Faded Light: Book II

(For additional notes and disclaimers, please see top of Chapter 1.)



= This one was supposed to be a slashy Saelbeth/Leralonde chapter, but Erestor got in my head, as other scenes have, one night while I was fighting a bad case of insomnia.



I’ll post the Saelbeth/Leralonde one next week...I almost made it into a single chapter, but I decided I didn’t want them to have to share their two scenes with Erestor’s flashback in this one...

...cowboy_n22, sorry, but I don’t have a facebook account, so I have no idea how to send anything to it; however, I update on this site at least once or twice a month, so just check back here and you’ll find the updates...=

 

Chapter 35



Vestale Pt.2: Youthful Folly

Erestor well remembered how it had started with Anirion, all those years ago, in Lothlorien...



His cousin had been a youth living in the Golden Wood, a few years before his mother finally decided to join her husband in Valinor.



One particularly rainy spring, rather like the one Mirkwood was having now, Erestor had been paying a visit to his kin and sharing Saelbeth’s room, who out of any of their other cousins, had always been most like a younger brother; Erestor supposed that was one reason he had been a bit overprotective...but as far as he was concerned he had been entirely right about Anirion then, and still was...



It had been late on a very rainy night...



He woke up when Saelbeth, trying to slip in unnoticed, made some noise getting out of his wet clothes...



“Sael, are you just getting home?” he couldn’t help grinning at the thought of his cousin, who had always been the good one, sneaking back into the talan at such an hour, but he didn’t think Saelbeth saw it in the dark. “What have you been up to?”



“Go back to sleep, Erestor...I’m just going to take a bath and go to bed too...”



There was something strange in his voice; Erestor frowned and got up, looking for the bedside candle, “Are you all right, Cousin?”



“I’m fine...I just lost track of the time,” said the younger, pulling his shirt over his head and throwing it on the floor next to his wet cloak. “And I want a hot bath after that drenching...”



Erestor stopped Saelbeth in the middle of reaching down to remove his boots and made him look at him...even in the dim light there was something different in his eyes...



“What have you been up to, Penneth?” he asked again, not laughing this time.



“Just something that had to happen sometime,” his cousin tried to smile, but he wasn’t laughing either. “You’re the one who makes jokes that I’ll likely still be nesse by the time I get to Valinor...”



Erestor did not think those words had ever ceased making him feel at least partly guilty for the entire sorry episode...



“I guess I won’t...” finished the younger, sitting down on a wooden footstool by his bed and moving again to pull off a boot...



“You had sex...who with...?”



“Anirion...”



“Anirion? That libertine of an Elf...he’s ancient...”



“He’s not...and he’s not a libertine...”



“He’s over a thousand years older than your naneth...and everyone knows he beds anything that moves...anything pretty and male, anyway...



“I can’t believe you let him make you too...”



“Would you stop shouting...?” whispered the youth looking toward the door before he turned an annoyed glare to his kinsman. “Do you want to wake up Nana, so she can scold me too?



“Anyway, it’s done now,” he said sardonically, “It’s not as if I can go back and say, ‘Saes, can I have my virginity back,’ is it?”



“Now, are you going to let me get out of these soaked clothes, before I come down with the first known case of Elven pneumonia?”



Erestor studied his cousin carefully while he finished taking off his boots and socks.



“Are you all right?” he asked, handing Saelbeth a towel.



“I’m fine...everything’s fine...”



“You don’t look fine, and you don’t look like someone who just had a night of pleasure...more like a Novice Warrior who just saw his first real battle, and his side lost...”



He frowned deeply as a sudden thought came to him. “He didn’t force you...?”



“No, of course not,” Saelbeth looked up from drying his hair, sounding outraged at the suggestion. He met Erestor’s eyes firmly, “Do you think me such a fool as to let anyone force me to do anything, especially something like that...?”



He threw the towel on the stool and turned away again with the excuse of searching for his nightclothes, “I’m just hurting a little still...” he admitted.



“...wasn’t he even careful knowing it was your first time...?”



“...you really are overreacting, Erestor...it was my first time; of course it was going to hurt when he...” he shrugged and still did not look at his cousin, “but it did get better after awhile...



“The first time with another male usually hurts, isn’t that what everyone says...” he pulled a nightshirt and night robe from a drawer and threw them on the bed, and reached up to untie his braids.



“Anirion says it gets easier after a few times, and that I’m much too repressed and self-conscious, that I need to learn to let go...”



“He sounds like a radag,” every word said about Anirion just seemed to increase Erestor’s antipathy for the other Elf.



“He would do well to have a few inhibitions of his own, the old slut...I hope you don’t intend on seeing him again...”



“I don’t know,” Saelbeth finally turned back exasperated, one braid half undone. “...I’ll remind you, Cousin,” he said, “I’m not an Elfling...I have been of age for several centuries, and I knew perfectly well what I was doing...and it was my choice to make, good or bad...



“Valar, I didn’t think my finally having sex would be such an issue...it was just sex...haven’t you been telling me that for years...”



“I would have held my tongue if I’d known you would give it away to someone so...” Erestor made a face, “so unsavory...”



“And I know you, Cousin,” he said going back to his bed and trying to get comfortable again, “if you were the kind who thought sex was just about lust, you wouldn’t have waited this long...”



Something else occurred to him then, “Sael...you didn’t let him come inside you, did you...”



“Erestor...” the younger practically shrieked and looked to the door again, as if expecting his mother to come in at just that moment.



Erestor sat back up, “Well, what if you get pregnant?”



“What are you talking about?”



“The trait is in our family, and you know it’s more likely your nana passed it on than my Ada...”



“I’m not going to get pregnant...Valar, who gets pregnant their first time...?” The younger laughed for the first time during this conversation, as he unlaced and pulled down his leggings, pushing them into the pile with his other wet clothes and picked up the towel he had left on his footstool, wrapping it around his waist.



“Anyway, I’m hardly the paternal type...can you actually imagine me raising an Elfling...? I barely used to put up with my own siblings when they were small...



“Now, saes, can I take my bath?” he said sounding tired, as he reached up to finish unbraiding his hair. “It’s over, and I doubt he’ll want to see me again...he probably thought I was some silly little virgin, amusing for just one evening...



“But I’m certainly not pathetic enough to be the one who goes looking for him tomorrow...”



“Of course,” he heard from the direction of Erestor’s bed, along with what sounded like a small giggle, as he finally headed to his bathing room, “if sex with Anirion was bad enough to turn you off from Ellons, there are plenty of Elleths who already throw amorous looks your way...and then you wouldn’t have to worry about being the one who gets pregnant...” a well-aimed cushion cut off any more clever suggestions the dark-haired Elf might think of making...





===============





Unfortunately, that was just the start...his cousin was young and naïve enough to actually fall in love with Anirion, and Anirion did decide, quickly enough, that he did want Saelbeth around – - of course he did, thought Erestor; no doubt his genteel, upstanding cousin was quite a change for Anirion from his usual bedmates...



Though having an official lover did not keep him from bedding anyone he could in any of the Elven realms, and probably in more than a few Human settlements as well...and it was worse once Saelbeth’s mother Sailed, and any other good sense he was likely to hear was usually far away with Erestor in Rivendell...



And of course, Saelbeth, being who he was, had remained faithful all those years to someone who did not deserve it...



For fifty years, Erestor watched his cousin, who had always been a rather reserved, strait-laced, but perfectly self-assured Elf, become someone much more self-doubting and unhappy with himself; someone Erestor hardly knew and did not want to meet again...





TBC...





Elvish Translations:



Talan / Flet



Penneth / Young One



Nesse / Virgin

 

Naneth, Nana / Mother, mom, mommy



Saes / Please



Radag / Beast (I wanted Erestor to call him an ass (or some similar animal, a mule or donkey would have worked), but I couldn’t find any words that fit.)



Adar, Ada / Father, dad, daddy



Ellons / Male Elves



Elleths / Female Elves