Further Tales Of Elbereth's Bounty

Title: Further Tales Of Elbereth’s Bounty – Cuthalion’s Tale
Author: Gloromeien
Email: swishbucklers@hotmail.com
Pairing: OMC/OFC, 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 one concerns Echoriath’s brother, Cuthalion, and his quest for the mate of his heart, after years of philandering.
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’. These Further Tales come into play after the last chapter of OEB, but before its epilogue.
WARNING: This particular tale contains a HET pairing. A return to the slash I love best comes with the next two tales, but this particular character prefers females, so I thought I would take a little holiday from m/m pairings, just make things challenging for myself (since non-slash pairings are the real challenge for me!). If you do not enjoy these kinds of things, I think this story is probably not for you. Things will return to their usual slashiness in the future, however, fear not. And for those brave enough to tackle this tale, I hope you enjoy.
Feedback: Would be delightful.
Dedication: To Eresse, who came to love Cuthalion as much as I and hoped for some conclusion to his tale.

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Further Tales Of Elbereth’s Bounty

Cuthalion’s Tale – Part Two

Coirë, Yen 192, Fourth Age

Every bleat, yelp, and whine that broke from the surgery jabbed like a slit knife into the taut flesh of his chest. Strung tight and wiry as a Galadhrim’s bow, Elladan was perched on the edge of his husband’s knees as if a hunter atop a craggy lookout, poised to strike a clean, cutting blow. His sting-swollen arm itched something ferocious, but he dared not scratch, both as example to his horribly suffering little ones and since Glorfindel would likely snatch his hand away, only doubling the pain.

Though his pale brow was also furrowed with concern, Glorfindel was proving himself, as ever, the model husband; stroking a warm touch over the spiked vertebrae of his back, roping an anchor-arm around his middle, and humming a familiar folk tune to soothe him. If their far-too-curious daughters caught a wisp of the lilting refrain within, then all the better. Their two, terribly precocious girls had somehow been blessed/cursed with an overabundance of enthusiasm for the natural world, which too often landed them, as in the current circumstance, in the care of the vale’s Lord and Loremaster within these very same Healing Halls, their squeamish fathers banished to the waiting room beyond, which had all the dreadful charm of Mandos itself (or so Glorfindel would gripe).

Little wonder Elrohir and Legolas had Tinuviel on the archery fields before she could hold a bow, Elladan reflected, as he picked at the calamine spattered scars attained during his unthinking rescue, only to have Glorfindel smack his roving fingers. He winced at the resulting burn, enough to sober him. If only their daughters were so easily learned.

After incidents in foxholes, bird’s nests, and one particularly gruesome affair involving a pair of innocent tree-frogs, he and Glorfindel were beginning to consider investing in a small pet refuge and employing some veterinary experts to instruct their well-meaning twosome, as the tenderlings’ salvation efforts often resulted in further injury to the animal, rather than healing. Their latest undertaking, the renovation of the two hives in their grandmother’s expansive gardens, had been the most perilous yet, as evidenced by the twins endless cries from within. Though he ached for their suffering, Elladan had not been able to stand even the observation of Erestor and Elrond’s painstaking removal of the hundreds of stingers embedded in the raging red spores that speckled their normally lissome skin. Glorfindel’s behavior, ever protective, had not been any more supportable to the healers, so both fretting fathers had been relegated, once again, to the Mandos-like chamber to anguish through the echoes of their sobs. Celebrian, thankfully, had offered her services as nursemaid; Lalaith had joined her shortly after.

Elladan cringed violently, as a twee-voiced shriek stabbed through the door. Hislome could be heard twittering reassurances to her sister Crissae, whose slick, angry face, he instinctively knew, was by now pressed hot into her neck. The twins bore through their myriad of injuries with remarkable solidarity, neither father could ever be as much comfort as their double’s constant presence, partnered as they were in mischief and in the more painful moments that followed. He and Glorfindel loved nothing more than to tuck in on rainy nights and play rapt audience to their manic chatter, their wilding tales of girls’ wisdom and woe so foreign to the experiences of two lifelong warriors. These precious times reminded Elladan of he and Elrohir’s early-years attention to Arwen, who often seemed likelier to have sprouted from the spinach patch than from their placid parents, though this connection to their fallen aunt brought its own sorrows and regrets.

He could never, however, regret their decision to increase the ranks of their family, nor the miraculous occurrence that had brought their daughters to being, troublesome as they oftentimes were. Yet what else could be expected from the offspring of two tenacious, gallant, and unyielding warriors? For they were, quite incredibly, the bedazzling product of Elladan and Glorfindel’s union.

For nearly four decades, they had searched for a blithe and maternal ellyth they might partner with in the rearing of a lady-child. With few prospects in Telperion after the love-cast’s maddening population increase, they looked to the ancient villages of Vinyamar, Tirion, and its seaside vale, Otirion. Echoriath even sent letters to some likely friends in Gondolen, as Erestor did to Lindon, but to no avail. With the siring of so many new babes also came some fissures in Mandos’ titanic walls, many of the longtime fallen being released or reborn. With the youngest among them inching towards majority, Elladan had begun to despair and Glorfindel to resign himself to exceptional company of the glorious sons they were so blessed with.

Until Elbereth, in her eternal grace, had heard the wailing hearts of two of her most hallowed champions, and answered with aplomb.

One hush winter night, now nine years past, her handmaiden, Ilmare, was given solid form by the gracious Lady herself, then sent on a most visceral errand for one so lithe, so ephemeral. From their treetop residence, Glorfindel himself had remarked her descent from Taniquetil, like a slip of white-hot flame down the mountainside. When they had opened the door to her serene solicitations, her radiance had nearly felled them; though this subservience had served them well as she told them of Elbereth’s decree.

She herself would be their Vessel.

The Lady knew of their desires, of their peerless mutual devotion, thus had ordered her handmaiden to be not mother, but womb to their mingled seeds. After the performance of a sacred ritual, Elbereth’s germinating power would channel through her, combining their essences into one new being, which Ilmare would allow to grow within her for the requisite year. Never before had two ellon been so gifted by the Lady’s ethereal grace; she had chosen them, the revered Balrog-slayer and the valiant warrior-son of Elrond, to sire a babe who would be a living tribute to her elemental bounty over this earth. Neither the Lady’s nor the handmaid’s divinity, however, would be kept within their daughter. The child would be entirely theirs, as any child of an ellon/ellyth couple. As befitting two seasoned soldiers, both had instantly bowed before the handmaiden, quickly asking what they should do.

Only later, once Ilmare had again wafted up to Taniquetil to wait out her pregnancy, had the magnitude of the Lady’s gift struck them, had Elladan wept in sundering joy at this unique opportunity, had Glorfindel crowed in ecstasy over the treetops of the vale, as they coupled in furious celebration.

Elladan keenly remembered every heady second of the rite itself. As on their binding day, both had squeezed a spill of blood into a ready goblet and both drunk deep from its rich scarlet, though they had been careful to leave enough for the later spell. After lacing their hands together, Ilmare had whispered blushingly precise instructions for their love-play, then had left them to their sensual explorations. Both had felt deliciously intoxicated by the other, the floodgates of their binding channel thrown recklessly open by the blood-feed between them. They had ground and groaned together with rare, blistering fever, until both were quite sodden with their husband’s enraptured spending. Woozy with bliss, they had not marked Ilmare’s return through the haze of culling kisses, though the strange, soul-deep tug effected by her spell properly attuned them. They watched, agape, as she mixed the remnants of their bloods and their spooned-up seeds with an ensorcelled mithril implement, felt the sultry thrall of their child’s formation. They had soon become even more hotly embroiled, her earlier restrictions having been revoked; their slow coupling had created a crucible of molten feeling, an incubating bed of tender emotion in which their babe might come to being.

Ilmare herself had seemed wonderstruck by these unfamiliar, palpable sensations deep within, clear evidence that Elbereth’s had delivered on her unbelievable promise and had spirited the seedling babe into her womb. The handmaiden had swore a vow of her own to keep their little one well, before departing, as her elven form could only be maintained in the care of the Lady herself. Glorfindel, thankfully, had had the wherewithal to gift Ilmare with a keepsake of his, an osfipal stone found the day of his rebirth and hung on a pendant for good fortune; Elladan had done the same with a locket of Arwen’s hair. Each night thereafter, they had sung prayers to the great Lady and her kindly handmaid, in return they had been able to listen to the haunting song of their growing babe.

When, after a month, that one, pure voice diverged into an immaculate harmony, even Glorfindel had wept.

Fuelled to arduous, effervescent existence by the dual flames of their brave fathers, Elladan would never forget the unrivalled existence of his miracle daughters, of golden locks, like the fiery Balrog-slayer, and of resilient silver eyes, like he himself.

Only few in their immediate family knew the truth of their creation: his parents, his twin and bond-brother, his sister, and all their children. Though in facial features they resembled Elladan, most assumed them of Glorfindel’s siring. He and his husband yet considered whether to one day tell them the truth of their fashioning, perhaps to remain undecided until their majorities. Regardless, and despite their too-adventurous natures, they were his absolute treasures, dear as all his grown children, for what parent could be asked to choose between them? He could not wait to carry them home, for a long soak in a salted bath and yet another application of calamine. Their ambitions would be chastened, this night; they would be uncommonly attentive and adorably apologetic, which he and Glorfindel would ply to their advantage as they all snuggled by the hearthfire.

Elladan was thus quite piqued by feeling, when another of his children wandered into the Healing Halls. Cuthalion sauntered about as if he’d been forcibly struck on the head, his dizzy smile of greeting indeed a sight for sore, worried eyes. Their silvery son had been so lonely, these last years, that Elladan and Glorfindel had been bereft over how to succor him; even their most patient efforts had not had even the faintest effect upon him. Yet this afternoon he seemed to veritably float over the floor. When they rose to meet him, Cuthalion embraced each, hard and heartful, for an exceptionally long while, his limber frame bristling with excitement, anticipation. When appraised of his sisters’ pain, he laughed almost too emphatically, but bunked down between his fathers to wait out their tending. Even in his more solemn moods, he would never miss a chance to tease and to brighten them; they were madly devoted to him in return.

His two gilded lilies, as he called them.

Cuthalion had managed to ensnare them both into coddling him for some time, speaking not a word in explanation of his odd behavior, but seeking out their consolation as he had not done in a hundred years. Elladan, though warmed by this rare mood, could not help but inquire after his son’s trouble, if trouble was indeed the cause of such suppleness.

Cuthalion sighed in response, though without the usual weight, and whispered: “I have found her, Ada. My one.” Noting the astonished airs both his fathers’ faces had taken on, he filled in some brief details. “I had thought she would never have me, but she herself came soliciting my attentions, this day, and revealed herself to be as enamored with me as I… as I have so longly been with her. We have but begun our courtship, Ada, but my heart brims with its potential, with the truth I have ever known… I love her. I have won her overture, and before long I will win our eternity.”

Try as they joyously did after such an overwhelming revelation, Elladan and Glorfindel could not squeeze the spark out of their bold, besotted son, who once loosed babbled on apace, until he had told the entire tale. Without, however, giving the slightest indication of which ellyth could be identified as his gracious beloved, a point of mild concern.

Glorfindel, ever blunt, was the first to voice the indelible question: “And which lovely one will we one day have the good fortune of naming our bond-daughter.”

Cuthalion flushed entirely ruddy, though the line of his lips was suddenly, severely drawn.

“Tis… tis Miriel,” he softly replied. Giving his fathers a moment to digest this rather startling information, he continued after a generous while. “Fear not for my honor, dear ones. I have come to solicit Erestor’s approval of the match, to request his permission to court her. I have not acted rashly… indeed, I have not acted at all! Twas she who sought me out and showed me… of her desires.” When they remained silent, he hastened to qualify their status. “She is yet innocent, I swear upon my brother’s care!”

Suddenly beset by acute worry, his pleading eyes flipped from one to the other, though neither yet bothered to respond. He was almost tearful by the time Elladan began to blush, his silver eyes locked in silent dialogue with his smirking husband. With a gloating snicker, Glorfindel gazed quite wickedly at his mate’s delightfully reddening countenance, before patting his bewildered son on the arm.

“Do not be distressed, ioneth, we are most glad of your joy and heartily approve of the match,” Glorfindel insisted, though Elladan yet purpled by the instant. “Indeed, I have for some time anticipated such a revelation. Is that not so, melethron?”

“Quite so,” Elladan choked out, unable to meet either pair of eyes, one rife with concern, the other with intense mirthfulness.

“I hope you will not be dismayed by a small confession,” Glorfindel wolfishly continued. “But your Ada-Dan and I even enjoyed… a small wager, on this account.”

“For Valar’s sake, bereth-nin!” Elladan snorted, by now turned almost fully away from them.

“I admire your acuity, Ada-Fin,” Cuthalion praised him, guessing the salacious matter of this wager and growing rather mirthful himself. “I am not at all injured by this cunning observation… and dare not ask what price you will no doubt quite brazenly exact from my blushing father. Though… perhaps I should later advise Echoriath and Tathren that my sisters will be spending a few days in their care?”

“Not for some time, I regret, as their bee-sores are dangerously plentiful,” Glorfindel sighed wistfully. “Perhaps in a few weeks time. The Valar have blessed you with a brief respite, meleth-nin.”

Recovering himself, Elladan looked back upon his sterling son, his golden mate, and thought of his two ethereal, though aching, daughters in the surgery beyond. With explicit appreciation, he kissed Cuthalion’s silvery crown, then twined fingers with his yet taunting husband.

“Aye, they have blessed me beyond compare,” he beamed, and quietly murmured his thanks to the Lady above.

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When Cuthalion unlatched the stable door, a pungent haze poured out, the air within still rank from the visceral scent of blood, birthing fluid, and horse sweat. Once ushered into the dim torchlight, he gently held her back; the shadow-play of the rippling flames alighting the angular lines of his face. He dotingly unfastened her heavy cloak, but left it to hang over her shoulders lest the evening chill should prick her. The night was uncommonly frosty; as they had walked the meadow grass crunched under their boots and their foggy breaths billowed before them. In the stalls, the steeds worked overtime to incubate their mares and newborn colts.

Despite the cold, spring was upon them. Since early dawn, Cuthalion had been busy guiding his crowning crop of foals from their groaning mothers: four today, three the day before, next season he would better monitor the exploits of his studs. Miriel trailed behind him as he surveyed the dormant stalls for signs of distress. He found each budding family in quiet order; mothers being milked, colts burrowed in the hay, and fathers snorting fitfully to sound their proud approval.

A peace came over him in this, his sanctuary. The strain of his arduous high season, coupled with the rigors of their courtship left him little time lately for replenishment. Though every gaze of his burnished mithril eyes told of his fulfillment in the vigilant care of both the herd and her own rambunctious self, at this late hour his usually creamy skin had paled sallow. His gait was made uneven by a twisted ankle, moreover he had begun to favor his right arm, but he had still squired her all the way from her family home, where they had dined with her fathers. Later, despite her pleas and protests, he would no doubt return her before curfew, attempting to conceal his limp the entire way back, swiftly lurching the path to his own talan after delivering her, and collapsing his battered body into his slim, lonely bed.

What Miriel would not give to be there to succor him, to leisurely disrobe him, to work his tired muscles loose, to massage the wounded ankle and to wring a howling release from him, so that he might sleep heavily.

The strictures of true courtship had him coiled with tension, she could feel it in the curl of his back when they kissed too longly, too intently. Though he would rather be emasculated than betray his oath to her fathers, even the most tender touch was embedded with a rawer meaning, only amplified by his cloying fatigue. He was slowly learning how to love her, but he knew very well how to lure her; despite the sterling aspirations of his gallant heart, his body could not lie. As such, he kept their kisses maddeningly chaste, his hands dug into a fold of garment and permanently clamped there; his lips roved no lower than her neck and his hips remained resolutely aloft of her skirts, let alone her nether regions. He manfully controlled his breaths, when whispering downy secrets in her ear; if she did not so adore him, she would have rallied herself into seducing him by now. Each night, after their evening stroll, he delivered her to the archway outside her father’s study, nearly purpled her palms with the fever of his kisses, but ever denied her mouth. She would slip into bed quaking with need, her thighs bruised from the effort of pressing them closed and her bosom heaving from overswell. Her dreams were scarlet, debauched affairs, their molten matter gleaned from the tellings of his past lovers; she would wake in a sticky, sodden mess of sheets, thinking him beside her.

Worse than her imaginings was her own voracious curiosity. She had taken to stealing up on her frazzled beau in unguarded moments, hoping to catch him mooning (which she often did), underdressed in his offices (which, after several embarrassments, he grew cautious over), or, even more deliciously, aroused (as yet unsuccessful, though she had noted several inopportune bulges on stablehands after dallying in the fields with their sweethearts). Cuthalion took this gameliness in stride. Indeed Miriel believed he was privately glad, for as a result of this wily streak her majority night would certainly prove more spirited, his own burden of instruction lessened by her lively enthusiasm for all bawdy things. Although the expression of his own desire was tightly checked, he encouraged her explorations, answered even her most blush-inducing queries with admirable earnestness, and, as always, teased her mercilessly. She was heartened that the playful manner of their interactions had not changed with their emotional intimacy; if anything, they were even more easy with their banter and more cunning with their jests.

She had never felt so free with anyone, whether sprawled about the river banks, brushing a new foal clean, or tucked into a booth at the ale hall amidst raucously debating companions. Indeed, it was little wonder he appeared so exhausted, as they had not spent an evening apart since the first day of her proposal. He’d escorted her to concerts in the Hall of Fire, the christening of a seaworthy vessel, a host of social events and the occasional cozy dinners with members of his family. He was a suitor beyond compare, invested in every aspect of her maturation, of their evolution as a couple and of the deepening of emotion between them.

She had been pleased to observe, at dinner, that all her parents seemed similarly convinced. They had welcomed their former charge with indelible fondness, glowing at every show of his affection for her and engaging him in rabid conversation. His gentlemanliness greatly impressed them, as did his elaborate plans for the future of his husbandry enterprise. More precisely, *their* husbandry enterprise, as he never spoke of himself without reference to her companionship, her support, or their togetherness. Whatever activity Miriel chose for her life’s work would be incorporated into his grand scheme, ever attuned was he to her needs, challenges, and preferences, nothing would be decided upon without her consultation or her cares in mind. That he was preparing himself for the ultimate position in her eternal life, that of her bond-mate, was in crystalline evidence.

Miriel could broke no objection, as she was increasingly like-minded. Her majority rites would be the final test, though she was in no hurry, at her young age, to be immediately bound. She did not doubt Cuthalion would wait as patiently for her hand as he had for her declaration of regard.

Her parents, however, might prove more persistent.

Only her brother was yet wrecked by this turn in their affection’s tide. His affront on Cuthalion’s honor went unvoiced at supper, but was clear enough by his bitter manner towards him. Upon her earlier confession of their couplehood, Orinath had raged against his tutor and his onetime great friend; he branded him traitorous to his vow of guardianship, their love a perversion of affections kindled in her infancy. That he himself grew softer towards one yet shelled in elflinghood’s delicate pearl - or so she had suspected for some time – only invigorated his ire. At table, he had simmered beside her and excused himself early, only his sire’s sharp looks keeping his tongue held. Cuthalion, unsurprisingly, had sworn to seek a private council with him come morn, but Miriel thought little would come of this, unless Orinath confessed himself and sought counsel of his own.

A blunt kick against the stall beside roused her from this reverie; Cuthalion’s own steed, Belar, was surly this eve. Her silvery one chuckled at his upstart horse and fondly patted his rump, murmuring assurances that tomorrow they would take exercise, forgotten in these last, harrowing days. Atypically unguarded in his state of exhaustion, Cuthalion gathered her close against him and nuzzled hotly into her neck, drinking amply of her spicy, jasmine-laced scent.

“Perhaps we should stud him to your mare,” he snickered into the silk of her skin. “Might settle him some.”

“And would your unruliness be similarly settled?” she taunted, her tone studiously innocent.

Disbelieving silver eyes met hers, though he essayed a sly smirk: “T’will be more glutted than sated come your begetting day, lovely one.”

“I verily hope we shall feast, after such discomfiting famine,” she countered, pressing her wares quite fully against him.

“Are you so hungry of late, meleth?” he questioned earnestly, somewhat taken aback by her eagerness. “You speak boldly for one who has not yet earned her place at table, nor even sampled the wine.”

“Whose fault is that?!” she protested, though was unable to do other than beam at him, for he was fair even when he lectured.

“You feel I have been neglectful?” he frowned, concerned, as ever, that he had not given his all for her.

“Nay, you are a prince,” she insisted, stealing a tender, reassuring kiss. “Indeed, your courtliness is quite maddening, celeben-nin. I will be so pure on my begetting day that my fathers might barter me for dragon’s bane. Might you not… tarnish me some? Tis but a week before my majority rites…”

With a saucy wink, she drew him towards the ladder, that most fortuitously led to the hayloft, the perfect hideaway for a few hours of experimentation. Cuthalion, however, stalled at the base, his reluctance glaring. Miriel well understood that this hesitation, that his earlier reserve, was not as much a matter of the preservation of her virginity, as it was of the dampening of the desires that besot him. He could have her easily enough, ply her easily enough; this is what terrified him. That he would behave towards her as he had to so many maids, that in this base action she would be but a conquest, not a love.

“As you are so convinced of your readiness,” Cuthalion confronted her, a knowing twine to his still pallid lips. “Do speak on the manner of your… tarnishing, awhile. What act is it that so dissatisfies? My kiss? My touch? What would indulge you?”

“You ridicule me,” she remarked pointedly, playing him with purpose. “Do you think me so green as to know naught of loving? I have done my part in discovery, through books, consults, and your own timely lessons. Perhaps it is that very readiness that softens you. Perhaps I am not… supple enough?”

His eyes darkened with regret, his weariness suddenly all too plain.

“Forgive me, melethen,” he whispered, resting their foreheads together and sighing mightily. “I am somewhat overcome by the day’s events. Tis no little thing to face your fathers’ judgment, your mothers’ hawk-eyes, bear the brunt of your brother’s ire. I want only to deserve you, Miriel, to singe through my wanton reputation with the clear, shining tenor of my honorable behavior towards you. The vale has not longly forgotten my treatment of those maids, nor have I.”

“Yet to a one they sing your praises,” she underlined. “Not one has a harsh word towards you, only compliments galore, of your sweetness, of your skills, of the deliciously slow burn of your bed-play. Do I not deserve to know such a lover? Does such loving not do us both honor?” Cuthalion shut his eyes on a sigh, let her caressing arms envelop him, though he yet fought with himself, with his shame. “If you would attend me, I will answer this earlier query as to my desires. Principally, I wish to languish with my love awhile, nestled in the hay, feel his heat over me and let his weary head be pillowed on my bosom, for he has toiled like a titan this day. I would taste fully of his mouth, be taught to lap, lick, and suckle, for these are simple talents every lover should be equipped with.” A warm gush of exhalation steamed over her collar, so she paused to inquire after his approval. “Have I already exceeded my claim?”

“Nay, you are quite spare, as yet,” he mumbled roughly, beginning to enjoy this game. “T’would be little trouble, and most pleasant indeed to so indulge you, beauty. What else?”

“I would be touched,” she purred, daring to lure him up the ladder. “Roved. Fondled some, if you would be coarse; but I know you are fine and fair, so you will pet me like a kitten, then let me stroke over your chest in compensation. I seek no writhing, nor grinding, nor too intimate groping, merely gentle affections, for we must ever be judicious in our actions, lest we become too roused. I have no desire to lie in agony the night long, nor would I keep you from vital rest, meleth-nin.”

“You lie in agony nightly, Miriel?” he asked, stunned by her candor. By this time, they were lounging side by side on a comfy pile of golden brambles, limbs loosely entwined; Cuthalion’s quicksilver eyes rapt on her sultry features, every word dropped from her tongue worth savoring. “I had not thought-“

“Of what? That maids could want so fervently?” she giggled at this sign of his apparent innocence in some vital ways of femininity. “We may have but a bud where you have a broad shaft, but do not by this evidence abuse the ardor of our needfulness.” Cuthalion coughed out his astonishment at her blunt terminology, but was nevertheless impressed, as ever, by her boldness. “Which brings to mind a final request. I recognize that this is quite an intimacy I ask of you, and that you are terribly weary… but might I… might I… feel some evidence of… of your arousal?” Her love was visibly taken aback, but by his gentled features not unwilling to hear her out. Nor, by his faint flush, unwilling to be touched. “You have gone to such lengths to conceal yourself, not to press me with this needful expression, but by doing so… you have injured me some, Talion. I have seen a fully roused stud mounting a mare, but I have not seen even a breech-covered bulge, nor felt the most fleeting press of my own beloved’s want of me.” She could not help but blush, though she did note how Cuthalion’s eyes blackened some. “And to hear such hallowed tales of how he is endowed…”

As he gathered her into the cradle of his arms, he chuckled with prideful bemusement at this last utterance, too well aware of the blessings and the challenges of such an easily undone, though admirable, endowment. Miriel, however, would learn of all this in due time. For the moment, she wanted kissing, petting, and the tamest of assurances; how could a doting lover fail to comply? Without further, though rather enticing, discussion, he leaned her back into the hay and pressed his full weight over her, which elicited a soft, beguiling moan.

Those baiting tiger eyes, the most vivid rendering of one’s desire he had ever been assaulted by, flashed gold, green, and copper, their flattering almond shape dangerously sultry. He smoothed a kiss over the snarl of her lips, lapped them apart, then delved into that lush mouth, careful not to abandon himself too entirely to sensation. One day her exotic features would quite willfully seduce him, perhaps enslave him, but for now she was his to treasure, to measure out his indulgence until he could be claimed by his prize. Skilled fingers did indeed journey over the plains of her raiment, the peeks of satiny skin. He shed his tunic to allow her requested discovery of his taut-muscled chest and strong, sinuous arms.

To his delight, she reveled in this: suckling his neck, laving gleefully up his sternum, nibbling lasciviously at the tight skin over his navel and nipping experimentally at his peaked nipples. This elicited a yelp or two of his own, if only to thrill her. He instinctively understood that her own body was yet sacrosanct, that for all her eagerness she was not yet entirely prepared to bare herself to him, but he was happy enough to oblige her, if this helped in her readying. At first he had feared he might not be able to bear these playful, though genuinely rousing explorations, but he now recognized that he was so exhausted, he would require an experienced lover’s stimulation to reach any hope of climax. His tented breeches currently provided evidence enough of his renown endowment, which had not gone unremarked by his light-headed lady.

Miriel proper herself up on an elbow and took hot-cheeked appraisal of him; he was easily the most stunning creature she had ever seen.

“You are so… masculine, Talion,” she remarked, a potent glow in the ever-shifting hues of her cat’s eyes. “One would think you a peredhil.”

“I have some faint traces of man,” he noted hushly, as astounded by her own lovingly disheveled beauty. She plucked another kiss, before returning to her admiration. “I favor my grandmother’s line. The Dorians are rather broad-boned, for elves.”

“I have always found you beautiful,” she admitted. “Though at this moment, you are the most sterling of elves imaginable. Exquisitely rendered, despite your… quite overwhelming virility.”

When she stroked the length of his chest, he moaned in earnest; moved near to trembling by her words, the intensity of her gaze, the love blazing like a pyre from those once elusive eyes. He cautiously fingered his breech-laces, then, once her attention was locked, slowly unknotted them. He shifted his hips that they might be pushed down; this accomplished, he lay back to display himself.

“Is this evidence enough of my desire, melethen?” he rasped, as she carefully molded to his side.

Her head tucked into the crook of his arm, her warm breath skittering across his chest, Miriel was rapt upon him for some time yet. His lazy fingers teased through the silken sheathes of her hair, his pulse became languid. Eliciting a mumbled promise that she would wake him before midnight, the undulations beneath her cheek evened out, as he relaxed into slumber. He softened almost immediately, but she could not tare her eyes from a meticulous scrutiny of his bareness, from his limber legs down to his blistered feet, from his flat stomach up to his comely face.

She knew then that he was entirely, eternally her own, by the ever-constant beat of his heart.

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

Amidst a whirlwind of willow down, he sprung up the stately stone steps and swept under the arched trellis, the blustery wind behind him yet chill with the last wisps of winter. The tinder-branched, budding elms about the courtyard were tremulous with the need to burst into bloom, the emergent summer restlessly awaited the balmy gusts that sped up from the south seas. His cloak whipping fiercely in his wake, he flew through the hush, reverent halls of the great library, his destination hidden, like the soundest of bird’s nests, in the eaves of the vaulted ceiling.

Swinging around the griffon-bust banister, he shot up the spiral staircase that coiled down close to the eastern slope of the oval reading room, then, once atop, crept along the slender strip of landing, hugged to the bookshelf-wall, and paused to linger just aloft of the open doorway to Miriel’s hideaway come bedchamber. His lady was within; preparing her no doubt flawless and regal raiment for that night’s celebration. With long practiced stealth, he could, if he shifted just so, see the cascade of colored cloths spilled over the wardrobe, the three celestial-hued contenders laid out on the bed, the bureau strewn with clasps, beads, and other bejeweled finery. His treasured one, however, was - by the echo of her sure, sonorant voice - tucked up on the window sill, bearing through some final hour advice and encouragement from her two flustered Naneth.

Cuthalion smirked at their fretfulness, but was also rather relieved that it was her exuberance that worried them and not his reputed experience. With implicit gentleness and considerable patience, they reminded their daughter of rather vital requirements for the majority rites’ success: the proper draught to prevent conception, the proper assurances from one’s bed-partner, the proper understanding that one night’s pleasuring did not equal an eternal commitment from either lover. He had expected a similar recitation from Erestor and Haldir, but no summons had come to the stables in the last month, save one invite to last evening’s supper. While the mothers were counseling temperance, the fathers beamed with pride over their couplehood’s earnest commencement and prospective resolution in a few decades time. He himself dared not yet anticipate what might never come to pass, lest feisty Miriel smell permanence on the wind and bolt as suddenly as an untamed colt. He would prove himself a worthy lover, as he had proved himself a worthy suitor over the last, frazzled month of their courtship; in time he may very well prove himself worthy of an altogether different kind of husbandry from one he was already devoted to. He would like nothing more than to prove her fathers prideful but knowing and be promised her hand.

He prayed nightly for Elbereth’s blessing, already so abashedly grateful for the Lady’s favor and subtle influence in his romantic affairs.

At his first, stolen peek of his own cherished one, lounging in the lower arc of the spherical window, the day’s promise coursed through him like a river’s rage. He watched her nod, smile, and sigh, beginning to chafe at their never-ending insistence, though always glad of their care. Yet behind the complacent meadow green of her eyes was vivid yellow flint, a spark that relished the knowledge of their week of secret, singeing explorations in the hayloft. How, under the guise of yet another leisurely stroll through the forest hollows, he had spirited her up to their soft bed of hay and, pillow-lipped, she had asked her well-planned question. His meticulously instructive answer had lead to various prepatory acts of his own devising, sultry acts of exposure and arousal designed to ready his overwrought pupil for her imminent majority rites.

In the first weeks of their courtship, he had forgotten how ingrained into her character were her scholarly ways. She could not approach even coupling with confidence, if she did not feel sufficiently learned in foreplay or alerted to what manners in which their bodies might meld. Oftentimes, he did little other than mime a demonstration over her prone form or employ a prop to exemplify a certain technique. This had rarely elicited more than hot-cheeked embarrassment, though she had been keen on the details; afterwards she had taken shelter in his steady embrace, any further comments seared into the skin of his neck by her quick, unmanageable breaths. He had longed to see her own skin flush with blistering need, see her entirely undone by his loving, but this could wait the few short nights to her begetting day. He had checked his own braising desires by reminding himself what courage his guidance might inspire, what moments of blissful astonishment he might experience at her rabidly curious hands.

Lissome, impish hands that had roamed quite brazenly over him, on those nights in their loft sanctuary, eager to map every patch of the taut landscape of his skin before baring her own. After raptly observing his naked form that first evening, she had carefully plotted her terrain, assuring herself that face, arms, and barrel-like torso were discovered entirely, before forging down into the silky silver bracken over his legs. His backside had required two nights of painstaking scrutiny, ending with a playful pinch to his left buttock. He had gone to great lengths to conceal the resulting expenditure, though she had gratefully been distracted by his accidental curse. The next night she had bandied about his hips and his navel for a considerable time, before he had gently urged her trembling fingers towards their intended destination. They had wrapped so delicately around him, he had been struck by the sensation’s resemblance to the brush of thistles in the long grass and had nearly lost all sense of reason, but the shudder of sudden fear that seized her had centered him to the moment, to its import. Strangely timid, she had swiftly withdrawn, murmuring that it would be unfair to overly provoke him. Her face had darkened with Erestorian pensiveness, but her eyes had shone with suppressed need.

Reminded of the anguished nights she had earlier spoken of, he had wished he could somehow, innocuously spurn her towards release, for she had not betrayed more than a hint of her desire’s depth in all her engrossing explorations. She had been saving herself, he knew, for the majority rites, had been affected by his earlier troths to chivalry and to her honorable treatment. Heartened by her consideration, he had vowed anew that this night, that her introduction to the love-arts would be rapturous, thunderous, sundering.

A vow he had every intention of keeping, if he could pry her away from her mothers awhile.

Tuned in to the dying tones of their conversation, he stepped into view, but did not quit the entranceway, choosing instead to lean rather roguishly against the frame. He rested the small bouquet of aloedil blossoms, of the violet petals she most preferred, into the crook of his arm; a gift waiting to be proffered. Three pairs of flattering eyes were suddenly foist upon him, though only one simmered with unspeakable thoughts, glowed incandescent at his thoughtfulness. As she rose quite daintily to greet him, he matched her mysterious smile, avidly embroiled in her enigma. Her mothers followed to the door, their liking of this intrusion undecided.

“What’s this?” Miriel glimmered with giddy approval. “It is just barely past noon, and I had not thought to meet you till evening.”

“Am I unwelcome, then?” Cuthalion feigned hurt, but his quicksilver eyes spoke mischief. “I, who pilfered my brother’s greenhouse to present you with a humble bouquet on this, your hallowed begetting day. A trifle, true, and nothing compared to your own lushness, sweet one…” He offered her the flowers, which she quickly snatched up and emphatically drank in. “But the first gift of many more, for my lady grown so exquisitely fair.”

She was in his arms in an instant, her wolfine lips daring him to be bold.

“Might this lady steal a kiss from her beau before he departs anew for the stables?” she asked coyly. “There are so many long and lonesome hours before sunset.”

“Then, if your mothers are willing, let us take a stroll by the river instead,” he suggested, struggling to blight the mercury from his tone.

Tiger eyes flashed in electric comprehension, a precocious tongue lapped away the resulting sharp-toothed smile, studiously sobering before she turned back.

“Nana-lir! Nana-rina!” she pleaded, though rather piously. “May I?”

“*Miriel*,” Alqualir, the one who had carried her, sighed, but was stayed from her disapproval by her mate.

“As you are now an elf of majority,” Elerrina amended the unspoken objection. “You may do as you will. But do not, dear one, forget the time. Strolls may be a pleasant distraction, but you will be sore indeed if there is not time enough to dress for the occasion. The greater part of the realm will attend you, this eve.”

“I swear to return her before Arien dips below the treeline,” Cuthalion himself promised them, playing them with effortless charm. “As I myself must wring from this impudent elf before you a suitor becoming such a one as your dearly daughter.”

“By your gracious words,” Alqualir quietly approved. “The task already nears completion.”

“Take your ease,” Elerrina seconded, after fetching Miriel her cloak. “Enjoy the day.”

Cuthalion himself fastened the clasp, snipping a bloom from the bouquet to perch behind her ear. Miriel dragged him out onto the landing before he could even bow in deference, brimming with irrepressible excitement at the rather easy accomplishment of his ruse. He didn’t doubt she knew of his deliciously impure intentions, though he could not guess, in their breakneck sprint out of doors, whether she had gleaned on to their molten core.

Once free of her kindred’s enclosing compound and en route to the stables, Cuthalion found he was in no great hurry at all to return the gamesome, invigorating creature that was his beloved. Not three paces within the encircling round of the orchard, she pounced, pressing fervently to him and kissing his mouth with a wantonness no innocent should play at.

“You are a prince to know me so well,” she praised between smoldering culls. “Though it grew so late I had begun to despair that you did not, after all, truly understand.”

“Understand?” he rasped. He cupped her face to slow them some, wanting to savor her.

As they were yet a goodly walk from their intended destination, he regretfully broke away their kiss, then latched an arm around her slim waist. She leaned so entirely against him that he almost carried her, so needful of his tenderness that she twined all their possible fingers together and lolled a lazy head on his shoulder. He should have known better than to think such an intellect even for a moment deceived. She knew very well why he lured her away so early, her complacence so terribly encouraging he thought twice of it, but shrugged this off when she purred into his neck as luxuriously as a cream-fatted cat.

Who was he to deny what they both desired most, on this rightful day for his claim?

“That the celebrations, though in my honor, are a chore,” she explained, distracted by his proximity. “An exhausting bore, at that, though I believe your very wicked presence will help to enliven them some. That I will be nearly listless from boorish chatter by their end and in no mood to be plucked from maidenhood at such an ungodly hour.” She halted their progress to face him straight, wanted no mistake in her meaning. “That I wish nothing more than to know your most intimate touch, and be feasted upon, rather than merely feasted, for the remainder of the afternoon.”

Cuthalion smirked at her endless reserves of guile; though, in response, softed a caress over her insistent lips.

“As you wish,” he whispered, then gestured towards the path.

***

With a gasp and a final quake, she sucked back a long draught of air, then expelled it in a heaving gush that trailed into a sigh. She sluiced her fingers down his sweaty back, gripped his buttocks firmly and held him in just a moment longer, letting the unctuous soak his love had summoned up from within her flood over, steeping him in her essence. His skin still broiling, streaming, he blanketed over her; their soul flames yet flirted and flattered. Caught in a fugue of heady, raucous feeling, she crushed their lips together as if to kiss the very spirit out of him, though he smiled quite dizzily when they broke off. Hardly straying a second from her arms, he gently extricated himself and inspected her for damage, his brow creasing at the sight of the garish, though unavoidable, streaks of blood across her thigh.

She was no longer a girl.

Deep, doting eyes of placid argent gazed reverently upon her, as he carefully stripped off the slick hairs that feathered around her face. He was humble, silent in passion’s wake, though those silver pools brimmed with feeling, speaking in pledges and troths no words could render nor voice could bear. He cleaned her as he had sullied her, with impossible tenderness; sowing kisses where he had maimed, bruised, or kneaded too fiercely, until her body seemed to hover above the sodden sheets, made entirely of ether and of emotion. He nestled them into a groove in the supple mattress so that she was cradled tight against him, as yet unable to quit caressing her cheeks, her brow, her lids, her chin… any and every possible plain or patch of her face.

When Cuthalion had earlier lead her to the stables, she feared she’d been hopelessly misunderstood. Yet upon notice of the empty stalls, her pulse became dangerously fleet; such that she had no memory of skipping up the ladder, of Talion clanking up behind, not until the romanticized and re-imagined hayloft above was so magically revealed to her. Curtains of gauzy, crystalline tulle would keep them from prying eyes, while a flurry of candles would both warm and light them ever so becomingly. The bales had been cleared away, though their fresh, downy scent lingered everywhere, including the plump-pillowed bed in the center, white, pink, and gold petals spilled liberally over the silken sheets and across the floor planks.

Miriel had shivered when strong, meaningful hands had rested on her shoulders, but not from trepidation. Her ebony hair had been draped aside, so that her neck might be properly suckled, as the full, muscular bulk of his virile frame had pressed into her back. Arms that had never before seemed so thick with meat had encircled her, had spun her around to meet a stare so sterling, so burnished with longing that she had nearly fainted away.

“I would love you,” he had bluntly told her. “As I have with every breath, at every moment, since I held you as a babe in my arms. Before there was a maid that I adored, there was a child that I took pains to harbor; that guardian love is the source of my affection now, my parching desire for you, and I would at last drink of that fount, Miriel-nin. I would be moored and replenished by its bountiful force. Let me, melethron, let me be drowned in you at last…”

At her breathless assent, he had cupped her face, had kissed her as if she would shatter at the sparest nip of his lips; their embrace growing more fervent, more plentiful as feeling besotted them. His searching hands had known instinctively how to prickle and to tease her skin a scalding red, how best to tongue her scarlet lips apart, how to plunder her moist mouth to woozy distraction. By the time they had staggered over to the bed, she had almost clawed off the tunic he should have shed much earlier, tearing out clasps and fraying the seams in her ardor. He had shed the scrappy garment like his snake charmer’s scales, gazing at her with eyes so worshipful, so sick with admiration that she had thought she might turn to stone.

Miriel had remembered, then, as he knelt before her, as he pressed his enraptured face between the crease of her legs, as his hot breath filmed over that immaculate crevice, that she was some manner of salvation for him. As he guided her down onto the bed, as he smoothed up her skirts, as he stroked over her trembling thighs and so gently eased them apart, she had recalled the many hushed conversations she’d inadvertently overheard between he and Echoriath, or he and Tathren, in which a desperate loneliness was made more explicit than his misguided past, in which he bemoaned his lack of everlasting companionship. Even in her most innocent years, she had yearned to fill that gaping void, to fuel him anew with the mercury that defined him, to be the flame that set him afire. As he sucked the soft of her thighs a violent crimson, caused her groin to burn as if seared with a forge iron and her nethers to melt to a viscous fluid, she had revivified all the stolen moments of preternatural understanding, of rapt endearment between them; at riding lessons in early years, later in the ripe-scented stalls, trouncing about the orchard, the endless sunflower fields, the river glades… moments of quiet thrall staring into his compassionate eyes, ever giving, ever caring. She had recognized that he had been her lover since the first, cannonical afternoon she’d been left under his guard, which had never after ceased to shield her, to shelter her.

He was her sanctuary.

A stab of fierce, unraveling need shot through her, when that rough tongue had laved over the very implement of her desire, a gnarl of nerves so acute she had thought she might be split in two. Her heart had surged with the force of her remembrances, had been engulfed by the blaze within her, love and lust smoldering into one brutal, ravishing wave of sensation. Cuthalion had masterfully steered the tides of feeling within her, riding each wave to higher and higher peaks, until she had crested, whimpering, sobbing his name. Just when she had been giddily floating in the wash of a rather addictive ecstasy, he had sailed her to even more intense levels of bliss, streaming from lake into river, river into the vast expanses of ocean, all this with constant, cunning swipes of his tongue.

When at last he had felt she could take no more, he had left her writhing in a voluptuous daze while he wiped his mouth and shed his soiled breeches. They had been caught in a wild fit of giggles as he stripped her bare, no longer a whit bashful before one so generous with his intimacies; instead she had been rather eager to toy with his red, emphatic erection, learning well how to ply him to her adoring will. They had groped and tumbled about the bed with gleeful abandon, until a particularly poignant gaze smacked them sober. Their petting had turned earnest, ardent, his mithril eyes shimmering with unspeakable need.

He’d tongued her to such volcanic eruptions earlier that her breaching was rather uneventful, save for the look of sheer, divine satisfaction that had overtaken him once embedded deep within the one he loved above all. Amidst his careful, knowing thrusts, the dull pain had flared into an altogether more incredible pleasure; by the visceral end both had crashed together, had cried out their hearts, blessed feeling rumbling like thunder through their slender frames.

Miriel had never, in her most scandalous imaginings of him, come close to conjuring the feverish, lunatic spell of this overpowering act of love.

As she lay twined with his yet baking body, she could not help but hunger for more.

“How do you fare, meleth-nin?” Cuthalion hushly inquired, breaking through her reverie. His silver eyes shone as if they beheld some wondrous thing, his soft smile welcoming of confession. “Is there pain?”

“Nay, there is only you, celeben,” she grinned rather wolfishly. “Pouring through me like molten mithril ore. Already I longed to be fired anew by your touch.”

“My, but you are a wanton thing,” he chuckled, before snatching away another kiss. “Well, fear not for your endurance of the feasting. Now you have quite a variety of subjects to occupy your torrid mind. For instance: where you wish to be ravished, upon the midnight hour? Our present location, or perhaps one more… adventurous? What would be the manner of your ravishment? Slow and sensuous, or quick and later loving? Will I have you supple and compliant, or will you stake your claim upon my most willing person and learn how to work me to writhing?”

“All such gluttonous delicacies,” Miriel purred, which nearly unmanned him. “Will I ever be truly sated?”

“I pray not,” Cuthalion whispered, struck cold by this black vision’s cutting potential. “For I would keep you ever close, sweet one.”

“Am I so sweetly after such using?” Miriel countered in jest, to lighten him. “I would have thought you’d fashioned me into a lover, one requiring an altogether more salacious appellation.”

“There is but one endearment that my heart sings,” Cuthalion declared, loathe to quit his solemnity. “Meleth-nin. *Melethron*.” The kiss that took her mouth brooked no tease nor flirtation, but wrenched a pure note of ardor from her own. “I would not burden you with woes on such an anxious day, Miriel, but you must know… I must confess it…” His lids crinkled in the effort to shut back their brimming; he found succor in the arms that knit tightly around him, as if weaving him into the very fabric of her being. “I fear our end, if it ever came… would be the end of me.”

The silky, lissome arms did not slink away, but cinched their vital hold. His face was shroud by a veil of ebony hair, a pink snarl of lips traced the leaf-slope of his ear. As befitting one of her implicit sagacity, she allowed herself a longly while to digest his words, this happening, the sudden tumult of her newly discovered majority and the impact of his momentous love troths. Though she kept him bound in her embrace, she forged inward, searching the sepia-toned caverns of her seemingly archaic soul for any shards of doubt, any un-mined recesses of corroded ore.

Wherever she sought, she found only coves shimmering with mithril, the silver of his hair, the argent of his ancestors’ eyes.

“Then upon my second majority, melethen,” she murmured to him. “Your heart must add a more resonant chord to its noble choir of names. The most coveted chorus of all shall we both sing out, to a gathering of our dearest ones. If you will but raise your voice now in accordance with mine, to seal our pact, then in private moments your heart can name me ‘bereth’, even so many years before the fact.”

“*Miriel*,” he gasped, but could not deny the relief that threatened to drown him, drunk as he already was on her scent of jasmine and spices. “A vow of betrothal is a sacred compact-“

“Our bodies have been pledged by their joining in rapture,” she softly repliqued. “Ever have I held this act as sacred. Do not mistake my mercury or my boldness for idleness, Talion, for complacency or for naivety. I gave of myself to the one who I would have possess me. If I had been refused, there would have been no other.”

Cuthalion’s quicksilver eyes met tenderly with her catlike own, their maddening mystery revealed in a flash of gold, an aura of laurelled, beaming amber.

“Then at the dawn of your first century,” he swore, his regal face wrecked with emotion. “We will forge a living bond from what has been just now given breath, though ever has it lingered in our hearts. Within my eternal flame, that warms you as its own.”

“Within my forever spirit,” she completed the vow. “That mists about you like the sacred ether of Elbereth herself.”

Their kiss sealed their troth, though its thrall tarried away the afternoon.

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

Late Summer, Yen 738, Fourth Age

Through the filmy, spectral mist that loomed over the creeping river poked spindly black boughs, the only measure of their proximity to the shore. A low gong sounded through the smog, heralding their approach to the dockyards. Midsummer haze, offspring of the oppressive heat, had mingled with the cottony billows of smoke from the forges to whitewash the riverside; only after the most castigating tirade of affronts he’d ever threatened a fellow inhabitant with and an arrogant retracing of his lineage had the keeper of the river mouth allowed them to sail inland from the sea, though with a veritable litany of cautions. All maritime traffic was being halted at the coast, all elves, animals, and supplies portaged into the vale by land due to the blinding haze; a entire day’s journey even in the fairest of weather.

Cuthalion, however, had not a day to loose.

Even the hardiest of seafarers shifted uneasily in their posts, the fog too dense by far to feign any semblance of calm. In the three weeks journey up from Gondolen, he’d come to know them all and they, him; not a one would dare counter him in his blood-severe insistence on pushing forth under such treacherous conditions, not when his lady-wife’s safety was in such ambiguous question. They did not honor him for his title, nor for his goodly repute, but because he knew them all by name and had taken generous time with each, if only to momentarily forget his grating, relentless fear for her, for his hard-won wife, his Miriel.

Miriel, his nearly five hundred year bonded, his lover of fifty more, who had never in the sum of all that blissful time behaved so oddly. Mysteriously, if truth be told. He had prided himself, through all their golden time of marriage, on being the chest that kept her treasures safe, the guardian of her secret self, the one who had unraveled her enigma and was bequeathed her most cherished confidences. He had wondered, for those over-numerous nights on the black ocean, his brow dappled with the cold sweat of the despairing and his bunk uncomfortable in its very emptiness, if a misstep had so innocuously been taken, if he had unconscionably lost her precious trust.

He had had weeks of staring over spare expanses of impenetrable sea to reconsider the rightness of the journey he’d just recently completed, at three months his longest absence from her.

Word had come up from Gondolen that an avalanche had quite suddenly broke over their mountain patrol while encamped beside an elderly glacier, sparing the soldiers’ tents but encasing an entire fleet of horses in ice. The populace of their already paltry stables halved by this calamity, the High Council had ordered a new crop of foals from him; his entire springtime yield would need be shipped southward, for expert training among the crags. Miriel herself had encouraged him to broach the bargain he’d eventually struck, that some of their best riders would come north and they would all caravan the geldings through the southward pass.

As ponies so terribly young rarely took well to sea travel, they would thereby grow up with the experience of mountain traversal and be at least half-readied by their midsummer arrival. Cuthalion had been reluctant to leave his sweetly wife so long, but she had judged the journey of great benefit to him, reasoning that his experience would aid the riders and, if he remained, he would fret the season-long for their well being. She had even been the one to propose a two month’s sojourn there for them, trysting in a cozy talan borrowed from his all-too-compliant brother. They had planned to reunite in three months at Gondolen; Miriel would depart after a two month to ensure she would be there to welcome him. She had shown no overabundant signs of distress upon his leave-taking, if ought she was excited for their holiday and urged him to make haste.

They had rode through the ever-treacherous mountain pass in the usual time, but upon his advent there had been no eager, amorous wife to greet him. Merely a note, come on her expected ship and delivered by a family friend.

Come home, Talion-nin.

Ever her gallant, he had not questioned her unexpected summons, but immediately commissioned a ship. A crew of salty Tirion sailors had been waiting on some delayed stock to pay their passage; he had given them twice their due to speed north. The sparse parchment he’d scrutinized for any overlooked sign or hinting indication of the reason for her stay at their home. All he could discern was that the note was indeed in her hand, its inscription brief, but rich with intimate meaning. Through endless days of torment, at the mercy of the haunting unknown, he’d all but cursed the gods who would injure her the instant he left her, after half a millennia of vigilance and care. Worse still was the prospect that another had been harmed and she suffered through the agony of his or her demise alone. The denizens of Gondolen were fairly well-informed of happenings in Telperion, especially in a noble house, but not even the dockhands had heard news of any tragedy.

Cuthalion had been, in all possible veins, at sea; his treasure buried far and well away.

As they carefully steered the heavy-loaded ship into port, he gave them his heartfelt thanks for their companionship and promised them a night’s lodging in his Lord grandfather’s guest halls, but leapt off the vessel when it was still a rope-length from the dock. His boots pounded over the creaking planks in his rush into the yard; he spied a familiar face by the ship-builders’ galley.

Ciryon, as was his immovable routine, had come to take luncheon with his new husband. After a longtime courtship, the couple had been bound just the previous summer; his bashful cousin could still be seen to glow with undaunted affection at having finally won his mate. Yet he saved a considerable amount of cheer for his kinsman, greeting him with an emphatic hug and inviting him to their table. Cuthalion regretfully declined, being possessed by only one, untamable notion. A notion in which Ciryon, apprentice in lore and official scrivener of the great library, may prove of some use to him.

“Come now, Talion, you are wearied from the trials of the morn,” Ciryon amiably objected, though his obsidian eyes took on a shadow of concern for his cousin. “Surely Miriel herself would conscience some refreshment, before riding fast into the foggy woods.”

“Is she presently occupied, then, in the library?” Cuthalion asked, grabbing his chance. “With her Adar?”

Ciryon considered his reply a few beats too long for the anxious husband’s liking.

“Master Erestor is in the Healing Halls, this day,” he told him, though he selected his words with meticulous care. “Miriel is there, as well. Tis for this that I am freed of my own duties awhile.”

Cuthalion was not fool enough to mistake his deliberate ambiguity.

“The Healing Halls?” he questioned bluntly, too fearful to fake his trepidation. “Has she taken to midwifery, then?” When Ciryon withheld his answer for an even greater time, Cuthalion became frazzled with worry. “Has she been injured? Taken sick? Verily, cousin, I am at wit’s end with this ridiculous concealment…”

“Go to her,” came the typically cryptic response. “She would that you see for yourself what has befallen her.”

His simple words could not have had a more vivid effect upon him. With the curtest of farewells, he raced over to the small stables and loosed a courier horse, kicking the complacent creature into a ferocious gallop. He accomplished the half-hour journey in but a quarter, and in the fog no less, leaving the horse to nibble on the verdant lawn and sprinting up the steps to the somnolent Healing Hall.

When he found the examination tables empty and the surgery abandoned, he blew out a long sigh of relief. Only slumbering, fractured children were bedded in the patients’ quarters, though he doubted Erestor would keep his sickly daughter there. The door to his study was ever so slightly ajar, the scent of savory broth, fresh breads, and sharp cheese wafted out from within. Luncheon. Of course! He inwardly defamed his wily cousin for such dramatics, outwardly composed himself. His dearly bonded should know nothing of his distress, as he had obviously worried his way up the coast for little reason at all. His mind did not linger over its own rashness, however; his unimpeachable devotion would have allowed no other reaction. He was suddenly assaulted by a milliard tiny aches, cramps, and stresses, as his nearly continual clench was finally laxed into something approximating ease.

He would not be truly relaxed until he had an armful of his Miriel.

After a gentle knock and a brief pause, he entered. Erestor muttered him in on a mouthful of his meal, but he was already behind her chair, wrapping tired arms around his wife’s inviting curves and drinking deep of her spiced jasmine scent. Rather than her usual, jubilant shriek, Miriel rose rather elegantly, flashing those wily, mystifying tiger eyes at him. By the curl of her lips, she kept some secret, but he was too heartened by the sight of her lush face to think on ought but the deepest, most searing embrace.

Without a word, he tugged her to him, softing a ripe kiss over her thorn-pricked mouth and tenderly enveloping her. Erestor chuckled behind, but could not bring himself to interrupt them, even to insist on some form of greeting from his bond-son. Instead, he stole a last bite of cheese and slipped out the door, knowing he would be beckoned back soon enough.

Cuthalion, for his part, was lost in sensual exploration of his beloved’s rather voluptuous person, though he did wonder at why she was so alluringly warm. Indeed, she seemed to be baking, as if his embrace were as potent as a hearth; for a time this did little but further enrapture him. She tasted as fresh as a peach, her buttery skin veritably glowing with health, but yet he could not shake the feeling that something was awry. When Miriel pressed their bodies together, he was further confounded by a strange pressure against his abdomen, one that had not been there before. She had, upon dizzy-minded reflection, seemed more curvy, but luxuriously so. Her bosom, for one, had somehow inflated during his absence. Perhaps her nipples had swelled for lack of teasing? He would have to kid her for this later…

The round that butted into his stomach grew so persistent, he groped a hand down to investigate.

He instantly wrenched back, glaring with shock.

Miriel was radiant at his discovery, though her robes hid the evidence completely. If he had not embraced her, he would never have guessed. She was, after all, but three or so months along. With long-practiced patience, she guided his hand back to her newly plump belly. Quaking with inexpressible elation at this first, genuine touch, Cuthalion fell to his knees before her. He burrowed his face in the velvety folds of her dress, pressed his cheek to the firm, potent round, whispering his greeting, his instant devotion to their growing child.

He had longed, in recent years, for fatherhood; as fervently as he had always longed for his wife’s love. His position as riding instructor at Erestor’s school had become his source of greatest fulfillment, after his dual charge as husband and as lord of animal husbandry. A child of their own to care for was not only the apotheosis of their bound love, but also a gift of most hallowed import to his mate, their union, and his family. Moreover, they had been undergoing conception-related trials for several decades, having decided to begin their family nearly seventy years ago. Elrond had repeatedly examined them both and decreed them hale as ever, the esteemed healer merely thought the time inopportune, for them and perhaps for the Valar. Elbereth would provide for them in all things through the course of their lives, he had predicted.

That the Lady had at last done so, on the eve of his prolonged absence those many months ago, only affected him more profoundly. The night itself had otherwise been quite memorable indeed, the prospect of separation fusing them repeatedly, ravenously, until the very break of dawn. If he had known that their loving abandon would have produced such a gorgeous result, he would have left on a journey long ago. At present, Cuthalion found himself so overwhelmed with joy, he could not bring himself to ease his face away from the belly full of their sweetly babe, though yet but a minuscule, delicate seed within his Miriel.

A sob broke above him, hot tears streaking down his beloved’s ruddy cheeks. He leapt up to succor her, the months of tension, of anticipation pouring out of her in a fierce display of emotion such as he had not witnessed since their binding ceremony. She dug as tight against him as she could manage, seeking proof of his scent, his touch, his strength and his unwavering affection; the endless wait, along with new, violent, nearly uncontrollable swerves of feeling, rendering her quite fragile of late.

Though rabid with questions, Cuthalion rocked her through her fitful sorrow, after tucking them up in the corner of Erestor’s ramshackle sofa. He stopped her small bleats and needful whimpers with exultant kisses, his own face luminous with pride, with deep affection. Eventually, she centered herself, almost ashamed that she had carried on so long. With her usual pluck, she swept past her sadness; guiding his eager hand under her skirt and placing it on her bare bulge, so that he might have a direct connection to their babe’s balmy heat within.

“How long have you known?” he inquired, his tongue tingling with the thousand queries to follow.

“But two turns of the moon,” she elaborated. “I was rather poorly the week before I was to depart, so father insisted that I at least let him examine me for anything untowards. I cannot even imagine the ghastly sea-ride, if he had not discovered it.”

“I wish I had been here, to see your look of wonder,” he sighed, but naught could honestly dim his smile.

“Your response just now was payment enough for your absence then,” she essayed a grin of her own. “To think of how I needlessly worried over telling you! I have not, somehow, in all our bonded years truly understood your apparent longing…”

“I have wanted for nothing else since I won your heart, melethron,” Cuthalion admitted, as yet unable to entirely absorb his good fortune. “To behold your plump, bountiful glory in your eleventh month, our child berthed between us as we love… Elbereth, the thought already fires me! To curl up by the hearth with our little elfling, telling tales, histories, teaching of our ancestors and their incredible lives… I must sing to the Valar, this night, pray everything goes well so that we might have many more.”

“Then you best chant them out an entire chorale,” she teased, her mischievousness returned with a vengeance. “For you, son of Elrond’s line, have fatted me with twins.” Smiling wolfishly at his gaping mug, she demurred rather fetchingly. “Or so father suspects by my advanced size.”

Speechless in reverent joy, Cuthalion could do naught but assault her with such a volley of fevered, demanding kisses, tugging up her skirts for an altogether more incendiary purpose. Though the flame of desire soon madly engulfed them, they took care that their affections be mellifluous, exuberant, and deeply heartfelt. They had babes to protect and to celebrate, as well as their eternal love.

Neither, in their embroilment, remarked the throw of the lock from without, as a proud grandfather assured that his dearest ones were allowed their intimacy.

T’would be the last, he suspected, they would know for a goodly while.


End of Cuthalion’s Tale