With Unlooked For Kindness by Isilme_among_the_stars  

Down a long, airy corridor of the Last Homely House, in a room spacious and practical, yet tastefully ornate, one can find Rivendell’s largest collection of written lore. It is a sparse thing still, yet its shelves are well-tended, its books and parchments kept in good order, and each surface is routinely tidied and cleaned, from the highest sunlit sill to its patterned granite floors. Erestor is grateful for such fastidiousness on this day, for he lies upon the stones.

“Erestor?” Ventures Glorfindel. “Is all well? Your countenance is a mite pale.”

Erestor’s head buzzes, his gut churns, and his limbs have rapidly drained of their strength, but little does he wish for this hallowed lord come out of the West to know such things. “All shall be well, momentarily.”

Glorfindel appears little convinced. He shifts his weight slightly and peers more closely still. It is no secret from him that the young Noldo has been injured, nor that the ills he has subsequently suffered have been long in the recovery. Glorfindel knows, too, that Erestor’s tendencies are toward motion, that curiosity drives him onward, and that, if given free choice, his limbs are rarely still. Such motion is how they came to know one another beyond the odd glimpse across the valley’s half-constructed settlement; Glorfindel travelled from Rivendell to Mithlond some seasons past bearing tidings and counsel for the High King, and Erestor joined his company, seeking knowledge Lindon’s crafts-persons had recently developed. Erestor was not born to the library and its dry, word-heavy shelves, though the casual observer might think it, given the abundance of time he has spent haunting this room of late. His thirst for innovation has turned, perforce, to that of the theoretical rather than the practical, for want of vigour. 

“Should ought prove ill instead…” The sentence hangs, unfinished, in the air, as Glorfindel lowers himself to lie between the feet of a lectern and the leg of a desk. Erestor lets it remain so. He lays between bookcase and table. On a shelf above sits a survey of the geological composition of the Misty Mountains he had wished to retrieve, close, yet firmly out of reach. A mere yard of distance separates Glorfindel and he; that, and a few polished lengths of oak. Erestor wishes it were more.

“What were you seeking, out of curiosity?” Glorfindel asks, turning his bright eyes upon Erestor.

“Irrelevant,” Erestor snips. He will find himself unable to read it now, even should the volume miraculously fall into his hand. His eyes will burn, his head will ache, and the words will swim about the page.

The gusty sigh he receives in response is more communicative than indicative of true annoyance. “I shall relieve you of my company, should you wish it, though I do not deem it wise.”

There is a vulnerability to being so affected that leaves Erestor feeling small and more afraid than he has in years. Little as he likes to admit such weakness as should, in an Elda, have rightly passed before now, it is worse to lie alone on an unyielding floor, unsure how many hours might pass before his traitorous legs will reliably bear him back to his chambers. His voice, when he speaks, is small and bitter. “I would rather you stay.”

“It is no shame to find oneself infirm,” Glorfindel softly claims. Erestor might rebut such sentiment with the tale of Gwindor. He might emphasise the poor opinion the prince suffered in Nargothrond before its fall, whose people saw he would not become again the audacious warrior they once knew. He does not. If Glorfindel can essay kindness, then Erestor can surely attempt temperance, no matter how difficult it may prove in such an ill state. 

For a while they lay in silence. It is not particularly companionable, but neither is it offensive. Erestor attempts to pay little mind to the discomforts of his still queasy gut and wool-filled head. Perhaps, he thinks, it was unwise to chance an excursion such as this when dizzy and with legs weak from exhaustion, no matter how bored he found himself.

“As far as resting places are concerned, these stones leave something to be desired,” comments Glorfindel idly from his place on the floor, and Erestor cannot help but laugh.

“I rather agree,” he admits. “It was not strictly by choice that I came to treat them so.”

“I thought not. Shall we remedy that discomfort?”

The room makes an unpleasant lurch as Erestor raises himself slowly to sit, though it is not as terrible as it might have been had he attempted such a thing some minutes ago. When he is grasped firmly by the arms and pulled decisively to his feet, the shelves at his elbow seem to sway sickeningly. Glorfindel is no healer, and has never claimed to be, or else he might have known better. He is, however, an experienced soldier, and takes Erestor’s unsteady weight easily enough. Erestor, who is neither, feels ungainly and awkward in his grip. “I rather wish you hadn’t done that,” he says between attempts to swallow the gorge that has risen in his throat.

Glorfindel has, at least, the grace to look apologetic and insists on extracting from Erestor the title he had come seeking, despite Erestor’s weak protests. 

“What good shall it do me now?” Damn the scroll. Surely even Glorfindel can see he is beyond such a venture in this state. 

“It need not be you that reads. Functional ears are enough to work with, if another were to speak the lines aloud, are they not?”

“A lord such as yourself surely has more pressing demands on his time.”

“Not, as it happens, on this day. And it may chance I find your company stimulating, beside.”

What it is that draws a joy-riddled, beacon of determined hope like Lord Glorfindel to a prickly, illness-embittered wretch such as himself, Erestor cannot quite fathom. Though he finds himself disinclined to raise the issue, since the lord in question is offering both a means to return to his chambers, which he greatly craves, and a relief from the boredom they so often cause. 

“I should be grateful, that being the case,” Erestor accepted.

The frustrations of infirmity are eased little by the comforts of Erestor’s bed, not half of the information read aloud takes hold inside his woolly mind, and his sour mood shows no sign of letting up. Yet Glorfindel’s company lightens the afternoon even so.

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