Feud

Chapter 41: Na Falas [At the Beach]

Anor had come to rest upon the lands of Middle Earth and all the air was transmuted, suffused with the radiant beams of Arien in the unclothed glory of her fire-formed soul, for only so could the glaring heat and searing brightness be accounted. Legolas could not bear to open his eyes, and even with them sealed tight against the relentless gleam he still beheld the scorching brilliance and threw his arm across his face to shield it from the blinding ferocity of the sun's essence. His wonder climbed with the ascending warmth spreading throughout his skin. Body and soul absorbed the omnipresent luminance bearing down upon his being, surrounding and engulfing him, invading his very lungs with each inhalation of the dazzling atmosphere while every expelled breath relinquished the much cooler ether of his own existence.

Beneath him the ground was soft and shifted as he moved, gliding across his legs and slipping through his fingers when he grabbed up a fistful of the loose, unconsolidated turf. He turned within it, rolling over onto his stomach to ease the unendurable lustre of the ubiquitous gloss. The sensation was luxurious; the earth wrapped round his naked form, dusting his flesh with a fine coat of iridescent grains and transmitting a glowing warmth like that of a down-stuffed cover toasted at hearth-side.

Legolas wriggled his toes down into the yielding, desiccated dirt and reveled in the feel of the tiny tingling caress the sand granted each time a muscle moved. He rested his cheeainsainst the powdery grit and stretched, exalting in the vitality coursing through the nerves of every flexing cord and sinew. A deeply contented murmur worked its way out from his throat to mix with the crisp whispering of wind in the high brittle grasses that marked the boundary between the strandline and the headlands.

The air smelled bitter with an unknown tang that he could even taste on his lips; he licked them to savor its unique flavor.

Legolas smiled.

Never had he heard Manwe's voice sing with such unusual timbre or blow with such a vehement staccato, buffeting about his ears and tousling his hair, whipping the strands against his bare back, lifting up handfuls of the thick tresses as if the Wind Lord was running invisible fingers through it. This did not resemble the Song of the air under the canopy of the Greenwood where branch and leaf accompanied the ponderously understated hymn.

Indeed, he could not identify what these melodies were like other than a vague similarity to the shushing sighs made as the breath of the Vala moved across the open grasslands between the forest and Dale. Yet, that was a soft lush sound of green life full with water and sap, scented with the freshness of new rains captured in spring. This was a rasping, brittle rustling like the noise of a rigid arrow's flight as it razed the sky, only softer in volume and at the same time magnified by multitude.

There were layers within this Song, as with all the many harmonies of nature, but here a powerfully beating rhythm pounded in time with the subtle susurration of the skies, underscoring the undulating air and rumbling through the grainy ground beneath the feral elf. Legolas lay utterly still, listening. His pulse synchronized with it and he felt himself dissolving into the immensity of the sound, absorbed into the overwhelming intricacy of Arda's fullness stretched across all the Ages accomplished and those as yet obscured, undesigned, and undreamed of even to the comprehension of the Powers.

The Tawarwaith sank willingly into the hypnotic thrumming without fear or panic, for it was not so much a sense of losing himself in the unbounded flow of time as of finding his source, the nucleus of his soul. In this state of fluidity, his disembodied spirit drifted upon the surging rise and fall of the relentless tide. Then, he discerned a tugging upon his mind, a yearning expanding within his inner most core, urging him to fly swiftly to the course's culmination. Longing for this unseen point of origin, Legolas knew a painful desolation unlike anything he had ever experienced, surpassing even the gnawing hunger of his heart for Malthen.

It was a strange thing, to feel his tears of frustration swallowed by the searing sun-soaked air before they barely wetted his cheeks. Legolas wept in the certainty that he was barred from reaching Eldamar and the lands of Elendë, forbidden to seek the shores of Aman, held bound to his arduous reality of suffering and death by the Judgement.

A shadow fell across his silently sobbing shoulders and darkened the clarity of the caustic glare from the polished and gleaming skies. Legolas turned his face up into the umbra and opened his eyes at last, gazing upon the golden mounds of stable dunes capped with tassels of flaxen sea oats and saber grass flagging in the warry wry wind. In a cleft between the hummocks of sand the curling crashes of foam-crowned waves heralded the horizonless expanse of the ocean, stretching in continuous mobility beyond even the long-sighted vision of the Eldar.

Legolas stared in awe upon the vastness of Aearon, the Great Sea.

An elf stood as the barricade between the archer and the limitless light. His countenance shrouded in black silhouette against the hazy azure expanse of Menel, he wore warrior's garb in the green and brown of Thranduil's Realm, but was armed for war no more. Chestnut waves of billowing hair arranged in the plaits earned by his senior rank and valorous reputation swirled across his face and drifted upon the blowing breath of the windy beach. He knelt and laid a hand upon his comrade's shoulder, tentatively, as though to see if he was made of substance or born of some trick of air and sun.

{Legolas? Why are you here; this should not be!}

The disgraced sniper sat up, startled, and shifted to put Anor on his right that he might see the Elda's features, for he knew the voice revealed within his thoughts.

"Valtamar?" Legolas squinted against the glare and raised his hand to shield his vision from the blinding glory of the surfside sun. He felt the hand drop away from his body as the elf stood. Legolas blinked, and in the second of time that required Valtamar was gone.

Soft laughter joined the whistling air darting across his eartips and Legolas strained to see through the punishing illumination. He rose to his knees and reached out to touch the creator of that gentle jubilance, grazing fingers against the solid strength of a well-toned thigh. He knew this elf.

{I have been seeking you everywhere, and you were here all the time! Foolish of me not to think of that! How I have longed for you, Laiquassë!}

Legolas caught his breath as Maltahondo moved out of the sun and presented himself before his former lover, naked and aroused, pulling at his full erection so that the cock dipped down, tempting the archer to tease and taste it. The guardian's other hand reached out to trace a delicate caress against the outcast's jaw, gently guiding the parted lips to envelop the bulging organ already wet from his casually sensual handling.

Eagerly the fallen prince sucked in the fullness of Malthen's vigorous potency and lapped and licked its length. Every nerve of his body awakened, singing with his desire to sample the familiar essence, inhale the heavy musk hidden in the thick auburn patch encircling the virile root, imbibe the vital fluids that would gush down his trachea. Legolas' cock filled and its tender tip tingled with a pulsing ache, craving the contact of his lover's adroit manipulation. He held his needy want in check and reached his arms around Malthen's waist to caress the solid strength of the broad back. His palms came to rest on the firm flesh of the compact arse and aggressively kneaded the warrior's clenching muscles.

Maltahondo settled his hands on either side of his lover's head and began pumping forcefully into the archer's throat.

Theirs was a rhythgolagolas knew well and he quickly responded by swallowing every other thrust as he moaned in the glorious agony of delaying his own ecstasy to pleasure his love this way. Malthen softly massaged the tips of his ears with his thumbs as he held Legolas' head still; it was maddeningly erotic and incited the archer to match the corpsman's pounding pace, thrusting his bowing penis into the empty air, searching in vain for any friction to ease the insistent itch.

He delighted in the growling grunts of the warrior's prelude to ejaculation and swabbed his tongue vigorously against the sensitive collection of nerves at the join of the head to the shaft. As Malthen pulled back for his final shove Legolas flicked the tip of his mobile muscle between the foreskin and the smooth, throbbing pinnacle, directly into the gaping slit. The echoing vibration of Maltahondo's gratified yell and the sensation of the hot semen streaming acrhis his palate and down the back of his throat nearly brought the forest champion satisfaction, but Legolas restrained his body as he struggled to consume Malthen's pungent sperm.

Maltahondo pulled out of his lover's mouth and sat down, squatting on his heels to draw Legolas close and cradle his head against his shoulder. Malthen buried one hand into the golden mane and stroked the back of the archer's scalp, landing light kisses across the crown of his head, as the other hand sumptuously smoothed along the scarred back and down, coming to rest upon the cheek of the ripe, rounded rear. He transferred his fingers from the thick tresses to the refined linearity of the chin and tipped Legolas' face to claim the open, willing mouth, plunging his tongue against the archer's and lapping up the detectable remains of his ejaculate where it blended with his lover's saliva. He broke the kiss to whisper against the accelerated exhalations of sultry air escaping from Legolas' panting lips.

{Le aniron, tithenben nîn.} [I want you, my little one.]

"Avo deli nin sen!" [Do not call me this!]

Legolas shut out the screaming alarms sounding through his mind, warning of some flaw in this encounter, some fact he should recall. Instead, he concentrated on the heavenly sensations running through his flesh as the long-absent attentions of his first love progressed.

The hand enticingly cupping his arse crept lower and insinuated questing fingers down the divide toward the center of Legolas' burning ardor, and he shook as a wave of anticipation rolled through him. Eagerly he spread his thighs and transferred his weight, gripping onto Malthen's shoulders, inviting more than this tormenting tantalization. Legolas reclaimed his lover's mouth and issued a pleading sigh of compelling cupidity for Malthen to swallow, pressing his tongue in a slow wet caress across the roof of the guardsman's palate.

He inhaled sharply from the corpsman's lungs as two fingers pushed inside him and began subtly probing the constricting channel, expertly stroking against the internal source of his scintillating delight. Legolas broke the languid kiss to exhale a tremulous cry of desire that mimicked the sound of pained distress.

"Alfar! Pathro nin!" [Not enough! Fill me!]

{How badly do you want this, Laiquassë? Have you been neglected so long that you would beg?}

"hen!hen!"

The wild warrior trembled as the corpsman nuzzled gently into the unruly golden locks and settled his lips around the inflamed tip of Legolas' elegantly crafted ear, running the edge of his tongue over it, lavishing the cartilage with lush attention. The fallen archer crooned his appreciation as he pushed back onto the insistent pressure of the fingers burrowing inside him. He tried in vain to thrust his cock against Malthen's belly, but the guardsman's knee held him back and Legolas wailed his disappointed groan over the smooth supple skin of the warrior's neck. The scent of this flesh, for so long only a memory, was intoxicating, and Legolas could not fight the desire to taste it, dabbing his tongue over a spot just above his lover's clavicle, sucking the warm dermis into his lips to produce a dark red oval there.

{Ah, yes! Only your mother has pleased me better! Lie back, lie back Legolas!}

Legolas stilled; a black fear encroached upon his delirious enjoyment as his memory assailed him with knowledge he longed to dispel. But Malthen dropped his hand from its tender grasp upon the archer's nape to fondle the foreskin wrapped round Legolas' protruding penis, wet with the transparent secretion of his rising lust.

The wild warrior sounded a forlorn shout as his hips pivoted to force more of his rigid flesh into those agile fingers. Legolas could not deny his incestuous desire.

Malthen pulled his fingers free and pressed his lover down into the sand, roughly shoving open the lean thighs to make room as Legolas grabbed his legs behind the knees and lifted them apart and out of the guardsman's way. The broad blunt brow of Maltahondo's resurgent organ bussed the archer's tightly sealed entry and Legolas wriggled his hips to increase and encourage the penetration, but Malthen held back. A richly sex-burnished chortle broke from the corpsman's lips as he watched his lover's fervent attempts to impale himself on the unyielding shaft.

{Say it! I want to hear it, Laiquassë! Beg!}

"Malthen, please!"

{Nay, not like that! Speak the words; tell your father what you need, Legolas; only then shall you have it!}

Malthen flexed his hips so that the dripping tip of his engorged cock delicately stroked across his lover's sensitized anus, eliciting a strangled gasping breath and a sharp spasm of the archer's penis. The corpsman leaned in and kissed it with a slow wet lick and relished the exquisite affliction in the exiled prince's lowing, pining response. Maltahondo raised his eyes to meet those of his life-long charge and found them burning with unquenched desire and bright with liquid defeat. Malthen pressed hard against the eager body's entry and groaned in delight as Legolas' pleading expression turned fiery and wanton.

{Beg me, Laiquassë!}

"Saes! Caro si!" [Please! Do it now!]

The archer squeezed shut his eyes and tipped back his head, unable to look upon the victorious exaltation this plea would earn, unable to stop the spill of shamed tears as he relinquished completely the last shreds of his decency and begged for his father to fuck him.

"Adar, nasto nedhnin, saes! Saes, Ada, seron nîn, le aniron!"
[Father, thrust inside me, please! Please, Father, my love, I want you!]

And Malthen responded, drilling into the willing body with force enough to rip the tender flesh over the constricting ring of muscles, plunging all the way in until the root of his organ was coated with his lover's blood and there was no more of his heated flesh to embed. Then he pulled almost completely out; allowing the motion to smear the mix of sanguine gore and pre-ejaculate over his penis before ramming back inside with a hoarse shout that drowned out the archer's cry of biting bliss.

The corpsman thrilled to the violent shuddering of Legolas' frame as he hauled hard on his legs to open himself wider and ease the intrusion deeper. Malthen watched in enthralled ecstasy as his lover's head bent back further, exposing more of the graceful neck, and he nipped and sucked the proffered slenderness of the ivory throat of Ningloriel's misbegotten child.

Legolas struggled to accommodate the girth of the cock pounding him relentlessly; a glorious euphoria of delicious over-extension claimed him as his inner core remembered the brutal caress of his guardian's engorged extremity. Every breath became a yearning cry of unfulfilled craving as his passion mounted towards its zenith. His equally bulging member bounced in time with Malthen's vigorously thrusting impalement. Legolas longed to see his lover reach for it, wrap his long fingers around it, and pump his cock until he exploded.

But Malthen would not touch him there and his own hands could not be spared. He could feel the sudden surge of heat along the walls of his channel, as the guardsman's ducts filled with seed and Legolas knew they would not reach orgasm together.

The next instant Malthen bit down hard on his lover's shoulder and groaned as his rushing stream of semen jetted into the depths of the archer's cavity. A few more lusty lunges and he was done, withdrawing his spent member with a relaxed and languid sigh of complacency, and rolled back to sit beside the tense and trembling body of his lover. He laughed as Legolas let go of his legs and moaned, twisting to bring his hard, heavy penis against the guardsman's thigh, seeking to rub himself to culmination. But Malthen got up and stood over him, smiling in amusement.

"Malthen?"

{Not yet, Laiquassë! Do not be so impatient!}

{Aye, he is far too willful in this respect!}

A new shadow fell across the wild elf's recumbent form and the archer flinched as he recognized the voice accompanying this addition to the scene. Elrond knelt, naked in the sand, and traced the tip of his index finger down the outcast's sleek shaft as Legolas braced himself up on his elbows, staring in confusion at the Noldo's smirking expression.

"You!"

{What is that like, Legolas? Feeling your father's seed burn you?} Elrond said and grabbed the stiff, salient sex and gave it a brisk yank that caused the fallen prince to collapse back into the sand with a howl. {You are hard as iron, Pen-rhovan! Perhaps your Ada did not fuck you long enough. Shall I try?}

The Elf Lord did not wait for an answer but lifted Legolas' shanks upon his shoulders and plowed inside, driving his indurate penis into the oozing slickness of blood and semen still draining from the archer's rectum.

"Daro! Baw!" Legolas cried; he did not want this.

{Shh! Peace, Laiquassë! Let him fuck you! Please us well and you will earn your release!} Malthen whispered as he stretched out next to Legolas and sucked up a dark and pointed nipple, rolling the other beneath his fingertips.

In spite of himself Legolas groaned in prurient delight under the application of his lover's tongue and touch in combination with the Elven Lord's robust sodomy. He could not avert his eyes from the Noldo's ravenous gleam of lustful hunger and a sensational current of pure exhilaration shot through him as he arched into the driving force of Elrond's cock. Legolas squirmed, trying to shift his position to bring the incessant friction over the right spot against his prostate, without successolasolasolas reached for his erection but Malthen snatched up his hand and pressed it around his own expanding flesh, biting into the tender swollen morsel of maroon skin with a growl. Legolas' shout of pain as he squeezed tight onto the hard handful elicited a reciprocating holler from the Elf Lord and the warrior.

Elrond leaned all of his weight upon Legolas as he hammered towards his climax, grunting with throaty vigor each time he withdrew and stuffed his cock back into the resistant confinement of muscle. He ignored his lover's gaze and instead watched the archer's slender steely penis rocking up with each invasion. The scrotum was pulled taut and snug up under the base of the florid column and the twin glands within looked uncomfortably full.

The Noldo's balls ached as he closed in towards a tremendous orgasm. Elrond dropped his palm to inflict a resounding, stinging slap upon the quivering bottccepccepting his punishing infiltration and repeated the unkind caress in order to hear Legolas' mortified cry twice. The Lord of Imladris shouted loudly as he abruptly pulled out and allowed his spurting organ to shoot iridescent seed all over the outcast's genitals and abdomen.

{Valar!} Maltahondo called out as he relinquished the bruised and bleeding tit he had been savoring to lap up the Noldo Lord's essence from his lover's stomach and balls. He ran his tongue in a long lick up Legolas' solid shaft, scooping up the salty extrusion as the wild warrior wailed in disconsolate abandon for more. Malthen's mouth embraced the slickened head at last and Legolas desperately tried to press his primed penis deeper past the firm lips.

{Nay, not yet! By Ulmo, you are so depraved! Can you not come without your own father's kiss upon your cock?} The Noldo saw Legolas' ejaculation was imminent and swore, pinching down upon the ducts to halt the eruption.

"Please, Malthen! Let me come!"

Legolas sobbed and fell back again into the sand as Elrond removed his legs from their position upon his shoulders. Malthen was laughing lightly and returned to suckling on the misused nipple. The Elf Lord joined him and Legolas gasped as two tongues worked across the tingling nubs that suddenly seemed to be unbearably sensitive, rising hard and high. He looked down upon the contrast of ebony and auburn hair and as he watched they both pulled up sharply and bit down severely, drawing out his blood and an anguished scream.

The forest champion wept; they were cruel. Had he not just pleasured them both?

The Noldo's pincer-like pressure upon his aching penis slowly subsided as his body's urge diminished and the tide of his passion ebbed. As soon as he felt the healer's hands retreat Legolas reached down to accommodate his over-stimulated cock, but before he could begin both lovers snatched his hands away and pinioned them out to the side.

{Laiquassë, you are not done! I know you want to taste him! Look at it! You ache to feel that shaft shoved down your throat!}

They flipped him over as Malthen said this and the guardsman gripped Legolas' jaw , holding his face scant inches from the Elf Lord's groin. Elrond was crouched before him, knees up and open, bracing himself with his arms behind him. His cock with its naked, scarlet tip was already proudly at rigid attention, awaiting the outcast to gulp it down. The Elven Lord made the organ twitch and the motion stilld itd its erotic enthrallment for his young lover.

{Please him well and mayhap I will take you from the rear; we will fuck you to completion such as you have never known!} Malthen's promise floated through his thoughts, an enticing mental nudge that matched the physical sensation of the guardsman's hand fondling his balls.

Legolas did want to take Elrond's shorn, aroused sex into his mouth and savor the feel and the taste of the exotic Imladrian. Malthen's carefully compressing hand retreated from Legolas' testicles and settled on his backside with an encouraging push. His tears ceased. The wild warrior crawled forward on hands and knees and the healer parted his legs invitingly wider. Legolas hungrily devoured the turgid shaft with an impassioned rumbling growl of gluttonous exigency and worked with frenzied skill to extract the Noldo's pith.

Behind him, hands gripped Legolas' thighs as Malthen spread him, tilting up his pelvis to bring the torn entrance in line with his cock, unbalancing the archer and causing his nose to crash into the soft nest of black curls redolent with Elrond's odor. Legolas groaned around the massive cock insinuated into his esophagus and flexed his hips, trying to push his penis down into the warm, yielding sand. But Malthen held him positioned for his own pleasure, not the archer's, and Legolas' member found no purchase on the beach.

{Elbereth! That is good!}, the Lord of Imladris shouted. {Fuck him, Maltahondo! Hard!} He pushed up from the ground to bury his burgeoning erection further into the talented depths of the wild elf's orifice.

The corpsman obeyed and forced himself inside the bloody channel with brutal impact, matching his pummeling coition to the Noldo's pivoting thrusts. Together they ravaged the outcast raw from front and rear and Legolas was utterly powerless to resist.

Nor did he wish for the punishing conjugation to cease. This was a level of exhilarated, tormented intensity he had never known before and he longed to finish the illicit intermezzo in concert with his two lovers, desperate to expel his semen at the same moment they loosed theirs.

Every thrust of Malthen's bruising cock shoved soundly into Legolas' prostate and each push of the Noldo's penis against his tongue forced the archer back upon the guardsman's rod, sending a flare of nerve-tingling shock to shiver across the very apex of Legolas' overlooked member. Behind the creased, narrow furrows of dark, curled lashes, his eyes beheld streaking trails of incandescent glory across his brain with every dual assault.

The sound of the two elves' elated roars and bellows testified to the building tension in their loins as the healer climbed towards his second ejaculation and Malthen rapidly ascended to his third, an extravagance of sexual abandon Legolas would not have thought possible. His euphoria escalated, knowing he was to be the cause of such gratification.

Legolas at last found the opportunity to engineer a successful climax and balanced on one arm in order to wrap his fingers around his sand-sheathed shaft and pump against the gritty grains. He hummed out his accumulating passion upon the Noldo's penis and felt it swell against his laving tongue. At the same time, he felt Malthen's grip tightening round his sides as the strength of his vehement pulsing doubled.

{Eru fuck me! You love it, Laiquassë! You are going to come with your father's cock up your arse, guzzling a Noldo's milt down your maw!}, the corpsman unleashed this of obscene curse as he rode his wild lover to the cusp of completion.

Legolas winced under the verbal assault, but they were all so close and he acutely needed this discharge. He breathed a deep breath in through his nose and held it as the first surge of his seminal fluid streamed up toward its outlet. At that moment the Noldo pulled out from the suction of the archer's lips and Malthen yanked his penis free from the flexing annulus of ripped tissue. Legolas was empty and the sudden loss seized his stomach in a squeeze of panic. He cried out to his love.

"Nay! Malthen, do not stop! Saes, Ada!"

But only silence replied.

He was already coming, however, and could no more halt the passionate torrent of his seed than he could have captured the infinite ocean in an earthen cup. Legolas thrust vigorously into his hand and voiced his explosive jubilation in an open-mouthed yowl of grateful relief.

{How pathetic, spilling into the sand, alone! Malthen has left you again and the Noldo will not spend himself inside you! Perhaps I can accommodate your want!}

The voice uttering this scorn encrusted and disgusted retort froze the outcast's heart. Even as his semen flowed over his hand in a scorching flood of splendorous transport, Legolas looked behind him and screamed. Ailinyéro plunged the blof aof a dagger into the fallen warrior's rectum, burying it up to the hilt. He withdrew the knife and repeated the attack, brutally slicing him open, stabbing deeper with every piercing thrust.

{No! Rochendil, stop this!}

A familiar voice, female, reached Legolas through the haze of relentless pain and boiling exuberance. He vaguely heard his tormentor's reply.

{Andamaitë!}

He collapsed face-first onto the beach.

Legolas felt hands reach under his arms and lift him up, away from the terrible viciousness of the merciless blade, and he was set down again carefully on his back under the blinding face of Anor. trietried to look upon his savior's features but the brightness was as obscuring as before. He shut his eyes against the sheen-halloed agony that broke upon his lacerated flesh like the endless surf crashing down on the shining shore. He could feel the last of his sperm oozing from him, bequeathing a lingering sense of exquisite elation even as the streaming warmth of his blood poured forth to stain the sand.

{Legolas? You must not be here! Awaken and return to your friends!}

"Valtamar?" Legolas mumbled the name as his consciousness wavered, but when the shadow of the form loomed closer and allowed him to see he found his gaze locked upon the smoldering compassion of bottomless black orbs belonging to an entirely different being.

"Legolas! Please, awaken! Legolas!" Gandalf held the archer tightly trying to still the racking tremors and quiet the soul shattering shrieks bursting from his friend's lungs.

Legolas' eyes snapped open into reality and his screaming ceased in mid-shout. He stared up into the gleam of the wizard's eyes through the darkness of night under Greenwood's canopy at the black water fen. He registered the sensation of the wooden planks of the talan beneath him, the soft warmth of a blanket wrapped around his naked skin, and the pungent aroma of his excruciatingly erotic release. Sweat soaked and smelling of fear and desire, Legolas was still shaking as his chest heaved to draw in oxygen and purge away the urge to flee.

He acknowledged the strength of the Maia's protective embrace, and heard the insistent beating of the Istar's heart where his ear was pressed against Gandalf's chest, the sound so reminiscent of the unending rhythm of the ocean's respiration. A soft caress smoothed across his head and repeated as Mithrandir sought to calm the wild elf. Legolas whimpered softly and huddled closer, making himself small inside the Istar's encompassing arms.

{Mithrandir.} He dared not speak aloud, somehow convinced that if he did so the scenery would shift again and he would return to the blazing beach and the unholy coupling with Ailinyéro's knife. Legolas clutched compulsively at the blanket the two shared and entwined his fingers into the long silver hair cascading from Mithrandir's chin, desperate to remain in contact with the wizard. He felt his tears well and flood down his face, one by one, in a silent progression of both shameful sorrow for the acts he had so eagerly enjoined and gratitude for their ending.

{It was real! It was more than a dream!}

{I am not certain. Whatever has happened, you are safe, I am here.}

The wizard encouraged Legolas to reach him through their mental bond and soothingly patted the windblown locks that smelled of an ocean the Wood Elf could not possibly have seen. Mithrandir was unsure if the sensation of scent was an actual residue of the salty air or a part of the inner vision he was sharing with his friend. The gruesome dreamscape was fully open to the Istar's awareness and he shuddered at what the guilt-ridden elf had endured.

{Andamaitë and Valtamar were truly there. I was on the shores of the Great Sea at the Crossing. They wait upon the beach for me to finish the Tasks and release them.}

{Do not assume so. There are ways to manipulate such visions; how you dreamed of Aearon is troubling. Rest now, be calm; I will let no evil find you.}

Mithrandir tightened his hold around Legolas as a vit trt trembling worked its way through the Tawarwaith. He caressed the archer's bowed head and let his other hand consolingly linger along the marred muscular back, kneading away the tension born of the nightmarish ordeal.

Legolas stirred and lifted his tear-streaked countenance to his wise friend's and found there the stirring fervor of protective outrage the wizard felt on his behalf. Expending a ragged sigh, he nestled his head back into the crook of Mithrandir's neck and let his tears soak the Istar's shoulder.

Tbc