TITLE:  Christmas Special: The Sequel
AUTHOR:  Ezra’s Persian Kitty
E-MAIL: ezraspersiankitty@yahoo.com
PAIRING:  Erestor/Glorfindel (others)
RATING:  NC-17
SUMMARY:  Secrets and Someday; Sequel to Christmas Special.
DISCLAIMER:  Not mine.
WARNING:  Talk of death and promiscuity.
NOTES:  I think this is the first time I’ve written a sequel on request.
Good job, on your part, convincing me.  :)  Also, uh, you might as well
throw canon out the window.  I did.

= = = = =

CHRISTMAS SPECIAL: SECRETS


Glorfindel had had a routine.  For that matter, so had Erestor.

But then came a moment.  In the snow.

And there was a confession of love on Glorfindel’s part, and a possibility
of someday on Erestor’s.  They had gone to bed together.  Not as lovers.
Not exactly.  It had been, for them, a matter of comfort and connection.
An acknowledgment of affection, a sign of some union, the beginning of a
new relationship for them.

After that, things between them changed.  And things in Imladris changed,
for such a great change had overcome Erestor.  No longer did he shout at
the children who ran through the halls, criticize his underlings, glare so
mercilessly.  No longer did he haunt the library’s archives by day, nor
disappear at night.  No longer did he strike fear into the hearts of all he
met.  And no longer was his face pale as snow, but colored as though
emotion stirred there.  Erestor, somehow, had internalized from the world.
His focus had turned from outward to inward.  He was quiet but not
belligerently so.  He was . . . different.

Glorfindel had not appeared to change so much, though he might have
been a bit jollier.  A bit quicker to smile, slower to anger.  He was,
undeniably, happy.

Every night, the same thing happened.  At the end of the day, Erestor
knocked on Glorfindel’s door, and Glorfindel let him in.  Glorfindel’s bed
became their bed.  They were never intimate.  They did not kiss.  They did
not speak of love.  They lay in bed together, and it was good.

= = = = =

Glorfindel, for a long time, for over a year, made not a sign of complaint.
He did not want to encroach on Erestor’s feelings.  He truly did not mind
waiting for Someday.  But he would join Erestor for meals, or creep into
his office.  And he would be content to sit and to stare with unconcealed
devotion.  In bed, he would lovingly wrap strong arms about the dark Elf
and tell him, “I am glad to have you here,” or something of the like.  He
always made an effort to show that he definitely wanted Erestor in his life.

But in those months of sitting and staring, staring at shadow-dark eyes and
lily-white skin and coral-pale lips, Glorfindel began to hunger.  Not madly
or passionately, not lustfully, not forcefully.  It was only a little 
hunger, as
of a man who is not starved, but only craves dessert.  He would stare at
Erestor’s mouth, and want.

And so, one day, as they sat together on a balcony bench overlooking the
twilit Valley, each reading a book of their own choosing, Glorfindel
decided to speak.  He did not do so all at once, but rather would close his
book, open it again, set it aside and take it up again, before finally 
Erestor
said, without raising his eyes from his own pages, “Speak, Glorfindel.  Do
not fidget so.  I cannot evict you from the balcony, nor am I apt to leave,
whatever you might say.”

Glorfindel raised his brows and when Erestor finally looked up to meet his
wide, blue gaze, Glorfindel smiled.  When he spoke, saying just what was
on his mind, his voice still fidgeted a bit.  “Erestor, oftentimes I wish to
kiss you, but I am wary of intruding where I might make you
uncomfortable; I just wanted you to know.”

Erestor laid aside his own book and answered, “Glorfindel, if ever you
want to kiss me, then ask, and I shall tell you whether you would be
welcome or not.”

At this, Glorfindel smiled again.  “All right.  But I must also tell you 
this:
that if ever, EVER, you want to kiss me, you are welcome to do so and
need no permission, for you already have it.  Though if you feel the need
to ask, then of course you may do so.”

Erestor grinned at this lengthy, carefully considered speech.  “Very well
then.  May I kiss you, Glorfindel?”

Glorfindel’s smile lit up his face like the sun shone there and he
practically bounced in his seat with excitement.  “With pleasure, you are
welcome to kiss me, Erestor!”

Then, Erestor’s pale hand rose to Glorfindel’s cheek, and he caressed the
warm skin there, looking deep into trusting blue eyes.

Glorfindel patiently waited.  This was Erestor’s kiss, to do with as he
pleased.  And he was gentle about it, and slow.  Glorfindel was not
surprised.  But he was still undoubtedly elated when Erestor’s nervous lips
covered his, a cautious and curious and delightful exploration of teasing
nips and sweet suckling.

= = = = =

Later, Glorfindel was sure to add much kissing to their repertoire of gentle
conversing and silent communion.  But never in the bedroom did he
approach Erestor in such a manner.  He had made a statement, an oath, he
thought.  In the very beginning, he had said, “This bed is for sleeping.”
He maintained that thought forever.

This bed, Glorfindel’s bed, was for sleeping.  No fear, nor terror here.
Only sleep.

= = = = =

Years passed.  Glorfindel grew to recognize the differences in Erestor’s
smiles.  What had once been a single, unfamiliar expression became sweet
or secretive or devious or amused or loving.  Kisses, too, had their
individual meanings, turning playful or passionate in turns.  One
memorable evening was spent doing little aside from trading tempting
kisses.

Still, Glorfindel never tried anything more.  He could see Erestor was not
ready, he could tell.  And so he trained his own body, cooled his own
rousing lust, basking solely in the unique joys of love.

As Erestor and Glorfindel slowly worked to merge their lives together,
they each learned to accept their own joys, to accept the thrill of a shared
life, to accept what came with the gives and takes.

= = = = =

Every night, the same thing happened.  At the end of the day, Erestor
knocked on Glorfindel’s door, and Glorfindel let him in.  Glorfindel’s bed
had become their bed.  They were never intimate there.  They did not kiss
there.  They did not speak of love there.  They lay in bed together, and it
was good.

But then one night, Erestor would not enter.  At the threshold to the
bedroom, he stopped.  He merely looked with cold, black eyes at
Glorfindel, hiding something.  “I must sleep in my own bed tonight,
Glorfindel.”

Gone cold with shock, the golden Elf hung upon the word ‘tonight,’
desperately believing that this was temporary, a one-time occurrence, an
anomaly.  He longed to grab Erestor’s hand and drag him in, to protest and
plead, at least to question, beg an explanation.  But then Glorfindel told
himself he had known this would not be easy, this would not be a simple
path that lay before them, this would not be anything resembling easy, and
he had to have known that Erestor would need his own time, his own
space to deal with these changes.  So Glorfindel smiled through the
threatening tears and told Erestor only, “I will miss you.”

= = = = =

For the first night in over three years, Glorfindel lay in his bed alone.  
And
he was miserable.

= = = = =

The next day, Erestor was wary, as though he expected Glorfindel to lash
out or hold some grudge, but Glorfindel appeared properly attired for the
dining hall for breakfast, and greeted Erestor with his usual smile.

Their day may have been a little strained, but it was nothing unexpected
after such a sudden rupture in their routine.  And when dinner was done
and nighttime fell, Erestor followed Glorfindel to his bedroom as usual.

But as soon as they reached the door, Erestor did the same thing.  He
halted at the doorsill.  He looked to the floor, to the wall, to anywhere 
but
Glorfindel’s tremulous blue eyes, and said, “I cannot sleep here tonight,
Glorfindel.  I am sorry.”

Again, Glorfindel was overcome by instinctual urges to do everything in
his persuasive power to keep Erestor with him, in his room, in his bed.
But he knew that would not be right, that Erestor truly held no obligations
to him, and that he might very well need this time apart.  Lying only a
little, Glorfindel answered, “I understand.”  He smiled, or tried to, and
refused to cry.  He said, “I will miss you.”  And that was the utter truth.

= = = = =

Again, Glorfindel slept in his bed alone.  And he felt wretched.

= = = = =

The following day was harder for them.  The tenseness that had grown
remained and deepened.  Smiles did not come so easily, and no kisses
passed between them.

That night, Erestor repeated his avowal.  “I cannot be with you tonight,
Glorfindel.”

And Glorfindel, beginning to fear that Erestor was drawing permanently
away from him, still maintained his inner strength, and said only, “I will
miss you.”  This time, he did not fight the weeping.

= = = = =

His sheets, that night, were salted with tears.  He did not sleep.  He 
feared
for what he had accepted to be his future.  He feared it would not be.

= = = = =

But the next night, as he sat waiting in his room, there was a knock on the
door and Erestor walked in before Glorfindel could even answer.  Erestor
weakly smiled and changed into his sleeping clothes.  When Glorfindel
still did not react, Erestor crawled under the covers and lay waiting,
watching the golden Elf.

Glorfindel dove into the bed and pulled him close.  “By Elbereth, I missed
you!” he declared into a face full of silky black hair.  “I thought . . . Oh
Erestor, I missed you!  I love you, you know?  I love you.”

And Erestor let him say it.  And if Glorfindel’s embrace that night was
slightly stifling, then Erestor easily forgave him for it.

= = = = =

Routine resumed.

But, as the years cycled their seasons, there were nights when Erestor
would say, “I cannot sleep here tonight,” and Glorfindel would answer, “I
will miss you.”  But never did the occasion arise where Erestor would
leave for more than a night, and Glorfindel never complained.

In a place such as Imladris, it seems that people ought to have noticed
what was happening between the two, but they did not.  People were
curious, true, but they did not pry.  Glorfindel had few friends and Erestor
had none, so they had nothing to explain.  Perhaps the only one who took
a vested interest in what passed between them was their Lord.  But even
Elrond did not dare interrupt the delicate balance growing there.  He only
watched.

= = = = =

One morning, as Glorfindel sat alone before his mirror (Erestor always
rose very early to depart his room in the mornings), there was a knock
upon the door.  Glorfindel twisted with difficulty, with his arms oddly
coiled about his neck in an effort to braid his hair, to face the door.
Cheerful as always (annoyingly so, some might call it) he hollered, “Come
on in!”

Erestor opened the door.  He was wearing, for the first time in Glorfindel’s
memory, leggings and a tunic, with tall boots, and he had a bag slung over
his shoulder.  His eyes were dark and expressionless as the moment they
had met and in his hand, Erestor held a slim book.

Slowly, Glorfindel’s arms dropped to his sides and his golden hair fell
streaming to either side of his face in a short-lived waterfall.  “Erestor,”
his voice wavered, whispering full of trepidation, “why are you in
traveling clothes?  Why have you packed your things?”

Erestor’s voice was cold.  “I need time away from you.  I am going with
Arwen to visit Lothlorien for a time.  Do not worry; I will be back.”

Glorfindel found that his throat was choked with fright and he could not
speak.  He watched with wide blue eyes as Erestor handed out the thin
book.  “My secrets are here.”  Glorfindel took the narrow journal in a
shaking hand.  Erestor hitched the bag further up onto his back.  His dark
eyes remained mysterious; Glorfindel could not read them.  “Please do not
open it ‘til you know I am gone; then we will both of us take the time for
thinking.”

Everything within Glorfindel rebelled, saying that this wasn’t right, that
Erestor couldn’t possibly be leaving him, not just out of the blue like 
this.
Glorfindel barely restrained himself from leaping to his feet, from
grabbing hold of Erestor and locking him in this room so that he could
never threaten to leave again.  But still some strength must have been in
him, for Glorfindel only held the book tight in both hands and said, as
tears flowed, “I will miss you.”

= = = = =

Glorfindel stood at his window, holding to Erestor’s wishes.  He watched
the escort party below, Arwen and Erestor among them.  He watched them
set off and when the last of the troupe finally disappeared through the 
gate,
Glorfindel returned to the vanity to sit on his stool, open the book, and
read.


~*~*~*~*~*~

Glorfindel.  These are my secrets.  I entrust them to you.

I was the son of a cooper.  I was the sixth child, but the first son.  I
remember my life very clearly then, as though a child’s life is simpler, as
though I do not want to remember the things that came after.  And that
sounds just about right.

I was the son of a cooper.  My first memories are of sitting upon the floor
of my father’s workshop.  The scent of the newly hewn wood surrounded
me, embraced me.  The rhythmic scrape-scrape of the file and the wooden
churning of the awl.  The sawdust upon the floor like a carpet of tawny-
white, auburn-gold, or brown dun.  The barrels stacked in rows against the
wall.  My father’s sweat, his straight hair, his height and his strength.  I
remember far more clearly the sight of his boots than the sight of his face.
He always wore red boots, though no other colors.  Only grays and
browns.

I was the son of a cooper.  My first toys were the amazing spiral shards of
wood that fell like snow from my father’s hands as he shaped the timber.
The delicate curls lay in clumps about me and I would test their strength,
stretching each one until it broke, or curl them up inside one another or
mash them to dust.

My first lullabies were the songs my father sang as he worked, songs sung
by carpenters, cartwrights, and coopers the world over, songs of trees and
death and wood and art.  Songs of love, the love of one’s craft.  These
songs he sang over and over as he made the barrels that would house the
wine, port, ale, and other goods of the kingdom.  I remember how he used
to test each one.  After binding it with the huge, flat metal rings, he 
would
reach inside to pound reeds of willow in the cracks, and smooth a resin
over the whole when done.  When the resin had dried to a hard, smooth
surface, he would fill the barrel with water and let it sit overnight.

Those are my first memories, but my only memories of my father.  The
story, I am told, goes like this:

Every month, the Elves who labored in our forest as lumberjacks would
drive their wagons by our house to deliver my father’s portion of lumber,
but he was keen to experiment with a new breed of tree, so he went
walking in the woods himself, with an axe in his hand.  He should have
known better really, than to be in the woods by himself intending to fell a
tree.  But many people could, and did, tell me of how happy the cooper
had been to have finally fathered a son.  He loved his daughters well, no
doubt, but every father longs for a son, especially fathers who have a
legacy to pass on, and my father’s legacy to me would be our trade, the
trade of a cooper.  Babe though I was, I think even I understood that, as I
sat playing with the heavy twisting clamps I was not yet strong enough to
lift.

But my father went out to the woods alone that day, perhaps sidetracked
with his head full of thoughts of his son, who knows?

I do not, for he died that day.

An arrow, the king’s arrow, pieced his eye in a tragic hunting accident that
struck my father dead.

It is believed that he was mistaken for a deer, for his hair is dark like 
mine
and rare among our fair-haired people.  The king’s men brought the body
back and a pyre was erected on the Burning Field near the river.  I do not
remember it.

I remember crawling across the frosted ground from the kitchen to my
father’s workshop and finding it dark and empty.

My father was a cooper, but I would not be.

I grew up in the Greenwood.  I grew up in the Greenwood when that name
still fit it, when there were no evil, poisonous beasts to foul our land, 
when
our land was still truly green.  The caves that now house the palace and
too many homes were vacant and mysterious then.  We lived close to the
land, in low cottages.  And the King and his family had great rolling
Houses with tall limestone columns and heavy curving architecture.  I
grew up in what was considered the soul of the Greenwood.  Those royal
houses and the great courtyard there and the town square: they were the
heart, the heart of the Greenwood.  And the Wood itself, that was the
body.  But surrounding the small merchants’ city that ringed the town
square were the rolling green fields of the farmers.

The farms that fed the people of the Greenwood were lands that had been
slowly, carefully cleared of the forests and turned with tender precision to
raise the wheat and corn and rice that would be made the staples of our
food.  There, in the countryside of my home, fields of green were carpets
of cabbages.  Dark brown soil held the potato crop.  Sprouts of vegetation
would become barrels of carrots, and miles of roped poles drooped heavy
with the vines for our wines.

My father’s workshop and our home were situated just at the edge of one
of these fields.  It was a field of corn.  This field belonged to my 
father’s
brother, and he willingly helped to care for my mother and her children.

I remember, when I was quite young, being tied into a sling about my
mother’s hip.  I went with her everywhere for several years.  But as soon
as I was deemed old enough to wonder about on my own . . . Well.  You
can be certain I did.  I got into everything.  I got into our pot of flour 
and
covered everything with it, especially my sisters.  I stole cookies from the
cupboard at every chance.  I played after every rainfall in the mud and
pulled down stalks of corn to make cones of green, like tents to hide in.  A
child’s duties on a farm were many, though, and I worked hard, even then.
Since my hands could perform the task, I’ve been husking corn.  And in
the house, churning better, shelling peas, pealing potatoes, scrubbing
floors, and laundering the clothes.  I did it all and I loved it.  
Sometimes,
my sisters complained about the chores, but I never could.  It was as
though our family was a living, breathing unit, one whole made up of
seven individuals.

I did not know at the time of the great lengths my mother went to for me.
She accosted every woodworker in the Greenwood, looking for a master to
apprentice me off to.  But her way was difficult.  I was too young to have
any experience, and quickly getting older.  And all the craftsmen had their
own sons, you see, often more than one.  They would not take on a boy to
whom they held no obligation.  And one of those young Elves, fifty years
my senior, married my eldest sister and moved into my father’s workshop.
They built their own cottage on the other side of it, but he was still young
and making his own way.  He would not take his brother-in-law as
apprentice.

And so my destiny became clear.  I would be a laborer on my uncle’s
farm.  I did not have a problem with that.  I thought it was bound to be
jolly good fun.  And, for me, it was.

Life, still, was not easy though.  No, not for a family of women without a
breadwinner.  Without the trade of my father, we had no income.  My
father’s brother and sister’s husband did what they could for us.  But 
still,
in comparison to most stable families, we were having a rough time of it.
We never went hungry, that was for sure.  But some things, we simply had
to do without.

For example, I was a young boy, a growing Elfling.  Why bother spending
money on cloth or clothes that will soon be outgrown and unusable?
There was no good reason.  Without any other boys my age in the near
family, the solution was simple.  I wore my sisters’ old clothes.

I hardly interacted with anyone but my mother and sisters; to me it was
nothing.  Clothing was clothing, and I was young enough that I ran about
naked half the time anyway.

But the years carried on, swiftly in fact, and I grew older.  I was still a
boy, and growing conscious enough of society to know that boys did not
wear dresses.  For whatever reason, this still did not bother me.  After 
all,
we all have bodies and we all wear clothes.  I’d seen the grand robes of
great Elves on splendid horses traveling the roads past our lands.  How
different is a frock from a robe?

Quite different, I was to find out.

After living in a house where my mother only vaguely apologized for not
having other clothes to give me and where all my siblings fondly called
me ‘little sister’, I stepped into the role, finally, of youngest sister.  
In our
family, the youngest child had always been charged with one of the more
energetic tasks: the unexpected trips to market.  When we unpredictably
ran short of something, it would be their job to run the hike to market.
Market lay twelve fields up a slight incline from our home.  We did not
keep horses.

My first trips to market had been on my mother’s hip every third Saturday,
and later I walked with my tall sisters crowded around me.  Now, for the
first time, I made the journey myself.

I cannot tell you how proud I was, deemed old enough to go to market
myself.  One failing of our family was that we kept few animals.  Only a
few chickens, for eggs and occasionally meat.  Supplies had run low, and
none of my sisters had ever been trained to poach, even if they were old
enough now to do so.  My uncle had given us enough, too much my
mother said.  And so I went to market, head held high and feet quick to
march, my pockets full of coppers and in search of meat for that day’s
dinner, and salt to stock the shelves.

The corn was tall on either side of the road for some time, and grew
shorter as stands of trees separated the corn from the wheat, the wheat
from the barley, the barley from the cabbage.

I sang to myself as I walked the road, meeting hardly anyone on my
journey.  But in the end, but two fields before the trees ended and the city
began, I met a bit more of my destiny.  Three boys were on the road, little
older than myself.  I recognized them at once; they were the sons of a
nearby farmer, who grew grain for the mill.  Like myself, they looked
forward to lives of hard labor and little else.

But boys at that age are impulsive, and as soon as they saw me, their
minds went to work.  The eldest, whose name I knew was Dinilion, halted
with his brothers.  They stopped, watching me approach.  My steps might
have slowed, but I never felt truly intimidated.  Finally, as I drew near, 
he
called out “Hey look, a little orphan girl on her way to market!  You must
be youngest of the bunch; haven’t seen you.  Must be buried in the pack
that comes crawling in on Saturdays!  Whutcha doing without yer brat
sisters to protect you?”

Well, I planted my fists on my hips and gave him a telling-to.  “We aren’t
orphans!” I shouted angrily.  “Our mother takes care of us!  And I don’t
need protection on this road, you big bully!”  And then I called them some
other names that I had overheard my cousins using as they worked the
field.

As you might imagine, they certainly weren’t happy with that.  Dinilion,
impulsive as I would learn he always was, ran straight at me and with a
firm push to my chest, sent me sprawling to the road.  “You show respect
to elders and to men, little slut!  When you’re a couple years older, I’ll
spread your legs and teach you a lesson!”

Frankly, I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about.  But I knew it was
mean.  I stood up, brushed off my red skirts, rolled up my red sleeves, and
gave him a hollering.  “You uncouth swine!” I cried.  My mother always
said I’d had a way with words.  “How dare you push me!  You’re no better
than a filthy cur, pushing me about.  As for elders, only those who respect
me earn my respect in turn, and as for men, I’m as much a boy as you
are!”

Maybe something shown in my eye, the glint of a challenge recognizable
to all boys, for they all three of them took a step back and stared at me in
shock.

That only lasted so long, however.

Three smiles came over three dirt-stained faces.  Before his brothers could
say anything, Dinilion asked me, “What’s your name, then?”

I told him.

Maybe I shouldn’t have.

They passed me by, just like that, and didn’t look back.  As soon as they
seemed a safe distance from me, they turned back around and Dinilion
shouted:

A boy in a dress
What a mess
When he’s in distress
He’ll just give a yell
A prince will come
But then turn numb
Instead of a lass
He’ll save a lad
And then go mad

Not very witty, but quite a head for rhyme had Dinilion.

And to this day, I curse myself for wearing a red dress.  Dinilion started
up, and his brothers soon followed.  Chanting, over and over, “Scarlet
Harlot!  Scarlet Harlot!”  They made it rhyme, in high-pitched, ringing,
rhythmic voices, “Scarlet Harlot!  Scarlet Harlot!”

I turned my back on them, and held my head high.  But all the way to
market, their cries of Scarlet Harlot rang in my head; I could not rid
myself of the horrid rhyme.

I went about my business and returned home.  But in a house such as ours,
my depression went unnoticed.

I soon overcame it, though, and destiny fated another meeting for me, to
counter my association with Dinilion.

Young enough that only a portion of my day was taken up with chores, I
slipped out of the house and into the cornfields.  It was my favorite time 
of
year, when the corn was high, but not yet harvested.  Heavy ears drooped
from strong green stalks, and I ran the rows of the field, losing myself in 
a
race with no one.  I whispered a child’s secrets to the corn, as though I
could commune with it.  Sometimes I fancied I could.

In the end, I turned south, to the southern end of the field, to the little
stretch of forest that divided my uncle’s corn from our neighbor’s rice.  In
this particular area, a stream ran through, and I crawled my careful way
down the stony incline to the bottom, where wildflowers grew in
abundance from the rocky bed.  The cool stream meandered and the trees
were high and thin above, casting great patches of golden sunlight down
into my secret haven.

I sat upon my favorite rock.  It was flat and I could dangle my legs into 
the
water if I so chose, and the flowers grew in a half a ring about me, their
sweet green vines creeping toward me with their little tendrils.  That
particular day, I tucked my feet under me and arranged my white skirts
about me.  The dress was old and worn, but new to me, so not quite yet
dirty.  In fact, it was the first day I had worn it.  Although it wasn’t 
silk, it
was smooth as, and I thought it very comfortable.  I undid the long braid
that kept my hair halfway free of tangles.  I ran my fingers through it and
picked a few stray weeds to plait into the hair behind my ears, as I’d seen
my sisters do.

“Hey!  Little girl!  What’s your name?”

I suppose anyone would have thought me a maiden.

Taken by surprise, I momentarily looked up in shock, my hands on my
cheeks.

A boy stood upon the rise opposing me.  He ran down the slope, silver hair
in a braid behind him.  He stood, barefoot like I was, just beside the 
stream
and looked at me. “Oh, I’m Elstras,” he added, as an afterthought.
“You’re one of my neighbors, aren’t you?  The corn daughters?”

I stood, self-consciously plucking the flowers from my hair.  “Yes,” I told
him, “But I’m not a girl.”

He did not, of course, believe me.  “You look like one,” he told me.

I had to admit that I did.  I shrugged my shoulders.  “I’ll grow up quick.
When I do, it’ll be worth it to get proper clothes for me.  Until then, I 
wear
my sisters’.”

He seemed unimpressed.  “Why don’t you get your mama to alter them?”

“She’s got better things to be doing.”  I was very defensive of my mother.
I suppose all boys are.  “I don’t mind the dresses.”

He smiled at me.  “I bet you don’t have any friends.”

I was confused.  “I have sisters,” I pointed out.

“So do I,” he told me, and then added with a laugh, “It’s NOT the same.”
He looked me up and down, and then plodded across the stream.  It was
neither very deep nor wide.  He stepped up upon the stone to look me in
the eye.  He was shorter than I, and younger.  He was looking at my skirts.
“Are you SURE you’re a boy?”

I scowled.  “Of course.”

It seemed he was going to question me further, but finally he decided,
“Okay.”  He eyed me up and down one last time.  Then said, “Wanna
play?”

It had never occurred to me that I might enjoy playing with other children.
I had quite a bit of fun by myself, occasionally I played with my youngest
sisters, and I also found amusement in my chores.  All the same, I
answered, “Sure.”  I was always up for a bit of fun.

And after that, Elstras and I had every kind of fun you can imagine.  As
much trouble as I had got into as a toddler, the two of us got into more.
We ran amuck in the countryside.  We journeyed to what I thought were
amazing places, confined as I had long been to the cornfield and my
uncle’s barn.  Elstras took me to see the mill, the winery, the granary, the
distillery, and the great underground grain stores.

In turn, I took him to the market.  Elstras had never been in the city, and 
so
I introduced him to the wonders of the pastry shops, the butcheries, the
fisherman’s wharf (which wasn’t exactly a wharf, since we only had a
river), the flower sellers, the candle makers, and the tavern where you
could get two mugs of cider for a copper, which we did.

It was not long before Elstras and I ran into Dinilion and his brothers.

There was to be a barn-raising two fields over (which was how country
children measured all distances) and boys like us were expected to keep
the men supplied with water and cider.  Elstras, by virtue of his mother’s
soft heart, had leant me some clothes.  After living in dresses, the 
breeches
and shirt that were too short for me were quite a change, but -- on this
occasion -- a welcome one.

We arrived just before sunrise with my eldest unmarried sister, who had
brought two baskets full of sweet things she had baked and was hoping to
catch the eye of one of the farmer’s sons.  I knew which one.  He was just
her age and the eldest and would inherit a portion of his father’s wheat
field.  He was tall and strong and gifted with red hair.  I’d never seen an
Elf with red hair.  Even though people marveled at my own ebony locks, it
was my own hair and I thought nothing of it.  That, however, was how
Dinilion finally recognized me.

Not long after the raising began, a cried trio of “Scarlet Harlot” rang out
above the heads of all, and my face went red.

Elstras did not understand at first, merely turning his head and trying to
peer through the crowd.  “What’s Dinilion all in a bother about now?”

In hushed tones, I related to Elstras my first and only encounter with the
brothers, who, like Elstras and my mother and most in our land, were
gifted with that misty silver hair.

Elstras fumed.  “Bastard.  Just like him, too.”  He shook his silver head
and told me, “Never mind him.  He’ll pick on anyone shorter than he is,
just because he has a chance to work in the mill.  He’s fooling himself
though.  He’s gonna be a farmhand all his life, just like us.  You wait and
see.”

“All the same, I’d just as soon not run into him here.”

Elstras agreed, and we determined to stay on the opposite side of the barn
site as the three brothers.

Dinilion was smart enough to keep off my back when so many people
were present, people who would at least take objective interest in someone
being pummeled.

But after the raising was complete, when my dark-haired sister was sitting
under a tree with the fire-haired wheat son, and the barn stood nearly
complete before us, and the sun was setting in the west, Elstras and I left
with the masses to return home.

Halfway to home, alone on the road, we were stopped.  Dinilion jumped
down from an overhanging tree before us, and his brothers appeared
behind us.  “Well, Scarlet Harlot.  Seems you got yourself a boyfriend.
Este Elstras.”  He chuckled.

“You think yourself quite a wit,” I said.  I turned to Elstras to say, 
“Quite
fitting; it seems they’ve one wit between three brothers.”

Dinilion fumed.  “I can hardly decide if your taste in clothing has
improved.”  He finally called me by my given name.

I smiled.  “He must be shamed,” I told Elstras, though I leveled my stare at
the flaxen-haired mill son, elder and taller than the two of us.  “I think 
he
had a crush on me when I was dressed as a girl.”  Elstras giggled.

Dinilion reddened and stuttered.  “Twerp!”

“Is that the best you can do?” I easily teased.  “Why, you’re all bluff and
bluster, Dinilion.  Know what that means?  All bark and no bite.  Like a
tame wolf.”

“And you’re a boy who wears dresses; what does that say about you?”

I only laughed at him; Dinilion didn’t bother me.  “Whatever you want it
to!” I told him.  “Whatever you wish to make of it.”  Then, I grabbed
Elstras’ hand and we skipped off past the bewildered youth for home.

Elstras seemed impressed that I had somehow avoided all physical
contact.  “Dinilion loves nothing better than a good brawl!” he told me
safe in the shadowed rows of my uncle’s cornfield, the moon and stars
guiding our dawdling feet.

“We’re too young to brawl,” I thought aloud.  “What’s he gonna do,
gimme a black eye?  I think I can take it.”

“Why DIDN’T he attack us?”

“Because he doesn’t know what to think of me; I’m too different.  And I
confused him.  But I don’t think I’ll manage to do it again.”

And I was right.

Two weeks later, I was sitting up on the kitchen counter, my dark-haired
sister dabbing at my face with water and puckweed.  “I never thought I’d
see the day,” was the beginning of the hour-long lecture that ended in,
“You’ll be cleaning yourself up next time!”

I didn’t doubt it.  Though I was privately very proud of my battle scars.
Elstras and I had got into a rumble with Dinilion and his brothers, whose
names I learned were Lathor and Burren.  The scrap rolled us into a patch
of thorns, and you can imagine what we looked like after that.  For a
scuffle of two on three, I’d say we walked away all pretty even.  My face
and hands were covered in tiny cuts; I’d a split lip and sported a greenish-
colored black eye.  Proud I was, yes, very proud.  Of the five of us, I was
probably best off as well.  I’d been wearing a dress, which -- though
hindered my movement -- protected against the worst of the stickers.

And when my mother attempted to give me a second sermon on fighting, I
was ready.  “But mom,” said I in my most innocent voice, “you try being a
boy my age who wears dresses!  What was I supposed to do?  Wave a
hankie and let Elstras defend me?”

Not only did I not get a lecture, but she laughed and gave me a kerchief
bound up with cookies to take over to Elstras.

And three days later, I had my very own outfit of well-fitting trousers and
tunic.  Complete with one of my father’s belts, which I had to wrap around
my waist twice.

That, however, was not my last fight with the mill sons.  But every time, I
would just pick myself up, dust myself off, and go on my way.
Sometimes I didn’t even bother to go home; I’d just get a telling off
anyway.

Still, my family was not impressed.  It didn’t bother me, for I could
understand.  They were women after all.  They just didn’t appreciate a
boy’s need to tussle.

I bid a final farewell to the dresses that I’d grown up in.  They’d served
their purpose, but I was done with them now, growing steadily taller,
though Elstras had long outstripped me in height.  I would soon become a
man.

And the following year, Elstras and I joined the harvesters.  This meant
that as the fields around us ripened, we moved in turns to harvest each
crop.  Our harvest range covered over a dozen fields, mostly west of our
cornfield, and five different crops.

I’d never experienced anything like it.  I’d never worked so hard in my
life.  I picked and plucked and lifted and scythed and carried and hauled
and dug and pulled until my muscles screamed and my body ached and
every night I would fall dead onto my pillow with the setting of the sun.
I’d never been so happy.

Working the fields was a race against time.  And a race against Elstras,
who worked beside me.  And -- to our horror -- Dinilion, Lathor, and
Burren lived close enough to be part of our team as well.  We never let our
rivalries interfere with our work, however.  The five of us once worked
together as a team over an acre of wheat in less than a day.  We were
highly praised and rewarded.  We came to an unspoken agreement that
competition this way was a whole lot better than duking it out in the dusty
roads and bramble patches.

One day, the first day of planting five years later, I discovered that I fit
into my father’s boots, and his old clothes as well.  And so I wore my
father’s red boots, fondly remembering the sight of them when I had been
a babe.

So, we grew up together.  Elstras, Dinilion, Lathor, Burren, and I.  There
were others our age who we associated with, who we organized games
with, but the five of us were close.  After each harvesting, we worked
together assembling the great field feasts that took place in the empty
countryside.  We battened down each others’ barns and homes for the
short Greenwood winters.  We bent over the endless stretches of earth
together when the time came to sow, and swam together in the river when
the sun was high and lazy.

We grew strong together.  We teased and played and worked together.
And Dinilion and I, we still tossed insults.  And Elstras and I, we still 
had
our own time in the tiny valley between our homes, where yellow and
purple flowers still grew upon the rocks.

And when our bodies awakened, Elstras and I loved together.  As though
it were the most natural thing for two male bodies to entwine as one in
such devoted comfort.  For us, it was.

I remember that first sweetness, that first mutual relief.  It was in the
shadow of my father’s old workshop we first kissed.  It was in the shade of
the tall corn we first touched one another.  It was in that little valley I 
first
took him in my mouth.  And it was in the loft of my uncle’s barn he first
entered me.

And so, Glorfindel, you see, I lied to you.  “I have only ever shared my
bed with books and virgin moonlight.”  It could not have been further
from the truth.

I don’t think I can put words to that thrill, that amazing indescribable
sensation of taking him inside me, becoming one and sharing this ecstasy,
and then letting go.

I wanted to do it again and again.  He called me insatiable.

I wore him out.

We reveled in life, he and I.  But I doubted that anyone loved the pure
thrills of life as much as I did.  Every waking moment was so full that I
never dreamed of ever wanting anything more.  I loved to play.  I had
learned that at a young age.  I loved to work; I knew that too.  And Elstras
taught me that I loved to have sex.

Years passed and the seasons maintained their cycles, and so did we.
Harvesting days were just that, stretching our sore muscles to the limit
under the beat of the sun or in pouring rain, and sleeping like stone
through the night.  Feast days were full of preparation.  Sowing time was
nothing but just that.  And there were still days spent rollicking in the
fields with the mill sons.

But then Elstras and I had our other time.  In the high summer, while the
green things grew.  And in the short, dead winter, when the fires never
went out.  Those were the times when we might lock ourselves away for
days, doing nothing but discovering the joys of our bodies together.

Then came the day that defined my life.

It was true that I loved sex, that I could have kept going long after 
Elstras
was spent.  It was true that I loved to tease him, laying there nude and
stroking myself and gazing unrepentantly at him.  It was true that we
snuck off to my uncle’s barn loft to make love when duties were light and
the noon sun was high.

It was no oddity, therefore, that one hot summer day found us lazily
thrusting together in an old pile of blankets in the barn’s loft.

When Elstras finally came, he let out only a soft sigh, my body skillfully
milking him.  He rolled off and to the side, for the loft was hot, made
hotter by the sun streaming in open windows, which we had hoped would
tempt in a breeze.  We lay there, comfortably close but not touching,
sweating and breathing hard, and basking in the overall deliciousness of it.

Maybe we drowsed.

At any rate, we were taken off guard when Dinilion popped his head up
over the edge of the loft.  “. . . didn’t answer me, but I could have sworn 
I
saw you two head in here . . .”

His leaf green eyes grew round.

No one could have mistaken the scene for anything other than it was.

I smiled at Dinilion.

What else was I do to, really?

Perturbed, he turned his hopeful gaze to Elstras, who lay tanned and tall
beside me.  He glanced at me and then downward, as if to say ‘close your
legs.’  I shook my head, as if to say ‘no way.’

We understood one another far too well.

In the end, Elstras gestured Dinilion forward with a jerk of his head.
Dinilion slowly acceded, climbing the rest of the way to stand near our
feet, looking down at us.

I’d always admired Dinilion in a distant sort of way.  But lust-crazed as I
was, I finally noted the pure godliness of his form.  Unlike the rest of us,
he had grown not only tall, but broad, a massive figure of an Elf, all hard
muscle, packed into tree trunk thighs, rock hard chest, and muscle-corded
arms.  My smile grew.  How could I have ever failed to notice?  And with
that fall of classic Greenwood silver hair and eyes the color of a summer
forest?

And I could tell that the sight of me did not leave him unaffected.  He was
far too tense.  I made an effort to open my legs further.  I touched myself
shamelessly, one hand stroking myself to hardness, the other teasing a
tightening nipple.  “What was that you first said to me, Dinilion?”  I
slurred his name delectably.  “‘Respect your elders, little slut.  When
you’re a couple years older . . .’”

“‘I’ll spread your legs and teach you a lesson,’” he remembered that
forever-ago day on the road, eying me with interest.  “You don’t seem to
need any lessons, but you sure paint a tempting picture.”

I glanced at Elstras.  He was amused to the point of having to hide his
smiles in false yawns.

“I think wearing dresses messed him up,” I heard young Burren (I would
always call him young Burren, though he was older than I) whispering to
tall Lathor (who was indeed the tallest of the mill sons).

They, of course, had followed their brother.  And two sets of pale green
eyes were peering over the edge of the loft as they stood beside one
another on the ladder.  I couldn’t see their mouths, only two giant pairs of
eyes framed by silver hair.  I snorted and rolled my eyes and Elstras
finally let out the guffawing laughter he’d been holding back.

I can only imagine the way my eyes lit up.  Elstras always said I got this
little twinkle when I knew I was about to get laid, and that my eyes turned
black at the point of ecstasy.  “Hey Dinilion.  Why don’t we give your
brothers a demonstration?”

He did not complain and, in fact, began to undress, rolling those great
shoulders as he removed his shirt.  “A demonstration of what?”

“Of what they get to do with me when you’re done.”

That lifted Dinilion’s eyebrows.

I got my own chance to raise my eyebrows when he removed his trousers.

Thankfully, he started out slow; he was a lot bigger than Elstras.  But then
once we found our rhythm, there was nothing like it.  As he pounded me
into the straw-strewn floor, I suddenly recognized the possibility that not
only was each lovemaking unique, but so would each partner be.

Elstras removed himself to sit against the wall as Lathor and Burren
cautiously crept closer -- but not too close -- to watch.

And watch they did.  The way I reveled in it, thrilled at every sensation.
They watched what Dinilion did with his hands, they watched what he did
with his body.  I believe we taught them well.  And when we felt the peak
nearing, we gave as good a show as we could, without loosing that
internal, shared marvel of first-time lovers.  As much as we took our
pleasure, we performed for our audience, all moaning sighs and shouted
curses.

“Hey guys,” Elstras managed to warn through his laughter, “do you want
even more of an audience?”

I only made efforts to increase my noise, and Dinilion finally shut me up
with a kiss.

I came like that, with his lips over mine, and him thrusting forcefully into
me.  I would grow to love being taken like that.  I loved it already.

His release followed shortly and, as Elstras before him, he rolled off to 
the
side, sharing the ratty old blankets.

I giggled and looked to his brothers.  “Who’s next?”

Elstras and Dinilion shared a look.  They couldn’t believe it.  “I didn’t
think your lust was, in reality, unquenchable,” Elstras worriedly observed
as Lathor and Burren quickly tossed a coin.

I smiled and rubbed myself against the blankets, ran my hands through the
straw, plucked at my nipples.  I’d never been so sensitized.

I think Elstras heard something I did not, for he suddenly pulled on his
trousers and shot down the ladder, seemingly faster than I could see.

It didn’t concern me as Lathor bared his body, all lanky sinew and silver
hair.  I smiled and gestured him toward me.  As quick as Dinilion had
always been in his rhymes, Lathor was truly the intelligent one of the trio,
and he had proved it in the many conversations we had shared side-by-side
in the field or splashing in the river.

He had observed everything very closely, and he was sweetly careful
when he entered me, though it seemed nothing could have hurt me at that
point.  I was too far-gone.

I stroked his body as he stroked within me, and I did my best to show him
pleasure.  He was quick to spend and, I think, embarrassed, but I kissed
away any shame and let him move off.

Only then did I hear voices from below.  There were people in the barn,
talking, and Dinilion was spying down on them.  But I was pretty out of it
by that point.  The words blurred and disappeared altogether when Burren
came to take me.  I smiled sweetly; he had always been the quiet one.  I
had always been glad to have someone around who was shorter than I, and
he was nearest my age of the three brothers.  We shared something like --
but, I suppose not TOO like -- brotherly affection.

He was far less restrained than his brothers, and entered me with one swift
thrust.  I barely noticed Dinilion wince in sympathy, but I do not
remember it hurting.  Burren’s movements were swift and shallow, and I
cautioned him to take his pleasure more leisurely and draw it out.  He
heeded me and deepened his thrusts, slowing at the same time.

When he finally came within me, I orgasmed as well, and our low groans
rumbled through the air.

As Burren moved away, I heard shouting.

Carefully, I levered myself to my feet, their seed dripping down my
thighs.  Burren lay, oblivious, in the hay.

Dinilion tried to shoo me back, but I approached the loft’s edge to look
down.  Nearly a dozen of what had been our old playmates were trying to
get past an increasingly nervous Elstras.  Their shouts of lustful curiosity
died away, however, at the sight of me.

I smiled down at them.  “So many.  No bother coming up; I’ll come
down.”  To avoid the muck on the barn floor, I only pulled on my old red
boots.

I climbed down the ladder, quite brazenly.  They were moved to utter
silence, as was Elstras, who was trying to convey with his eyes that he
knew what I was planning and that it was a Bad Idea.  I could see the
capitalized phrase, right there in his gaze.

I looked about, pleased to see a neatly stacked pile of hay bales, not yet
fed to the animals who, in their stalls, ignored us.  “Dinilion,” I lazily
drawled.  “Send down a blanket.”

If I rightly recall, Elstras made furious gestures of refusal behind me, but
Dinilion obeyed me, sending down the blanket like a giant, flickering leaf.
It fell into my arms and I spread it on the hay bales stacked no higher than
my thighs and crawled upon the makeshift bed like a whore.

“Who wants a go?”

Young and energetic and unattached, none of them left.

I smiled and spread my legs.

They all took their turn with me, some more than once.

Some of them showed me some interesting new things, and I showed them
quite a bit more.

I remember every one.  Each once my playmate now my lover, and each
unique and wonderful.  Daronath, one of those with that rare fire colored
hair.  He was thin, but strong, as we all were from the work in the fields.
Younger than I, and with bright burning eyes.  He moved to me first,
wicked and lovely.  Ratannon, with gilded hair and nervous smile.  Wieril,
strong and broad; he gave me quite a pounding.  Silivren, a classic
Greenwood beauty; he had the look of the princes.  Ateldir, still young and
awkward and oh-so tender.  Berrihan, merry always and a joy to make
love with.  Yajhavir, hair tainted with chestnut and famed for his skill at
poaching.  Ilahir, the silent barley son; I’d never heard him speak until he
lay against me and whispered my name. Wipher, a sliver of a lad too
young to know any better.  Celidrir, another silver beauty, this one
willowy and determined.  Magorad, the oldest of the lot, and by far the
most experienced.

Fluttering in the background, Elstras had swiftly evolved from amused to
nervous to downright concerned.

I wasn’t.  I was thoroughly enjoying myself.  It was hardly as though I
could die from too much sex.  I had the virtue of being both an Elf and
male.  I couldn’t get sick and I couldn’t get pregnant.  I was young and
lust-crazed and satisfying all my friends to the best of my ability.  It was
the best day of my life.

In the end, when they had gone, and the mill sons were cleaning away all
evidence, taking the blanket away to burn, Elstras stood -- green eyes
filled with concern -- looking down on me.

I can’t rightly recall much about those moments, tingling all over with
satiation and need.  I think Elstras was dumbfounded that I was still
aroused.  I hadn’t counted, but maybe he had, the number of times I’d
climaxed.  Looking back, I don’t really want to picture how I must have
looked, sheened in sweat and dripping with semen, dark eyes lost to lust.  I
remember, though, what I did.  I held out my hand and called for him.

He took it.  “I can’t,” he pleaded.  “After . . .”

I looked over.  He was hard and ready.  Despite what he thought of my
condition, I wanted him in me.  “We started it,” I growled.  “We’ll finish
it.”

And we did.  I pulled him down and he took me there in what had been
reduced to a pile of straw.  We mated like animals in the barn and I loved
it.

Later, when we attempted to leave, I discovered that I could not walk.

Elstras wrapped me in a one of those old blankets and carried me to the
stream.  He bathed every inch of me in cool, clear water and playfully
counted the love-bites that covered my skin.

He carried me up the other side of the bank and through the field of rice to
his family’s home.  He snuck me into the cottage and into his bed, where
we curled together like puppies in a pile.

I fell asleep, knowing that I had just lived a day that would change my life
forever.

After that, the seasons continued to turn, but my life took a turn for the
better.  I doubt many other people saw it that way, but I certainly did.

Like a wildfire could take to a dry field, whispers of my escapade in the
barn burned across the countryside.

The many Elves who had been there sought me out days later for a repeat
performance.  I willingly obliged them.

Weeks later, I was a changed man.  Again, my fashion adapted to my life.
I took to wearing long tunics that reached halfway down my thighs and
nothing beneath.  Still wore my old red boots though.

My ring of lovers grew.  How else were lusty young men to occupy
themselves in the hazy days of summer, the merciless monotony of
winter?  When I was so willing?

Everyone knew what I was.

They called me a whore.

I maintained that ‘harlot’ was a much more dignified word, and whether or
not Dinilion revived the term, the name Scarlet Harlot was soon how the
people of the countryside referred to me among themselves, helped along
by the sight of my father’s old red boots.  Scarlet boots.

I moved out of my mother’s cottage.  In the end, I converted the loft of my
uncle’s barn into a home for myself, with his permission.  He must have
known what I was up to, but he never acknowledged it.  I didn’t much care
either way.  I lived a life of hard work, fun play, and good sex.  I didn’t
need anything else.

In the Greenwood, there was this old song.  I walked the roads to market
and to my lovers, singing this old song.  It was one that was known to
every child in the Greenwood.  It was taught to me by my sisters, and I
had sung it with joy in the company of Elstras and Dinilion and his
brothers.  It was one of those things when you stopped understanding the
words, so often we sang it, dancing in circles in green fields of yellow
flowers.

And, older, I sang it on the roads, laughing at those words.  It was an
announcement to any who knew me.  If you hear me singing, you have but
to follow the sound of my voice.

I am what the Valar make me
I am a child of the firstborn
A shadow who walks
A tree who talks
I am what the Valar make me

I am an Elf, I am a child
I am the sum of my parents,
The wish of my king
I am an Elf, I can be anything

I am what the Valar make me
A ship that sails,
A bird that calls,
The babe that wails,
The snow that falls

I am my dreams,
I am my hopes,
I am what seems
To be the future
I am what the Valar make me

It is written
It is seen
In the stars
In the everything
I am what the Valar make me

One day as I sang and walked, my tunic skirt flapping in the breeze, my
black hair dangling half-loose in the open air, my scarlet boots kicking the
dirt up behind me, I saw a horse approaching.  I continued my song and
thought nothing of it.  But as it drew near, I saw -- seated upon the 
beast’s
back -- an Elf tall and proud with ivory-pale hair and leaf-green robes.  I
hadn’t a clue who it was, but when he drew up aside of me and halted his
mount to look curiously down on me, I performed an inexpert bow and
declared, “Good day, my Lord!”

He smiled and inclined his head.  “A good day it is indeed, my country
youth.  Tell me, if that song is true, what have the Valar made you?”

I grinned lecherously and lifted the hem of my tunic to reveal myself to his
avid gaze.  “Take a guess.”

A slight blush overcame him.  Still, he seemed old.  Sometimes it’s hard to
tell, but I knew he was far older than I.  I’d never lain with anyone more
than a few hundred years my senior.  But he seemed more along the lines
of ancient.  I grinned.  I told him my name and said, “If it does not
displease you, we could make a bed of reeds to lie in for a time.”  I knew
that road far too well and I gestured to a stand of trees behind me.
“There’s a place not far from here.”

He smiled through his blush.  “That’s just fine.”

I introduced myself to his horse and led the beast into the open trees.  The
Lord dismounted and removed his outer robe to hang upon a low branch.
He was attired in shirt and leggings, which revealed a fine figure and he
was just my height.  I led him deep into the glade, which housed a
burbling brook and a flat clearing perfect for the nature of my common
rendezvous.  In fact, the delicate green grasses were still pressed flat 
from
a previous day’s tryst.

After I’d thrown my boots and tunic aside and lay naked in the soft grass, I
watched him disrobe, I watched him watch me.  “May I ask your name,
stranger?”

“I am Silinde, advisor to my King Oropher.”

I smiled widely.  “An advisor.  I’ve never met anyone so . . . lofty.”

It did not take long for us to get things underway, and you can be sure he
taught me a thing a two.  A few tricks to remember for later.

When we were done, we bathed in the brook and bid farewell and he went
on his way.

I began to look forward to my encounters on the road.  I seduced and was
seduced by soldiers, traders, craftsmen, scholars, laborers, and every other
assorted citizen of the Greenwood.

And still I continued my trysts with my old playmates, and especially my
loving interludes with Elstras.

As though every claiming filled me with life, I felt as though I grew in my
enjoyment of it, in my own effervescing sphere of contentment.  Joy is the
word, I believe.  I took joy in it.

Every joining thrilled and excited me, and left me feeling more complete,
as though giving of myself always meant I received something equally as
exciting in return.

I never longed for anything but the joys of life.  To savor the taste of my
food, to fully enjoy every drop of my drink, to thrill at the physical labor
of my work, to relish my fatigue at the end of the day and to delight in the
pure joy of arising each morning.  If it is true, I thought, that old song: 
I
am what the Valar make me, then I am joy.  The idea, the thought, the
mere *word* of sin never crossed my mind.  Sin was something evil, was
it not?  Something base and vile and irreverent.  Something harmful to
oneself or to someone else, and what I did was none of these.  I gave and
took only joy.

And perhaps others did not think the same, did not understand, did not
approve.  Certainly many did not, my family did not.  My mother, my
sisters grew apart from me, ignored me when they met me on the road,
turned their backs on me in the public square, shut the door on me when I
came to visit.  I was different in so many ways, and they did not
understand.

But I considered that I had enough tolerance for all of us.  I understood
that I was unique, that they could not accept what I had become, what I
had grown to be.  And that was all right.

I rarely thought then on my lost trade, on my lost father.  Only more and
more common has it become for me now, in the security of my Imladrian
home, to wonder on what would have been if my king had not
unknowingly slain him, if I had grown to learn the skills of a cooper and
carry on the family line.

As it was, we lived our blissful, unchanging lives in the rolling green
fields, the marketplace, the free and open wood.

___________________

Then, one year, the crops failed.  Nearly half of them.

We had fooled ourselves into living a timelessness, a summer of country
existence, without cares or concerns.  For me, my five hundred years was
an eternity, and I had expected it to go on forever.  We all had, I think, 
all
of us country boys.

After the first shock of watching field after field turn to pestilence, 
after
wandering in devastated silence the blighted potato crops, the empty
husked corn fields, the withered vineyards, after all this failure, my
memory becomes hazy.

For then came the spiders.  We had no warning in the country.

Years before, my eldest sister, whose husband had become one of the
Greenwood’s coopers, had given birth.  I remember shouting and screams.
I remember fires.  I remember the body of our mother, blackened with
poison, bent over in the rotting field.

I remember running in the night for the caves, with Elstras beside me and
the mill sons behind me and my little niece cradled in my arms.  Her
parents were dead; that’s how I thought of them then, her parents, not my
sister, not my sister’s husband.  She was my niece and her parents were
dead.  It did not hurt so much to think of it in those terms, it made sense 
to
an Elf who was barely a man and had no preparation for anything
resembling this wave of evil that swept the land.

Elstras carried a scythe, I remember.  With the ferocity of a bear whose
family is threatened, he cut down a spider that sprang up before us.
Dinilion, Lathor, and Burren carried what weapons they could.  A shovel,
a hoe, and Dinilion had his father’s sword.

We all had tears in our eyes, but for my little niece, who was too young to
understand the dying screams in the distance, the raging fires of the 
fields,
the great shadows of the spiders.

Maybe because we were young and swift, we were among the first to
reach the caves.

There were women screaming for their dead children, husbands weeping
for lost wives.  Children were few.  Like my niece, only those who could
be carried had survived.

We cowered together in a corner, touching one another as though to be
sure we were actually there, petting one another’s tangled hair and holding
sweaty hands, while brave Burren snuck through the caves.

When he returned, he had word.  He was breathing hard and still held his
shovel tight in his hands, as though waiting for an attack.  “The royal
family is here; they are already organizing defenses.  They are asking us to
organize ourselves.  Farming families this way.”

We followed him through the deep dark of the caves, lit by smoky tallow
candles and poor torches.  We found familiar faces in that long stretch of
cave, even as we faithfully repeated the names.  Names came to us as we
huddled along the wall; those known to be dead and those missing.  We
passed the names through the caves, sending on messages.  Every once in
a while, the piercing screams of those who mourned were punctuated by
the happy cries of reunion, but not often enough.

I was only destined to find one of my sisters, the one with dark hair like
me.  She had turned from me in the past, but all was different now, and we
held our silver-haired niece between us and mourned.

Then, to our shock, her fiery haired love appeared.  He knew, of course,
what I was, but he had never judged me, and I had always silently
appreciated his indiscrimination.  Abruptly, he said, “I mourn with you
your loss.”  I could see he had his own losses.  Like us, his eyes were
haunted.  Then, he said to me, “I had intended to ask your mother, but now
it is left to you.  May I have your blessing to wed your sister?”

“My blessing, yes.  You would have had our mother’s blessing, the
blessings of our family.  I hope the Valar keep you, I hope your lives grow
full of love and peace.  I know that you will be happy together, should Eru
permit it.”

Then I handed my niece over to them without a word.  They understood.

___________________

Our lives, then, became a hundred-year shadow of darkened caves, of
spider attacks, of orcs ravaging what had been our city.  I worked
alongside my friends and lovers, digging further down into the earth,
carefully widening out what would be the halls of our homes.

My trysts took a different nature then.  Silent we were, and quick in the
depths of the caves, always with a lookout.  They traded me around,
shared me like I was an eternal light that they each wanted to shine over
their lives for a short time.

I didn’t count the years, in truth.

And there was nothing to break the monotony.  The seasons ceased to
exist for people who barely saw the sun as it was.  There were no feast
days to divide the waxing of the years.  When you’ve seen spiders the size
of small horses destroy your home and kill your family, your faith in the
Valar diminishes.

___________________

Whispers pervaded the cave finally, whispers of a war to come.

In due course, the king’s men came.  They searched out all male Elves
who could wield a sword.  We were working in the caves and they were
moving down the line.  I listened.

“Name?”

“Dinilion.”

“Father?”

“Fealion.  Deceased.”

“Trade?”

“Farmhand.”

“Skills?”

“I wield a sword.”

“You’ll be in the King’s battalion.  Second company.”

I listened as his brothers answered the list of questions.  They, too,
claimed skill with a sword, though they had none.  They got their wish
when the soldier coolly told them, “King’s battalion.  Second company.”

“Name?”

“Elstras.”

“Father?”

“Eldinir.  Deceased.”

“Trade?”

“Farmhand.”

“Skills?”

“Sword.  Spear.  Archery.”

“How good are you?”

“Good.”

“King’s battalion.  First company.”

It was true, Elstras had been far better educated and well-rounded than
myself, though he was hardly a warrior.

My turn came next and I answered with detachment, as my friends had
done.

“Trade?”

“Farmhand.”

“Skills?”

I exchanged glances with Elstras.  I’d never held a weapon in my life and
he knew it.  The king’s man raised his brows, waiting.  He didn’t have all
day.  I shrugged and looked away.

His partner, who had been recording everything, moved to make the mark
beside my name that would define my destiny, but then the inquisitor
happened to look down.  “Hold on.”  He looked up into my face.  “Those
boots.  I’ve heard about you.”  He smiled at me.  Smiles were rare in those
days, though I saw more than most.  I smiled back.  “You’re the Scarlet
Harlot.”

Somewhere behind me, I heard Dinilion groan.

I nodded.

The king’s man turned to his partner.  “Give me that.”  He grabbed pencil
and paper and wrote something beside my newly entered name.  “We have
a place for you,” he assured me with a leer.  “You’ll travel in the rear
company.”

“What company is that?” I questioned.

He did not meet my eyes.  “You won’t be there to fight.”

Then he moved on down the line.

___________________

Day and night smeared together.  Weeks were distorted into months.  I
remained attached to my friends as well as I could.  We ran errands for the
king’s men; we gathered for the march to the south.

My life had lost any concept of cycle.  Sometimes I ate, sometimes I slept.
Sometimes I stood guard, sometimes I packed wagons.  Sometimes I
stitched tents, sometimes I lay with my friends, or other, needful men.

Before I knew it, we were marching.  I was in a party near the middle,
with the King, the princes, the advisors, the other keepers of other things.
I hardly knew who was who.  I knew that my friends marched on the
perimeter, keeping the spiders at bay.  I went days without seeing them,
though everyone who marched was accustomed to passing messages.
Every once in a while, a soldier would suddenly walk beside me, “Elstras
sends you his best wishes.”  And he would move away again.

It was good to know that even parted, we were not alone.

And when halted, so that the majority of us could sleep, I did not sleep.
Men already sick with the journey, hateful of war, longing for home, came
to lay with me in the night.

Each of those stops on the long road, I was the only one who always
erected my very own tent.  I welcomed anywhere from three to ten a night.

They needed what succor I could give them.

___________________

One day as I walked, weary and confused, a horse stepped up beside me.  I
looked up into familiar green eyes and smiled.  “My Lord Silinde.”  I
nodded respectfully.

He greeted me as cheerfully as one may on a march to war.  “I thought I
saw you among us.  Where is your armor, your weaponry?”

I had grown used to the question.  “I have none.”

“Why are you here then?”

I gave him a pointed stare.  “I am here to give comfort to the men.”

___________________

Soon, our banners joined those of Lothlorien.  Then, on the last days when
the sun still shone and the air was not hazy with campfire smoke, I could
make out the standards of the High-King, of Lindon, of Imladris.

But the Elves of the Greenwood were proud and secretive even then.
Without strictly stating it, I was forbidden to ‘associate’ with any
‘foreigners.’

I obeyed.  I was frightened enough, marching to war without any
knowledge of what that truly meant.

Sorrowfully, I looked at the faces about me.  Warriors there were, yes,
soldiers.  Oropher had always kept his military men in great numbers.  But
among them I saw too many faces that I knew.  They were not the faces of
soldiers in any way.  They were craftsmen, cooks, and farmers like me.

With such large numbers, our stops for rest were larger and less organized.
I made a habit of wandering the fires, speaking to the men.  I would sing,
tell jokes, and explain exactly how they could find my little tent, if ever
they wished to visit.  I was saddened to find nearly all of my friends 
there.
In fact, the only lovers I ever had who were not there, were not there
because they had already died in the initial raids on our land.

My only relief was that my new brother-in-law, for that fire-haired Elf had
indeed wed my sister, was not among our companies.  Perhaps they would
indeed know peace.

___________________

When our final camp was made, at the end of a long line of tents of Elves
and Men, it was in the shadow of Mount Doom, for that blasted place was
always visible.  One had to close one’s eyes to not see it.  And death
already surrounded us.  The Dead Marshes were not then what they are
now, but they still carried that name.

But I saw little of camp.  Instead, it seemed I lived in my tent.  And they
came to me, one after the other.  And I gave them what they needed.
Whatever they asked for.

It was always good to see familiar faces, though.  Elstras, Dinilion,
Silinde.

The time drew near, I knew, for the first attack, for what would be the
beginning of years of battle.  I could sense it, even if I did not overhear 
the
whispers.

“He is too confident.”

“We’re all going to die.”

One eve, as I lay naked and alone in my scrap of a tent, I heard someone
calling my name.  One of the king’s men stuck his head inside.  “You’re to
come with me.

“My clothes . . .”  Bleary-eyed, I glanced around.

“You won’t need them where you’re going.”  The soldier leered at me.
“It’s the King’s tent you’ll be sleeping in tonight.”

For a moment, I could not move.  But I slowly roused and pulled myself
together.

I thought then, on the King.

I wondered if he suspected that I was the son of the cooper he had killed.
Or if he even cared.  Like the rest, he would take me to his bed to sate
whatever it was he needed in my body.  Lust, fear, connection, anxiety.
Often, it seemed, they sought me out merely to escape from the reality of
war.  And I welcomed them all.  It was what my king demanded, and the
only thing I thought I could offer.  Some were so young, far younger even
than I, and others were survivors of long distant wars; some I’d grown up
with and others I saw for the first time naked and ready.  There was
always an eagerness about them there at the end.  Perhaps they knew they
were destined for death.  Perhaps there was a bloodlust that grew among
them.  But all the ‘perhaps’ in the world could not save them.

But he bid me into his tent that night, King Oropher.  I still could not 
find
my clothes, and so walked the long distance across the camp with only my
scarlet boots.  Few saw or cared.  When I saw him I thought him a
miserable man, so sure of success and yet riled enough about something to
send for ‘the harlot.’  I knew that was what he called me.  Many of them
did.  But I doubted he even knew my name.  I doubted and I was right, for
when his guards pulled aside the flaps of the tent and I disappeared within,
feeling as though I was being swallowed alive into the yawning maw of
some dark monster, he turned his bleary green eyes to me and asked,
“What shall I call you?”

I gave him my name, the one I was given at birth, the one I long had
answered to, growing ever more distant from my own name, hearing it
bandied about in bawdy tones and hoarsely shouted in meaningless
ecstasy.  I gave him my name that night, knowing I was giving it away for
the last time.  Just as I was giving myself away for the last time, the last 
of
myself.

And he was not kind, nor was he brutal.  Only a weary indifference bound
us, my body finally feeling as though its use was past its time, worn and
gone.  I felt nothing.  Neither arousal nor pain.  No enjoyment, no
fulfillment, no irritation, and no sensation.  I was, finally, numb.

___________________

And when he was through with me, I succumbed to true sleep, as I had not
since the march began.  I wondered what spell came over me, for when I
finally awoke, a day had passed, and all the camp had been emptied.

I wondered if I had been left behind on purpose, undisturbed for I could
not fight, or if they had merely overlooked the shadowed compartments of
the King’s tent.

I did not even know in what direction they had gone.  I was so lost to the
horror of it that I did not even know I was naked as I sat outside the
King’s tent and made a fire for myself.

There was no food, so I did not eat.

I sat there for many days.  I heard the sounds of war.  I could almost see 
it.

Then, there was the sound of riders.  Thranduil came, with tears in his
eyes.  He saw me and ignored me.  He and the small remainder of his men
were battered and wounded.  They moved about the camp and packed a
few things into a wagon, which they hitched together, and then they
slowly moved away.  They moved in the direction of the main camp, that
of Gil-galad.

I stayed where I was.

___________________

I knew the rest were dead.

Can you grasp it, just the smallest idea of what it means?  Being a harlot,
and knowing that you alone have survived all your lovers?

I could not.  I was half-mad with the knowledge of it.  I do not truly
remember those times.  Who found me.  Who cared for me.

___________________

Later, I returned to the site where they had died.  The battle had since
moved elsewhere.  I went alone.  I carried a shovel.

Previously, someone had come to lie out the dead.  In lines the Elves were
laid, arms crossed, eyes closed.  When they still had arms or eyes.

I found Silinde first, near the edge of battle.  He had fought, scholar
though he had been.  His white hair was twisted in bloody knots.  I lay
over him a Greenwood standard.

As a ghost, I wandered the lines of the dead.  I could name many, but there
were few I was looking for.  Dinilion.  Lathor.  Burren.  I dug one grave
for the three brothers.  Time was short.  I marked the grave with scarlet
boots.

I never found Elstras’ body.  But there had been no survivors from that
first raid.  Like the High King would be later, it seemed he had been so
close to the front lines that there was nothing left to find, let alone 
bury.

Did I love Elstras?  I was too scared to let myself know.  I still don’t.

___________________

I did what I could in the camps of war.  Most often, I was a water-carrier.
Or stretcher-bearer.  I saw the battle at times, but still I had never 
raised a
weapon.  I decided I never would.

When at last I was introduced to Elrond as ‘one of the few Mirkwood
survivors’, I gave the name Erestor.  He looked upon me kindly.  His eyes
were haunted.  The war was over.  It was time to rebuild.  Not buildings
for us, but reconstruction of a different sort.  A reconstruction of the 
heart.
He was sympathetic when he told me all my brethren had already returned
to Mirkwood.

“Mirkwood?” I remember asking.  “Where is that?”

Elrond and the other Elves exchanged looks.  I didn’t bother to read those
looks.

“Please excuse me,” he answered.  “It is what we have taken to calling the
Greenwood.”

“Mirkwood?” was my response.  “The name well becomes it.”

“It is too dangerous to return there alone,” one of the others told me.

“I will go, then, wherever else I am welcomed.”

“Imladris has lost many,” Elrond told me.

We have all lost many, I thought, but I did not say it.

“You would be welcome there.”

“Then let me be your servant and follow where you lead.”

And I did.  I latched onto the Half-Elf like he was the last light left in
Arda, though with what found skill I masked every emotion that passed
through me, I do not know.  And he depended greatly upon me.  It was the
first time in a long time I shared a bed without sharing my body.

___________________

Once the ride home finally began, Elrond soon found a way to occupy
himself.  He was, to my hidden horror, assembling a list of the dead for his
Valley.  He asked me to assist.  I was happy to excuse myself with a
truthful excuse.  “I am sorry, my Lord.  I do not read.”

After all, what need had country boys for reading?  Even Elstras had not
known how.

Horrified at this confession, Elrond took it upon himself to teach me.  That
was how we spent our evenings, and along the road home he would test
me as well.  He taught me all the languages he knew.

___________________

Entering Imladris was like entering a new world.  Though I had very much
changed.

As the centuries ripened and rotted and fell away to the books of time, I
made my place and kept it.  People knew me as the cruel counselor.  That
became my name.  I allowed it.  I encouraged it.  I had no stamina to think
on the past, nor to welcome anyone into my future.  I was too tired for
much of it.  I took what path was easiest for me.

___________________

So, you see, I lied to you, Glorfindel.  “I have only ever shared my bed
with books and virgin moonlight.”  I suppose it is true, in some respects.
The only bed I have ever had, of wooden frame and stuffed mattress, is
here in Imladris.

But I had wanted you to see me as something I was not, something as pure
and untouched as those cold clear winter mornings you so love.  I
trembled as I said it.  I trembled not because I feared you but because I
feared lying to you.  And now it is all laid bare before you.

I cannot be what I wanted to be for you, for someone who looked upon
me, who approached me, first with love and not lust.  I cannot be your
equal; I cannot be as an untarnished sheathe for a brilliant shining sword
newly reforged from the Halls.

But this is all my life and I cannot hide it from you any longer.

___________________

And now, here I am in Imladris.  Choosing to remember my childhood, if I
remember anything at all.  Wearing my eternal mourning robes, ever
grieving for those who I recall with any fondness.

Still guarding close those memories of childhood, of the bullying in my
sisters’ clothes, I rattle after the wee ones in these white halls, yelling 
at
the top of what I know are very formidable lungs.  I don’t know if they
hear my words; sometimes I don’t even hear myself.  I yell after them to
mind themselves, to take care, to look out.  As though I can yell the same
thing to my childhood self.

At the same time, I am silent to all else.

And you are right.  You haven’t said it, but I know you think it.  ‘Why do
act as you do, Erestor?  So cold, so intimidating?  Why push people away?
You are hiding.  Why are you hiding?’  I think you know the answer now.

I have had my fill of closeness.  I have found that people are not to my
liking.  Selfish they are, as I never was.  I’ve never met anyone like
myself, so willing to give of themselves that they gave away everything.
That is what I did, you see.  I kept nothing for myself, in the end.  No 
joy,
no pleasure.  No thrill or delight.

Numbness, finally, was all that I was left with, a cool replacement for the
vivacity of my youth, I know.  For so long I have felt as spent as the days
of late autumn, when even the drooping trees are weary and the sun
content to lie abed late and return undercover early.  Nothing could be
roused in me.  There was no more joy.  There was no more anything.  Life
was an old routine, though much changed for me.  And so discouraging
was I to people that they stayed away.  They feared me.  And I was
grateful for it.  Distance of any kind was welcome, and fear was close
enough to respect.

So, that is who I was, and who I became.  I was a summer and I became a
winter, do you see?  Frozen, some have called me.  How apt.  My body
does not rouse in any way anymore.  Like the rest of me, I thought it dead.
Dead emotions, dead senses.  Nothing.

But you see, I forgot something.  For after every winter, comes a spring.
And the trees that seem to die are merely hibernating.  I feel, suddenly, as
though I am waking, waking from this extended hibernation.  I feel,
suddenly, as though I might find joy again.

Not in myself, though, no, not yet.  In myself there is still too little of
anything.

It is in you that I find my joy.  You have given to me what I only ever
gave to others.  Slowly, Glorfindel, you are filling me up again.  I once
more recognize these things I have spoken of: pleasure, delight, and joy.
It is like finding some treasure that was familiar to me a long time ago.  I
must hold it carefully, and examine every inch of it to define it, to
recognize it, and say yes, I know this.  This is joy.

So too you have given me strength.  Strength enough to finally recall all
that I had pushed so far away from me.  All that I set down before you
here.

And yet, there is something else still.  Among the treasures you have given
me, there is something new, something unfamiliar and unremembered.
Based upon what I have learned and read and heard, the name I must put
to this unlooked-for treasure is love.  Love grows in me.  I did not wish to
speak of it, as though it was so fragile the merest utterance would break 
it.
And so I kept it secret, a slow and careful cultivation of the poor 
seedling.
But nothing grows without light, I have learned, and love always hidden is
no love at all.  And, I begin to realize it is not so fragile a thing as 
first I
thought.  And though my voice would tremble, I soon shall say them.  Not
quite yet capable though, I shall first write them down, finding the subtler
telling of the written word not quite as destructive as those that are 
spoken.

I want you to know that I mean each of these words in their entirety.  “I”
as in all of me, every part.  “Love” as in the eternal kind, merry and 
bright
and completely indefinable in these clumsy words I am so uncomfortable
with.  “You” as in all of you, every part.

I love you.

And this also you need to know.  Though my body does not yet stir, does
not yet shake the winter snow from its limbs, my heart already has
warmed, and I do not think it will be long before my body longs for more
than your sweet embrace and fleeting kisses.

I have chosen to give to you my secrets.  I trust you will not betray them 
to
any other, and if you do, it is my own fault for so harshly misjudging you.
As for me, I must have time alone.  Is it a test?  I think it is.  Not for 
you,
you must know, but for me.  To think more deeply than I have yet dared to
think, to dream more soundly than I have ever hoped, and to feel more
keenly than I have ever dared to feel.

Time I have taken for myself and time I give to you.  Think, if you will,
dream if you dare, or feel if you must.  Perhaps your needs are other.
Perhaps you have come to hate me for these secrets or perhaps you long
already to have me back.  I ask only that you use this time wisely, and
regard these secrets selfishly, for they belong only to you.

And when I return, then we both shall discover what each of us has made
with our time.  If my voice has grown strong enough to utter the word of
love, or if your heart has turned away from me.

With love,
Your Erestor
If you will have me
Still waiting for Someday

~*~*~*~*~*~

Glorfindel breathed.

Then he, very carefully, trembling as he did so, closed the tear-spattered
papers.  He set the book aside.  He stood up, pushed in his chair, stepped
back from the desk, and breathed.

“Damn him!  Damn him damn him damn him!  Dammit Erestor!  Damn
damn DAMN!”  He ran to the window and threw it open to the spring day.
“ERESTOR,” he shouted, loud enough to throw the birds from their
perches, to turn the heads of those guarding the border; his voice echoed in
the Valley like a godly thunder.  “Erestor!  Get back here right now!
Come home at once!  If you can hear me, then turn around right now and
come back to me!  Erestor!  I love you!  DAMN YOU, COME BACK!”

The squirrels chattered angrily, the maidens tittered in the gardens and
Elrond, somewhere in the Valley, shook his head in bemused
consternation.

But there was no returning cry.  And there was no returning Counselor.

= = = = =

Glorfindel spent the next days in an uproar.  He spoke with Elrond, won a
temporary sabbatical from all duties, acquired the room next to his own
chambers, was granted a sum of goods and money, and was given a troupe
of three Elves who agreed to do whatever he asked of them for a month.

He took these three Elves under his wing: young they were and eager to
achieve much in the Valley.  One was a craftsman whose trade was that of
a woodcarver, the next was a librarian newly migrated from the Harbors,
and the last was one of Glorfindel’s own warriors, but a novice in
comparison to himself.  He took them aside and told them, “I am in love
with Erestor, and he is in love with me, and now that he is gone, I wish to
prepare a surprise for him, do you see?  All right, come with me, my
cronies, my eager minions, and bring with you your paper and ink and
write down all that I say, for I don’t want a single thing forgotten.”

In this way, Glorfindel amused himself.  He kept busy, he made what he
thought was the best possible use of his time.  And so trusting were his
three henchmen that they kept every secret he gave them, enthused in their
labor and excited at the chance to work with a suddenly completely
eccentric reborn hero, for the fallen warrior of Gondolin is what everyone
said Glorfindel was, even if he never said it himself.

= = = = =

In the depths of the Golden Wood, Erestor wandered.  Alone he wandered,
and full of deep thought.  Any who saw him would turn to those beside
them and say, ‘Do you see that Elf?  What shadow weighs so upon him
that he appears caught in it, even in the midst of our Lothlorien?’  And if
an Imladris Elf overheard, he would answer, ‘That, that is the Counselor
Erestor.  Long has he haunted our own halls, devoid of cheer and light.
And why he has come here I do not know, but that a change has overcome
him in these passing years and it is said the Golden Wood is a timeless
place.  If it is time he seeks, then he has found it here.’

And just as in Imladris, those who saw Erestor let him be and did not
disrupt his solitary ruminations.

But in the end, as the months fell swiftly down the tunnel of time and his
return to Imladris drew near, Erestor did something he had never in his life
done before.  He sought advice.

One night after a feast shared between the people of Lothlorien and the
visitors from Imladris, Erestor approached the queen who did not claim
such a title and asked to speak with her.  Galadriel, dressed all in white
and pearls and the delicate blue of sea foam, rose elegantly from her chair,
bid her husband farewell, and clasped Erestor’s elbow, asking him to lead.

Now, Erestor was not easily intimidated, but when in the company of this
witch, he could not hide his awe.  Galadriel was indefinable, at some
moments a maiden, at others a wisewoman.  She was bright as molten
gold and yet seemed to cast a dark shadow.  She was beautiful and,
somehow, horrid.  He could not stand her, but longed to stand near her.
She was taller than he was too, which was upsetting for some reason, even
though many people were taller than he.

He walked with her along the swinging bridges high above the ground
until they reached some unnamed talan, merely a crossroads of the high
city that branched throughout the mellyrn, a silver-roped roadway.

The talan was large, and circled round the trunk of the tall tree, with
curving banisters all about and various stairs and bridges leading off it.  
It
was a good place.  A few white lanterns hung like dripping icicles from
the branches above, and there were no people within sight.

Galadriel finally let go his arm and she needlessly rested her hands upon
the white railing, looking out over the Wood.  “What do you seek from
me, Counselor?”

Her voice, too, seemed to hide some magic in it, as though there were
nothing normal about her, as though only the heavenly and miraculous
resided in or near her.  Finally, Erestor answered, “I am not sure, my
Lady.  I seek counsel, but I myself am uncertain what nature that counsel
should take.  My secrets might be known to you, for you see much, or I
may be a mystery to you, as I am to many.  I do not know.  But I feel
obliged to admit that my visit here had a basely selfish purpose.  I have
come here in cowardly flight from the man whom I love.  I do not know if
I have the strength to seek what I desire, or the ability, even, to love him
as I wish to do.  I have come here to think over the whole of my life, and
to wonder at my future.  In my wonderings, I have grown sure of a love I
was previously too weak even to speak of.”  Throughout his speech,
Erestor dared not look to her, for her starry eyes -- he knew -- would have
stilled his tongue, so full of knowledge and time were they.  “What I
expect or hope from you, I suppose even I do not know.  I have thought
too much it seems, and have overwhelmed myself with questions no one
has answers to.”

“Love always offers more questions than answers.  Do you not know this,
Erestor of the Greenwood?”  He looked up with shock at her words.
“Aye, I know more of you than you think, Counselor.  And as for counsel,
I may offer you this: Trust to love, to your heart and his.  Do not think
overmuch.  Also, relationships -- of any kind -- are a two-way affair: there
must be give and take for both parties, forfeits yes, and triumphs.  You
have already given much, however.  Now is your time to receive.”

“I don’t know that I completely understand,” Erestor confessed.  “But still
your words calm me, and I shall remember them.”

“That is well, Erestor.  Now, the night is far gone and I seek my own bed.
Do not be too long in seeking yours.”

“Yes, my Lady.”

And she was gone.

And Erestor, Erestor returned to his guest quarters to pack his things.
They would be leaving soon, he knew, and now he looked forward to his
return.

= = = = =

End Part 2




TITLE:  Christmas Special: Part 3
AUTHOR:  Ezra’s Persian Kitty
E-MAIL: ezraspersiankitty@yahoo.com
PAIRING:  Erestor/Glorfindel (others)
RATING:  NC-17
SUMMARY:  Someday has arrived.
DISCLAIMER:  Not mine.
WARNING:  I can’t really decide if this needs some kind of warning.
NOTES:  Welcome, Erestor, to your emotional rollercoaster.  Please keep
all angst within the ride until it has come to a complete stop.
Sorry about the modern-day terminology, but really, is there any synonym
for ‘turn-on’ let alone an old-fashioned one?

Thanks to Mo-chan, for timely inspiration in essential moments, or -- as
she would call it -- her ‘liquor logic.’

= = = = =

CHRISTMAS SPECIAL: SOMEDAY


Erestor, so long used to hiding what had -- admittedly -- been fairly dull
and depthless emotions in previous years, could not mask the very real
anxiety that radiated from him the closer they rode to home.  Of all the
Elves who made up the escort, none dared discuss or even mention the
changes that had overcome Erestor in recent years.  Accustomed as the
Elves of Imladris were to Erestor’s foul moods and cold manners, they
easily did as they had always done.  They ignored him.

But also riding tall and proud in the escort was Elrond’s daughter.  The
Evenstar rode her white mare beside Erestor who was mounted on a
chestnut stallion, and she alone braved the possibility of cruel retorts and
evil glares.  She watched him with a calm sweetness inherited from her
mother’s mother, all subtle smiles and knowing looks.

It was hard to miss the fact that, as the troupe came within sight of the
gates, Erestor was downright jittery with nervousness.  Finally, Arwen
could remain silent no longer.  She guided her mount directly alongside
Erestor, who had -- with much disgruntled impatience and indecipherable
grumbling -- taught her to read and write so very long ago, along with
other proper skills for young ladies and lords to be tutored in.  Since 
then,
she had maintained her distance from him, as most people did.  But like
most who at least associated with him at meals, she had noticed his
metamorphosis.  And she approached him now to speak.  “My dear
Counselor, you’re unsettling your horse.”

Shocked to find the young lady so close, Erestor started, but then took her
words to heart and took a moment to calm his mount, fondly patting the
beast’s great neck.  “You are right.”

In an effort to prevent eavesdropping, Arwen leaned in to whisper,
“What’s come over you, Counselor Erestor, to so alter you these last
years?”

Erestor offered a shaky smile and Arwen raised her eyebrows, in an
expression all too reminiscent of her father.  She’d never seen anything
happy or uncertain in Erestor’s face, but both were there now.  Erestor
also leant in and whispered back.  “I doubt you are the first to see it, but
you are certainly the first brave enough to say anything.  Even your father
has avoiding speaking of this ‘alteration’ as you so delicately put it.”

“And?” she asked, with a girlish grin.

“It is the one thing that changes all who experience it.”

Arwen shook her head, not understanding.

Erestor lowered his voice even more, pitched it so only the lady might
hear.  “I am in love.”

Arwen’s delicate hand clapped over her mouth in astonishment and dark
eyes went wide as saucers.  She glanced about as though to see if anyone
else had heard, but the Elves of their escort were all firmly engaged in
watching the surrounding woodland shadows or giddy with anticipation of
returning home, which was now in sight.  Arwen tittered a moment,
staggered at the mere thought of Erestor being in love with anyone, at
being susceptible to those more tender emotions that surely swayed every
Elf at times.  Until this moment, she just could never have conceived of it.

Despite her lack of a verbal answer, Erestor continued.  “I may confide in
you, yes?  Glorfindel has told me he loves me.  I may have panicked a bit
when I finally decided I returned the sentiment.  I left him a note before I
ran away to the Golden Wood with you.  . . . I can’t imagine he is very
pleased with me . . .”

“Oh Erestor,” Arwen cooed in a sympathetic voice.  “I had no idea.”

“No one does.”  Except Galadriel of course, but he didn’t say that.

He turned fearful eyes to her, and she read more emotion there in that one
look than in all the expressions she had ever seen him wear altogether.
And when he tempered his pretty voice to her ear, it was desperate with
desire to know, “Do you think he will be angry?”

And even with her lack of knowledge in the subject, she answered to the
best of her ability.  “Oh Erestor, may I call you that?  Erestor, even if he 
is
angry with you, if he loves you, he will forgive you, I am sure.  Glorfindel
is not one to hold grudges or keep any hatred in his heart.”

“May your words strengthen me,” Erestor seemed to pray.

And then no more words passed between them, for the gates loomed near,
and a party of Elves waited within the forecourt to greet them.

= = = = =

Glorfindel had been careful in his manner of dress.  His hair, his secret
vanity, was brushed free and loose as he never wore it in public.  An
uncommon idea nowadays, he had been raised to believe that hair
untempered by braids was not a sight fit for public viewing; it was not
proper.  But he wore it thusly now.  Perhaps even he was not certain why
he found it fitting.  Perhaps it was merely the imagery of displaying what
was -- to him -- a symbol of the bedroom to publicly greet his lover.

The outfit he wore was newly commissioned: all shades of blue, from the
most delicate pale icy cerulean in the lace at his collar and cuffs to the
deepest, richest cornflower of his leggings.  A bright sky blue doublet
embroidered with coils of gold and sewn with sapphire jewels was the
crowning grace of the ensemble accented by navy velvet boots and a
braided belt of softest leather dyed the color of rainbow’s indigo.  He wore
a mithril ring twisted with silver and set with a blue stone on his left
forefinger.

He cut a dashing figure to say the least.  Among all the Elves in the court,
he shone the brightest by far and many interested glances were cast his
way.  Elrond only stared in inquiring perplexity.

Glorfindel regarded none of them.  As they all waited in the courtyard of
white and gray stone with trees rising majestically above them and the
wind softly blowing, Glorfindel only had eyes and ears for his three
henchmen, who had grown as attached as puppies to a master.  As the
greeting party waited, these three Elves stood in a line beside Glorfindel,
and what a line it was.  First stood the young craftsman, by name of
Saelbeth, dressed all in tones of violet, in delicate shoes like lilac and a
costume of heavy, swooping sleeves like the soft iridescent underbelly of
curving sea shells.  He wore dark leggings the color of violets and purple
ribbons in soft yellow hair.  Next the librarian stood in line, by name of
Melpomaen.  His small, dark figure was draped in proper robes, but all in
the colors of red, from crimson lining to an almost plum velvet surcoat
lined in gold buttons.  Currant-colored ribbons bound his ebony hair and a
thin fillet of filigreed gold sat upon his brow.  Last but not least came 
the
young warrior, by name of Dinendal, clothed all in shades of green from
boots of suede and linen breeches to shirt of silk, and ribbons in auburn
hair; he was decked out in evergreen and paling lime and forest tones of
jade and emerald.

With secretive smiles on each and every face, they awaited the slowly
approaching escort.

Then they all filed in, guards and diplomats warmly greeted by friends and
family, Arwen by her father, and last to dismount, Erestor.  He left his
horse, reins drooping to the ground, staring disconsolately after him.

Erestor was frightened.  He simply did not know what to expect.  And
there stood Glorfindel, with the most colorful trio behind him.  But
Glorfindel himself, oh how magnificent!  As though a god of the sky stood
before him, manifested in velvet and gold and satin and lace and glorious
flesh!  How intimidating, how beautiful, Erestor barely found the strength
to edge near.  Erestor, in plain brown traveling clothes stained with the
muck and mire of the road, seeming so small and completely unappealing.
And some part of him was acutely aware of the many eyes on them, even
as he fearfully approached the figure drenched in blue.

Glorfindel’s expression remained firmly unreadable.  Neither smile nor
frown tempted the wide mouth.  Eyes were clear and blank.  And still
Erestor came near.  Knowing not what else to do, Erestor performed a
little bow; it seemed appropriate in light of such a presence.  He ignored
the three curious youths in a line behind Glorfindel.  And Erestor licked
his lips, his dark eyes glancing aside and darting up to resolute blue.  His
words came slow and his voice stuttered, “I can understand if you are
cross with me . . .”

Then, Glorfindel sort of . . . swooped.  In a predatory lunge, he shot out 
to
wrap iron-strong arms around Erestor’s slim figure.  He lifted Erestor into
the air and spun him about.  When Glorfindel finally set him down, he still
would not release him.  “Cross??!?!?” he belted out, loud in Erestor’s ear.
“Nay!!!  FURIOUS I was, furious that you had left me!  You coward!
And, so, well, what did you unravel in your thinkings?”  He pushed
Erestor away so that strong hands on weak shoulders dictated the distance
between them.  He looked Erestor firmly in the eyes, he madly looked,
blue eyes suddenly deep with love and worry and frenzied devotion.
“Anything of note?”

Erestor glanced wildly about.  “Nothing for public consumption, really,
Glorfindel.”

“TOO BAD!!!!” Glorfindel howled.  He seemed quite mad, and he just did
not care that there was, indeed, an incredibly amused and curious public to
witness them.  He embraced Erestor again.  “Erestor!  You . . .”  It seemed
he was going to swear.  Erestor was stiff as a board in his arms, as though
fearful of physical attack.  “I love you, every last part of you, I love
everything you are and were, I love your heart.”  Glorfindel pulled back
again and hunched over to kiss Erestor’s tunic where it lay over his heart.
“Your mind.”  He kissed Erestor’s brow.  “Your soul.”  He took Erestor’s
hand in his own and brought it up to lay a kiss on the inside of his pale
pulsing wrist.  “And your body.”  And kissed Erestor full on the lips,
soundly and without reserve, with much tongue and mashing of lips.  He
practically bent the other Elf over backwards, staking his physical claim.

Arwen and Elrond raised their eyebrows in a similar expression.  The
Elves in the guard stared in shock, and Glorfindel’s three henchmen
shared happy, anticipatory smiles.

Glorfindel pulled back and the two Elves stared at one another as though
surprised.  They both were shaken.  But then Glorfindel’s mad sanity
returned.  He held Erestor at arm’s length again and cried, “And dammit
all, Erestor, you’ve already told me, and if you never voice it, I don’t 
care,
and if you’ve changed your mind that’s just too bad, because I love you,
now, always, and forever.  I love you and you’ll never be rid of me.”

Then, it seemed as though his steam finally wore off.  Glorfindel seemed
to deflate.  He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against Erestor’s.
He continued, ending in a whisper, “ I am not cross, Erestor, not furious.
No never, not with you.  And if you can wait, if you can hold off your
bathing and eating for just a little while, there is something I’d like to
show you.”

“I will go with you,” Erestor readily answered, though still unprepared to
deal with an out-of-character Glorfindel, so at ease in his sudden madness.

“Oh but first!” Glorfindel declared, stepping up to stand side-by-side with
Erestor, and hand-in-hand, “Let me introduce my helpers.  Of course you
know Melpomaen, and these are Saelbeth, a craftsman who lives outside
the House, and Dinendal, one of my up and coming guardsmen.”

Erestor nodded in turn to each young Elf, who offered salutations and
welcome and secretive, knowing smiles.

Glorfindel told them, “Run ahead now and prepare things!”

And off they went, scurrying into the house.

Glorfindel took Erestor’s arm gently and crooked it into his own and led
him toward the House.  He turned his head to whisper near Erestor’s ear,
mindful now of keeping down his voice, seeming to have already
forgotten his antics in the square.  “My dearest friend,” he said, so easily
and lovingly, with a longing in his speech, “I’ve taken the liberty of
preparing for you a gift.  I trust, from the tone of your letter to me, and
from your passive acceptance of me today, that your feelings have not
changed?  Have continued, even, to grow?”

Erestor glanced shyly into kind, blue eyes no longer glaring with near
hostile intensity, but only soft and wise, as they ever had been.  “That is
right,” he agreed, all the old harshness of his voice tempered by these new
feelings arisen in him.

“Good, that is well,” Glorfindel answered happily at once.  “And I must
also say that your letter touched me in many ways, but never did I waver
in my love for you, and so devastated was I that you had fled that I might
admit to a slight case of psychosis.”

“For this lunacy that has possessed you, and for any suffering I may have
caused you, I am sorry.  But I needed my own time away to think.  I
oftentimes think too much, maybe as a replacement for feeling.  I’ve been
. . . adjusting.  And being around you, it would have been too distracting.
Too complicated.”

Glorfindel smiled.  “I understand.”  He really did.  “I’m just glad to have
you back.  I did miss you.”

= = = = =

Erestor could not help but notice that everyone was staring at them as they
walked the hall arm in arm.  “Glorfindel . . . what did you do?”

Glorfindel guiltily rubbed the back of his neck.  “Well, I DID go a little . 
.
. insane.  As soon as I read your letter, I may have made a slight
confession to the whole of Imladris.”

Squeezing shut his eyes, Erestor sighed and bowed his head.  “You MAY
have?  Really?  Well, I’m glad I was not here to witness your foolishness,
Glorfindel.”

Glorfindel blushed and laughed.

Finally, Glorfindel led them to his chambers and then halted.  Listening
carefully, faint scufflings and whisperings could be heard.  Erestor canted
his head and eyed the white carven door with narrowed brows.  “What
have you done?” he asked curiously.

“A little remodeling,” was Glorfindel’s answer.  Unspeakably excited, he
clasped his hands behind his back and rocked forward on the balls of his
feet.  “They’re almost done.  Just wait and you’ll see!”

Sure enough, the trio of brightly colored Elves emerged from the room a
few minutes later, each bowing at the pair as they passed, smirks firmly in
place.  The scent of some spicy incense followed in their wake.  Glorfindel
nodded his thanks to them and then turned to Erestor.  “Ready?”

“And willing,” Erestor answered, waiting for Glorfindel to open the door.

Which he did.  He pushed the white door so that it swung inward and
bowed Erestor through.

Erestor let out a slight gasp.  Much was changed within the single room
that made up Glorfindel’s quarters.  In fact, all that remained the same was
the positioning of the bed relative to the fireplace, which stood black and
empty in these warmer seasons.

He stepped within, carefully looking everything over.  What had been a
ramshackle collection of a disorganized warrior’s life in all manner of
disarray had become a cool and organized room, in shades of blue and
white.  Gone was the dark mahogany armoire that had loomed in the
corner.  In its place stood two identical wardrobes, stained with that
incredible Imladrian white that could be found in so much of the Valley’s
woodwork, and the doors of the wardrobes were skillfully carved in subtle
scenes of snow-washed winter in the Valley.  Erestor approached to
curiously run his fingers over the shaped wood.  “Saelbeth’s work?”

“Aye.”

“There are two.”

“One of them is mine,” Glorfindel agreed, stepping forward to open the
other wardrobe, revealing his collection of clothes neatly displayed.
“They other is empty.”  His meaning was clear.  He licked his lips and
looked plainly at Erestor.  “You don’t have to use it, but I thought maybe
you wanted to keep a few things here, so you have something to change
into in the morning.”  He shut the door and backed away and looked then
to the floor.

Erestor made no reply, still overwhelmed at the look of the room.  He
turned his attention elsewhere, taking in the heavy blue bed curtains and
matching drapes.  Blue cushions embroidered with silver thread had been
bestowed upon the window seats.  Plain wooden chairs, the sort that
Erestor favored, had replaced the monstrous seats upholstered in fading
red that had so long lived there.  Glorfindel had switched the place of his
oak vanity and maple desk so that the latter now sat nearer the window,
where there would be more light.  A new array of shelves were spaced
evenly along the walls, housing Glorfindel’s small collections of not only
books but also games and a few bottles of wine, as well as the many books
and small personal things that had some how migrated from Erestor’s
room to Glorfindel’s.

Erestor walked the soft blue carpets in what small floor space was left in
what was already a fairly undersized room, examining everything.
Finally, he noticed something.  “Snowflakes!” Erestor exclaimed, holding
up a small inkbottle that was green glass set with a design of pewter
snowflakes.  His dark eyes lit up with joy.  There were snowflakes subtly
embedded throughout the room, sparkling in the blue cushions, hiding
along the carved edge of the bookcase, shadowed in pattern on the rug.
Even in the old woodwork of desk and vanity, they appeared.  Plain brass
handles had been replaced with silver drawer pulls, which Erestor finally
saw were indeed six-pointed and delightfully reminiscent of snow.

“I didn’t want it to be too overstated,” Glorfindel said, somewhat
sheepishly.

But before he could say a single thing more, Erestor finally noticed the
most drastic addition to the chamber.  “Glorfindel.  Why is there a door in
your room?”

Where once had been flat wall now housed a door.  Granted, it blended in
with the rest of the lightly colored room and was not designed to draw the
eye.  Its silver handle was, unmistakably, shaped in the likeness of a
snowflake.

And Glorfindel answered the question.  “There is a door in my room,
because my room is now . . . two rooms.”

Erestor eyed the threshold warily, as though the closed door might hold
something evil behind its innocent appearance.  “That was a guest
chamber.”

Glorfindel shook his head.  “Not anymore.”

“This isn’t your room, is it?” Erestor asked, looking steadfastly at the
white paneled door.  “These are our rooms.”

“Only if you wish it,” Glorfindel readily answered.  “Only if you’re ready.
After all, you still have your own . . .”

“My own space for thinking?” Erestor questioned with a smile, looking at
Glorfindel again.

Glorfindel shrugged.

“I don’t know that I’ll need it anymore,” Erestor told him boldly, then
approached the secret door to open it.  Those dark eyes darted about and
the smile slowly melted from his face.  Not in disappointment or alarm,
but only in shock.  He moved within.

This room was easily twice as big.  It was a corner room, with windows on
two walls and a balcony as well.  Between warmly hued rugs the wooden
floor was revealed, pale oak planking, warm in the light from what was
conceivably a few hundred candles, no doubt only just lit by Glorfindel’s
ambitious minions.  Candles filled the warm room in warm colors, the
yellow light flickering and cheerful and accompanied by a subtle incense
smoking from large brass braziers.  The room itself was done up in light
greens with touches of peach and red.  The bed in this room, for example,
was very . . . red.  There was no other word for it.  And big.  The bed was
decidedly very big.

The wide windows were draped in flowing gauze of peach and lemon, like
spring flowers blooming from the pale green of the walls.  Potted plants
grew in the corners and hung from high shelves.  The fireplace here was
again much larger than the other, and painstakingly carved of dark
mahogany in the likeness of great growing things.  Not flowers nor viney
décor as was common among Elven architecture, but great growing stalks
of some crop.  A great many pillows, cushions, and blankets were laid out
around the hearthrug, so that one might make a nest there.

Then he saw the mural.  Along one side of the wall that housed the door to
the hall was a stretch of plain wall, painted in brilliant colors, a 
landscape
of rolling hills and sprouting trees with a great blue sky above, and a 
plain
dirt road disappearing over the hills.

Erestor ran toward it, dirty shoes skipping across the rug-scattered floor.
He stopped short but a few feet from the wall, reaching out to almost -- but
not quite -- let his fingers dance over it.  “It’s home,” he whispered in a
voice wet with tears.  He turned with shining eyes to face Glorfindel, who
had taken a few steps within.  “Who painted it?”

“Saelbeth’s grandfather.  You know him; he works with the carpenters.
He, too, remembers the time when the name of the Greenwood was an apt
one.”

“This is the very road!  The very road,” Erestor exclaimed, pointing, “that
led down to my house!  You can see where the corn grows in the distance!
I walked this road!  I knew it!”

Glorfindel admitted, “When he asked me which fields to paint, I just told
him to choose, ‘the road that led to the corn and rice.’  He remembered it.”

Erestor nodded, looking again upon the mural.  “I did not know him then.
Though I may have seen him at market once or twice.”  Erestor thought
long and hard before voicing his next thought, “People who knew me then
tend not to recognize me now.”

“Lack of joy changes a person,” Glorfindel told him.

Erestor turned to regard him again.  “I suppose it does.”

For a moment, then, they looked at one another.  And when their thoughts
began to show, they looked away and stood in silence.  Erestor’s eye then
caught upon a low dresser with wide drawers beside the bed.  “What is
here?”

Glorfindel followed to watch as Erestor pulled open the top drawer.  “Oh,
all sorts of things,” he said in a voice that was not quite innocent.

“Glorfindel,” Erestor’s voice was all seriousness.  He had removed from a
great pile of them one of the Imladris bathing tokens for the Bath House,
painted one of six colors on one side and engraved with a rune or two on
the other.  They were flat and round and just smaller than the size of
Erestor’s palm.  “These are for special services.  Expensive oils and
steams and the private rooms.”  He looked up at Glorfindel.  Around at the
room.  “Where did all this come from?”

Glorfindel shrugged.  “I called in a few favors.”

“A few?”

“My cronies helped.”

“You didn’t have them steal, did you?”

Glorfindel laughed and smiled kindly down at a firmly glowering Erestor,
who was kneeling before the dresser.  “You know me better than that.”

Erestor agreed with a nod and a tight smile.  “Still, all of this . . .”

“It was worth it,” Glorfindel told him as Erestor replaced the bathing
token and closed the first drawer to open the second.  Which was filled
with a variety of bottles stacked in their own little wooden or velvet
compartments.

Raising an eyebrow, Erestor commented, “Never have I seen such a wide
array of oils.”

Curious, he quickly shut the drawer and moved to the last.

Glorfindel suddenly stood beside him, hovering.  “Oh, you don’t want to
look in that drawer.”  He seemed quite certain of it, and even reached as if
to pull Erestor away.

“Don’t I?” Erestor answered, pulling it open in any case.  A blushing
smile grew upon his previously ashen face.  “Why Glorfindel, I had not
realized your tastes were so varied.  Your selection of toys is impressive.”

“Well, I don’t really . . .  I’ve never . . . I had some help, assembling 
this . .
. collection.”

Erestor looked up.  Glorfindel was blushing a far deeper shade of red than
Erestor himself.  Erestor shut the drawer and stood to look up at Glorfindel
and tell him, “Wouldn’t I have loved to eavesdrop on that conversation.”

Glorfindel giggled anxiously and again made that nervous gesture, rubbing
the back of his neck, as if he had nothing else to do with his hands.  “Yeah
. . .”

Shaking his head in bewilderment, Erestor looked about the place again.
He noticed something new every time he did.  This time it was the brass
chandelier that hung from the center of the ceiling and could be lowered
with a golden rope run through a pulley system and tied off at chest level
beside the door that led to the first room.  “What is all this, Glorfindel?”

Glorfindel did not answer until Erestor turned to face him.  “I had told
you: my bed, the one in the other room, that bed is for sleeping.  That is 
all
it ever will be for.  I never want you to feel . . . obligated or pressured. 
  As
long as we are there, you are safe.  Safe from intimacy, from physicality,
even from love if you wish it.  That room, that room is our winter.  It is 
for
hibernation, for resting, for breathing deep and slow and easy.  But this
room, this room is our summer.  It is for . . . everything else.  If you 
want
it to be.  If you wish, we will lock this room until you feel comfortable
here, or we can lock it away forever.  But, you said, in your letter to me,
that your body was only . . . resting.  Waiting for summer.  When that
spring awakening comes, we have a room to be comfortable in.”
Glorfindel sighed and looked then to the floor.  “That was a lot less
eloquent than I imagined it.”

Erestor took Glorfindel’s biceps in the gentlest of holds, moving close and
looking up into worried blue eyes.  “It was perfect.  And you, Glorfindel . 
.
.”  Erestor savored the name as it rolled through his mouth, “you asked me
about my thinkings, my conclusions.  Four months ago I wrote it and you
read it, and I discovered that I am quite strong enough now to say it: I 
love
you.”  He then tugged on a strand of that magnificent golden hair to bring
Glorfindel’s head down for a kiss, slow burning and sweet.

“Mm,” Erestor purred as he pulled away, eyes closed and face drawn in
smooth lines of contentment.  “Thank you for these rooms.  A Winter and
a Summer.”  Then, he looked with dark pools of love into Glorfindel’s
calm face.  “I hate to think I’m so divided.”  He laughed.  “But I like this
place.”

Glorfindel smiled.  “I’m glad.  And, uh, I have something else to show
you.”  He took Erestor’s hand and led him back into the Winter Room, to
stand beside the cold hearth.

They stood facing one another, in the path of golden light from the candles
in the Summer Room.

“In your letter,” Glorfindel nervously began, “you were very careful,
Erestor, to leave out any names of note.  Your mother’s, your sisters’, your
niece’s.  Your own.  Despite this,” Glorfindel said with an unsure smile, “I
sent out some letters to Mirkwood and guess what?”

Erestor was motionless, not knowing what to think.  He gave no answer.

Glorfindel reached out to retrieve several papers from behind a vase on the
mantle.  “You were gone quite a long time.”

“Four months,” Erestor agreed.

“Aye.  Plenty of time for an ambitious messenger to seek out the caves of
Mirkwood and return.”  He rifled through to pick out a sealed parchment.
“There’s a letter here from your sister.”

Erestor suddenly paled.  He regarded the plain envelope as one might eye
a riled snake, uncertain if it would bite.

Glorfindel replaced the other papers on the mantle and looked down upon
the note in his hand.  “I know not what words are here, nor what the tone
might be.  I can understand if you do not wish to read it.  The unknown is
often--”

“Will you open it?” Erestor quietly interrupted, his voice hitched with
fear.  “Will you read it to me?”

“Yes.  Yes, of course,” the golden Elf readily agreed, breaking the wax
seal and unfolding what turned out to be two sheets of thick paper.  Blue
eyes searched the heading and he suddenly smiled.  “It begins, ‘My
Brother!’”

“Read it.”

“Yes.”  Glorfindel read.

~*~*~*~*~*~

My Brother,

Glorfindel’s enquiries came to us quite unexpectedly.  My hand shakes so
badly, I’ve had to rewrite my reply, my correspondence to you, four times
now.  Oh my dear, we’ve counted you so long among the dead that the
mere thought of you reading this now is enough to move me to tears.

I gather that you have much changed.  I believe we all have.  Glorfindel’s
letter brought to mind my life on the old farm; I had not thought on those
days in such a long time, but I am glad I was reminded of them.

And I am glad I was reminded of you.  I understand you are the Chief
Counselor Erestor in faraway Imladris.  I can say I have heard of you, I
have heard many things of you, and none of them match up to my
memories of my little brother running about in my old frocks, nor the
youth I cleaned up after his first fistfight, nor the man who sheltered with
me in the mysterious caves I now call home.

Too long had we been parted, by too many things.  I do not wish to speak
of them now.

I wish to speak of my life and of yours.  I wish you well, I wish you all 
the
blessings you once bestowed upon me, and my husband and little Cellel.

Cellel, of course, is a grown woman now, and you’ve never seen such a
beautiful young lady.  Though barely six hundred years my junior, I shall
ever call her young.  Despite the delight she takes in life, she is of a 
fickle
heart and has not yet settled with a man.  She earns her place here by
toiling in the gardens.  She is the only woman to do so, as the garden area
has been host to three spider invasions in the years since it was
constructed, but she refuses to part with her work there.  As so many find
to be true, she cannot live long without the light of the sun, else her soul
dims and she begins to pine.  And so the gardens keep her vivacious and
young, it seems, and I am glad of it.

When I told Cellel of your survival, she burst into a fit of tears and
demanded at once to join the next party leaving for Imladris so that she
might come visit.  I explained that she could not just drop herself on your
doorstep, no matter you’re her uncle.  She agreed, but her determination
may yet sneak her out of the caves and to your side, whether I will it or 
no.

If this is the case, you may expect a lovely lady of long silver hair and
with a bright green cape clasped with a silver buckle in the shape of a rose
to come clattering through the halls of your House any time now.  She will
not have changed much from the last time you saw her, really.  She knows
to call you by your preferred name now, but she is a passionate girl and
may forget.  For that, I apologize.

She told me, after her tears had dried, in a quiet voice (rare for her) that
she remembered holding tight to you after her mother died.  She
remembered always taking joy in the sight of you in the caves before you
left.  That your joy added to hers and that though she pretended to resent 
it
when you ruffled her hair when passing in the halls, that she truly enjoyed
the attention.

As for myself, Caranir and I work side-by-side in the new mill.  Long did
we work to shape the caves, but we have always been happy, for we have
always been together.  What grace kept him at my side during the War I
do not know, but I am grateful for it.

Please, Erestor, be not long in replying.  I must know all that has happened
in the long centuries that have parted us.

With love,
Dondeild

~*~*~*~*~*~

Erestor was weeping, great wailing sobs.  He had backed up to sit upon the
blue bedspread and his arms hung weak and limp at his sides.  Glorfindel
set aside the letter and slowly moved to sit beside him on the bed.  Erestor
turned to him and cried with great gasping sobs into Glorfindel’s shoulder.
“I’m” *gasp* “so” *heave* “happy-y-y-yyyy!”

= = = = =

After Erestor cried himself to a restful sleep, Glorfindel escaped into the
Summer Room to douse all the candles and put out the incense.  He
collected a token at random from their drawer and when he left, closed the
door behind him.

He let Erestor sleep until the majority of the House had sought their
dinner.  Then, he roused the sleeper and Glorfindel led him by the hand
through corridors lit by the last of the day’s light.

The Bath House was an extension of the main House and could be reached
without leaving the safety of a roof, particularly handy on those rainy
days.  Glorfindel led the silent Erestor through the hall, down a staircase,
round a tower, and through the wide-open double doors to the Bath House.

Glorfindel presented his token to the bored attendant, a young maiden, still
a girl really with curly black hair and rosy cheeks, who was thrilled at the
opportunity to actually do something.  She hopped to her feet, glanced at
the rune and the color -- dropping it into one of many tubes that would fall
down to the boiler room where more people would be working to run the
pumps -- and smiled brilliantly at them as she sorted through the keys at
her waist.  “Follow me sirs!”

Erestor remained silent and rather pliant, following wherever Glorfindel
led him.

The walked past the community pools and individual tubs, loosing steam
this time of day, and down a torch-lit stone corridor.  They were
underground now, as the valley went slightly uphill.  The waterfall beside
the building would be turning a wheel to power the pumps.  But it was not
audible through the thick stone.

The attendant pushed open the oak door, which would have been heavy if
not for being so well balanced on its sturdy iron hinges.  Glorfindel and
Erestor followed her in and sat upon the wooden benches as she pulled
down the wooden ramp that the heated water would flow down.  She made
sure that robes and towels were laid out in their proper places.   Once the
water started flowing, she sniffed it to make sure it was the scent that had
been recorded on the token, not that Glorfindel cared one way or another,
and Erestor was practically catatonic.

She flashed a smile at them then, and said, “If you leave your clothes in
the basket, they’ll be cared for.”

Glorfindel smiled his thanks and when the door finally clicked closed with
a final thud, he sighed out a deep breath of relief.  “All right, Erestor.”  
He
climbed to his feet and held out his hand.  “Up to your feet, my friend.”

Erestor took the hand and slowly stood.  It seemed he was looking at
Glorfindel’s chest, but he was more likely glazed with a trance-like sleep
still, though obviously responding to Glorfindel’s auditory output.  “You
gonna get undressed?” the golden Elf asked with gentle sarcasm.

Erestor shrugged.

Glorfindel tenderly stripped him of the traveling clothes stained with mud
from the roads.  He set aside the shoes and threw the garments in the
woven basket that waited.  Then, he guided the naked Elf over to the deep,
circular pool.

Erestor wakened a bit as he stepped into the heated water, the scent of
lavender and something else, almost like vanilla but subtler, rising from
the steaming surface.  He relaxed with a low, crooning moan and sunk into
the water that was still falling from the wooden ramp with little bubbles.

Glorfindel waited until the bath had filled and the water ceased.  He
tugged the string that pulled the ramp away and then sat on the floor
behind Erestor where he sat in the sunken stone tub.  He reached out to
unbind Erestor’s braids and run his fingers through.  “You’ve had quite a
day, Erestor.  You must be tired.”

“Mm-hmm,” Erestor rumbled, leaning back.

Glorfindel massaged the soaped water into Erestor’s mass of black hair.
“I’m glad to have you back.”

Erestor mumbled something that could have been, ‘me too.’

“If you like, I could give you a massage before bed?”

“S’nds nice,” Erestor drawled.

“Are you gonna eat tonight?  Or can you do without?”

“Glorfindel?”

“What?”

“Are you getting in here with me or not?”

Glorfindel pulled his hands away and looked at the back of Erestor’s head.
“Do you want me to?”

For a moment, there was no reaction, and Glorfindel could imagine
Erestor rolling his big brown eyes.  “Of course.”

Glorfindel stood.  “All right.”  He removed the braided leather belt and
carefully undid the many buttons of antler that did up the front of his
bright doublet.  Soon his clothes, nowhere near dirty, were neatly folded
on one of the wooden benches, soft boots sitting crumpled together
underneath like a pair of blue lop-eared rabbits.

Glorfindel came round to slip swiftly into the steaming water, humming
with satisfaction at the wet heat that soothed nerve-tightened muscles.  But
he was not fast enough for Erestor’s quick eyes, which caught the sight of
his arousal.  Those eyes, long shadowed with darkness to an inky black,
were now very clearly a deep brown, and they sparkled in the lantern light.
“So,” Erestor’s sleepy voice rumbled, “have you been wondering about
my body?”

“Wha – what?”

Erestor chuckled easily.  “Your eyes get so big when you’re shocked.  It’s
cute.”

“Oh, but, what?”

“So hopelessly confused,” Erestor observed with a giddy laugh.  He
peered into astonished blue eyes.  “What I’ve come to think of as my re-
awakening.  I know I feel it coming.  Soon now, Glorfindel, I’ll wish to
show my love for you in physical terms.”  He peered through the water in
the direction of Glorfindel’s groin.  “Very physical terms.”  He looked up
again at Glorfindel’s face, his brown eyes a skillful mask of innocent
curiosity.  “If that’s okay with you.”

Glorfindel’s arms had been spread out along the round rim of the sunken
tub, and he fought to keep them there, lest he draw attention to what he
wished to cover.  “Erestor,” he nervously laughed.  “I’ve wanted you for a
long time.  I look forward to any way in which you’d care to express this
love.”

The predatory gleam in Erestor’s eyes dulled to something more tender.
Then he reached out across the distance to touch the ring on Glorfindel’s
index finger.  His voice was lazy.  “I’ve never seen this before.”

Glorfindel pulled back his hand to fondly examine the sapphire embedded
in twisted silver.  “It was a well-wishing gift from my little helpers.  
They
banded together to get it for me in anticipation of my happiness.”

“Saelbeth, Melpomaen, and Dinendal.  What a troupe.  They’ve come to
truly care for you, it seems.  It looks as though they had a great deal of 
fun
working together.”

“You’ve no idea.”  He sighed and then chuckled.  “Now I fear I’ll never
be rid of them!”

Then they sat, quiet and lazy in the steaming water.  Erestor dipped his
head back into the water and ran his fingers through until the strands were
straight and slick.  He used a rough cloth that had sat neatly folded on the
rim of the tub to scrub every inch of his travel-weary body.  Glorfindel
watched in silence.  When Erestor finished, he mirrored Glorfindel’s pose,
sitting opposite the warrior and stretching lean arms out along the edge.
When he spoke, it was to voice his rambling thoughts.  “I must make reply
to my sister.  I hardly know what to write.”

“Just let her know that you are happy.  That you are glad to hear from
her.”

“Yes.”

“Such a pretty name: Dondeild.”

“She was never fond of it,” Erestor easily replied, a small smile playing
about his lips.  “Country names were so simple.  Straightforward.  So were
we all.  Simple.”

“You miss that life.”

“Of course.”  Erestor’s smile faded.  “I miss my family.  My joy.  That
peace.  The rolling fields and rising trees.  The songs and simple country
feasts.  I don’t think I’ll ever be that happy again.  Until I have that
innocence back, I can never have that joy.”

“Joy of a different sort, then,” Glorfindel suggested.

Erestor looked directly at him, hiding nothing.  “Yes.  Exactly.  Something
different.  A joy that is richer somehow.  I don’t know what would have
become of me, had you not struck me with that misfired ball of snow so
many years ago.  Would I still be bound up in my black robes and sorrow?
Would I still fear the word of love?  Would my memories still be the only
joy in my life?”

“Such terrible questions, Erestor,” Glorfindel worriedly told him.  “Do
you really want to know?”

“I suppose not.  But I do wonder,” Erestor replied.  “I love you,
Glorfindel.”  His lips lifted in a sudden grin.  “I like saying that.”

“I like hearing it,” Glorfindel assured him.  Then, he removed himself
from his place along the wall of the tub and leant forward to brush his 
lips,
light as a snowflake, against Erestor’s.  “I love you.  Erestor.  Counselor
and harlot.  What was your name then?”

Erestor rolled those big brown eyes and Glorfindel retreated, sinking back
into the hot water.  “I’m not going to tell you,” Erestor teasingly told 
him.
“It’s embarrassing.”

“Your parents gave you an embarrassing name?”

“I thought so,” Erestor said.  “Dresses weren’t the only reasons Dinilion
teased me as a boy and again no, I’m not telling you.”

Glorfindel laughed.  “I’m curious now!”

“Too bad,” Erestor told him with a wink and a smirk.  “So, what sort of
sex do you like to have?”

“Uh . . .”  Glorfindel was continually caught by these nonchalant bursts of
casual conversation about sex.  “Gee, Erestor.  I’m not used to these sorts
of things coming out of your mouth.”

Erestor raised a brow.  “Does it bother you?”

“Noooo . . . It’ll just take some getting used to.”

Erestor smiled.  “Good.  So.  Do I get an answer?”

“Answer?”

Laughing, Erestor shook his head.  “Too much too fast, maybe.  You
know, Glorfindel, it seems to me that you’re the one who’s uncomfortable
in these conversations.”

Glorfindel let out a nervous laugh and looked away.  “Erestor.  The last
time I saw you, I felt that I was intruding on your personal space when I
held your hand, and now you’re asking about my preferences in the
bedroom.  It’s disconcerting.”

“I see.”  But Erestor would not relent.  “When’s the last time you had a
lover?”

“Oh, Erestor.  Not since . . .  A long time ago.”

Erestor leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees under the water,
his chin just above the surface.  His expression was serious.  “Now that I
think about it,” he said as though it was just occurring to him for the 
first
time, “I don’t know all that much about you, Captain Glorfindel.”

“No one does,” he said in a small voice.

“I see.  Well.  Glorfindel, I’m never going to ask you if you are the same
Glorfindel of Gondolin, somehow magically returned to us.  I won’t ask
you about that.  But maybe you’ll tell me.  Someday.”

“Someday,” Glorfindel echoed.  “Aye.”

“Until then,” Erestor sat up straight and drifted around the small pool to 
sit
beside Glorfindel, “You’ve been waiting a long time.  Do you want me to .
. . ?”

Glorfindel heard the sultry tones, saw the heated glance, felt the
wandering hands.  He faced the dark-haired terror.  “To what?” Glorfindel
challenged, blue eyes darkened to something closer to indigo.

Erestor smiled.  He leaned in, nose to nose with Glorfindel.  “Do you want
me to . . .” he slid his hand gently around Glorfindel’s aroused member,
“touch you?”  His grin turned insolent.  “Do you want me to take you in
my mouth and suck your orgasm right out of you?  I’ve been told I’ve an
extraordinarily talented tongue.”

“Ah . . .”  Glorfindel’s eyes darted fretfully about the room, suddenly
uneasy again, and he quickly licked his full lips.  He couldn’t meet
Erestor’s eyes.  “Y-yes.”

Erestor’s eyes lit up and he moved around to kneel before Glorfindel,
placing his hands on the warrior’s hips.  “Up you go; sit right on the 
floor.
I can’t hold my breath THAT long.”

Glorfindel, disbelieving at the hasty situation, allowed Erestor to
maneuver him until he was sitting on the rim of the sunken tub, his feet on
the shelf he had been sitting on in the water.  Erestor rose up out of the
steaming water like an exotic undine with shining pale skin and wet
crinkled hair to kiss Glorfindel long and sensual as his hands played
skillfully along the golden Elf’s skin, massaging trembling thighs.

One hand came up to gently cup Glorfindel’s flushing cheek.  “I love
you,” Erestor breathed against panting lips.  Then his own lips discovered
the lay of the body beneath, as they fashioned a path from jaw to belly,
tasting the salt of the skin past the lavender-vanilla of the water.  He 
made
Glorfindel tremble all over, and moan and sigh with longing and lust.

“Erestor.”  He could say nothing more.  “Erestor!”

Erestor had parted golden thighs and smiled against the hot skin there.  He
was snickering.  “I love you, too.”  Then, he swallowed down the purpled
hard length that had been quivering in his firm hand.

Glorfindel gasped and just barely held himself back from thrusting
forward into the sudden, welcoming heat.  He stilled Erestor’s eager
motions with a hand on his shoulder.  “I’m not going to last long,”
Glorfindel warned in a shuddering breath, “at all.”

Erestor made no reply, as he was incapable, but he batted Glorfindel’s
hand away and glared up at him, which set the blonde to laughing.  “By
Elbereth, Erestor, don’t glare at me when you’re doing that . . .”

Seeing the humor, Erestor withdrew so that he could laugh too, peering up
at Glorfindel from the water and trying in vain to shake off the humor.
“Oh Glorfindel; you’re too much!”

“Uh, please don’t stop . . .”

Erestor made a downward motion with the palm of one wet hand as
though to quell his own laughter and closed his eyes to take a deep breath.
Still, he smirked as he moved forward to lick teasingly along the wetted
shaft before consuming him again.

= = = = =

The girl that manned the station at the door to the Bath House looked
suddenly up at the shouts that reverberated down the hall from the private
rooms and stood as though to investigate . . . but after a moment’s further
consideration, decided not to.

= = = = =

Glorfindel was breathing deep and quick, relaxing in the shallow depths of
the pool, Erestor curled contentedly at his side, one wet hand petting at
thick, golden hair.

“Z’nice,” Glorfindel muttered.

“I see your speech faculties are returning.”

“Ha.  Ha.” Glorfindel was not amused.  “Funny.”

“Mmm, I think I really like that drawerful of bath tokens.”

“Good.”

“Ah.  You haven’t graduated from one-word sentences.  Brain still
mushy?”

“Not funny.”

“Mm-hmm, yes it is.”

= = = = =

After their bath, Glorfindel and Erestor could think of nothing but sleep.
They forwent dinner altogether, slipping down the hall to the Winter
Room where they crawled together into bed to sleep deep and long,
entwined closely like lovers long separated.  Which they were.

= = = = =

They passed those first days reunited without household duties or any
other thing to distract them from one another.

Their nights they lived in the Winter Room, speaking little and sleeping in
the downy soft bed draped all in sea foam blue.  Sometimes they would
take turns reading to each other from their collections of books, mostly
short novels and clever poetry.  Erestor moved all his clothes and personal
possessions there, filling up his own white wardrobe and the empty space
on the shelves.  He gave up his old room altogether, even though
Glorfindel protested that it might be too soon.  Too much, too fast, he 
said.
Erestor assured him it wasn’t.  They explained in halting language to
Elrond an abridged version of what had happened between them, and their
Lord offered his smirking congratulations.  Meanwhile, Saelbeth,
Melpomaen, and Dinendal made it their supreme objective to ensure that
the lovers were not disturbed.  They occasionally patrolled the corridor
that led to their rooms; they haunted Glorfindel’s and Erestor’s offices to
guarantee that all was in order.  They made sure to send food to the Winter
Room, when the two Elves had not been seen all day.  They were playful
guardians in an uncertain era.

Then there were the times spent in the Summer Room.  Glorfindel and
Erestor would share their meals while sprawling in the generous mound of
pillows set before the giant fireplace, lit only with candles in the midst 
of
summer.  And Glorfindel encouraged Erestor to talk.  And talk he did.  Of
the little things that he remembered, that he was finally strong enough to
share.  Memories of a loving mother, clever sisters, a decent hard-working
uncle, and good friends.  “Did I ever tell you my earliest memory of my
mother?”

They sat among those pillows, all pale purples and burnt umbers.  Erestor
was wrapped about in a crocheted blanket in streaks of green and blue.
Glorfindel was wearing several layers of heavy robes, in dark and mellow
tones.  It was the first day of winter, and they’d lit their first fire in 
the
Summer Room, though it was only midday.  Glorfindel’s golden hair was
free and shone like straw-turned-gossamer in the mingled firelight and
rays of the sun.  Erestor’s dark eyes watched him intently.  The warrior
shook that golden head and his voice came in a low and pleasing rumble.
“You’ve told me little of your mother.”

Erestor nodded.  “She was shorter than I would be, but that is not how I
remember her.  She was tall, larger than life, as my father had been to me.
She had flowing silver hair, and sky-blue eyes, and she always seemed
ancient to me, as old ones inevitably are.  As a toddler, I was ever 
clinging
to her skirts.  But firstly I remember one winter afternoon.  I was watching
my sisters from the window; they were playing in the snow.  But I was too
young to join them; my mother feared for my safety.  Seeing me saddened,
she said to me, ‘Come little one.  I have something better than play to
teach you.’  And she picked me up and set me on the counter.  I could still
see my sisters out the window, but what my mother was doing was far
more interesting.  She was making cookies.

“I watched, fascinated.  I had always wondered what it was she was
eternally laboring over up there on the counter so far out of my sight.  I
was intrigued, as she toiled with all those sweet-smelling things, telling
me all the while precisely what she was doing.

“I grew up in that kitchen,” Erestor wondered slowly, quietly.  “Years
later, I would stand beside my mother there, while my sisters played in the
snow, and she and I would make the cookies together.  While they baked
in our little brick oven, she and I would warm our hands before it and sip
at hot mugs of chamomile tea.”  Erestor smiled and laughed, already
remembering what came next.  “When the cookies were done, I heaped
fourteen of them in a kerchief.  I wrapped up in my mother’s cloak and
took them outside, cradled in my arms.  My five sisters crowded around,
taking two each.  Merai would take four.  She could always eat twice as
much as any of us.”  Erestor suddenly halted, his brows furrowed.  “You
remind me of her.  Merai.  She was tall and strong.  Blonde-haired, blue-
eyed.  Sweet and bright . . .”  He shook his head.  “Anyway.  We would
eat the cookies, standing with our feet cold in the snow.  And then we
played.  Until the night darkened the ruined backdrop of the snow-strewn
meadow that would, come summer, be a field of corn.  Until we were
frozen with cold and wet through layers of homespun.  Until our teeth
chattered and our hands were red.  Then we’d stream indoors, leaving our
sodden clothes in a heap by the door.  Our mother waited with a neatly
folded pile of six blankets, to wrap each of us up as we came in.  We’d sit
round the old brick oven and sip warm milk flavored with cocoa.”

= = = = =

So the stories unfolded over the days.  Days became weeks, and their
common duties resumed.  Weeks became months and a new routine
developed.  Months became years in the Valley.

All the while, Glorfindel said nary a word of himself, though listened
intently to all that Erestor divulged to him.  On rare occasion, the three
henchmen would be invited, and the five of them would crowd the pillows
on the floor of the Summer Room while Erestor spoke of the golden years
-- his childhood -- in the Greenwood.

= = = = =

But one day, while lounging upon the balcony that overlooked the river to
the south, Glorfindel was broodingly silent, and Erestor chanced to speak
to him.  “Glorfindel?”

There wasn’t a sign of recognition.

“My Love?”

“Hmm?”  Glorfindel was elsewhere.

“Glorfindel, you’re acting out of character.  What so consumes you?”

“I’m thinking, Erestor.”

“I suppose there’s a first time for everything.  Don’t keep me in suspense.”

Glorfindel smiled weakly, though his eyes still searched the horizon, as
though despondently seeking something he knew he would not find.
“You’ve confided in me so much; I feel I know you better than I know
myself sometimes.  But still, it seems odd to me . . . How on Middle Earth
did you become Elrond’s Chief Counselor?  Forgive me but, you yourself
have admitted to your own lack of education, and yet within two-thousand
seven-hundred years you’ve become the second most powerful Elf in this
Valley.  What cool state of mind allowed you to achieve all this?”  Erestor
made as if to answer, but Glorfindel continued speaking.  “Were I to name
all the advisors in our council, I would be able to tell you: this one is 
the
son of a lord, that one a prince’s daughter.  This Elf worked his way up
from ranks of the scholars and that one from the soldier’s command.  Not
one could boast their beginnings as a farmer!”

“Glorfindel, were you not there for the course of those two-thousand
seven-hundred years?  Were we not introduced while still walking in the
shadow of Mount Doom?  You know better than I what you thought of me
then.  You should have seen the progression.”

Glorfindel slowly nodded to himself.  “You were Elrond’s assistant at
every turn.  Though I never saw him teaching you your letters and
languages.  But I suppose, if you were always with him, then you have
good reason to know the workings of an Elven realm.  It was several
hundred years before you earned a position as Counselor.  Many more led
to the title of Chief.  And,” he carefully thought, “so little care had you 
for
emotion that you spent all your days immersed in the workings of cool
logic.  You never did say much . . .”

“I had no need to.”  Erestor’s smile was subtle but sure, his voice hushed.

The echo of a chuckle moved in Glorfindel’s throat.  “That’s the truth,” he
marveled.  “The merest glare could strike any of us down without a word.”

“And I discovered,” Erestor continued, “that ‘cool logic’ could surmount
any number of unforeseen challenges, and that relying so heavily upon my
intelligence that I -- in fact -- had a great store of it.  Enough knowledge
and wit together to accomplish a great many things.”

Silence fell then, as Glorfindel’s internal deliberations continued and
Erestor allowed them.

The air seemed to shift between them then.  Glorfindel looked down to the
stone of the balcony floor and then over to Erestor’s patience gaze.
“Erestor.  You’ve confided in me so much.”

“So you’ve said.  Glorfindel,” he continued before the blonde could say
anything more, “you don’t . . . *owe* me anything.  Is that what you
think?  You don’t.  What histories I offer you, I offer freely.  Whatever
guilt you feel is not necessary.”

“But I want to tell you.”

“That’s different then.”

Glorfindel turned to face Erestor, and his fair face was marked for the 
first
time with a great depth of fear and uncertainty.  “I died in Gondolin.”

Erestor’s hand flew up to his mouth of its own volition.  “Oh Glorfindel,”
he breathed, eyes wide with astonishment.  “I never believed the stories.  I
didn’t.”

Glorfindel swallowed nervously.  “I tend not to dwell on my own death.
Much like yourself, there are those things I prefer to remember, and those
things I don’t.  But I want to tell you.  Now.  While I have the strength 
and
conviction.  While I’m slightly drunk.”

“You’ve been drinking?”

“Let me speak.”

“If you must.”

“Yes I must.  I don’t like to talk about it.  I haven’t before, except to
Elrond.  And I won’t want to talk about it again.  But, I love you Erestor.
And I want you to know, to know and understand all of me.

“I was born a Lord in Gondolin.  I lived for Gondolin.  I died for
Gondolin.  And all my life there was a cycle of duty.  I obeyed the will of
others and none of my own.  And all I had to show at the end of it was an
empty life.  I had never loved, nor known passion for anything so simple
as play or work.  And then I died.  Do you know, birth and death are
possibly the most traumatizing experiences we will ever know, but we do
not remember them?  It is true.  I know how I died, of course.  At least, I
know how it has been recorded in the history books.  But I do not
remember it.  I do not want to.

“The afterlife, however, is a different story.  These things I will tell 
you,
they will sound odd.  There will not be anything in your experience to
compare them to.  And here it is.  I lived then--  Well.  Not lived.  Let me
say I *dwelt* in the Halls.  Yes, the Halls of Waiting.  It is like no place
on Middle Earth.  It is easy to get lost in an ephemeral world where things
that seem solid have no basis in physicality.  What seemed to be walls,
floor, ceilings were not.  They shifted, moved.  And my own body, I knew,
was not a real body.  We neither ate nor slept, we souls who dwelt there.  I
was far from alone.  Yet I could not share in the representation of life
about me.  So many, you must understand, are happy there.  The afterlife
is a good place.  But not for me.  I did not understand it.

“After I-did-not-know-how-long, I was approached.  It was an Elf, or so I
thought, and one I never had seen before.  He addressed me and said, ‘I
am concerned for you.’  I answered, ‘I am not happy here, it is true.’  ‘Do
you know why that is?’ he asked.  I told him no.  He answered me,
‘Glorfindel, the afterlife is an echo of life.  If you cannot be happy here, 
it
is because you never were happy in your own life.’  And I realized he was
telling the truth.  I did not know what happiness was, and never had.  He
told me, ‘Glorfindel, you went about life all wrong.  You are the only Elf I
have ever seen who neglected to discover joy.  Do you know what havoc
that wreaks for us?’  I asked him who ‘us’ was.  ‘Why, the Valar of
course.  We are tired of dealing with your melancholy.  It pervades these
sacred Halls like a shadow of evil.  It is not acceptable.’

“Then he said, ‘Glorfindel, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but you
failed at life.  And now you pollute the afterlife with your unique non-
existence.’  I did not know how to respond to this and so said, ‘I am sorry.
Can you teach me to angst more subtly?’  He laughed and told me, ‘I am
glad to see you have a sense of humor, whatever else you may lack.
Glorfindel, we’ve reached a decision.  Now, what did you do when your
soldiers failed a test?’  ‘I made them repeat it.’  ‘Right,’ he said, 
‘That’s
what we’re going to do with you.’

“The next thing I knew, I was walking on a road, unknowing if I was alive
or yet dead.  Lord Elrond found me wandering alone and confused in the
wilds of his land and took me in.  I was not thinking rightly, I suppose,
when I told him my name was ‘Glorfindel.’  Mayhap I should have
thought up another.  But that was what I told him, for good or for ill, and
that was how all the Valley knew me.  And for the first time, illuminated
by the soul of a half-Elf and living again in a valley sanctuary, I knew 
joy.
No obligations nor titles bound me to any lord or land and I knew
happiness because of this.

“I allowed myself to learn the value of a quiet evening in my own
company, or of carousing with the youngsters of a cheerful land.  And
after I discovered this freedom, I declared my allegiance to the Lord and
land of Imladris, understanding -- finally -- what that meant, what this
should be.  Allegiance is love, not slavery.  Thoughtful loyalty, not
mindless obligation.  It is shared freedom.  It took a second life to learn
this.”

“Then I met you, indeed in the very shadow of Mount Doom, after nearly
loosing myself in the hate and hopelessness of years of war.  I found hope
in the end of that war, and I found mystery in you.  And in you, I also saw
myself.  An Elf void of happiness.  I wished I could teach to you the joy
that I had taught myself.  But I was never brave enough to say aught of it.”

Glorfindel shook his head.  “If my story is muddled, I apologize.  So much
of it is still hazy in my mind, like times in your own life, I know.  And
that’s it, I’m done with it.  If you have questions, I ask you to hold on to
them for a later time.  For today I am done.”

= = = = =

But Erestor had no questions.  He embraced Glorfindel and then let the
reborn warrior leave, disappear into the white halls of Imladris.

Erestor took it upon himself to call upon Glorfindel’s minions.

Over the years, Erestor had come to know them rather well.  Sometimes
he worked closely with Melpomaen, and he knew the scribe best of the
three, from the lad’s eagerness to succeed in every endeavor to his well-
hidden insecurities.  Melpomaen feared so much, when he had no reason
to.  He was extraordinarily shy upon meeting others for the first time and
had no real confidence.  Erestor was amazed: just the simplest compliment
could set the scribe to beaming and improve his mood for days.  Erestor
felt he understood Melpomaen.

Then there was Dinendal.  The guardsman was wholly uninterested in
what others thought of him, aside from his few friends and especially
Glorfindel.  Dinendal was one of those who had yet to outgrow the energy
of youth and could spend all day on horseback or sparring or dancing or
any other physical task without tiring.  And, like Melpomaen, his
enthusiasm for any task was unending and uplifting.  Yet the difference
between them was marked.  Melpomaen’s tendency for quiet was matched
by Dinendal’s penchant for conversation.  It seemed the auburn-haired
warrior could easily outshine the dark little scribe.

Saelbeth was the link between them.  The woodworker, the artist, the
straw-haired youth was youngest, sweetest, and often mediated between
the other two.  Saelbeth, unlike his friends, looked outward far more than
inward, was concerned with others more than himself, and saw in his two
friends and his two mentors the very best people on Eru’s Middle Earth.

Erestor sought them out now.  It was late in the day, after much work was
done, and so he searched first for Melpomaen’s room.  Still officially
regarded as a visitor from the Harbors, Melpomaen had quarters in the
long-term guest wing of the main House.  Saelbeth lived with his family
south of the gates among the little village there and Dinendal had his place
in the barracks.  Most often, the three could be found lounging about
Melpomaen’s rooms.  Which was where Erestor so swiftly traveled.

Melpomaen’s door was as unremarkable as all the white doors in the white
corridor, but it lay at the very end of the hall.  Last door on the left.  
Easy
to find, but quite a hike from the Summer Room balcony.  Erestor did not
even take a moment to catch his breath, knocking perfunctorily and
pushing open the brass-handled door.  “Boys!  I--”

The ‘boys’ as Erestor called them were all three of them squeezed into
Melpomaen’s narrow bed, completely naked, and bound up in a unique
entanglement of limbs.

“Ah . . .”  He stared.  “Ah . . .”  He stared.  “Oh.  Um . . .”  Erestor was
struck speechless, brown eyes wide and far past any simple state of shock.

Dinendal snorted.  Which set the other two to laughing.

Still chuckling, Melpomaen extricated himself from the bunch, wrapping a
white sheet about his thin form as he did so.  Dinendal and Saelbeth lay
side-by-side, pulling the blankets up to their chins and failing to hold 
back
their wailing laughter.

Melpomaen was first to compose himself.  “It’s nothing to fret about,
Erestor.  But, please, close the door.”

Erestor wordlessly did so.

“You were bound to find out eventually,” the scribe continued.  “I’m only
sorry it had to be in such a shocking manner.  Though really, one normally
waits for a response after knocking.”  He paused then, as the other two
finally quieted.  “Are you . . .”  Melpomaen was frightened again.  “Do
you think it wrong of us?”

“Wrong?” Erestor carefully echoed.  He schooled his features into a mask
such as he once wore in common company.  “Immoral, perhaps?”  Oh, he
was scaring them now.  “Wicked, maybe, for the Valar teach us that one
soul alone shall ever match our own, that sin of the flesh be a selfish
indulgence, and that a harsh governor awaits us at the crossing of the Sea.”
Three faces drawn in lines of horror and betrayal stared at him, pale and
strained.  “Wrong, you ask me?  If you ask me this, then,” Erestor’s façade
cracked and became a smile, “then you have no idea what antics I got up
to in my own youth!”  He laughed then, and the others laughed uncertainly
with him.  “Come now!” Erestor shouted, leaned down to brace himself on
his knees as he laughed.  “Wrong of you?  How can you ask me such a
thing?  Oh, my boys,” Erestor sighed.  He stood up straight again and
approached Melpomaen to embrace the sheet-draped form.  “You know
your own hearts.  There is no sin, no wickedness here.  I hope you did not
truly need my confirmation of such a statement.”

Melpomaen hugged him back, as well as he could, and shuddered.  “Need,
no, but you scared us there, Erestor.”

Erestor pulled back to smile at each of them in turn.  “Good,” he told
them.  “It will teach you, maybe, to lock doors.”

He turned, then, to leave them to their privacy, but before he quite reached
the door, Dinendal wanted to know, “Your youth, Erestor?  What antics?”

Erestor turned back to regard them with narrowed brows.  After a
moment’s thought, he offered, “Have you ever heard of the Scarlet
Harlot?”

They shook their heads.

Erestor smiled.  “Ask Saelbeth’s grandfather.”  And he left.

= = = = =

On his own, Erestor headed for the kitchens himself, grinning all the
while.

= = = = =

By the time Glorfindel returned to the rooms, he had managed to regain
his common manner of felicity and upbeat manner.  He swept into the
Winter Room, hanging up his cloak in a smooth move beside Erestor’s
own on the awaiting hook.  He was all a-flutter to speak, but silenced
words before they could start, shutting the door and looking at the scene
before him.

Erestor had set up a short table before the small fireplace, which had a
young fire crackling on the grate.  A simple meal of bread, honey, and
broth was set up with a bottle of mead and two clear crystal glasses.  “I
didn’t see you at dinner,” Erestor told him.

“No,” Glorfindel haltingly supplied.  “I wasn’t hungry.”  He stared at the
tableau a moment.  The blue drapes were closed to the moonlight.  The
fire jumped and sparked, casting leaping light and shadow across Erestor’s
face in turns.  A few scattered candles illuminated the rest of the light-
colored room, though the corners were still empty with shadow.  Though
the winter was young and still mellow, the fire burned high and Erestor
was wrapped in what Glorfindel called his ‘cozy robes,’ a thick sort of
fleece the color of midnight skies.  His ebony hair was loose and recently
brushed; he could tell because the strands were fluffed with static at the
ends.

Glorfindel toed off his boots and came to sit on the cushion at the
opposing side of the table.  They ate quietly, few words passing between
them.  When they finished, Erestor piled the dishes on the tray and
Glorfindel opened the door so that he could place them outside on the
sideboard in the hall.

Then, Erestor ushered Glorfindel to the center of the room, carefully
undressed him, led him to the bed, and spent an excessive amount of time
undoing the warrior’s braids and combing out the fine, honey-spun hair.
“Your hair is truly golden, you know that,” Erestor murmured.  He placed
a simple kiss on Glorfindel’s bare shoulder and then coaxed him under the
sheets.

Erestor retreated to disrobe.  With detachment, Glorfindel watched the
body smooth and pale as alabaster shimmer in the firelight.  Arms thin and
wiry, belly flat and lean, mile-long legs framing lax sex.  Big brown eyes
and long black hair.  “You’re beautiful.”

Erestor shook his head.  He crawled into bed to curl up to Glorfindel’s
side.  “Look who’s talking.”

They smiled.

“It’s early yet for bed,” Erestor pointed out.  “Shall I tell you a story?”

“By all means.”

“It’s about your little helpers . . .”

= = = = =

Glorfindel was in his office.  He didn’t actually like his office.  It was,
formerly, a stable, and it stilled smelled like one, and files just did not
survive the humidity.  Young interns transferred all permanent paperwork
to the storage facilities in the House.  As it was, Glorfindel disliked
paperwork altogether and spent as much time as possible not being in his
office and not doing paperwork.  But alas, not all a captain’s life is 
glory,
and he had accepted that long ago.

He was there now, bent harshly over the desk, gold hair braided out of the
way, his large hand carefully guiding the quill across the parchment.

Erestor was good at being quiet.  It was a skill one tended to pick up when
one liked avoiding people, but he surprised even himself when he
managed to slip undetected into Glorfindel’s office, and slowly sneak
upon him.

Slowly, Erestor moved so that he could peer over Glorfindel’s shoulder.
“What’s that?”

Glorfindel’s reaction was overwhelming.  In one fluid movement, he
opened the top drawer of the desk and swept all his papers within it, nearly
spilling the ink.  “Erestor!  You sneak!”

“Was that poetry, Glorfindel?”

“Poetry!” Glorfindel declared.  “Don’t be ridiculous!  I . . . I can’t write
poetry!”

“Oh really?” Erestor asked, pulling a piece of parchment from behind his
back with a knowing smile.

Glorfindel paled.  “That . . .  I threw that away.”

“It turned up on my desk this morning all the same.”

Downright shocked, Glorfindel said, “How?”

“I think your minions have been looking out for us.”  Erestor took the
parchment in both hands and cleared his throat.

“Oh Elbereth no!” Glorfindel cried, his head falling to thud on the desk,
knowing there was little else he could do.

Erestor read aloud.

“When all the world is gray and dim,
All I do is think of him
When my mind remembers pain,
I just think of him again.”

“Please,” Glorfindel downright begged, “please stop.”

Erestor couldn’t cease laughing.  He calmed himself enough to say, “But
there’s a whole four more verses.”

“Spare me.”

“I didn’t know your speech could be so moving.”

“Oh, shut it.”

= = = = =

Erestor and Glorfindel walked the halls after lunch.  They spoke of
nothing in particular.  The faintest trace of a smile lingered about 
Erestor’s
lips.

“I’m, uh,” Glorfindel began.  “I’m not gonna hear the end of this poetry
thing am I?”

“Not for a loooonnng time,” Erestor agreed.

Their steps slowed at a commotion from the opposite end of the corridor
and an unfamiliar sight.

“Isn’t that Melpomaen?” Erestor asked.

The young scribe seemed to fly down the hall, rose-pale robes flapping out
behind him, black hair streaming.  His light shoes pounded the marble
floor and his arms flapped about wildly.  He was grinning, they saw, as he
drew nearer and he skidded to a halt before the pair.  “News from
Dinendal!” he panted out.

“Isn’t he on the border this week?” Erestor asked.

“Aye!  He’s sent news!  I’ve just had it from Saelbeth: the party from
Mirkwood, you know the scholar’s council?  There’s a lady among them!
They don’t know her.”

Glorfindel and Erestor exchanged anticipatory, uncertain looks.  “Cellel?”
Glorfindel softly asked.

“We shall soon see,” Erestor murmured as Melpomaen retreated down the
hall, nearly as fast as he had advanced.

The pair stayed where they were, listening carefully to the clatter of
hooves and all manner of noise in the forecourt.  There were shouts of
welcome and announcement.  The bell in the tower rang twice.  Shouts
became a smatter of voices and movement.  The horses were led away.

Melpomaen had long disappeared round the far corner, but now he
reappeared, a girl all wrapped in a forest-green cloak at his side.  He
pointed down the hall at Erestor.  The girl turned.

“Craban!”

Glorfindel couldn’t help it.  He raised his eyebrows.  “Your name is
Raven?”

Erestor looked shiftily over at him.  “It was the hair.”  Then she clattered
down the hall until she reached them and Erestor was lost in a cloud of
flying silver and brilliant green.

“Oh by the Valar I thought I’d never see you again!”  Cellel pulled back to
smile brilliantly up into his face.  She was short.  Even for a maiden.
Suddenly she stepped back, clapping her green-gloved hands over her
mouth, green eyes pale as overturned poplar leaves flicked to Glorfindel’s
face and then back to Erestor’s.  She clasped her green-gloved hands
before her breast and her eyes grew ever wider in her pretty face with a
look of horror.  “Oh!  I’m sorry!  I forgot!”

Erestor smiled at her.  “It’s all right.  But I didn’t get a chance to 
return
your embrace.”  He opened his arms and she flew into them again.  They
held one another tight.  Her sleeveless milky white arms wrapped tight
about his torso.  One of his hands cradled the back of her head, fingers 
lost
in strands of molten silver.  Tears fell from his eyes.  “I never thought 
I’d
hold you again.”

Glorfindel took a step back and looked away, as though this would offer
some privacy.

“Oh I missed you!” she cried.  “Erestor.  Erestor!  It doesn’t sound right,
but I’ll remember in future, I promise.”  She pulled back to look up into
his face.  “Erestor.  Uncle Erestor.”

He laughed and wiped unthinkingly at the tears on his own pale cheeks
with the sleeve of his dark robe.  “You never called me uncle,” he
reminded her.  “You don’t have to start now.”

“Oh but I want to!”  She pulled back, suddenly excited.  “I’ve brought
gifts!  Things from the Greenwood.  They’re in my bags; someone’s
taking them to my rooms.  Oh and here,” she withdrew from an inner
pocket of her robes three sealed bit of parchment.  “I’ve letters.  I nearly
forget; I was told to give you them first thing.  Another from Dondeild and
one from Caranir.  And the last,” her sweet, bell-like tone faltered, “the
last is from the King.  King Thranduil.  I’d never spoken to him before,
only seen him down the great line of lords and princes at the end of the
Great Hall.  But, news of your survival reached far with Glorfindel’s
enquiries, and even the King heard and he remembered you.  Here.”

Erestor wordlessly took the letters.

“Well,” Cellel said, starting to come down off her high, and knowing that
Erestor would want to read those letters.  “Aunt Dondy says I am ‘over
exuberant’ and shouldn’t annoy you overmuch, so I’ll go now, and meet
you later.”

“We’ll have dinner together in the Dining Hall,” Erestor told her.  “There
are private tables.  We’ll have a decent conversation then, all right?”

She smiled brilliantly.  “Sounds good!”  She flashed another smile at
Glorfindel, leaned in to kiss Erestor’s cheek, and then scooted off back
down the hall, where Melpomaen was waiting to show her the guest
quarters.

“How do women do it?”  Glorfindel’s wondering eyes followed her
retreat.

“Do what?”

“That young lady just made a weeks long journey on horseback from
Mirkwood across Mountains and into this Valley.  And there is not a speck
of dirt on the hems of her gown.”

Erestor just laughed.

= = = = =

Erestor wanted to be alone when he read the letters.

Glorfindel let him.

Erestor was in the Winter Room.

Glorfindel waited in the Summer Room.

Glorfindel waited for two hours.

Then Erestor called to him.  “Glorfindel?  Would you come in please?”

He tried not to run, opening the door slowly and closing it carefully behind
him.  The dinner bell would ring within the hour.

Erestor was sitting at Glorfindel’s desk.  Glorfindel sat on the bed.

“Thranduil’s letter,” Erestor began, “was very kind.”  It was as though he
was trying to regain his method of non-emotion.  “The first few
paragraphs were filled with your usual diplomatic drivel.  It was written in
his own hand.  He . . . apologized.  For leaving me on the battlefield that
day.  For leaving me, like I was just trash to be left behind with the 
bodies.
Not his words.  He was actually very compassionate and, I think, sincere.
It’s beyond me.”

Glorfindel waited before asking, “Can I read it?”

Erestor wordlessly held up the single piece of parchment and Glorfindel
was quick to snatch it up.

His eyes dashed across the page.  “Diplomatic drivel is right,” he muttered
to himself.  “Hmm. . .  He expects ‘no reply, considering the matter at
hand’ yatta yatta.  Are you going to write back?”

Erestor shook his head.  “I don’t know.”

= = = = =

At dinner, Glorfindel watched from a distance the table that Erestor shared
with his niece, laughing together over a great many things and crying over
some others.  They ate some of their food, but not much.  Cellel seemed a
loving sort of person.  Generous.  Like her uncle.  Glorfindel couldn’t
imagine either of them living in the Mirkwood caves, especially in the
beginning.  No heat.  No light.  He shuddered.  He could understand why
she would choose to risk her life in the outdoors rather than live it in
darkness.

After dinner, when the Elves in the Dining Hall were making the mass
exodus to the Hall of Fire, Glorfindel remained at the head table, seeing
that Erestor and Cellel were slowly making their way to him, heads bent
together in discussion.

Several young Elves descended upon the table, whisking away the
evening’s dishes.  Glorfindel left them to it, standing to wait for the pair 
to
come to him.

When they did, Cellel shyly smiled at him.  “Erestor told me that you and
he . . .”  It was as though a nervous twitch carried her forward and she
embraced the warrior nearly two heads taller than herself.  “It’s good.  I’m
glad.”  She stepped back to look up at him.  “You make him happy.”

Glorfindel watched Erestor blush.

Cellel jumped back then to clap her hands together and look between
them.  “Shall we go get my presents?”  She bobbed up and down
enthusiastically like a cork in the sea.

“Yes, let’s,” Erestor agreed, holding out his arm so that she might take it.

= = = = =

The three Elves spoke as they moved through the corridor dark with the
shadows of night, lit by interspersed torches and a few bright stars through
clerestory windows.

Erestor explained to Glorfindel, “Cellel is staying through the winter and
spring.  She’ll return with the main party come summer.  We must
manage, in that time, to show her all the wonders of our Valley.”

“And we will,” Glorfindel promised, “And gladly.”

Cellel burst in, “Erestor!  I don’t know what I shall do with myself!  I
came here to visit you and it did not occur to me that you have your own
duties to attend to, and Glorfindel too; I don’t want to keep you from him.
You mustn’t dote on me unendingly, but what is there to do here in the
Valley?”

“Do?” Glorfindel asked her.  “Why, I suppose you mean aside from long
hours spent in happy entertainment in the Hall of Fire, and browsing the
unending library, and walking the winter paths, and playing acceptable
sports in the courtyards with other young ladies, and going to the pubs,
and visiting the crafts shoppes?”

“I hadn’t realized,” she wondered.  “Acceptable sports?”

Glorfindel and Erestor exchanged questioning glances over Cellel’s head.
“Croquet?” Glorfindel put forth.

“Mm, yes.  I think mostly croquet.”  Erestor brightened.  “And we’ll
introduce you to Arwen!”

Cellel turned to him with those wide poplar eyes.  “Lady Arwen?” she
squeaked.  “But she’s like a princess!”

“So?” Glorfindel wondered.

“So,” she wheeled to face him, “I’m a gardener!”

Glorfindel’s brow crinkled in consternation.  “I’d forgotten what it is like
to dwell in a kingdom.  Imladris is not like that, Cellel.  Arwen would love
to meet you.”

“Oh.  Well, I . . .”

“You think about it,” Erestor told her.  “Now, which is your room?”

Cellel rushed forward and ushered the two Elves through the door.  Aside
from the saddle bags slumped on the floor beside the bed, there was a
small travel sack on the vanity, which she immediately opened.  “Aunt
Dondy and Uncle Caranir helped me put this together.”  First, she pulled
out a small jar, carefully wrapped in cloth.  It was clear glass and the
liquid inside was nearly black.  “Greenwood vanilla; I’m sure you
remember it.  Pure, unfiltered.”

Erestor’s brows lifted and he took it with interest in his hands, holding it
up to the light from the candles that Glorfindel was efficiently lighting.
“Mmm,” he murmured to himself, “Cookies.”

“And I brought you a cool-light.”

Glorfindel came near to watch over their shoulders as Cellel removed a
greenish sort of stone from a black velvet pouch.  Erestor took it from her
and again held it to the light.  He explained its purpose to Glorfindel.
“They grow in certain places in the caves.  They glow by themselves.  In
complete darkness, one crystal is enough to light a small room.  They were
essential to us in the early days.  Enough light to see by.  No heat, no
smoke either.  Great nightlight,” he suggested.  Glorfindel smiled.

Then, Cellel withdrew a tough leather cylinder, the sort used to transport
maps and art.  She handed it over.  “It’s a sort of family portrait.  Aunt
Dondy, Uncle Caranir, and me.  They’re really like my parents, you know.
They never had a child of their own.  I think they remembered the fields,
and they didn’t want to birth a child in the caves and raise him there.  I
was like their daughter anyway.  Still am.”

Erestor handed the tube to Glorfindel.  “I can’t wait to see it.  I’ll have
Saelbeth frame it.”

Cellel’s exuberance died down without warning when she took out her last
present.  It was a tiny rosewood box, intricately carved.  She looked up to
Erestor with wide eyes.  “When Aunt Dondeild realized the attack, you
know, in the beginning.  She was alone in the house with your mother.
Grandma gave her a sack and told her to run for the caves.  She ran--”

Erestor held up his hand.  “She told me about this in the letter.  You don’t
have to.”

Cellel sighed with relief.  “Good.  Uh, here.”

Erestor took the box and slipped it into a pocket with the cool-light.
“Thank you, Cellel.”  He hugged her then, and they bid their goodnights.

= = = = =

They weren’t two steps into the Winter Room when Glorfindel started.
“So what’s in the box?”

Erestor shut the door and waved him toward the bed.  “Go.  Sit.”

Glorfindel did so, after setting the leather tube on the vanity.  He didn’t
take off his boots or his outer robe or anything.  He stared at Erestor,
waiting.

The Counselor went over to sit at the desk.  He lit the lantern there and
turned up the wick, brightening the room.  He took up one of the letters
and unfolded it.  Skimming the passages, he finally said, “Here.  Dondeild
told me . . .  Well, I’ll just read it, shall I?”

He read.

~*~*~*~*~*~

There is something I have kept from you a long time, as Mother did before
me.  It is not a secret, really, or important.  I don’t think it’s 
important.
But I feel terribly childish and terribly guilty for keeping anything from
you at all, no matter how small.

When Mother first forbid myself and my sisters to speak with you, we
didn’t understand.  Eventually, we heard the rumors, of course.  Even
then, I don’t think I completely understood.  And then later, when I did
understand, I could not for the life of me comprehend why Mother would
take such offense at your actions.  Except that she found some great sin in
them, and I did not.  Still, I obeyed her wishes.  I ignored you when we
chanced to meet, and when you sought me out I turned you away.  I shall
never forgive myself for it.  I was afraid and I did not even know why.  It
seemed so much easier, at the time, to just push all of it away, all the
intrigue and rumors and pity.

Then, one day, I was to meet Caranir for dinner.  We had just begun
officially courting, and Mother took me to sit at her small table in her
room to look through the jewelry there, and find something for me.  We
didn’t have much by that point, as you know.  But I saw something I’d
never seen before.  It was a small rosewood box, a box that could only
contain a ring.  I opened it and asked Mother what it was.

She was unspeakably angry.  Not at me, I don’t think.  She grabbed it out
of my hands and put it away.  She said, “It was your father’s.  He wanted
your brother to have it.”  That was all she would say, and I thought that
was the last time I would see the box.

It wasn’t.  On that terrible night, when the spiders came screaming out of
the darkness amid the brushfires, Mother shoved a sack at me and told me
to run for the caves.  She said she would be behind me.

I ran blindly.

It was only much later, after the mourning and the shock, and after you
disappeared into the caves to leave me with Caranir and Cellel did I bother
to open that sack.  She had prepared some food that would keep, and a
wineskin.  There was also a small selection of family heirlooms, including
the rosewood box.  I refused to explain to Caranir what it was or why it
was important.  I felt guilty that Mother had never given it to you.  I felt
guilty that I had forgotten it.  I felt guilty every time I passed you in 
the
caves and did not speak of it to you.  It was a secret that grew from
nothing.  The longer I put it off, the harder it became to think of it.

I didn’t want to have to explain to you how bitter Mother had been.  How
much she’d kept from you.  How much it hurt me to go along with all of it
and how much I’d come to hate that part of her, long after she was dead.

This is the end of it, then.  I have told you, and when Cellel presents to
you her gifts, she will give you the rosewood box.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Erestor stopped then.  He couldn’t read any more.  His hands were shaking
as much as his voice and he put the letter down.  “So much . . . stupidity,”
he ground out.  “So much blind fear.  I hate it.”

Then he reached into his pocket.  He set aside the cold-light, which gave
off just the faintest green glow of phosphorescence that Glorfindel could
see.  Erestor set the box on the desk beside the letter.  It was tiny, and
nearly the reddish color of cherry wood.  Erestor stared at it.

Glorfindel bit back his words.

Then, Erestor reached out to open it, the miniature hinges squeaking.  He
could not hide the shaking of his pale hands.

Within it was a ring.  It seemed a dull metallic color, like pewter or even
iron.  Erestor took the ring out of the box and cradled it in his hands in 
his
lap, rubbing at the surface of it with a fold of his robe.  He held it up to 
the
lantern light.  It shone like silver mithril, only different.  Brighter.

He wordlessly handed it out to Glorfindel.  “Feel it.”

Glorfindel held out it his slightly cupped hand and Erestor dropped the
ring there.  Glorfindel gasped.  “It’s so heavy!”

“It’s platinum.  A rare metal.  There were a few strains of it in the rocky
outcroppings of the forest when the Greenwood was pure.  I hear it’s all
gone now.”  Erestor watched Glorfindel hold the ring up and turn it, so the
lantern light glinted off the edges.  There was a design of vines around the
outside, and an inscription on the inside.  Erestor narrowed his eyes.
“What does it say?  On the inside?”

Glorfindel stood from the bed to kneel by the desk, holding the ring close
to the lantern.  “I can barely make it out,” he said, slowly turning the
platinum band.  “‘From earth, life.  From father, son.’”

“An old country saying,” Erestor explained.  “Sometimes we toasted to it.
On feast days.”  Glorfindel continued to study the ring.  “It was believed 
--
as far as I know -- by everyone in the Greenwood that farmers were
essential to life and highly revered.  The farmland was the soul of the
Greenwood.  From earth, life.  We depended upon the earth to feed us.
From father, son.  All sons have a father, a name to live up to, a legacy to
gain.  All but me.  All but every orphan.”

Glorfindel ignored Erestor’s tears.  He took Erestor’s nearer hand, the left
one, and slipped the platinum ring onto the index finger.  It fit well.

Erestor marveled to see it there and held his hand up before his face.  “The
platinum rings were a tradition.  When the eldest male child reached his
majority, his father would give him the family ring.  So the rings passed
through the generations; so the family lines were remembered.  Elstras
wore one.  Dinilion never did; his grandfather had been a younger brother,
you see.  There were only ever a few hundred of these.”

“It’s yours, by right,” Glorfindel told him.

Erestor shook his hand.  “A few thousand years too late.  It doesn’t feel
like mine.  It feels unnatural.”

“You’ll get used to it.”

Erestor took the ring off and put it back in the box.  “I don’t want to.”  
He
stood and turned as though to leave.  “I’m not my father’s son.  Not really.
I never knew him.  We were connected only by blood.  And that never
seemed to matter to anyone.”  And then he left.

= = = = =

Glorfindel stayed up.

He got a fire going in the grate and then he tidied the room.  It needed it.
Erestor kept his life fairly ordered, but Glorfindel was apt to toss his 
things
about and forget them.  And Erestor was resolved to never clean up after
him.  So, Glorfindel kept himself occupied in the late evening hours by
picking up his odds and ends and tidying his closet and organizing the
desk.

Erestor returned well past midnight.  He was pale as snow and carried with
him his fatigue like a winter mantle, heavy but unseen.

Glorfindel looked up when the door opened and so silent and withdrawn
was his love he seemed a ghost, enshrouded in a weak desolation as in a
fog.

It was Glorfindel’s turn to take Erestor by the hand and turn him round
and remove the all those layers that made up what was left of his outer
shields.  But as Glorfindel was leading him to the bed, Erestor
unaccountably resisted.  Glorfindel’s momentum carried him out of
Erestor’s handhold and the warrior turned round to cant his head in
confusion.

Erestor’s eyes drooped with the exhaustion that comes from overextended
emotions.  “Let’s go to the Summer Room.  Just a . . . change of scenery.”

Glorfindel stared a moment.  He stood up straight.  “All right.  If you’re
sure.”

Erestor did not answer.  He led the way, his naked form eerie in the light
of the lantern and the dying fire, pallid and wisp-like.

As if in a trance, Glorfindel followed.

= = = = =

They’d never slept in the Summer Room before, if one discounted the
drunken stupor they fell into before the fireplace occasionally.  They’d
never even sat on the bed.  Hardly looked at it.  Didn’t discuss it.

They changed the sheets though, when the dust accumulated.  There was
only the tiniest bit now, and Erestor carefully pulled back the covers, so
the dust didn’t go flying.  It would make him sneeze.  He climbed onto the
mattress as Glorfindel carried in the lantern to set it on the chest of
drawers.

Glorfindel looked down on him.

Erestor looked back.  “Take off your clothes.”

Following orders, Glorfindel turned his back and slowly removed his own
layers.  He was uncertain.  In unfamiliar territory.  He didn’t know what
was expected or what was allowed.  He knew that he could just ask.

But, he didn’t.

He left his garments in a crumpled heap on the floor.  He sat tentatively on
the bed.

Erestor reached weakly out to him.  “Just hold me.”

Glorfindel lay down, turned out the lantern, pulled up the blankets, and
held his love.

Erestor gave him a shock by kissing him.  Aggressively.  By the time
Glorfindel got over his shock and began to respond, Erestor pulled back.
“If you don’t want to sleep here, you should have said something.”

“No, I,” Glorfindel was confounded.  “I want to.  I do.  I just . . .  You
know me and uncertainty.  Throws me off.”

“Needs some getting used to?  Right.  If it’s too much too fast, just let me
know.”

“Right,” Glorfindel murmured against Erestor’s temple, running his
fingers through the hair there.  “I feel like we’ve had this conversation
before.”

“More or less,” Erestor agreed.  “Sleep now.”

“Mmm.”

= = = = =

Glorfindel awoke to the sensation of friction.  Rhythmic friction.

Early morning sunlight was streaming through the gauzy peach-lemon
curtains and lit up the Summer Room like a garden.

Glorfindel threw back the covers to see Erestor looking mischievously up
at him, both talented hands wrapped around Glorfindel’s swiftly hardening
flesh.  He shook the sleep from his blue eyes.  “What a way to wake up.”

Aside from a few playful touches, they hadn’t done anything like this
since the Bath House the day Erestor got back from his Lothlorien
sojourn.

“You up for some fun?” Erestor wanted to know as he slithered his way
along Glorfindel’s body.

“Up?  Yes.  Decidedly so.”

Erestor laughed, hovering above Glorfindel, face to face.  Black hair
trailed over the golden skin and Erestor slowly leaned down, as though to
kiss Glorfindel’s lips.

Glorfindel closed his eyes and Erestor took a detour, fastening his mouth
to Glorfindel’s ear tip instead.

“Aiya!”  Blue eyes flashed open.  He squirmed delectably, gripped
Erestor’s upper arms reflexively, unrelentingly.  “Stop,” he panted.  He
turned his head so Erestor had better access and pulled him closer.  “Don’t
stop,” he sighed out, humping up against Erestor’s thigh.

Erestor pulled away, shot a glancing kiss against Glorfindel’s lips and
moved on to the Elf’s taut neck.  Glorfindel made a noise between a
squeak and a squeal when Erestor played his lips upon the heating flesh
beside his jaw, beneath his ear.  Erestor’s hands were downright fiendish:
one played softly down between Glorfindel’s legs and the other abused a
stiff nipple.  “Love you,” Erestor whispered against the skin above
Glorfindel’s collarbone.  He smiled.  “Love to make you scream.”

Glorfindel’s hands tangled in the red linen sheets, rather than bruise
Erestor’s pale skin.  It was so sudden.  So wonderful.  “Aiya!”

Erestor worked his way down the golden torso, his hot kisses applied
between hot words, encouraging and practically sinful.  When he dipped
his tongue into Glorfindel’s navel, the prone Elf let out a staccato shout
and twisted the bed sheets to permanent wrinkles.

Erestor didn’t lose a beat, moving down further still.  Tongue, lips, a 
touch
of teeth, had Glorfindel hard and pulsing.  He moaned.  They both did.
Erestor opened his mouth and sunk slowly down, taking Glorfindel all the
way in.

Glorfindel tried to hold himself in check, thrusting minutely and keeping
his hands at his sides.

At this reservation, Erestor withdrew, concentrating on the tip of
Glorfindel’s arousal, one hand playing with the sac beneath.  Then he
pulled his hands away, bracing them on the mattress on either side of
Glorfindel’s hips.  He used only his tongue.  Eyes dark with playful
mischievousness glared up at Glorfindel.  Erestor withdrew to say in a
voice thick with hunger, “Take my mouth.”

Then he rested parted lips at the crown of Glorfindel’s cock and waited.

The golden warrior groaned.  “You’re going to make me do this, aren’t
you?”

Erestor grinned up at him.  “You want to do this, don’t you.”  It wasn’t a
question.

Throwing back his head, Glorfindel howled, “You’re insane!  I love it!”
He could hold himself in check no longer and began thrusting up into that
inordinately hot and welcoming mouth.

Glorfindel’s encouraging words degenerated into barely identifiable
syllables, which fell apart into varying consonant and vowel sounds as he
fucked Erestor’s mouth without restraint.

Keeping his hands braced on the mattress, Erestor persuaded Glorfindel to
thrust as deep as he liked, moaning around the generous mouthful and
using his tongue to full advantage.

Finding a rhythm that suited, Glorfindel kept a deep and steady pace,
loosing himself to the ecstasy.  One large hand reached out to tangle in
Erestor’s dark hair, the strands caught between strong fingers, and
Glorfindel forced himself deeper.  His desperate moans grew high-pitched
and needy and his touch became thoughtlessly harsh, clawing at Erestor’s
hair and pounding into his mouth.

When Glorfindel came, he let go with a roar and Erestor sucked hard,
swallowing energetically.

Glorfindel’s mind blanked for an instant as his hips pumped instinctively,
chasing down the last of that pleasure.

He slipped from Erestor’s mouth and gently untangled his hand from the
snarled mess of black hair.  His eyes were closed, he realized and he
opened them to see Erestor grinning, wiping at his mouth with the back of
his wrist.

Glorfindel himself felt rather pliant and unwilling to move, but Erestor
squirmed up along his body to rest beside him, one pale arm draped across
a golden, heaving chest.  “You okay?” Glorfindel worriedly asked, not
voicing his fears.

“Dandy,” Erestor told him with a laugh.  “No, you weren’t too rough,” he
said to the unasked questions, and kissed Glorfindel’s shoulder.

“Good,” Glorfindel sighed with relief.  They lay still for awhile, content 
to
hold one another and say nothing.  Then, Glorfindel wondered, “So, you,
uh, ready for a return favor?”

“Oh,” Erestor sighed, “No.”  He chuckled a little.  “Have to wait a bit
longer for that, I’m afraid.”

“Do you know . . . how much longer?”

Erestor laughed and hugged Glorfindel close.  “Not much.  Not much at
all.”

“Really?!”  Glorfindel was excited.  “Brilliant.”

= = = = =

One day, Erestor noticed the minions, as Glorfindel still referred to them,
were acting oddly around him.  Jittery.  Bug-eyed.  Stuttering.

He cornered them in the library’s lounge one day, when Dinendal and
Saelbeth were assisting in Melpomaen’s research.  He snuck upon them.
“Boys.”

They jumped.

“So,” Erestor told them.  “Ask me.  You’ve obviously done your other
questioning.  So ask me.”

They exchanged looks.  Saelbeth stood from the sofa he had been
sprawled on.  He hunched a little as he shuffled forward.  “You’re him,
then.  The Harlot.  Isn’t that right?”

Erestor smiled distantly at him.  “Yes.  That’s right.”

“Who knows?” Dinendal asked.

“Not many,” Erestor answered.

“What . . . happened to you?” Melpomaen asked.  “How did things
change?”

Erestor shook his head.  “You don’t need to know.”

Saelbeth then asked, “Why did you tell us?”

Erestor shrugged.  “People might be whispering of it in future, if they
aren’t already.  I thought you ought to hear it from me.  Besides.  You
have your own little . . . oddities, yes?  Isn’t it good to know you aren’t
alone?  I’m always here, as is Glorfindel, if you ever need someone to talk
to.”

= = = = =

As for Cellel, she loved Imladris.

She wandered the dying gardens, communing with all the late-blooming
plants and speaking at length with the many gardeners and others who
loved growing things as much as she, oftentimes saying, ‘what I wouldn’t
give to live with gardens like these!’

The libraries were a revelation to her; admittance to the Mirkwood
archives was limited, as the caves’ atmosphere was far from conducive to
the long life of parchment and all papers were handled with the most
tender of care.  Therefore, Cellel handled the books in Imladris as sacred
things, practically terrified of accidentally damaging them.  But, she did
not spend overlong there.  She claimed that too much reading ‘strains my
eyes’ and that the air in the library was ‘too papery.’

She was in the Hall of Fire every night, from the minute the doors opened
until the last song of the night, continuously proclaiming to any who
would listen that ‘the Greenwood has NOTHING like this; it’s
AMAZING.’

And, she met Arwen.

Cellel was all of a nervous flutter, hardly knowing what to do with herself.
She had only two dresses and she was wearing the better one, a bit of satin
and lace, also green, but nothing near as fancy as the Lady of Imladris
wore, and Cellel -- poor thing -- did not know whether to bow or to curtsy
or what to say or anything.

But Arwen, kind soul, smiled and promised Cellel that nothing was to be
expected of her, that they were just two girls with nothing better to do 
than
embroidery and gossip.  Arwen learned that Cellel had never been taught
to embroider and a fast friendship was formed.

= = = = =

Winter grew in Imladris, cold and still.  There was no snow, there had not
been in many years.  But it was cold.  And life slowed to a crawl.

One afternoon, Erestor and Glorfindel lay in bed in the Winter Room.
They were both wearing their winter robes and lay atop the covers.  Only
their hands touched, fingers loosely interwoven.  Glorfindel stared at the
canopy.  Erestor stared over his chest at the desk.

They were quiet.

Life was good.

Erestor suddenly sat up.  He was looking hard at something on the desk.
“Glorfindel.  Get up.”

Glorfindel slowly sat up.  “Why?  What are we doing?”

Erestor stood from the bed, walking round it to the desk.  “We’re going to
the kitchens.”  He picked up the small jar of Greenwood vanilla and held it
to the light, where it shone faintly red and thick.

“Um . . . why?”

Erestor stowed the jar into a pocket.  He looked at his love.  “We’re going
to make cookies.”

= = = = =

Erestor seemed to glide down the hall, but Glorfindel had to trot to keep
up.  “Erestor,” he said, slightly belligerent, “How long has it been since
you actually made cookies?”

Erestor stopped.  He looked at Glorfindel.  “Well, let’s see,” he wondered
to himself, looking vaguely upward and moving his lips as though
counting.  “The last time, I must have been . . . four-hundred sixty-
something years old, and now I’m . . . three-thousand two-hundred sixty-
eight?  Yes.  You do the math.”

“That’s . . . a long time, Erestor.”

“Glorfindel.  Cookies aren’t something you forget.  It’s like riding a
horse.”  He turned, stalking toward the kitchens.

Glorfindel wasn’t so sure.  He followed, muttering, “Like you would
know.”

= = = = =

Glorfindel stood uncertainly at Erestor’s elbow, looking over the shorter
Elf’s shoulder at the array of ingredients spread out on the countertop
before them.  “Erestor.  Why are we making cookies?”

“It’s winter.  I want to.”  Then he turned to smile sweetly up at 
Glorfindel.
“Don’t you want to?”

“Well, I’m used to just eating the cookies.”  He stressed the word,
‘eating.’

Erestor rolled his big brown eyes.  “Come on,” he said in a persuasive
manner, “this will be fun.”

“Fun?” Glorfindel asked, peering between hanging pots to the other end of
the kitchen where the cooks were preparing that evening’s dinner.  “Looks
like WORK to me.”

Erestor poured together some of the dry ingredients.  He passed the bowl
to Glorfindel and handed him a spoon, saying, “Here.  Mix this.”

Glorfindel stepped up beside Erestor at the counter and slowly,
awkwardly, mixed the flour and salt and some things he did not recognize
together.  He looked over to watch Erestor pour together melted butter and
three kinds of sugar and what appeared to be a generous amount of that
dark dark vanilla, which was strong.  Glorfindel could smell it.  It smelled
good.

Without warning, Erestor took away the flour mixture and pressed the next
bowl on him.  “Here,” he said without preamble, “Mix this.”

Grumbling good-naturedly -- Glorfindel refused to admit it was a bit fun --
and he took the bowl, carefully turning over the butter and the sugar.  He
watched as Erestor started a third bowl, bringing over some chocolate he’d
already melted and added some thickening agent like flour, only not.

When Glorfindel’s butter-sugar mixture was thoroughly blended, Erestor
again took the bowl and passed him the chocolate one.  “Here--”

“Mix this,” Glorfindel finished for him.  “I get the idea.  Hey, why am *I*
doing all the hard bits?”

Erestor raised a brow.

“Don’t do that.”

“What?”

“The eyebrow thing.”

“What eyebrow thing?”

“You know,” Glorfindel persisted, “the Peredhel eyebrow thing.  They all
do it.”

“Oh, you mean this?”  Erestor raised a brow.

“Stop it!” Glorfindel was laughing.

“Why?”

“I dunno!” he sputtered.  “It’s weird.”

Erestor snorted.  He shook his head and continued his work.  He was
adding various things, like eggs, to the butter-sugar-vanilla, which he was
churning to a delicious smelling syrupy mess.  Stirring a little too
vigorously, Erestor discovered a spatter of batter on his wrist, which he
promptly licked off.

Glorfindel stared.  He had stopped stirring.

Erestor didn’t notice.  He licked his lips, contemplating, then smiled and
swiped a finger along the spoon, gathering a good amount, and popped it
into his mouth.

“You eat the batter?!”  The warrior was scandalized.

Erestor looked at him with wide eyes a moment before popping his finger
out of his mouth.  He couldn’t have been sterner when he replied,
“Glorfindel.  By Elbereth, man, haven’t you ever been in a kitchen?
Haven’t you ever made cookies?”  He held up the dripping spoon.  “It’s
the best part!”

Glorfindel cast him a disbelieving glare, but then he saw the sudden,
wicked twinkle in Erestor’s deep brown eyes.  The dark-haired Elf with a
white smear of flour along his cheek dropped the batter-smattered spoon
on the sugar-scattered table without thought.  He stuck his flour-lined hand
into the incomplete batter to scoop out two fingerfuls of dripping cookie
mix the color of brown sugar.  He lifted the hand to dart his pink tongue
out and lick along the crease between his fingers to catch a dollop of
sugary cookie mix.  Then he held the fingers out to Glorfindel, the honey-
thick substance shining like molasses or syrup and threatening to drip
down to the floor.

Glorfindel accepted the challenge, suddenly grabbing Erestor’s wrist,
which made the Elf jump and blink in surprise.  Glorfindel’s tongue snuck
out, wet and red, to taste the sugared mix, and then sucked both fingers
totally into his mouth, wrapping his tongue neatly around them and staring
all the while with indigo-darkened eyes.  He sucked and sucked and
swallowed the sweet stuff down, moaning all the while, until not a trace
was left and he pulled Erestor’s hand from his mouth with an audible
*pop.*  “Mmm,” he silkily agreed.  “Best part.”  He licked his lips and
winked.

Momentarily forgetting the cookies, Erestor stared vaguely at Glorfindel’s
mouth, grabbed hold of his blue shirt in fisted hands, and dragged the
warrior firmly forward and slightly down to claim his sugar-stained lips.

When Erestor considered himself done, he pushed Glorfindel away,
smiled, and turned back to the mixing bowl.

“Uh,” Glorfindel intelligently interjected.  “So, do we HAVE to finish
making the cookies?  Cause . . . we could, you know, go back to the room
. . .”

“We’re making the cookies, Glorfindel, THEN we can go back to the
room.”

“Oh.”  Glorfindel pouted.  “All right.  Tyrant.”

“Softy.”

“Uh . . .” Glorfindel cleared his throat, “that’s NOT the term I would use.”

Erestor couldn’t help it.  He giggled.  He glanced down at Glorfindel’s
groin, bit back his smile and turned back to the batter, slowly adding the
flour-mix and trying not to laugh.  “Here,” he snickered.  “Mix this.”  He
handed over the spoon.

Glorfindel growled, but good-naturedly gripped hold of the spoon and
began to vigorously stir in the thickening flour, which immediately sent a
white cloud billowing up into his startled face.

Erestor sniggered.  “You look like a ghost.”

“Not funny.”

“Mm-hmm.  Yes it is.”

= = = = =

The next hour was spent making cookies, a process frequently interrupted
by immoral glances, wandering hands, batter stealing, kissing, and various
other distractions.

By the time the cookies were cooled and frosted and lined along a plate,
ready for consumption, Erestor had worked Glorfindel into a frustrated
frenzy.

The Counselor ate a cookie, licked the crumbs from his lips, and then
stretched, long and tempting.  He was still unaware of the flour that
decorated his cheek and Glorfindel was still rather covered in it.  “Well,”
Erestor said, eyeing the window, “it’s nearing dinnertime.  There’s some
work I meant to catch up on; I’ll see you later.”

Glorfindel grabbed his arm.  “Oh no-no-no-no noooo you don’t!
Remember, Erestor?  Make cookies?  Go to room?”

Erestor somehow maneuvered himself out of Glorfindel’s grasp.  “Not
really.  Besides, there’s dinner on soon.”

And he walked right out of the kitchen.

= = = = =

Moments later, Glorfindel was still standing there, completely bewildered
as to how he’d just let Erestor get away with that stunt.  “WHAT am I
DOING?” he asked no one.  “What is HE doing??”

He ate a cookie.

“Blast.”

He ate another.

“Captain Glorfindel?!”  Dinendal skidded into the kitchen.  “You’re
needed in the yard right away!”

Glorfindel sighed and shrugged on his robe.  “It’s just as well,” he
answered, half to Dinendal and half to himself as he followed the youth
out of the well-warmed kitchen and into the drafty corridor.  “What’s
happened now?” he asked, with both concern and an air of ‘what on earth
did they manage to do this time?’  He held out a handful of treats.
“Cookie?”

“Oh, sure.”

= = = = =

Glorfindel was more than perturbed to learn that two of his men had got
into an actual fight, over a girl of all things, and he had to come all the
way down there to sort it out.

His breath misted the air as his fury, over a great many things, was
released on the two Elves who had been most ill-fated in their timing.

They all of them who were unfortunate enough to have been there upon
Glorfindel’s arrival cowered in a long line against the barracks wall as he
gave them a serious chewing-out.

After the duo was dealt with and Glorfindel was assured that there would
be no brawling on the yard for a VERY long time, he stood aside and
watched with a distinct glower as the men -- all of them -- performed their
punishment: ten laps around the barracks.

Dinendal stood beside Glorfindel.  He fidgeted.  He watched the
guardsmen run.  He watched Glorfindel glower.  He watched the distant
clock tower, which would chime the dinner hour any minute.

“Dinendal.  Either stop that squirming or join the men in a jog.”

“Yessir,” Dinendal spouted, renewing an effort to keep still.

When the bell finally rung out, loud and clear, Dinendal released a huge
lungful of air and turned to Glorfindel, jabbering in one breath as he
reached into his pocket.  “There wasn’t really a fight; it was just a
distraction; it was planned; the men were in on it; they knew you’d be
furious; I was told to give you this.”  He stood at arm’s length and held 
out
a bit of folded parchment.

Glorfindel but reached out a hand to take it and Dinendal was nothing
more than a figure in the distance, disappearing around the barracks.

Curiously, Glorfindel unfolded the letter to find Erestor’s neat, spidery
writing.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Come to the Summer Room

~*~*~*~*~*~

“Ah . . .”  Glorfindel’s brow raised and he allowed himself a smile.
“Okay.”

= = = = =

Glorfindel had started at a nonchalant sort of walk.  He walked away from
the training yard.

Then, it evolved into a quick walk.  He walked quickly up the path to the
House.

The quick walk became a trot.  He trotted around the Bath House and up
the stairs about the tower.

The trot progressed into a jog.  He jogged down the wing of the Resident
Quarters.

The jog became a run.  He ran up to the door of the Summer Room.

He stopped.  He lifted a hand to knock.  He thought.  It was his own room.
He didn’t knock.

He tried the handle.  It was unlocked.

Glorfindel breathed.

He opened the door, just a crack, just enough to peer through, to see the
candlelight.  He opened the door further and slunk into the room and tried
to close the door silently.  The click of the handle seemed absurdly loud.

Glorfindel kept his hands behind him on the brass handle and pressed back
against the door as though to seep through it, as though to escape the
intensity of the vision before him.

The candles were lit.  All of them.  Including the ones on the chandelier.
There was a brisk fire leaping in the hearth.  Incense filled the room,
something rich and foreign, something exotic.

There was a bottle of oil atop the bedside dresser.

Erestor was on the bed.  Naked.  Aroused.  Staring with trembling
intensity at Glorfindel.  A rosy hue betrayed his pale flesh.  His eyes were
lusted black.  Slightly tangled, his hair was loose behind him.  He
supported himself on his elbows, one knee drawn slightly up.  His cock
was engorged and heavy-looking.

Glorfindel swallowed convulsively.

Erestor was not completely nude, however.  The pale, long lines of his
legs ended in a pair of suede boots.  Scarlet boots.

Glorfindel couldn’t decide whether or not he was surprised at the distinct
flush on Erestor’s cheeks.

Erestor forced a smile.  “Hi.”

Glorfindel blinked.  “Hi.”  He looked about the room, at the candles.  The
incense.  The chandelier.  Back to Erestor.  “I got your note.”

“I see.”

“Nice boots.”

“Thanks.”  Erestor shifted nervously on the bed, and glanced away from
Glorfindel’s avid gaze.  “I had them commissioned last month.”

“So.”  Glorfindel didn’t press quite so heavily against the door.  “You
want to what?  I don’t want to assume anything here, Erestor . . .”

Erestor looked at him again.  His black-brown eyes were so large, there
was white all around the iris and his breathing was labored.  “I . . .” the
word came in a sighing breath.  “I want to have sex with you, Glorfindel.
I want you inside me.  I want to love you completely.”

Glorfindel almost smiled.  “You DO love me completely, Erestor.  Sex is
just an expression of that.”

Licking his lips, Erestor glanced away again.  His chest rose and fell with
every forced breath.  “I like the way you talk to me.  I like the way you
look at me.  I like the life I have with you, Glorfindel.”

“But you won’t meet my eyes when you say that?”

Erestor looked at him.  “I don’t want to ruin that.”

Glorfindel smiled.  He slowly moved away from the door, carefully
skirting the edge of their cushioned hearth area.  “Aaahhhh,” he said in a
deep-throated rumble, with an air of sudden comprehension, eyes alight.
“I understand you now.  Erestor,” he said the name firmly, as though to
make sure he had the Elf’s attention.  “You say you are slowly awakening.
If it is anything like your previous awakening, I shudder to think at your . 
.
. needs.  I understand if you would seek physical pleasure from others
beside myself.  I don’t care.”

“You don’t care?”  Erestor could not hide his pure astonishment, black-
brown eyes warm and shocked.

Glorfindel moved toward the bed.  “Elstras didn’t care.”  He sat on the
bed.  “And Erestor, you can’t tell me he didn’t love you, even if you are
still unsure of your own feelings after all these years.”

“By Elbereth, Glorfindel, I don’t know what to say.”

“I suppose there’s a first time for everything,” was Glorfindel’s comeback.

Erestor smiled ruefully.  “I don’t know why,” he shook his head.  “I never
thought you’d react that way.”

“Why not?” Glorfindel shrugged, slipping off his robe.  “You yourself
have dubbed me the most generous Elf you’ve ever met.”

“Yes, but,” Erestor shook his dark head.  “The difference between love
and sex is hard enough to comprehend without drawing shaky, nearly
invisible lines between them.”

Glorfindel took off his shirt and kicked off his boots.  “Well, Erestor, 
let’s
see if we can make the distinction clearer.  Firstly, I love you.  Secondly,
you love me.  Clear so far?”

Erestor nervously nodded, watching Glorfindel disrobe.

“That’s it,” Glorfindel told him.  “As long as that never stops, then all is
right in my little share of the world.

“So--” Erestor choked off his own words.  “I’ve never had this much
trouble before.”

“So I gathered.”

“I don’t want to shock you.”

“Too late.”

“All right.  I don’t know if you’re ready to hear this.”

“Try me.”

Erestor just opened his mouth and said it.  “Melpomaen made hints . . .”

“You’re not going to spell it out for me?”

“HE didn’t.”

“Melpomaen made hints?”  Glorfindel shrugged.  “Like an offer?”

“An invitation,” Erestor admitted.  “I don’t know how he worked up the
nerve to ask me.  It took him a while, I have to say that.”

“And you want my . . . permission?”

Erestor shrugged and looked away.  “Opinion.  Judgment.  Permission, if
it comes to that, aye.”

“I’ve already given it,” Glorfindel promised, slowly taking up Erestor’s
nearer hand to place a kiss on his hot and sweating palm.  “Just remember
not to give so much of yourself away.  Take something back, in return.”

Erestor canted his head, expression serious.

“What?”

“Galadriel said something like that.”

“Galadriel is a very wise woman.”

Erestor shook his head and looked away.  “I’m not nearly ready to think
about other offers and other partners.  I’m more than content with you.”

“For now,” Glorfindel suggested.

“Right.”

“Fine.”

“Really?”

“Yes.  Really.  It’s not in my nature to be jealous or hard-hearted.  If I 
had
a problem with any of this, you would know by now.  I’m glad you’re
talking to me about it now.”  Then he amended, “At all.  I’m that glad
you’re strong enough, that I’m worthy enough.”

Erestor suddenly let out a bark of a laugh.

“What?”

“Worthy?  I never questioned the worthiness of my lovers.  They were all
worthy in my eyes.”

“But I’m not just a lover.”

“No.”  Erestor was all seriousness.  “You’re the one whom I love.”

Glorfindel thought about that a moment.  “I see where the confusion
comes in.”  He chuckled.  “Can I kiss you now?”

“Please.”

“No need to beg,” said Glorfindel, leaning forward, “unless you want to.”

Erestor finally let himself reach out, curling a hand about Glorfindel’s
cheek and guiding him forward.

They kissed.  And it was meant to be sweet.  But it couldn’t be for long.
Glorfindel was too eager, Erestor too desperate.  The kiss grew deeper all
at once, delving and delicious as Erestor’s hand moved to grip the back of
Glorfindel’s neck and lock him there.

The golden warrior threw one arm over Erestor to brace himself, still
entangled -- entwined and ensnared -- in their kiss, in one another.
Unintentionally, Glorfindel forced Erestor down flat to the bed, laying
heavy atop him and moving together, Glorfindel’s trousers the only
boundary between them.

Erestor smiled into the kiss and mischievously rolled them over, straddling
Glorfindel’s hips to reach down and untie the drawstring.  They parted --
such anguish! -- to remove the last of Glorfindel’s clothing, only so that
they could fly together again, skin to skin, all over glorious and hot, 
rolled
over and over the red linen sheets, playing (not fighting) for dominance.

Glorfindel let Erestor win, his shoulders slammed into the downy soft
mattress, Erestor’s hands on his shoulders, swiftly dancing elsewhere:
over an arched throat, down a falling rising chest, to pluck at browned
nipples as one would a tightened lute.  Glorfindel shrieked and twisted
against the linen, one hand fisting the crimson quilt, the other set tight
round Erestor’s arm, just above the elbow, seeking something steady,
something solid to hold.

This didn’t seem to limit Erestor’s nimble hands, which wound their
teasing paths across the golden skin, pinching, caressing, and teasing at
turns.  Astounding, arousing, and amazing until Glorfindel could lay back
no longer, but stake out retaliation in his turn.

He grabbed the ivory Elf, flushed like pale roses, by hip and shoulder,
swiftly driving him over and then rolling atop him; Glorfindel moved like
a predator, like a dancer, like a lover.  He dragged his palms from
shoulders to chest, sliding, rubbing the flushing skin to darker rosy hues,
those big hands covering such a span of skin as to engulf nearly all of
Erestor’s chest.

Those big hands, blanketing him in living warmth and loving heat,
upbraiding, reproving guilty flesh for its tempting, oh so tempting, beauty,
hue, and feel.  ‘I love thee,’ sang long, strong fingers.  ‘I love thee,’
murmured callused palms.  ‘I love thee,’ promised blanketing hands,
striving hands, loving hands.

“Love me,” Erestor whispered.  Perhaps a plea, perchance an order,
possibly a wondering observation.  He opened already half-closed eyes to
stare intensely into Glorfindel’s.  “Show me.”

Glorfindel nearly laughed, but didn’t.  He smiled instead, with his whole
being, and he vowed as he bowed his golden head, “Always.”

Then, they fell to more kisses, sharp and biting, quick and fighting, soft
and soothing, deep and proving, as Erestor had asked.

Then Glorfindel, with those big hands, sought a path from heaving chest to
taut belly and lower still between long legs to touch for the first the time
the long and heavy length of his lover, swelled and hot and needful.
Erestor sang out approving sighs and calls: ‘yes!’ and ‘more’ and
‘Glorfindel!’

Parting long legs, scarlet-booted legs, Glorfindel settled himself between
them, sitting back on his heels and relishing the glory of Erestor.
Writhing, twisting, moaning, pleading, thrusting, calling out, as Glorfindel
created a sheath with his hands.  Then one of those strong and tanned
hands struck out like a serpent for a tasseled pillow, coaxed it under
thrusting hips, felt below the tightened sacs.

Erestor’s lust-black eyes shot open.  “Take me.  Now.”

Glorfindel could barely form words, so intoxicated was he by sensation.
Blue eyes, heavy-lidded, flicked downward.  “What about--?”

“I already prepared myself,” Erestor explained in a small voice, half in a
whimper, and half in a groan.

“Sweet Eru,” Glorfindel cursed with slurred sounds, “what a pretty picture
that must have been!”

“So take me,” Erestor begged, parting his legs further still, arching his
hips and reaching out with empty hands.  “Please!” as though he half-
expected Glorfindel to loose interest.

Glorfindel met one searching hand with his own, fingers laced together.
Long over lean, tan under pale.  Clutching, they were bound together.

With some small difficulty, Glorfindel readied himself, with sweat and
saliva and their own leaking juices mingled.  He tested Erestor’s entrance
with one thick finger, to be sure.  Then, he breached the panting,
shuddering body.  Bit by bit, so slow and wary.  Though it was a torture
for him to do so with any care.

Erestor hissed and keened, knowing fullness after being so long bereft,
knowing completeness after being so long hopeless.  “In me, in me, in
me,” he huffed the crooning mantra again and again.  It ended in a high-
pitched wail when Glorfindel skewered him entirely.  Totally and wholly
and for a heartbeat, there was a blinding sigh of relief, for so much that
had come before, for the so much else that would come after.

Then, they moved, together and sweetly.  Sweet as they wanted to be,
sweet as they had tried to be, ‘sweet’ was overcome once more by ‘eager’
and by ‘desperate.’

Glorfindel moved in him, moved over him, moved.

Erestor moved around him, moved under him.  They moved together.

Chest to chest, one within the other, hands still joined.  They mated.  They
made love.

In a moment of weakness, when their pace was still just this side of slow,
Erestor blurted out, “Will you always love me?”

Through the crazy pleasure-pain of ecstasy, Glorfindel grinned and kissed
an arched throat.  “I should like to think so.”  He kissed a pointing chin.
He looked into insane black eyes.  “I will always love you, harlot and
counselor,” he panted with his thrusts, “all together.”

Erestor wrapped pale/flushed arms about the great torso, pulling and
holding him close.

Glorfindel remained deep inside.

“I love you,” Erestor gasped, saying over and over the words he’d
previously dreaded to utter.  “I love you.”  As though the words purified
his past.  “I love you.”  Though the past did not need purification.  “I 
love
you.”  It was encouragement, and enticement.  “I love you.”  It was a
promise, and a truth.  “I love you!”

Then Glorfindel broke free, thrusting wildly, bucking like a stallion,
untamed and free.  His hair fanned around him, a golden wash of silk.  His
skin shone like bronze in the light of hundreds of candles.

Erestor answered thrust for thrust, whine for groan, kiss for bite.

What glory united them, what love bound them, what pleasure joined
them!

They chorused their pleasure to the setting sun, to the candled room, to
one another repeatedly in words and not-quite-words.  Their milky white
pleasure coalesced to that burst of black-white lightening.  In waves, in
coils, in rings, it washed and sprang and reverberated through them,
carrying them for a while together.

It faded, it faded slowly, with unequal shallow thrusts.  It faded until
naught remained but a high peace and sense of wonderment, and
fulfillment, and great elation.

Glorfindel slipped from the sated body, and then collapsed half atop the
paling body.  He did not see the smile on Erestor’s lips.  But he heard the
impassioned whisper, aimed for his pointing ear, “Glorfindel.  I have
found my joy again.”

= = = = =

The night seemed still, the fire trickled down to a murmuring glow, the
candles murdered themselves with muddled hisses in puddled wax.  The
incense hung about the room, but trippingly began to dissipate.  A hazy
swell of moonlight indirectly infiltrated the room through falling silks of
peach and lemon.

Erestor spoke to the peace of the room as much as he spoke to Glorfindel.
“There was a prayer we kept for bedtime in the Greenwood.  It was taught
to me by my mother when I was but the tiniest lad.”

Glorfindel’s attempt to whisper manifested instead in an exhausted croak.
“Will you tell it to me?”

Erestor nodded once, his cheek pressing on Glorfindel’s broad shoulder.
He petted golden hair and recited:

“Give to me my hibernation,
Summon me to sleep.
Let me rest my weary head,
And drift into the deep.”

And that is just what they did.

= = = = =

Yet again, Glorfindel and Erestor fell into a routine that suited them.  
Life
was lived truly together, amidst Imladris duties (which they never found to
be a chore) and shared meals and quiet times and times spent making love.

One month brought them a swift winter, bitter in its cold, awful in its
freezing rain, for Elrond was loath to let snow interfere with life in the
Valley.

Thusly it was that Erestor sought out his Lord one day, to beg sweet
entreaty of him.  “It has been many years,” he reminded his half-Elven
Lord, “since snow has touched the dead-slumbering land of wintered
Imladris.  Surely, a brief snowfall shall not do much harm.”

Elrond had developed a remarkable ability to look innocent.  “Why do you
come to me?  I hold some sway over this Valley, true, but to suggest that I
command the clouds themselves . . .”

“Oh but you do,” Erestor told him.  “Long have I lived here and long have
I watched you, my Lord.  Though you expose not the length and breadth
of your power, you cannot hide it from those who know you best.”  And
he gestured to the hand that bore the ring, though naught but Elrond
himself could see it.  “Many of your secrets are known to me, my Lord.”

“And you but ask a snowfall?” Elrond questioned.  “Why in the world?”

“Why?  Because snow was the catalyst that exposed my wintered
emotions to Glorfindel, and snow he so dearly loves.”

= = = = =

“Erestor!!!  Erestor, wake up!”

“No,” said Erestor into the pillow, muffled and slurred.  “Go away, insane
person.”  He dragged another pillow over top of his head.

Glorfindel pulled it off.  Then, he committed a severe crime.  He yanked
all the covers from the bed, exposing Erestor’s naked body to the frigid
air.

“GLORFINDEL!!!”  He was awake now.  “You are IN FOR IT!!”

Glorfindel ducked the flying pillow.  He was not deterred.  “Up, Erestor!
Get up!”

Erestor flopped back down onto the mattress, curling into a ball and
snuggling into what was left of the pillows.  “No.  Evil Elf.”

“I’m not!” Glorfindel protested, as though sincerely affronted.  “It’s
snowing!  Come on!”

“Snowing?” Erestor asked without opening his eyes.  “Are you sure?  Did
you check?”

“I don’t have to CHECK!” Glorfindel told him, practically insulted.  “I
just KNOW.  I feel it in my belly.”

Erestor giggled.

“I DO!” Glorfindel insisted.  “Come on, we have things to do.”

“I can’t play in the snow all day,” Erestor fake-lectured at him.  “I have
grown-up things to do.”

“No you don’t,” Glorfindel protested.  “It’s snowing; take the day off.”

“Oh, just because you say so?” Erestor queried, opening one eye to peer
over his shoulder.

“Well yeah!”

Erestor rolled his eyes.  “Well . . .” he dithered.

“Please!!!!”

“. . . I don’t have anything of particular import scheduled for the day . . 
.”

“And???”

“I could be persuaded . . .”

“If?”

“If you wear that white outfit, you know, with all the . . . white?”

“Yeah, my snow clothes, of course,” Glorfindel answered, a bit
nonplussed.  “I always wear my snow clothes when it snows.”

Erestor rolled over finally, sitting up to look at his lover.  “Yeah?  Well, 
it
turns me on.”

Glorfindel’s brows shot up.  “Really?”  He had a funny smile on his face.

“Uh-huh.”  He shrugged.  “Don’t know why, but it does.  . . . You’re
going to use this to your advantage now.  Aren’t you?”

“You really have to ask?”

Erestor laughed and scooted to the edge of the bed.  “Wait till I tell you
some of my other turn-ons.”  He stood and walked sedately around the
bed, past Glorfindel, and into the Winter Room.

Glorfindel stared dumbly after him.  Then he followed.  “Well?  Like
what?!?”

= = = = =

Glorfindel was swift to dress and when he was done, he kneeled on the
blue-cushioned window seat to throw aside the heavy cobalt drapes and
smile at the winter scene.  “The snow still falls,” he told Erestor with a
happy lilt to his voice.  “Big and heavy, like downy soft feathers to 
collect
on the ground in a blanket of pure white, like a shroud to let rest the
earth.”

“And I accused you of having no head for poetry.”  Erestor smiled softly
at Glorfindel and asked, “Are you going to go wake the troops?”

Glorfindel glanced at him before staring out the window again.  “No.  The
twins will take care of it.  I’d like to go to breakfast with you.”

Erestor grinned sweetly, though Glorfindel did not see.  “I am glad.”

= = = = =

They chose to dine in the Mess Hall that morning, amid the rowdy
youngsters and soldiers eager to play in the snow.  They were quite a
picture: Glorfindel with golden hair knotted in loose strands at the back of
his head, all in white wool and cotton from neck to toes with tall boots and
white rope belt.  Sitting across from him was Erestor, black hair restrained
by the commonly plaited braids from his temples but otherwise loose, and
all in long tunic and leggings and boots of black.

They each had a generous bowl of porridge, stirring in milk and sugar at
turns and eating it quickly before it cooled.

Glorfindel was itching to get out to the field, Erestor knew, and went with
him, overseeing all the preparations for the snow battle that would occur
after lunch.

Erestor joined those in the center of the field, sculpting snow creatures
with the aid of hot water and the addition of icicles for teeth and horns 
and
tusks, until the white field was a topiary of ice and snow animals which
never existed in anything but legend and the fantastical minds of the
minstrels that had shaped them.  Cellel was watching with Arwen from the
upper balcony the antics of the Elves on the field and Erestor waved to
them.

Arwen waved back and Cellel blew him a kiss from her green-gloved
hand.

When the bell tower rang for the noontime meal and the Elves all ran for
the halls, Erestor took Glorfindel’s hand in his own to tug him away from
the House, promising, “I have a gift for you.”

Glorfindel canted his head in surprise and followed where Erestor led,
down the length of the tourney field and round to the front of the House
where, in the forecourt, awaited a sleigh.  It was pulled by two white
horses all done up in red ribbons and brass bells, stomping their great
hooves in the snow and puffing their hot breath in streams of steam as the
snow still fell.  The sleigh was white, with long runners, and sitting up in
the driver’s seat with long reins in his hand sat green-clad Dinendal, the
snow peppering his auburn hair as eyes twinkled merrily in their direction.

Glorfindel turned in astonishment to Erestor.  “How did you know?  The
snow?  The sleigh?  What is--”

Erestor silenced him with a kiss.  “So many questions,” he said against full
lips cooled by winter wind.  “Just come now, and ride with me.”

So, they climbed into the sleigh, and pulled a heavy red rug over their laps
and cuddled close together as Dinendal snapped the reins and the sleigh
took off with a lurch across the snowy court.

The paths that Dinendal took them on were the snow-covered wagon roads
used by the farmers to transport their crops.  The roads wove through
wood and over plain and even crossed the river on a sturdy stone bridge.

Dinendal’s nose and mouth were covered with a green scarf against the
biting wind, but Glorfindel and Erestor laughed the whole way, thrilling at
the nip of the cold and singing: so they went along the snow-blanketed
roads of Imladris.

= = = = =

The sleigh returned not long after the lunch hour, sliding over the snow,
pulled by the strong white horses right to the tourney field, where
Glorfindel’s men lay waiting behind their snow bunkers and forts.  They
cheered at the sight of the sleigh, which Dinendel pulled up along side the
field between the wall and House.  Glorfindel stood from his seat and
shouted through cupped hands, “Fire at will!  Fire!  Fire!”

He sat back down and he and Erestor laughed uproariously at the
snowballs flying amidst the falling snow and the laughing warriors and the
crazy furious fight that erupted, nothing more than the most adventurous
play.

So intent was Glorfindel on the ridiculous display that he did not notice
Erestor had crept from the other side of the sleigh.  He did not notice 
until
a snowball caught the back of his head, and he turned to see Erestor in his
lonely black clothes laughing and laughing at him from a small copse of
trees, standing in the snow that didn’t quite reach his knees.  The snow
was all caught in ebony hair and spotted his black tunic in slowly melting
specks of white.

Glorfindel took his time, bidding farewell to his oblivious men and
thanking Dinendal profusely before he leapt from the floor of the sleigh
into the field of snow and through the trees, pursuing the black shadow
that fled in fear before him.  “Erestor!” he shouted his threat, “You’re
going to pay for that!”

But it seemed that, should Erestor wish to be caught, he would have
slowed, or thrown another missile, but he did not.  He maintained a fairly
straight line through the patch of trees, purposefully heading for a distant
garden through the tall stone wall.  Down the straight brick path he ran,
treading atop the snow rather than through it, hair flying out behind him in
the thickening snowfall.

Glorfindel maintained a steady distance, keeping Erestor in sight but not
getting too close as the dark Elf led the way sprinting to the end of the
garden and vaulting over the low garden wall.  He ran across a meadow
and through the line of trees into the forest.  He ran through the white-
washed stick-like trees until they opened out tall above him in a clearing
all adrift with snow.  He stopped and turned, scooping to snatch up a
quickly packed ball of snow.  Aiming with precision, he caught Glorfindel
full in the stomach before the white-clad warrior caught up to him.

Instead of tackling his lover though, Glorfindel stopped short instead, just
over an arm’s length away, breathing heavy and thickening the air with his
breath.  “Erestor,” he panted.  “Why did you lead me out here?”

Since Glorfindel seemed more inquisitive than playful, Erestor flung out
his arms and fell gracefully backward into the pillowing snow.  He crossed
his legging-clad legs and crossed his arms behind his head.  “Why,
Glorfindel, do you think I did?”

He shrugged hopelessly.  “I don’t know.”  He was even more confused at
Erestor’s position in the snow.

Then Erestor reached out his arms.  “Come.  Let’s make love in the
snow.”

Glorfindel threw back his head and laughed.  “Is that it?  Is that the great
plan?”  Glorfindel smiled down on Erestor’s sinful countenance.  “Don’t
try those doe-eyes on me; you know I can’t resist.”  He shook his head and
chuckled.  “In the snow!”

Erestor flipped up the bottom of his tunic so that he could start removing
his leggings.  “Yes please.”

“You’re incorrigible!”

“That’s the idea.”

“Get on your knees before you freeze your best bits.”

Erestor laughed and obeyed.  He quickly kneeled up to sneak his hands
through the layers of Glorfindel’s clothes to take him in his mouth in a
swift preparation.

Glorfindel gasped, at the overwhelming sensation and at the suddenness of
it.  He unknowingly weaved his strong fingers through Erestor’s black hair
as Erestor withdrew a small bottle from somewhere on his person.

Removing himself from Glorfindel’s hold, Erestor withdrew, coating
Glorfindel’s shaft in a sweet-spicy smelling oil.  Then he turned about and
fell to his elbows in the snow, offering himself up.

Glorfindel dropped to his knees as one might fall to sudden prayer, and his
worship was no less sincere.  He took the bottle that was handed him and
quickly coated Erestor’s insides with the slicker-than-slick foreign oil.
“Ready?” he asked, easily aroused by Erestor’s antics.

“Ready ready ready!” Erestor agreed, already moving in rhythmic
anticipation of the pleasure to come, hindering Glorfindel’s progress.

“Hold still!” Glorfindel laughingly commanded.

Erestor complied only long enough for Glorfindel to sink in, bury himself.

Knees cold in the snow as it still fell in drifting waves about them, still
clothed in ebony and ivory in the brown-skeleton forest draped in new-
fallen white, they recounted that old harmony with ever-multiplying
variations.

= = = = =

It was not even dark yet when Glorfindel and Erestor closeted themselves
away for the night, choosing to bed down in the cozy Winter Room after a
swift dip in the Bath House tubs.

They wore thick house robes and slippers as Erestor lit a fire and
Glorfindel fetched a covered tray of hot food from the kitchen.

Having missed lunch and dinner, they fell to the food with gusto once their
door was closed to the world and Erestor hung their black iron kettle upon
a waiting hook and swung it to sit over the fire.

They were content to say nothing for the time, instead singing a mournful
winter tune softly together, humming or wordless as often as not until the
kettle spitted steam and Erestor swung the hooked arm back out to steep
the tea.  “Hot toddy?” he asked as he took up a bottle of Dwarvish whisky
from the bookshelf.

Glorfindel smiled and nodded and twenty minutes later, they were
wrapped up together, naked in bed, sipping at mugs of whisky-sharpened
tea and saying nothing, content forever to be just like that.

When the fire dulled to something less than a roar and teacups long were
set aside and bed curtains were pulled around three sides of the bed,
Erestor turned to his love to say, “I love Imladrian winters.  And I love
knowing that I have a Summer to go home to.”

“And you love me,” Glorfindel pointed out cheekily.

“Indeed I do.”

Then they lay down together entwined beneath the covers that were pulled
up to their chins.

Erestor easily fell to a deep and dreamless sleep, but Glorfindel stayed up,
watching the fire in the marble hearth sleepily burn itself away.  He
stroked the silky black strands of his love’s hair.  He could hear the 
winter
wind whistling outside and the last crackling remnants of their eve’s fire.
Though he could neither see nor hear it, Glorfindel knew that the snow
still fell outdoors.  Then he gathered Erestor as close as he could into his
embrace without waking the Elf, and he smiled into the darkness, and
slept, never more contented.

= = = = =

The end.


Note:  In the midst of writing this story, I stumbled across this poem:

SNOW-FLAKES

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


Out of the bosom of the Air,
	Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
	Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
		Silent, and soft, and slow,
		Descends the snow.

Even as our cloudy fancies take
	Suddenly shape in some divine expression,
Even as the troubled heart doth make
	In the white countenance confession,
		The troubled sky reveals
		The grief it feels.

This is the poem of the air,
	Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
	Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded.
		Now in its cloudy bosom revealed
		To wood and field.