Of Elbereth's Bounty

Title: Of Elbereth’s Bounty – Part 7
(third in my unofficial series, after In Earendil’s Light and Under the Elen)
Author: Gloromeien
Email: swishbucklers@hotmail.com
Pairing: OMC/OMC, Legolas/Elrohir, references to Glorfindel/Elladan
Summary: As their relationship flourishes, our two elves think towards revelation and its dire consequences.
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimers: Characters belong to that wily old wizard himself, Tolkien the Wise, the granddad of all 20th century fantasy lit. I serve at the pleasure of his estate and aim not for profit.
Author’s Note: It does, however, help to no end to have read both In Earendil’s Light and Under the Elen before this, as otherwise you might not recognize any of the characters. Hope you enjoy, and thanks for keeping to the path thus far!!
Feedback: Would be delightful.
Dedication: To the moderators of Library of Moria, Melethryn, Adult Fan Fiction.Net, and other sites of their ilk for all their wonderful, tireless work and for keeping us up to our ears in fic.

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A/N Part Deux: Sorry it took so long to update, but here are two chapters for your perusal as recompense, with part eight along any day now. I want to thank my ever-constant reviewers, Twilight, Sian, HHS, Karen, and especially Keekercat and Eresse for being so gracious as to give much cherished feedback and for sticking wit lit little fic universe here. I appreciate the support to no end, and thank you all so very much. Now, on with the show...


Of Elbereth’s Bounty

Part Seven

His rousing, on this sallow morn, had been twofold.

As the cloying fugue of sleep evaporated into a pinching consciousness, his wincing, woozy senses registered the teeth that cuffed at the column of his neck, the lips that smeared over the dagger edge of his jaw, the tongue that prodded at his closed, lax mouth. The randy cub of an elf who shared his bed prowled territorially over him, purring when their flush skins singed together and pawing his legs apart. With a predatory growl, he pounced between them, his elephantine engorgement butting against his own too-ready shaft.

When Tathren groaned, those lush, voluptuous lips sucked onto his red mouth, the tiger tongue plundering its slumber-soured depths, as if for cream. With a long swipe beneath, his own was soon skillfully drawn out and mercilessly fellated, as a nimble touch smoothed, kneaded, and petted him body-long, lingering on his tough, taut buttocks. His irradiant blue eyes opened to the sight of his darkling lover-cousin desperately unwound, groping for the salve even as he began to rock against him, each churn of their raw hips eliciting sharp bolts of intensely carnal pleasure. Tathren batted the bottle from his limp grasp and clasped his hand in a near-crushing hold, their blunt grind too gorgeously wanton to balm away sensation.

Echoriath grinned wolfishly when their eyes locked together; he raised up onto his elbows, reared his raven mane, and thrust pointedly, pinning him down hard awhile, before setting a relentless rhythm. As he watched the once terribly chaste elf become embroiled in a slow-burn rapture, Tathren was reverent with a teacher’s sage satisfaction. Through the long weeks of their togetherness – ten, now - the cavernous belly of Echo’s self-confidence had been steadily, patiently filled by the spoils of their ravenous coupling. His innocence had necessitated his submission, but soon he would be longly fed by Tathren’s fervor and would hunger for dominance. By the craven tenor of this bold awakening, the golden elf’s taking at his cousin’s behest would not wait long.

Tathren doubted he could desire it more.

Whost ost to daydreaming of the coming moment of his breaching, he was surprised by the first bite of release at the base of his now turgid erection. My, but such talents his sweet one had developed! Echoriath was lost to passion above him, slamming his manic hips home as Tathren writhed enthusiastically. With a ragged cry, he let the blaze of completion overtake him, shooting hot spurts of his salty seed across Echoriath’s swollen abdomen even as his own was emphatically soaked.

The darkling elf collapsed beside him, panting, giggling, his fevered skin too sensitized for cuddling. He licked his pulpy lips salaciously, savoring the echo of their dizzying kisses, then fought to temper his breaths.

“Masterful,” Tathren complimented, as he rolled onto his side. He snatched up a lock of ebony hair and traced the bristly end around his cousin’s peaked nipple. He delighted in the resulting shiver, the stealthy fingers that stole his hand away and twined with his own. “Perhaps, when we return from the shore, we might explore the final lesson of you learning. Your readiness was keenly felt, this morn.”

“Readiness for?” Echo queried, foisting shrewd, but lust-fogged eyes on his elder.

“My bedding,” he smirked, careful to hide his eagerness, lest the timidity return. Sure enough, a definite blush heated his cousin’s pale cheeks. “Would you not have me, meleth?”

“Aye,” came the enigmatic reply, as his lazy grip tightened and his lax shoulders grew rigid. His reasoning mind was reflected in cool, averted eyes; they were wet when they locked on him again. “Are you wearied by our lessons, tathrelasse? W-would you that they… f-find their end?”

In an unanticipated instant, the confident cub that had roused him molted back into his skittish, coltish cousin. Both, however, had thoroughly misunderstood him.

“I would sooner be emasculated by an orc,” he vowed playfully. “Than see an end to our intimacy.”

He could not ignore the tremor of relief that quaked through the darkling elf, nor the burnished regard that bathed him. They would soon be wanted by his twin, this was no time for the love troths that sprang, unbidden, onto his heavy tongue. Nevertheless, he balefully remindimseimself, their fractious time would soon come upon him. His eagerness to be dominated by his timely lover was coupled with no little fear at his own potential reaction. Only once before had another taken him, the blubbering result had been rather discomfiting, to say the least of his overreaction. To lie, now, with an elf who so utterly besotted him was hazardous, at best, folly at its worst. Yet he would chance it, he had resolved within himself, if the risk meant such a reward as Echoriath’s love.

The final test would be their impending sojourn at the seaside, with Cuthalion’s accompaniment. For the first time since their relations began, they would remain decidedly apart, yet constantly in each other’s honorable, too-tempting company. Each repressive day they’d spent at the building site had been rewarded by nightfall; at the ocean, they would be forced to sleep side by side, but somehow untouching, awkwardly but necessarily chaste. Could they suffer this separation? Could they keep counsel? Tathren was unsure, but would let Echoriath’s behavior guide him. In truth, he was desperate to know how deeply the young elf felt their relations, how amenable he might be to their eventual revelation, how sterling might his eyes shine after days apart and how readily he might then confess his love.

If, indeed, Tathren was worthy to be named his beloved.

Shaking these unfathomable thoughts away, Tathren found himself the subject of his ponderous cousin’s acute observation. He realized he himself had not spoken since his own spirited vow; amber eyes examined him with incisive care. Gone was any speck of bashfulness, replaced by a stunning intensity, by the raising fire of his intellect. His conversation, however, was casual in the extreme.

“Why do you not have flowers?” he inquired softly. “Or plants of any kind? There are troughs on your balcony and pots stacked in your larder, but no shrubs to root them.”

“If you recall,” he defended himself. “I am but recently returned from adventuring.”

“You’ve resided here for over twenty years,” Echoriath insisted. “Yet there is no trace of sprout, seed, or soil in them. The small garden of your back terrace is barren, your water ducts outmoded, there are but two chairs to your dining table and a third, if required, supplanted by a large steel bucket. There is but a twine sack in your guest chamber, your greeting room spacious but sparsely furnished, and, as the river is quite far, a cascade that tumbled through a grate in your deck would do wonders.”

With a disbelieving h, Th, Tathren shook his head in bafflement. “Have you completed your ruinous tally, or am I to suffer more berating, master builder?”

To his continued surprise, Echoriath did not blush at his remark, but firmed his features in tight resolution.

“Even with considerable renovation,” he noted cautiously. “This talan has outgrown its usefulness for one of your station.”

“My station?!” Tathren snorted, though remained thoroughly amused by their strange discussion. He guessed at the covert intent of his cousin’s cutting remarks. “And you would build me another, I suppose?”

“Nay,” Echoriath hushly dismissed the thought, his hands beginning to tremble. Tathren watched the play of emotion over his stern face, before the darkling elf ventured into perilous waters with his subsequent suggestion. “My own talan, once complete, will have every amenity you might require, as well as two becoming guest bedchambers. Why do you not… y-you might simply… take one for your own.”

Tathren’s shock could not have been more severe.

“Y-you… you would that I…?” he stammered, as Echoriath hastened to explain.

“None would suspect us,” he elaborated. “We have always been the closest of cousins and confidants, after all. Erestor and Haldir will require a talan for their kindred sooner than one can be constructed, their compound is but a stone’s throw from the willow thicket and even less from here. We might soon be called away by the council…” He cursed quietly to himself, then soldiered courageously on. “In truth, I would have you near. I would… Tathren, I…”

A kiss silenced him, so ripe and sweet none could mistake its meaning.

“Will you never cease to astonish me, lirimaer?” Tathren praised, after drawing him close. “I can think of no smarter gambit to ease our fathers into acceptance of our… our relations.” No need, just yet, to voice the true import of his affections.

“Indeed,” Echoriath seconded, so overjoyed by his reaction he might verily have burst in his arms. “Yet I fear we must reveal ourselves to one whom… Truly, I cannot fathom how he would not revel in our startling news.”

“Talion,” Tathren agreed. “Aye, he must know. Else he will cotton to our coupling soon enough… for certes, if you continue to bay like the heathen wolfhounds of Angmar, in your throes. Best we appraise him, carefully, at the shore. I will think on the manner of it.”

“A wolfhound?!” Echoriath objected, though his gossamer eyes brimmed with mirth. “At least I do not snort and harrumph in my sleep like a… a congested mumakil.”

“*I* am no mumakil,” he considered mischievous“But“But perhaps our esteemed grandsire can be so injuriously branded, when napping by the reflecting pool?”

At that, Echoriath was seized with a veritable symphony of snickers, his manner so giddy that Tathren could naught but join in.

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

As he clopped energetically up the final rung of the mithril stairc whi which snaked up the sturdy mallorn to their family talan, Echoriath, fresh from the river, paused on the doorstep and surveyed the misty morning view. Isolated from the rest of the family compound by virtue of its height, on a crisp autumn day and with a polished spyglasss the bluebell roofs of his fathers’ residence were visible from outside the ore caves on the second shelf of Taniquetil. They lay atop the lush treeline as tulips dropped in a dense bed of shrubs; the plumes of smoke emanating from the chimney stem like a flock of birds scouring for seeds. The house itself - its interconnected, elliptical segments uniformly tiled by slates of silver, cobalt, and indigo stone - resembled a bunch of grapes fallen between the colossal hs ohs of the premier mallorn of the colony, grown from the root of Telperion itself.

From such sterling heights, colossal, intimidating Taniquetil could be seen in all its much-hallowed majesty, her pyre-like peak burnished with the Valar’s eternal light. Even in the dank of first winter, Echoriath could but glance out his window and watch the veil of fog undulate over the mountainsidee pre progress of various torch-bearing parties as they ascended to the luminous crest. Little wonder he himself so craved solitude, raised in such quiescent, such reverent surroundings. On this balmy morn, a brume-swollen wind wilded through the gargantuan leaves, which batted against the sloping roof tiles like the leather flaps of a warrior’s surecoat. The breeze was kiss-heady in the meadow below, but on high the gusts were raucous, stinging his eyes raw and whipping the tips of his sodden hair.

He was, however, dry in an instant.

After skulking indoors, he discovered that the stone-slated exterior blunted the better part of the cacophonous leaves, their jarring flagellation softened to a strange, broom-sweep susurration. Unnerved by the still yet simpering atmosphere of the entrance hall, he hastened to his deep-lodged bedchamber, but as he padded down the shadow-flayed hall, a guttural, oddly assonant grunt drew him towards their central hearth. Twas as if the dawn had not yet risen in the reception hall; the bulky tulle of the drawn curtains kept out all the but faintest sheen of sun, around the seating area candle stubs had unceremoniously flamed out hours ago, the fire itself was a waning burn of embers and ashen logs. The two figures blanketed in wolfskins before the hearth had little need, however, of that burnished source’s warmth, as they were at present quite hotly embed. ed.

With a knowing smile, Echoriath crept closer to the cusp of the room; the now familiar, impassioned groans of his Ada-Dan mounted as, from what he could tell of their thankfully shroud position, he was so being. Though this occasion was hardly the first on which he’d come upon his fathers torridly entwined, Echoriath found himself newly fascinated, in light of his own recently accomplished tutelage. Indeed, throughout his youth he had always taken comfort in the poorly stifled moans that nightly haunted their dormant halls, in the fevered, heartening physical expression of his parents’ adoration. While some children, namely his brother, were often embarrassed by the candidness with which fathers such as his admitted, and happily explained, the necessity and the joys of such loving interaction, Echoriath had been grateful of their openness, of their emphatic, oft too-vivid example. Whenever his curious mind was seized by a blush-inducing question, regardless of its innocence his Ada-Dan or his Ada-Fin gladly offered their wisdom, which had allowed him to explore intellectually the concepts of pleasure and of desire that Tathren would later so skillfully unleash from within him.

Indeed, his first bedding with Tathren would have been far more intimidating had he not been an accidental witness to his parents’ tenderness, both in routine affection and in the coupling act. In detailing for him, around the time of his first majority, how wondrously rejuvenating a lover’s attentions could be, his Ada-Dan had encouraged him to see beyond his own judgmental nature – in the wake of Cuthalion’s burgeoning, yet already rampant promiscuity – and embrace the part of himself in which had so recently awakened a confounding sensuality. The path to his own blissful explorations has been both endless and disheartening, but paled in comparison to the millennia through which his Ada had longed for, and had subsequently been ignored by, his other, more proud father.

Oftentimes, the comfort thought of their mirrored struggles was the only thing that had kept him sane.

Thus, he could not help but observe, for a brief time, the magnificence of their melding forms: how every kiss, grasp, and cull was worshipfully fused to the other’s flush skin, how every stroke further shattered his darkling father, how every thrust unified them in body and in flaming soul. The harmonious gaze and the boundless care which Glorfindel beamed over his beauteous, thrashing mate pricked at their son’s heart; their unyielding ardor, their incendiary oneness a daunting inspiration. He wondered if he and Tathren were so, in throes; if their loving seemed so artful, so giving, so thoroughly self-eclipsing. If the love he’d felt between them that very dawn was a barely nascent fact and not the ephemeral fictions of a heart cleaving to ether.

When their steady joining grew fervent with impending completion, Echoriath left them to their privacy. As he slipped into his bedchamber, the raising cries of their mutual release echoed through the hush corridor.

***

Long moments later, after easing out of their hearthside pelts and tucking his dozing mate snugly within, Elladan groped along the floor for his fallen sarong, the drape of his thick ebony hair as effective at tunneling his groggy vision as a horse’s leather flaps. Luck favored him when he tripped over the velvet sheath, its indigo folds, embroidered with silver latticework, soon wrapped around his lithe waist. Spying Glorfindel’s shirt beneath the sword rack, he tugged it on as he ambled out, only to realize halfway down the hall how his husband’s considerably broader shoulders exposed an indecent amount of his own sculpted chest.

With a self-berating sigh, he fumbled to knot the decorative ties, as he made his tipsy way towards Echoriath’s rooms. Uncharacteristically out of sorts from his recent tumbling, Elladan’s woozy head would most certainly rather be lolled in the crook of Glorfindel’s kiss-bruised neck, but he had not seen Echoriath for days, now, and both of his sons would soon be off to the shore with their cousin. There would be three heady days ahead in which to laze with his beloved; Valar knew how many opportunities were left him to converse with his rapidly maturing child. Indeed, as he peeked through the open, offering doorway, the sight that greeted him was equally encouraging and anxious to the parent of a so often solitary son.

River-fresh and ruddy cheeked, Echoriath, himself shirtless, was latching his ready pack, his hunting belt, bow, and bountiful quiver laid besibeside him. Though his boots were on, he’d not yet grappled into his newly pressed tunic, which hung from the cornice over his alcove-shroud bed. When he stood to cross the room, Elladan nearly gasped at the strapping frame construction work had wrought of his former slip of a son. His creamy skin nearly rippled, like his rack of an abdomen, over meat-fed muscle, his preternatural grace imbued with a newly feral quality. Gone was the diaphanous skin, the jutting ribs, the emaciated legs; in their place, sinuous limbs pivoted with a virtuoso’s elegance about a sleek torso, well-nourished gams, and hips that had learned to stalk. Even the air about him bristled with a vital vigor, as if his potential charged the very gulfs of space that surrounded him. He and Glorfindel had suspected something other than a builder’s tenacious pride kept him relentlesoccuoccupied this last month, the unmistakable evidence now traced a necklace of faint and ferocious purpled marks around his throat.

Their young magnificent had, at long last, found himself a lover.

Though a milliard questions pricked his impatient tongue, Elladan chose the appropriately paternal route and stayed his eagerness. Instead, as Echoriath move to tend to his appearance at the mirror, his too-curious father padded graciously in, soon looming behind his reflection. At his son’s bashful smile – a brief, grateful sign of his ever-soft character – Elladan snatched his brush from the night table, then began to work through the raven sheathes of his swim-tousled hair. As he combed through the voluptuous locks, he marveled at Echoriath’s serenity. Not once did he flinch, or gripe, or hunch his shoulders, nor did he surreptitiously maintain a safe distance. Instead, he sighed with a languorous contentment, leaning back into the slow, massage-like strokes over his scalp. Neither did he hasten to make needless conversation, but basked in the long silence before a grin of no little ebullience tippled his lips.

“You’d best pay court to your seamstress, Ada,” he quipped mercurially. “That shirt rather lacks precision.”

“Whereas your shirt is altogether lacking,” Elladan repliqued, eyeing his scarred neck. “And your choice in adornment… somewhat barbarous, nay?” The concerned father was heartened to see he could still make his son blush. He set down the heavy brush, then drew out thatches of hair for his braids. “Was he gentle with you?”

“At first,” Echoriath smirked, now flush with pride.

“And is he tender?” he inquired, knowing himself at the precipice of fatherly indulgence. Echoriath clasped his fingers free, at that, sundering the braid weave and resting their entwined hands on his shoulder.

“He was a prince,” Echoriath beamed, as silver eyes met gold in the cool surface of the mirror. “He continues to… to mentor me, in ways I could not even have imagined. He is a true companion, faithful, deserving... beauteous. I have no regrets, Ada, nor should you for encouraging me.”

“Only one,” Elladan exhaled, momentarily shutting his eyes. “That my timid little elf will never again seek the shelter of my arms, but this vital creature you have become. Though my brother warned me well enough of a father’s wares upon a son’s timely maturation.” After but one clipped breath, he opened the tranquil pools of argent eyes and regarded his growing son with affection. “And might one’s family ever come to be acquainted with an elf of such esteem?”

When Echoriath became almost imperceptibly still, his father swallowed back his considerable amusement. He had guessed than an elf as secure in privacy as his darkling son would be none too swift in introducing even a casual affair to family, much less a beloved. For this companion was indeed beloved, the young elf’s secret cares given away by every oblique mention of his bed-teacher, every shimmer of his gossamer eyes. When those amber pools averted themselves for but a flicker, when he waited a hairsbreadth too long on his reply, however, Elladan was seized by a bold sense of disquiet.

His son was struggling to form a half-truth, so as not to give him an outright lie.

“Forgive me, ioneth,” he saved him, despite how his skin prickled with objection. “A father’s eagerness often forgets him his rather precarious position in such green and awkward circumstance.” Instantly apologetic himself, Echoriath turned towards him and clutched their mingled hands to his heart.

“Your place is here, Ada, to the last,” he pledged, though he began to tremble. “I am ever beholden to your generous care, your sage and vigilant counsel.”

Impressed, but not entirely assuaged, Elladan softly inquired: “Then will you take but a piece of your wise father’s counsel, Echoriath?”

“Always, Adar,” he swore, raptly attentive.

“In the manner I bequeathed to you, by your siring,” Elladan explained. “One will ever stand above all, in the intense and impenetrable hold of a true lover’s heart. You and I, ioneth, are wrought from the same constant cloth, tenaciously bound, yet easily frayed. Fraught, by misuse. We love but once, eternally, I have known it of you since your infancy. Be shrewd, nin pen-ind, be sure of he upon w you you shine your immortal blessings. I fear I am already too late in advising you thus, but best not to leave a thing perilously unsaid. If you doubt him, retreat, before the tax of infinite time plagues you to grief. Do not give the whole of yourself to one who cannot keep you.”

Echoriath remained immovable, as he digested his father’s caution. While Elladan sensed some expected resistance, he also felt that his advisement was deftly noted, squired away for a later moment of private reflection. To his great relief, Echoriath soon embraced him.

“I am not yet too far grown not to need your succor, Ada,” he whispered, seemingly overcome by some sharp emotion. “Be at peace, while we are gone, and know that I will ever trust in your kindly words, in times of strife.”

As he held strong to his blithe child, Elladan thanked Elbereth there was still some sweetness in him.

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

Cuthalion was not so cunning of mind that he could readily divine what manner or mischief was afoot, but he was also not the mule-headed orc his brother and his cousin seemed to take him for. He may not be as genial, nor as ‘sensitized’ to the nuances of character as either of his companions, but the cloaking hood they repeatedly attempted, surreptitiously, to throw over his eyes did not blind him to their complicity, though the cause of their secrecy he had not yet devised. In truth, he suspected no dense nor onerous collusion between them, though he’d had instances of doubt during their ride, by their campfire, and in the night’s furrowed quietude. Some spectral presence lingered on the outskirts of their cheer, waiting, as a predator might, to pounce, once his vigilant eyes had been averted.

By this if accidental deception, they had issued an unspoken challenge, one no warrior of his salt nor caring brother could longly leave unmet.

As he waded, knee-deep, into the constant wash of the ocean tide, he looked out into the vast horizon and mentally reviewed the moments that had pricked him. The journey itself had passed merrily as always, with goading races, impish insults, and unwitting swats to a horse’s rump all in the usual, unhurried vein. Both twins had taken considerable pause, when Tathren had skipped off his horse and landed poorly, but no harm came of the stunt except a rather stunning bruise across his backside. Echo had insisted on treating the wound himself, but as Cuthalion had no patience for healing, he felt he could make little of this particular incident. Though the rest of the ride had given Tathren some tenacious discomfort, by the time they doffed their packs and shot towards the surf, stripping wholeheartedly as they ran, his cousin was righted enough to summarily toss him over. Indeed, the rest of the afternoon was spent in horseplay and the like, of a free-spirited glee not experienced since his elflinghood. Over and again, Tathren wrestled them into submission and launched them into the deep, his energy relentless, his grin as glorious as the subsequent sunset.

Love, Cuthalion had reasoned, after one particularly al sal slap against the waves. His cousin was clearly, hopelessly in love. How else to explain the near immediate expulsion of gloom at his reconciliation with his fathers, some time ago. Tathren was ever one to let his cares gray his attitude for many, slow-healing months after, but here he was entirely reformed. The explorers had oft whispered to him of their late night visits to his talan, after revels at the ale house, only to be discouraged by the wanton groans breaking from within. As for Echo, he must have knowledge of this voluble elf’s identity, but this was not enough to conscience his brief flashes of reservation, of self-restraint.

As was in glaring evidence when Cuthalion had returned from hunting. Tathren had again declined to join him, preferring to build a spit and stoke their waning fire. Echo was typically lost to furious sketching, but curiously perched atop a rock not ten feet from the tent. When he later returned, a prize elk across his shoulders, neither was to be found. The animal was flayed and roasted by the time they staggered back to camp, emerging, to his surprise, from the forest wilds. Though he did not protest a wit when they excused themselves as berry-picking, neither did he swallow such a lump of coal as that ridiculous tale. Echoriath did indeed have a tunic skirt full of rare olafine berries, which proved a savory glaze to the elk-meat, but more he could not for a second meet Tathren’s eyes. Tathren was similarly distracted, if not entirely absent during their stilted meal, though he would, every once in a while, stare rather insistently at Echor, un, until the other flicked his eyes up to satisfy him.

Cuthalion had feared that they deliberately concealed their anger so as not to spoil this happy retreat, but another unfathomable instance reared its obscure,iguoiguous head. Unfortunately, the memory was veiled in the haze of inebriation. After supper, they had imbibed, as was their want, of two aged bottles from Forochel Bay. If pressed, he would abashedly admit to consuming an entire bottle himself, but to his faint surprise and more enthusiastic pleasure, Tathren had shared his with Echoriath. In the past, his brother never drank more than the bottom of a goblet’s worth; with Tathren’s unspoken encouragement, he took several generous draughts, enough to fire his cheeks a hot scarlet, before long. He had moved closer to his cousin to ease the tipsy passing of the rather excellent vintage, their quarrel tempered by raucous taunts and his own long-winded tales.

In the thick of one such a recounting, Cuthalion had paused for effect, only to find his audience embroiled in other matters. Tathrad cad clumsily spilt a splash of wine on his light-colored shirt. Echoriath, giggling, had used his own darker tunic to dab it, causing both to fall into hysterics only intoxication could provoke, and thereby begin to tussle. Tathren obviously being of greater strength, he had soon yanked his cousin violently forward, which had tripped him and landed him cold is las lap. As Echoriath had struggled drunkenly to extricate himself, Tathren had taken control, his every move barred by a caging limb, a constricting hold. Rather than be aggravated, Echoriath had done little to truly fight him off, going lax until, through Tathren’s own manipulations, he had ended by looking up from his lap, hair splayed wild across his legs, a too-wicked smirk taxing his cousin’s patience. To Cuthalion’s continuing surprise, Tathren had flustered mightily at this move, bucking his brother off as a startled steed might. In deference, Echoriath had counseled himself, but not before a mischievous glance ranked over his befuddled cousin. While Echoriath studiously quieted and returned his attention to the tale, Tathren had been lost to them, draining the bottle in record time and uncorking their third. Cuthalion had hastened to conclude his tale, then swept off to bed, thinking, despite the encroaching stupor, that his companions required some privacy to properly resolve themselves.

In truth, he had not heard a sound from the moment his head hit the s


That morning had broke peacefully, both cousin and brother behaving as ever before, if somewhat slower, due to the collective pounding of their leaden skulls. A stew of entrails and some athelas-spiked tea had hardied them for the day’s delights, but it was the good company and their boundless merriment that had truly cured them. After a replenishing swim, Tathren had thought to hunt alone, so Cuthalion had stolen some time for reflection, wading through the sea. As he toddled about the mulch sand, he felt on the cusp of his solution, but an answer yet evaded him. He wished, not for the first time, that he had been blessed with a greater share of intellect; surely even his genial brother could do with a mite less and still be unparalleled among elfkind.

Before he could truly launch himself into musing, a deft missile whizzed over his shoulder. The not-terribly-sharp shooter soon linked arms with him, a sun-dazzled smile alighting his twilight features.

“Why so glum, gwanur?” Echoriath queried. “Are you plotting out the gruesome details of your latest conquest? Setting a snare for some skittish, unsuspecting ellyth?” Cuthalion would have laughed more heartily, if the question had not been so uncharacteristically bold for his soft brother.

“Perhaps,” he enigmatically repli“Per“Perhaps I am merely sussing out the cause of those rather flagrant marks around your neck, my sneaky onnakenake bite? Assault by venomous pollen? Glass-blowing incident?” At that last attempt, Echoriath swallowed back a gasp.

“There was, indeed, an incident at the forge,” the darkling elf admitted, his color perilously rising. “Though there was little blowing of… glass.” At this, he shook not with shame but with giggles, though his cheeks nearly glowed with heat.

“You have a lover,” he needlessly intuited, smartinat hat he had not guessed before.

“I have a lover,” Echoriath confessed, with overwhelming glee. “Perhaps even…” He instinctively hugged his brother, so buoyant was he from the revelation. Cuthalion could feel the passion quaking through his slender frame, so fierce as to eventually shatter his bones to dust. The arms that released him clamped ardent hands on his, his brother’s eyes moist with unshed, joyous tears. “Talion, why did you not tell me how wondrous it is to love?! Though in truth I have loved for some time now… but the act of it, the joining of bodies, of melding of spirits, the… the rapture!! Even here, among my brethren, the pull of longing is relentless.”

“Then why did you part from him, even for so brief a time?” Cuthalion questioned him. “Why did you not invite him along? We would have been glad of his company, gwanur, Tathren as well as I myself.”

“Hannon le, Talion,” Echoriath smiled gratefully, though avoided answering him. “It heartens me to know that he is so welcome among us. Alas…”

Cuthalion took this regret for sign of slight repentance, but no apology was forthcoming. For one so shrewd, his brother was preciously thoughtless in some regards. He decided his reservations could not be so easily cast off, even in the face of his brother’s too-apparent contentment.

“Yet methinks you have long confided in our cousin,” Cuthalion whispered, his eyes hard with resentment. “The name of the elf you love, of his regard… you sought his counsel before the night of your bedding, even after the confessions I have made and the tales I have shared with you. Is that not the secret between you?”

“Secret?” Echoriath started, struck by his brother’s words. “You mistake us, gwanur. This is the very matter of the private audience I have sought with you, this morn.”

“He has known of it for mont Cut Cuthalion charged him, his brow fraught and his face mired in hurt. “Since the quarrel with his fathers, if I may speak plain. Think you I have not marked how you steal away from the building site, from dinner, to beg an audience with him before taking to your lover’s bed? He is the true brother of your heart!! I was usurped long ago…”

“Talion,” he groaned sympathetically, pressing his forehead to that of his dejected twin. “As usual, you see the scouts withhe the trees, but not the arrows flying forth.”

“I may not be blessed with your more obvious talents,” Cuthalion retorted, yet did not pull away. “But mine have not turned me cold, lead me to deceive my betters and shun those who hold me most dear.”

Echoriath turned serious, but not sober. “Aye, there was some necessary dissimulation, but only to preserve… in truth, I thought you had guessed it, from the cantankerous manner in which you left our camp last night. The ruse with the berries was a paltry veil, I admit, but even then I thought you doubted. But the wine… I behaved poorly. We spoke of nothing else for hours, I swear it.”

“Why should you speak on a foolish brother?” he spat back. “When talk could yet turn to the hallowed topic of your new lover.”

With a mighty sigh, Echoriath drew gently away and stared balefully at him. His face was open as never before, with acute worry, no little frustration, and a poignant empathy; Cuthalion felt he had never truly regarded him until that very moment. No amount of divination, no act of foresight or detection, could have prepared him for the coming revelation.

“Nay, you are ever mistaken, gwanur,” Echoriath corrected him, beset by halting, hesitant breaths. “I spoke not of my lover… but *with* him.”

Cuthalion blanched, felt his knees give out. He sat, listless, in the frothy surf, for an eternity it seemed, though his mind was not frozen, or numb, but overswept by a flurry of linking, connection, remembrance… moments lit with a different hue, blanks of information filled, touches, looks, too-stealthy smiles all readily explained. As the rushing waves soaked him through and his despairing brother waited on his response, he fought to right himself within a world so foreign to him, so permanently and inconceivably shifted aloft.

It was some time before he realized Tathren was suddenly there, staring down at him, arm woven around Echoriath’s waist too tightly to be innocent. No action of his cousin’s was innocent, not ever again.

“Do you love him?” came his first, rasp-throated inquiry. Both elves stared further, unsure which was to reply. “Echo?”

A beatific look came over his darkling brother’s lush countenance, so comely and tender Cuthalion could not doubt its veracity.

“Ever have I loved him,” Echoriath offered his answer, not to his soggy brother but to the elf in question. “Though I have but of late come to learn the manner of it.”

At this unaccounted profession, Tathren’s aquamarine eyes sprung from the spumey depths of the sea and alighted on his cousin fair. He basked in the heated aura of brilliant golden eyes, knew the elf they beheld to be the dearest treasure to him. He found he could naught but kiss this glorious elf, fervently, eloquently, as if his life-breath was not without but within soft flesh of his mouth.

They kissed until there was no sea, no shore, no mountain above nor forest beyond…until a silver-maned creature sprung up, light as foam, from the tide and crushed them into his arms, shrieking his joy.

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

The sulfurous moon of late summer floated, like a daub of butter in the waters of a percolating cauldron, amidst the brume fronds that streaked the midnight sky. As the looming mist dissipated in a cool breath of wind, a couple emerged from the willow thicket into the mossy-boughed ederwoods, their humble raiment dappled with leftover spray. All around them, leaf tongues lapped up the last of the fallen rain and branches glistened with moisture, the lawn slick under their grass-stuck feet. Neither elf minded the delay of the sudden showes ths the forest was never so mysterious, never so inviting, as after a warm summer rain.

The blonde elf, luminous as the yellow moon above, allowed his ebony-haired companion to lean generously against him as they strolled, their arms too willingly locked around the other’s waist, their lax shoulders and their lazy heads folded lovingly together. Not even the emergent woodland creatures that scurried to their rest could mistake the deep, tranquil wells of emotion that flowed so effortlessly between them; such was their completion that even languidly linked they became one ever-replenishing source. They meandered about the lush wood without care for the route of their journey or contemplation of their eventual destination, simply content to wander the humid woods with their beloved.

When the lonely nightingale found them, in a sparsely-treed, quiescent clearing, Legolas’ could not help but smile wistfully at her mournful, melancholy song. He hearkened to his languorous mate, noting the casual loll of the head into his nape and the placid beat of his constant heart. He had come to cherish these long, silent walks with his bonded, a chance each night to express a chaste, but no less ardent, affection for him. Ever since Elrohir had bashfully confessed of the incontrollable, insatiable lust that afflicted him, Legolas had insisted upon such hush moments between them, if naught but to maintain the rapt hold of their bond.

At first, Elrohir had barely been able to brave the shortest of strolls, before fever sickened him to moaning and he would end, crouched and quaking, balled up shamefully at the base of a sheltering willow, Legolas begging for leave to carry him home. Though he had happily given of himself as often as his husband had desired him, even one of his archer’s endurance could not couple so voraciously, for days upon days, weeks upon weeks, without the influenc som some bodily spell or preternatural necromancy. His gallant elf-knight had bourn these limitations with characteristic grace, though every coddling touch or succoring clutch raised through him like the boldest flames.

To further his poor husband’s trials, Erestor’s tonics had, at first, little effect on him. When the healer strengthened the potion, Elrohir suffered the opposite effect, shuffling through the house dazed, listless, like the waking dead, unable to eat, sleep, or even reason with sustained coherence. While he no longer lusted, he also no longer felt, after three burdensome days causing Legolas to storm the healing halls and demand some kind of useful solution. Erestor could do naught but inform Lord Elrond, who quickly mixed a draught that restored to his beleaguered son a grateful balance.

Upon waking, Elrohir would drain a cup of the foul brew, which allowed him to go about his routine in fine, sated spirits. By evening, the effects would begin to ware off; their strolls now served to distract his rousing body and to tire him some, as well as for the more obvious, affectionate reasons. Once returned to their bedchamber, Elrohir could unleash the full force of his passion, until both were so exhausted that he swiftly fell asleep in the cradle of Legolas’ arms. Satisfied that his mate had found some measure of peace, Legolas would then drift off himself, until Elrohir would prod him awake the next morn and charge him with the immediate brewing of his vital draught.

While their schedule rather lacked for spontaneity, a cunning elf could manage some improvisation within;hapshaps not of the physical variety, but then Legolas enjoyed Elrohir’s company on far too many levels to limit his imagination to inspired coupling venues. Indeed, he had secretly challenged himself to so enthrall Elrohir by the ardor of his courtship, that the darkling elf would forget all his child-related troubles and bask in the ample evidence of his mate’s unwavering devotion.

He had begun simply enough, for what plan thrived on unnecessary complexity? Each morn, as the tonic simmered, he would steal out to the garden and harvest a different bloom, to adorn Elrohir’s plate at their fast-breaking. The meaning of this flower was then inscribed on a slip of parchment, which would serve as place setting. When time allowed, at the end of a long afternoon and just before their evening meal, he would draw a replenishing bath for his beloved, pour him a palate-whetting cup of honeysuckle wine, and set a volume of poetry by the bath, to peruse while he soaked. Oftentimes, during their walks, he would guide him towards some starlit field, or glittering cave, or neighboring garden, where they might sit for a while and contemplate nature’s bounty. He might turn up after his regular sword-practice sessions with Elladan to massage away his aches, or steal him from his papers and reports with a defiant archery challenge. His own favorite, however, were the rare days when, after lunchon, he would secret him away to the conservatory that adjoined Elrohir’s study, grab an incidental volume of history from the library, and fall into sprawling debate with his learned husband. Legolas did not know what he found most arousing, the manner in which Elrohir carefully weighed two opposing factors, how the elf-knight would patiently list the aftershocks of a certain calamity, or how generously he listened to even Legolas’ most outlandish theories (and a great many were spun just to see the repressed frustration ripple beneath the argent pools of those eyes). Regardless, after such an audience, Legolas would often too keenly swallow the bitter taste of Elrohir’s own plight, forcing himself to return to his duties with mind aflame and counting the minutes until nighttime as grains of sand through an hourglass.

In truth, his efforts caused him but to wonder why they were so occasional beforehand. He doubted he would be able to entirely cease them, once Elrohir’s fever had passed. Though he may eventually run through the lion’s share of their flower garden.

Legolas cuddled his husband closer, caressed his pale brow. Elrohir appeared so spent from his industrious afternoon at the Council, the archer wondered if they would need couple at all. When the elf-knight slowed his already labored steps in a familiar thatch of ederwoods, Legolas thought he very well might drop to sleep in his arms. Drowsy silver eyes lifted into the thick of the trees, a contented smile curled his lips.

“Somewhere in the darkling wood,” Elrohir sighed, with more sentience than his husband would have expected from him at this late hour. “A lonely elf waits out the night.”

“Are you lonesome, meleth?” Legolas questioned him, a spike of fear stabbing through him.

“With such arms to berth me?” Elrohir protested. “Never, maltaren-nin. I speak of one who may yet come to be quite dear to us, but is presently unknown.”

“How now?” Legolas nearly demanded, baffled by his riddle-like remarks. He followed the incandescent mithril eyes upwards, his own alighting on Tathren’s barren talan above. With their son presently at the shore, not a candle’s glow could be glimpsed in the dark edifice. “Has some trouble newly beset our child?”

“Trouble? Nay,” Elrohir explained himself. “I speak of his new lover. To my rather paltry and secluded knowledge, they have not spent a night apart, since their first, some weeks ago. Months, even… though I may be mistaken. He must suffer fiercely, this night.”

“Indeed… *he*, you say? He must,” Legolas reflected, what part of his heart that was not involved in his mate’s care going out to the poorly elf. “Tathren’s regard, once it has penetrated, is not one to be so easily shucked off. How did you come to know of this?”

“I know little, if any at all,” Elrohir assured him. “I know the elf was innocent, yet an ellon of aded yed years for one so untouched. Tathren has spoken but once of him, but I believe his very brevity and caution speak volumes of the depth of his feelings. He keeps this one with precious care. He may, indeed, have fallen in love.”

“Then may they both be blessed,” Legolas wished into the summer night. “And may this unknown elf pass a gently troubled night, sure of our brave one’s heart, though it be absent.”

“Praise be to him,” Elrohir seconded. “May he cherish our dearly child as ardently in return as he himself is cherished.”

Legolas, hearteny thy the thought of Tathren in the first thrill of love, caught up his own beloved and softed a kiss over his mouth.

“As you are cherished,” he purred. “Lovely one.” As he burrowed his face into the spills of black, velvety hair, Legolas found his own night-balmed body stirring some. “Shall we retire? Or are you too weary, meleth?”

“Nay, I am too well, melethron,” Elrohir murmured, as he hugged to him. “My fever is greatly lessened, this day.”

Legolas, piqued by this news, adjusted their position to meet his eyes. “Lessened by chance? Or by…resolution?”

Though their stroll had been too gorgeously hush to be interrupted by sorrow, the archer felt a stealthy moroseness creep over him. He was not prepared, not on this woozy night, to face the blunt truth of Elrohir’s answer; for though he had resigned himself to the eventuality, he could not yet fake his agreement before one so dear. Elrohir perceived how the news had silenced him, hastened to assuage him.

“Fly not blindly to forgone conclusions, meleth,” he counseled, his eyes bright and beckoning. “I am resolved in your favor, that is why the fever waits some.”

“In…” Legolas gasped, not yet daring to believe. “You mean…?”

“Aye,” Elrohir beamed proudly at him. “I will, if you are still agreed to the manner of it, beget us another child.”

The elf-knight was suddenly seized in such an ebullient embrace that he thought his spine misnapsnap. This was, however, nothing compared to the kiss that assaulted him, ravaging yet eloquent, sinking straight to his loins but shot true from the heart. When Legolas broke away, panting thunderously but with soul-piercing eyes, he knew rest was the furthest thing from his feral husband’s mind. After the weeks of blithe, undemanding succor he had received, Elrohir could naught but indulge him. He backemselmself against a fat-trunked ederwood and opened his arms in welc The They soon encircled an archer trembling with need, the promise of a golden night implicit in his sensuous overture.

“Hold tight, my beauty,” Legolas growled mischievously. “I cannot aught but love with you, now.”

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

On the last, balmy morn of their sojourn, Tathren emerged from their hothouse tent into the misty sea wind, his senses on the verge of pure serenity. The ocean before him, roasted a shale blue by the late summer sun, spurt a frothy tide over the beach, the sky was crisp and prim with the promise of autumn, the sun glaring. To the north, gulls circled the lower crags of Taniquetil, scavenging for crab shells and cawing forlornly. His dazzled gaze followed the length of the rock shelf to the spear-head tip, where a familiar figure was hunched over a sketch pad.

Tathren smiled fondly, but inwardly reproached himself.

When Cuthalion tossed the last of their logs on the fire, the luring smell of his fast breaking and the precipitous gnaw in his gut drew him to the hearth. A bubbling cup of broth was foist into his still drowsy hands, his cousin knowing well enough to save any conversation for mid-morn, at the earliest. As Tathren settled in and took a testing sip, he examined the silvery elf for signs of disease. He could not yet quite reconcile himself with Taliounquunquestioning support of his relations with his gentle twin; the day before, after a long moment’s reflection, the sprightly elf had pounced on them and sung them heralds for hours anon. He had been almost too-easily drawn into their reluctant dissimulation before their fathers, noting with typical candor that they must be carefully broken in and praising their plan for co-habitation. Since that climactic revelation, he had been unconscionably courtly with them; insisting on heareveneven the most blush-inducing incidents of their awkward shuffle towards togetherness, teasing them incessantly about the other lover’s prowess, and allowing them ample private time to indulge themselves awhile.

Indeed, citing an impulse to explore an islet far to the south, he had departed at dawn the day before and returned in early afternoon, allowing them ample time for a slow, sensuous coupling on the beach, as the tide crashed over them. He had been equally forgiving that night, when, after another bottle or two of Forochel, Echoriath could not seem to keep his tongue out of Tathren’s wine-soured mouth, drinking most of his share directly from the golden elf’s crimson lips. After Tathren’s red-cheeked apologies – Echoriath had been far too intoxicated to give proper care - Talion had declared himself heartened by their obvious mutual adoration and had begged that they not strive to conceal these necessary affections on his act. Ht. He would draw the line at actual petting, of course, but kissing and groping were expected, and easily tolerated. The requisite restraint would need be vigilantly kept at home, he had reasoned, so here at the shore they should love freely.

Unfortunately, despite Cuthalion’s after-midnight offer of the tent while he himself slept beneath the bountiful elen, Echoriath had sunk like a stone in his arms and was of no decent use to him, except as the most luxurious of pillows. This was the concession of Talion’s he most cherished; that he could hold tight to his beloved in the night, as he had every night since the beginning of their togetherness. Only their first at the shore had he necessarily kept away, a tortured half-sleep he was not soon eager to repeat, unless under abject need for secrecy.

In truth, he dreaded their revelation to their fathers, for this reason of far too many.

As he downed the last of the broth, he remembered another, more timely revelation that had yet to be broached between Echoriath and he. The darkling elf had stood fast before his other half – such vaultless courage, his tender one was possessed of – and declared his love, to brother and to lover both. Tathren, concerned for Cuthalion’s mind-state, had not wanted to fall into a bevy of troths just as the silver elf was recovering his senses, so had refrained from his own, equally heartfelt vows. This postponement had delayed them indefinitely, however, as no moment seemed fitting enough to properly, emphatically swear himself. Echoriath’s patience, in this of all things, had been ridiculously blithe, but he knew his bashful elf was pricked by his reserve and had possibly begun to doubt him. Indeed, no little part of Echo’s own pronouncement had confused him some, since he had said ‘ever’ before confirming his love. He had “ever-loved” him, but how? As cousin? As heart’s brother? As…

“Go to him,” Cuthalion all but commanded, his quicksilver eyes at once mercurial and imperious. “Or can you not, after these long weeks, discern that he awaits you?”

“How…?” Tathren bleated in surprise.

“Have you learned nothing in his bed?” Talion almost reprimanded, the spark in his eyes now fired to full flame. “Diligence. Efficacy. Synchronicity. A confluence of events, based on equal parts observation and intuition. Has he truly never lectured on the rhythm and flux of the natural world?”

“There is often little discussion,” Tathren sheepishly admitted. “Merely… sensation. Though he has taught me much of glass-blowing.”

“Indeed,” his cousin snorted, ignoring the obvious taunt and pressing on. “I myself could not begin to explain the theory, but to say this: he is too keen an observer to miss your lately ruminations over some matter of import; as such, he has cunningly whisked himself away to the very spot in which your barely nascent affections took shape, in hopes of rousing some further declaration. If you mark his sketch pad, you will even note that he but shades in the very same anemone once outlined. He would not dare tempt fate by drawing a new one.” After rising, he added. “Superstitious, as well, but rather agreeably so.” With an ample intake of breath, he turned in the direction of their grazing horses. “Fret not, I will strike the camp. Now *go*.”

After freshening his mouth with some mint and washing the film of sleep from his skin, Tathren made his way over the scoured rocks and gnarled sprigs of coral, to the end of the jutting shelf. As he approached, he indeed marked the very same anemone-fountain sketch as before, now enlivened by shade and color. More poignantly, he noted how Echo’s velvet-soft lengths of ebony hair sparkled with a crystalline iridescence under Arien’s most luminous rays, how his svelteuscluscled bwas was clenched with tension, how the dust from the colored pencils stained his lissome hands, which had so reverently caressed his face that very morn, before collecting his wares and leaving their tent. He did not know whether to crouch down beside him or beckon him to stand, what pose would best be recalled a milliard times, when his Echo thought on the moment he had declared his love.

He hoped the memory would always be heartwarming to him.

“I have never seen such colors before,” he murmured, low enough to either draw his cousin’s attention or provoke him to stand in greeting. Echoriath set his pad aside and stood, offering a hand to help him over the last of the coral. Tathren’s own were soon tainted with the strange, phosphorescent greens, pinks, and haunting blues of the deep. “They glow, as the very creature that inspired them.”

“A simple matter of mixing certain minerals into the chalk,” Echoriath explained, bending to wash both his hands, then Tathren’s, by cupping some water from the wading pool.

Tathren simultaneously caught up his nimble fingers and met his burnished eyes. “Even the most unfathomable wonders seem but putty in your capable hands.”

“Your goodly and beauteous self, for instance,” Echoriath teased, as he leaned in for a lingering kiss. “Truly an unfathomable wonder of this great world.”

“Are my charms so very mysterious?” Tathren goaded, but took the chance to enveloped him with steady arms. “Even after knowing me so intimately?”

“I hope there will always bee ele elusive quality to your affecting allure,” Echo commented. “Though the true mystery will remain how I came to draw the regard of such a one as you, meleth.”

“As most creatures that come to mate,” Tathren related fondly. “By showing me the vast palette of your most rand and plentiful colors, lirimaer. More luminous than all the phosphors in the sea, more bedazzling than the silmaril itself.” He kissed him, then, hard and intent, before breaking away to beam so blazingly at him that Echoriath thought he might burn to cinder. “I love you, my Echo.”

“As I do you, melethron,” he vowed anew, too overcome to aught but whisper.

They did not kiss again immediately, but touched and petted, gently, worshipfully, embracing in every way but meetmeeting of their lips. When the moment came, their mouths were slow to fully mate, laving with tender tongues before delving dee hot hotly, into such gorgeous bliss both were soon locked in a thrall of passion.

At a gull’s shrill cry, Tathren broke away, afraid if their caresses progressed too far he would end up ravaging Echoriath on the coarse, scraping rock. Better he bear the discomfort of desire restrained, of the incipient ride home, than have his beloved’s backside rawed by carelessness. Echo seemed equally mindful, reasonable, though he melted amorously against him and gazed out over the sea, as i sav savor every drop of the moment’s inherent romanticism.

“Tell me, beauty,” Tathren asked into the crown of his hair. “For I have been piqued for days, now. When you proved yourself to Cuthalion, a our our revelation…”

“As long as I have known what it is to love,” he anticipated the question with effortless acuity. “You have been the virtuous and unwavering object of my… ever, tathrelasse, ever have I loved you.”

“As a cousin first, you loved me,” he amended.

“Perhaps,” Echoriath indulged him, worried that he might become overwhelmed. “The first knowledge of it dawned with my… my capacity for physical need, for desire and its release. It was my… thirty-seventh or thirty-eighth year, I cannot justly recall.” Tathren adjusted their position so his face was clearly beheld, by his probing eyes he would have the toll of it. “You had lately rnedrned to Ithilien with your Adar, and perhaps a week after your departure, I began to… to *ache* for you, in a manner I had never known before. In times of solitude I would be gripped by a visceral loneliness, it was the only time in my life I sought so fervently to be in pleasant company, that Iht fht forget… Over time, those feelings tamed themselves, but for the decade before my first majority, they proved agonizing, as every feeling is in those clumsy, blundering years of the body’s revolt into adulthood. Yet the midnight dreams of you, first of sensations I could not comprehend, then, after some of Cuthalion’s teaching, ones I understood all too well and thougespeesperately shameful, these would not abate. Even in your very presence, when my spirit was heartened by a cousin’s care for my well being. By the time we sailed for Valinor, I knew, else I very well might have stayed on with my naneth. I loved you, and not as a cousin should.”

Dully sobered by his remembrances, Tathren fell silent. Slowly, hesitantly, a gentle smile crept over his pensive face.

“And the dreams?” he smirked, not without mischief. “Have they since abated? Or do you still desire me, even in deepest slumber, my hands smoothing over your parched skin, my tongue teasing a peaked nipple-”

Echoriath swatted his buttocks, but grinned bashfully. “They are but more vividly hewn. And when I wake… your radiance is there to behold. At my mercy, it is.”

“Indeed,” Tathren chuckled, but could not help a smirk of satisfaction. “But truly, melethron, it pains me to know how longly you suffered, how my very presence must have provoked your solitary ways…”

“Do not think on it,” Echoriath reassured him. “I suffer no longer, nor did I too acutely after my first majority. I imagine, if it were not you, I would have pined after some other elf. It is my nature, as are my solitary ways, as you call them.”

Tathren’s eyes went wide, with guilt and with realization. “Your first majority! Valar, did you want me even then? Am I the reason you refused majority rites? Did I… somehow rebuke you? Why did you not…?”

“My, we are prideful, this day,” Echoriath chided him, more amused than scornful. “One mere mention of my vigilant love, and already such liberties are taken with reality, such distortions...” He pecked Tathren on his moue of a mouth and elaborated on that fraught time. “I wanted you, true, but I was too… afeared, of my desire, of how it might rage, of coupling itself, to conscience any act or rite of physical love. Not until this last decade have I truly become… acclimated, to the idea. Fret not, meleth. And, if I recall, you were by no means free to accommodate me.”

“Nay, I remember now,” Tathren mused. “My two-year of naivety among the Gondorian vipers and grave miscalculation at court.”

“Eldarion weathered it well,” the darkling elf noted. “His grief for his fallen wife passed gently. He indulged himself, purely, for his brief time with you. He married again. What ill truly came of it, other than a few white hairs for our kingly uncle, of which he was already quite plentiful?”

“Little, in the end, save the scolding of my youth,” Tathren laughed at himself. “Worse than when I stole in to see you born. Deservedly so.”

With another, too-ravenous kiss for thought of their impending departure, Echoriath dismissed the gray past with a swipe of his singeing tongue.

“Forget what’s gone, meleth, laid to rest on a faraway shore,” he advised him. “This time is ours. It is our honey-time, before fathers, families, and other forces seek to wedge themselves between us. I will ever cling to you, as a drowning elf to a fallen bough, when the time comes, but for now let us concentrate on… on ripening each moment until we are swollen tight with bliss, until we are verily fit to burst.”

“How did you come to be so wise?” Tathren wondered aloud, as he laced his hold even tighter.

“Dilligence,” Echo began to list. “Efficacy. Synchronicity. A confluence of events, based on equal parts observation and intuition. Have I never related my theory on the rhythm and flux of the natural world?”

“Never,” Tat enc encouraged him, taking his too-willing mouth yet another time. “Bless me, melethron, with every glorious point of your reckoning…”


End of Part Seven