thranduil returned up north, most are simply biding their time before they can return.”

“They may play the martyr, but we are shrewder,” Tathren underlined. “I am Sinda myself, as is Ada-Las. We are of Thranduil’s very line. They will broke with us, or court injury to their king. When they see Echo’s designs and know that they will partake in their construction, thus learning how to build themselves even finer homes in Laurelin, even their Sindar pride will be appeased. Should they stay or go, in the end, we will have new houses for our folk.” He turned his eyes on Tinuviel, who’s eyelids fluttered mightily in her fight against slumber. “For the children this sweetly child may berth herself, one day.”

“She knows you,” Elrohir commented, side-stepping the issue. “Twas she who alerted me to your presence. Already she speaks fondly of you, this new being that lures her. She sings to us of your light. To know that you will be here to guide her, secure and succor her… let the Sindar be resolve as they will. I would have you home for a time, if you are willing.”

“I could not think of keeping away,” Tathren promised him, with a complicit wink to his sister. Heartened by his regard, she gave in to sleep at last. “Though we must occasionally summer in Gondolen, lest it fall to seed under the troubled Council’s sloe-eyed watch.”

“Perhaps we will accompany you,” Elrohir considered. “To see this marvelous place.”

“I would be glad of it,” Tathren encouraged him, his thoughts turning to an earlier request. “Now, you have distracted me enough from my mission, Ada. Will you not relate to me the tale of the wilding three and this radiant star-child?”

Elrohir could not suppress a snicker at this too-acute description, but gladly launched himself into the tale. Indeed, he had been anxious to tell it anew, as all in his acquaintance were beyond exasperated by his recurrent indulgence in such storytelling. With Tathren, he could add a layer of intimacy he had only shared with Elladan, so the chance to unburden himself was intensely welcome to him. He collected his thoughts, careful choosing which episode might properly set the course.

“The matter emerged the very night after your imploring to Ada-Las on the archery fields,” Elrohir began. “I agreed to consider the potential for a second child. I was soon struck with fever and we resolved that fate had steered us in the appropriate direction. After suffering months of torment and after my ravaging sickness during our troubled time, I was naturally disinclined to see the fever return. Legolas understood my distress and agreed that our family was ample enough. But my dearly husband understands me better than any other. He knew time would pass, and so would memory of the fever, and I would eventually be struck with the realization that I need not court the fever anew in order to sire a child. Concomitant with this realization, that came over me by Legolas’ intuitive clock in the second long year of your absence, was my acquaintance with Nenuial. As we treated her in the Healing Halls, I came to know her, to befriend her as a trueheart and be appraised of her woeful tale.”

“Aye, she is kindly,” Tathren interrupted him. “Twas as if the Evenstar herself had been reborn.”

Elrohir’s breath caught at this comparison, he shut his flooding eyes. “Think you… do you truly think them so similar?”

“She even smells like aunt Arwen, of violets and mist,” Tathren remarked cautiously. “Had the thought never occurred… Ada, I have injured you!”

“Nay,” he assured him, releasing a long, calming exhalation. “I am but overcome by… by the Valar’s care. Elbereth blinded me to the true beauty of Nenuial’s nature, so that I might reap such a peerless bounty. That I might have both children and sister again.” He crushed Tathren to him, then, a few stray tears spilling down his cheeks. “You are keen, pen-tathar.”

“But tell me, Ada,” he pursued. “What pains have so afflicted such a fair lady?”

“Nenuial is of the First Age,” Elrohir elucidated, after some steadying breaths. “She is bond-sister to your foremother, Galadriel, through her brother Aegnor. Though they had wanted children through the many centuries of their binding, her husband was beset by a rare affliction, even among elfkind. Try as they may, he could not sire her a child. Twas Galadriel herself who discerned Aegnor was the troubled one in their bond, though none could think on a remedy. When Aegnor fell in the Dagor Bragollach and was ushered to Mandos, her childlessness became even more acute. She dwelt in Lindon awhile during the Second Age, then finally sailed to Valimar, hoping her beloved Aegnor would soon return, as others of his age had been slowly quitting Mandos. Her wait has yet been in vain. When she heard, through the White Lady herself, of Idril’s prophecy, she came to Telperion to read the scroll in person, desperate to glean some notion of when her husband might be re-embodied. She fell from her horse beyond the limits of our compound… and has since cultivated quite a crop of children for her husband to cherish along with us, upon his return. The triplets are, after all, kindred to him through a lengthy family line.”

“Do they know of this other father?” Tathren inquired.

“Indeed, they do,” Elrohir replied. “Though the intricacies of his relation to them and the events of his passing will be kept for later years. They know only their Nana is bound to another elf, who is at Mandos. Though they do not truly comprehend the purpose of Mandos and its place in our world, they are quite glad that Nana has a meleth to hearten her. There was a time when they feared for her solitude, though Nenuial is quite a social elf.”

“This may be overstepping my own bounds somewhat,” Tathren gently furthered his questions. “But how did Ada-Las come to be convinced to…?”

Elrohir smiled knowingly at the potent inquiry, but was glad to explain: “Unlike my brother’s experience, the siring of our tempestuous three was no great cause for concern. I have experience of lying with maids, I did not fear for my interest nor my potency. We had both come to regard Nenuial as a sister and she herself longed so for her mate’s return that there would be no confusing the tenor of her affections. Legolas is especially fond of her; they were both reared in times of great strife and share a similarly resilient outlook. They are both also quite reserved in the disclosure of their private affairs, but they came to trust each other enough to mutually disclose. She has come to be a true partner with us, a giving mother and the dearest of friends. Your Ada-Las waited by this very fire while I sired our babes, he says the time of reflection was quite beneficial to him. Afterwards, he joined us in bed and we all curled up together, rubbing Nenuial’s stomach, encouraging our little one to come forth. I hear the babe’s first, timorous bleat by the night’s end. How we rejoiced! We could not rest until dawn, thinking of the future.” Elrohir was lost awhile to remembrance, of how heartily Legolas had kissed him then, of how he declared the gift of their child the most beautiful he’d ever been given and of how sensuously he’d reclaimed him the night after. His husband truly was the second half of his very soul. “Two years ago, my own genteel, yet often fearfully tenacious naneth came to visit her grandsons and, in closed council with me, hastened to chastise that we had not properly treated Nenuial. I had not the faintest notion of what she spoke of, as I indicated to her, being an oafish ellon by birth from her very own womb, but she gladly appraised me of the situation. Though Nenuial was more than content with our darkling tribe, she had confessed to Nana that she had always wanted for a daughter. That she feared in the years to come she would be entirely surrounded by warriors and would be, though cherished by her sons, kept from their company, even by her own mate, who would no doubt immediately cotton to three young fledglings to train and hunt with.”

“Ha!” Tathren exclaimed mirthfully. “I would never have thought on such a notion.”

“Nor we,” Elrohir admitted. “I was quite glad Nana had thought to bring up the concerns and the longing Nenuial herself would never dare mention, even to my husband’s soft ears. When I appraised Legolas of this complication, it took him no time at all to agree to expand our family. I consulted Erestor, who thought there might be a technique or two we might try to ensure the siring of an ellyth, though no method was proven infallible. Erestor spoke his explanations directly to me. As his lecture went on, as they tend to do, I noted Legolas’ countenance became shroud. In the following days, he grew increasingly distracted and kept insisting that we delay our conversation with Nenuial herself. I became gravely concerned for his well being, perhaps the first siring had affected him in ways unapparent until now? I soon created a private occasion in which to broach this with him, and to my ready shock, he proclaimed himself resolved to sire the babe himself. I still, to this very moment, cannot say what decided him, though I have my… my suspicions. One Nenuial herself agreed… I marveled at the ease of his resolution. He has never since betrayed an ounce of distress, not even on the night he lay with her. Indeed, he likes to gloat that, in the haze after their coupling, she mumbled that he pleased her much more than I.”

“Saes, Ada, spare me your crudeness,” Tathren grunted, but smirked nonetheless. “But I do admire the fruit of your labors, asleep at long last.” He nuzzled his sister’s plump belly, drinking in her peachy smell.

“As all goodly elflings should be,” Elrohir noted, but snatched a kiss from his son’s flaxen crown. “Yourself included, pen-tathar. You’ve had your storytime, now you best tuck up. I fear you will discover yourself with a bed-full of brothers, come dawn’s first light.”

“Could this elfling not steal a few moments more in the arms of his Adar?” Tathren whispered, rather reluctant to quit his father’s balming heat. In truth, he’d not felt so tight with him since their advent in Aman and was loathe to loose the tender feeling between them.

Elrohir, moved by this show of affection, could not dare contemplate refusing him. He drew his two treasures even further into his blithe embrace, their blanketing bodies the most comfort a father’s heart could ever wish for.

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

Even through the copper-tinted haze of far too many goblets of miruvor, Cuthalion regarded the elf before him with unremitting awe.

The colony’s founding had battered and trenched a brute-cut body of Echoriath’s formerly lank frame, his torso sleek, sculpted, his muscular limbs sinuous. Even splayed listlessly across a chaise longue, clad in nothing but supple velvet breeches, there was an unrefined, almost feral quality to his posture, hewn in the wilds of their undiscovered southlands. His keen mind had grown cunning; his wit sharp and his humor caustic, in the manner of his brash adventuring companions. Yet his lush features bespoke a regal grace inherited from their valiant sire, the alabaster skin against an ebony crown of hair that marked him of Elrond’s line. He was still gullible in that familiar way, susceptible to prods at his bashfulness and jibes about his solitary nature, which would forever hold sway in his professional affairs. His tales of the settlement concerned tasks, structure, resources, and horticultural ambitions, rarely did he speak of elves he had encountered or like minds he’d befriended, though Cuthalion did not doubt there were an overlooked few who had impressed him.

He was altogether enigmatic, this elf that had returned to them, an amalgamation of Echoriaths old and improved. At times during their long night of conversation and of ablutions, Cuthalion struggled to recognize even a glimmer of his cherished brother; other times he was fiercely reminded of how little the darkling elf had inherently changed. To an elf of Cuthalion’s wiles, of course, this puzzling behavior gave him leave to test his brother’s newly drawn boundaries.

What fun would their reunion be without a smidge of perspicacity, if he were not the rabble-rousing Cuthalion of longstanding renown?

With the encouragement of several carafes of both miruvor and, earlier, a fine selection of wines, he found himself faced with an elf exhausted from a tumultuous, emotional day, suitably plied by drink, kept from his beloved by circumstance, and bared down to nothing but his breeches. After hours of relating remembrances, tossing off barbs, and launching into labyrinthine digressions, Echoriath yet tussled with the encroaching oblivion of heavy sleep, but his irrepressible desire to please his brother kept him victorious thus far. To this end, he dumped another fill of miruvor into his empty goblet and drank generously from the brimming cup, smacking his lips at the bitter aftertaste of the liquor.

Yet he could not stifle a resulting giggle at the sound, his cheeks aflame.

Cuthalion smirked, bared his teeth. Though his tolerance had increased remarkably, Echoriath was never one to entirely hold his drink. If his memory of their seaside escapades served him well - and it had – in such a state of inebriation, his brother was somewhat overwhelmed by lust, by the need for sensation, for stimulation. Only sodden did Echoriath entirely quit his reasonable, restrained ways and evidence his fleshly cares. Though Tathren was probably by now collapsed on a waybed, snoring fitfully in his parents’ home and therefore incapable of tending to his beloved’s itching desires, in his twin’s present state Cuthalion could effortlessly extricate the most salacious of anecdotes from him, which regularly Echoriath would rather have his teeth plucked out by a warg tail than divulge. His intent was not to injure or embarrass him – he would never treat his own brother so basely – merely to glean some knowledge of his private relations in order to deepen their own intimacy. He loved his brother, wanted to be assured of his proper treatment… as well as, in all honesty, to gather fuel for later taunting sessions.

He may be wicked, but ever with heart.

Replenishing his own goblet with the sour elixir, he met Echoriath’s amber eyes across the thin, rectangular table between them. His brother laughed, once, then smiled with unctuous fondness, imparting how glad he was to be with him again, of their togetherness. His face was flush, his cheeks ruddy, buoyant, as he nuzzled his head against the bristly texture of the armrest. Already, the telltale signs of heightened sensitivity were upon him: he sunk his bare back entirely into the velour cushions of the chaise, his feet played with a silky blanket over the far edge, his tongue lapped at the rim of his cup and his fingers stroked over the velvet-clad length of his inner calf. Though his movements were sluggish, he’d grown restless, shifting every few moments to increase the friction on his back, his arms, like a cat on a scratching post. The wisps of his loose hair spilled over his chest to further torment him, though he had been the mastermind behind this misbegotten maneuver. Echoriath knew well enough Tathren was unreachable this night, though with every twitch and writhe he seemed of a mind to conjure him forth.

Cuthalion peaked a wondering brow, which sent him blushing a spell.

“Echo, will you indulge my curiosity awhile?” he inquired of his languorous brother. “On a matter of little importance, true, but yet I have always marveled…”

“At what have you marveled?” Echoriath grinned impishly, his own interest roused by the impending question.

“In all your time away,” Cuthalion elaborated. “With all the no doubt strapping swordbrothers you’ve encountered and gifted guildsmen you’ve brokered with, have you never once… desired another?” Though Echoriath was clearly shocked by the question, he nevertheless respected his brother enough to consider the matter, guessing immediately its underlying intention. “Not that you would act upon this desire… but have you never been at all curious to have knowledge of another’s body, another’s way of loving? Does it not… concern you… that you have only ever known one bed-partner?”

The absent tenor of the darkling elf’s face told him his thoughts had instantly flickered off to Tathren, but Echoriath, conscious of his brother’s observation, wrenched his mind away from this luring image and set a steady course towards response.

“I have not been fashioned as you, Talion,” he softly began. “I do not begrudge you knowledge of so many, these experiences are part of the search for your only one, and indeed my own beloved went through a similar search before he knew me as his own. I am not as you both… I am an aberration, in this as in many things… I am content to love with my one and him alone. I wish… I wish, at times, that we were truly twinned, that I might for a moment make you feel how fervently, how relentlessly I love him… but that is not to be.”

“I also would like to share in your love, if for but an instant,” Cuthalion remarked somberly. “Perhaps then I might recognize the feeling in my own heart, when the time comes.”

“Have you not courted any promising maidens, in my absence?” Echoriath asked gently, not wanting to inflict further melancholy upon him.

Though the effects of his own intoxication veered him towards self-pity, Cuthalion rallied himself.

“I have snuffed my blaze through the maids of this land,” he explained. “I had a constant lover in the last few years, but over the winter she came to try my patience with her incessant talk of binding. I knew then she was not precious enough to forever keep and cut her free, though I do miss how she warmed me. I… I do not like a cold bed for long. I must take another lover soon.”

“Perhaps a period of abstinence might be beneficial,” Echoriath suggested, a twinge of mirth overcoming him. Cuthalion abstinent was like a horse without hooves. “Or you might make another bold attempt at bedding an ellon…”

With a snort, Cuthalion eyed him contemptuously. “Tis your tongue that has grown bold, through the companionship of such salty journeyers.”

“My tongue is quite bold, indeed,” Echoriath grinned wolfishly. “It relishes the salt of plunder, the cream of suck, and the excavation of musky… *sacred* passages.” To Cuthalion’s further astonishment, his brother mewled in frustration. “Valar, the wine has roused me! I want my lover…” Resigned to the present, if fondly-held, company, Echoriath engaged him further. “But I have not yet sufficiently replied to your rather mischievous and ill-portending inquiry. While you are right in judging me dedicated to my beloved and our forever bond, I cannot pretend that others are not… intriguing, at times. I have come to know more elves in these last years than all I have known throughout my admittedly short life, so naturally I found more than a few fair.”

“Such as?” Cuthalion pursued.

“I spent a three-month in the mines,” Echoriath related ponderously. “To lay the track and construct rest stations at various levels. At times the work was so arduous that we could not break for home, so we would stay the night and rest when we could. Tathren had no love for these absences, but he could be of no help to us and was occupied at the docks unloading ships. Oftentimes, I would be quite lonely. I found the miners rough. Some were stout-hearted, like Gimli, but others… they were not like elves at all. One such as this, however, was… very beautiful. Dark, like the little ones, black eyes and blackest hair. Mayhap black of heart, as well. I despised his manner, verily I did, and would never have come to love him, but on some of those lonely nights… he was innocent in slumber, as we all are. He was devastating…”

“Did you… find pleasure in his comeliness?” Talion asked, unable to stifle a guffaw.

“Nay, never!!” Echoriath protested. “He was pleasing to the *eye*, gwanur. Not every thing of beauty shoots straight to the loins.”

“Indeed,” his brother sniffed pointedly. “But was there perhaps one who *did*?”

Echoriath harrumphed with Elrondian bluster, but did not oppose him.

“His name is of no consequence,” he charged. His lips curled giddily; he was, despite himself, proud to be proven an elf of various wants, if only one supreme need. “He was a simple elf, a cultivator of farmlands, a master harvester… a grower. We sowed the first fields together, planted the orchards and tended the vineyards, before the others came. He was flaxen-haired, as Tathren, and there were instances when his manner so reminded me of him that I could not rightly tell one from the other. Which confused me some… greatly, at times. The land work kept him hardy, but lean. We would swim together, after the noontime meal. I came to… appreciate his form. His bashful charms, so like my own. If I had not had Tathren, I would… we would, perhaps, have… But he was no temptation! I would never… but Tathren, by Elbereth, would not be dissuaded. He came to swim with us one afternoon, and afterwards was so ferociously jealous that I thought he might do something rash. The elf had his own longtime lover, in Valimar. A maid. There was never…”

“Did he strike him?” Talion asked excitedly.

Echoriath laughed at this, then assured him: “Nay, nay… but he forbid me to work in the orchards for a time.”

“And you complied?” the silver elf queried disbelievingly.

“For a time,” Echoriath responded enigmatically. “In truth, I found his jealously somewhat… useful. I encouraged it awhile. He would take me with such force afterwards, bleating troths, plied to my every wish, so skillfully as to utterly sunder me, that I… I could not resist…” Talion howled at the baldness of this revelation, such that he’d never thought would slip from between his prim brother’s lips. “But even that instance does not compare to the unforeseeable solicitations of other, covetous elves. While I did nothing to encourage these suitors… they did always somehow come to suffer for the benefit of my amusement. Tathren is rather cunning, in his own hotheaded fashion.”

“Do tell,” Cuthalion prodded, entirely embroiled in this unwieldy, improbable discussion.

Echoriath gathered his legs in and propped himself up against the armrest, eager to amuse him with proof of his beloved’s devotion.

“There exists, in the southernmost peaks of the echoriath,” he dove into the tale. “A tributary of a fearsome river that snakes up the eastern seaboard. From a shelf in the uppermost heights of an oceanfront mount, a waterfall pours through a gate of jagged rocks and over a cliff of extreme elevation, one only the most agile among our people might survive, but certainly not without severe injury. This shelf has little greenery, the rock sheet heated like coals beneath the fierce, unguarded sun. The cove from which the river spurts forth, however, is quite humid, cushioned with rare breeds of moss and lichen.”

“Enough with geography,” Cuthalion groaned, impatient in his inebriation. “Tell of the incident.”

“I must set the scene,” Echoriath insisted, but proceeded nevertheless to the meat of the tale. “Weary elves would often climb to this shelf on days of rest to ease themselves, the routine of hothouse languor, an invigorating swim in the river’s breakneck gush, then a stretch beneath the sun was compellingly restorative. None bothered to bring their raiment beyond the entrance cave, as none would be necessary with the sun to bake them dry. Open nudity was common enough in the early, frontier days of the colony, and later the shelf became known as a place where exposure was not only accepted, but expected. After the completion of the first guildhall, a sixmonth following the arrival of the premier wave of workers, Tathren and I were lounging on the open rock. A few small parties of companions were in the vicinity, but most kept to their own circle, as all wanted to rest, to renew themselves. The previous week had been brutal for my beloved, hauling timber from the supply ships and lugging wagons full into the town. The instant out of the river, he had crawled to our usual spot, collapsed onto his stomach, and burrowed his head in his arms, falling dead asleep. I, myself, was laid out beside him, enjoying a time of reflection but far from fatigued.”

“*You*, Echo, were bare within the sight of others?” Cuthalion marveled, after spitting up some of his drink.

“Aye, Talion, that is the point of the tale,” Echoriath sighed, somewhat aggrieved that even his own twin could not intuit the forces that had molded him into an intrepid, audacious version of his former self. “An elf of our acquaintance, a seafarer and one of the new arrivals, perceived that I was not lost to slumber and came over to converse. He ostensibly wanted to learn more of our plans, as he had the option to remain for a time and sample the atmosphere, but as our light discussion progressed, I could rarely catch his eye, so focused was he on… on one of my more generous endowments.”

“Your elfhood?!” Cuthalion gasped, then snickered plainly.

“Elfhood, indeed,” Echoriath acknowledged. “Twas as if he’d never before seen an ellon, though I imagine he had had occasion to regard himself.”

“Was he himself becoming?” his brother queried.

“Not to my taste,” Echo admitted pensively. “He had no grace, no… delicacy. T’would not have surprised me if he’d declared himself a peredhil, for he was of manly countenance: coarse haired, brown, and rugged. And transfixed, it seemed, by my own slender form. He veered our talk towards the carnal in order to remark upon my… my length and his appreciation of it. He made advances. I rebuked him, but I was not about to skitter off into the cave and hide myself. If he could not conduct himself with the appropriate respect for his fellow elves, then he would suffer the consequences of his brusqueness.”

“And did he?” Cuthalion asked, almost savoring the inevitable conclusion.

Echoriath laughed dryly, then finished: “He was veritably purple with anger!! Unbeknownst to me, in my flustered state, Tathren had both awoken and slipped quietly away. His absence was what provoked the elf to outright overture, though I was so stunned by his conversation that I had not even marked our cousin’s retreat. No sooner had I stood and spoke curtly to alert others of my predicament, than Tathren whistled from the cliffside for our attention and summarily dumped the elf’s effects into the ocean! In solidarity, the other elves decided to take leave with us, so the brute had to trudge the steep and dusty road back to the town with nothing but his burly navel hairs to conceal him.”

At this, Cuthalion was seized by such a fit of cackling that he nearly toppled off his own chair.

“His immodesty had him rightly banished,” Echoriath completed the tale. “Though a certain member of the security council may have had an overgenerous amount of sway on his fellow swordbrothers.”

“I wager none dared even engage you in polite flirtation from that day on,” Cuthalion stuttered out, between peals of mirth.

“I would have hoped,” he continued. “But there were, unfortunately, several more incidents… most strangely involving the river, now that I take their toll…”

“*Saes*, Echo, tell another before we retire,” Talion urged him, with the whine and pout of an elfling. “My dreams will be merry.”

“Very well,” Echoriath conceded, though it was no real trouble to him. He enjoyed entertaining his brother with such tales, as he’d never before had tales to engage him, while Cuthalion had always been bursting with intrigues and seductions. He considered which of his stories had the most sauce, to further beguile his bed-hopping twin, then selected an incident that he was sure would make he himself blush, before long. “At this later time, the guildhalls were all nearing completion. Our heaviest flush of builders, wood craftsmen, and stone-workers were settled in tent compounds around the eight main edifices; some would remain to ply their artistic wares, most would depart for other colonies within the year. By day, we constructed. By night, we reveled. My three apprentices and I oversaw the process from the digging of the foundation to the polishing of the stone pillars. An influx of immigrants had recently arrived, representatives of each of the eight trade guilds hand-picked to decorate the individual halls with their art. The House of the Golden Flower, Ada-Fin’s own house, was the jewel of my designs. I gave his hall the greatest share of my attention, not a detail was overlooked. I selected the art of weaving for its guild, as Ada has always admired great tapestries, cloth textures, and fashionable raiment. On Glinfalas’ recommendation, a loom-master from Otirion was commissioned, his Naneth’s own instructor in the weaving arts.”

“Hardly of infallible reputation,” Cuthalion noted.

“His tapestries are exquisite,” Echoriath proceeded undeterred. “His carnal appetites, however, lack some… discretion. He is of a sect of elders that have never left Aman. Even in this more evolved age, they purposefully remain married to some *very* ancient, primitive customs: they practice communal binding. The nine members of a sect are bound together over three days of zealous festivities: blood rites, spellcasting, and… and…”

Cuthalion visibly blanched at his unspoken insinuation: “They… they… You lie!”

“Nay, Talion,” Echoriath vigorously shook his head, as if to brush off an unwanted touch. “They couple… as a whole. Any children begotten from their union… unions?… are sold out as concubines to members of other sects. I was shocked to discover that Glinfalas himself is one of those children. He escaped the sect just before his first majority and set out on his own. Thorontir fostered him into full elfhood, trained him as a warrior. Yet over the ages he has rekindled a relationship with his mother, misguided as her beliefs are, and he knew the tapestries to be the finest in all Aman, so…”

“Does he follow the… the rites of the sect?” Cuthalion gaped. “Was he the one that…?”

“To speak of abstinence,” Echoriath mused, thinking of the woes his friend has suffered. “He is so cold, Talion, because he believes that any connection with another might evoke some deep-seeded perversion he fears lie within him still. Until this latest journey, he had gone untouched by ellon or ellyth for over five thousand years. This incident, however, broke him, and all was revealed.” He watched the colors of sympathy play over his darkling brother’s face, shaded as it was with the knowledge that he himself might have suffered a similar fate, if Tathren had refused him. After some dark moments, his brow evened and his countenance lightened anew. “Yet lately he has been hotly wooed by a maidenly lute-player. She is somewhat innocent of the world herself, only a decade our elder, but perhaps… perhaps they can come to some understanding.”

“And the incident in question?” Cuthalion emphasized, hoping to rouse his brother back to jesting.

“Aye, the incident,” Echoriath turned jovial again. “The night we completed the House of the Golden Flower, one of the tradesmen had brought fireworks. Nearly the entire population was gathered in the recently completed gardens that surround our glorious fountain to watch them. The Golden Flower guild is one of the three that border on the gardens. This information may seem trivial, but it will have its part in the action. As our entire settlement was out of doors, Tathren and I could not yet quit the House itself. A tapestry of Ada-Fin in his battle with the Balrog had been erected in the main hall that afternoon, the finishing touch, and I could not verily wrench my eyes from it. Tathren had come to collect me for the fireworks, but sensing I was in no mood for revels, decided that we should remain awhile. We spoke of Ada, of his eventual reaction to my reconstruction of his beloved city – which I yet feared would be scathing – and of how the town was taking shape. We were gathered on a luxurious rug before the hollow hearth… it was not long before I sought the solace of my lover’s care. Wanting to dispel all traces of sorrow from my being, Tathren was rather inspired in that night’s loving, such that the hall soon echoed with… with my moans.”

“A sound I am well acquainted with,” Talion needled him. “I assure you, gwanur-nin.”

With a fearsome blush, Echoriath pressed on: “We heard the pop of the fireworks in the distance; we did not fear discovery. Save that a certain lecherous, sect-worshipping elf had come in to admire his handiwork… and stayed to admire *us*. We’d not bothered to unclothe entirely, but my breeches had been discarded and my shirt flayed open. Tathren sensed him instantly, and glared such that he wafted into the shadow. He had thought him gone, but found him again later, at another place in the hall, and growled at him. I myself took no note of him, nor did I find my lover’s growl… unusual, so I remained oblivious and embroiled in our passion. Just as we were soaring to our final, sundering release, the elf emerged again, from beside the hearth itself, and stood directly over us as we… we…”

“Came to completion?” Talion essayed smartly.

“Aye,” Echoriath demurred, his cheeks ruddy as a cobapple. “Tathren sunk into my arms. We were in our fugue for some time, as is customary, but when I opened my eyes a few moments later, the stupid elf had lingered there. He smiled at me – a wretched, wolfish grin – with no shame at all! He wanted me to know the force of his admiration, the… the thrall of his lusting. To no one’s surprise, I started, and Tathren turned swiftly around. When he marked the elf’s proximity, his black, beady eyes, he leapt to his feet, fastened his breeches as he chased after him, and apprehended him just by the exit. The elf thought Tathren would yank him back in, but my beloved had other plans. By this time, Tathren was bare chested and loose-breeched, so he threw the elf over his shoulder, marched him to the fountain before a community of eyes agape, tossed him into the spray, and told him – before an audience of avid ears – to cool off before he took his trade elsewhere.”

Cuthalion nearly choked himself with laughter at this spirited recounting; he could very well picture Tathren, handsomely shirtless and flush from carnal exertion, strutting back into the Hall like Legolas from an orc den, imposing, glorious in his ready dispatch of the enemy, Mirkwood blood roaring through his veins. He shared this vision with his now drowsy brother, who sighed dreamily at the image. Despite their night-stretch conversation of jealousies and of infatuations, there was but one who ever held his tender heart.

One whom, Cuthalion esteemed, would sorely regret the lost chance to ply the wine-laved, lassive elf before him to his impassioned will, when later taunted by the information that had been gleaned from him. Grappling to an unruly stance, the silver elf offered a swaying hand to his brother, who nodded sweetly – three winks from sleep – but did not stir. Instead, Talion stretched the feet-twined blanket over him and slipped out the goblet from his drooping hold.

He kissed his long-missed twin on the brow, before lurching off to his own bedchamber; glad to know some of his intimacies, at last.


End of Part Thirteen