Of Stars and Solitude Unbearable by Isilme_among_the_stars  

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Of Stars and Solitude Unbearable

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Elrond creeps into my room in the dead of night with fear-widened eyes. Swift as a hare he darts toward my bed and curls trembling against the post, heedless of the stone floor’s chill. As one small hand rises cautiously to clutch at my arm, I shake off the fading haze of hard-won sleep (with much regret) and reach over to drag him clumsily onto the mattress. Across the room from us, Maglor murmurs in his sleep, rolls over, and tugs his quilt up to his ears. The autumn frosts have begun early this year, and my young elfling’s skin is already cool to the touch. Instinctively, I draw Elrond close and settle the covers over us both.

“Bad dreams?” I ask, and Elrond nods. As I brush my mind against his, it laps like the tide against some desolate shore, and he stands alone in the washed out landscape. Young eyes rove over a heartless sea where the horizon is empty of all but tossing waves. White cliffs are at his back, reeds peek over sandy dunes southward along the shore, and Elrond’s heart fills with the hollow echo: no longer my home, no longer my home.

This vision of the world, callous and cruel, is not how I want Elrond to know it.

So, as I often do, I steal a story to croon from the kinder past. Here ships sail busily to and fro, skipping over the indigo depths as gulls gather on their rigging, welcoming them to port. In Eglarest the air is sweet and the homecomings sweeter still. Long years ago the Falas fell, long before Elrond was born; and on this night I hope its memory shall prove just distinct enough enough from the havens of his birth to bring comfort, not pain. And as a blush of warmth begins to creep into his bones, and the soft gauze of sleep settles over his mind, I think I have judged well. Yet it is a light sleep, the kind that reserves a corner of the mind for the waking world still; I continue weaving tales ‘til dawn.

I have often wondered how much Elrond and Elros remember of the destruction of Sirion’s havens. What facts do half-Mannish minds cling to? And what slips away? Even elvish memories, though very clear, are not infallible. So too the recollections of twins differ greatly, no matter how similar their faces may appear. Treating Amrod and Amras as a bifurcation of one spirit was a mistake I never made, and one that those who did came to regret. Elrond and Elros are no different in this regard.

As months and years pass more smoothly than they ought, my concern grows, and I remain watchful, awaiting a day when the fallout of our actions finally lands and peace is shattered irrevocably. That day never seems to come. Elrond and Elros’s grief, though I know full well it is there, never rises to earth-shattering heights; content for the most part to skim beneath the surface as a whale might, coming up now and then for air. I had been expecting something on the level of Turgon: frigid, unyielding and dangerous after Elenwë was taken by the ice. Or else, the fiery eruptions of Fëanor, whose grief for Míriel could wreak devastation even centuries after her loss. Instead, the children put me in mind of Maglor, always turning outward and onward, and seeming never to stagnate in their grief.

Of Elros this seems proven accurate with the passing of years, though Elrond, I come to learn, can be much like me after Angband. When his grief grows too heavy he shuts it away, hoping that if he does not touch painful memories, they will not touch him. He is vulnerable, though, this way; unprepared for ambushes in the quiet and the dark. Children, also, are ever changeful as they grow, and so too (though it takes me long to realise) are their griefs.

Thus I am taken by surprise one day when, in the space of a breath, Elros changes from sunny-as-Maglor to spitfire-like-Fëanor. When weighed against my father’s tempests, Elros’s is a small, almost humorous eruption, and I must savagely quell my mirth; laughing would surely only end all attempts at comfort before they even begin.

I am teaching him to block a thrust at the time. Elros is ten and stands as tall as an average mannish child of six. That is to say, he still does not reach my hip, so his blows do little more than bruise my knees (I shall congratulate him later for remembering to target a weak point, even in his all-consuming anger). And how fiercely he clings to the hilt as I pluck the wooden sparring sword out of his grasp!

“I hate you!” he screams, face red and twisted with sudden rage. “You had no right!”

“To what, Elros?” I ask, striving to keep my voice calm and even.

“To kill naneth.”

It would be futile to argue intricacies, which is what I very much want to do. For the fact of the matter is Elwing’s unfortunate fate was far from wanted, nor did I lay a hand on her. She took the leap herself, though under duress, and culpability is not so neat or easy to assign. Given the recent appearance of Gil-Estel in the sky, I am not even sure she met her end that day. But, instead of exculpatory repartee, I find something with which I can in principle agree.

“You are right, Elros, I did not,” I admit. “No one had the right to take her from you.”

“But you did. I hate you, I hate you!”

Logic will not win the day. It rarely does in the face of searing emotion, for logic can do nothing to staunch the wounds of grief. Nor is this so simple as right and wrong; two concepts which have never had a static value in any case. Nothing is simple in Beleriand, and I do not want to delve into the finer points of oaths and morality with a ten-year-old in a fit of pique.

“This is not new, Elros.” Indeed, Maglor and I have spoken of Elwing with the boys many times, and have never sought to hide our part in her fate. “What hurts you so, to bring it up now?”

“Nothing!” He screams and begins to lay into my thighs with his fists.

I would bear it. Pummelling me is a much safer method of working out his rage than many I can think of. But Elros holds his hands so wrongly his thumbs are in danger of breaking. Not for the first time, I wish I still had two functioning hands, for this would be much easier if I could hold Elros’s arms separately. His spindly wrists fit easily within my grip, but to do so I must spin Elros around and brace him against my chest. This is not ideal, for he has never responded well to feeling trapped.

“Peace, Elros! You have every right to be angry, but do not damage yourself.”

There is only so much fight in one small boy. Though he rails against me with all his might, it is not very long before he is spent and his heaving chest pushes back into mine as Elros tries to catch his breath.

“Feel better?”

“No,” Elros sobs. When the tears begin to fall with this twin the danger has usually passed. When I release his hands he turns instinctively to bury himself in my clothes, but his face is twisted with the ugliness of conflicting emotions. Poor child. I know too well how that feels.

“Cry if it will help,” I say, wrapping tentative arms around him, alert for any twitch or twist that may signal my ministrations are unwelcome. Elros only burrows deeper while managing to hold his body still aloof, as if the comfort he draws is somehow illicit.

I am at a loss. I think of my father often at such times. It is hard not to, when the immediacy of parenting wanes, leaving room for memory to rush in. Fëanor bore my tears not poorly, but selectively, and would not have suffered such a storm as this. ‘Dry your eyes, Nelyafinwë’ he would have said, lifting my chin high, ‘you are above such things’. And so, foiled by father, I turn to mother, for her wisdom on the matter would prove superior if I could recall it. But here my knowledge fails. Elvish memories are exceptionally clear and accurate as a rule, but mine has been prone to skips and falters ever since Angband. It is luck that the simplest of strategies works: quiet, stillness and an embrace.

Elros is worn enough, ravaged by emotion, that he does not protest being carried the short way home. Maglor looks askance as I push awkwardly through the door with Elros peering dolefully over my shoulder, so unusual is it for him not to insist on using his own two feet.

“They have both been out of sorts this week,” my brother notes.

“I had noticed. Have you any idea why?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” He shrugs. “I think an early bedtime may be in order.”

“You can wrangle them into it.”

Maglor rolls his eyes. “You say that like bedtime is a duty you ever take on.”

“But I do!” I protest.

“Very seldom,” Maglor scoffs.

“I will trade you Elrond in the middle of the night.”

At this he gives me a pitying look. “I shall keep bedtime, thank you!”

Once Maglor and Elros begin to slumber, deeply asleep they stay. It is the kind of rest that refreshes and restores, wholly and well. Elves can manage without it, subsisting quite well on a lighter kind at need, where dreams and the living world blend. I have learned to do without the first, and some nights can find no rest at all, which is why caring for Elrond in the dark hours usually falls to me. Maglor (who wakes like a bear with a sore head) has little patience (though he strives earnestly to find it) for the terrors and bad dreams Elrond’s deeper sleep bring, nor the wanderings he is prone to in the lighter kind. ‘Besides,’ my brother likes to tell me, knowing Elrond settles more easily for me, ‘why should I rouse myself when his favourite comfort blanket is already up?’ Maglor fails to mention how frequently I disturb his own rest with the winds of forsaken heights whistling through my mind. At such times he will crawl into bed behind me and sleep curled against my back; the weight of his head against my shoulder and the warm soughing of his breath a tonic against their unbearable solitude.

“Will you manage while I am away?” I ask. Will I?

“Stop worrying!” Maglor rolls his eyes. “You will only be gone a week.”

Ossiriand is the safest place left in Beleriand, nestled as it is among the Gelion and its tributaries; for in those waters the power of Ulmo holds still, though weakly. Even here, parties of orcs and Easterlings, less daunted than in years gone by, sweep ever more frequently into the land. Scattered throughout its forests, the remnant of our people have found refuge. We live as the Laiquendi do, hidden in the fastness of the trees. It is easier to subsist off the land unobtrusively this way, yet it leaves me feeling blind and uneasy for their safety. How can I defend that which I cannot easily gather to me? To assuage my concerns, Maglor early on devised a regimented schedule of contact with outlying settlements, and that is what I purpose to fulfil this week.

All is well with our people, who make the most of a tenuous stretch of peace. But on return I walk directly into an argument between Elrond and Maglor. Elrond (who is practically allergic to raised voices, except when it is him doing the yelling) fires rebuttals at quickfire pace. His outbursts can be startlingly verbose. Quite articulate on the surface, they wend in frustrating loops, circling back to some perceived hurt which is never the thing truly troubling him underneath it all. One must be a detective to decipher that, for Elrond himself could not tell you; he seldom consciously knows what it is himself. If one listens for long enough it becomes clear that Elrond’s responses are not as coherent as they seem, and he takes in none of what is said. He is a ship disconnected from her rudder. The wheel keeps spinning and spinning, but no one stands at the helm, and the ship continues blindly on, heedless of the treacherous waters it traverses.

Maglor’s retorts fly just as rapidly. His natural inclination would keep Elrond talking indefinitely, endlessly fuelling the cycle, when what Elrond needs is for the words to stop. Someone must still the wheel until he is able to steer himself again, and Maglor has never been good at giving up the last word. Thus I draw Elrond’s attention, for it is easier to provoke him into bawling at me, than it is to navigate the tangled mess of my brother’s insecurity and pride. And blessedly, at that moment a loud clang erupts from the direction of the kitchen, followed by a childish curse from Elros, to which Maglor reacts with the well worn instinct of a parent. He rushes off, lest the sound herald mischief or injury.

When Elrond and I are alone I tell him gently, “I am not going to argue with you.”

Then, it is only a matter of patiently waiting for the bluster of his speech to puff its way to a standstill. When it has done so, I lead him wordlessly to the brook that runs closest to our home. There I splash the travel-grime from my face and drink deeply of its clean, cool waters, knowing he will do likewise; the dousing will do us both good.

Afterwards, as we sit on the bank, Elrond positions himself so carefully close to me that our clothes almost brush; a hesitant invitation. He needs touch, you see, just as much as his brother does. But unlike Elros, who is free with embraces, playful shoves and all manner of contact in between, Elrond seeks out touch only rarely, and one must offer it with care. Thus I work at inching us closer by degrees. A shuffle here and a carefully placed arm there.

“I hope you have not been terrorising Maglor this whole time,” I jest lightly.

Words come thickly forth as he tips his head against my side. “I do not like it when you go away.”

That night the boys will not sleep. Maglor is critically low on patience after tucking a wandering Elrond back into his bed for a third time, not to mention the prolonged and frustrating battle it was to get Elros there in the first place. The harried look he wears as he tells them to ‘for goodness sake stop talking and go to sleep’ promises the next reminder will devolve into threats.

“I will see to it,” I say, with a restraining hand on his shoulder.

As I open the door, two small heads snap toward the sound. Elros glowers, while Elrond manages to look both guilty and terrified, as if he had just been caught pulling the tail of a cat and awaited chastisement. Both sit propped against the headboard on Elros’s bed with their knees tucked up to their chins.

I bring my finger to my lips, then toss them the cloaks they have left in a rumpled heap by the door. “Put these on.”

Poor Elrond looks terribly confused. “What—”

“Put the cloak on, Elrond!” Elros, who catches on quickly and is suddenly conspiratorial, admonishes him in a harsh whisper.

We clamber quietly out of the window, and then I boost them up so they can scramble onto the roof. There is something delicate about their small, bare feet balancing on my shoulders that inspires a tangle of affection, fear and protective instinct in me; feelings that refuse to dim even when pain flares in my bad shoulder, courtesy of Elros’s unfortunately placed toes. It is not a difficult climb, managed easily enough between my height, and the conveniently broad window ledge. Even so, I thank the boys after I have hauled myself up, as if their tugging on my tunic really did help.

“Is Maglor gonna be mad?” Elros asks.

“We’re not telling Maglor,” I reply, settling my back against the shingles.

It is a clear, crisp night. The stars in their constellations are bright beside the half-moon, and Gil-Estel is the brightest of them all. Before an hour has passed it will cede its seat in the sky, and by then I hope to have the boys settled back in their beds. Elrond, who sits curled next to my head, stares up at it mesmerised, as does Elros, who lies spreadeagled further away. I cannot tell what either of them are thinking.

“Do you want to tell me what is going on?” I coax.

A sudden croaking of frogs from the nearby brook joins the usual evening chorus, and neither child utters a single word.

“Fine. We need not speak of it, whatever it is.” With one finger I trace a constellation that floats high above the horizon. “Do you see that cluster of stars? The Quendi name it Wilwarin.”

“It does not look like a butterfly to me,” Elros says.

“Maglor did not think so either when he was small,” I tell him, “He told our atar it looked more like a worm, wriggling its way through the sky.”

Maglor was younger that night than the twins are now, small enough that he had lain comfortably atop Finwë with his small back to our grandfather’s broad chest. He had grasped great fistfuls of Finwë’s shirt when his sudden and hearty laugh at Maglor’s childish words jostled him like a ship on a storm-tossed sea. As if they could argue across the ages, Elrond squints and decides that it looks nothing like a worm either. Elros claims none of the constellations look anything like they are meant to and wonders why we bother naming them at all.

“What would your adar think?” I ask with mock shock. “He is out there somewhere on the great sea, navigating by those stars.”

At my words Elros turns stony. The humour was ill done and I change tact.

“I had the same question when I was small,” I admit. “My grandfather, who was born in these lands, far to the east, told us it was easier to talk about the stars if they had names. The Quendi used them to mark the passing of time in those days, and could tell quite precisely when it was by the positions of the constellations in the sky. We still use them this way, at night.”

Elrond shivers and comes to lay against my side, his head on my chest. “How?”

As he presses closer, soaking up my warmth, I explain Menelmacar’s path through the sky, and how it changes with the season. The night is growing chill. Elros still remains resolutely apart, though goosebumps begin to prick his skin, and I wonder if it is indifference to the cold or inner turmoil that keeps him there.

“That one,” he says of Gil-Estel, “does not stay up long.”

So, he has been watching it. I am not terribly surprised. Has Elrond too? How often have the two of them lain awake to catch a glimpse of the star?

“No,” I agree. “A few hours from sunset only it seems, though the star is too new yet to know how it will behave through the seasons.”

“How did it get there?” Elrond asks, at which point Elros fixes him with a look as if he stands before an apple tree, hands poised to pluck and asks how we come to have fruit in our pantry.

“Clearly it came from the sea,” he says. “It must have taken the same path Arien and Tilion do.”

“How do you figure that?” I ask him, starting to have unsettling suspicions about the connections he is making and just what he may already understand.

When he turns that same look upon me without a whisker of elaboration, I savagely stamp upon the urge to press him further; corrections to both his scientific knowledge and courtesy can be made during daylight hours.

“Naneth has not come,” Elrond whispers. It is a sad, resigned statement.

“You thought she would?” I ask gently.

“It is her necklace, isn’t it?” he says. “The new star?”

“A silmaril? Yes, I believe so.” The light of those jewels is difficult to mistake.

“So, she is alive,” Elros says, stubbornly.

“When you saw the star, you decided that?”

Elros nods.

“But she did not come back,” Elrond repeats.

“And adar did not either.” Elros balls his fists and looks away. “No one came.”

What answer is there to such a hurt? Nothing I could possibly say or do seems adequate. Yet there is a solidarity that a brother can provide; he who bears witness to their sibling’s slow making, and is intimate with a rawer, truer version of their soul than most will ever be privy to. One who has buoyed them past tears no other will witness knows well the fears in their sibling’s breast; insecurities no other can comprehend. Brothers bear matching wounds, and bind the other’s hurts with clearer eyes because of it. In Elrond’s sudden rising and cleaving to Elros this is abundantly clear. It is much like watching my reflection distorted in rippling waters. They keep each other from bleeding out. Have Maglor and I not done the same thousands of times?

So small and forlorn do Elrond and Elros look, clinging to each other, that it takes me a long time to speak. “I do not know that they can come, elenyar.”

There are many reasons, tangible and abstract, why this may be so. The children can of course comprehend none of them, yet understand abandonment viscerally. Too young to separate love from presence, their hearts are in turmoil.

“Maglor and I will not leave you,” I promise, and thankfully, both accept the embrace I offer, resting within it until Gil-Estel sets, though I doubt my word means much to them. Both are soon stifling yawns.

“Come. Time for bed; before you fall asleep, roll off this roof and send Maglor into a fit.”

Elros giggles at that. It would not be the first time he has tumbled off a roof.

Our house becomes uncharacteristically quiet as all fall into a deep and peaceful sleep, save me. I pass the twilight hours in the grip of a shadow that took up residence in me while I hung from Morgoth’s reeking peak, and has clung like ink driven under my skin ever since. I can no more purge it than the Laiquendi can erase the mesmerising patterns with which they decorate their skin.

No one comes for me. For years, no one comes. And I am at the mercy of the mountain, with wind the only voice to hear, and abrasive rock the only touch. The expanse is vast and cruel, transcending the night’s length and the walls of the room my brother and I share, for I am not there. Maglor’s even breaths are but the mocking sigh of a distant breeze, for he is safe on Hithlum’s plain. And I am chained; I cannot reach him.

With the rising of the sun, Maglor kisses my brow and pulls a blanket over my shoulders. Rash words pledged five centuries ago dig their claws into my mind, painting our small resistance meaningless before the senseless violence that rushes as a river of blood before my feet. Shame and despair crash through me again and again until I feel desperately twisted and ill.

When fitful sleep briefly claims me, ash and blood run through dreams in which I stand utterly friendless; the rightful due of one so marred. I am torn; caught betwixt stubborn, clinging hope and the fell, violent misery that ever threatens to consume it. Longing for Maglor’s steadying presence hollows me, but there are innocents in this house, tiny and dear, and I cannot hurt them. I must not hurt them! I think repeatedly to leave; that my absence is the best safeguard. But in that direction also lies the cruelty of broken promise. A perfect storm. An impossible choice, bound to harm no matter what I will. So I lock the tempest inside and shut myself away.

As the afternoon waxes, raised voices herald a spectacular row between Maglor and Elros. They pitch battle in the kitchen, arguing about Varda knows what, and the sound splits my forehead like a migraine, throbbing behind my eyes. I should intervene, and would normally. I would make light, draw the child into a story or tease out some curiosity to distract him until my brother regained a handle on himself. Yet today, all I can do is let their angered voices wash over me from afar as I lie hid in the dark. Life goes on in the domestic beyond, where Maglor plays at parent instead of orphan-maker, and I do not notice when the night time chorus takes over and all is still; I am too preoccupied by waking nightmares.

With the predawn light of the next day, a runner arrives breathless and serious; a soldier from a neighbouring settlement, reporting orc sightings in the forest. With one clear-eyed look at me, Maglor rises hastily to don his armour. “I will go,” he says.

“I can—”

“You look awful, Nelyo. I can handle this.”

“I know you can.”

We do not speak or meet each other’s eyes as I help him with the harder to reach buckles. Awkward as I make the process, it is still faster than donning the armour alone.

“Káno?”

Maglor pauses briefly to meet my eye. “Yes?”

“Take care.”

Then my brother turns to me with a look both fondly exasperated and very self assured. And it is at this moment that a sleepy Elrond slips through the doorway, rubbing his eyes, takes one look at Maglor buckling on his sword belt and becomes white as a sheet. His shriek has Elros hurrying in moments later. Maglor squeezes me on the shoulder apologetically and bustles out the door, mussing each of the boys hair as he goes. If this was meant to reassure them, it does not have the intended effect.

“No!” Elros cries, darting after Maglor. I am forced to toss out an arm to catch him, and think he may be more fawn than boy as he deftly dodges it. Fleet legs carry him straight into Maglor’s arms, whose sharp ears and quick instincts have him on his knees ready.

Maglor is terse, but not unkind, when he says, “stay with Maedhros, Elros.” And Elros does not protest as I lead him back into the house, where his brother still stands as we left him, stiff and blank-eyed. When I brush against Elrond’s mind it is full of the scent of Maglor’s armour after battle. He breathes in the rank, metallic smell, so close it stings his nose and the biting links nip at his cheek as Maglor cradles him to his chest. This is how Elrond was when I first saw him, limp in Maglor’s arms, looking as if he were miles away.

There are few times I am grateful for my mangled right shoulder, which aches more often than it does not. But today, the salve perpetually rubbed into it to ease the shrieking muscles is an advantage. With his head tucked beside my neck, the minty fumes waft into his nose, driving away the memory. Slowly Elrond’s small body loses its stiffness, and his arms come up to wrap around my neck.

“Are you alright, elenya?” I ask, and promptly feel the tickle of his hair brushing against my neck as he nods, even though his small body quivers. Alright is a relative term with something as terrifying as Sirion or Angband in your past. The child in my arms is still far from well, but he is present again at least, and that is something. Given time, quiet and gentle handling he will be well enough before long, and those things are not so difficult for me to give. Elros though, is baffling. He perches exactly where I have placed him, as an owl preparing to swoop, or perhaps a mouse preparing to flee; I cannot tell which, and do not know how best to soothe what ails him.

“All is well,” I try. “Maglor will be back before long.”

Elrond only swallows nervously and clings tighter, but anger overmasters Elros’s fear. Spitfire worthy of Fëanor suddenly has him calling me a liar and yanking Elrond out of my arms into his own. But with his brother gripping desperately to my neck, the end result is a tangled heap of bodies on the floor. And though I roll so as not to land on top of Elros, I think he has still bruised from the fall.

“Are you hurt?” I ask.

“Get away!” he shrieks.

I nod and back up, thinking to retrieve the leftover bread Maglor will have wrapped in wax cloth and left on the bench (as he always does when foul thoughts keep me too long from meals). It is a wonder how much good a little water and sustenance can do in such situations.

“No,” Elrond whimpers, confused and hurt, “don’t go.”

“Worry not. I am only fetching food.”

There is a soft expression I reserve especially for Elrond at such times. Something inside of me understands what it is he feels, I think. There is an honesty to his open vulnerability; something brave which could grow to great compassion in time. Such a thing was squashed out of me many years ago; beaten down mercilessly as the needs of others loudly usurped my own, and I was required to tend to them. Perhaps this child peering forlornly up at me from within the circle of his brother’s arms will never have cause to do such a thing. Elros though, I fear becoming hard, cloaking his dread with anger, just as Celegorm did, becoming closed off to all warmth in the end.

It is he I hand the first chunk of bread to; a peace offering. “Eat. You will feel better with something in your belly.”

“No, I don’t want—”

“Just eat it, Elros. He is right,” Elrond’s shaky voice interrupts.

Elros glares at me and takes the piece I offer him roughly. Elrond is far more gracious.

“Thank you, atto,” he says.

Crumbs fall from his mouth as he makes a derogatory noise.

“I meant it, Elros, when I told you that Maglor and I would not leave you. He will be back.”

“Everyone promises that,” he scoffs.

“They still leave,” Elrond says quietly.

Nothing is simple in Beleriand, least of all promises. Perhaps in this place, it would be better never to make them.

“Then I shall amend that,” I choose my words carefully, “and say instead that you will never be left alone. Maglor and I do not mean to leave you. But beyond that, we will see to it that you are always cared for, if the worst should come to pass.”

This, at last softens Elros; he seems on the verge of tears. I do not often brush against his mind as I do with Elrond, for he does not welcome it. So I am surprised when he chooses to draw near to mine. And in his awareness is a washed out shore littered with seaweed, as after a storm. Grey clouds are on the horizon, white cliffs are at his back and he is utterly alone. Elrond too, washes up frequently on this very beach, but curiously, neither imagines the other to be there. My calloused thumb is rough, far from the soft touch called for, but I brush away his tears as gently as I can when they begin to fall.

“You will always have each other, I suspect.”

Elrond reaches out and squeezes Elros’s hand. “I do not promise…” he teases, and quite soon both are laughing wetly.

---

Maglor returns two days later, exhausted and spattered with black stains that betray violence. I grimace as he falls bonelessly into a chair at the table.

“You had better be planning to wash before embracing the boys,”I say.

That enlivens him. “Help me off with this would you?” he asks, and then as we start working the stubborn buckles together, “where are they, anyway?”

“Down by the brook. Our málor are teaching them how to draw out crayfish. Update me on the situation?”

“We are safe for now. It was a small group, dispatched quickly. Our men are running down the last few now.”

Maglor does not miss the way my brow creases.

“They will be caught, Nelyo. We are far more at home in this forest than they.”

“You had better be right.”

“Stop fretting,” he teases.

“It is my job to fret,” I say, tapping him firmly on the forehead.

“No,” he sighs, “it is your job to strategise.”

“That too,” I agree.

When Maglor has thoroughly scrubbed away all trace of battle, we go to find the boys. Elros bends over a wooden bucket holding something that clacks away at its bottom, fascination plain on his face; so engrossed is he, that he startles when we draw near.

“I told you, didn’t I?” I tease gently as Elrond hops over to bump his shoulder against my brother’s side. But as Maglor runs a hand through his brother’s hair, Elros pointedly ignores him.

“Elros,” I warn; we are not raising him to be rude after all, even if he is upset.

Several conflicting emotions war across his fine features, and at length something like bravery wins. Fistfuls of my brothers tunic crumple in his hands as he presses his face into Maglor’s hip. This is far from the free and easy touch common with Elros, as if a layer has been stripped away betraying something raw and vulnerable beneath.

Maglor squats so that he can take Elros’s face between his hands. “I missed you, elenya.”

“I did not want you to go,”he whimpers.

“I know.” Still stroking Elros’s cheek, Maglor raises his gaze to me questioningly.

“A certain pair have been afraid that you would not return,” I explain, and a that Elros’s tears begin to spill over.

“You did tell them I would, did you not?” Maglor scolds me gently.

“Repeatedly,” I assure him.

My poor brother looks quite baffled, and really very tired, so I take pity on him and jerk my chin up toward the sky. “Consider the evidence.”

He squints in confusion for a moment, but it does not take him long to understand.

“Oh,” he says, mouthing ‘the star’ silently after.

“Oh, indeed,” I confirm.

Maglor, whose face has crumpled, wraps one arm around each of the twins and holds them close for a long moment.

That evening Elrond and Elros gleefully drag furs, blankets and pillows into a little hollow where we often sleep in hammocks on hot summer nights. Assured of our safety by reports that the last few orcs are dead, I have agreed to sleeping beneath the stars this night. Elros had wanted us to camp on the roof. When I laughed and asked if he wanted Maglor to have an aneurysm he merely shrugged and said it was worth a try.

I am sure I shall regret our rough bed when I wake full of aches in the morning, but I shall bear them gladly for the happiness it brings the children. It is surprisingly cosy with the twins bracketed between us, Elrond tucked close to my side and Elros flung across Maglor. All four of us let our eyes wander across the constellations, and often they come to rest on the brightest star.

“They love you, you know,” Maglor comments, finding both boys gazing upon Gil-Estel again. “Whether they come or not, that will always be true.”

He need not elaborate. Elrond and Elros know very well of who he speaks.

“And we love you too,” I add. “Whether we have a right to or not.”

“We know,” Elros says. Such a simple statement should not cause me to ache so, yet there is such casual acceptance and warmth in it that I do. And tonight, sharing in a sight beheld by countless Quendi since the moment Imin first awoke, none of us fears or feels alone.