Further Tales Of Elbereth's Bounty

Title: Further Tales Of Elbereth’s Bounty – Ciryon’s Tale, Part Three
Author: Gloromeien
Email: swishbucklers@hotmail.com
Pairing: OMC/OMC, Tathren/Echoriath, references to Legolas/Elrohir, Glorfindel/Elladan
Summary: This is a companion piece to Of Elbereth’s Bounty, which takes place between the action of the final chapter (16) and the epilogue, set centuries in the future. Some of the characters from OEB deserved to have their own stories wrapped up outside of the actual narrative of that tale. This particular tale, along with the soon coming Rohrith’s Tale, concern the majority rites of two of Tathren’s triplet brothers.
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimers: Characters belong to that wily old wizard himself, Tolkien the Wise, the granddad of all 20th century fantasy lit. I serve at the pleasure of his estate and aim not for profit.
Author’s Note: While I think parts of this story can be understood on their own, I think it better to read the whole cycle, or at least Of Elbereth’s Bounty, to completely understand the world I’ve created and the character histories. The series is as follows: Part One is ‘In Earendil’s Light’, Part Two is ‘Under the Elen’, and the vastly larger Part Three is ‘Of Elbereth’s Bounty’.
Feedback: Would be delightful.
Dedication: To Eresse, as always.

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Further Tales Of Elbereth’s Bounty

Ciryon’s Tale – Part Three

Ivrin’s injuries were not as severe as first suspected. His leg, for one, was not lame, but merely numbed to dullness by his relentless ride. His despondency was caused by dehydration and malnourishment; after a simple, hardying meal and a few carafes of water, he became alert enough to tell Elrond of what inner pains plagued him, of which most were caused by nothing more than his exertions. His face, however, was not beaten by his horse, though he would not confide the cause to the healer, saying only that his bruises had been treated by a skilled medic and that he had salve for them. He longed, quite obviously, to be alone with Ciryon, to give him his explanations before any other.

Ciryon, luckily for him, could not be pried from his side for all the mithril in Moria.

A sleeping draught was prepared for him, but Ivrin would have none of it until he was allowed to bathe. Even after a replenishing bath, he refused, so Elrond entrusted the tea mixture to Ciryon, who was yet quite concerned and would administer it unfailingly, when the moment was right. The doting grandsire harrumphed appropriately as to how ‘the riddance of any minority or the performance of any coupling rites whatsoever were not to be even indirectly mentioned, let alone undertaken, this night,’ then left them, with a bemused smile, to their own devices.

Ciryon could not quite believe his good fortune, nor could he rightly keep from Ivrin for more than a second after Elrond’s departure. He drew Ivrin, so fetching in one of Tathren’s sleek satin robes, over to the bed, then hugged him shyly. The seafarer enclosed him in a rapt embrace, drinking deep of his sweet, downy scent, like fresh fallen snow. Neither was entirely sure how to treat the other; their relationship had bloomed in correspondence and both felt some slight unease expressing such troths in person. Yet there were questions that required elaborate explanations, details described and promises vowed anew, before any plans for majority-making could be broached.

Ivrin cupped Ciryon’s face, with the implicit tenderness the darkling elf had earlier displayed him, then softed a kiss of like gentility, of abundant affection, over his snarl of lips. Emotion coursed between them as ever before, rapturous, luring, but both knew no answers, nor mindfulness, would come from lingering too long on such a sensuous caress. With an apologetic sigh, Ivrin slipped away as slowly as he had come on; they propped pillows against the headboard and curled up together, Ciryon lapsing into a rather intimate perusal of his face. Though he examined the bruises, he looked far more intently, at the texture of his skin, the angles and plains, over cheekbones, brows, into his eyes. Into the uncharted depths of these emerald pools. Into his soul.

“I love you,” Ciryon told him, with the earnestness and the facility of innocence. “I have wanted for you so, Ivrin. I cannot claim to know by what calamity you have come home, but I… I cannot be less than grateful for it. I *wanted* you home, melethen, with my entire being.”

“I know it, my tender one,” Ivrin replied, stealing three quick kisses from his neck. “How your countenance was alight when I arrived! I have never seen you thus. So bright. So… merry, it seemed.”

“Indeed, though I was overwhelmed at the sight of you, I had quite enjoyed the revels,” Ciryon explained, unable to disguise the giddiness of his smile. “I wish you could have arrived earlier, as twas a jovial evening for all invited. Such conversations we undertook! I won enough for a new pony at banyon cards, without cheating once, and later… I danced.”

“You *danced*?!” Ivrin exclaimed.

“Aye, with Tinuviel,” Ciryon mused, baffled by his own behavior. “”When she gets an idea in mind, there’s no resisting her.”

“And the barge?” he asked.

“Tathren and Echo were to spirit us away to the coast,” Ciryon elaborated. “Rohrith, I, and a party of our familiars. We were to pass several days there, at the surveyors’ camp.”

“They did indeed seem quite *spirited*,” Ivrin chuckled. “I take it the barge was well stocked?”

“I know not, I had barely stepped on board when you reined in your steed,” he grinned in response. “I am so glad of your return, meleth.”

When he nudged up to kiss him again, Ivrin pressed a pausing finger to his lips.

“How familiar were these… familiars,” he inquired pointedly, his face tense with apprehension. “They were surely not blessed with pure intentions.”

“I care not for their intentions,” Ciryon retorted, though was not upset by the insinuation. “I had none of my own.” He understood all too well why Ivrin had pressed his question, for he held similar, as yet inappropriate to voice, fears. He, too, would have his answers in due time.

“Forgive me,” Ivrin hastened to underline. “I had worried that, when you received my last letter, that you would… I would not blame you for taking some measure of relief.”

“My relief came in the knowing of your care,” Ciryon insisted, taking the kiss denied him.

“Ten years is beyond any reasonable demand of abstinence,” Ivrin assured him, for naught. “Especially ridiculous for the delay of a majority.”

“I spit in the face of convention,” Ciryon teased, desperate to hearten him. Ivrin did indeed laugh at such an absurd image. “I desire you alone, melethen.”

Ivrin, touched and relieved, could not help the foolish grin that struck him.

“I, too, have wanted for you, Ciryon-nin,” he swore, eyes luminescent with feeling. “I love you.”

“I know it, melethen,” Ciryon murmured, struggling to keep counsel. When his sailor finally blinked his eyes shut, himself overwhelmed by the emotion between them, he took his own chance. “Now, cease this fretting and recount me the tale that brought you home. What of these terrible… yet oddly becoming… bruises?”

With a hefty sigh, Tathren began: “A tempest such as none in my crew had ever witnessed before struck so suddenly, we scrambled to keep the ship afloat. I steered her true of the storm, then careened her into a cave we came upon. I could not slow her enough for a proper docking, so we crashed onto the beach. I was thrown from the helm, and suffered the bruises you see now, as well as a few scrapes and scars you may later cluck over. The moral is, after a brief period of unconsciousness I emerged relatively uninjured, as did the rest of the crew. As soon as we crawled our way out of the cave and found a nearby village, I realized we were not yet so far north that I could arrive in time to surprise you if I raced down.” Ivrin shrugged, unimpressed with his own relentless drive. “I did so.”

“You *did so*?” Ciryon snorted, thoroughly amused by his humility. “I dare not ask how long you were in journey, nor how madly you drove that horse, nor, if I am wise, how often you took rest to be so weary. Though may I ask after your ship? Will she sail again?”

“Nay,” Ivrin bowed his head, as if in deference. “By this time, she must be kindling. The captain dismissed us all. We will not be sailing for Arda, Thranduil will have to find another ship for his commission.”

“Th-then,” Ciryon stuttered, fearful of voicing the very question lest its answer be opposite to his most heartful suspicions. “Then you will… will you, meleth? Will you… remain?”

“Aye, lovely one,” Ivrin whispered, the candlelight sparkling his bejeweled eyes. “Twill take me some years to befriend another crew.”

“*Years*?!” Ciryon rasped, stunned sober by the significance of his revelation. “Verily?”

“Two, at my most fortunate,” he concluded. “Though I may tarry longer, to see you grow some.”

After the most earnest cry of delight he had ever heard, Ivrin was summarily pounced upon, the tender skin of his face veritably showered with pecks and culls, ending with an ebullient draught from his too-ready lips. To his dismay, the relief of revelation made his fatigue all the more obvious; once Ciryon had embraced him fully and most fervently, he sagged against the headboard. Intuiting his beloved’s encroaching exhaustion, Ciryon settled them both beneath the covers, resting Ivrin’s weighty head on his slender chest and securing his arms around him.

Other cares could wait on his renewal. For the moment, their togetherness was all.

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He drifted into wakefulness as a branch down a placid river, his senses yet gauzy and dull with the draught. Forgotten in the droop of late night exhaustion, he’d been stung awake by muscles buzzing with ache but a short time later and thus had been administered the blotting tranquilizer. Skeptical of the seeming comfort of his surroundings, Ivrin kept his eyes shut awhile, instead drinking of the heady, dew scent of morning.

Strange that there was no creaky sound of ship, no briny stench of drunken seafarer, no snorting horse nor whipping wind about him. There was, somehow, this impossible scent of a meadow at dawn – the satiny sheets that cocooned him were veritably drenched with it - though the hour must be far past by the tipple of sun across his legs. Legs atypically bare, as he wore flannel sleeping trousers in winter; indeed his entire body was rather startlingly unclothed, but also rather pleasantly so, as this allowed his sensitized skin to come in direct, luxurious contact with the downy hide that blanketed him so hotly.

Truly, the softest hide he’d ever felt before. It baked as if a pouch filled with coals, but did not appear to be treated or tanned. He realized then that his arms were wrapped around the hide, so perhaps it was a pouch of sorts, or a pillow. He’d never felt such a warm pillow, nor one so firm, though for all its plump, sculpted plains, it was gorgeously silken. Its tassels must also be of the finest cord, from the millenaries of Vinyamar, surely, as their gossamer strings brushed so smoothly against his neck and cheek. Ivrin had not the slightest notion how he had come to find himself in such a bed, but he was yet far too woozy to consider disturbing such blithe relaxation in the name of discovery alone.

Suddenly, the wonderful, blanketing pillow-pouch made the most bizarre movement against him. It wriggled. Verily! He was rather put-out by this turn of events, but could yet see no reason to reveal his wakefulness to what must, after a brief time of reasoning, be a creature of some sort over him. A benign and protecting creature, for certes; though after some groggy consideration he concluded that the impossibly fresh scent was being emitted by this very soft, very silky thing, who was also bare as his birthing day and possessed of a rather remarkable tumescence, its slick head currently drooling onto his hip.

He remembered then, about the darling elf in his arms. He decided to feign unconsciousness a while longer, to see what the deliciously curious, yet currently innocent elf would do, with a slightly older, stunningly nude love of his lying, prone and immovable, in his bed.

He was pleasantly surprised by his overture. Calming his wriggling as best he could, Ciryon first stilled to admire the sight of his naked lover; his sinuous, though work-roughed, frame and his hauntingly handsome face. Ivrin almost twitched himself, so palpable was the stare of those inquisitive eyes as they raked over him. The second wave of sensation came in the form of avid, daring fingers, which swept over slopes, crooks, and clefts, meticulously mapping out their cherished terrain. They tickled through the wispy strip of hair that connected his navel to his groin, but would not venture further south; his elf would not pass over the invisible boundary into that murky, adult territory without explicit permission, despite the rather distracting state of his implacably turgid length. Ivrin himself had to fight to ignore his insistent stiffness, as he was all-too-anxious to learn what his curious elf would attempt next.

The answer nearly maddened him. After some flirty suckling of his neck and a devastating lap across the hollow at its base, those scavenging fingertips tickled over a very limp, very lazy nipple. They began to test out their teasing methods with a conviction his hard member could only envy, with each round of worrying came increased vigor, until both nipples were knotted painfully. Ivrin nearly did reclaim unconsciousness, when a slippery tongue darted out to lick them, teeth to nibble them to distraction, until they were so tightly puckered he could not stifle a thoroughly approving groan.

All movement ceased instantly, his elf a fawn caught in an archer’s crosshairs.

Betraying a devilish curiosity of his own, as to what his lovely one would do if overtaken by a seemingly dormant, dream-impelled elf, Ivrin lurched his body over as if simply adjusting his pose, in slumber. Keeping his eyes decidedly shut, he snaked his arms around his beloved and drew him perilously close, throwing a leg over to secure him. With a hot haze of breath against his sleek neck, he mumbled some saucy gibberish, the steam, and not the nonsense, causing Ciryon to squirm with guilty delight. He smoothed drowsy hands over the quivering skin of his torso; the body beneath, though live with need, shameful of the consequences if he should urge his love to completion while asleep. These concerns, however, did nothing to keep his eager little wolf-cub – for Ciryon was as snarl-lipped and velveteen as one - from mewling into his temple, keening at the sweep of rope-hewn hands down his backside, or writhing as his taut buttocks were brazenly kneaded. Ivrin felt a jolt seize through his slender frame, then another, and knew the ruse was rapidly becoming too much for one of his innocence.

He did not, after all, wish to frighten him.

His eyes fluttered open to meet with orbs as round and wide as black pearls, lips trembling with unspeakable need. He smiled rather wolfishly himself at his tender cub, before pouncing at his mouth; delving with hot, skillful tongue into its savory climes. Ciryon giggled and gasped rather ebulliently, at first, as he was pillaged above and groped beneath, but further below their simmering members began to throb with emergency. Neither was so mature as to long suffer such lively arousal, not when the night had been spent embroiled in the other’s arms.

Ivrin left off his kiss with a gaudy flick of tongue, to watch his sweet Ciryon’s face as he experienced this first, carnal touch. He palmed him brusquely, for this was no time for gentility, and set a tantalizing rhythm, matched by the ragged breaths they both panted out. Ciryon’s hips soon undulated in sensuous time with his pulls, his airy simpers becoming a constant, throaty moan. Every slide of his coarse fingers over that scarlet, spuming length echoed vividly over his own, though only the head pressed into fleshy, giving thigh. Slipping his leg between straining limbs to spread him further, Ivrin released his now purpled erection and ground their hips flagrantly together. Incensed by the sheer, molten feeling coursing through him, by the thrust and broil of their gyrations, Ciryon bucked wild, thrashing, cursing, then finally surging forth into a glorious ecstasy. Ivrin flamed with his own release soon after, he growled into the sodden skin of his silky little wolf cub’s neck, then cinched their sweaty bodies even closer together as they whispered conspiratorially of their pleasure.

After a time of repose, Ivrin could sense Ciryon’s spine prickle with a myriad questions, concerns, and, as ever, curiosities; with his body temporarily sated, his ever-reasoning mind was ripe with intrigue over this first taste of partnered sexuality. Still, as his new lover summoned up the courage to pose these rapidly breeding questions, Ivrin held him vigilantly tight; his own wisdom telling him that intellectual elves often dismissed emotion, only for its undertow tides to suddenly, and treacherously, overtake them. Ciryon, however, appeared serene for the present moment, his skin glowing with a becoming flush and his jewel eyes beaming with affection.

Ivrin could not believe they had not truly exchanged more than a few fevered mutterings since his awakening, the feeling between them so strong as to be unspeakable. Still, they were too comfortable for silence to linger long, with Ciryon’s arrow-point questions fletched-out and ready to shoot forth. As the whitewash of a late winter morn blanched the windows with a filmy, uniform brightness, his little wolf cub gnarled at a plush mound of his bottom lip and foist onyx eyes of an elusive yet meaningful cast upon him.

“I-Is it vulgar to… to praise your skill, melethen?” he rather demurely inquired. “Your touch was so… nearly… indescribable. I had never thought such a simple thing as another’s touch could be… could wring such… feeling. Even in dreams, I have never been able to…”

“That is loving,” Ivrin replied, with terrible fondness.

“Tis very fine, indeed,” Ciryon hushed out, reddening considerably as his mind thought over other acts, of even greater intensity, that they might perform together.

“I should say so,” Ivrin chuckled, ghosting a caress over his cheek. “Though I yet suffer a few creaks and stabs of tension, my body veritably sung with desire upon awakening to your own quite deft rousing. Do not discount your own, if yet unrefined, skills, my dear one.”

Ciryon blushed even hotter, if possible, at his compliment; his young, excitable shaft stirring from its short nap to poke ever so slightly against the wash of the elder elf’s abdomen. Though his thoughts strayed to the salacious at his love’s unexpected quickening, Ivrin reminded himself of how delicately he must proceed with one still formally possessed of his virginity, so newly versed in physical love. He dampened down his own wanting flint, instead refocused on coddling his needful and somewhat flustered wolf cub.

“Forgive my boldness,” Ciryon began, seeming to summon the courage to speak from deep within. “But you were… *are*… s-so beautiful.” At Ivrin’s smirk of surprise, for he was mightily stunned by such a pronouncement, Ciryon peeled back the covers as if to prove his argument right. The temperature of the bedchamber was yet comfortable enough to keep them warm, embers in the black hearth still emanated a gentle heat. Though the occasional quiver of lip sibilated his ‘s’-sounds, Ciryon manfully reined in his galloping heart and elegiacly extolled the virtues of his beloved’s sinuous frame. “I had thought but to kiss you into wakefulness, as you had been so poorly upon your return, but I grazed by a crease of such babe-like softness on your neck that I could not rightly… elsewhere, your skin is stretched taught by muscle, of salt-sprayed roughness that in itself is quite… provoking. I became captivated by the various textures about your neck, chest, arms. I suddenly could not even consider properly rousing you without a thorough exploration… Can you not see? Then I spied your rippling stomach, packed in with muscle, then back to the slender cuts of meat on your chest, crowned by…” Eyes of liquid obsidian lit on his budding nipples anew, his breath caught at their near-lecherous look. “You would have had to bear through my fumblings… I thought only to try out, to taste… but I became… ravenous.”

With Ciryon suitably distracted by his flaring arousal, Ivrin took his own chance to admire the darkling elf’s lithe, but elegantly proportioned, frame, as well as the tight-wrung engorgement that sprouted from his nethers. The bulbous, crimson shaft was as opposed to lithe and elegant as could be; Ivrin was instantly consumed by a desire entirely his own. Ciryon’s groping questions would have to be deferred. Suddenly, there was an all too grating hunger to be fed.

Ivrin stroked his fingertips, back and forth, over Ciryon’s own seed-slick navel, daring the purpling erection to point upwards, to swell to full, potent bloom.

“Yet you ate unbidden,” he rasped throatily to his innocent one. “Touched where you were not invited. Outright mauled with teeth and tongue what was but lazing in repose. Though I applaud your gall, I must, for my own honor, take some little compensation.”

When Ivrin thumbed the bell-head of his shaft and swiped away the first pearl of his essence, Ciryon caught his already fitful breath. His eyes went round as ebony moons, however, when the mired thumb was pressed into Ivrin’s mouth, thoroughly cleaned of its cream, then extricated with deliberate, demolishing slowness. His own hand instinctively snuck down to palm himself, his need pulsing, violent in the face of such gorgeous debauchery, but Ivrin batted it away. He petted the florid shaft with long, languid strokes, the seismic reverberations shaking through his sprightly wolf cub, who was by now gasping with need.

Lust, Ciryon was discovering of himself, specifically the rapacious need Ivrin’s most commanding person inspired in him, could entirely and emphatically overtake his typically shrewd mind; indeed, he willed it to do so for the sake of experience. When Ivrin saucily patted the space beside their pillows and motioned for him to sit up against the headboard, thereby bluntly exposing both his nakedness and his fierce arousal, he did so unthinkingly, unquestioning, for he knew his love thought only of his betterment, of his immense satisfaction. After their earlier, startlingly intense experience, he was only too eager to trust in Ivrin, to let the older elf guide him into pleasure both unsuspected and mutually fulfilling. His legs splayed apart and his hands fisting the sheets, Ciryon waited, panting through a broiling sweat, for what smoldering act would follow.

With starving eyes, Ivrin outright gawked at the singeing spear of his erection. Stalking like a panther over his lap, he laved a rough, ready tongue from base to dripping tip, the sheathes of his hair scraping like raw hide over sensitive inner thighs. Turning playful, he licked and flicked at the slick head, then suckled the veined length with alacrity, consciously building a sure, sensual rhythm. Even the heavy scent of the darkling elf’s groin was pure as a snowfall, his steaming sweat like morning dew. Ivrin gorged himself on his innocence, relishing every last moment of his immaculate rendering, before his teaching, his taking marked him forever. A soft tug on his tender sacs kept him stiff and wanting, allowed him to suck with doubled fervor, as Ciryon writhed in ecstatic abandon. Though his wildling cries only faintly penetrated the palms clamped over his ears and the fingers nearly embedded in his skull, Ivrin felt the pulse of his pleasure with every lap of his manic tongue, every hollowing of his cheeks and every skilled contraction of his throat.

Another swift, maddening tug to stave him from completion and Ciryon was pummeling the bed with his heels, baying like the wanton wolf cub he was. Incensed by the rabid carnality of the act, he pawed and scratched at Ivrin’s shoulders, until his tormentor released his held sides and finally allowed him to thrust. Not wanting to spare a scrap of sensation, Ciryon plunged true with each surge of his hips, as Ivrin all but swallowed him whole.

With a spine-wringing quake, he spent viciously.

Ivrin reverently milked him through chokes, coughs, and sobs, savoring every salty spurt. Ciryon tasted, as expected, like the sea-spray in northland coves, like the dense brume over deep-water ocean. Like every place he loved to linger, whether above deck or perched high in the crow’s nest. Ivrin told him this, as he nested them back into a secure, comforting embrace, for Ciryon was still weeping some.

“I never d-dreamed,” he sputtered, his emotions in such disarray that he could not retreat to the sanctuary of his inner shell. He shook as on that first night in Gondolen, like a slip of willow leaf in a gale, such that Ivrin feared he may have completely shattered that safe-haven, that formerly unbreakable shell. “S-scorching… like a funeral pyre, like a loss, but rejuvenating also… gilded and g-golden…everything light, everything hot, all consumed by… by your love…”

“Aye, melethen,” he soothingly whispered. “By that alone, was I moved to pleasure you.”

“I felt… whole,” Ciryon yet struggled to vent, though Ivrin knew implicitly how their loving had affected him. “Such… completion. In that instant, I surged and… we were one.”

“I knew your pleasure, also,” Ivrin confirmed, beginning to rock him gently. “I was undone.”

As suddenly as the spell came on, however, his ever-curious wolf cub brushed away his tears and crawled up to face him, a sharp brow peaked in inquisition.

“Did you… release?” Ciryon asked directly, no longer so shy about such intimate subject matter after their own shared intimacy.

“Quite explosively,” Ivrin responded with bemusement, a flick of his eyes indicating the rather flaccid evidence of his completion.

“But you…?” Ciryon was both puzzled and unable to formulate a proper question, dizzy-minded as he still was from his own rapture. “There was no… stimulation.”

Ivrin smirked rakishly, then replied: “There was perhaps no direct stimulation, but I seem to recall – through the haze of remembrance – that I was sucking rather ardently on a stiff, savory shaft.“

A giddy-mouthed kiss was snatched from him, before Ciryon queried: “One may be sundered merely by… by the pleasuring of another?”

“With enough lascivious suggestion, a potent situation, and the proper application of innuedo,” Ivrin expounded, rather enticed by the bawdiness of their conversation. “One may be sundered by the mere whispering of a lover into the tiny hollow of one’s ear.”

“*By Elbereth*,” Ciryon marveled, his features courting a sly look for one so newly versed in pleasuring. “Will you teach me of these wanton ways, melethen?”

“I pray nightly that no other will ever dare,” Ivrin swore, indulging in a rather distracting kiss of his own.

By the time they eased off, Ciryon’s following question was at the ready. His bashfulness, however, reared itself anew.

“Ivrin… I know tis ungracious to pry,” he ventured hesitantly. “But might I know… might you in benevolence tell me… of… of your previous lovers?”

In truth, Ivrin had expected the question much earlier, inveigled in the ink of a correspondence or hastily murmured back in the hold of his ship. He had long been prepared for full disclosure, as he owed his beloved no less and felt, at times, as if even his brief, learning-prompted experiences had been traitorous to his long-simmering regard for the then-minor Ciryon. The moment come, he did not shy from the question, but shifted them to their sides and launched into the full tale.

“How could I have quarrel with such a query?” Ivrin assured him. “Tis your right as my beloved and the one I cherish to know of my past. My question is… how much detail can you bear?”

“Every detail you feel is necessary,” Ciryon stated, with his renown sagacity. “I would, as you say… know the whole of it.”

“Some may surprise,” Ivrin warned him, with an impish smile. “Indeed, in ways you cannot predict, though as one enchanted with storytelling, I will not now give the game away.” With a wry chuckle, he ordered his thoughts, then began. “In truth, there have been but three to school me in ways of love, though I did not heartily love one among them. They were, in my mind, tutors; I sought to learn only to teach the one I would love – your very self, melethen. From the dawn of my forty-second year, I knew… that I held you in unique regard. In short time, I came to know that feeling as love. You were, however, nowhere close to returning such an affection. Indeed, by the time of my majority rites, you had not yet an inkling of such a thing, nor I of your inclinations towards ellon, so I rightly sought out an elder to initiate me. He was… what can I say? He was fair enough, kind, patient, and very gentle. I only lay with him the once… I realized, too late, that he was not entirely to my liking, but I was innocent myself and all too responsive to *any* stimulus, so we fared well. I learnt enough to try again with one more suitable and comely, but this was not to be until I was employed on my ship. In the meantime… you came to ripeness before my very eyes, and I was ravaged with want for you. That quiet, rainy day in the library, when you first evidenced desire for me and were overcome with shame…”

“You knew!” Ciryon exclaimed, blushing a fierce rose at the memory of his embarrassment. “You *saw*…”

“One could not fail to remark such a thing, lirimaer,” Ivrin noted sympathetically. “Your flustering was so pretty, I was nearly shamed myself. When you ran, I knew naught but heartache could come from such an early revelation of my desires. We both required some time apart – you to grow and I to learn how to be a proper mate – before I could dare attempt to win you. Success in that endeavor was far from assured, even when I found you again in Gondolen. Adolescent stirrings are just that; one might react to a gull passing overhead, a pinky sunset, or a lover with equal fervor. I could only hope that… my prayers would be heard.”

“To think that I doubted your regard,” Ciryon mused, surprised indeed at his recounting.

“Never doubt it again,” Ivrin underlined, unable to keep from caressing his beloved one, thoroughly and lengthily. Ciryon, however, would not be deterred, even from such involving affections. He pressed him onward. “Once away, I attempted abstinence, so sorrowed was I by our separation and so invigorated by adventure. In the course of those adventures, however, I came to be flattered by an elf or two, and eventually decided that neither of us would be well served by my own inexperience, when the time came. So I… I found one of gentility and grace, rare among seafaring folk, and trysted with him for a spell. He taught me well of lust and my body came to lust quite madly for him. After a month or so, however, lust gave way to complacency, as there was naught to fill me but his spurtings. My heart was full of another, so I broke with him.”

“And which other was this?” Ciryon teased, quite pleased that he had such a lasting effect on Ivrin, even before his knowledge of mutual regard.

“Your very self, my tender one,” Ivrin purred, then quickly sobered, the hard truth of his tale yet to come. “I thought this one exposure would sate me for the duration, as there was some talk of docking in Telperion at the time, but then… I was seized by a lust that would not release me. The fire had not object, I merely wanted – anyone within reason, at any time, in any way. I just wanted satisfaction, that is all. I was still caught in the wave of adolescence. My body now knew of carnal delights and had not yet had its fill. I burned in silent for a six-month, shamed to sickening by these all-too-natural instincts, but finally I could naught but give in. I waited for an elf of uncommon allure, and, on an inland stay in Vinyamar with my parents, I found him. I am not proud of the encounter, nor that he bore a most vivid resemblance to you, beloved, but I… I was not then constant elf you have ever been, Ciryon, I was going mad. We rutted – for it was naught but the most primitive of encounters – every night for a week straight. By the end I was so disgusted with myself, and thankfully sated, that I swore to burn like the fires of Mount Doom itself rather than to suffer such a thing again.” Ivrin scowled at his own pliability, at his ridiculousness. “When I think on how I behaved, how tarnished I am by this past error… I was a fool.”

“Nay, melethen, you were but a needful, youthful elf,” Ciryon reasoned, with implicit fondness. “You had no surety of my regard, merely knowledge of your own feeling, perhaps never to be returned. That you even thought of me when choosing for your minority, when trysting with a lover of knowledge, who might teach you for our own betterment… I cannot rightly speak of how this moves me. To think that you were planning for our future, caring for me all this time… how can I else but adore you, Ivrin? But cherish you, as a rare and exquisite ocean pearl?”

“Tis you who are exquisite, lirimaer,” Ivrin murmured, nuzzling their faces close. He found, quite astonishingly, that he could with able facility be entirely roused anew.

Ciryon also remarked the resurgence of his rather endearing vulnerability. Ivrin’s hardy nature was so often cowed by the emotive aspects of their love, by its newness and its fragility. Twas his charge to succor his beloved, in these brittle time, to solder his resolve and to assure him of their bond’s potential.

“Yet tis I who would apply my learning to the task of your pleasure, meleth-nin,” Ciryon grinned wolfishly, as he crawled into the dominant position above Ivrin. “Will you allow one of my renown innocence to… demonstrate how keenly I’ve been taught my scarlet lessons?”

“Please do, my beauty,” Ivrin groaned, as long, luring culls were already being drawn from his perilously exposed neck.

The languid day had certainly kept its sultry promises.

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

One Week Later

His amiable brother Brithor had become so fond of noting these last years, as if the wisdom itself were not applicable to all ages of elven life, that the fever of adolescence was best enjoyed to its fullest and not a whit repressed past the day of majority if one was to survive its agonies intact. That Brithor himself had indulged his own fired loins far before his majority, he had concomitantly argued, did not lessen the validity of the statement itself. Ciryon, while in no place to judge his rightness or erroneousness before, had often dismissed this typically simplistic notion as one of Brithor’s good-natured attempts at placating his forlorn twins.

At present, however, Ciryon was struck by the recalled pronouncement’s rather glaring profundity. As he demurely sipped his after-dinner tea, he was inconsistently attuned to his fathers’ sprawling conversation with Ivrin, true, but had also nursed a rather robust erection, unabated, for nearly an hour now. In times past, he would have fidgeted and squirmed throughout the entire meal, excused himself but seconds after dessert, and ungraciously loosed the sash of his robes as he rose to better conceal his inexplicable arousal. After a week of spirited bed-play with his beloved, however, he had learnt to temper himself according to the neediness of the situation, gained the confidence to allow his insurgent body to burn through its desires without scurrying away to perform a hasty, guilt-ridden exorcism. Every moment passed in Ivrin’s adored company was somehow provoking to such an excitable young body as his own, not that Ivrin alone was required for such provocation, but this did not mean that he need suffer through further embarrassments when his thoughts turned scarlet, as they inevitably did, and his groin emphatically responded to the near-constant stimulation of Ivrin’s enticing presence beside him.

As Brithor had so smartly counseled, one could only endure the incessantly lusty aspects of his adolescent condition if said lust was indulged in, preferably with a loving partner, on a regular basis. Indeed, the promise of later evening hours alone with his beloved was perhaps all that presently kept him from sneaking Ivrin’s hand into his breeches and commanding him to stroke wild. Ciryon could not imagine how he would have weathered such sultry and enrapturing desires had Ivrin’s ship not so fortunately capsized. With his every ecstatic cry to the heavens, he had given orgasmic thanks to the Valar above for such blessings, of guided sexual maturation, of a devout, valorous companion, of their hallowed future.

Not that he had yet experienced the ultimate in physical bliss. Even after the few days necessary for his complete recuperation, Ivrin had further, near indefinitely delayed his taking. Their pre-emptive explorations were too glorious in themselves to proceed with needless haste to the intimacies of full penetration. Why not, Ivrin had reasoned, take the lucky occasion of their sequestering in Tathren and Echoriath’s talan to thoroughly and enthusiastically engage one another in lighter, though smoldering hot, play, thereby evolving quite organically, with heart, mind, and body in uproarious concert, to proper lovemaking. Ciryon had not had a second of lucidity to brook any objection, as Ivrin had embroiled him in an erotic fugue for the entirety of the last seven days, only thinning some when others called on them.

From that first morning of sensual discovery onward, it had been a golden time for them. By noontime, they had waddled over to the bath to cleanse themselves for their likely afternoon visitors. Elrond, Elrohir, and Legolas had all, indeed, come to check on their wellness – Ivrin’s physiological and Ciryon’s spiritual. They had not, thankfully, tarried long. The elders had no clue that they had already somewhat disobeyed them, so after Elrond’s detailed examination of Ivrin’s progress, they left them to become *reacquainted*. Both Elrohir and Legolas had been nearly burnished with gladness at this fateful turn of events for their sweetest son, vowing to provide any thing necessary to their leisure and extracting a promise of their own for this very dinner. Rumil and Anamir had followed hot on their heels, lingering a bit longer and fretting over their son’s still vivid bruises. Fortunately, Brithor and Rohrith had also poked in at this time, so Ciryon could allow the parents some vital face time with their oft imperiled son.

The triplets’ stroll by the frozen river had been at times rowdy, affectionate, and heartbreaking. This first had come in the form of Ciryon’s own near unstoppable elation at Ivrin’s momentous return, with teasingly insinuating asides as to how he had already known some deeply pleasurable moments in his arms. Brithor had been more inquiring than Rohrith, as was to be expected, once again imparting his one, wise quip to his brimming brother. The affection was dispersed throughout the conversation, as all three were both proud of their majority and, as ever, heartened by this latest chance at private company.

Rohrith’s unusually restrained mood, however, could not be overwhelmed by the others’ ebullience forever. With a brother clamped to each side and their strong arms gripped tightly around his waist, he was finally prodded into unburdening himself of the unfolding of the bittersweet events of the previous night. He had, as thought, taken a trusted friend to his bed. He had chosen one who had come up from Gondolen for the occasion of their begetting-day, so there would be no pressure, after a fortnight of further indulgence, to continue their intimacy; the elf in question had been well-informed of Rohrith’s intentions from the start. The act itself had been satisfactory enough to prompt the planning of a future encounters; though Rohrith spoke only in the vaguest of terms of his enjoyment, he would meet with the elf that very night. Indeed, he confided that he, as Ivrin, had woken to pleasuring that very morn, which had them embroiled until the very docking of the barge.

Yet despite his rather comfy approval of the love-acts he had undertaken to learn, a darkness had festered within him. Rohrith had made no mention of Dioren until explicitly prompted by Brithor, and then had dismissed their exchanges as typical. Though they had been rank with suspicion of his distress, he and Brithor had continued to listen attentively to what details Rohrith had wanted to reveal to them, even as the notion of his slight disingenuousness prickled them through their brotherly bond. When at last, steps from their apartments, he had broken, they had been awash with relief that their third would not suffer through this repression for another pained, yet impassioned night. Even Rohrith’s tears had been brief, conservative, as he had confessed to a gutting hurt that Dioren had not evidenced even the slightest care that he had bedded another, though he knew better than any which way the peredhel’s proclivities turned. Dioren had even been so witless as to congratulate him on the loss of his virginity, though they had been sure the half-elf had not quite phrased his compliment so crudely. Dioren was not a cruel elf; indeed, he was an honorable and gracious friend to their brother. He simply remained oblivious, perhaps strategically so, to Rohrith’s maddening love for him.

Rohrith had not confided what both Ciryon and Brithor knew only too well; that while all evidence pointed quite glaringly to the contrary, Rohrith still held out some remote bastion of hope that Dioren could be affected by his love, could be won over, could be the other half that would make him whole. After comforting their despondent brother and advising him to take full advantage of the lusty night ahead, Ciryon and Brithor had secreted a silent pact to consult their fathers on this dangerously acute matter. All of their livelihoods would be in severe jeopardy should Rohrith find his consolation only in grief; his bleak mood on such a joyous afternoon only underlined the need for swift, preventative measures.

Still, even Rohrith was not so heartless as to keep them long from their own sensual adventures. After another round of rather flagrant taunts, Ciryon had escaped up to the talan, where Ivrin – bless his lascivious self – had awaited him by the roaring hearth, laying breathlessly bare over a luxurious pelt of fur. He’d ordered Ciryon to strip – aye, strip! – for him, then had proceeded to map out all the most sensate hollows of his quickening skin. Each gluttonous encounter, in their subsequent, ravenous days of intimate seclusion, had furthered his carnal education, until both had been moved, through the rapture of passionate loving, to their physical and soulful apotheosis. The culmination of these slow-burn pleasures would possibly come that very night, with Ciryon’s elf-making, his incomparable ravishing. However, despite his prolonged virginity, he had already been gifted of an honor beyond compare by his stunning and unpredictable beloved.

As his thoughts strayed once again from their dinner-table conversation and into the realm of the salacious, Ciryon could not help the soft blush that pinked his cheeks, when he recalled the previous night’s incomparable events. As Ivrin had attempted to read a particularly poignant piece to him, Ciryon had wriggled quite irresistibly in his lap, until the seafarer had no choice but to launch a full out assault on his hopelessly rousing person. Any ardent display of eagerness had always completely unraveled Ivrin, a fact that had soon become amply evident, as they had streaked over to the bed and tumbled recklessly about each other.

They had been groping giddily about for a long, lazy hour, when Ciryon had wanted to further his ongoing tutelage in the art of oral pleasure. He had sucked Ivrin into a voluble string of curses, pointers, and hoarse groans, when suddenly his beloved had seized him by the shoulders and pried him strangely away. The devastating look in his emerald eyes had been layered with hues of a complex design, vulnerability mixed with reverence, affection mingled with abject longing, worry stained bright by heartfelt trust. Ivrin had named him his beauty, his succor, his melethron, then had asked for a thing so astonishing, Ciryon had broken their kiss to gape at him.

Ivrin had wanted to give himself to him.

Twas thus that Ciryon had undertaken the most exquisite adventure of his young eternity. He had known his beloved uniquely, worshipped him from within and steered him to beatific completion. He had watched their shared ecstasy overcome him, wring him, wreck him, had mastered his undoing even as he had raged like a pyre himself. He had awed his lover with his daring and his care, had basked with him in the all-too-fleeting oneness of their soul flames. Ciryon was no less than transformed by the incomparable experienced, finally understanding the power he had within himself, to love Ivrin, to someday be his mate. They had not slept until the dawn, but laid hushly together, stroking and petting, whispering tipsy nothings, swollen troths.

He had, at last, come of age.

This night, Ciryon would know what it is to be opened to another, to surge and to sigh, to be the live receptacle, the very crucible where their passion is fired. Though of pensive visage before their supper table, he was outright rabid with anticipation, their frolics the previous night having abolished his fears and illuminated him as to the intricacies of his taking. He would know of the pleasure Ivrin had experienced so emphatically, feel the hot essence of his love within him. Twas little wonder his tumescence pronged so flagrantly up between his thighs, when there was the threat of Ivrin’s tongue to entice him…

At last, Legolas spied his slightest of frowns as their conversation turned down yet another fork in its meandering road. Both his fathers had glowed with pride for the length of their supper, Ciryon sensed that before their bedazzled eyes, they were already bound. Ivrin was dear to them as one of their own precocious brood; the prospect of his being a son of theirs in binding was too blinding for them to see, as Ciryon did in ponderous moments, the future outstretched before them: his treacherous journeys afar, his prolonged absences, and the uncertainties of his shipbuilding aspirations. Though Ciryon was not yet quite ready to settle down, he did not doubt such a day would come soon enough after his second majority, but the longing would even then be far from being appeased. With his cunning, connected family as champion to his cause and of their union, perhaps some time could be saved them, but he would not build the foundation of their love on false hopes.

He would face the trials ahead as never before, in the ample, explicit knowledge of Ivrin’s undying love.

Pointed glances were exchanged. The table, after the fondest of well-wishes, was excused.

Barely steps past the threshold of their borrowed talan, Ivrin slammed him against the bolted door and tongued his lips apart. His kiss was silken, spiced with wine, his mouth sultry hot. Ivrin spared his beloved a look of effluent tenderness, before luring him to their bed.

To the smoldering accomplishment of his majority rites.

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

Spring, Yen 733, Fourth Age

Her immaculate serenity, the grand and gracious river Sirion, who with her blithe and giddy flow bisected the land south of Taniquetil, was twinned to a sprightly, rapid-speckled river, the sly Silpion. These sisterly tributaries both spurt forth into the sage ocean from the same gaping mouth. Silpion, as befitting her lively character, cascaded into the sea from a high-born cliffside, while her more elegant sister simply glided through an archway carved by nature’s force into the base of sedimentary rock. Not to be outdone by her twin’s subtle graces, Silpion rained her quite voluminous waters down before the archway, so sailors had to segue through her falls before being given leave to sail Sirion’s more steadying waters.

Both sisters snaked their way down to the vale of Telperion. The clever elves that reside there were not satisfied by a measly beacon stationed atop the archway, by the thunderous falls, to ward off intruders and to ease the way of the trade ships. Hidden behind the rock cliff was a slope of incomparable lushness, with mossy shelves just begging to berth houses of harmonious elven craft, which slid into a slender, fertile valley. The seaside cliff was sheer, but also stepped with bracken shelves. The beach was dense with shale, perfect for a small town. A builder of considerable renown came courting this rather flattering landscape, upon which he constructed a colony as diverse, yet complimentary, as its twin rivers.

The ocean view now supported white stone villas, above a sprawling port of docks, inns, and shipyards, where only the finest wrights were invited into residence. Unlike the ancient port of Tirion, this town was secured by Telperion’s own guard; its Lord a valorous, peaceful elf who valued the sanctity of his seaside people and his inland kin, above all. This laurelled elf made his home on the fecund slope behind, where structures as gabled and refined as those of the hallowed Rivendell loomed above the river valley.

The resemblance to this noble house was well intended by its architect, who blessed his own manse a homely house and the colony entire, in honor of his own descendant line, Imladros.

Having need of a scribe, secretary, and sometime advisor to sift through the myriad piles of solicitations that daily landed on his study desk from places near and far, as well as to keep up vital correspondence with the High Council of Telperion, the Lord of Imladros, never one to take up the quill when a bow was at hand, had engaged one exceptionally dear to his heart and one who he trusted implicitly with his secret affairs: his younger brother. This studious one oddly preferred the blanched seaside villas to the mansions of the dulcet slope, as the constant, effervescent scent of the ocean reminded him of his beloved; by these late years a shipbuilder of considerable repute, oft commissioned by the elders of Tirion, Vinyamar, Gondolen, and even northern Laurelin to add to their fleets.

By residing so close to the primordial sea, the seneschal’s beloved need not travel the half-day’s journey inland to meet with his dearest one, which often prompted him to stop, unscheduled, for a night in transit, when he did not have time enough to stay a longer while. Though fleeting, these unexpected nights buoyed the seneschal’s spirit such that he could oft be fortified for a six-month entire, a considerable length of heartfulness, as the shipwright’s commissions regularly lasted for spans of seven years or more.

On just such a stolen eve, as the rosy aura of sunset faded behind the cliffside and a sparkling twilight swept over the sea stretched out before them, the two were spooned together, though cocooned in a cashmere blanket, on the floor of the villa’s highest balcony. The shipwright had surprised the seneschal there early that afternoon and they had tumbled immediately into loving, not caring whether the entire town heard their rapturous cries.

Ivrin Rumilion’s latest commission had lasted close to seventeen years, his longest absence yet.

Ciryon Elrohirion, seneschal to the Lord of Imladros, presently waged a rather riotous battle against his more covetous instincts, to twine his beloved to him without care for the fragile cage of his ribs, such was his need to keep him home. If the villa could be said to indeed be Ivrin’s home, as he closeted only his most formal garments here and its chests held not the merest of his possessions. Though he would forever have his love, Ciryon did not have his binding pledge; he feared, after nearly five hundred years, they may never be truly mated. The fury of their passion momentarily sated and Ivrin dosing heavily in his arms - his handsomeness as stunning as the day they first lay together - he took this opportunity to return to the reflection he had been engaged in when his heart had so suddenly stepped through the balcony door.

Ciryon was not fool enough to believe he could keep Ivrin from the sea. Even as he now slept, he faced the moist breeze that billowed up from the shoals, was lulled by the break of waves over the dockyards as much as by the soft of his lover’s body behind him. He was most alive when testing the latest testament to his masterly craftsmanship on a choppy ocean, though Ciryon did not doubt that the constancy of his devotion was what allowed Ivrin to relish such liberating moments. That, in essence, was the rub. Without their love as inspiration, he could not create; the very element of their relationship nurtured his artistic drive to ever greater heights. Yet without his distant commissions, he had no outlet for his creativity; an inland vale such as Telperion only required so many ships, and these of routine design. Ivrin thrived on his interactions with the various people that made up their elvish culture, the seafaring life was ingrained in his very blood. His peace was there, as well as an ample portion of his heart.

When he left, Ciryon’s went almost entirely with him.

This last expansive absence had been excruciating for him. The correspondence was as relentless as ever, but even his most scorching letters were no suitable substitute for the roguish elf he now spooned so tenderly to. When the proposed decade had strung out to fifteen anguished years apart, Ciryon had gone poorly. One day Tathren had remarked he had not seen a smile from him in almost a month, his movements had grown increasingly sluggish and his handwriting sloppy. He grew winded by merely crossing over the falls in his daily journey to the First Homely House of Aman, to say nothing of his regular noontime naps. His normally buttery complexion was waxen, his locks of hair frayed; what would Ivrin think of him, were he to suddenly return? But he would not return, Ciryon had inwardly bemoaned, not for the foreseeable future. Ciryon had crawled into his bed that night and not risen by his own accord for another three turns of the moon, though the bed itself, as well as its despondent occupant, had been transported back to Telperion, to the estate of his wise grandsire. He had recovered eventually, once his twins had incited him to weep with an uncommon violence, but all in his family knew it had been a close thing.

Ivrin knew naught of this, as sworn to by overly concerned elders, though the scribe knew all-too-well how strongly founded their fears truly were and how close he’d come to fading. Some change in the tenacity or in the routine of their relationship was imperative, if not for love alone than for his own survival.

He had considered this, and a great deal more, that very afternoon upon his blustery balcony. Though he had been the first of his siblings to find love – and this from infancy – he alone remained unbound. Even Brithor’s famously roving eye had finally been permanently fixed on a shepherdess from the outskirts of Vinyamar, their first daughter already peeking into her tenth year and their second born not a month ago. While he presently had no wish to rear a child of his own, none could say what the coming age might bring. Whispers had already begun to waft over the ocean that the fourth age of men would pass to legend in a century or so, the ebb of the cultural tide leased and flowing again. He himself was dutifully involved in composing a companion volume to Erestor’s History of the Elven People during the fourth age, which recounted the romantic exploits of the renown triplet grandsons of Elrond. Yet his own tale, so compelling at the outset, had no foreseeable end to hearten the reader, as he and Ivrin seemed content to drift along together, committed in word but not in deed. Ships anchored in the same harbor, but ever stocked to sail.

This miserable state, *his* misery, would end this very night; or if not entirely end, then veer inland, towards a lake, a pond, or perhaps even the rapids, but ever towards resolution.

Else his sanity would be dashed upon the rocks.

As he drank in the briny scent of sleek mahogany hair, he drew fortitude from the rope-hewn body twined so snugly with his. Though light-lidded slumber kept those jewel eyes abed, he’d earlier been entranced by their decadent gleam, as they raked so greedily over him. Yet bold as Ivrin was in sexual overture and brazen in their deliberate baring, he loved nothing more than to be enslaved by passion, his vulnerability mined for prized sensual ore. Aflame with cruel, culling desire, he would beg Ciryon to claim him, as if he would take whatever treasure he could; by the brimful, if necessary. Whether trenched into the core of him or in the soft of ecstasy’s wake, twas the only time Ciryon ever felt Ivrin was wholly and completely his, that only he could delve for such gorgeous yield into this sacred part of him. He came to crave this way of theirs; the first, pleading look in those emerald eyes, the supplicant lavishing of tongue on his famished engorgement, hips writhing hysterically in his lap and taut buttocks rubbing manically against his member. How Ivrin would open to him, in gaze, heart, and splayed body, seeming the most delicate skeleton waiting to be fleshed out by his love.

He purred into Ivrin’s love-bitten neck at the memory, stiffening anew. His slowly-swelling shaft was yet pillowed between those two, plump buttocks, but a slight maneuver would sheathe him. Ivrin’s prone form showed every sign of willingness, from his pursed, rosy lips to his skipping breaths to his own kindling erection. Ciryon knew well how he could torment him into wakefulness with nips and pinches, squeezes and licks, laps, laves, and wispy tickles, but he staved off. His body would be sated soon enough.

Twas his heart that was yet dissatisfied.

Instead of a more salacious move, he shifted back so that he could reach that silken mane of mahogany hair. As he brushed long, lazy strokes through its loose waves, Ciryon began to sing. The low, breathy song was his own composition, part chantey, part lullaby, every word meant for the one most beloved to him. Lured by the haunting strain of his voice, Ivrin rolled back towards him, to gaze with eyes nearly ready to capsize at this tender vision of his one. A kiss could not be more intimate, their coupling more piercing, than this devastating piece. He was entirely breathtaken.

“Beautiful,” Ivrin exhaled, as the last refrain wafted out to sea. “But so lonely, melethen, so bereft of hope…”

“I was quite bereft these last years,” Ciryon confessed, bashfully. “It is true enough that I enjoy my solitude, but that is not to mean I wish to be… forever alone.”

“My prolonged absence gave you this fear?” Ivrin asked softly, though prepared to endure the tough consequences of his choice. He had suspected he would receive considerable rebuke upon his return, though he was glad enough to feel its slap. He had not wanted to be so long away, which Ciryon knew well enough, and had berated himself for being so completely netted in the impossible situation many times over. “If I am gone, melethen, tis but to ply my trade.”

“Yet here there is now a port city,” Ciryon pointed out, but without rancor. “Below the rail a shipyard. But even if you are based here, tis in your very blood to wander.”

“I will always return,” Ivrin heartily assured him.

“And you will always go again!” Ciryon retorted, but cursed himself for the force of it the instant after. He took a long, cleansing breath, then met Ivrin with honest eyes. “With every farewell, my flame dims some. If there is no ever-constant source to re-ignite it, I will be, before long… snuffed out. When I received your black letter, to say your task was entirely sundered by storm and had to be redone… I nearly was.”

“You took ill?” Ivrin demanded, aghast. “*Why* did you not summon me home?”

“Is this your home?” Ciryon asked in response. “You seem to prefer the hull of a ship to a berth in my cleaving heart.”

“I prefer no such place to where I thought I ever was,” Ivrin insisted, with a fervor and flint few so tenderhearted as Ciryon could deny. “Kept safe and strong within you, melethron-nin.”

“I am strong enough,” Ciryon explained, resting a flush forehead to his own. “But I am no colossus. I cannot stay vigilant when you are so far gone, for so long. I could not weather another stretch of fifteen years. I need you close, Ivrin. I need to feel your heart near.”

“Forgive me,” Ivrin pleaded with him, relieved to finally be able to gather him up. “I will not take another commission until the turn of the next century. Imladros suits me excellently well, but nothing so much as its chief advisor’s heart. I am yours, melethen. I would do anything… I will build my shop here, be anchored to your bed… and perhaps you yourself might accompany me on future journeys?”

“Perhaps,” Ciryon hushly agreed, himself gathering up his courage for his next suggestion. “But not merely as your beloved.” He softed a kiss over Ivrin’s plush lips, captured his bewildered gaze. “I would be your mate.”

“How now?” Ivrin blinked once, his face turned sheer and stony as the finest cut of ivory.

“Bind with me, melethron,” Ciryon proposed, almost giddy with the tension. “I would be one with you. Love you as my own, eternally. I could not bear, could not survive any other outcome to our tale. I must have you, or… or be lost…”

Ciryon could barely speak his last, when a kiss of snarling vigor was pounded to his lips. Summarily flipped back onto the cashmere blanket, a rabid elf assaulted his every sense, pillaging his clefts, planes, and hollows, plundering his mouth, wrenching his legs apart with an impassioned cry of victory, and clamping his hot-stoked skin down over him.

“Ever have you had me,” Ivrin panted, as he struggled to slick himself with their preemptory spurts. “If I wander free, tis at your allowance; if I am renown for craftsmanship, then ever am I lit by the transcendent aura of your love. I am naught, if you are lost, melethen. I am of your making; I move by your circadian rhythms and sing, beloved, at your command. I am the very matter of your heart.” Ivrin held fast against a climactic burst, nearly undone by the force of his feeling. “I will most surely be your mate. For eternity, Ciryon-nin.”

Floating somewhere beyond elation at his blessed vow, Ciryon bleat out his own adoring troths in turn and gave all, in body, heart, and love, to his newly betrothed.

End of Ciryon’s Tale


A/N: The final Tale of the series, Rohrith's Tale, coming soon!!