It mostly changes.

From black to something... slightly less black.

I wonder if I'm the only one who notices. Then I remember we're dealing with some who are older even than I and I think 'yes. Of course. Of course they notice.' It mostly changes. Around me. From black to something slightly less.

If such a thing can truly have color. If such a thing is a thing that even exists and it isn't all in my mind.

Some people say I've lost my mind, as though it's something so easily misplaced, like a small novel or a handy knife. Others say I've gone mad. And I think 'no, I'm not angry.' Madness implies some great show of emotion, doesn't it? Rocking back and forth and raving. And I'm not insane either. That would require total lack of sanity. Crazy, that's the other. I prefer that one. It can mean so many things, and when called so by a loved one, there's generally at least a hint of affection in it, as though I'm forgiven for being crazy, because it's not an angry crazy or a lost crazy or a completely crazy. Just slightly off-kilter and faintly harmless.

Of course, the others, the ones not so beloved, they would never say so directly, but I have ears and I have friends. I know what they say about the one who was taken and returned, as though I didn't have a choice in the matter. There's always a choice.

I chose to fulfill my obligations in life and I chose to return to it. We all have that choice, all of us who die. The trick is figuring out how to come back. It's a little foggy to me now, like something misty in my memory. So when they ask, I don't answer.

But am I crazy? What does it mean to be such? It is, perhaps, merely a state of distorted observation. But then, I suppose I WOULD see the world differently, having left it behind me and then returned to it unlike any other.

If that is the case, it is everyone else who is crazy, to not see the beauty and goodness all around them. To not see the light. I watched a tree the other day. They say I'm crazy for watching a tree, but perhaps they did not look close enough to see it dancing. Perhaps I'm the only one willing to sit and watch the trees.

Perhaps it was more than a day.

More than a day, yes. Because even though he hates the tall grasses, he waded through and soaked himself up to his thighs to bring me food and tell me to eat. I saw his approach, and as he came near I still thought to myself that it was slightly less black.

Than usual.

"Crazy old one," he called as he came tromping up, slightly less black. "I've brought you food, you insufferable star."

He has odd names for me.

"I had this made especially for the old fool who'll forget it's there and let it sit out in the rain for an hour. It won't get soggy."

I wondered when I would call him on it. "It must be hard as stone," I told him.

"Yes," he answered, "But you won't faint from hunger again if you eat it."

"Why did you bring me food?" I asked him because I wanted to know.

He got all blustery and it became less black, even less than usual. "Because Elrond is too busy and everyone else thinks you're crazy."

"Arwen doesn't think I'm crazy," I pointed out, quite truthfully.

"Arwen is five."

"Arwen knows," I told him and I smiled.

"Knows what?"

"She knows," I assured him.

He stamped his feet and blustered.

"YOU don't think I'm crazy."

He left the plate and frowned and walked away, and it grew black again.

---

He plays chess with me. I don't know why. I play because it's less black around me, but I don't know why he plays. Maybe he knows, too. He knows it's less black.

But he thinks it's just because he wants me to exercise my mind.

Honestly, I don't know why. I always lose, and he's always grumbling at me.

I forget the rules. It's so complicated. Sometimes he has to correct me, but usually I ask. "Is this right?" I say. I always forget.

---

They don't like to give me swords. They think I'm dangerous.

I've never hurt anyone; I'm always in control of my weapons, you have to be.

They don't understand that, that I have control over the blade. They think my mind is elsewhere, as though I left it at home with my whetstone.

I have to be supervised like a child.

I'm new here, but I'm not a child.

Arwen knows. She laughs with me at them, because we know things they don't. He laughs too sometimes, but he tries to hide it. I don't know why; it's always less black when he laughs. Always.

---

He knows I don't like the supervision, and he doesn't think it's necessary either. We indulge them, though. I play with my swords, facing anyone who dares call a match. There aren't many.

But in the night, we go down together, like children out of bed past curfew. He brings his weapon. It's a sword, an old one, when they used to make the hilts as long as the blades. He's deadly with it, just as I am with mine. I use the more modern ones. Two-handed with a narrow blade. It suits me.

We don't have to hold back then. We shutter all the windows, so no one can see. We pretend no one can hear, but they must. All one has to do is walk by and the reverberations of steel on mithril ring louder than our shouts and grunts. It's good then, like before, and I don't have to think much.

I bet he doesn't either, and I bet he thinks it's good too. He needs breaks from thinking. That's why we go down in the night.

And that's when it burns brightest. That's when there's hardly any black left at all. When the world around us is lit by smoldering braziers, all browns and reds in the light when the shutters are closed in the training yard.

I asked why they called it a yard when it was indoors. No one has yet given me an answer.

We like it then, when it's bright in the night with the smoke from the fires and the clang of the metals and nothing that resembles thinking.

---

It mostly changes from black to something less black around me. I honestly don't think he's figured it out, not completely. I'll call him on it when he does.

Until then, I like it when he comes to visit. He doesn't often. Usually when I haven't come out of it in a while and he wants to make sure I'm all right. He doesn't put it like that; he wouldn't. He comes in yelling and carrying on about the Valar-know-what, just because he won't outright say he's worried.

I try to listen, I try! But listening's complicated when it's words. Words are complicated. So mostly I just watch and that's easy. That's especially easy when it's him. I'm a little crazy I suppose, and that's why words are so complicated. But maybe words are just harder to understand because they can mean different things, or he can be saying something with his words when his thinking means something else entirely. And since I think it usually just means he's worried, then I don't hear. But then he figures I'm not listening and he gets blustery again.

But I just watch him, cause even when he's yelling at me, it's less black.

---

I've started to despair of him. Because I'm pretty sure he's figured it out. It mostly changes. He just won't accept it.

But I like to be around him still. And now, for me, it's less black, too, as though we aren't alive at all unless we're together.

I think I've fallen in love with him.

I never understood that expression until now, until I lived it and discovered yes, love – new love – is just like falling.

I scrabble at the edges of things, trying to keep myself upright, but you just can't do it, once you start to fall.

Once you start to fall there's no stopping it. Until you hit the bottom.

I reached a point about two sentences ago when I decided to just let it happen. Cause as I fall, it gets brighter.

I hope he's willing to fall too. Because I do love him, and it would be a sad thing if he wasn't even willing to help me back up.

---

We sit in silence when the mood suits us. He's good at being silent. He sits by the candlelight or on the hearth and he mostly reads. Sometimes I ask him to read aloud simply for the pleasure of listening to his voice, but not this night. This night all is silence. He reads his novels and I watch him do so.

He is beautiful, even if he does not know it, and I dare to think it grows less black everyday, but it mostly changes around me.

---

I'd never gone beyond the Imladrian wall. I worried that I would lose track of time or become lost.

Besides, there was plenty to occupy myself within the House. And he never left either.

But one day he knocked on my door and asked me, "Would you like to go for a ride?"

I couldn't remember the last time I'd been on a horse and I agreed right away.

He took me to the stables where he said there was a new animal. He introduced me to Asfaloth.

I took to the beast right away; I could sense we had something in common.

He said Asfaloth didn't like just anyone, but the horse certainly liked me.

I mounted him and off we went, tearing through the gates and into the forest, beyond the Imladrian wall.

---

It was just like our skirmishes in the yard. We were running; we were racing; we were flying. And we didn't have to think about anything at all. The rush of the wind drowned out the sounds of the world and motion blurred everything around me. I felt so safe.

I only stopped when he did. We dismounted and let the horses wander. He'd brought food. I wasn't surprised; it was the sort of thing he would remember that I would forget. So we sat down in comfy wilderness and ate the fruit and bread.

---

"Are you happy?" he asked me.

"Yes," I told him.

"Are you happier now... than you were before?" he wanted to know.

I answered, "Yes."

"Why?"

"Because," I said, "Fantasy is so much more stable than reality." I smiled. I thought it was funny.

He didn't.

---

In the end, I didn't call him on anything. Because I was no longer sure of the blackness anymore: what the blackness was or what it meant or if it was all in my mind after all. So instead of calling him out, I let myself fall completely.

It happened like this: one morning I woke up and I went about my life, and I realized that everything I saw was simultaneously both brighter and duller than the way I'd seen before. This had been gradual, but I hadn't noticed it until that morning.

And all day it was the same. I realized, that when people talked, I understood them more than I had, and I when I really listened, I understood completely. People still thought I was mad, but they talked to me more and smiled and I realized I had changed. My own blackness had virtually disappeared in the light of my love.

And I made I decision. I wouldn't call him out, I would just let myself fall.

It happened like this:

---

I knocked on his door.

He opened it.

He was surprised, because I had never knocked on his door before. He would, on occasion, deign to seek me out, but I had never sought him. (I never had, because he always seemed to turn up just when I needed him most, though I'd never told him that.)

He was surprised and, at first, worried. "Is everything all right?" he asked.

To my own surprise I answered, "No."

"Come in," he said. He moved away and beckoned me forward. It was late and the firelight from the hearth was the only illumination in his shuttered room. I let my thoughts drift a moment: how beautiful he was, how graceful. Until then, I'd never noticed the physicality of my love. I loved him because he cared for me and took care of me and because he spent time with me and because he was intelligent and witty and silent at all the right times. And now I loved him even more. Was love something that never stopped growing? Surely if it continued at this rate, my heart would burst from it.

And I knew him to be beautiful.

He made me to sit down in a chair before the fireplace and he kneeled beside me and took my hand and looked me in the eyes.

I thought these were all rather promising things.

"What's wrong?" he asked,

"I'm not crazy anymore," I told him.

"I never thought you were," he answered. His voice was very soft. He was usually quiet, but his voice . . . I could only describe it as soft.

"I was, though," I said, quite sure of myself. "I was crazy. When I came back, everything was so alive. I couldn't look away, even though I was blinded by it. Did you know that when I met you, we were both surrounded by blackness?"

He shook his head. He didn't seem to understand.

"Yes," I went on, convinced of it as I always had been. "It's like a shadow. We both had these sad shadows, but the more time we spent together, the more the blackness went away. I noticed it on you first, because I don't often look at myself. I was afraid to. But it affected me too."

He was trying to understand me and I was trying to make sense, but it was hard.

"Like an aura?" he asked.

"Something nearly like an aura," I confirmed, though I wasn't really sure. "Mine's gone completely now though. For me, it was my madness. For you, I think, it was something else. Maybe loneliness. Yes, that sounds right. I suppose everyone has their own blackness, and those were ours. But you made my madness go away. Everything is so much less black now that it's nearly white." I was euphoric. I knew I was right. "And yours is nearly gone too."

"How?" he asked. His eyes were huge and brightly shining in the firelight. There was a certain desperation to the question, and his hands in mine had gone completely still, but very warm.

To my own amazement, I blushed. "I replaced my madness with my love. With love for you."

He gasped and looked away.

"For I long time," I told him, "I thought you were in love with me, only you didn't know it. I can't really see the blackness anymore though, so I can't really tell."

He went silent, and I could feel that his hands were very tense. He didn't want to look at me, so he squinted instead at the chattering fire. I let him. He was thinking; I knew that. He needed to think more than me, or I just thought through things more simply, so I let him. When he'd made a decision, he spoke. "Are you saying . . . ?"

"It's really very simple," I told him. "People try to make love complicated, or it gets that way by itself I suppose, but there's no reason for it. I love you, Erestor." And I kissed the top of his head and gripped his hands tight.

He swallowed hard and kept looking away. Blustering again. He was making things so hard, like people tend to do. Either he felt the same, or he felt differently. I just wanted him to tell me. He hesitantly asked, "I made your darkness go away?"

I'd already said that, but I answered anyway. "Yes, that's it exactly."

Finally, he returned his gaze to me, and it was a tear-filled one. I realized that I was crying too, and I wondered why. He told me, "You did the same for me." He smiled, and it was beautiful. "And you're right. I've loved you for a long time, but I just didn't let myself know it." He kneeled up and hugged me tight, and I held him just as fiercely. "You made the darkness go away, Glorfindel." He understood, the same as me. "And I love you."

"I thought it mostly changed around me, but it was always less black when we were together, because love filled it up with light." I might have a lingering madness, but no one will ever convince me it isn't a good thing. I knew I was right.

We smiled because we were happy and we cried because . . . Well, because we were REALLY happy. And we kissed because we were in love.