Thelinn was waiting for him. Glorfindel looked down the path toward the house, but resolutely reversed his steps the other way. Only when they had gone over the rest of their rostas for the summer months, agreed a list of promotions to put forward to Elrond and settled on the escort for the next trade and message run to Arnor, was he at last free to head for the less routine meeting he had unwillingly deferred. As he strode toward the house, he let all semblance of courteous friendliness fall away. He felt neither polite nor friendly and had no intention of assuming the appearance of either one.
His destination achieved, he did not bother with preliminaries. Straight to the point and poised ready with reproaches, he demanded, “What did you say to him, Elrond?” He loomed in the archway of the open doors, judging his anger too consuming to advance further on his lord.
“Playing up, was he?” said Elrond, dourly. He had been waiting for this confrontation. “He walked out on me a second time. If he does it a third, I’ll not tolerate it. Warn him I said so.”
“What did you *say*?”
“I told him that I’d personally see him incarcerated in Khazad-Dûm if he caused you hurt or played you false.”
Glorfindel was speechless. Incoherent with surprise, anger and shock, he stared at Elrond who looked back at him flatly, showing no remorse.
After a moment of deadlock they both looked away, accustomed to arguing but never with this degree of emotion lying unappeased between them. Glorfindel came into the room fully, set aside his belted weaponry, poured Elrond a drink and then one for himself. He sat in his accustomed place. “Elrond, take this, sit down and talk to me. Tell me everything.”
Elrond took a moment to close a book that he had been reading, straighten up a stray scroll that lay half off the edge of the table and shed his heavy outer tunic in favour of the informal comfort of shirt and leggings. When there was no plausible delaying tactic remaining to him, he accepted the proffered wine and chose his favourite seat where he could gaze out of the windows onto the Vale. Without looking at the Elda, he began to talk.
***
At his desk, Erestor methodically dealt with petty matters that had come his way, until there was nothing left of minor import. He delivered what needed passing on to the messenger’s pile, and returned with more interest to writing to the farmers, merchants and traders of the surrounding countryside. On his return he had elected to wash outside under the pump in its deluge of cold water, and it had shocked him into a degree of self-possession. He stayed under the water for a long time, and emerged to don only the leggings that sufficed for decorum to return to his chambers. Once there, he hung up everything that was clean and dry, laid out the rest to air or for cleaning, and searched for the plainest working clothes he could find, settling for loose black leggings, a soft russet undervest and an unadorned black robe that fell to the floor. He fastened a sash around his waist to hang with braided ends down one side to dignify the outfit and finally drew on his boots.
Back in his office and working, he dedicated his whole attention to those matters immediately at hand. When it was time to eat, he left with reluctance, only to find himself at table in the absence of both lord and captain. He left early, returning to his work and continued into the evening until his muscles demanded a change of position.
It was very late. There was no light in the outer rooms to denote anyone still reading, nor any still at work. He doused his candles and the lamps, and made for the door along the familiar access between desks, wall and shelving, to emerge into the wider libraries and thence into the lit halls, hoping he might sleep after the night ride and today’s assorted fights.
“Erestor.”
He froze in place, surprised and wary at this summons out of the dark of the hall. Glorfindel stood up, a rising bulk of shadow from where he had been sitting in one of the windows, staring out at the night-blackened sky. He came closer, and then turned the other elf toward him with a hand on his shoulder. Erestor took a step back.
“Light,” Glorfindel muttered and moved away to strike a flame. Satisfied when he had set a few of the nearest stands of candles burning, he studied the other’s face, seeing eyes no lighter than the sky outside and no more informative. “Elrond has had a long talk with me. About you…”
Burning beeswax flickered, not from any impurities of casting but from drafts which took liberties around the high spaces of the hall, casually licking the flames into snaking tongues in their wake. Flame and air alike took no heed of tension, even while their scatterings of light enhanced the golden halo framing Glorfindel’s not-quite frowning face and the planes and hollows of Erestor’s contained features.
Erestor said nothing. Glorfindel seemed remote, closed and unfamiliar. He waited to hear what the other had to say. What point in asking? He had not waylaid him in the dark with a trapper’s patience to hold his peace.
“When all is ready, we go to Lórien, and thence to Harad, just as you said. Your preparations are in hand?”
Erestor nodded. This was Glorfindel as he had not seen him before. He came nearer. Erestor resisted the temptation to back away once more.
“You were hardly waiting here to ask me that.” The words were as ungiving as Glorfindel’s expression, tossed out as if in challenge, which they were. Erestor was girding himself for what counter Glorfindel returned for him to field.
Glorfindel eyed Erestor as if measuring him for the first time, trying to see in that loveliness – worthy even of an Avatar of the Maiar – evidence of the stories Elrond had told him. He saw nothing to reveal a bloody past in Maedhros’ service, rebellion against Gil-galad’s amnesty, alliance with unruly mercenaries, or a conspirator against Númenórean rule. “Elrond would not lie to me. Would you?”
Erestor looked away; he doubted he had been wholly open to anyone since his childhood. There were two alone who could ask what they willed and he would inevitably answer, no matter how reluctantly. But there were things he would not willingly reveal to any other. Pride bedevilled him after Elrond’s rough mauling, and coupled with being accosted out of black shadows, which had sent his heartbeat into a tattoo that was not yet fallen back to its accustomed steady beat, he was in no amenable mood to take this question from Glorfindel with humility.
“If I chose to, why not? Don’t we all when the need is upon us?” A clumsy retort and manifestly untrue, but good enough for want of better to bolster defence against imminent attack.
Glorfindel frowned openly at that. “Erestor, do not speak so. It hardly becomes you.”
Erestor’s startlement at the tone of this reproach betrayed him into a bark of laughter, no sooner permitted to pass his lips than cut off. “Very well. Elrond would not lie to you. So whatever he has said, is true. Why then do you question me?” His voice was cold, his stance planted squarely and his head tilted firmly up, but his eyes did not rest on Glorfindel’s face as he spoke, choosing instead to address the wavering candles.
Tone, manner and words disturbed Glorfindel, and angered him after their apparent beginnings of friendship. He was already deeply at a loss over what Elrond had told him. He reached out a hand to take Erestor by the arm, commanding him almost roughly, “Look at me.”
Erestor’s eyes jerked up to his. “Let me go, Glorfindel. You have no cause to question me.”
“Oh, but I do, and you know it. Have your vaunted wits gone begging? I have reason to question you five times over. I am charged with your escort, Erestor. I am committed to Elrond’s service. I have oversight of Imladris’ security, and I am charged by the Valar with my appointed duties.” He stared at Erestor’s ungiving expression. “Did you not *know* how much I liked you? And I have to find out from *Elrond* the extent of your involvement with Maedhros? And all that came after?” His grip tightened as he drew Erestor nearer. “Could you not have told me?”
Erestor tested his hold to see if he could draw away without a real struggle, wary of provoking a true fight, unsure of both their tempers. He had no experience at all of this aspect of the Elda. He doubted anyone in Imladris did.
Glorfindel maintained his grip about Erestor’s upper arm with a casual disregard for the half-hearted attempt to pull free. “You lay with them. You laid their plans for them. Tell me, Erestor, did you kill for them?”
Erestor felt every word as if they cut him to the quick, and had to draw on every reserve he had not to show it. The only refuge to be found was in the distraction of attack and he mustered a ready army of words to loose at his target. Glorfindel was awaiting an answer, apparently inviting one, rather than delivering the rhetorical reproaches Erestor had suspected of him. The blue eyes fastened on him had never been more intent, and Erestor let the silence work for him with exquisite precision for an unmeasured pause in time. Then he smiled, his third devastating arsenal, and struck much as Glorfindel had, straight and true. “What would that matter to you, my Lord Captain? Or does it spoil your fancy that what you had set your sights on is sullied by its history? For sure, if it’s tarnished it must be brass after all. I am sorry for your disappointment.”
Glorfindel stared in shock at the sharp sting of the serpent in his grasp, but he did not let go. Erestor laughed, low and sounding such that for the first time Imladris’ newest champion could plumb just how and why Elrond could dislike him so.
“What, so shocked? Not once but twice I thought you set on avoiding what I had to tell you. Do you seek to blame me now, for that?”
Not one word of denial among the vituperation. Glorfindel pulled him close, not sparing of the handful of muscle and bone that was enclosed by his determined hold, dragging him round so that the light passed between their bodies to fall full on Erestor’s face, both hands fixing him in place before his seeking inspection. “Tell me you did not kill for them. Tell me that Elrond is wrong. That he is mistaken, that he does not know the full story. Tell me *something*, Erestor.”
Erestor, breathing harder now, his arm hurting more than he would admit even to himself, gave little sign of that small inconvenience. Glorfindel was visibly refraining from shaking the truth out of him, little though he would welcome it: Erestor remembered all too well the feel of mithril-enhanced iron passing into flesh with the resistance and sudden give that presaged the worst of damage, the slide of blade on bone that guided the point fully home. He had no intention of denying it. “When I lie to you, Glorfindel, it will be for some better reason than to deny that truth. I told you already, why do you think Galadriel kept me so close, unlike so many others, once her huntsman had us in hand?”
“Yet some were sent to a worse fate than this,” said Glorfindel tossing his head vaguely at the wealth represented all about them, still thinking as best he could, coldly though shock’s after-waves redounded upon him, ebbing too slowly for his liking as he stared at the stranger’s face so close before him. Eyes that in the past seemed reticent, though with a softened edge that Glorfindel had been willing to believe indicated a return of his own interest, were now showing not the least weakness, nor any elven spirit whatever except a Fëanorian arrogance that gave no quarter and spared no room for discussion of any kind. With that haughty expression and incipient rage, their roles should be reversed, Erestor holding *him* captive.
He had not relaxed his grip and became mindful that he should but he was not ready for this confrontation to end quite yet. “Erestor?”
The Noldo nearly surrendered at the plaintive tone of that one word, in which all he had grown to value of gentle concern and amity reasserted themselves. His stomach twisted. Vast and overwhelming, the familiar warmth undid him, to the point where only a thread remained to contain the breach in his defences that he dreaded more than Glorfindel’s antipathy. He would rather have faced Galadriel at her most formidable.
He made a decisive effort to free his arms, without holding back any of his own not inconsiderable strength. Glorfindel might be stronger, but he would have to choose to hurt him to keep him in hold. He risked his last dignity on that one throw, wrenching shoulder and elbow joints almost from their sockets in his determined bid to end this torturous interrogation.
After an endless hiatus in which Glorfindel held on and Erestor did not desist, the vice-like fingers opened and Glorfindel dropped his hands, leaving Erestor free to turn for the door. Instinctively he made for his old rooms and their secluded embrace, closing both doors behind him. Shaken to the core, he took refuge in the familiar, still surroundings whose silence welcomed him. The tears he had resisted on the training grounds would not now be denied, and for the second time in two days he wept bitterly, cursing while he did: himself, Maglor, Maedhros, Elrond, the Valar – he cared little whom he reviled so long as the litany of words kept thought at bay and fended off the hurt he had known was coming. His arms hurt and he clutched them where bruises would soon form, and subsided to the floor, no longer even trying to stem the tide. He knew well he did not weep for Glorfindel, nor what had passed between them, or at least, not only for that. He had been avoiding these tears since Celeborn’s contingents had finally laid them by the heels. Relief was there amongst the outpouring of regrets, and Erestor let himself cry for as long as tears still came.
***
“Erestor’s missing.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I can’t find him. His quarters, his study, his old rooms, the great hall, your library – he’s nowhere to be found and Meren is in his stall – he’s not out riding.”
“What about the gardens?”
“In full dark? It’s possible I suppose.”
“Why do you want him anyway? You know if I search him out he’ll be aware of it. We didn’t part on good terms. He won’t like it. I’ll do it, but only as a last resort.”
“Neither did I part with him on good terms, Elrond. And I’ve never been unable to find him before unless he was out with Meren.”
They exchanged a silent glance, both thinking on what they had said that day, and what they might expect of Erestor. “You don’t seriously think he’s gone?”
Glorfindel shrugged uncomfortably. “You didn’t see him this afternoon. He said you’d be glad if he betrayed you… That you hated him, and could then at least be rid of him. And I – what you said bothered me more than I expected, so I waited to speak to him after he finished whatever it was he does for all those hours at his desk.”
“Getting ready to go to Harad, I expect,” murmured Elrond, knowing forwards and backwards how Erestor worked after all these years. “And clearing out of the way unfinished business so he can concentrate.”
“Yes, well, I waited for him and it was hours before he emerged; it was dark, and I’d just been sitting there, thinking. Elrond, you may not like it, but he matters to me, and after what you said – I accused him of kinslaying. He fled, when I let him go. Now I can’t find him.”
Elrond sighed. “You really are serious about him?”
Glorfindel did not answer but came to stand beside him where they could overlook the whole span of the southern valley from east to west. Black trees filled the horizon, while overhead the stars lit an unclouded sky: for a moment the conversation lapsed as the wondrous beauty of it caught them. “He loves the stars you know; I came upon him naming all he could see from his old rooms. I do intend to have him, if I can. He thought you’d oppose it.”
“I didn’t know that about him.” He hesitated. “Glorfindel - I know he is capable of taking great pleasure in much that Eä has to offer – books, horses, fine clothes, music, the gardens – all these, but that does not make him a suitable partner for you.”
Glorfindel listened sombrely.
When he neither interrupted, nor showed signs of restless protest, Elrond continued carefully, “You did not see him as I did. He was such a good match for them. He *belonged* with them and he did all they asked, took all they gave, the good and the bad, giving no sign at all as to which counted for which. With him, you’d never be sure.” He left unspoken, that he could not think of a more unsuitable match for the Captain of Imladris.
“My lord, I will not argue with you. Yet you were very young, and he – surely he has not served you so very ill that you would have him outcast forever? I don’t ask you to like him, but to count him as beyond the pale… Elrond, you will understand, if in this I have to judge for myself.”
Elrond nodded resignedly, expecting nothing less. “I hope you won’t regret it. I know it will be hard – for you both, I think. Today already proves that. Go and ask the guards if they saw him leave, and check again. If you cannot find him, come back and I will look for him.”
Elrond poured a drink and sat in the window, awaiting his return. Unlike Glorfindel, he had no fear that the Noldo had left. He had sensed many impressions that afternoon, many unwelcome to him, but there had been amongst them no contemplation of open flight. Some of what he had said had been to test the other’s intentions, designed to help him divine more of Erestor’s thoughts and motivations than the elf willingly revealed. He had not bargained for Erestor’s reactions – nor his own. Glorfindel would find him. If not, he could discover Erestor’s whereabouts himself, though he would not do so lightly.
He sat on in the dark and waited, pondering what Erestor had said about Harad, and Gandalf’s last missive about the presence in the south of the Greenwood, increasingly convinced that Erestor was right. They could ill afford to allow easy footholds from which remnant servants of Melkor or Sauron could wreak more havoc, as had been happening so disastrously in the north. Gondor must stand, or they all would pay the price. And the forest fastness must be investigated, no matter what messages Gandalf carried from Saruman. If Thranduil would agree, could they act without the wizards’ sanction? The idea shocked him but he could not shake his persistent unease.
***
Glorfindel made the rounds of the house once more, stopped for a word with Lindir to ask if Erestor had appeared in the hall, and stepped out to the brookside behind the wall of the barracks to see if he was there. The guards had not seen him. He checked the stables once more, asked the sleepy incumbents if they had seen sight or sound of the Noldo and, on drawing a blank, walked down to Meren’s stall as if the horse could tell him where to look. The dapple-grey stallion was still there, as he had expected, but not facing outwards at Glorfindel’s approach, and suddenly he knew he had run his quarry to earth.
He padded up to the dividing wall of the generous indoor provision. His silent footfalls had alerted the elf sitting in the straw, or perhaps Meren’s nicker had made known his approach. Glorfindel saw Erestor flinch and look away. Clearly he was not himself. He sat, hands between his knees, back against the board partition, black garb littered with straw and equine smudges. While Glorfindel watched, the colt nudged Erestor’s side and gave another low nicker. The Elda absently patted a greeting on the hot shoulder before pushing him aside. Meren resisted a moment before giving way. Glorfindel crouched down an arm’s-length distant from Erestor and waited, not looking at the elf but across the expanse of straw at the grey who took to lipping hay and snorting a little water, not truly thirsty, idly occupying himself before falling back into the somnolence rightfully his at this late hour.
Listlessly, Erestor spoke into the arching silence of the stables around them, “You’ve come to finish what you started? You are persistent, my lord. How shall I satisfy you?” He said no more, and nor did Glorfindel speak in answer to the half-hearted bitterness, relieved at the absence of the acerbic tones of their earlier interchange. He settled himself further into the straw bedding to get comfortable. After a while Erestor heaved a deep sigh. “I was missed then.”
“I looked for you and couldn’t find you anywhere. Elrond said he’d search you out only if I didn’t run you to earth. He rather thought you’d not welcome contact of that ilk.”
Erestor shuddered in reflex at the thought. “Then I am obliged to him. I went to my rooms for a while and then I came here. What do you want, Glorfindel?”
“I told Elrond I would not give up my interest in you. You were wrong about him putting a stop to it. He said nothing to prevent me, Erestor.”
Erestor laughed, an unhappy sound, and said mordantly, “No, he just plans to lock me up and throw away the key if he’s not happy with the way your romance works out for you.”
“He was concerned, Erestor. He’s very sceptical about you and he has a legacy of feelings from Sirion and after that is not to be cast aside. I gather you made a profound first impression? And certainly he doesn’t condone what you did in the years afterwards; he fundamentally opposes choices you made. As do I, for that matter.”
Erestor laughed, no less harshly, hands hanging loosely between his knees, and head tipped back against the planks. “You have a unique way of making your interest known.” He turned to look at Glorfindel at last. “So – you told Elrond your intentions.” The Captain had his head slightly tipped, his smile showing faint encouragement to talk if he wanted, eyes solemn. “You wouldn’t be the first to want me. Nor the first with the most appalling timing. What in all Arda do you think you’re doing?” There was no heat in the words, his voice was tired, but his eyes showed sharp attention, “Or was that little scene in the library staged to show me my place?”
“I have no idea what I am doing,” admitted Glorfindel, “but I’m sorry about earlier, not for asking, but for doing it in such a way, surprising you in the dark…” He didn’t finish the rest. He wanted to touch now as instinctively as he had then, though in rather different fashion. “I should have waited until tomorrow, after the day we had passed already.”
“Twice I began to tell you. Twice you put me off. You were most unfair,” Erestor observed dispassionately.
“I didn’t realize – I didn’t understand – Elrond had much to tell me. You’ve lived a – varied – life. Mine has been very different.”
In unbroken silence they contemplated for a while the realities of longevity in Erestor’s case, what he had done in the long unfolding of the years, and the contrast of Glorfindel’s truncated span with its very different griefs. Glorfindel stirred before he spoke once more. “What was it like for you, living with them?” There could be no mistaking to whom he referred.
“In what way?”
Glorfindel shrugged. “You were thirty eight. Did you spend much time with Maedhros? Even when I knew them, he was as intense as Fëanor.”
Erestor glanced at him warily. “He was very intelligent. His mind… I have never met any to equal him. He taught me himself, a great deal. I had tutors but where they stopped he took over. He was generous, in his way, and always kept his word. Quite mad, I suppose in hindsight, but at the time – he was systematic. Purposeful. A planner.” He spoke without feeling.
“And the others? You had a lot to do with them?”
“I don’t kiss and tell, Glorfindel,” he said drily and with finality.
Glorfindel looked sidelong at him, catching the dark humour, the deep reservations, and the wondering about possibilities, all revealed in the thoughtful eyes that rested on him. And then the sombre expression lightened, and the finely delineated mouth curled up.
“Is it the same, your hair?”
“The same?” Puzzled Glorfindel brought a lock forward to see it, as if it might have changed since he last dressed it.
“The same as it was in Gondolin?”
Glorfindel laughed. “Yes. Everything is the same, more or less. Erestor – you don’t kiss and tell, but – do you kiss at all?”
He sighed. “Not for a while. Not for a long while. You?”
“Here and there, nothing serious since I found myself returned. And not for some time lately.” Again they both relapsed into contemplation, in Erestor’s case of all the times he had felt Glorfindel’s interest in him, a steady presence and undemanding. Now he knew how that could change. His belly tightened at the memory of hard hands grasping his arms, and a bruising struggle. For all his hours of training, this would never be someone he could win free of, not unless it was granted freely. A familiar warmth spread in him. He remembered his dream, and tried to imagine giving this golden lord what he sought. An uneasy mixture of familiar, heated longing and churning repugnance at his desire overtook him.
“You can if you want.”
“What?”
“Kiss me.”
Erestor sounded casual, as if slightly curious. In Glorfindel the words stirred something he fought to rein in: not lust, although that too was raising its head robustly, but rather the desire Erestor had so aptly taunted him with, the temptation to believe what he chose, relinquishing better judgement in favour of fantasy. Yet of everything he understood about Erestor, the most certain was that appearances could deceive, and in this arena it was especially likely to be true – or so his instincts insisted, while his heart sang another song. His loins frankly didn’t care so long as he pursued what was offered, and his head was left to rule the whole cacophony. No, he did not trust this invitation as permissive or promissory. He was not taken in by its casual nature, nor the suggestion of willing partnership he would have been delighted to construe from those two short words had they come from any other elf.
“Come over here then.”
Erestor shifted over with his peculiar grace, which he retained even when hay-strewn in the straw and adorned with Meren’s grass-embedded slobber, only to pause uncertainly. Glorfindel lifted his arm and Erestor took the hint and settled at his side, heart thumping, wondering if he were mad, and why he was still here, and surely he had taken leave of every good sense he had ever possessed. And yet, the warmth at his side, where hips, ribs, shoulder and arm met in smooth junction and compromise of angle, reminded him of the peace of the afternoon by the river. Glorfindel now, as then, continued to play the flame to his moth. At that moment it did not seem so bad a fate to be consumed by fire. He reached out a hand to draw a handful of gold toward him. It felt as soft as it had the day before. Silk smooth. He let the strands run individually over the back of his hand and fall away. Laurelin-radiant indeed even in this light, though it smelled of flowers and not of their larger cousins. Idly he wondered what the Trees had looked like. “Did you ever see them?”
“Did I ever see who, Erestor?” Amused, Glorfindel was in no hurry, though he too was aware of the pulse of his heart and the lean contact of Erestor’s body beside him.
“Telperion and Laurelin.”
“Ah.” He smiled remembering the afternoon before. “Yes – the world was different then. They were incredibly beautiful…” For a moment he was quiet, vainly seeking words that could adequately paint a picture of those twin glories of the West in the Elder days. “There were songs sung in Gondolin about them that could have a whole tavern of soldiers fall quiet at the singing.”
“I would have liked to hear the music that could encompass such loveliness.” The words emerged softly and slowly, low in register, taking on a musical intonation of their own. The silence left in their wake merged with the spell already cast by the stillness of the stable about them. Idly Erestor twined a curl between his fingers.
Glorfindel’s scalp shivered at the scarcely felt tug, which caused a renewed frisson of desire to spread through his body. He turned to face Erestor a little more without moving the other elf, letting the arm he had dropped about him come to rest with his hand splayed between Erestor’s shoulders. With his other hand he smoothed back the tendrils of hair around Erestor’s face and set long fingers about the task of picking straw out from his black crown. Then he bent to kiss him. Erestor tipped his head to make it easier. Mouth slightly open, Glorfindel pressed his lips to Erestor’s and felt him tense and then allow it. Silken hair gave and slid under his palm where he held his willing subject in place; smooth lips met his own in the give and take of this virgin intimacy. He lingered over the kiss, wholly absorbed without needing to extend it into a prelude to passion.
Erestor seemed to meld into the space bounded by Glorfindel’s body, hands and lips, kissing him back, lips soft and parted, as if he were freely for the taking. Wary in spite of the lust that shook him, Glorfindel had no intention of acting on that impression. A glance revealed black depthless eyes watching him with a reserved intelligence at odds with the limber body he held, eyes that remained disengaged and untouched. A second shiver went through Glorfindel, of a very different kind. He could still feel Erestor’s body easy in his hold, pressed to him, giving all the signals that would encourage him to carry on, while those clinically curious eyes studied him as if to see what Glorfindel would do next without the least intention of Erestor involving himself.
Glorfindel had known those who had received unwelcome advances hard to put off. He had stood witness when others had suffered the bitterest of partings when one or both of a couple had thought themselves attached by love forever. He had seen friends through times of intense unhappiness with their chosen partner before their differences were reconciled. Whether in his role as superior officer, comrade in arms, head of household or simple friend, he had seen it all, and listened for hours, not always understanding, but willing to let friends or subordinates talk if they needed to. Yet even so he had no experience of anyone remotely with a past like Erestor’s. When he retreated he placed a second shorter kiss on the side of the still slightly parted lips before settling back against the wall, drawing Erestor close into his side with one arm.
Erestor allowed it, and himself sat back, following Glorfindel’s lead. Far from relaxed, he twined straw between his fingers. “It’s late.”
“Time to find our beds, you think?”
Erestor cast him a quick glance, relief writ transparent on his face before he went back to his handful of twisted stems. “High time.”
End of Chapter 12/12
End of Favourite Addiction Part One
To be continued in Part Two Southern Ventures
Vocabulary:
Sindarin - English:
Meren – Joyous
Thelinn – of loyal heart, Resolved Heart
*** vocab ends ***
Author's Chapter Notes:
Summary: Assorted elves talk; one walks off, goes missing, is sought.