Under the Elen

Title: Under the Elen – Part 4: Sons (a sequel to In Earendil’s Light)
Author: Gloromeien
Email: swishbucklers@hotmail.com
Pairing: Glorfindel/Elladan, Legolas/Elrohir
Summary: Our heroes face the Shadow’s wrath.
Rating: R
Disclaimers: Characters belong to that wily old wizard himself, Tolkien the Wise, the granddad of all 20th centuantaantasy lit. I serve at the pleasure of his estate and aim not for profit.
Author’s Noto mao many people enjoyed In Earendil’s Light – none more than I myself writing it – and that tale left so many threads unknotted that I decided to explore the aftermath in terms of the actual Lord of the Rings narrative. I have been looking up select incidents in the book, but I am no master at these facts and it should be noted that I have twisted them for my own purposes, stealing from both book and movie cannon. Thus, some parts are still considered a bit AU. Would probably be best to read In Earendil’s Light before this, as little will make sense to you. Here goes nothing!!
Feedback: Would be delightful.
Dedication: To the lovely and gracious Eresse, who here receives (though she didn’t really ask) and whose fics enthrall me. Go read hers first!! Also, to the ever-compelling Ezra’s Persian Kitty, who’s beauteous and visceral fic ‘Feral Form’ I steal from in one of the following scenes. Sorry if this causes any grief.

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Part Four

Minas Tirith, Yen 3019, Third Age

Though Legolas had risen before the dawn, there would be no sun to light the morn, as there had been no luminous elen to allay the bitter, fuming night. From a balcony on the eastern front of the Citadel, he watched ruefully as the ominous cast of black-charred clouds was stoked by the cindering ruin of Sauron’s infernal county. Somewhere amidst the lava-spills, the scythe-rocks, and the coarse sands of Mordor, two hobbits bore a deadly charge, yet Legolas envied them the clarity of their purpose. The heaviness of his own dilemma on this day that would not dawn was not so purely wrong, nor of valorous righteousness, but flawed, selfish, its proper resolution yet obscured.

The hydra-headed choice loomed, as the Shadow’s hissing vow, before him.

Without the giving light of Earendil’s ever-constant beacon, Elrohir had slept fitfully. Despite hours – nay, a crown’s worth of nights - of the most impassioned coupling Legolas had ever known between them, no sweep of his touch nor murmured endearment could settle his tight husband in this perpetual midnight, though his wound-weariness had eventually him him. With the blessed advent of Elrohir’s slumber, Legolas had found himself similarly fraught. He’d made an early rise, drawn, out of a warrior’s blood-sick curiosity, to the view: the city’s crumbled battlements far below, the outstretch of the ravaged Pelennor and the hellfire beyond. Yet Legolas needed no silmaril to engulf the sheer fire of his /fea/. A fool’s hope might crackle therein, but there it was sparked. His faith in their victory was akin to that of Elrohir’s ever-constant love; the hearty hobbits would reach the precipice and sunder the Ring, their army would befoul the Shadow’s horn-headed hounds, and Arda would survive this over-shroud morning. Somewhere, amidst the froth-mouthed fiends, he would keep hold of his life and live on to parent his child.

Yet the few dreams bequeathed to him foretold another fate for his beloved.

The scuttle of bare feet on cold stone broke his contemplation, as bruise-blotted arms wove around him. Ignorant, purposefully so, of the desolation before them, a groggy elf-knight purred his greetings into the neck of his husband’s leaning spine. Legolas brushed grateful hands over his, but did not turn to embrace him. Thusly alerted to his strange reticence, Elrohir forced himself to fully rouse and slipped in beside him, against the rail. His mellow argent eyes were for his lover alone. Casting aside encroaching darkness, the creeping Shadow, and even a warrior’s honor, Elrohir tucked a stray wisp of cornsilk hair behind his ear, then caressed the length of the leaf-shaped lobe. Legolas allowed himself a faint smile, but kept his indigo-deep eyes aloft.

“When I dreamt, these last hours in your arms, I dreamt of my youth,” Legolas spoke unheeded. “I never longed, as some, for the rule of love, yet I have known more of its thrall than most. I wanted none of love’s subjection, only the empowerment of true coupling with another of equal conscience. When first I learned of our betrothal, the newness of this circumstance did not provoke me, but my soul’s long knowing of it. I needed not to be told, but to be reminded.” He clasped Elrohir’s hands in his and kissed them, but still kept his eyes away. “Before you came, I knew not what strength lay within me, and after you had come and gone, I too sharply learned the jagged edges of a world without your heart. When last in Mirkwood, even my father’s house was barren of feeling, not for his deed, but because I thought I had returned to the withered land on the outskirts of your regard. Were there no Ithil nor Arien, were there no Greenwood, Imladris, Arda, or Valinor, as long as there was an Elrohir I would press on. I would fight. I would suffer. I would hope.” At last he turned to him, the despair in his incandescent eyes raising. “The beatific light of your soul-flame will forever beckon me forth, melethron. Without you I am but a litter of ash, a creature of gristle and frail bone, crutched and ragged. If your all-forgiving grace forgets this world, then there is no world and I have no heart!”

“Legolas…” Elrohir barely breathed out, he was so overcome by his husband’s words.

“You must retreat, Elrohir,” Legolas near-growled, such was his fervor. “You shall not fall!! The Shadow may have the bravest of our company, but I will not watch you burned by its wrath. You must escape to Lorien, save yourself with our child. I beg you!! I have lost father, brother, and many a kinsmen to Sauron’s blackness, but I will not lose my mate!!” Even as the elf-knight’s rapt arms enveloped him, he bleated on. “I will not be without the one who wooed my green heart beneath the willow. The one who succored me even in absence, the one who gave himself weeks before our binding, the one whose counsel I hold above all others, the one who never once flinched at the knowing of my destined quest, the one who welcomed me home a betrayer…”

“Hush, maltaren-nin,” Elrohir whispered into those flaxen sheathes of hair. “If my council is so well-hallowed, then will you heed me now?” After a long, treacle-throated sigh, Legolas assented. The piercing ardor of his blue eyes had gentled to wide, if troubled, pools. “If I am so cherished as you claim, then there is no space in your heart for such… understandable trepidation. There is no dawn to rouse our beleaguered spirits, so you are forgiven if a brief chill shivers your resolve. But mine is set. I will fight at my brother’s side. I will slay. And we will prevail, this day. If I am the elf of your sweet tribute and you are the beholder of my rabid heart, then let the heathens come.” With a tenderness that belied his bold words, Elrohir cupped his soft-skinned lover’s face in his palms and blessed his mouth with a blithe kiss.

“Let them dare scrape at the steel shell of our love. They will be blinded by its mithril sheen and broken on its blunt side.”

Their glinting eyes locked in vital accordance, Legolas dared himself a smirk.

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

They poured up the slope like a rash of dung beetles, the sickly yellow cast of the eye of Barad-dur reflected on their onyx carapaces. Beneath this battered armor oozed their snot-smeared skin, their foaming jaws, gnarled snouts, and the glazed beads of their eyes testament to their fiendish accord with the Dark One. Elladan might pity them, if their stench were not so acrid, if their spikes were not so sharp, if they for one second sought his mercy. They were primal, vicious, and rank; their famished hordes surrounded him so that he’d lost sight of all other, Elrohir once a swirl of raven hair beneath a swinging axe, now consumed by the fray.

As he gouged, maimed, and severed, he imagined that he saved each slithering fiend, spared them Sauron’s reckoning. He knew not what manner of after-death an orc fell to, merely that each was wholly deserving of obliteration and that he was keen to send them off. The smoke-spread sky above rumbled and brooded, Elladan smelt the greasy, viscous rain that threatened, though it little differed from the bloodsport fields around him, where infantry and Shadowspawn lay as somnambulant brothers.

With a snarl worthy of a voracious warg, he ripped a second sword from a Dunedain carcass and swung wild, mincing the attacking throng into a ruinous pulp of viscera. Showered an oily obsidian by the blood spray, Elladan sped through the mass assault waged against him, more heads toppling in his wake than from a guillotine. Fever-wrecked and drenched through, he grappled up a corrugated rock without use of his glove-stripped hands, desperate for a moment’s reprieve. Across the writhing plain he spied his valiant twin, shooting his quiver’s worth of arrows to save a spare breath. In the distance, Legolas’ slit-knives mauled an over-toppled mumakil with a terrible rage, until he heard Eomer’s strangled cry and dove off to his rescue. He marked each of his swordbrothers in turn: Mithrandir reborn and Peregrin, Eowyn and tiny Meriadoc, Faramir, Imrahil, and stout-hearted Gimli. He met the immolating stare of the All-Seeing Eye atop Barad-dur, and knew this was the end of all.

Suddenly, the earth shook such that Elladan was unseated, then tossed into the mire below. The deepest crevasses of ground rung like a gong. As he staggered over the quaking land, he could think only of his brother. The bedeviled orcs had paused their assault, equally fearful of being swallowed down into the cracks of this brimstone soil, which gave Elladan swift, if unstable passage to his startled twin, who could not quite muster a smile at the sight of him. With a silent nod of greeting, Elladan sheathed his sword and snatched up his hand. If the end had come they would fall as they had sprung forth: two parts of one flesh, two souls sired by the same timely seed. As the field around them seized, he hugged his brother close; searching the company, as he was, for Legolas. There was, however, no mane of star-hewn gold shining amidst the soot and stone, no silver bow glinting in the sallow green glow.

The cry of eagles sounded above. The end was not upon them after all.

Mithrandir’s booming, prophetic voice thundered across the heathen plain. “The realm of Sauron is ended!!”

Elrohir sputtered, then coughed, the nape of his neck soon slick with tears. As the orcs around them collapsed, combusted, or fled in cowardice, he watched the tower crash. His bone-weary brother slumped against him, his rasping breaths settling some when Elladan lowered them down onto a flat-topped rock. After a quiet moment, Elrohir rallied, fussing onto a seat beside his humbled twin and taking the measure of his appearance. Satisfied, he looked about as hawkishly as the eagles might, though the one he sought remained missing.

With a sigh of encroaching despair, Elladan noticed the sky. A spring-soft wind breezed past, dissipating the smog-clouds and clearing way for the stars. Soon, as both of the brethren shone their quicksilver eyes up, the ethereaght ght of the silmaril beamed forth from the west. Their grimed faces lit by their grandsire’s radiance, the twins became quite easy to find.

A streak as brilliant, and as blindsiding, as the silmaril above soon swept Elrohir up in its arms.

“We must rejoice, melethron!” Legolas crowed, with unabashed glee. “Our son is born!”

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

Summer, Yen 3019, Third Age

There were few sights as peerless in their awe and majesty as the ride to Minas Tirith. The White City’s magnificence could move even one as ageless and journeyed as he. Elrohir had often wondered, in these times that leant themselves to serenity, if Valinor herself could match the splendor of this fabled path, which every mortal in Arda longed one day to barrel down. Though their company cantered, rather than barreled, across the last of the Pelennor towards the tactfully restored gates, the elf-knight felt a quickening within, both at the view before him and the thought of who awaited him e. e.

A snortle sounded from within the cloth tightly bound around his torso. Tiny fingers, yet of bracing grip, tugged his attention downward, where eyes of shimmering aqua blue demanded his regard. When the wind-worried wisps of his golden hair tickled over peach-ripe cheeks, the baby trilled with elation, as if some trick of his father’s delighted hie kie kicked fitfully at the scarf that bound them, but Elrohir quickly stayed him with a click of his tongue. The eager child’s body brimmed with energy restrained; though he was yet an infant, the little one had the vivacity of one twice his brief months of life.

“Patience, pen-tathar,” Elrohir soothed him. “We are approaching the gate. Ada-Las will soon be with us.” Once breached, however, no heart-swollen archer awaited behind the grated doors. Was it possible his husband could not sense the imminent arrival of their son?

“The court awaits your party at the Citadel,” a guard informed Elrond behind, as Elladan threw him a reassuring glance. The guard received, for his trouble, a satisfactory chirp from the babe, who had wormed his way into an upright position against his father’s shoulder. The company chuckled fondly, by now long-familiar with the new one’s inherent frivolity. The son, it seemed, even at such an early age would rival the father in mirth and in mischief.

As the horses grappled up the cobbled streets, both twins observed the child’s wide-eyed wonder. Though he would soon forget this first exposure to the White City, they themselves would long remember his curious visage as he took in the alabaster domes, tight passages, and poe-faced people that lined its streets, as he first beheld the Citadel’s grandeur. If his grasp dug deeper into Elrohir’s garments, if his face burrowed further into nec neck as they approached the summit, the proud father did not chide him, but only gathered him close to his rapid-fire heart.

The babe was not the only one anxious for their family’s reunion.

Elladan, astride a tawny-hide, white-maned Rohiric steed named Belfas, screwed his noble visage into a cross-eyed clown, to which the little one giggled, the overwhelming city forgotten in an instant. Glorfindel’s horse soon caught up to their other side; to Elrohir’s utter shock the Balrog-slayer likewise engaged the child in merriment. The baby swung giddily from one side to the other, his small body hampered, but not daunted, either by the cloth binding or by his own lack of ready control. When, as they approached the upper shelf of the mountain, Glorfindel fell back and Elladan sobered, he reached over his father’s shoulder in distress and nearly fell from his perch.

/Legolas’s son, indeed,/ Elrohir mused inwardly, as he snuck a kiss from his young one’s temple.

The child, enchanted all over again with his stately father, squealed.

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

Atop the plateau in the Citadel’s resplendent courtyard, Legolas twitched.

Indeed, he veritably quaked, as the Cormallen field had beneath them when the Shadow fell, in anticipation. Fisting his hands into the satin fabric of his formal jacket, he struggled to compose his up-curling features. Though he knew how unbecoming such behavior was to an elf of his stature, he could not for the life of him help himself. A reunion with his husband after two long months of separation, the incipient first meeting with his baby son – already three months old! Legolas had yet to reap of the peacetime’s bounty, so Valar forgive him if he was a mite unsightly in manner. Further down the receiving line, Aragorn was somehow stilled by the sanctity of his office; Legolas could not comprehend how, mere moments from his first sight of Arwen since the Fellowship’s leave-taking from Imladris, he could carry himself with such poise. A former Ranger of the North, at that!

Truly, the title had overly burdened him.

At last, the flag-bearer trotted up the path and onto the white-pebbled gravel of the courtyard. Legolas hissed out his breath when the extended company rode forth; how many banner-carrying courtiers, truly, did one lady require, even one as ethereal as the Evenstar? Finally, her principal escort rode into view, Elladan on a comely new horse and, beside, handsome Elrohir.

When blue gemstone eyes beamed down from within the folds of a twisted purple cloth, to meet his own matching pair, Legolas could no longer keep countenance. As Elrohir carefully dismounted, he sped to their side; the elf-knight barely had his feet on the ground when touch-hungry arms enveloped him and he met the quenching kiss of his lover.

A squeak of protest sounded between them, Legolas laughed heartily against his lips. His mirth turned to astonishment, however, when Elrohir eased him away and uncloaked their cheery babe. The darkling elf was hard-pressed to judge which face was the most wondrously struck at the sight of the other, though Legolas had grown strangely solemn. His brimming eyes regarded his son with such tenderness, such gentility that his spore-swamps-of-Mirkwood hewn archer seemed suddenly as delicately rendered as an ederwood bloom. He treated the babe with similar delicacy, ghosting his lissome fingers over his downy head, but not yet daring to touch him. Only when the little one smiled, with uncommon reverence, did Legolas himself dare close his mouth.

“Mae govannen, nin pen-ind,” the golden elf finally greeted him. “I have longed to make your acquaintance.”

Once Legolas spoke, the child reared in amazement. To both fathers’ surprise, their son sung a soft note; somber, as once described, yet pure as the flow of a mountain spring. As the haunting chord resonated through the sterile peaks that surrounded them, Legolas gasped, twin rivulets of tears streaking down his pale cheeks.

“He knows me,” the archer whispered, more to himself than to his family. His trepidation forgotten, Legolas scooped his baby son into his arms and hugged him close. Further tears were shed as he held the young one, the heat of his tiny body suffusing him with boundless warmth.

Elrohir, for his part, nearly glowed with pride. “I should perhaps have forewarned you, meleth. Our pen-tathar sings to all he meets, each familiar known by their own proper note. After careful observation, I eventually discerned that he, himself, also bears a note, the tone of its ringing in accordance with his desires.” The child, after adjusting himself to the hold of the more slender of his fathers, wasted no time in perusing the silken texture of his Ada-Las’ very fine, very fun to tangle flaxen hair.

“And are the young master’s desires plentiful?” Legoleaseeased, his playfulness returned and his tears soon wiped away.

“You will soon discover them for yourself,” Elrohir predictedh a h a dry laugh, as he had only recently become acclimated to the relentless demands of fatherhood. He was happy, other than to simply be with his husband again, to share these joys and frustrations with him. “Will he not, tathrelasse?” As if to prove his Ada-Hir’s point, the baby yanked at one of Legolas’ braids.

“You will find, gwador,” Elladan smirked, as he strolled over. “That you will come to favor, as we, the Rohirric manner of plaiting.” Elladan nipped his nephew’s nose, then patted his bond-brother paternally on the back. “A sturdy plait it is, reluctant to dislodge despite the most vigorous tugging.”

“I take your meaning,” Legolas nodded as he winced, the little one’s grip terribly solid. Elladan tickled the child’s plump tummy and, giggling, he released his hold. Despite himself, Legolas nearly sighed with relief.

“He is nimble,” Elladan noted. “He will make a fine archer… That is, if he ever come to be named.”

“Your accuracy is humbling, gwanur,” Elrohir shot back at him. “Are you not weary from the road? Have you not some mock-begetting of your own to accomplish hence?”

With a potent wink, Elladan bowed to them both and sauntered off to join waiting Glorfindel. The entire party save they themselves had by this time ventured inside.

“Have you not named him, Elrohir?” Legolas questioned injuriously, concerned that his son existed without ennoblement until this very day.

“Is it not a father’s privilege?” Elrohir softly replied. “We had not agreed…”

“You are his father same as I,” Legolas insisted, inwardly deciding whether to be heartened that he had not decided without him or distressed at his insensitivity. The child of two noble houses needed a carefully chosen title, as well as a mere name. Little wonder the babe sung himself by note. “But nay, we had not agreed. Or truly considered the matter, until now.”

With the young one now quietly settlgaingainst him, Legolas wove his free arm around his husband’s waist and allowed his open shoulder to be similarly occupied. They ambled over to the sapling tree, the courtyard’s centerpiece and the only sign of the natural world at the Citadel. Both Elrohir and the baby sunk further into Legolas’ embrace, feeding off and flowing with the affection emanating from within. Finally reunited with his dear family, Legolas was loathe to speak, but his son would not be named in silence.

“What of Earendil?” he tentatively proposed.

“I had considered Oropher,” Elrohir countered. “Or Ecthelion or Feanor… but he is his own soul. I would not burden him with the wrongs or the rights of our houses. A new age of elves dawns with the time of men. He is beholden only to himself and should be thusly named.”

“How did you call him earlier?” Legolas asked. “Your endearment to him…?”

“Pen-tathar,” Elrohir reminded him. “I have taken somewhat to the alatilation. I recall when first you spoke of him, beneath the willow in his mother’s womb, where our shared life and love has so often come to fruition, where the trees whispered to him.”

“*Tathren*,” Legolas suggested, already pleased by the sound. “What think you, meleth?”

“Beautiful,” Elrohir remarked. “As is the child you have begotten us, maltaren-nin. I fear I’ll need thank you each and every day for your misjudgment. I must commend this betrayal as the most plentiful I have ever had the good fortune to suffer.” He brushed a kiss over his sleepy-eyed baby’s brow, then met his husband’s mouth with a more sensuous caress. “Are you not in accordance, Tathren-nin?”

To their never-ending surprise, the baby snortled in agreement, before giving sway to sleep.

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

As he sank further into the unctuous waters of the bath, Elladan purred from pure contentment. Though traveling without constant threat of Shadow proved one of the more genial pleasures of the coming age, the road from Edoras had not been without challenge, chiefly that of caring for the spritely babe in their company. The merry child now met with his awed Adar and their state-dinner mercifully brief, the once-warriors were finally free to take their plentiful ease. Knowing his peredhil brother’s love of the long-soak, the King had generously provided a tub large enough to accommodate Elladan and his mate.

If said Golden Flower could be plucked from the window sill.

“I never thought to see the White City so tranquil,” Glorfindel commented, with suitable distraction. “The restorations have bettered its design. The dwarf has clearly had his day.”

With a soft chuckle, Elladan allowed the fluid mercury of his eyes to pour over his husband’s bare, bold form, clothed only in a diaphanous sarong yet coiled with tension. The silken sheathes of his sun-kissed hair hung loose over his slender shoulders, its bristled ends framing the taut muscles of his chest. Though still sinuously wrung, his body had lost considerable weight, whether through worry or war-time rations, Elladan refused to contemplate. Instead, he set his sights on luring him down into the hot, frothy waters.

“Do you mark the excavation, by the south wall?” Elladan noted. “Torches encircle the cleaved ground. Arwen would essay a garden, there. I’m to send roots, when returned to Rivendell.”

“An elven touch,” Glorfindel ruminated, his furrowed brow considering this eventuality. “What Gondor never knew it wanted.” Elladan laughed sharply at this, drawing his too-serious husband’s attention. “You are cheerful, Elladan.”

“And you are ponderous for such a blessed time, meleth-nin,” the young husband chided, with hush affection. “What captivating cornice keeps you yearning at the window, when your measure of our bath is waiting?”

Glorfindel sighed, unable to admit the cause is ris reluctance, perhaps even to himself. His gray-hewn gaze drifted out, beyond the spires of the Citadel, to the fallow land in the far distance; where once was Mordor. The still-steaming fields of rock and stone too keenly recalled another lonesome vale, where once his kinsmen’s ashes were scattered by a bedeviled wind. By now, the overgrown valley would bear no trace of their existence, of their cares, of their courage, of the lives they so eagerly sacrificed. What would become of Mordor? Would, through the waves of time, Sauron’s wrath be forgotten and evil again come to fester within this soot-seeded land, within the souls of its unforgiving people?

From his soothing water-seat, Elladan harrumphed with Elrondian frustration. Since their journey south had begun, Glorfindel had been strangely caught in the fugue of memory, as if disbelieving of the peacetime’s advent. He waited on some further dark force, some unforeseen enemy, when Elladan understood quite well that the true warrior’s enemy was complacence. Before the war’s end, he had predicted his own dispirited nature, his feelings of uselessness in a more gentle age, but, to his surprise, they had not come. Months had passed since he’d strung a long-bow, cleaned his bloodied sword, or overtaxed his horse, but not for a moment’s sake did he miss these tasks, busied as he was with other cares.

The forlorn manner of his husband, for example.

Though more than a few judged his patience lacking, Elladan was not an inconsiderate elf. He had marked, with a bowman’s acuity, the tenderness of Glorfindel’s regard when he beheld their cherubic nephew, the prideful visage which instructed Elrohir in the finer points of his care. While his own Adar was merely entranced beyond rapture with this new creature, he knew enough of parenting to let Elrohir follow his instincts. Glorfindel had beens cas careful of his remarks, which had admittedly little-bothered the new father, but were damning evidence, Elladan had been sure, of his own secret desires. The ghosts of Gondolin he nightly summoned only further echoed the truth of his somber mood, Glorfindel wanted not a lordship, but a legacy.

Why else had he been reborn to this world, with the battle now ended and the enemy vanquished, but to find a mate and to build himself a family? With no threat to hinder him and a hallowed mate at his side, his mind staved off the inevitable disheartening by conjuring the blackest moments of his existence before his weary eyes. Countless times in these past months Elladan had cause to observe his husband’s quiescent suffering, unable to give him cause to hope. He had, after all, just recently survived the most vicious war of their time. Surely he, of many others, had justly taken time to heal.

On this dulcet evening, however, with his family reunited, his sister promised, and his brother beaming, he had cause to reconsider his position on breeding, love, and legacy.

“How long have Ada’s eyes been so bright?” Elladan delicately questioned his husband. Glorfindel again tore his stare from fallen lands and bid him audience. “Flecked with silver and their rich color paled?”

“I… I confess, I had not marked them,” Glorfindel exhaled, with solemnity. Seeing the matter of some concern to his uncharacteristically patient beloved, he rose from his perch and crossed the room. Shedding his sarong without a care, he waited on his answer, before stepping into the bath.

“He will not be long for Arda,” Elladan estimated. “He will wait-out the Shirelings, perhaps, with Mithrandir, before sailing West. I wonder if he will see Arwen again, after this long stay.”

“Would such a choice dishearten you, meleth?” Glorfindel inquired, his attention instantly focused on Elladan’s concerns, as he, in turn, sank into the silken waters. He was, despite his brooding, ever the peerless companion.

“Quite the reverse,” Elladan insisted. “I fear, if forced to make too many partings, Ada may fade. I too well remember the time of Nana’s grief and its grip on him. He would be with her again.” He fell silent a moment, choosing his next words as Elrohir might. “I will be named, shortly, as Lord of Imladris.”

Glorfindel, a seasoned diplomat, barely flinched. “And Elrohir?”

“Estel would entitle Legolas, for his service and brotherhood,” Elladan explained. “The colony of Mirkwood elves may move south, to Ithilien. There is little place, even in Rivendell, for them to flourish, as they must for survival’s sake. Elrohir and Legolas would divide their time between Ithilien and Imladris… he could not be Lord and so long absent. Besides, he little cares for titles, though he will have ample say in matters of government, at our home and in the new settlement. His skills will come to plentiful use, fret not.”

A longtime guardian’s prideful smile overcame his gloom, as Glorfindel clasped his husband’s hands and kissed them. “Have you need of a chief counselor?”

“Ambitious, are we?” he teased sweetly.

“Terribly,” he mused, suddenly heavy with fatigue. Glorfindel groaned to himself, then sighed. He waded over to the other end of the bath, eager to entwine himself in the warmth of his beloved’s lissome frame, future Lord of Imladris or no.

“I fear, in the throes of my new capacities, I may come to long for besiegement,” Elladan ruefully acknowledged against a damp temple in desperate need of a caress. “The challenges of peacetime may come to overthrow this simple warrior’s heart.”

“You are far too cunning, lirimaer,” Glorfindel murmured into his neck. “Your stealth is renown.”

“Indeed,” Elladame tme to whisper, as his lips traced a sensuous path across his cheek and up his ear. A lap at the peak sent shivers through the mellowed Balrog-slayer. “I mayce sce settled in my office, allow myself to be persuaded into siring a child or two.” Glorfindel stilled. When questing fingers found the slope of his opposite ear, he sprung up to face his bemused mate’s luminous silver eyes. “If my action is in accordance with your own desires, melethron.”

“In *accordance*,” Glorfindel nearly scoffed, unable to too soon give in to his rising, impossible joy. “You would… you would d-do this…?”

“Only with your blessing, maltaren-nin,” Elladan insisted, serious on this point alone. “If you could not forgive the manner of their begetting, I would not risk it.”

“For such bounty, I would risk…” Glorfindel trailed off, thinking better of the sentiment behind his words. He struggled vainly to compose himself, nearly ashamed of his sensitivity on this issue. “I have come to long for… I greatly wish for…”

“Hush, melethron,” Elladan soothed him, drawing him into a heady embrace. “I know well of your desires. Though you have some decades to console yourself to the idea, as it would not become the new Lord of Imladris to sire a child with other than his mate within the first years of his rule. Best allow those that remain to know of our love, of the strength of our binding, before we try their trust with the weirded begetting of our children.”

Sobered by his husband’s reasoning, Glorfindel signaled his agreement to this concession. “We will long consider the rather vital choice of naneth. The ellyth in question must be… a rare pearl.”

“For certes, if she is to weather my fumblings,” Elladan jested, happy to see this quip elicit a smile from his belov“I b“I believe some dwarven wine may be called for.”

At this, Glorfindel could do naught but shake his head, astounded and heartened by his husband’s brave resolve. He well recalled the last instance in which Elladan had consumed dwarven wine, as well as its dtroutrous consequences. That he would volunteer to do so again, despite his own bleak memories of the affair, was awesome and deeply affecting.

The future Lord of Imladris was truly his heart’s mate.

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

Lairë, Yen 40, Fourth Age

Imladris, the Last Homely House

At the third toe-curling shriek, Tathren leapt from his bow-shaped bed and dressed hastily. Some intrigue was afoot in the stately halls of this, his second Ada’s home, and he would not wait-out the roseate dawn to discover it. The call of adventure was rarely sounded between the sage peaks of this too-complacent valley; if the spine-braising cries of the ellyth in question did not herald such a call, then Tathren was no warrior’s son.

With nimble fingers, he swiftly braided his golden hair in a single plait, then encircled the tail in a broad strip of black leather. His earth-toned tunic and breeches deftly hidden beneath his bed for just such an instance, were it not for the moonlight aura around the crown of his head, he would be nearly invisible. As it was, he would need rely on the shrewd lessons of his Ada-Las to skulk around the compound undetected.

When a trickle of fitful sobs echoed forth from the Halls of Healing, Tathren knew his course. As he stalked along the dusk-shroud corridors of the family wing, he noted that the doors to both his Ada’s and his uncles’ chambers were minutely ajar, not a candle left glowing within. This was not their custom, some grave matter must have called them so thoughtlessly forth.

With a twinge of glee at his good fortune, Tathren broke into a cautious run.

Like a beacon in the night, the Healing Halls blazed with light, caused, no doubt, by the raging hearth at its center. Wondering at the need for such a fire as the first embers of morn reached over the horizon, Tathren streaked through the yard as if sailing on the wind. Fleet-footed, he snuck through the brush that encircled the domed edifice, slid down the leaf-strewn rail of the stairs to gain momentum, and vaulted up to the second-floor. He easily slipped his slender adolescent’s frame through the irons that enclosed the balcony, which led, always unlocked, to the healer’s alcove. Erestor’s study did not much impress him; he moved swiftly through the stacks of books, crackling the open-paged tomes in his haste.

None would heed this disturbance, what with the clamor below. Easing his lithe form, now quivering with anticipation, through a slit of the study door and onto the landing, he immediately crawled up the quite useful engravings, into the rafters. The Healing Hall had a domed ceiling, after all, but the walls of the various chambers within could not be buttressed on air. The smaller rooms were therefore held by a series of fat beams, upon which the discerning and agile elfling could easily spy on his betters, or, more precisely, the ‘trials’ they needlessly sought to protect him from. Positioned above what he judged to be the heat of the action, though mindful of the white-hot brick of the nearby chimney, Tathren settled himself into the joint of two sturdy logs and peered down at the scene.

His Ada-Hir loomed by the hearth, as was his way when considering matters of grave import, though he struggled to stifle a thoroughly bemused smirk. Ada-Fin, as he’d come to endear both his beloved uncles, was gathered sagely into an armchair, seemingly fussing over a bundle of cloth. Ada-Dan paced as to dig a trough in the floor tiles, his manner fearfully unhinged, though neither of his companions paid him much mind, other than his Ada’s aforementioned bemusement. From the surgery beyond, the cries has dulled to relentless whimpers, as though a wounded animal were caged within. A strange business, this.

And what other mischief abounded here? Upon closer inspection, Ada-Fin wielded not a blanket, but a cow’s udder, drained and fashioned as sieve of sorts… but for what purpose? Why was Ada-Dan so furious, while his husband seemed so calm, indeed nearly oblivious to the goings on around him? Why was his own Ada-Hir even present? As Tathren further puzzled out this bizarre circumstance, a perplexing, unfamiliar noise, akin to a mewl, sounded from within Glorfindel’s arms. The elder elf clipped the end of the udder, plunked the attached bladder into a waiting bowl, and beamed down at the… *aiya*!

His Ada-Fin held an elfling!!

In his hurry to stifle his own shriek, Tathren bit down hard on his tongue. ny tny true warrior should, he swallowed back both his yelps and the blood, too stunned by the unbelievable sight below to keep his befuddled stare too long away. Though he had never before seen a baby elfling – and with few memories of his own elflinghood (that, truth be told, had not yet quite ended), Tathren was immediately certain of two major points: first, that this was a newborn babe, and most confusing, that this was the child of his two uncles. Even if the scene before him revealed only assumptions, the resulting spark of his fea told him the truth of it.

Dismissing the frustration he felt at not being told of the imminence of its birth, let alone its very existence, Tathren examined this new, and much longed-for, companion of his. The pearlescent sheen of his skin proved him the son of Ada-Dan, as Ada-Fin was of a more golden complexion. His fine silver hair was peculiar, however, as none of the Noldor or Sindar he knew possessed such ethereal coloring. Coupled with the crystal blue of his eyes, he was a child of immaculate starlight.

Tathren knew, in that moment, they would be as brothers.

Turning from the spitting hearth, his Ada-Hir then regarded his twin with amused compassion.

“Elladan,” he chided softly. “Will you not quiet some? You’ll only further fray your… rather tenuous hold on patience with this...” Elrohir could not be generous nor gentle, so he left off.

“Aye, meleth,” Glorfindel bned ned him. “It has been hours since you’ve held the little one. He would know his sire’s warmth.” As if in agreement, the babe began to gurgle sweetly.

Elladan glared at the immovable doors of the surgery, but relented his pace. With a growling sigh, he burrowed down into the armchair beside his husband, wove his arms about them both, and regarded his newborn son with mellowed brow.

“He is the picture of Naneth,” he remarked, his restraint still evident. “Is it not strange that he should bear her colors in the very age of their extinction, gwanur?”

“He sparkles as the silmaril above,” Elrohir complimented, drawing near. “He will be comely fair.”

“You are starshine itself, Cuthalion,” Elladan murmured, as he caught hold of a tiny hand. “Yet why does your brother tarry so?” As if unimpressed with this line of questioning, the elfling yawned mightily and promptly fell asleep, causing his two fathers to coo with unrestrained affection.

“You have oft told of his shyness,” Glorfindel proposed. “Perhaps he is merely too timid to yet meet the world.”

“He best overcome this manner soon,” Elladan mused darkly. “Else he may not be long for it.” Glorfindel paled considerably at this suggestion, while Elrohir tisked at his twin’s inconsiderate response. “Three hours have passed in waiting, maltaren-nin. I fear…”

“Perhaps you should sing to him,” Glorfindel suggested, unable to digest any alternative to his son’s safe advent into the world. “You and Elrohir both. He will hear the tenor of your voices and be heartened.”

“An excellent proposal,” Elrohir seconded, grasping his twin by the arm and tugging him to his feet. Before Elladan could think to voice an objection, Elrohir knocked at the imposioorsoors.

Erestor soon answered, and could think of no reason to dismiss them.

Above, Tathren crept about the huge beams, anxious to witness an actual birth! Though there were no rafters above the surgery itself, there was an open space where the central beam met the wall, enough to poke his head through. The sight that met him, when this was accomplished, almost caused him to loose his footing. An unknown ellyth, certainly of Noldor heritage yet her autumnal colors suggesting Dorian descent, lay depleted across a cot by the other side of the hearthfire, her skin ghostly and her distress palpable. Blood and other violet viscera slicked her outstretched legs, bulbous belly, and the sodden space between, which Tathren avoided out of respect, if not outright revulsion.

The brethren, to their credit, paid her state little mind as they flanked her, each taking an arm and soothing her brow. Midwives waited by the fire, boiling linens, while Erestor, his apron splashed with gore, examined her again. Suddenly, a tremor seized her middle, shaking the loose belly as if infested. The ellyth screamed as if she’d been disemboweled.

Tathren looked on, fascinated.

“Not long now,” Erestor judged sagely, nodding to the twins. “Let’s give him some encouragement, shall we?”

The brothers placed their free hands on the quaking womb, then, with touching eloquence, they struck a low, resonant note. As their voices raised, beckoning the young one, the ellyth fought to sing with them, not wanting her child to be born amidst her howls. Soon, as her stomach bucketed furiously, they found an immaculate harmony, so blithe, so culling, that Tathren’s throat clenched.

Just as Erestor ordered her to push, a curlicued whistle sounded behind him. A familiar sound; Tathren knew, to his horror, that he’d been discovered. After scaling down the bisecting wall, he came face to face with a rather impressed, though scowling, Glorfindel. Tathren, as ever, could not keep his usual, mischievous gleam from his eyes, not could he long hold them aloft of the babe before him. With unabashed wonder, he tip-toed towards the now reluctantly accepting Balrog-slayer and gaped wondrously at his magnificent new cousin.

“I see that, in all things, Ion shall inevitably surpass Adar,” he concluded, with no little amusement. “Well played, Tathren Legolassion.”

“Hannon le, Ada-Fin,” he grinned sheepishly, knowing when to bow as well as when to break rank. As he reached out to touch the baby’s fine silver hair, a cry of an altogether different tenor broke from the surgery behind.

Glorfindel’s soft countenance became brilliant with joy, as he whispered to the child in his arms: “Wthinthink you, Cuthalion? Shall we go meet your brother?”

It was Tathren, however, who nodded his assent vigorously, unthinking until the last moment of how his own Ada-Hir might feel of his presence. Too late for warning was he ushered into the surgery, where the midwives washed the writhing babe. The ellyth had fallen into a long, exhausted sleep on the cot, while Elladan, Elrohir, and Erestor conferred darkly by the fire, awaiting the newborn with disheartening concern. Glorfindel’s own beaming smile was smote by their tense faces, even Cuthalion began to fuss. The atmosphere was so grave that Elrohir tucked his son under his arm without reproach or greeting, as Glorfindel joined their company. None dared speak until the midwives had bathed and wrapped the child, who was hushly presented to Elladan.

All then saw the meat of the matter, as the child, though similarly pale, had the thick raven hair of the brethren. They were not, by any measure, identical twins.

“But I heard their song!!” Elladan exclaimed, his face fraught. “Twin voices clearly beckoned through the ether… how can this be, if I only sired one babe?”

At this terrible utterance, Tathren gasped.

“How now?” Erestor queried, an altogether different form of astonishment alighting his face. “Not their sire? What mischief is this you speak, Elladan? There can be no other Adar to these children.”

“But he is so dark,” Glorfindel insisted, with greater hold on reason. “Though, I must confess, this second one is without question a child of your seed, melethron.” These last words he barely breathed out, so damning were they for the babe in his arms. Elladan, as if in acknowledgment of this, accepted the proffered infant, not wanting his real son to wait on him. He gentled some as he beheld this shy one, so delicately rendered as if by glass-spinning.

“Calm yourselves, my fretful fathers,” Erestor had to laugh. “Glorfindel has struck the right chord, but he does not mark its melody.” Four pairs of thoroughly bereft eyes struck him like a blow. He laughed again, despite himself. “Among the Dunedain, twins are not always identically fashioned. Identical twins are of one seed, which then somehow splits in two. These others are no less twins, merely begot of two separate seeds in one conception. As you are peredhil, Elladan… I imagine you are not immune to such an occurrence, though it is a first among elfkind. The light of the Valar upon you both, one might venture.”

With huge sighs of relief, the beset fathers embraced their dear ones, then saved a tender caress for each other. Even Tathren merited a squeeze from his Ada-Hir, who he knew, in such heartfelt moments, woefully missed his own husband, tending as he was to a matter in far away Ithilien. As Glorfindel expounded on the Gondolian provenance of Echoriath, the darkling child’s name, Tathren found his attention swinging from one elfling to the next. Both held their allures; he hoped they would come to be dear to him.

As the company quieted into a hush reverence, Elladan hummed a rather poignant melody to comfort his disquieted son, who had wasted no time burying his face in the folds of his Ada’s tunic and continued to fuss. The song, coupled with Elladan’s kisses, blanketed the timid one with love, until he at last released the tunic and dared to look about.

“Is this also one of the Valar’s blessings?” Tathren asked a soon confounded audience.

“After what do you inquire, pen-tathar?” Elrohir questioned.

“Look for yourselves,” Tathren responded, to his elders continued confusion.

Until, that is, Echoriath, blessed of bounteous Elbereth, dared open his golden eyes.

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

Yavië, Yen 122, Fourth Age

Ithilien, Home of the Wood Elves of Sindar

The wind whipped fierce as a lash across the desolaelenelennor, until they came to the river. Wild gusts, moist and seething as warg’s breath, swept across the yellowed grass of the tundra, hailing the crisp autumnal season, the waiting winter. Far behind, the Citadel spires shone, a peerless streak of white against the bleak sky, as blasts from Mithrandir’s wand against the flying Nazgul. Where oncey’d y’d raced across the plain as if the wolves of Mordor were at their heels, now they rode, as hearty travelers might, though their hearts were full with remembrance: of their questing youth, of their stand against the Shadow, of their peacetime lives.

Their man-brother was now the King of legend, their sister cold, shroud by the once-Golden Wood. They had, with a whisper, passed on.

Astride one of Virgor’s many foals, Elrohir took his last glance back at Minas Tirith; at Rohan and Lorien and Imladris far away. He felt as if he could see every valley, every mountain, every stream and hollow, ever tree beneath which they’d lain and every willow for which his son was named. This was his last view of the only land he’d every known, his heart felt flayed and gutted. Flanked by his brother, Elladan, who wept, and Glorfindel, who could not come to tare his eyes away, he questioned their choice to depart, but knew naught but greater sorrow would come of their staying.

With a boyish grin that became the man, the King, he was, Eldarion embraced each one with a ruler’s resolve. The death of his parents had marked him; no longer did his cherub’s smile meet his flinty eyes, nor his manner betray ought but his title. Elrohir thought he perhaps longed for their going, for in their eyes a mother’s spark was mirrored, a father’s teasing pride lingered. In this regard, Elrohir was glad of their imminent departure; after burying their sister, he could not lay to rest another cherished one, not on this shore, where he had beo deo dearly loved.

With a bow of deference, the King’s company knelt, as the brethren and the Balrog-slayer crossed thedge.dge.

Riding, as their forbears, into legend.

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

Tathren and Cuthalion met with their party but steps into the forest vale, jubilant at the return of their respective Adar. The silver sprite, thirty years past his first majority and in full bloom, trailed behind his fair cousin like a squire to a knight, painfully eager to learn of the golden elf’s magic touch. Child of Elladan’s valor and elemental disposition, he also lacked any qualms about ingratiating himself with others, unlike his more timid twin. Born under a different star, both would have been warriors; instead, they were archers, horse-breeders, and born adventurers, Tathren having just himself returned from an exploration of the Glittering Caves and Cuthalion anticipathis his own future journeys.

His only son, Elrohir esteemed, had in his one hundred and twenty-second year grown into a soul not undeserving of his cousin’s unabashed reverence. Mercurial, kind-hearted, and bold beyond reason, his warmth of spirit radiated from him like the aurora above; he was a natural leader, but without a charge. This last Elrohir hoped he might find among more of his age, in Valinor, though he and his cousins were heart’s brothers, complicit and eternal. Indeed, it was his ever-vigilant guidance of their growth that had helped them through the trials of youth, as evidenced by Cuthalion’s relentless shadowing. Tathren, however, bore this as most things, with humility and with respect for the younger’s want of an example.

The lively pair wasted no time in embracing their weary parents, whispering endearments and inquiring after their lonely task. Both children reeked of their compassion, but the beleaguered elves were more than happy to oblige them and surrender to their doting care. Cuthalion quickly latched himself onto Glorfindel, who strangely seemed the most affected, quickly ushering he and Elladan to their talan. Tathren kissed his Ada-Hir’s wind-b che cheek and wove his arm around him, content to stroll down to the river in silence. Despite his best intentions, his son knew well of mortal death: Neyanna had been laid to rest some twenty years ago and he had insisted on accompanying them to Estel’s last night of life.

As they ambled down the fertile banks to the rippling Anduin, a sight of overwhelming magnitude and splendor lay before them. A ship, some thirty oars long (though who would man them, he could not say) was held upright on the beach by various ropes, logs, and pulleys, her sails drawn but her masts as immovable as a mallorn. How his husband had suddenly evolved a talent for ship-building would forever remain a mystery, but Elrohir suspected the matter had something to do with a dwarf, as most matters of construction inevitably did. Though no elf other than they lay about, the dwarf in question lay dormant in a folding chair, snoring as the South Wind through Rivendell elms on a blustery autumn eve.

At Tathren’s wry snic a t a tawny head popped up over the prow, its golden eyes searching, shrewd. With typical preoccupation, Echoriath slid down the side ladder and shuffled over to the easel on which the ship’s schematics were fixed, all without even noticing his kindred. If it were not for his odd eyes, Echoriath could easily be twinned accidentally with the brethren in Elrohir or Elladan’s stead. Painfully quiescent and timid to a fault, the tender elf proved frighteningly solitary at the best of times. He often shunned the invitations of even his brother and cousin, preferring to cultivate his garden, nurture his collection of rare plants, spend hours designing a greenhouse, a boat, or a talan, ever-mindful of the balance between the natural world and elven necessities. Indeed, under Gimli’s tutelage, he was fast becoming a master builder; he plied thaftsafts of wood-working, smithing, and glass-blowing as many young elves shot a longbow. Though an archer of middling skill, Echoriath could make any weapon and, if required, devise something novel. Not mentment of his self-imposed isolation was wasted on lethargy. If anything, his fathers worried that he did not rest enough, rarely swimming, jousting, or merrymaking unless forced by Cuthalion, or more persuasively by Tathren, who he l as as a brother.

Indeed, it was his cousin’s familiar whistle that broke his concentration now. He looked up wut rut raising his head, but appeared happy to see them both.

“Have I told you, Ada,” Tathren informed him in a booming voice, as they sauntered down to the beach. “That Echoriath designed our ship?”

“Master Gimli gave me much assistance,” Echoriath himself murmured, as he hugged Elrohir in greeting. Solitary he may be, but the young elf was explicitly affectionate with his elders, from whom he drew what little resolve he possessed. “And Ada-Las has worked tirelessly…” He trailed off, as he often did, his amber eyes fixn son some problematic point. He jotted a few quick notes on the easel. “Are Ada-Dan and Ada-Fin returned as well?”

“They are taking rest in your talan,” Tathren noted pointedly. “Your Naneth is there.”

The spirited young elf noted an almost imperceptible dimming of his cousin’s amber eyes. Idrethiel, the twins’ gentle Naneth, would not be accompanying them to Valinor, preferring to stay in Ithilien with her mate and his daughters. In that moment, Tathren was unsure whether Echoriath had, indeed, made his peace with this. Putting any lingering thoughts of his own belated mother aside, Tathren vowed to shield his cousin from the heartache heselfself had known too keenly.

Each elf in the company, it seemed, would leave a piece of themselves in Arda.

“Their journey has been trying,” Elrohir sighed, feeling rather bereft himself. “Glorfindel is particularly… afflicted. It would hearten him, I believe, to see you.”

“I will go to him presently,” Echoriath agreed, his concern writ large on his comely features. “The ship will be readied for the dawn.” When Tathren proffered his hand, Echoriath dared a soft smile.

“Come, gwador,” he beckoned. “I will escort you.” The young builder’s relief, in this, was writ large across his pinched face.

As the two youths climbed back up the rocks, Elrohir ventured aboard the ship, just as Legolas was exiting the hold. With a halting gasp, the Lord of Ithilien veritably leapt into his husband’s arms, his grief at Estel’s passing still palpablnthsnths after. Legolas had not weathered his absence well, though neither had he felt able to accompany Elrohir on his bitter errand. During his time of mourning, he’d shorn his flaxen locks in deference, cutting the endless sheathes of cornsilk hair just below his ears. Before Elrohir left for Lorien, they had grown some, but it seemed he had chopped them again; himself, on this occasion. Elrohir could tell by the cinch of his waist he had again forgone proper nourishment, oubtoubt in his obsession to complete their ship. His iridescent eyes, brilliant but forlorn, were burnished by the rabid call oe see sea.

Yet his kiss was potent as ever.

“I have longed for your embrace, melethron,” Legolas rasped. “As the trees long for Arien’s grace to bless them. As a woodland elf longs for shelter beneath their lush bows.” Elr Elrohir knew his mention of the long-restored Greenwood was not careless. The previous year, Legolas and Tathren had spent a month camping there, communing with the archer’s beloved forest and bidding its hollows farewell. Thranduil, though undoubtedly knowing of their presence, had let them be. Tathren had been heartbroken, but Legolas had not been moved. Despite Glorfindel’s well-known theories concerning the former Mirkwood King, it seems a son forsaken can never after be reclaimed.

“How fare you, my brave one?” Elrohir inquired, pressing r far faces intimately together.

“I am well, now you are returned,” Legolas admitted. “Though I leave some livelihood in Arda… the sea’s call haunts me. I shall find my peace in the West.”

“My peace is here,” Elrohir vowed, enveloping him in warmth and affection. “With you, where it ever was, maltaren-nin.”

Legolas sighed in response, drawing strength and comfort from his mate’s soft mouth.

In the sanctuary of a lover’s arms, Legolas and Elrohir looked to the North, across the resilient Anduin, to the land beyond. On the outskirts of the forest, on the terrace of their talan, Elladan and Glorfindel shared the view, Arien’s ethereal glow emerging from behind the cloud, on this, their last day in Arda.

They looked West, these last truehearts of elfkind, towards Valinor.


End of Under the Elen

Author’s note:

‘Tathren’ means ‘willow’, of obvious significance to Elrohir and Legolas.

‘Cuthalion’ is the second name of Beleg, which means ‘strongb

‘Echoriath’ means ‘encircling mountains’, as in the peaks that encircled Gondolin.


Author’s Note Part Deux:

A HUGE thanks to all of my lurking readers for being so good as to take a gander at my latest ravings. I’d especially like to send my heartfelt thanks to Anorielle, Tuxedo Elf, Haldir’s Heart & Soul, Sian, Skoda, and Casualis for their excellent feedback and also for taking the time to review. My most vociferous thanks, however, have to go to wonderfulsse,sse, who has supported me through every turn. Everyone’s feedback fills me with light and joy, and I am forever grateful.

COMING SOON: “Of Elbereth’s Bounty”, an epic tale of forbidden love, fatherly woes, and lots of smutty elves about. It’s the third in the ‘In Earendil’s Light’ series, and I hope you will all journey there with me!!