Of Elbereth's Bounty

Title: Of Elbereth’s Bounty – Part 4
(third in my unofficial series, after In Earendil’s Light and Under the Elen)
Author: Gloromeien
Email: swishbucklers@hotmail.com
Pairing: OMC/OMC, Legolas/Elrohir, references to Glorfindel/Elladan
Summary: Our comely young elves wholeheartedly choose the path of most resistance.
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimers: Characters belong to that wily old wizard himself, Tolkien the Wise, the granddad of all 20th century fantasy lit. I serve at the pleasure of his estate and aim not for profit.
Author’s Note: It helps to no end to have read both In Earendil’s Light and Under the Elen before this, as otherwise you might not recognize any of the characters. Hope you enjoy, and thanks for keeping to the path thus far!!
Feedback: Would be delightful.
Dedication: To the moderators of Library of Moria, Melethryn, Adult Fan Fiction.Net, and other sites of their ilk for all their wonderful, tireless work and for keeping us up to our ears in fic.

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Of Elbereth’s Bounty

Part Four

The crescent moon hung in the misty midnight like a scythe waiting to strike, held aloft of the earth by Elbereth’s grace alone. Her sallow cast shroud the forest in a halting darkness, even the dew glistened wanly across the gravel-textured lawns that surrounded the sloped-roof Healing Halls. From the study, Elrond watched the very elf he waited upon emerge from the woodland path and float through the waist level fog, lithe as a specter in his diaphanous coat.

A sharp cry sounded behind. With a nod, none could tell whether of approval or resignation, Elrond quit the window. The trouble that had torn Elrohir from his husband’s arms this night had roused the Lord himself an hour before, but he was no more readied than his unassuming son for the painful task ahead. As he slipped surreptitiously back into the sur, th, the sight that awaited him did little to soldier his resolve: Erestor strung tighter than his bond-son’s most exacting bow, Haldir bale-faced beside his horror-struck brother, Rumil, and, on the table, Rumil’s poorly son, Ivrin. Hard living in the brute, perilous northern realm had spirited Rumil’s mate, Anamir, to Mandos the year before, leaving the Galadhrim to raise their little ones alone, twin ellyth not yet twenty years on and this spritely ellon, but three. Ivrin’s sisters had unadvisedly brought their precocious brother tree-climbing, during which, in a rotten turn of fate, the elfling had lost his toddler’s footing and tumbled from the higher bows of a grand, golden mallorn. His spine, by some gifted magic of the Valar, was unbroken, but his legs were shattered and his left arm savagely snapped. The warriors of the tribe had set the legs with considerable care, if not skill, but the arm, thought only sprained, was neglected in their haste to Telperion and mended in an improper form.

The only remedy was to snap it and allow the break to mend anew.

They had come, Rumil and his small company of friends, directly to Erestor upon late night arrival, but the Loremaster and skilled healer could not bring himself, as continued to be readily apparent by his blanched cheeks, to perform the necessary procedure on his tiny nephew. When Elrond required a second, he could think of none but his stalwart Elrohir, who had, many millenia ago, suffered an injury in similar need of resetting, though he had been well into his third century at the time, not merely his third year.

After testing the child’s brow, Elrond cursed inwardly. In their fever to break new ground, the Silvan and Dorian colonists had forged into the northern county with even the smallest of their families in tow, a dangerous proposal even in Valinor’s wilds. Though no Shadowspawn would plague them, there were also no amenities yet constructed to properly care for accidents of this regretful nature. The Lord was again reminded of the vital necessity of surveying, planning, and slowly building up a site; a charge set to the bands of explorers in his own realm under the rapt supervision of the High Council. If the other tribes of his people had been more open to their advisement, as Elrond himself had dug the very cellars of Imladris, this tender one would have been spared weeks of never-ending agony.

By Rumil’s bleak countenance, the lonely father knew only too-well what misery wreaked his child. In his over-creased face, Elrond perceived the barely held restraint that kept him from cradling his son, the ever constant, inner reminder that such an action would only cause further injury, perhaps even torturous pain. Ivrin’s spirit, however, needed as much tending as his frail body, so Rumil rested a hand on his elfling’s heaving chest and regarded his son intently.

“Ada?” Elrohir beckoned his father’s attention, a moment after shedding his light coat. “What has happened?” That he had dressed in urgency was readily apparent by his loose-laced breeches and the askew collar of his shirt, which failed to hide, to Elrond’s hairsbreadth of mirth, a love-bit trail of purple marks from the right of his neck to his shoulder.

Roused in the dead of night, indeed.

Any further amusement was staved off, however, when Elrohir took measure of the surgery table and those gathered there. In his argent eyes a great, haunting sympathy was reflected, as none could mistake the awkward position of the elfling’s left arm. After a fortifying inhalation, he slipped into their circle and immediately assumed the well-hewn role of master diplomat.

“Greetings, gwador,” he focused on Rumil, anticipating the protests that would soon come to pass. “Though gladdened by your arrival, I would not dare charge you well-met. How may I be of assistance?”

Elrond sighed imperceptibly, too heartened by his son’s intuition and grace under fire.

“I will stay the course,” Rumil barked wearily at him. “I have seen the rage of battle, treated wounded, been wounded myself. I will not be parted from him.”

“None among us doubt you, gwanur-nin,” Haldir reassured him. “But no father should witness the maiming of his child. It is a matter of instinct.”

“I have weathered far worse,” he rasped, a chill clouding his eyes like wind over an arctic ocean. None present could help but recall the manner of Anamir’s demise, drowned in the implosion of a too-deeply dug well. “I will weather this.”

With a pointed look, Elrohir unsheathed the slender mithril rod that would serve to snap the bone true. Eyes wide as saucers, Rumil bit back a howl of protest. Surely the rod was too heavy for such a fragile limb! When Elrohir set the implement beside the oblivious elfling, Rumil visibly clenched. He may be proud, but he was not foolish enough to believe himself capable of bearing silent witness to the harrowing procedure. With a gentility known to few of the warriors among their kind, Elrohir covered the beleaguered father’s hands with his own, then patiently lifted them away. To Elrond’s surprise, Elrohir then drew the stubborn elf into a firm embrace. He whispered to him in the assonant tongue of longtime swordbrothers, which was the final blow to his resolve.

Flanked by Erestor and Haldir, Rumil was soon led into the hearthglow of the anteroom beyond the surgery doors.

Elrohir caught his father’s smirk; he was impressed.

***

Hours later, Elrond gathered himself into his favorite armchair by the roaring fire, wretched with the echo of the child’s cracking arm and needful of his own blithe son’s steady company. As they could administer no sleeping drought to one so small, so beset by fever, Elrohir was curled into the rocking chair, vigilant arms cradling Ivrin as they calmly swayed to and fro. Upon knowledge of the procedure’s success and the first sight of his bandaged son, Rumil, blighted with exhaustion after five days of incessant riding, had fainted into his brother’s arms. He now slept, immovable and fully clothed, in a bed nearby, with Erestor and Haldir tucked into a cot beside.

As he himself sipped a remedial tea, brewed by his lovely, stealthy wife, Elrond could not help but note the subtle shades of emotion that drifted across Elrohir’s rapt face. Concern, remembrance, serenity, and an irreconcilable sadness colored his son’s regal countenance, but the boldest hue was a blue longing, tinged as ever by white-knuckled fear. Though Elrohir had yet to confide in him, all in their close family had some knowledge of the obscure, unfathomable susurrations of distress between him and his bonded. Through a series of hints, feints, and unvoiced implications, Glorfindel had related to Elladan, who in turn had mentioned some speculative notions to his parents, that the couple weighed the heavy impact of another child on their intensely loving marriage. Elrond, though unsurprised that Legolas considered the matter with meticulous caution, had been stunned to learn that it was Elrohir, and not the archer, who had yet to be swayed.

Observing him now, so reverent of the little golden one in the bow of his arms, Elrond was doubly disbelieving of his reluctance.

“Does he yet slumber?” he inquired, drawing Elrohir’s softened eyes.

“Nay,” he replied hushly. “The pain lingers still. Yet his flame is strong and constant, sleep will not tarry long.”

“And the fever?”

“Tempered some, but not fully drained from him,” Elrohir judged, resting his cheek on the elfling’s glistening brow. “We might try some tea, on the morrow…ah. There.” As Elrohir slowed his rocking, tiny legs went limp; the child sank against him, burrowing his scrunched face in his shirt.

Sleep had vanquished him at last.

Elrohir chuckled, eyes stuck on his young charge. “He is so like my Tathren, this tender one. Only after hours of rocking would he give in to his fatigue, his thirst for knowledge of the world around him ever firing him, even to the point of insomnia. What I would not give for just one more night of caring for that fretful babe of mine.” His quicksilver eyes found solace in the flickering hearth, sanctuary from his creeping sorrow. “He is so willful, Ada, so needful of autonomy. I could never burden him with my sadness at his prolonged adventuring, but I feel his absence too keenly, at times. And I… I sometimes fear…” Elrohir caught himself, before he said too much.

“Thranduil,” Elrond spoke what his son could not. “His blood legacy. That Legolas, in keeping Tathren from knowing his grandsire unwittingly encourages, in hand with inexperience, behaviors that might otherwise be checked and overcome.” The Lord and father had himself long considered this, but his feelings were less than resolved. “Yet knowing Thranduil might not lessen his effect on Tathren.”

“This I well know, Ada,” Elrohir exhaled longly. “His influence, present or no, has wrought little but the most corrosive shame in Legolas.”

Elrond carefully worded his next question, but could not keep it back. “Is this what keeps you from… from fatherhood, yourself?”

“I *am* a father,” he growled, then remembered himself before his own sire. Yet the resulting scowl was not unnoticed. “My brother has a loose tongue.”

“We have each of us wondered, ioneth,” Elrond elucidated, with ample patience. “Gwanur, Adar, and Naneth alike, why, in light of Elladan’s own action, you and Legolas did not follow suit with a sibling for your golden child. By the Valar, do not name Thranduil as the cause.”

“I knew not the number of our family to be of such engrossing debate,” he snapped, instinctively tightening his protective hold over the child in his arms. “The matter is between Legolas and I.”

“It is the ‘between’ you speak of that preoccupies us,” Elrond insisted, with great affection. “The unwavering heat and ardor of your loving bond is an example to us all. We would not it be overburdened, especially by such slight trouble as this.”

“A *slight* trouble?” Elrohir started. “The breaking of our binding vows?”

“Methinks that is Legolas’ argument,” Elrond countered. “Though he himself would be loathe to speak it, even in this instance.”

With a grunt of frustration, Elrohir struggled to control himself, if only for the sleeping child’s sake. In truth, Elrond had never seen his pure-balanced son so provoked by mere debate. The master diplomat uncharacteristically fought as desperately as a caged warg; clearly the action required of him for the siring of another babe struck deep within, to the very core of his self-definition as constant and adoring mate. When his consoling eyes attempted to balm his son’s itching spirit, he found Elrohir furiously blinking back tears.

“I have searched, Ada, for the wellspring of strength that might allow me to… to…” he haltingly explained himself. “But I have yet to divine by what manner Elladan brought himself to so forsake Glorfindel, even for but a moment’s time, for but a spurt of seed, given not for love of an ellyth but out of love for an absent husband. I know in my mind that such an act would not be a betrayal, but a tribute, to our binding vows, to my blithe husband, that in some strange way it is the ultimate act of love for him. Perhaps that is why Tathren quits us as he does, why he begs for another to second him, because though my heart rages with love for my son and though I have struggled as Glorfindel before the Balrog to be worthy of him, no other care will ever equal my immortal love for Legolas.”

To his utter shock, his father laughed at him.

“Elrohir!!” he protested. “To compare your love for husband to child is to compare titan to colossus! We speak not of degrees of love, but of manners of loving. You may be heartened, ioneth, to know that, though I would give almost anything to have my sweet Arwen home again, I would not even for your sister’s life sacrifice my dearest Celebrian.” The profundity of this statement stilled the elf-knight to silence. “I loved my Evenstar as well as I could, but her destiny lay with Estel my foster child and nothing in my power could keep her from him. Do I love hess fss for choosing her own path? Nay, I do not. Do I love her more or less than the sons I keep daily counsel with? Never. Would I forsake an eternity with my ethereal wife to stay a hundred years with my daughter before she fades. What think you, Elrohir?” When his darkling son could not find his tongue, he kept on. “Throughout the never-ending span of our lives, ioneth, we are bound over and over again, sometimes tightly, sometimes with the barest link, to those around us. Each of these threads are precious and unique, no relation knit with the same yarn. Some are so tenacious they can never be severed, some so thin that the barest breeze pulls them free, some fray until there is but a strand left, which strangely holds for all eternity. None can be measured against another, for they are all dependent on two solitary souls blown by the winds of fate. Even with my powers, I cannot predict what the future holds for you and your beloved mate, but I can speak of the bond between a child and his sire. I would not have forgone such an experience for any elf’s love. It is the most fulfilling role I have ever charged myself with playing, save that of husband, and I hold the deepest respect for any elf so worthy of the task as you, my dearest one.”

With that, Elrond eased himself to his feet aoughought out Celebrian, leaving his son no little, fateful pondering.

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

On this night of nights, Ithil was but a slit of silver cloud, a reflection of Taniquetil’s glacial aura, an echo of fog-shroud starlight above him. As he stole through the quiescent forest hollows like a brigand from his master’s house, Echoriath inwardly cursed the ominous sky for its midnight black omen. Yet he kept to the path, kept to his resolve, no matter how unsteady his step, how emulsified his innards, how raucous his ever-reasoning mind, currently leaded down with the milliard questions he should have posed to Tathren that watershed afternoon in the orchard, when his ritual-blighted sorts abandoned him entirely.

The one grace accorded him was sure knowledge of Tathren’s desire, of which there was nearly too ample evidence. In the sleep between the overture and their impending togetherness, the clockwork logic of his mind had fit the cogs and springs of Tathren’s unwitting machinations into a terrifically fine working order: his defense by the seashore, his initial championing of Elostrion, his fit at the ale hall, his too-doting helpfulness during the harvest, the slaps, pats, pinches, and squeezes that kept them within an arm’s reach of one another throughout their companionship. As he tramped through a barely lit clearing, Echoriath berated himself for his blindness. Though hardly a marksman, one with such an eye for detail as he should have long remarked these subtle shadings to Tathren’s normally carefree nature. Indeed, he would have marked them, if not for his own heart’s too-innocent fluttering, the longing that sprung not from his charred loins but from the essence of his soul flame.

Where he loved, Tathren merely desired; therein lay the most chafing rub.

As he approached the thick-wooded pass where Tathren made his home, he lowered the brim of his hood further down his brow and cinched his cloak around his shoulders. Though he could not with good conscience keep himself from this night’s indulgences – too long besotted was he by his cousin’s radiance – nor would he deceive himself as to indulgence’s price. Tathren, his lust slaked, would surely tire of him; how could one so solemn, as he, be worthy of an eternity with the most mercurial elf in the land? Even if, by some wicked twist of fate, Tathren was temporarily deceived by his body’s relentless urgings, surely their fathers would rather see them flayed than bound. Raised as close as brothers of the noblest line, of twin fathers, no less, the people of Telperion knew them as blood relations, not as cousins by affinity alone. Their union would reek of privilege, of incest, of every taint and scandal a Noldor house had ever been accused of by the common Silvan woodsfolk. The making of their marriage bed would awake the unrest of ages past, ire at the perversion of one of their favorite sons.

Yet even at the cost of fading to grief, he would give himself this one, immaculate night.

***

When the door swept open and Tathren stood, half-bare and beckoning before him, hew wew why the stars had fled.

Echoriath, breathless, knew not what orb or celestial manifest could best his cousin’s ethereal countenance for luminescence, not the moonstone glow of his bejeweled eyes nor the halo that crowned his golden hair. He was a prince of uncommon majesty, not of dank Mirkwood nor lush Greenwood, but of the vast, ephemeral heavens, where even the Valar dared not roam.

Yet for all his effervescent grace, the night’s true promise lurked within his muscular form, the proximity of such naked virility instantly evaporating any troths of honorable distance Echoriath had vowed to himself in the dark wood. The diaphanous silk of his sarong hung low on his hips, but not another slip of cloth adorned this resplendent elf of his heart. He had anointed his honeyed skin with lavender oil, the sweet scent so luring that Echoriath failed to note as Tathren shut the door, threw the lock, and welcomed him.

Only when smoldering iridescent eyes raked the length of his shivering body did his nascent apprehension focus him on the present, on the feral form that stalked towards him. The molten stare that mated with his own, as agile fingers unclasped his cloak, was unknown to him, a regard so foreign, so ferocious, that Echoriath unwittingly sought some glimmer of his cousin’s warmth within his slit-pupils. When the last of his shirt was unhooked and probing hands smoothed up his trembling chest, he pushed violently through them, drawing this strange, aloof creature into a crushing hug.

Tathren may have gasped, may have snarled; but whatever sound broke from within him, he curled himself around Echoriath and held him for a long while. Soft kisses to his temple, the peach of his cheek, a nip at the peak of his ear told him his cousin had joined them at last. Gentled palms cupped his face, lifted his jaw up so that petal lips could meet his own, easy, embroiling, as that velvet touch sparked the taut skin of his abdomen.

“May I?” Tathren inquired between thick, sultry culls at his mouth, the seam of the young builder’s shirt sleeves clinging to his lax shoulders.

Echoriath barely blinked his assent and the shirt slid off, baring an elegant slope of neck Tathren was only too happy to caress with those ready, reddening lips. Between his hazy head and his jelly legs, the young adventurer was veritably holding him upright, though he was soon spread across a nearby loveseat and pressed hot into its satiny cushions. As their sweaty, baking bodies scorched across each other, thigh met thigh, chest met chest, and mouth met open, wanting mouth. When Tathren’s saucy tongue laved the length of his own, tasting the full of him, Echoriath could do naught but abandon himself to the heady thrall of this first, enslaving penetration.

Echoriath knew, in that sensuous instant, how thoroughly and adamantly he wanted to be taken.

Cunning fingers singed circles over his sensitive aureole and tweaked the clenched nubs; the resulting moan reverberated across Tathren’s giddy tongue, only urging him to further deepen their kiss, worry those nipples raw, and prod the very wrought evidence of his arousal into the soft of Echoriath’s thigh. When his own engorgement subsequently engulfed his too-cloying breeches and braised its tented-velour tip against Tathren’s navel, the adventurer broke off his body-questing and settled at his side, if not his own precipitous pants.

Eyes as aged and restless as an ocean met his, the rippling depths of their affection ensured the arms that enveloped him were not snared as chains but balming as the flow of the tide. The simmering gaze sank down, washing over his heaving chest, the swimming heat in his loins, to his breech-bulge. As those lissome archer’s fingers loosed his laces, Tathren looked upon him with concern and no little lust.

“Are you truly resolved to be loved, lirimaer?” he murmured, his voice frayed. “For if I touch you now… it will be to claim you.”

In silent reply, Echoriath tugged the last of his laces free and rested Tathren’s hand on his slick navel. The skin beneath liquefied like lava-rock at this sparest touch, his groin swollen so painfully stiff that he whimpered into Tathren’s neck.

With reverential care, Tathren lowered himself to the floor and shifted Echoriath’s hips before him, his legs splayed wanton. To see his golden cousin so patient when both their desires grated fierce and fiery heartened him, even from within the grip of this peerless, desperate need. At last, Tathren pulled down his tight breeches and bared him. The resulting gasp deliciously twisted his pulpy lips, such that Tathren, amidst his shock, resolved to plundered them again ere the night’s end. More of glutted man’s measure than sleek elven rendering, Echoriath may have been overly blessed by the Eldar in all other aspects of his lank frame, but between his slender legs stood a pillar that would shame the most generously endowed among the Dunedain. His girth unsteadied even one of Tathren’s accomplished skills, though, his mouth suddenly ripe with saliva, he was more than eager to prove himself worthy of the task.

“Saes, tathrelasse,” Echoriath rasped, flattered by his awe but terrifically needful. “Release me.”

The green elf had expected to be stoked, expertly stroked by hard-laboring hands; he swore aloud at the first steamy swipe of Tathren’s tongue up his length. The golden elf besotted him with unctuous laps, teasing licks, deft squeezes to the knotted base of his shaft, before sucking him into the moist, molten depths of his mouth. His body was electric, enthralled; galled, even, by the waves of rapture that pummeled his nerves and pounded through his veins, as if caught in a cyclone mid-sea. Though he clung feverishly to the incredible feeling, fingers entrenched in Tathren’s flaxen hair, he surged in fiendish release, pouring every last drop of his cream down his cousin’s throat.

Tathren swallowed, rested a groggy head on his thigh, and purred like a fatted kitten.

Echoriath, however, felt not a wit sated.

***

With a gauze-veiled gaze, Tathren looked up at his soft cousin, at the play of emotion over his flush features. As the rush of pleasure ebbed to a gentle, constant stream, he perceived the telltale blush of embarrassment give way to curiosity: ‘by what means did he bring me forth? How might I perform this on him, in turn? What other ways can our bodies be so gloriously mated? Why, despite my most thorough undoing, am I still wreaked with desire?’ This last, glaringly apparent if only by the burnished glow of his eyes, gave Tathren the greatest satisfaction, as he had feared even the most careful coupling might unnerve this tender one.

Instead, Echoriath’s impassioned wails had obliterated his bashfulness and roused a lover from within.

As tickling fingertips traced the lobe of his leaf-shaped ear, Echoriath whispered: “W-would you… might I not please you, as well, tathrelasse?”

With a sigh, Tathren grappled to his feet. He padded over to the pantry and poured himselglasglass of miruvor, his carelessly knotted sarong still threatening to bare his hips. He would not allow his eager cousin to see the sodden front, nor the newly stiffening shaft soon erected there. Promise, after all, and some tempting uncertainty would only amplify their pleasure. He felt Echoriath’s amber eyes rake down his back, over his behind, as the still breathless elf straightened himself in his seat. He was unsteady, tightly strung; Tathren would have him unwound before taking him.

“Would you care for a tonic?” Tathren queried playfully, the tendrils of Echoriath’s frustration creeping over his back.

“Nay,” he nearly bleated. Melancholy threatened, so Tathren pressed on.

“If you venture into my bedchamber,” he instructed with softened tone. “I had grandmother fashion you a wrap similar to my own. Of course, she did not think it for her beloved grandchild, but for a… companion of mine. I told her I was quite taken, as I indeed was, with the gray-lavender hue of your formal jacket at the ale house.” The room became so still, Tathren thought he had fallen asleep. “The fabric is silken, sensuous he the touch. I’ve laid out a selection of oils. If you would choose which fragrance you prefer… I thought it most enjoyable to anoint you myself.”

His feet barrustrustled the carpet bristles, so swiftly did he fly. With a proud chuckle, Tathren downed the las the the tart miruvor, then stealthily followed the eager young elf.

He observed, from the archway, as Echoriath sniffed each bottle in turn, selecting a heather-laced musk that Tathren himself preferred. Bare and breathtaking, Echoriath ambled over to the bed. He sampled the satiny feel of the material, stroking along the folds as if over the sweep of a lover’s back. Tathren could tell by swa swaggering stance that he was hard, so wanting for stimulation that his hands shook with the effort to refrain from touching himself. Though the gifted sarong obviously pleased him, he could not bring himself to cover up, intuiting that even the slightest veil over his groin might devastatingly unman him.

He was as ripe for plucking as a peach of thcharchard.

Tathren caught his hand an instant before he gave way to his body’s insatiable demands; Echoriath barely stifled a whine of protest. As the virginal elf struggled to hold his hands aloft, not to turn towards the bristling heat of his cousin behind him, Tathren poured out a generous amount of oil and began to anoint his back. Worshipful, heather-scented palms soon loosened his rigid shoulders, massaged the length of his wiry back, then worked, with something more intent than caring, his plump buttocks. Thinking himself about to be breached, Echoriath leaned towards the bed, but Tathren’s steady arms righted him, as he pressed himself full against his oil-slick back. Echoriath groaned, melting into his embrace, his head lolling wantonly back. More of the salve wet his hands and they roamed, eliciting the most luring, unbidden moans, over firm pectorals, purpled nipples, rippled abdomen, and a navel of such tear-budding sensitivity that Echoriath wrenched his head back and bit a hungry kiss from his mouth.

Swirling around, he snatched the bottle of oil away and doused his trembling fingers, but inches from their intended destination. Tathren seized his attention by taking his hot mouth, making good on the earlier promise of a thorough plunder, all while guiding the fingers on his swollen shaft, demonstrating at once how he liked to be stroked and how thickly to slick him. The last of his patience smote by this most intimate contact, his body aflame, Echoriath thrust into his arms, letting his neck be sucked violet and the grind of his hips ignited.

By the time they found the waiting bed, no caution could dissuade him. He bucked up like an unbroken colt, needful, keening, kicking his heels against Tathren’s backside and baring himself for the taking. After halting, and hasty, preparation, Tathren lost what little reason ruled him and sunk into that thrilling, unctuous heat, so scarlet and carnal and sundering that he knew nothing of the world but star-kissed skin, but sensuous ebony hair, but enraptured eyes of giving, incandescent gold.

They mated with a fever few experience on their bonding nights, neither able, even long after completion, to consider releasing their rapt hold on the other.

This first coupling was, for both, a thoroughly ravaging consummation.


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

Though long bonded, entitled, and of a considerably advanced age in comparison to the youngsters that encircled them, Legolas was glad of some revelry this night. Dinner had been a maudlin affair, with Elrohir yet unsettled by some pronouncement of Elrond’s (or merely thought of the sickly child), Tathren closed as a chest of gold farthings, Glorfindel preoccupied by notice of some foreigners coming by the river, Cuthalion in the dumps over his latest irresolvable tryst, and Echoriath strangely, giddily clumsy. Indeed, were it not for Elladan’s witticisms, he would have thought himself supping with a family of unknown relation.

The ale hall’s lively atmosphere was a balm to his beleaguered spirit, after a long day of archery lessons with his charges, rallying with Haldir and Rumil, and wretched diplomacy in dealings with a soon-departing exploring party. With Glorfindel eventually called away, Elladan had suggested a night in the cups and Legolas was more than eager to oblige him. Even Elrohir, tucked hotly into his side, was eased by his twin’s company; the two had little cause to interact outside of Council matters now that their questing was long done and Elrohir more oft than naught retired to his study after the evening meal.

As the lute player struck up a familiar tune, they fell into an appreciative lull of silence, he and Elladan exchanging sly glances at the flirtatious younglings that sundednded them. To their bemusement, a sable-hairlf nlf not a year past his second majority smirked salaciously at Elladan from beside the ale barrels, his legs askance to signal his intent. Soon, a whistle sounded to their left, emitted by a green-eyed beauty, whose relentless stare nearly scored a target in the elf-warrior’s forehead. Neither seemed to mark the gold band that signaled the age and honor in which he was bound, nor the brazen maids that routinely fluttered by, like gulls over a fish-steretered beach. They did, however, seize eatherther up in such a feral manner that Legolas soon feared an incident. Or, perhaps, hoped for one, as a quarrel over Elladan’s virtue would be most entertaining.

Elrohir, oblivious, dozed in his constant arms.

“You best guard your chastity with a mithril belt, gwador,” Legolas taunted him. “Your comeliness gracelessly unmoors these tenderlings.”

“More than one would have sequestered you by now, o blonde immaculate,” he retortedly. ly. “Were it not for my brother’s lax hand tucked so daintily between your thighs.” Legolas chuckled affectionately, then kissed his beloved’s ebony crown.

“Methinks Glorfindel best not tarry long,” Legolas upped the ante. “Lest he discover himself the mediator of a fearsome duel for his own husband’s honor.”

“Ah, they would not dare approach me,” Elladan scoffed, as a cloaked figure did indeed loom behind them, casting a shadow over their wine carafe and honeycakes.

Legolas gleefully mocked Elladan’s blanched countenance, until the figure drew back his hood and his eldest brother stood before him.

“bretbrethil!!” he exclaimed, unsure of whether to be pleased or worried by this revelation.

He gestured to an empty chair, but his brother refused, seizing up the situation with a hawkish stare. The stately elf, though not of their sire’s taciturn disposition, had never reconciled himself to his youngest brother’s binding with an ellon, though Legolas knew not whether his gender, his peredhil makeup, or his Noldor heritage was truly the deciding factor against his bonded. Conscious of this, Legolas and Elrohir tempered some of the affections they allowed themselves with family when Mithbrethil was about. Yet there was no bad blood between them. It had been through Mithbrethil’s confession of their father’s complicity that Legolas had uncovered the truth of his son’s fraught begetting. While the eldest brother did not leave Mirkwood with the colony, choosing instead to stay and fight from within, they had kept up their correspondence and, once removed to Valinor, hosted his visits every few years.

Those visits, however, were usually heralded months before. This sudden appearance, on the heels of Rumil’s tempestuous arrival the night before, was unprecedented.

“Well met, gwanur,” Mithbrethil bowed, too formally for Legolas’ liking. Perhaps the familiarity of the ale houssquisquieted him, or more like the too-public venue for their reunion. “Forgive me for my audacious interruption of your evening, but I would… I would that you accompany me into the glade, a moment.” Elrohir, by this time, cast a groggy glance upwards at the interloper and precipitously straightened in his seat, thankfully allowing Legolas to rise without waking him himself.

“I surely would,” Legolas beamed at him. “Once you have been properly welcomed.”

The archer hugged his brother more to rattle him than out of warmth, though the two were somewhat intertwined. Mithbrethil, to his astonishment, nearly ground his bones to dust with the force of his embrace, his face, upon parting, clenched with repressed feeling. Elladan and Elrohir, also bearing too sympathetic witness to his distress, were soon on their feet. With uncommon sobriety, the three followed Mithbrethil out of doors, down to the starlit glade by the riverside. To Legolas’ continued s, th, the eldest Prince of Mirkwood was not yet able to entirely release his little brother, not until the sound of the river flow rushed through the sterling night.

“Forgive me for my stealth, gwanur,” Mithbrethil begged anew. “But I would spare you the… the shame I myself felt, when confronted by… by…”

“By what force, nin bellas, are you so provoked?” Legolas demanded, growing increasingly concerned for his brother. “Truly, I have never seen you so weirded by circumstanTellTell me what ails you.”

“I swear if I could soften the blow, I would, dearest Legolas,” he vowed with stunning chivalry, before retreating beneath the tree cover. Elrohir was at once at Legolas’ side, not knowing what manner of monster or fiend would emerge anew with Mithbrethil. Elladan, ever vigilant, had drawn his sword.

None, however, could have prepared Legolas for the floating steps of the one that padded towards him, for his first, breathless sight of star-spun hair, gentled aquamarine eyes, and an ethereal countenance necessarily forgotten for all of his adult life. Indeed, Legolas was so incensed that tears instantly sprung from his eyes, though none could blur the glowing grace of the one before him.

“Naneth?!” he cried, then raced towards his mother. He paused but a second; she was so beauteous that he wondered if she could truly be real, but at her familiar smile he threw himself into her arms and harkened to her as no other, save perhaps his mate.

For endless moments, Laurelith held her son, her Legolas, whom she had known but as the tiniest elfling, but could not long keep herself from gazing upon him, grown to such majesty. As her awed eyes took in his golden, unrivalled perfection, Elrohir could not help but mark their too numerous similarities. Though he resembled his father some, Legolas took the lion’s share of his radiance from his shimmering Naneth; the two were almost as twins reunited.

Little wonder Thranduil went mad when she was taken.

After such a momentous revelation, Legolas could not long keep his mercurial nature in check, dragging his compliant mother down the slope to meet his bonded.

“Nana, may I present to you my beloved, Elrohir,” he introduced his elf-knight with unabashed pride. Elrohir bowed primly, but Legolas insisted on demonstrating the fever of their affection with a bristling kiss. To Elrohir’s relief, Laurelith trilled with laughter. “And this is my bond-brother, Elladan.”

“I am long acquainted with the Sons of Elrond, pen-neth,” she chuckled indulgently, as she curtsied to them both.

Legolas clasped his mother’s hands again and continued excitedly: “But you are not acquainted, Nana, with… with my Tathren. We have a son. Grown to full majority and an archer of incredible skill, an adventurer by trade. He is named for the willow by the training fields in Greenwood, and he is bold and blithe, kindhearted as few are, so spirited and lovely… Nana, you will adore him.”

“If he is like the splendid elf you have become, my Legolas, I would be more than heartened to know him,” she replied, with bountiful tenderness. “I hope to know you both, before long.”

Sorrow struck him them, at all she had missed, at all she had endured, at the unbelievable event of her release from Mandos and at the reality of how little they truly knew of each other. He fell into her arms again and held her despairingly tight, whispering to her of all the secret pledges he’d long stored in his heart.

There were a lifetime’s cares to tell of.


End of Part Four