Beneath the Ever-Bending Sky by Isilme_among_the_stars  

The shore was quiet.

No gulls cried. No creak of rigging, crack of billowing sails, nor bellow of crewmen cut the air, for no ship had visited this stony beach in years. Neither did forlorn melody echo in the secluded cove, for the old elf was sleeping. And he dreamed.

Ossë looked upon the bedraggled figure with mild curiosity and wondered what his mind’s eye saw. What was it like to lose yourself in a place between waking and death? To forget the world and time, to fall through the cracks in your mind? Was it escape, or imprisonment? Perhaps both.

The old elf, with face still fresh as the first daisies of spring, creased his brow, whimpering low and forlorn. Ossë’s sea-silken hand brushed one unblemished cheek. He did not withdraw it when eyes like moon-fire shocked open, piercing and deep, pinning him as Falathrim spears did coral trout thrashing their last defiance. The maia was not daunted. Was he not also as perilous as the murky depths?

“It is time, old friend,” Ossë’s sibilant voice washed over the elf like foam over sea pebbles, deceptively soft.

“No,” Maglor replied, just as quiet, just as firm.

Ossë pressed a promise into the elf’s hand, nacre-sheened and sharp, then returned to the waves to call on another ancient friendship. He would not allow these shores to become the moribund elf’s last haunt. Maglor hurled the mollusc shell into the foamy surf with a loud splash.

..<|>..

A skiff hugged the rugged coast, its oars raking the clear, still waters. Círdan pulled deeply against the glassy surface and breathed deeper yet of the still, cool air. He adored mornings like this, when all the coast seemed to sigh with contentment. The rising sun came blushing into a sky kissed only by the lightest breeze. It was merry hell to be caught in such weather on the open seas, of course, but here in the havens such days were bliss. There was a certain quality to the empty firth’s peach-gilded grey not to be found in any other place in this world. Círdan would ache for its serenity long after he departed, just as he ached still for the slate-dark depths of his long-lost Falas. Stowing the oars with a sigh, he turned his gaze to the hazy shore. Once these docks had been a forest of masts, alive with the bustle and hum of a cheerful, sea-faring people. But few of the tall ships remained now, silent witnesses of a bygone age holding forlorn vigil, their duty near its end. The time for departure drew near.

Ripples and a splash broke the mirror-calm surface, rocking the skiff as a dripping figure clambered over the gunwale.

“Well met,” Círdan greeted, accustomed to such intrusions.

“You mourn it already,” Ossë remarked, eyeing the elf with uncomfortable intensity.

Círdan spread his arms wide. "How could I not? Behold its beauty.”

"I did not say you were wrong to." The maia sniffed, passing eyes over distant cliffs.

"You too mourn," Círdan observed.

"How could I not?" Ossë echoed with startlingly accurate mimicry. "These shores spill over with uncounted grief, like a gutted fish."

Círdan wrinkled his nose. "Eloquent, as always, Ossë."

The boat rocked with a strange sound that passed for laughter. "If you wish for pretty words look not to me. I shall guide you to the one who spills them, careless and heedless, thinking none wish to hear. One of his own is needed to retrieve him I deem."

"You have found Maglor?"

Ossë peered at him strangely. "How could I find what I had never lost?"

Círdan’s heart quickened. "Where is he?"

"You will need a bigger boat." And with that, the maia slipped over the side to glide gracefully away.

..<|>..

"It is time," Ossë repeated on another day, at another shore, to the old elf with the fathom-deep eyes, while skates played in the shallows around their ankles.

"No.” He turned his proud head away so that wind-snarled curls danced briefly in the sun. When this answer earned him a thorough splashing, the elf glared. "I have chosen."

"You have chosen wrongly,” declared Ossë, who knew a thing or two about wrong choices.

Maglor would not be moved. "It is still my choice."

There were worse places to spend an eternity as a lyrical phantom than this sun-blessed beach. Its crystal waters deepened to ultramarine under a clear, bright sky; a little warm for Ossë's taste, but the elf seemed well acclimatised. The maia surveyed him. Bronzed forearms hugged tight around his companion’s middle, cinching the gauze tunic he wore. It was a posture better suited to the cold northern climes, for the old elf nursed a chill buried deep in his bones. Healthily glowing skin could not hide the rime clinging beneath.

"Others may also make choices,” Ossë retorted. “I choose to haunt you until you acquiesce."

"I have never tired of your company so quickly as you tire of mine," the elf reminded him gently.

"No matter. I can learn patience."

Maglor scoffed, for he knew the maia to be endlessly mercurial. But the patience of lapping waves carves deep caves at the ocean’s edge, and Ossë was well acquainted with waves. Maglor, staring studiously at the glittering horizon, lifted one tanned foot and with a perfectly straight face, splashed Ossë back.

..<|>..

Ossë’s kelp-strewn figure sat astride the nose of the ketch. Círdan, busy stashing oilskin wrapped gear below deck, chose not to question the maia's seabed-torn adornment, likely the result of some under-wave storm he did not wish to hear of. "What is my bearing, Ossë?"

The bedraggled head cocked to one side. "South, once you clear the firth."

"And how far am I to go?"

Ossë shrugged. "What is distance to a drop in the ocean? Your artificial markers are strange to me. How should salt know how many leagues it has rolled dissolved in the waves?"

"Tell me of the coast there then, and the patterns of nature in that place."

"In the warmer waters life teems and races, not sluggish and cautious as it is here. Turtles nest in the balmy sands, there where summers are hot and winters bring no frost. When there chances an easterly wind, the scent of rosemary blows over the waves."

Círdan paused, thoughtful. "It is farther south than I have travelled in years, I think, my friend."

"Mayhap. Do you bring companions?"

"This journey is mine alone. Unless you should like to bunk below deck with me?"

A sour look passed over Ossë's leathery face, and he leaned backward to brush webbed fingers through the rippling surface lovingly.

"I thought not," Círdan concluded, untying the mooring line and pushing bodily against the piling. The ketch’s nose swung about, pointed toward the open sea. "Lead the way."

..<|>..

In the still evening air, Maglor floated upon a calm ocean, watching as the first stars began to blink into the dusky sky. Cool water soothed away the heat of the day, not yet gone from the heavy air. And as Ossë swam beneath, the elf's buoyant body rocked with the wake of his passing.

"Do you not find this climate stifling?"

Maglor was not so easily capsized. Disgruntled, he turned an eye briefly toward the maia before returning his gaze to the heavens. "You forget that I grew in the dewy heat of Aman, roaming within steamy valleys cradled by the Pelori."

Beside the elf, Ossë’s body hung languidly like kelp beneath the surf. "It was never so dry in that place."

"That I will grant you," Maglor agreed, "but neither did such glorious fruit as the olive grow there, and cherries, you can forget entirely."

Unimpressed by produce of the dry earth that to him held little appeal, the maia huffed. "Why will you not return?"

"To a place unmarred by darkness? How can I take there the ruin packaged within my heart? I am a poison, Ossë. No good will come of it." And with a few broad sweeps of still-vital limbs, Maglor propelled himself along the wave line.

Ossë, dolphin-like, dived, snaking his way through the water to surface again beside the elf. "Do you think my heart less dangerous than yours? I have swum in the inky depths of the midnight zone. I turned toward the impenetrable dark and felt it slip fingers deep into my heart. Yet when I surfaced, Uinen and Ulmo took me back still."

"This is different," the elf asserted, exposing his belly to the seabed in a desire for speed; his arms pulling determinedly through the water.

"How?" he asked, but the elf would not answer, for unlike the maia, he could not speak under water. Ossë narrowed his eyes. "One of your own comes hither. Do not run from him."

With a series of strong kicks, Maglor pulled ahead, and Ossë let him go.

..<|>..

A ketch skirted the headland, skipping through quiet waters as it rode the coat-tails of a summer storm. In the distance, white glimmers adorned the mountains over Andrast, where the last tall peaks of Ered Nimrais caught the sun. Círdan leaned over the port side, peering out with a hand raised against glare. He saw not one hint of another vessel for miles. In times not long passed, these waters had been thick with corsairs. That obdurate scourge had not been easily quashed, but Elessar had managed it. These waters were the sole domain of Dol Amroth’s mariners now. Where were their ships?

Before the bow of the boat, a raft of sea lions broached. Their playful fins caressed the air in a graceful display of seemingly effortless synchronicity as they rolled and dived. Among them a familiar form cavorted, webbed toes kicking through the surf with delight and abandon. Ah, that explained matters.

“Have you scared away the sailors, Ossë?” Círdan called.

“They are fearful of the high, tossing waves. All fled to their harbours when the winds rose. Tiresome creatures.”

It must have been an impressive tempest. He tipped his head toward the darkling southern sky. “Your storm?”

Ossë looked affronted. “Manwë is lord of the airs, not I! Mine is only the accompaniment: towering breakers, seaweed adorning the shore, rotting crab carcasses tangled in the midst. You know how it is.”

“Indeed I do.” Círdan was no stranger to the gifts Ossë bestowed in his wilder moods. How could one forget that memorable winter storm late in the second age, when the sea surges had been ferocious enough to unearth creatures of the deep? He had gone to the beach to survey the damage and found it littered with fang-toothed snake eels. The sight of hundreds of dead-eyed and open mouthed carcasses staring back at you was not one easily forgotten. “The air grows warmer. I judge we approach the climes you described. Have I far to journey yet?”

“Less far to go than you have already come. A ten-day’s sailing perhaps, though I can swim it faster.”

“You have known how long it would take me all along, haven’t you?”

Fetching up on the deck the maia fairly chortled.

Suddenly, the mainsail found a new attitude with a particularly sharp flick under his hands. “You could have just told me!”

“Would that have been entertaining?” Ossë stretched out his long limbs, bathing in the sun as he watched the storm ahead with smug affection. Just then, a barrage of particularly ferocious waves beat upon a distant shore, sending showers of foam into the air.

“Show off,” Círdan muttered.

The maia gave him a self-satisfied look that softened after a moment. Was that endearment? The emotion looked strange on his face. “You bore the jest well, as you ever do.”

“How is our Noldorin friend faring?”

Ossë shrugged.

“Not well, but he hides it with a convincing performance?” Círdan guessed.

“Not so convincing, but he tries.”

..<|>..

On a warm southern shore, footprints in the sand wore slowly away, eaten by the rising tide. They tramped up the beach, disappearing as the sand turned to shelves of chalky rock. There, a cool blue light shone in the window of a dilapidated house, nestled comfortably into the hill. Tiles were missing from its roof and patches of stucco from its walls, but this did not seem to bother its inhabitant, for whom the building was more a squat than a home.

The grief-eroded elf sat cross-legged atop a thin mattress in the only corner where the roof was mostly intact. Before him lay a leather wallet, open and spilling its contents to be pored over: letters mostly, some brittle and faded. Ossë had never seen much point in written correspondence. Of greater interest to him was a little shell, half covered in parchment. The shell itself was nothing special, a cockle only, and quite a plain one at that, with nothing remarkable about it save a perfectly round moon snail hole near its wider edge. But through the hole there was threaded a twist of hair, soft and dark. And Maglor’s fingers ever seemed to find it as he read and re-read long redundant words, brushing the loose ends absently.

In the beam of soft, clean light that at that moment began to shine through the broken roof, it was apparent that the hair, which at first appeared to have come from one small head, in fact belonged to two. Ossë followed Maglor’s gaze as he looked sharply up toward Eärendil, where his ship rested beside the moon.

“Why should you care?” Maglor asked of the star. “I would have thought you preferred me far away.”

Eärendil, of course, did not hear. The light continued to shine resolutely down. After a moment, Maglor stowed the sheaves of parchment inside their protective bounds and turned away. Curled as he was, a spray of dark hair covering his face, one might miss the fine trembling of his shoulders and think he found sleep, but Ossë was not fooled. The favour he bestowed was as much memory as promise; a pebble of sea glass slid onto the window ledge in a shade of turquoise never matched outside of Aman.

..<|>..

Círdan had barely set foot upon dry land when a ragged figure strode toward him with all the ominous purpose of a storm cloud.

“If you think I am coming with you, you are sadly mistaken,” Maglor declared with a hard edge to his voice. This was not the welcome Círdan had hoped for, frayed and slightly forlorn as he felt after weeks on the cramped ketch. It was, however, more or less what he had expected.

“I am glad to see you too, Maglor,” he shot back, as the other appraised him with a long, hard stare. Stretching sore arms, and curling toes into the crystal sand, he savoured the feel of steady earth beneath his feet. “Would you be so kind as to direct me to the nearest fresh water?”

“Filling your casks and then turning homeward again, are you?” Maglor asked pointedly.

“Oh no.” The smile Círdan wielded was angelic. “I plan to stay a while yet. The balmy air here is rather pleasant, is it not? I wish to make the most of it.”

By the narrowing of his eyes, it seemed Maglor considered the merits of becoming a thorn in his side. At length, a bare rudiment of civility won. “A short walk north of here you will find a runnel still flush with water, despite the dry weather. You need not travel far upstream before it is no longer brackish.”

“My thanks,” he called after Maglor’s retreating form as the other strode determinedly away.

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The grey-haired, genial-faced Teler sat with bare feet dangling over the edge of his ketch, as was his habit when he dropped a line into the ocean hoping for a catch. There had been no bites this morning. This gave Maglor a petty kind of satisfaction. Let the optimistic fool chase his prey to another bay, where I no longer have to look upon him.

He would have no such luck, of course. Having spotted Maglor watching, Círdan stowed his line and dove deftly into the waves, swimming with an easy grace toward the shore.

“What do you want?” Maglor asked as the other shed fat drops that darkened the sand at his feet.

“The fish are not biting today.”

It was an inane observation that did not merit an answer. Maglor gave one anyway, equally inane, as had all of their conversations been up to this point. “So I saw.”

The twist of steel in his words did not deter the other. “I thought to dive for shellfish in the shallows. Are they found readily in these parts?”

“I would not know,” said Maglor, who was not in the habit of diving for his food.

“Care to join me? Discovery is more satisfying with two than one, is it not?”

Oh, joy, he thought. “I will pass, thank you ever so much.”

The Teler shrugged. “As you will.”

A week had passed since the insufferable elf had fetched up on this beach, and Maglor chafed at his presence. This was, perhaps, largely to do with the fact that Círdan did not seem to tire of him, no matter how ill-mannered he became. Maglor considered the other as he broke the surface, stowing a scallop in a basket tied with rope to his ankle. It was almost insulting, the way it bobbed merrily in the waves, and its owner seemed entirely too at home here.

There came an amused chortle from the shallows.

“I do not see what you find so funny,” Maglor shot at Ossë.

The meddling maia bared his teeth in a self-satisfied grin. “Relocate, if you are so displeased with the company I have brought.”

How good it would feel to collar the impudent creature, to break his scaly nose with a reproving blow. Foolish in the extreme, however, would such a course be.

“Maybe I will,” Maglor threatened impotently instead.

..<|>..

Maglor’s expression took on a despondency by firelight sharply in contrast to the morose belligerence Círdan was accustomed to by day. The Noldo seemed not mighty, but a small, pitiable thing beside the flickering flames. Loneliness had made a home in his fair features that would put one in mind of noble suffering, if one knew no better. Engrossed as he was with a piece of sea glass, shifting it delicately between adroit fingers, the other did not mark his approach.

“I have not seen its like before,” Círdan remarked. “The colour is enchanting.”

“You would not have,” Maglor told him with a voice almost soft, “seeing as the pigment required cannot be found this side of the great sea. It is a cruel joke of Ossë’s I believe.”

“Capricious and dangerous he may be, but I have not known him to be deliberately cruel. More likely it is a hint.”

The other tensed and all trace of vulnerability abruptly fled. “Why have you come?”

“The sea was generous,” he remarked, holding out a basket of scallops as offering.

Maglor’s eyes fixed still upon the glass. “Keep them.”

“Truthfully, I have more than I can use. You may as well take these.”

The other sat stiffly for a moment longer, and Círdan wondered if he were minded yet to refuse. But at length he looked up warily, and though his words of acceptance were civil enough, it was clear Maglor did not wish to be drawn from the cloak of grim solitude he had drawn around himself this night.

“Worry not, I will trouble you no further,” Círdan assured him.

“Then I bid you good night.”

As Círdan retreated across the shore it seemed to him that the world about them held its breath. All was quiet on land and sea, save for the soft crunch of sand giving way beneath his feet. As moonlight touched its rippling surface with a pearly sheen, even the sea seemed stilled with anticipation. Beside a fire altogether too cheery for his sombre mood, Maglor lifted his face to the sky as if in plea. Círdan knew not what it was he cried to the skies.

..<|>..

On a warm afternoon a week hence, the grey-haired Teler dozed lazily on the foredeck of his ketch. Kicking determinedly through the water, Maglor startled him from repose with a loud knock on the hull. The sight of the other, off-kilter and peering down in puzzlement, was not as satisfying as he had thought it would be.

“Throw down a rope, will you?” he called.

Perhaps the Teler’s patience could indeed wear thin, as the rope, when it came, slapped him casually across the cheek, and it stung.

“I thought you would have better aim than that, Teler!” he shot back snarkily.

“I have a name, Maglor,” Círdan rebuked as he cleared the railing. “I would prefer you use it.”

Maglor merely shrugged and thrust a basket at his chest. “For you.”

“Oysters?” the other asked, peering inside. “You can keep them.”

“That is not how this works, Nōwē,” he chided, frowning. “I return your generosity in kind. You accept.”

“Have you been so long among cynical Men that all must be an exchange?” Círdan quipped. “Or were the Noldor always like this?”

Chastened, he lowered his voice. “No. We too shared freely, in kinder times.”

Something alike to pity, yet not nearly so cloying came over the Teler then. “It will be kinder for you to keep them. I detest the slimy things.”

“I had thought you Falathrim zealous for them,” Maglor jibed lightly, setting the basket down between them. This earned him a chuckle.

“Despite what you may have heard, us Falathrim do not become weak-kneed for everything that comes from the sea.” The boat teetered slightly as Círdan folded his legs and lowered himself to the deck.

Maglor mirrored the gesture. “So it appears.”

The other turned to him with open curiosity then. “Do you enjoy them?”

“Not particularly,” he admitted reluctantly. It was tantamount to confessing he had rooted around in the sand much of the morning for a food he had no intention of partaking in. That, in turn, revealed something far too close to altruism for his liking. From the twinkle in the other’s eye, Maglor suspected that had not passed him by.

They sat for a while in silence, lulled by the rocking of the boat and the soughing of waves against the shore. It was he that broke it, at length. “I did not know you could be roused to annoyance.”

Círdan snorted. “Ulmo give me strength.”

“That rope was aimed true, wasn’t it?” he accused, giving the other a shrewd look.

“Perhaps it was repayment for your rude behaviour,” the Teler suggested, affecting innocence with effortless skill. It was becoming easier to see why Ossë favoured him the longer they talked.

“If it was, I believe you sold it cheaply,” Maglor told him.

At this Círdan raised a questioning eyebrow.

“It left a great deal wanting. The Fëanorian standard for petty revenge is much more exacting.”

“I shall endeavour to extract my due in future,” the other assured.

Maglor contemplated the stark coastal cliffs cradling the shore. Behind the hilly country lay several leagues of grassy plains raked by the salty breeze, and beyond that a fertile country dominated by evergreens. Their shelter was not without appeal. “Who is to say the future will present such an opportunity?”

Círdan looked at him sidelong, all but daring him to flee. “I am sure it will. Unless you intend to transform into the very soul of courtesy overnight…”

“Oh, fear not,” he jested, biting back a cynical laugh. “I am as surly as they come. I shall do no such thing.”

“Good, for I fear you would bore me terribly were you perfectly mannered,” Círdan admitted.

Then, unsettled by the ease that began to worm its way into their interactions, Maglor disembarked as abruptly as he had come.

..<|>..

A promise of autumn hung chill in the clear morning air as Círdan emerged, yawning from below deck. The prospect of brisk, revitalising forays into cool waters was a tantalising one; it played pleasantly through his mind as the breeze carried the sounds of industry to his ears. Maglor had appeared beachside early this morning; an unusual turn of events. By now he had learned his reticent companion preferred not to risk exposure to conversation until noon at the earliest. Occasionally, the other would disappear for days at a time, and Círdan would creep over to his squat to peer quietly through the window, reassuring himself that Maglor had not vanished entirely. Always he found some possession inconspicuously placed on the Noldo’s rough mattress, and began to suspect the other left reassurances for his benefit.

This morning, the dark-haired elf ranged back and forth, methodically sorting tiles on his roof. A growing heap of the broken piled upon the eaves, and a small collection of replacements sat neatly stacked against the wall. From the consternation inherent in Maglor’s stance as he peered down, calculating, Círdan guessed they were too few. Quietly, he began trussing the intact tiles with rope laid alongside, ready to be hoisted, and though Maglor’s glance betrayed that he had noticed, he said nothing.

“A ladder would make this quicker and easier,” Círdan lamented as he scrambled onto the roof, rope in hand.

“And you have one, do you?” Maglor snapped.

“Are you asking, or merely being disagreeable?” Círdan answered cooly. “It would not take me long to knot together a rope ladder, should you wish it.”

Maglor looked away. “I am not some charity case, Nōwē.”

“Did I ever imply that you were?”

He turned back sharply then. “Why do you not just leave? Surely you have done more than enough to absolve your conscience.”

“And you think Ossë would grant me safe passage without you? I would be wrecked before losing sight of the shore.” Though spoken in jest, both understood how likely the words would prove true, should Círdan try it.

Perhaps in sympathy for both of their plights, Maglor’s answer was coloured more with frustration than true anger when it came. “And so you plan to while away your days in my wretched company until you and that weed-bedraggled, fish-breathed excuse for a maia wear me down?”

“That is about the shape of it,” Círdan confirmed.

“Suit yourself, I suppose,” his companion grumbled, brushing his hands of grit. With a resigned sigh he took the offered rope and began to pull as Círdan guided its path.

The sun was nearing its peak by the time the requisite tiles had been scavenged from abandoned buildings dotting the shore. When the last had been placed, Círdan stood back to check their handiwork. Sweat trickled uncomfortably down his neck, and beside him Maglor’s fair face was flushed with exertion. It was not so difficult to convince the other to cool off in the waves.

“How many abide in Mithlond still?” Maglor asked idly as he floated on his back, shielding eyes from the sun with one hand while the other made lazy strokes.

“A touch over three score.”

One voyage-worth of people; a small, lonely number. The last of the Eldar in Middle Earth delayed their leaving for the errand Círdan had set himself. He watched as Maglor’s enquiring mind came to just that conclusion, and the other turned to him with a pained look at odds with the vitriol in his words.

“They tolerate this ridiculous notion of yours? Content, are they, to delay while you waste your time pursuing me?” he accused Círdan, though his expression more rightly accused himself of yet another hurt wrought by his hands.

“We have no such desperation that a few months, nor even a few years could try our patience, Maglor. Mithlond is yet fair.”

It is our home still, went unsaid, yet from the surprised upward cant of Maglor’s eyebrows it seemed he caught the sentiment all the same. Longing for the quiet waters of the firth had begun to tug at him, suffusing his words, pleasant as these warmer climes may be.

“Even your patience shall wear thin eventually,” the other predicted. And Círdan knew then, in the Noldo’s mind, there existed no possible future in which he did not cling like a barnacle to this fading world.

..<|>..

Mere days passed before Maglor was glad of the newly intact roof gracing his dwelling, as the first storm of the turning season sent winds tearing along the coast. He had lain guiltily awake, shifting restlessly atop his rough mattress as they whistled through the eaves, and memory of uncomfortable wave-tossed hours upon a ship long ago drenched his thought. Surely Círdan’s ketch sluiced about the bay in a similar fashion this night. Early he had risen and found his feet turning toward the shore, as concern still frothed within him, long after the winds died down.

Teasingly the waves lapped at his feet as he settled upon an outcrop of rock kissed by the tide, eyes ever roving toward the ketch that now bobbed placidly among the waves. There was approval in the shape of their briny caress. When a figure emerged from the cabin, looking weary but no worse for the wear, Maglor’s heart slowed in relief.

Círdan, as was his habit when he spied Maglor watching, dove promptly into the waves and with flawless strokes made for the shore. Maglor made no attempt to flee.

“The seasons turn,” he observed, as the Teler hoisted himself out of the ocean, dousing the rocky shelf liberally.

“So they do,” he agreed, watching Maglor with quiet anticipation.

He looked away, addressing his next words to the world at large. “There is room enough for two on the shore. And the nights will be kinder, I suspect, between walls that do not lurch in high winds.”

“I should not wish to impose.”

Little of the other’s recent behaviour could be called imposition, in truth, even by Maglor’s reclusive standards. Loath though he may be to admit it, there was a growing regard between them, and Círdan was rarely less than respectful.

“It is no imposition, Nōwē,” he said.

Once, Maglor had tried to purge all that family and community meant from his heart, but had succeeded only in driving it deep below the surface. Perhaps it was a trait quintessential to Eru’s children that could not be wholly drowned, for the more amity he tasted, the more he ached for companionship. Perhaps the other read it in him too, author that he was to the painful longing’s awakening, damn him.

“Then I would be grateful,” Círdan accepted. He hardly raised an eyebrow at the second mattress laid by that Maglor had journeyed miles and endured several nights of busking in beer-soaked inns to trade for.

..<|>..

If one looked carefully they would find signs the squat in which the two elves sheltered slowly became a home. Círdan’s fingertips trailed lightly over pebbles arranged into a symbol of Estë, laying hid beneath florid growths of saltbush. The same motif had been brought to life on a grander scale in Rivendell’s halls. Elrond had been fond of it. Long before becoming the Lord of his own realm he had been in the habit of scratching the symbol beside tent flaps and inscribing it over doors. Who had started the practice, Círdan wondered, he or Maglor?

“Your thoughts are deep, Nōwē.” Maglor’s voice cut through his musings, as the other handed him a roasted shearwater wing, dripping with grease. The bird’s skin, glazed with wild honey to complement its salty flesh had been crisped to perfection. They ate for some time in silence, savouring the taste.

“This is good,” Círdan exalted. “I had not realised how excellent your cooking would be.”

Maglor affected a pout, meant humorously no doubt, but which in the end looked rather sad. “Not many expect culinary prowess from a ragged hermit in the wilderness, I find.”

“Is that what you believe I think of you?” Círdan asked.

“It is what I have become, whether you think it or not.”

Before him coalesced the memory of a youthful warrior prince superimposed upon the weary elf’s countenance. Maglor had been effervescent then, leading a rousing ballad, which all deep enough into their cups at Mereth Aderthad had belted out alongside him. Little difference was there outwardly, and yet there was all the difference in the world. The sorrow undercutting his words was like a stab to the gut.

“That is not what I meant,” Círdan said, smoothing the rough waters between them. “I was merely grateful for the meal.”

But Maglor had perhaps read more in Círdan’s appraising look than he had intended. “Why are you doing this?” the other asked with a sharp voice.

“Long ago,” he explained, “I stood before Ulmo, full of anger as he declared my creaking, primitive ship unfit, and Tol Eressea disappeared into the distance. He was right to hold me back; I would be but bones on the seabed now had he not. It would have been folly to follow the island, and still I almost did. I know what it is to be left behind, Maglor. I cannot wish that upon any other.”

“And if that other would rather be left?” he asked.

“Ah, but you see,” Círdan smiled knowingly, “I do not truly think you wish that.”

Maglor looked away. “Nōwē”, he said when he turned back, “I am not sure you wholly want to go.”

“Perhaps,” Círdan mused, “we are not so different.”

..<|>..

“Does the sea not call to you?” Círdan asked him one day as they gathered vegetables. Finding the old, overrun garden had been good fortune, and better luck still had it been that much was ripe and ready to pick, despite long neglect. Maglor paused, a cluster of tomatoes forgotten in his hand, and leaned against a pitted stone wall.

“I feel the longing in my bones,” he admitted. “I have for years.”

“Then what holds you back?” The other wiped his brow, leaving a dirty streak across it. His basket near brimmed with greens.

“Many things,” Maglor answered, deliberately vague and noncommittal.

There came a shrewd look into his companion’s eye. “And fear is not one of them?”

That was not something Maglor wished to dwell on. He hefted both of their baskets then, and set off trudging down the overgrown path toward the shore, thankful that the slope’s treacherous nature occupied both of them enough to save him from answering for a good while. And even when they reached a gentler incline with kinder surfaces, Círdan kept his silence. He rarely pressed, beyond the first push.

“I had a good thing once,” Maglor explained at length. “Is it so wrong to keep it in my memory, a perfect diamond, rather than return to find it was only ever cut glass?”

“It seems a poor thing to me, to rob yourself of something fine, be it only glass, that you may cradle the ghost of a finer jewel in your mind,” Círdan ventured.

“Then you do not understand.”

“I would not say that,” his companion said gently. “Only, if it were me, I should choose differently.” And Maglor found in his expression a wistfulness that betrayed weighty experience of the matter.

“And what, pray, have you given up that compares?” he prompted, half bitter and half curious.

“Naught, I suppose. I never knew an untroubled land, nor saw the light of the trees,” the other answered, too casually. He downplayed his hand.

“You deflect,” Maglor said flatly. “I am not so foolish as to think the idyllic West the only thing one might pine for.”

Círdan inclined his head briefly at that. “Just so. If the Falas were raised from her watery grave, and Brithombar restored in all her glory, I would return in a heartbeat,” he admitted.

Great seas of green, perfumed with blooms delicate and hardy, rippled in the chill winds of his memory. “As would I to Ard Galen…” he said. There followed a quiet moment, wrapped in reverie, until Maglor broke the silence with a mock shiver. “…but not Himring, though Maedhros might have.”

The startled Teler let out a great gale of laughter then. “We speak of coasts and plains,” he said seriously, once it had passed, “but it is not truly lands that hold your heart is it?”

“No,” Maglor admitted, and thought of family that had once looked upon him with neither pity nor disappointment, of days when pursuits begun with good intent ended almost always well, and of two young peredhil with whom his acquaintance had begun ill, and yet turned to more good than could have been hoped. What, if any, could be regained?

“You should take the risk, my friend,” his companion urged. “Who knows? You may yet find your diamond intact, or better yet, in its place a pearl.”

“Said like a true Teler,” Maglor quipped, attempting to strangle his pain with the same ferocity with which he now washed the greens as Círdan watched on with infuriating calm.

“I have never been fond of your ridiculous gems.”

“They have rather lost their appeal for me too,” Maglor said ruefully.

..<|>..

Around the fire of an evening, Maglor would often sing. He did so unthinkingly, as though falling into an old habit long forgotten, now awoken with the familiarity of companionship. Recently, however, with the weather turning, they found themselves retreating quickly inside to avoid the rain, and Maglor was silent. The window had not yet been shuttered this night, despite frigid drops occasionally gusting in, and through a gap in the clouds the light of Eärendil shone. His weak silvery beam fell upon a small shell in Maglor’s grasp, threaded with a twist of hair, and as Círdan watched his fingers slip over the smooth surface he thought his companion knew not what his hands did.

At first glance the shell seemed unremarkable, but Círdan knew the sea and the life it contained well. Plain as it seemed, this combination of colour and pattern were found along only one stretch of coast, long sunk beneath the waves.

“Where did you come by that?” he asked as mildly as he could manage, biting back curiosity more Noldorin than Telerin.

Maglor startled, realising suddenly what it was he held. The rime Círdan had long known lived in his heart showed in eyes hoary with frost. “I was given it, long ago,” he said, and could have been standing in the first age, so far away seemed his voice.

“Which of the boys was it?” Círdan asked softly.

“Elros,” came the reply, still distant as a dream. “How did you know?”

“It is a child’s gift. Many were bestowed upon me on visits to Sirion’s havens. They dotted those beaches like a pox. No where else have I seen that particular pattern since.”

Silence stretched between them, heavy with memory as Maglor’s fingers lingered on the little lock of hair. “He was not precisely a child at the time,”he said at length.

“No?”

“I found it the day Maedhros and I sent them to Gil-Galad, weighing down a scrap of paper that simply said, ‘do not forget’. In Elros’s writing, not Elrond’s.”

That was unusually cryptic for the forthright young man Círdan had known. “What did it mean?”

Maglor smiled sadly. “I still do not know, precisely. Many things…”

“You loved them.”

“Yes,” the other agreed, his words barely more than breath.

“As did I,” Círdan whispered. “When did you see them last?”

With that Maglor’s attention snapped suddenly to the present. “That is none of your damned business.”

A painful parting it must have been then. He held up hands in a gesture that sued for peace.

Long it was before Maglor spoke again, and so softly did he do so that Círdan almost missed the words. “I did not know,” he said, “that they would be in Eonwë’s camp that night.”

An awful thing it was, that your child, no matter the complexity of that relationship, witness you at your lowest. Worse still, perhaps, to be fully cognisant of the tragedy, as Maglor had been.

“They never hated you. It was rather the opposite, I believe.”

The shell jerked suddenly as Maglor’s fingers tensed. “Do you not see, Nōwē? That is far worse.”

“Not to my mind,” he refuted. “Neither can I bring myself to dislike you.”

How wry was his expression as Maglor raised his right hand, deformed with burns scars still that shimmered silvery in Earendil’s light. “Too easily do some people shackle themselves to the depraved, calling it love, and so corrupt themselves.”

And he hugged arms around his knees as if the depravity he spoke of could be contained with the gesture.

“It is not a wicked thing I see before me,” Círdan replied, carefully setting aside his disgust at the violence those marks represented. Two long ages had passed since Maglor’s sword had swung against an innocent.

“Then you do not see clearly,” his companion snapped, “for so the holy light has judged.”

“Shocking as this may seem,” Círdan argued, gently still, “many things have changed in two ages of the world.”

At this, Maglor could only glare, finding no suitable repartee.

“Tell me truly. Have you isolated yourself for nigh six thousand years for some misguided notion of protection? Against your wickedness?”

When Maglor shook his head it was a confused gesture; not so much a refutation as a denial, as though to shake some unpleasant truth from his head. And he clasped his fingers about the shell as he spoke, holding tightly to still their shaking. “Many things have changed, Nōwē. Some lost things cannot be salvaged.”

“No, they cannot,” he agreed, thinking of the young man who had once travelled upon his ship toward a newly raised island full of promise, and how he had turned his face to the wind and laughed. His flight through the world, all too fleeting, had been one of movement, joy and significance. Círdan came to sit beside Maglor, carefully wrapping an arm around tensed shoulders. It was the first time they had touched so, the first solace of the kind that Maglor had accepted. And Círdan recognised the pose of one loathe to show their tears who barely held back weeping. Humour, of all the ways to diffuse tension between them, was the most tried and true.

“If you think some grouchy, ragged old hermit has the power to corrupt me, then you profoundly overestimate your influence, I am afraid,” he teased.

And instead of tears, uncertain laughter came bubbling forth.

“Come back with me, to Mithlond at least,” he offered. “It does not take great intellect to deduce you are lonely. But you need not be alone.”

Maglor only hung his head. “I cannot.”

Chapter End Notes

Maglor: I think you will find I can be quite stubborn, Nōwē.
Círdan: Unfortunately for you, I think you will find I can be just as stubborn as you.

Nōwē is Círdan's original time. It's meaning, sadly is lost to time.

Thank you so much for reading! The good news is the conclusion to this little story is about halfway drafted! However, with a couple of stocking fics to finish this month, you can most likely expect it early in the new year. :)

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Wind thrashed the shoreline, waves beat mercilessly against cliffs and two Quendi sheltered nestled betwixt rocks, dwarfed by the magnificent display.

“Ossë is in a mood today,” Maglor remarked casually.

“I heard the winds teasing earlier,” put in Círdan.

“They whipped him into a frenzy, no doubt.”

No sooner had Maglor finished speaking than a particularly ferocious wave sent a shower of spray in their direction. The maia was listening, it seemed.

“Nōwē,” Maglor chided, his eyes fixed on a shape among the waves. “Did you learn your lessons from Ulmo so poorly? Surely that tub lacks a dropped anchor.”

The undercurrent of darkness beneath his companion’s teasing tone quickly captured Círdan’s attention. Following Maglor’s gaze he found his ketch tossed roughly about the bay, drawn surely by the swelling tide toward the treacherous shore.

“She will be dashed against the rocks,” Maglor observed.

She would, too; the ketch bobbed inexorably toward a jagged outcrop of basalt with unforgiving edges. Círdan had never once failed to secure any of his vessels. Perhaps some thread of fate stitched its designs this stormy day. He sighed regretfully. “There is nothing for it.”

“To the void with that!” Maglor rose, and with determination stamped into the set of his long limbs, strode purposefully toward the waterline.

“Are you mad?” Círdan called after. “You will be dashed against the rocks.” But before he had finished speaking, Maglor had leapt into the waves. It was a clean dive, executed with skill, into waters wild with stormy commotion. Círdan could scarcely draw breath until a dark head broke their surface, and he had muttered a desperate appeal to Uinen that the whelming waves not conquer the foolish creature. Perhaps Maglor had finally let go the last twists of his threadbare sanity. No right-minded Elda would dare challenge Ossë on such a day.

When a forlorn figure half-scrambled, half-washed onto the ketch’s deck, Círdan could almost hear the Noldo’s terse imprecations.

Where do you keep your damned spare, Nōwē? Maglor would no doubt be muttering as he searched, mast to keel, for the second anchor. You are not fool enough to neglect stowing one.

As the boat drew closer and closer to the outcrop, Círdan’s apprehension grew, like mounds of spume gathering on wet sand. At last, a dark object sailed over the portside railing and sank rapidly to the depths. The anchor took, and happily, when the vessel ceased her determined drift, she still bobbed far enough out from shore to avoid disaster. The small figure aboard paused not, however, and made ready to dive back into that roiling water.

“Stay there, you fool!” Círdan called, but his words were snatched by Manwë’s sprites, and lost to the howl of the wind.

Maglor was strong, and showed no sign of flagging as steady strokes propelled him toward the shelf of rock on which Círdan stood, despite wind-whipped mountains of surf threatening to overthrow him. Strength, however, could not save him from the swell that hit just as he neared the promontory; and as Círdan had feared, he was indeed dashed against the rocks.

Fiercely, Maglor clung, refusing to be pulled back as an arrow drawn for a second firing; and true to nature, no sooner than Círdan had dragged him from the water by the shoulders, did Maglor shake him off impatiently.

“I am well. Do not fret!” he insisted.

Well, in Círdan’s opinion, should not include a disoriented sway plaguing one’s movements, nor a cut blooming above one’s brow. He eyed Maglor with concern as one side of the Noldo’s face glazed red where seawater pouring from his hair mingled with blood. Realisation came, in that moment, of how deeply he cared for the surly elf as grieved imaginings seized him. The thought of his companion dragged, insensible, to the sea bed, turned him cold.

“Would you cease being a prideful ass for a moment?” he quipped, ignoring Maglor’s rebuffing hands that he might hold him steady as the two made for higher ground, and spray, cast off from the booming crash of storm-front waves, lashed their backs. Later, when both were dry and Maglor’s hurt was tended, he asked, “why did you do it?”

And Maglor answered ruefully, “I may be content to linger here indefinitely, but you, most certainly, are not.”

“Boats can be built, given time and resources.”

“Perhaps,” Maglor asserted, “I do not wish to put up with you for as long as that would take.” But both knew the suggestion for the falsehood it was.

..<|>..

Sutures bristled, prickling his skin as Ossë ran a careful finger over the lump burgeoning from Maglor’s forehead. A great purple bruise spread there, like squid ink dispersed in water.

The old elf stirred. “Admiring your handiwork?” he muttered with eyes still closed.

Ossë withdrew his hand, regret as slick and heavy within him as algae covered boulders festering on the edge of a fetid pool.

“You should not have been in the waves,” he accused.

“Spare me,” the elf grumbled, “I have suffered one upbraiding, and have no use for another, nor for your guilt.”

“Do you hurt badly?” Ossë inquired, quite politely he deemed.

Perhaps Maglor thought otherwise, as glazed eyes opened to spear him with an incredulous look, darkly intense. “What do you think?”

Elves were complex creatures. The sensate experiences of incarnates, as a whole, were such widely varied things, and in the specifics of the mammalian nervous system, Ossë now found himself sorely lacking, just when the knowledge had become pertinent. He turned a plaintive expression upon Círdan.

Yes, greatly, the elf mouthed, taking pity as he was wont to do.

“It pounds like an un-moored vessel beating against stone pilings,” Maglor moaned.

An awfully unpleasant thought that was. Imagining the thumping, Ossë wondered if it applied only to Maglor’s forehead, or also to his ears. He slunk away.

..<|>..

When Ossë crept back to slap a gob of slimy goo across Maglor’s brow, the disgusted look on the Noldo’s face had Círdan chuckling heartily.

“Leave it,” he advised, catching his breath as he wiped tears of mirth from his eyes, “it will help.”

“It has the feel of mucus, or worse,” Maglor complained.

The concoction may well have included the secretions of some unfortunate sea creature, for all Círdan knew. Ossë’s remedies never came without a touch of revulsion, and yet were strangely effective. Surely enough, the tension in Maglor’s shoulders soon began to disperse, and he rose to sit.

“I will calm the waters when you sail,” promised Ossë, as near an apology as ever there came from the maia. Círdan tipped his head in acknowledgement.

Such surety was there in the word when. Ossë, clearly, had no doubts as to Maglor’s eventual concession. Though Círdan remained unsure of its inevitability, he thought, perhaps, the other had softened to the idea, and judged the time ripe to apply leverage.

“When we sail, we shall first ensure you are in a good mood,” he told Ossë.

Neither the emphasis nor the feint were lost on Maglor, who answered with a sharp look. “That is, if we sail. I am minded rather to walk. I shall not care that it increases the time required tenfold or more.”

Ossë might have looked suitably chastised, had the expression ever passed his strange face before. As it was, he managed only a rather amusing mild bewilderment, and Maglor’s answering laugh was quite fond, even if it was cut short by a painful wince.

“You are forgiven,” he offered, softly.

“What use do the tides and currents have of forgiveness, Fëanorion?” sniffed Ossë, much offended, and took his leave with as much dignity as he could muster.

“You are minded to sail, after all?” Círdan asked, as the pointedly harsh crunch of Ossë’s retreating footsteps faded (the maia had no trouble moving silently, even upon land, when it was his wont).

“I did not say as much,” retorted Maglor, but the evasive answer was rather ruined by the melancholic expression he wore as he spoke it.

“Neither did you refute me.”

“It only occurs to me,” said Maglor after a good stretch of time, each word spoken with the same gravity and affected carelessness as stones plunked into a shallow pool, “that I shall miss your company when you leave. Perhaps I should not have saved your boat.”

The affection lately stirred in his breast, Círdan began to realise, was grudgingly reciprocated. Maglor, it seemed, had come to care for him too, in his own way.

“If you wished me stranded here,” he answered, “perhaps not.”

..<|>..

The elf of ships and rigging bent at the very edge of the sea, removing quill and viscera from a squid and tossing them to the waves. Around Ossë the pleased flitterings of a thousand tiny creatures vibrated through the undercurrent as they came to feast.

“Uinen give me patience…” Círdan muttered, and turning, called loudly behind him, “sit down, for pity’s sake, before you fall over!”

There stood the old elf, swaying with the motion of the sea as he drew a crab net from a sheltered pool, nested amid a tumble of weed-adorned boulders; and Ossë found himself momentarily transfixed, before recalling with a jolt that Quendi were never meant to move so.

“I will take care of this. Rest now,” Círdan told him with a voice as deceptively gentle as the silty ocean floor, that none-the-less holds firm under the vast weight of oceans, and pushed the other’s shoulders downward until Maglor was forced to sit. He made no protest. The attentions of his own kind did him much good.

“Why are you doing this?” Maglor asked, as the other squatted before him, radiating concern.

“We have had this conversation before. Do you not remember?”

“Ulmo insulted your ship. I have not forgotten.” There Maglor blew out a frustrated sigh. “That is not what I meant…”

“Then by Aulë,” Círdan implored, “say what you mean! Or have the words deserted you?” He took the other’s face in his hands and turned it this way and that, seeking for sign of infirmity therein.

Seemingly more from habit than annoyance, Maglor batted his hands away. Far more tolerant was he toward Círdan, than he had ever been for Ossë. “You could simply have waited me out, or, had you grown frustrated, lashed me to your mast and had done with it. But this? It seems very much like care, Nōwē. Yet I have done nought to deserve it.”

“Should I not care? You are a being that breathes, just as I, are you not? Is kindness not yours by right?”

It struck Ossë melancholy to see Maglor scoff at that, as if he believed his very personhood in doubt. The feeling was much the same as one had gliding over the broken peaks of drowned Thangorodrim. Life had returned, teeming, to Beleriand-under-the-waves shortly into the second age. Crustaceans had crawled in, seeding coral as they went, beaten in their racing only by microscopic creatures too small to be seen by incarnate eyes. Etched into the stones of Brithombar’s walls now stood thriving reefs, brimming with the industry of survival. In some places, however, life would not take hold. No weeds grew, not even the hardiest, over Morgoth’s slag heaps of old, where still lay the great wyrm’s decaying bones. The old elf was not of their ilk, though he seemed to think it. So dulled had his countenance become that it were as if Ossë beheld him lying in the sandy shallows from above, as water bent and tempered the sun’s light to render him a blue-grey.

“You suffer from faintness again?” Círdan asked as Maglor pressed the heel of one hand to his forehead.

Tangled curls bobbed like a buoy rocked by the waves as he nodded.

“Come, then. Inside with you, and should you refuse to lay I shall sit on you such that you are forced to do so.”

A strange feeling lapped at Ossë, wistful as the retreating tide, as the two elves withdrew, one laughing weakly at the other’s jesting threat. Ossë was as the birds that wheeled over cliffs, high above the waves, distant and watchful. He was as an anchor pulled from the seabed’s firm embrace, a security and connection no longer craved as it came time to sail. The elves made their hobbling way along the beach, and as Ossë slipped quietly into the waves and away, he could not help but think they left him behind.

..<|>..

Maglor had quietly fussed over his pack for an hour now, strewing its contents across his mattress that he might pack and repack the items contained within. Círdan watched as he stowed them in a variety of haphazard ways, to little avail. A worn leather wallet seemed ever at the forefront of his efforts, and invariably received the most care. Though he had improved much, the knock taken to his head still made of him a poor logistician, much to Maglor’s frustration.

“What are you trying to achieve? Perhaps I can help.”

“Likely I will be fit to travel soon,” Maglor declared, which was no answer at all, though the Noldo clearly believed it was. His wits, Círdan knew, had not been dulled. Rather, infuriatingly obtuse was for him merely an usual mode of communication.

“Do all Finwëans believe their intent carved as legibly on their faces as cirth in stone? Or is that your particular talent?”

Maglor looked up sharply. “It is past time you returned to Mithlond, is it not? I assume you do not intend to depart without me.”

Had he resolved to sail at last?

“You mean to come?” Círdan asked tentatively, still fearing were he too heavy-handed the other would shy away, like a flighty ray.

A small, concessionary smile twitched across Maglor’s features. “You have a second bunk on that ketch of yours, do you not?”

“Well,” Círdan jested, “I had planned to tie you to the mast…”

And Maglor laughed as he pulled out the leather wallet yet again and eyed it ponderously. “I hope you brought a strong rope.”

Círdan came to sit beside him. “Is it fragile?” he asked.

“Somewhat. Though susceptibility to water damage troubles me more. It is long since I have journeyed over sea, and I am afraid I am unprepared.”

“That is no object. I have oilskin that can be spared.”

“It would be much appreciated,” Maglor accepted, touching his hand briefly in a curiously intimate gesture of thanks.

Quietly, and with little fuss, the contents of the old stucco house were gathered and put in order. Little discussion was required, as they had fallen some time ago into an easy working relationship, dividing labour as easily as they drew breath.

“Are you certain?” Círdan asked as the last items were stowed into a wooden crate.

“No,” Maglor admitted. He paced restlessly about the floor now there remained no tasks with which to busy himself. Doubt was evident, certainly, but Círdan thought it only fear disguised, for Maglor’s determination seemed sound. The Noldo’s feet took him, seemingly without conscious intent, to the window, and with palms flat against the sill he leaned into the gloaming, where the first stars began to shine. When Círdan laid a steady hand between shoulder blades that faintly trembled, Eärendil shone warmly upon them both.

..<|>..

The easy skill with which Círdan handled his ketch was no less a marvel to Maglor now that their journey neared its end as it had been at the beginning. He watched with appreciation as a series of practised manoeuvres brought them cleanly into the Gulf of Lune. The journey had been a pleasant one, as, true to his word, Ossë had gentled the waters as they hugged the coastline, following it north. Now, as their vessel skipped over the protected waters of the firth, Círdan breathed deeply of the rain-washed air, still heavy with moisture from a passing shower. “We will reach harbour before the day is through,” he judged, “if this wind holds.”

The Teler came to life on these familiar waters in a way Maglor had not seen in all their time in the south. He became more himself the closer they came to the havens, as if shrugging off a confining cloak, or stepping into a pair of well-worn boots. Maglor, by contrast, felt increasingly ill at ease, and wrong. As a surge of biliousness came causing him to cling to the mizzen mast, Círdan seemed to take his unsteadiness for renewed doubt. Perhaps doubt was indeed responsible, at least in part, for though a touch of light-headedness still lingered, it had not affected him so in weeks.

“What convinced you to come, in the end?” the other inquired, displaying in its full glory his tendency to treat conversation like rigging and rudder. The connections he drew were not always obvious at first, and subtle tugs frequently begat greater swings, the effect of which were slow to realise, yet weighty. Thinking long-ingrained apprehensions failed to lift, the Teler aimed to point Maglor’s prow toward something stronger.

“That,” Maglor admitted, not without a touch of bitterness, “I do not rightly know.” He did not much like being steered, no matter how well-intentioned the steer-er.

They docked as sunset flamed across the heavens, casting rippling waters in gold; and disembarked at a lamp-lit quay lonelier, despite its marks of lived-in society, than the patched, stucco building in an abandoned bay had ever felt. A small party waited to shepherd them toward a laden table set beside a welcoming hearth.

“We have met, have we not?” Maglor asked the elf with tree-lit eyes who pressed a hearty bowl of stew into his grateful hands, surprised to find another child of Tirion still on these shores.

“We fought alongside one another, a long time ago,” she agreed, settling in the chair opposite. “I ran messages between our companies.”

“You are one of Turgon’s folk, if I remember correctly? Yet you linger.”

Now that recognition had come, he knew that they had seen one another once more. Her dark eyes had met his across another battlefield, when the field had been more ramshackle refugee village and opposing was more accurate than alongside.

“I have my reasons, just as you,” she spoke mildly, betraying neither a hint of this later meeting, nor of resentment. “One day, perhaps soon, we shall give up our clinging and turn toward home.”

..<|>..

“What am I doing here, Nōwē?”

Maglor lay curled atop the bed he’d had the use of since their coming to Mithlond. Such doubtful questioning and self-isolation were common occurrences of late. Bereft of the habits of survival that had, if not driven, then at least kept him from freezing over entirely during their sojourn in the wild south, Maglor began to stagnate. It was evident too, that he slept poorly, if indeed he did so at all.

“On that mattress? Clearly not what it was intended for,” Círdan made light, knowing humour to be the most reliable balm between them, though his heart ached to see the Noldo thus.

Maglor scowled, unmoved. “You are aware, I presume, that in this house there lives a survivor of Sirion’s havens? What right have I to walk the same halls as she?”

“She is not the only among my remaining people,” Círdan conceded, coming to sit in a chair beside the bed. “Have you been condemned?”

“No. The matter has not been raised, even once.” That silent lack of rancour, nor even acknowledgement, seemed to grieve Maglor, perhaps belying his very understanding of how the world functioned. “You could all sail,” he insisted. “Leave without me. You need not provoke their pain with my presence.”

“There is not a single Elda here who believes that the best course of action, I promise you.”

Anger was evident now in the harsh lines of the other’s brow. “Why? You think me ill? That my mind is not my own?”

“No,” Círdan refuted softly, “I believe you grieved. We who remain are not in the habit of turning our backs on the hurting.”

“Not even those soaked in the blood of their kin?” he provoked, clenching his scarred palm into a fist.

Círdan did not rise to the bait. “Not even they.”

But Maglor, hungrier for confrontation than a mantis shrimp faced with an offending crab, changed tact. “If I am forced to sail, Nōwē, I will be made to face spectres that haunt my worst dreams. Even if your band of forgiving Sindar manage not to spill their anger, I promise you, most others will lack their restraint.”

“None here wish to coerce you. We will wait to sail until you wish it.”

“And what,” Maglor asked pointedly, “if I am never ready?”

“I have waited three ages. What is another? You are afraid, I think,” Círdan posited, “not of the ire you may face, but of the business of going on living in its despite or lack; that there will be no marked moment of a curse lifted, forgiveness granted, or weregild paid to shift the weight of the past from your shoulders, only a banal normality that sits poorly with the blood-soaked past you cannot forget. But the past must be contended with, whether you do so here or in the blessed realm. Perhaps, you are scared to find, in the end, that it was only you keeping those you love at a distance, with no reason for it beyond poorly used guilt.”

“What do you know?” It was no longer anger that marked Maglor’s words, much as he aimed to make it so, but grief, and the agony of a bared soul. Kindness, sometimes, needs must be cruel.

“Could you truthfully say you wished wholeheartedly never to leave these shores, I would gladly part and sail in a heartbeat, but I do not believe that the case,” Círdan dared go on. “You came willingly to Mithlond, Maglor, but run still. You must ask yourself, is the escape you fashion truly an escape? Or merely a prison built from the bricks of solitude and empty skies?”

..<|>..

The woman with tree-lit eyes stood in Maglor’s doorway.

“He missed you,” she said, leaning in to better see the scrap of parchment on which Elros’s faint handwriting could just be made out. The comment, scrawled in the margins of an early treatise on the divergence of Sindarin dialects, largely inaccurate, and later scraped hurriedly for re-use, read what a load of rot, under which Maglor had written prove it, Elros!

“You knew Elros?” he asked.

“I helped man the fleets to Númenor.”

“What small chance I might have had for reconciliation, before the sea and its promise led him away, I squandered,” Maglor admitted ruefully.

The woman’s expression twisted in sympathy. “Turgon sent my son to the sea, and Ossë sent him to the depths. Many still thought the Valar would find pity for our plight in those days, but hope had already left my heart. I begged him not to go. We did not part well.”

Fraught partings were all too familiar to Maglor. “May it be he lives again in Eldamar, and you shall have your chance to mend that rift.”

“Perhaps we will meet again, on the other side of the sea, perhaps not. It may be he lingers in Mandos yet. Who can say?” The woman cocked her head curiously. “Sometimes it is not what one expects to find, but what one fears not to, that terrifies us more. Is that not so? But come, the evening is fair, and we would have you join us, if you will.”

This midwinter the winds and waters stilled in a rare reprieve from the near-constant rain and blustering wind the season usually brought. On the wharf there were set hundreds of lamps, some simply oil and wick set in shells, and others elaborately wrought lanterns, catching puffs of misty breath in their warm glow. Among the winking stars above, Eärendil shone bright and clear, and as Círdan passed him a mug of spiced miruvor, his light was mirrored in its honeyed depths.

“We have all lost much to the darkness,” Círdan lamented. His normally cheerful friend was unusually sombre this eve. Sorrow rounded his shoulders and soaked ebullient limbs, weighing more heavily on him than Maglor had yet seen. “It lengthens, the year comes to its nadir, and we remember. Let us kindle for ourselves a little light.”

“In hope or defiance?” Maglor asked.

“Why not both?” With a piercing look as salient as his words, Círdan took up a small candle for himself and held another out for Maglor to take. “You may light one if you wish, in memory of the lost.”

“Who will yours burn for?” Maglor asked, curious.

“For Gil-Galad, Elwë, and Olwë, among others.”

The last was unexpected.“Olwë is not lost,” he said with some surprise.

“And yet,” answered the other, “he has been to me for many ages. You have your own living ghosts, do you not?”

And Maglor thought of Elrond then, and of Nerdanel, of kin who turned back at Araman, and all those departed over the great sea. “I think, Nōwē, the time draws nigh for us to face them.”

“I believe you are right, my friend.”

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A tall ship loomed above the calm waters of the firth, its furled sails muttering restlessly in the wind. Currents of change tugged and swirled as the neap tide drew the last remnants of a bygone era into the past, once and for all. Beset by a resigned anticipation that left him uncomfortably off-kilter, Ossë could muster no more than a few feeble waves to slap half-heartedly against the hull.

“Ho, Ossë!”

A spray of dark curls wafted in the breeze, caught in the playful fingers of Manwë’s airy sprites, as Maglor leaned over the side. His piercing grey eyes, with a twinkle in them more mischievous than sea lion pups at play, found Ossë’s fathom-deep gaze. The old elf was cheerful this morning, and Ossë curmudgeonly. Oh, how the tides ebbed and flowed.

“Catch!” Maglor called, as something hard plummeted down, shining, sun-lit as it fell. Caught between his deft, webbed fingers, Ossë found it to be a shell, shimmering pearlescent with all the variform colours of the vast oceans.

“What is this?” he asked.

“A message,” answered Maglor. “I hoped you might bear it to the hither shore.”

“I am not your herald, elf,” Ossë pouted.

Laughter, bright as ship’s bells that sound out the hour, dropped like pearls to the water line as a grey head joined the dark. Fistfuls of rigging were clutched tightly in Círdan’s hands as he leant out wide. “After the last errand you had me run surely we can call in a favour! Do you recall how long I was about it?” he teased genially.

Thirty-five spring tides had Ossë counted between Círdan’s departure from Mithlond and his return; enough to bathe the coast in all her seasons and then some. Playing messenger would be but a minor inconvenience in comparison, especially as he already purposed to make for that shore.

“I shall carry it,” Ossë conceded.

“And you will see it found?” Maglor raised one eyebrow, less in question than in knowing. No fool was that old elf, nor a stranger to Ossë’s capricious nature.

Ossë bared his very sharp teeth one last time in what he knew to be a grin that brought little reassurance to most; and bright bubbles of laughter followed him as he dove, muffling and distorting as the depths rose to meet him. Luminosity came in strobing curtains of teal through the tourmaline depths of the sunlit zone. Bright enough was their play for his piscine eyes to make out the message carefully engraved in nacre.

Túlalme márenna. We are coming home.

Beneath the words Círdan’s anchor and Fëanor’s star sat side by side. What would Olwë make of that? Ah, to be a gull perched on the pier when he found it, for the Teler’s face would undoubtedly twist into many amusing shapes. Chuckling to himself, Ossë leapt and fetched up on the deck of a lonesome ketch, left roped securely to the pilings. The pair of Dol Amrothian sailors to which Círdan had offered it had hardly been able to believe their good fortune. Perhaps they re-considered now, for the pale faces that peeped out from the hold were accompanied by mutterings of haunting and water sprites.

From the depths rose a great swell, surging forward as Ossë settled into his favourite position on the prow. Catching the tall ship in its momentum, the great wave set it on its way. In the distance, whoops of delight echoed through the gulf, and great canvas sails unfurled, their convex bellies gorging on air as the ship hurried toward the open sea.

On a hither shore there would be a reunion. Two elves, one dark-haired and one grey, would step onto shimmering sands and find themselves caught up in the unyielding embraces of incredulous loved ones. One, who had chased after tree-light long ages ago, would never find what he had once sought, and yet, in its stead would deem reunion with long-sundered kin, and the meeting of many new beside, a greater gain. The other, who had known that light, would rue the harsher luminance of the sun on those once soft-lit lands, even as he found himself besotted with their radiance in its glow. Long would it take him to believe the hand-wringing, bright-eyed descendent of Melian, or the tight-lipped, russet-haired woman waiting for him to disembark truly wanted him back. He would, though, in the end. Both would grieve and laugh and love, and continue their strange, messy, painful, wonderful lives, in the way that elves did.

Ossë dangled his feet over the edge of the ketch. Watching as the tall ship approached the lip of the gulf, he kicked his webbed toes lazily at foamy wavelets that played about them. Soon enough he too would depart, but there was no hurry. A world of white-tipped waves and free-blowing winds awaited, old friends called from distant shores, and so too did the wild joy of the open sea.

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