here we go again by lonelyvisitor  

The parcel from Pengolodh had arrived one week before the wedding.

Orodreth was envisioning an intimate affair. Immediate family only, he’d insisted, for the inn did not have accommodations sufficient for all of Elvendom, and would be overcrowded as it was with the retinue of two grooms and a bride.

Gil-galad had no cause to disagree with the father who had raised him from a babe, before dragonfire and general misfortune had passed the responsibility to Círdan of the Falas. And yet the great loremaster’s curious gift occasioned a change of heart.

Far be it from me to stir the pot on the eve of your nuptials, read the enclosed note’s impeccable tengwar. Yet puzzling as I always have on the problem of your parenthood, I recently came across a fortunately un-singed ledger of your father’s in my material from the wreck of Nargothrond.

It seems I have long misfiled it, which perhaps was Orodreth’s intent: what begins as a record of fertilizer production—yes, yes, this too is of historical interest, but quite literally dull as bat-droppings—turns, two-thirds through, into some sort of secret diary.

This furtive document gives an account of your adoption and first years of life, and provides his own speculation(s) as to where you might have come from. This includes variation on traditional theories, as well as some intriguingly novel conjecture.

Having read and mulled the implications of said account, Gil-galad now found himself standing in dawnlight on the docks of the Island of Ellairë. He was holding one carrier- pigeon in each hand while a third perched on his head. The birds had tiny scrolls tied to their feet, missives bearing the silvery-blue wax seal of the House of the Star of Radiance, which had only ever comprised one person.

Now he who had once been High King prepared to send three last-minute invitations to his wedding.

To the first pigeon he whispered: “Findekáno Astaldo.”

As she flew westward toward risen Arien he addressed the second: “Findaráto Ingoldo.”

The third pigeon seemed like she might be content to stay nestled on his braid-crown. Gil- galad nudged her off, murmuring the final flightpath:

“Curufinwë Tyelperinquar.”

His three messengers on the wing, Gil-galad drew a steadying breath of the salt-sweet air. He’d led a decent life in Middle-earth, before its doomful end. Now in Aman, with Celebrían

and Elrond soon to take him husband, the life that stretched before him seemed it would be far more decent still (and less likely to be cut short by fiery combat).

Yet some measure of who Gil-galad was had always been missing. Through all those grave and kingly years he had been given occasionally to wonder — to hope, to dream of someday knowing the whole truth.

Now his dream rose up above the pinkened Sea that stretched between Ellairë and the mainland. Both fear and giddy anticipation coursed the body that still bore the memory of single-handed battle with the Dark Lord, if not the scars.

It’s done, then, Gil-galad thought, and turned back toward the shore.

One of his fathers was hosting his wedding, but another would be sitting in the aisles.

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Fresh off the last ferry for the week from Alqualondë, Finduilas Faelivrin navigated the harborside bustle by bearing toward the tallest Elf she could see.

Gil-galad could not be reliably identified by hair-color. It had been pitch-black when he was a baby, lightened by his adolescence to a strawish blonde that could, at times, seem reddish — and now that he was a large and full-grown former High King it seemed to alternate seasonally between dark and fair. Or even depending on the angle of the Sun, which was equatorially punishing on Ellairë, scruffy old goat-hillock that it had been before their father (for reasons inexplicable) determined to pass his re-embodiment warding vacationers who’d made a wrong turn on their way to the Enchanted Isles.

Today her little brother’s wavy locks were the rich if nondescript brown depicted in most of his official portraiture — though blonde highlights were discernible as Arien shone upon his deep bronze skin.

“He’s an Arafinwëan after all!” Finduilas cried as he barreled toward her. “Gwindor, dearheart, do keep up.”

A pace behind, her husband shifted his grip on the valises and shoved sun-spectacles into his silvered hair. “Rodnor!”

“Dearest sister!” Gil-galad lifted Finduilas by the waist and twirled her about, then did the same to Gwindor and the valises. “Doughtiest brother-in-law! A pleasant voyage, I trust?”

“It doubled as a fishing trip.” Finduilas sloshed a netful of mackerel into the hold of the mule-drawn cart, while her brother shouldered up the luggage. “Assumed—rightfully?—Ada hasn’t adequate provisions. How’s he? Going absolutely insane?”

“Oh yes.” Gil-galad laughed and took up the reins. “I’m making sure of that. Get in, get in!”

Finduilas fanned herself at her brother’s side while Gwindor bumped along in the back. The road up to the guest-house was mercifully lined with oak and wild olive-trees, cool and fragrant, and after an eventful voyage the former Princess of Nargothrond relaxed and remembered the eccentric beauty of her father’s new domain. A bit roughshod, it all was—

Orodreth had fared uneasily enough running a kingdom, and with an inn he was not much better—but the natural charm of the landscape would lend a fine backdrop for the wedding.

Gil-galad, a bridegroom! It was nearly unthinkable; the man had been unwed four millennia in Middle-earth. What changed? Of course Finduilas knew it was more a matter of who had sailed to Valinor at the turn of the Age.

“So when will we meet your Elrond?” Finduilas asked. “We do adore Celebrían, and she alone would have been a marvelous choice—and a cousin, no less—but to hear the talk, this half-Elf is the second coming of Lúthien and Eärendil combined.”

“Isn’t he just that?” piped up Gwindor. “Genetically, one supposes?”

“Indeed.” Gil-galad made a wistful face. “Introductions have been long-delayed, sister mine. They will certainly be made before dinner; I think Elrond’s having a final gown-fitting at the moment. But first I must confide in you something, which you absolutely cannot tell Ada—”

###

Earlier that day, one of Fingolfin’s finest stallions had been spotted speeding down the road from Tirion to the Sea.

Halfway through the journey the horse’s rider noticed a shadow cast down onto the rolling plains through which he passed. A great eagle soared the skies above—Manwë sending a messenger, of course, to bless his favored son’s reunion with his scion.

Fingon laughed at the lovely portent and urged along his steed.

Yet when he arrived at the rundown quay that promised passage to the Island of Ellairë, his feathered friend had beaten him there. Having descended from the skies this proved not to be an eagle at all, but an Elf wearing mechanical wings—a second cousin, as was statistically likely.

“Celebrimbor?” Fingon squinted as his horse turned back toward Tirion. “You’re going to Ellairë?”

“Hullo. And I don’t think either of us is.” Celebrimbor was wearing goggles; he rucked off the straps that secured his aluminum feathers to his arms. “Seems we’ve missed the boat.”

This was kind of him to say, for Fingon supposed he might have continued flying. Just as Celebrimbor had observed, a rather overburdened vessel could be seen on the water, receding from view toward the eastern horizon.

“Next ferry will be here before you know it,” called an old Teler fishing from the end of the pier. “Won’t be but a week, I should think.”

“We haven’t got that kind of time!” Fingon had begun stripping off his riding-clothes, and forgotten completely about Celebrimbor’s wings. “Fancy a swim, cousin?”

“Fancy a lift?”

This mellifluous offer came from a sloop that had appeared around the curve of the cove. Its mainsail bore the unmistakable insignia of snake devouring snake, and casting off a mooring its golden captain nimbly trod ashore across the rope.

“Finrod!” Celebrimbor smiled and embraced him.

Fingon could not repress his vexation. “You’re going to Ellairë too?”

Finrod’s bow betrayed no reaction to this abrupt greeting. “I am an honored uncle of the betrothed—two of them.”

“But the invitation—”

Immediate family only, Fingon was recalling, unsure if uncle or great-uncle truly qualified.

“Was strangely delayed, didn’t you find?” Finrod held out a hand. “Welcome aboard, cousins.”

###

“I’m sorry, but you’ve done what?”

In his good nature Gil-galad had carried his sister’s luggage upstairs to the family suite, and now extended it to explain himself for the third or fourth time.

“I have invited my three potential sires to the wedding! Elrond’s got both his parents here, and even Celeborn’s sailed from across the Sea now, so Celebrían will have hers—”

Not this again, thought Finduilas: the issue of Gil-galad’s blood parentage had been tedious in the First Age, and only grown more so in the Fourth.

“Rodnor, you’ve got two fathers already, and Ada and Lord Círdan will both be there. Bit greedy, isn’t it, to insist on a third?”

“Perhaps it is.” Gil-galad sighed. “But I’ve wondered all my life, and now I’ve got significant documentation—”

“Pengolodh found more notes in his rubbish can, then?”

“This is in Ada’s own hand, Finduilas! Apologies, Gwindor.” Striding toward the bookshelves he’d nearly knocked over a potted palm that turned out to be his brother-in-law; one often forgot he was there, in moments of high feeling. “Look.”

Gil-galad flipped open the diary and read:

“‘Year 472, First Age of the Sun. Among the survivors of the Nirnaeth is an infant child that has come into my care, brought to Nargothrond in Nolofinwëan livery, and yet by guardians sworn to silence on his exact provenance—’”

“The oldest rumor there is.” Finduilas was serving herself a large portion of wine. “And knowing Ada he started it himself entirely by accident. Which of course must have been the Nolofinwëan intent, to plant an heir where there was none—and their lot so prone to dying off mid-kingship. But livery does not paternity make! Be glad you were raised in the wiser house, an Arafinwëan—or at least that Ada managed to scrape together wisdom enough to send you away before...everything.” She gestured grimly with her glass. “Poor Fingon, though, he’s been trying to lay claim to you for years...”

“Well, I’ve never spent more than a passing moment with the man—the longing stares have made me uncomfy—but I think it’s time I gave him his chance. Listen, though, it gets more interesting:

“Year 480. Gil-galad has grown into a winsome, kindhearted, undeniably golden-haired lad who charms all in his path. Not a few have said that my son returns to these halls the spirit of our fallen king. I too cannot help but see something of Finrod in him—it is uncanny, for my uncle perished in the pit of Tol-in-Gaurhoth seven years before the boy’s presumed birth. It is said that the fëa of one who wishes to return to the world in haste may come in the form of a newborn child. Yet it is said also that the Enemy takes many shapes—that gold-gleaming Gorthaur before whom Finrod fell in song is the master of shifting form, both his own and that of Elves bred in the pit of Angband, their bodies made crucible for horrors unspeakable. Gwindor has related this, from observations during his own captivity—”

“Beloved!” Finduilas barked a laugh towards her husband, who had now draped himself over a windowsill out of the path of Gil-galad’s pacing. “Did you insinuate to Ada that Rodnor might be the spawn of Great-uncle Finrod and the Dark Lord Sauron?” Gwindor shrugged into his wineglass, and she tsked. “Always getting in the middle of things. You believe this, brother? You are aware that Sauron killed you.”

“Viscerally, sister, and until one theory outweighs the other I believe it just as much the next —listen:

“Year 487. Celebrimbor is so wonderful with Gil-galad. He’s made him a blunted blade set with sapphire, for the boy is as enamored of our Mormegil as his sister—” he winced with apology toward his present company, giving Finduilas the opportunity to roll her eyes and Gwindor to stare vacantly toward the sea—“and fancies himself a great warrior-to-be. The good smith has taken measurements for his first suit of mail and armor, and now G.-g. follows him each morning to the forge, absorbed in his own gift’s construction, and the two of them emerge at the end of the day soot-caked and happy as beetles in bat-guano, kindred spirits they are—oh, if only Tyelpe knew...!”

Finduilas frowned. “Knew what?”

“Well, it does end like that—if only Tyelpe knew, dot dot dot, exclamation point.” Gil-galad snapped the book shut. “But presumably that he’s also one of my potential fathers!”

“I believe that was referring to you both being covered in batshit, or whatever was the phrasing. How in Arda could Celebrimbor be your father?”

“Orodreth always did hold a candle for Curufin’s son,” mused Gwindor. “Erotic overwhelm could be the cause for the ellipsis.”

“Oh, he’s always held a candle for anyone capable, why do you think he went for my mother —Ada dearest!” Finduilas smiled at the disheveled whir of white-blonde who had presently come rushing into the room. “We were just speaking of you.”

Gil-galad clasped the diary behind his back. “Were we? I don’t think so.”

“Linens,” said Orodreth in horror, searching a creaking wardrobe. “I haven’t enough linens. Finduilas, thank the Valar you’re here, there’s been an emergency with candlesticks as well— oh.” He spun around, sighing, and wrangled his children into a teary embrace. “My little ones. Stop growing, would you?”

Finduilas patted his back. “There, there, Orodreth—we are Elves, so I should hope that’s the case. Now what’s the trouble with the candles?”

“Rodnor.” Gwindor spoke from the window, a pigeon alight on his forefinger. “Bird for you.”

“Everything.” Orodreth drew his palms down his daughter’s face while his son extracted himself to take the message. “Everything’s the trouble, as usual, this place is falling apart around me—but my children are home, and that’s what matters, isn’t it?”

Except by the time he glanced up, quite sentimentally, Gil-galad had managed to disappear. 

###

Chapter End Notes

If you're keeping track, Fingon is Harry (gay), Celebrimbor is Sam (divorced, the romantic interest of the picture), Finrod is Bill (played by Stellan Skarsgård).

Rodnor is the Sindarinization of Gil-galad's Quenya name, Artanáro. Mormegil ("Black Sword") refers to Túrin, during his time in Nargothrond.

Do not expect the timeline to make sense in this, lol. For contrived purposes Gil-galad was born sometime around the Nirnaeth and sent to live in the Falas sometime before the fall of Nargothrond. These events are only 23 years apart, so, handwave handwave over factoids about elven childhood development.

I realized that I have to give Aipi credit for Gil-galad Saurodion — it seemed to naturally bubble into my head as (one of several) plausible backstory but I think you in fact planted the idea in my brain years ago!!

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No matter. The wedding feast began tonight, and Orodreth had an inexhaustible task-list spooling ahead of him; as bridegroom he knew his son had his own, if of a nature more emotional than logistical. So having dispatched his daughter to deal with the candles, the innkeeper of Ellairë resolved to confront his linens-crisis.

As he was making haste down the hill to Sildis’s laundry, counting the copper coins in his pockets as he went, he found his path obstructed. This was not uncommon on the island, for flocks of roving goats had made their home here far longer than any elves—yet in Orodreth’s present case the obstacle was two approaching travelers, both lavishly attired and wearing shaded spectacles.

One was small and dark, the other tall and fair.

“Returned from the Doomsman’s Halls, by popular demand.” The blonde spoke with premeditated choreography and pointed to his fellow. “He’s the brains.”

“I am,” said the black-haired one. “Ow! Don’t kick me.”

“Say the bit, Curvo.”

“Fine. ‘And he’s the brawn.’ Hello, Artaresto. Missed us?”

“Oh no.” Orodreth began an uphill retreat as hasty as his approach. “Absolutely not. I expelled you from my kingdom, from my life, it cannot, it must not be—”

“Come now, coz.” Stealthy Celegorm had contrived to stand in his way again, and he was broad as he was tall. “We wouldn’t miss the event of the season.”

“You were not invited! Moreover, you are dead.” Orodreth’s glance twitched between his two cousins. “Or you were, lately. And you would have been even less invited, had I known that Mandos spat you out.”

“And history deems us the cruel ones!” With a flourish Curufin removed his spectacles, leaving them to hang from the delicate beryl chain around his neck, all of a piece with his sparkling earrings—Orodreth was feeling positively dingy in his tarnished silver. “Come now, ‘Resto. We’re here to make it up to you.”

“Make it up to me?” Orodreth found his voice on the edge of hysterical laughter, and so drew upon outrage to steady himself as he stormed again in the direction of the local laundress. “You are aware that tomorrow at daybreak my son weds a descendant of Lúthien, upon whose line your kin and you personally have brought gravest insult and injury—that his lady mother has cause enough already to undermine my hostmanship?” Oh, he’d suffered much discourse with Elwing about how many pelicans would be involved in the proceedings. “And that’s before my Aunt Galadriel gets word, forever-unfriend of your father—”

“Yes, yes, kinslaying, and neither love nor mercy.” Curufin clasped together craftsman’s hands in ring-bedazzled piety. “We’ve repented of it, darling.”

Indeed their presence on Ellairë, beyond doom and death, seemed to speak of this. Orodreth recalled his own foggy centuries of contemplation in the Halls—yet in doing so became more convinced that the brothers Fëanárion had somehow found a loophole.

“No one is going to believe you!” he hissed as the fiends followed him into a billowing fortress of brightly-colored cloth, Sildis’s wares hung out to dry. He knew anyone who saw Celegorm and Curufin had set foot on the island would be of like mind: “They’ll probably think you’re here to steal the Silmaril from the bridal diadem.”

Orodreth immediately regretted saying this, and that anyone had ever hinted to him what Elrond’s wedding costume might entail. With dread he watched as a most curious look passed from Curufin’s mauve-grey eyes to Celegorm’s still shaded gaze. The elder brother only laughed.

“The Silmaril? That old thing! Can’t say I take any interest. I’ve returned to life to hunt the hart and hare, not hallowed jewels. Nor my fellow elf.”

He spoke humbly, yet Orodreth noticed how his eyeteeth were filed to points, as they had been from the Years of the Trees to the first of the Sun—a quite deliberate cosmetic intervention, if Celegorm had indeed been reembodied in unfangéd form.

“Then why,” Orodreth grit his own jaw, pushing forward through silks and sheets, “are you here crashing my son’s wedding?”

In the vigor of emphasis he’d taken down a kimono and two tablecloths. When Orodreth emerged from this freshly-laundered cavern, old Sildis stood before him with arms crossed, a flock of inquisitive employees paused behind her at the creekside amid the tubs and washbins.

“You’re three moons behind on your bill, Angarátion.”

“Please.” In the confusion of textiles, Orodreth searched himself for copper. “Half my beds are bare, I’ll pay you back next week—”

Yet Curufin was already dropping silver coins into the lady’s palm.

“Does that settle it? Very well. We’ll take whatever our good cousin needs.” He made a nonchalant shrug at Orodreth’s stare, as various bales of linens assembled for their benefit. “It’s just as I said! We’re here to make things right. Think of it as a wedding gift for your son. We’ve been dying to meet him.”

Curufin smiled at the joke, assuming it was self-evident. Orodreth stood bemused, wondering how it was that one so recently emerged from the underworld could be thus endowed. But then Curvo had always been prudent, financially speaking, not unlike Uncle Finrod—one of many passions the two of them had shared. Whereas the last king of Nargothrond never seemed to see dividends from his investments and inheritances, be they inhabitable cave- systems or ramshackle country inns.

In the midst of Orodreth’s fretting, Celegorm had draped a languid bicep over his shoulder. “And after all,” he purred—as his brother came in step with them, securing his purse to his belt, “why shouldn’t two of your oldest friends be at your side at this most joyous occasion?”

Orodreth recalled similarly sweet words being bandied about as he’d clutched white- knuckled at the gilded arms of Finrod’s throne.

And then he saw the carts of spotless sheets and tablecloths, napkins and towels and lacey draperies. He wondered if Elwing wouldn’t be more open-minded after sleeping in a freshly- made bed, instead of that nest she’d been keeping in the eaves.

###

Down at the docks, meanwhile, Gil-galad rushed toward a newly tethered sailboat of clear Arafinwëan provenance—like the bird-born missive that had summoned him again to the harbor, it bore the seal of twined snakes.

He watched anxiously as three figures emerged from the hold. One was fair-haired, one dark threaded with gold, one vaguely reddish—one of them was his birth father!

And I haven’t the faintest idea who! Gil-galad thought. Giddy as an elfling, he came bounding down the planks, which swayed under his enthusiasm; and though the first man he came upon seemed the athletic type, capable of holding his balance, at the moment he seemed quite unsettled.

“Hail to the High King,” said Fingon, a customary greeting to all who had held the position. Yet by the look on his face it seemed he had not determined whether to speak in a joking or an over-formal manner before opening his mouth. In spite of the rumors that tied them they were not well-acquainted, and his words betrayed a brimming nervousness sprung from the awkward fact.

Gil-galad grinned, and bowed in what he hoped was a soothing manner. “Hail yourself!”

“Artanáro!” Now Finrod approached with open arms, and kissed him thrice—cheek, lips, cheek—in the Telerin fashion. “My favorite nephew.”

“Don’t say that to my father!”

Fingon furiously blinked at this demonstration of familiarity while Celebrimbor came loping forward, brushing windswept auburn locks off his face.

“Finellach,” he laughed, with eyes that crinkled like warm embers.

“Uncle Tyelpe!” Gil-galad clasped his arm. “Good to see you in one piece, old man, and me unscorched!”

“Well!” said Finrod, in a tone of gracious abstention from remarking that he was the only true uncle present—a great one, no less. “It took your father long enough to extend the invitation, but here we are, before the happy day. Where is Orodreth? I’ve got twelve dozen oysters, and I know he always runs out of ice...”

“Orodreth.” Gil-galad now drew back, and smiled disarmingly as he mused aloud. “That’s the thing—he can’t quite know you’re here yet.”

In truth he hadn’t thought this far into his plan. His father would no doubt be alarmed to see three more potential fathers added to the guestlist. Gil-galad knew he’d find the time and place to reveal this information in a sensitive and controlled manner, but in the short term he needed a ruse.

Then he spied a quantity of abandoned barrels at the edge of the dock—perhaps they had lately housed smelt or seabreams.

Gil-galad turned again to his potential fathers, voice redolent with flattery. “I suppose you’re all very limber, aren’t you?”

###

Chapter End Notes

Artaresto is Orodreth's Quenya name. Artanáro is Gil-galad's. Angaráto is Angrod's (hence Angarátion).

Finnellach is yet another Gil-galad epithet meaning 'flame of hair and eye.'

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Orodreth attempted to calculate his chances of returning to the inn without anyone noticing he had acquired two Fëanorions. Yet by the time he’d run it all through they were already walking through the gates—and there in the courtyard, of course, were Elrond and Celebrían assembling flower-garlands, and with them most of their parents.

Eärendil was polishing silver and whistling affably; Celeborn was braiding his wife’s hair. For a brief moment it was only Galadriel’s Tree-lit gaze that went wide in shock at the sight of the strange Elves delivering the linens. She alone of this assembled company had laid eyes on her elder cousins, in distant and more fateful days.

Then the pelicans began to attack.

After an initial spate of shrieks and bellowed curses, the brothers displayed characteristic methods of defense. Curufin drew out his hair-pins to wield like daggers, and twisted several of his rings to reveal retractable razors and spikes, while at the same time Celegorm seemed to be attempting to negotiate with one especially belligerent bird by beast-speaking in the manner of Oromë.

This approach proved very ill-advised when she transmogrified into Princess Elwing.

“You,” she snarled, with her pelicans gathered about her in thunderous fury. “What evil wind has cast you here, enemy of my grandmother, my parents, my brothers—lechers and murderers—my father killed you once, I would do him honor to gut you myself—”

Elrond, having grasped the situation, presently inserted himself.

“Naneth, please, no deaths before the wedding.”

“Your mercy is most gracious, Lord Elrond.” Celegorm bowed, stirring many feathers that now dusted his head and shoulders. “Or should I perhaps say ‘nephew,’ given the love my brother bore—”

Elrond held up a hand. “I will not suffer you to speak, kinslayer.”

“Orodreth, what is the meaning of this?” Celebrían stepped to her husband’s side.

All the while the innkeeper of Ellairë had been creeping his way past the altercation; he was now halfway to the storeroom across the yard. The reproving gaze of his future children-in- law froze him like a hare in a hunter’s track. Elrond retained that kindly dazzle in his eyes, even with features sharpened in admonishment. Moreover, like her mother and father beside her, Celebrían was built rather like a tree trunk; it was not inconceivable that she might crush between her thighs the tender skull of anyone who dared to cross her husband.

An ensuing silence only made things worse. All attention fixed on Orodreth to explain a situation that had barely been contrived by him at all, but rather imposed with only his grudging acquiescence.

Oh, how typical of the Theme, to blame calamity on Angrod’s son.

Orodreth’s fear curdled to affront. “I haven’t got the faintest idea what they’re doing here— they came upon me and followed me, the nuisances, and then they carried some...towels and things. And that’s all!”

“We paid a debt.” Curufin played at his hands, resetting the weapons to their decorative state. Celeborn advanced with quiet fury. “There are some debts that cannot be repaid.”

“To a launderer’s they can be, actually.”

Against this retort an Iathrin rabble rose again, Elwing and her great-uncle spitting threats and curses as Celegorm and Curufin attempted to remain unagitated, covered as they were already in pelican-down. Celeborn, ever haunted that he had not been present to defend the fallen realm of his people, seemed well prepared to do so now.

Yet then his wife stepped between the warring parties, descending from her position of distanced observation, and spoke in her deep portentous voice.

“Artaresto.”

Even more so than Elrond, there was a very terrifying kindness to Galadriel’s manner of speaking. For a long moment she let Orodreth wither under it.

“Did you not once drive out the sons of Fëanor from your dominion?” said his aunt at last. “For in your wisdom you saw their evil influence upon the folk of Nargothrond. Much as you wisely limited this evening’s engagement to close family.”

“The next return ferry’s not for a week,” said Orodreth in misery.

Eärendil looked up from the silver, with which he had awkwardly continued. “I could take them in Vingilot—”

“No,” said almost everybody.

“Then they can be banished from the wedding, if not the island,” Galadriel went on. “It is indeed very strange that they are here, certainly when my brothers received no invitation—”

It was at this moment that the gates burst open again, admitting Gil-galad and his mule and their laden cart, which had three large barrels strapped to the back.

“Rodnor!” Orodreth cried, made hopeful by this arrival.

Everyone liked his son, in a manner they seemed incapable of liking him. Having engendered the boy’s relatively happy childhood—which had then engendered four millennia of relatively stable governance in Middle-earth—was perhaps the only thing Orodreth had ever done correctly in his life, even if Círdan had stepped in to finish the job.

Yes, Gil-galad was the reason all of them were here. Orodreth was sure his presence would smooth things over. His son was a canny leader and consummate diplomat, attuned to all avenues of potential strife between the Elves.

Yet leaping off the cart Gil-galad began leading the mule down the alley towards the stables.

“Hello,” he said in passing, not giving a second glance to his father or fiancés, nor indeed noticing the strange tension in the atmosphere. “Must make sure this wine’s chilled, see you all at dinner—”

It was now half three in the afternoon. Dinner would not be for many hours, once Arien had traded shifts with her silvery brother—the Elvish tradition being to stage a wedding feast from gloaming to gloaming, with the vows spoken at dawn in the rising light.

Did Gil-galad truly mean to hide himself away until dusk? “Darling, wait!”

In Orodreth’s haste to set after his son he nearly knocked over his elder child, Finduilas descending the north wing stairway with her arms full of candlesticks.

“Oh, thank Valar. Lassë dear, you remember your cousins? Would you deal with...all this?”

Vaguely he waved toward Celegorm and Curufin, ignoring the look of horror on his daughter’s face, as well as the shouts that ensued behind him as he fled.

###

In a granary adjoining the stables Gil-galad located a crowbar. This was first used to pry open the barrels containing his potential fathers, second to bolt the door against inquisitive intruders.

Fingon, Finrod, and Celebrimbor once again demonstrated limber grace in extracting themselves—and not at all complaining about smelling of fish, at least outwardly.

Gil-galad smiled. “Here we are! Your accommodations.” Amid the looks of horror Finrod was the first to laugh.

“Such a lark you are, Artanáro, joking with us! Your father always gives me the Uinen Suite when I come to stay, I’ll show myself there—”

Gil-galad held up his hands. “The inn’s booked—utterly, I’m sorry to say, but being as you were last-minute invitations I’m afraid it’s what we have.”

The floor of the granary was strewn with hay and there were several goats milling about. Finrod for the first time allowed himself a peevish look; Celebrimbor seemed to be taking great interest in the olive-harvesting equipment rusting in the corner. Of the three Fingon seemed most agitated.

“I’d have a word with your father,” he said sharply. “It was Orodreth who summoned us, was it not—why then would he refuse to see us and trammel us with his livestock?”

Again Gil-galad saw the anxious glaze of his eyes. If Fingon believed Orodreth had sent the invitation, he now must be certain that this had been done with intent to humiliate him, and thereby undermine the many millennia of rumor-mongering that Gil-galad was a Nolofinwëan by birth.

Gil-galad did not want to impress that his father had the malice or cunning to concoct such a scheme.

“Actually,” he confessed. “He doesn’t know you’re here. I invited you. ”

Fingon’s look turned from irked to irrepressibly hopeful.

“You did!” he said, and continued in the rather leading manner with which he’d cornered Gil- galad at some Tirion ball a century ago, as if anticipating a tearful reunion. “Well! Why might you have done such a thing?”

He seemed to have forgotten his cousins were there at all, let alone had shared his same invitation. Beside him Finrod’s eyes narrowed, good graces at last worn through.

“What are you playing at, lad? I’m your kin. Why should my invitation be so furtive? And in the company of these rather random gentlemen.” Finrod cast about a cursory glance. “No offense meant to my noble cousins.”

Fingon did seem offended, looking on the brink of another outburst, but then came a loud metallic crash followed by the outraged bleating of goats.

“Apologies!” said Celebrimbor. “I’m just trying to see—aha! Now there’s the spring- loader...”

They were all growing restless, Gil-galad thought. Before long they’d burn the place down. “Why don’t I get some drinks,” he suggested. “And some ice for your oysters, Uncle—I won’t be but a moment. Do not leave, and do not tell anyone what I just told you.”

He spoke this with the command of a king, and left without leaving time to hear objections, taking the crowbar as he went to now barricade the door from the outside.

Chapter End Notes

Elwing + pelicans inspo owed to Chestnut_pod's great Elwing fics!!

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The inn grounds did not have a large geographic footprint. Orodreth nonetheless swiftly lost track of his son.

He was first waylaid by the cook, who had many arcane questions about the provenance of the evening’s lembas-corn better suited to Galadriel or Elwing, and subsequently by tripping over a lobster trap. Bruised but still determined, he found Gil-galad’s mule outside the granary, and his voice echoing inside. Orodreth tried the doors, yet it seemed they were jammed from within.

It also seemed that Gil-galad was not alone.

Possessed as he was of Elvish hearing Orodreth might have immediately identified these mysterious persons. But it couldn’t be, it shouldn’t be, not the day of the wedding. Not when so much had already gone wrong.

Part of Orodreth wanted to deny the possibility. Yet the greater part was morbid curiosity, and it sent him creeping around the corner of the granary to seek the window, just missing Gil- galad as he made his exit through the front.

Out of his son’s sight, Orodreth peered through the cracked and dusty panes.
His heart, already making a slow progression down his spine, sank straight into his toes. There indeed among the farming implements stood Finrod.

History had been quick to name Orodreth a pale imitation of his uncle, and every time he saw him Orodreth felt paler still. Even in casual Telerin sailing costume — his flaxen hair windswept in a ribbon, his blouse sloughing down his shoulder, his breeches cut very high above the knee — Finrod seemed radiant and royal as he had been when he presided over the court of Nargothrond. Before they had turned on him, and even then his noble stature had persisted through his downfall, becoming the sort of thing people sang lays about. Whereas burdened with the crown Orodreth had only made a further shambles of the mess Finrod left behind; it was not all his fault, surely, but entrusting much of his policymaking to a mortal scarcely clear of his majority had been a poor decision, no matter how comely the young man had been.

In short, Finrod’s mere presence made Orodreth feel dreadful about who he was. He’d comped his uncle enough nights in the inn — such guilt one harbors, for letting someone’s kingdom fall to ruin — and he had not wanted him at the wedding. Certainly not when he’d told Angrod and Eldalótë not to bother.

(This too in order to spare himself from his parents’ commentary on the softness of the beds and the dangerous conditions for their elderly sighthounds, who had weak ankles and startled easily at goats.)

Yet the Elf that Finrod stood beside filled Orodreth with a further dread.

Fingon the Valiant was unmistakable: the gold threaded in his dark braids, the ardent glint in his grey-blue eyes. Orodreth thought his father’s cousin had perhaps spoken ten words to him in all the years they had first been alive. He and Angrod were once good friends, and in the days of the Trees Fingon had likely scruffed Orodreth’s head in the midst of some hunting- trip before riding off to theatrically spear a boar. On the Ice he’d remained at the vanguard, wrestling bears and whatnot while Orodreth got frostbite and blisters from his crampons.

Then all those storied battles, including the one where Fingon died in storied fashion—but it was since his death that he'd caused the most trouble.

It didn’t matter what was recorded in the official genealogies, those riverine tapestries draped about the courtyard of the Finwëan palace. Everyone thought Fingon, not Orodreth, was Gil- galad’s father.

This often included Orodreth himself.

But then Orodreth remembered, with righteous nerve, the boy’s tender years in Nargothrond. Who had endured those nights that infant wails had echoed through the caves, taught him his Tengwar, watched him grow into a man? Well, Círdan, for the latter. But it was Orodreth Gil- galad called his father, in spite of the convenient narrative of the High Kingship passing in an unbroken line down from Fingolfin.

Besides, Fingon had only ever been known to have one partner, and neither of them had been in seeming possession of a womb—no matter what people said regarding the provenance of Gil-galad’s occasionally-reddish hair.

But in his agitation over Fingon and Finrod, Orodreth had managed so far to avoid a second glance upon the third Elf in their company, whose presence truly disturbed him most.

Now he beheld Celebrimbor, with hands pistoning a mechanical olive-picker—with shapely forearms bulging—a look of determined, lusty concentration on his face that Orodreth remembered well—

—from the times he had seen Tyelpe at work in the forge. How happy had been his cousin’s coming to Nargothrond, in spite of the sorrow that preceded it, the strife that came after! The Bragollach had left both his parents dead, and Minas Tirith in the Enemy's hand; it had brought Celegorm and Curufin to sow dissent within the caves. And yet Orodreth had so needed a friend. It was lonely raising Finduilas on his own—her mother, an Avar of Nan Tathren, had laughed at the terms of Noldorin monogamy, and after their daughter’s early years visited sporadically when the willow bark trade brought her up the Narog.

Tyelpe had arrived a distant kinsman, for in Aman he came up cloistered in Formenos while the Arafinwëans spent endless summer in Alqualondë. And yet he had become so dear, over commiseration about their mutual marginalization in tedious, erotically charged council meetings; over not a few bottles of miruvor deep into the evening.

How many chances had there been? How many lingering glances beneath those long and ruddy lashes?

Orodreth had never taken his cue. He was a father, a husband (so he still assumed), a pawn in a political tinderbox. Even when Celebrimbor stood at his side as Orodreth cast out his kin— breaking from his own father and uncle for love of the line of Arafinwë—even then there had been no overture.

Then the Mormegil had come to Nargothrond. Tyelpe was among the smiths when Anglachel was cast anew to Gurthang; he’d counseled Orodreth of the fell doom he sensed was bound into the blade. Orodreth had not heeded him, but let Túrin build a bridge.

Thus had Glaurung come, and the city fallen, and Finduilas been taken and slain terribly. Orodreth spent the next millennium in Mandos kicking himself—while Celebrimbor got involved with someone far more glamorous and interesting, even if that person happened to be the former Lieutenant of Angband in radiant disguise.

Yes, Orodreth had so very many regrets when it came to Celebrimbor.

How long had he harbored his fantasies: of carding his hands through hair dark-red as heartsblood, of being crushed between broad shoulders thickened by hammerstrikes? Still, when word came that Tyelpe had returned from the Halls, he’d sent no heartfelt letter, no basket of Ellairë’s finest goat cheese and figs. Orodreth only hoped his cousin assumed he was still dead, for he was certain if he ever saw Celebrimbor returned to life he would die again, only of embarrassment.

And yet having somehow survived this moment, Orodreth now found himself climbing the trellis that went up the outer wall of the granary.

He found he couldn’t help himself, that several thousand years of mortification had dissolved the instant he caught sight of those amber eyes, warmed from within not only by Treelight but the spirit of a true smith, who forges his great works for friendship, and for love.

There was a trapdoor on the roof, if he could not go in by the front.

Propelled by self-loathing, by anger, and most of all by lust, Orodreth scrabbled with the latch and lifted up the handle. Strategic positioning never having been his strong suit, he then tumbled into the granary from above.

He landed in a rather unflattering position, ankles raised, a quantity of hay breaking his fall and draining him at once of erotic impulse. Three chivalrous hands automatically extended

themselves, smelling of fish; Orodreth shirked from them all, shimmying backward toward a barn-beam.

“You!” He cried in collective address, looking from man to man. “What in all the Themes are you doing on my island?”

“Snorkeling trip,” said Fingon, with absolute assurance. Celebrimbor took a longer beat. “Shipwrecked, wasn’t it?”

Finrod crossed his arms. “Artaresto, I demand a prompt explanation as to why I was not invited to this wedding in the first place.”

“No one was invited but family.” Orodreth staggered up, shedding hay. “Immediate family.” He attempted a threatening glare. “And there are enough of them. I don’t have room for you, go home.”

“The ferry’s not for a week.” Fingon’s resolve fell easily to a pout.

Celebrimbor pointed to Finrod, seeming eager for a second impression at speaking. “He’s got a boat.”

“You’ve got wings,” snapped Fingon. 

Finrod laughed. “Well, I’m not leaving.” 

“Oh, go step on a sea urchin, Findaráto.”

Roused and terrified by his own discourtesy, Orodreth kicked at the granary door. This caused a plank to topple outward; while he had certainly not planned so well-choreographed an exit, shimmying through this aperture he was able to remove the crowbar that latched the outside.

“I do not wish to see you again. Any of you.”

With a clang and fleeting glance past his shoulder — at Celebrimbor standing with his olive-picker, an unreadable expression on his beautiful face — Orodreth stormed away.

###

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The innkeeper of Ellairë shuffled weepingly to the root cellar, aiming to muffle his sorrows among the potatoes before he composed himself and found his son, which had been his errand in the first place. Naturally this is where he encountered Celegorm and Curufin again, sorting onions into hempen sacks.

This was the last of many final straws. Orodreth sank disconsolate to the earthen floor. 

“Why are you still in my house.”

Curufin knelt to pat his cheek. “There, there, ‘Resto. You did let us in.”

“And Finduilas was showing us out.” Celegorm scrutinized an onion for blemishes, then placed it among a harvest of flawless specimens. “But then after seeing what a fine order we made of the linens, she recalled you’re rather short-staffed in the kitchen as well.”

“We’ll keep a very low profile,” Curufin assured, all the many gemstones on his person glittering in a slat of sunlight. “Remember, we come in humble penance to make you recompense.”

“The only thing you’ve made me is miserable.” Orodreth raked his hands through his hair. “All of you who keep showing up uninvited—and your son’s in on it, by the by—”

He flailed a hand toward Curufin, who frowned in inscrutable silence. Celegorm gave his brother a significant glance.

“Celebrimbor’s here! How interesting.” “And Finrod,” moaned Orodreth.

“Finrod’s here?” Self-satisfaction crept back into Curufin’s mien. “How even more interesting.”

Orodreth wiped eyes on the sleeve of his blouse. “Fingon too.”

Celegorm shouldered the sacks of onions. “Well, he’s not interesting at all.”

“Tedious, frankly.” Curufin sighed. “We had enough of him during the Trees, always lurking about our father’s house—”

“Eating the good snacks,” said Celegorm.

“Why.” Orodreth shook his head. “Eru all-mother-all-father, why me? It simply must be divine intervention, that one Elf’s life should be so ridden with disaster.”

“Oh, get up.” Curufin hefted him from the armpit. “Taking the Doom of the Noldor a bit personally, are we? I wouldn’t worry about your being the most accursed person in this family.”

“Fifteenth or sixteenth most accursed.” Celegorm flung open the cellar doors. “At most.”

“And don’t you get tired of weeping and trembling all the time?” Curufin led Orodreth, as he wept and trembled, out into the sun. “I seem to recall you doing enough of that during the First Age. Sing a new song, Artaresto.”

###

On his way back to the granary with four glasses and a bucket of sparkling miruvor—on precious ice that would have to be reused for the oysters—Gil-galad discovered that his potential fathers had escaped. Finrod, Fingon, and Celebrimbor were now milling solemnly about the inn grounds.

It seemed they were in search of an exit. Panic bolted up Gil-galad’s spine, and he rushed toward them with a gait that steadied to authoritatively nonchalant on close approach.

“Hello.” He flashed a smile cultivated over millennia of courtly dispute in Lindon. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Fingon seemed about to say something, but Finrod had elected himself spokesperson. “Your father’s hospitality has always been questionable—but this.” His great-uncle’s speech rang with terrible gravity. “Beyond the pale.”

Gil-galad pursed his lips. “You saw Orodreth?”

“And he saw us.” Celebrimbor came forth winkingly, and clasped Gil-galad’s shoulder. “I think it’s best we see ourselves off.”

“Oh, come now.” Fingon took the miruvor. “We can stay for one drink.”

The next thing they knew he had drawn a dagger from his belt and sabred the bottle open. Sweet liquor frothed forth from the seamless cut, and Fingon served it expertly into four portions, nary a drop lost to the dirt.

Before Gil-galad could weigh the consequences of this suggestion, he was raising a toast. “To...”

The truth of the matter stalled on his tongue. My father, he seemed to wish to say, though this would largely be taken to mean Orodreth, and did mean Orodreth, if not at present. My fathers? Gil-galad decided against making the admission just yet. He styled this pause as a happy sigh.

“Family,” he said. “To family.”

“And beyond the immediate!” Finrod drained his glass. “Gods, I needed that. Off to the harbor, then—there’s lots more on the boat.”

###

The hour that followed was among the most extraordinary of Gil-galad’s lives, though nothing of great consequence took place: simply a sail around the island with a great quantity of fine wine and several dozen oysters, which simply had to be eaten given the scarcity of ice. Fingon shucked and tossed the shells overboard while Finrod ran with the wind, laughing and expounding from the tiller, barking orders to Gil-galad—what was Círdan teaching you in his havens, you’re going to lose half your hair to the winches! When they laid anchor Celebrimbor acquiesced to making a demonstration of his wings, analoging their aerodynamical properties to that of the sails with an effortless lack of condescension, even when Finrod started acting as if he had the stronger grasp of physics. Fingon, growing restless in the course of this discussion, lept up and somehow produced two rapiers, which is how Gil-galad found himself drawn into swordfight, leaping from deck to mast to gunwale as Fingon fought with one hand behind his back—I’m going easy on you, you know—and Gil- galad laughed and said the same, and then routed Fingon over the bow so he splashed ass-first into the water.

No Elf had ever looked happier to be soaking wet in his finery. As Fingon climbed the ladder back aboard, Gil-galad lent a hand, seeing that irrepressible hope returned to the other man’s eyes.

“You do remind me of him, you know.” Fingon wrung out his braids, speaking with a strange distance in spite of his gaiety. “My cousin.”

Gil-galad knew there was only one person he could possibly mean. Yet cornered as he was— Celebrimbor and Finrod had devolved into a discourse on the particulate streams of the Moon and Sun and how they impacted air currents—he found once again that he was not yet prepared to have this conversation, in spite of having engineered its ideal conditions.

He poured them both another drink. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to be much more specific.”

“Maitimo.”

Without meaning to Gil-galad must have cringed minutely at the tender epessë. Fingon coughed.

“Maedhros. He could be like that—gentle and unassuming, in spite of his size. Until he went for your spleen.”

Gil-galad certainly remembered the size, and the sabotage—for the decades of the War of Wrath the Fëanorians had been uneasy, necessary allies, up until the day that Maglor and Maedhros scorched their hands on the jewels. Yet Gil-galad remembered no gentleness in that mountainous presence, nor sentimental insinuation that he might in any way bear significant relation to the young High King.

He nodded into his wine. “Are we still talking about swordfighting?”

Fingon laughed. “Excellent metaphor, isn’t it? For so many things. Ah.” But his look turned grave again. “Gil-galad—Ereinion, if I may—I was hoping it might continue my earlier line of inquiry. Why was it that you asked me here?”

A maritime atmosphere only intensified the piercing blue inquiry of his eyes. Gil-galad felt a rise in his chest. Fingon had spoken only of Maedhros, but only one of them stood here now, and in spite of Gil-galad’s supposed semblance to the latter, it was the former whose combative grace he had seen dancing across the deck. Until the end Fingon had anticipated Gil-galad’s every move as if they were extensions of his own.

Regardless of what was widely said, he had never before believed he could be Fingon’s son. And while it was impossible for him to be the biological child of both Fingon and Maedhros — neither man had had a womb — nor did it seem conceivable that they might be his parents in any spiritual sense. They were both like creatures out of legend, one flame bright and fell, one smoldering in the rent earth, while Gil-galad had been as a steady-burning oil lamp, a star shining dependably over the entire Second Age.

And yet. As Fingon waited for his answer Gil-galad felt the closest he had come to the cusp of admission. Apart from feigning his own fall into the Sea it seemed he had no way out of this one.

Until suddenly the wind turned, and Finrod was clamoring for him to aid the gybe. “Pardon me.” Gil-galad leapt up gratefully. “And perhaps we might discuss over dinner!”

He could not bear to look back on Fingon’s disappointment. His great-uncle occupied him well enough with his directives, alternating easily between stern and good-natured as together they wrestled the sails. In Finrod too Gil-galad saw himself. Many in Nargothrond had said so when he was a child, and in finally meeting him in Aman Gil-galad had come to agree. Yet to believe the implication of Orodreth’s diary—that Finrod was in fact his father—was to give credence to unspeakable horror. Had Gil-galad in fact begun his life as some cursed lab experiment? Would Finrod even have known what had come of his body—what had been made of it, perhaps even after his death?

Watching Finrod in command of his craft, vibrant and golden and grinning, Gil-galad could scarcely bear the thought. Moreover, gauging by the angle of the Sun, he guessed that he ought to have started his braids half an hour ago.

“Better be off.” He began descending the ladder. “But I’ll expect all of you at sundown, yes?”

“Naturally, my lad, naturally!” Finrod seemed to have completely forgotten the insult he’d taken earlier.

Fingon at first said nothing, though Gil-galad managed to elicit a nod when he caught his eyes.

“Sundown. Of course.”

Then Celebrimbor approached, his hands entwined with spare sail-line he’d been using to model a nine-crossing knot, in attempt to prove some molecular structure to Finrod.

“Will Orodreth not be offended? Your father was very clear in his desire that we leave the island.”

There was a subtle longing to his look—and skepticism, which Gil-galad knew could be a prelude to the stubbornness belied by his affable nature. How often they had disagreed, once Celebrimbor came to know him as a man and not a child—how differently they had ordered their realms, Gil-galad rejecting the evil that Celebrimbor had come to harbor. (Though had Annatar’s arrival in Lindon been a family reunion? This thought too he perished.)

It was for this reason that among a host of implausibilities Celebrimbor seemed the least likely potential father of all. Though Gil-galad was still known to call him uncle, they had been peers and friends and allies for a thousand and a half years in Middle-earth. Celebrimbor had forged the Ring of Air for Gil-galad’s hand.

Still: If only Tyelpe knew, he’d read in the diary. Knew what? That Orodreth loved him, or that he had reason to love him beyond his handsome looks—that he had been a father to Tyelpe in more than forging him a sword?

“Orodreth.” Gil-galad laughed. “I’ll work on him! Thank you for the oysters and the physics and the duel—see you all at dinner.”

With this he made a seamless dive into the Sea, and held his breath until he’d emerged near the surf, where coming up for air he saw who was awaiting him on shore.

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As Gil-galad ascended from the waves he was met by his fiancés descending the winding rock staircase to the beach—or rather Celebrían descending on their behalf. Elrond was being carried in his wife’s arms, his pearlescent sparkling toenails dangling safely above the sand.

“Ereinion Gil-galad!” His former herald brimmed with all the bright fury Gil-galad had seen upon the plain of Dagorlad. “Where in marred Arda have you been?”

He had always found it difficult to lie to Elrond. Withhold, certainly. For nigh a thousand years Gil-galad had constrained himself, held off from confessing how he longed to lean across the desk and kiss him all those nights in Lindon when they were late in council. (He’d done the same in the Last Alliance, kept to himself the fiery foresights of coming doom that crowded all his dreams.) Elrond’s beauty was otherwise too bewitching to court with fallacy, for he also saw clearly through that which was feigned.

Gil-galad stumbled forth, dripping, uncertain of how to proceed—when Celebrían grinned. “It’s just as Finduilas said, meleth-nîn. He’s looking for his Ada.”

As much as it was concerning to know his plan had been uncovered, the suggestive languor with which his future spouse spoke made Gil-galad go weak in the knees. He was about to say something about having been a very naughty boy indeed when Elrond insisted upon being set down on the sands.

“I suppose that’s one way to describe going about with strange men on boats, the day of your own wedding.” Ascertaining the set of his pedicure—and smoothing his low-cut singlet so it sat fetchingly about his rear—he stamped forth. “And your sister’s lovely, by the way. Not that it seems you were planning on properly introducing us.”

In stocking-feet Elrond’s height struck both of his partners at about the shoulder. Still it was hard for Gil-galad not to feel as if some vast unknowable presence was looming above him, peering into the very marrow of his desire as Melian the Maia had once transfixed her husband in the glades of Nan Elmoth.

“Elig-nîn, Tyelemírë.” Gil-galad stepped out of the surf, beseeching; how beautiful were his betrothed ones, wearing barely more than smallclothes; the rest of their wedding finery awaited them uphill. “My loves, I do not deserve your sympathies—”

“Oh, there he goes.” Elrond scoffed, patting a sopping braid behind Gil-galad’s ear. “Of course you do. You simply might have told us, so we could aid you in your ruse.”

“We’re quite good at ruses.” Celebrían sidled up behind her husband, idly stroking his shoulder. “Ask Glorf and Erestor, if we hadn’t locked them in the rare book room that night —”

“Ereinion’s scheme is not a romantic one, my lord.” By the Sea Elrond’s eyes turned a depthless grey-green; one imagined the Lord of Waters speaking decrees through his grandfather Tuor. “Though how convenient that his marks happen to be three of the most famously handsome Elves in history.”

Elrond had never been the jealous type, but then Gil-galad had never given him cause. There was none for the High King save his herald—until he’d met the herald’s wife, that was.

How maddening and delicious had been those centuries after Celebrían’s healing, sharing memories of their Peredhel: his wisdom and kindness, the midnight sheen of his hair! If these meetings had been at first sentimental, they soon took a turn for salacious, and it was only for honor of the beloved body that lay absent between them that they’d managed to keep their hands off one another. As soon as Elrond arrived in Aman their fate was sealed, the Statute of Finwë and Míriel be damned—and it had nothing to say about half-Elves, anyway.

“Be most assured,” began Gil-galad, one hand laced to Elrond’s, the other set on Celebrían’s curving hip, “that all my love and ardor I reserve for you.”

“And for her,” amended Elrond.

“But mostly for you,” purred Celebrían half-jesting, with a nip at his ear. Elrond was nestled between them now, just where he liked.

“Prove it, then.”

His voice had turned more breathy than bothered. Yet it still bore a command, and Gil-galad had never hesitated to take his herald’s counsel. He drew Celebrían into a kiss that her husband might observe from his lower vantage.

Her lips were well worth savoring for their own sake. Celebrían was a handsome woman who now wore her tragic scars with a roguish air, and her warrior’s body was as well-suited to the armor of the sparring grounds—where she and Gil-galad had excised their passions, ere their distant star had sailed—as to the scantier dress she now sported. She smelled like the honeysuckle garlanding her silver hair, and she laughed into his mouth, and Gil-galad loved her with an ease and abundance still astounding to him. For the love he had known for one had doubled to embrace another, and the passion with it.

As Gil-galad drew a hand to the low of Celebrían’s back he well-remembered his passions returned—

Yet Elrond sundered them, with a hand splayed to each of his lovers’ collarbones.

“Restrain yourselves,” he scolded, though he looked about to lick his lips. “Remember that we seal our troth this night. I will not have you both spoiled for me ere Tilion takes the skies.”

Gil-galad glanced to Celebrían, who arched a brow, then turned to tip up Elrond’s chin.

“What is it that you wish, beloved?” Gil-galad watched dark lashes demurring as if in fealty; he placed a single kiss upon a mouth already parted in breathless permission. “Our proof, or our restraint?”

“Or to be the one spoiled?” Celebrían drew her husband back against herself, as Elrond sighed, hand lingering down the sculpted plane of Gil-galad’s chest. “There will be time enough for that.”

Then she too drew Elrond into a tender kiss—though he yelped when she smacked his ass. The tumult drove them both into the lapping waves, until they stumbled down together with a splash, rolling and laughing in the tide’s caress. Wet as he was already, Gil-galad joined his bride and groom-to-be on the sands, taking his own time basking between them and receiving with delight their still-restrained passions. There would be time enough for that indeed—as well as for all of them to dry off and clean up.

###

The thing about an Elvish wedding was that it hardly mattered when the persons of honor planned to arrive. The party proper would span at least twelve hours before the aftermath spilled into the coming days, and was as likely to start when someone deemed it dusk as when the betrothed partners were fully prepared for its commencement.

First came cocktails, then song and dancing, followed by a dinner that devolved to dance and song. Next a heady toast to bless the consummation, which subsequently took place under the cover of deepest spangled night as they had done in the dales of Cuiviénen, with traditional guest participation still sometimes observed. Then came coffee and pastries, the gifts of the parents, a few songs more solemn and sacred; and at last at daybreak the exchange of rings, gold swapping in for silver as vows were made to Varda and Manwë, to Eru in grave memory of Her third and thus far longest party, the Theme that warped in loving, marred eternity around Her firstborn Children.

Not so complicated a schedule, thought Orodreth, made peaceably distracted again by tasks: flowers, table-settings, Finduilas’s fortunately reinforced supply of candles. The intervention of his cousin-uncles had somehow managed to calm him from his sulk, though perhaps it was in fact their absence that soothed him. Where had Celegorm and Curufin gotten to now? He supposed there was no getting rid of them at this point, for they were lost to the crowd; guests in various degrees of beach and formal-wear were already milling about the courtyard. While family had been limited, Orodreth had not been able to forestall the bride and grooms from

inviting their friends, which seemed to be the entire populations in exile of Imladris and Mithlond. Bowls of olives and platters of sardines were disappearing as soon as he set them out on the table, not to mention the wine.

Yet the people were enjoying Orodreth’s hospitality, weren’t they? He was showing them a good time. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so disastrous an evening after all—so long as the second wave of wedding-crashers stayed far, far away.

Of course it was just as he engaged this forfending thought that Celebrimbor came up to him, all kindly eyes and Fëanorian cheekbones.

“Resto.”

Orodreth fixed all his attention on gathering up discarded shrimp-shells. “I beg you, do not address me intimately.”

I am not worthy of it, he was thinking of a way to say, one that did not undermine his authority as wedding-host. Before this was possible, however, Celebrimbor had knelt before him, and then he was taking up Orodreth’s seafood-perfumed hand.

“My lord Orodreth.”

On bended knee, Celebrimbor lowered his gaze. Orodreth received the kiss to his fingertips, stunned, and remembered suddenly how Tyelpe had once pledged fealty to him upon the throne, that he had been deemed worthy of the great smith’s service.

Yet what remained of ruined Nargorthrond was now far below the Sea.
“Oh, get up,” hissed Orodreth, embarrassed for a variety of reasons. “I told you to leave.”

He found he was speaking softly, though, as Tyelpe rose, an apologetic grin upon his winsome face.

“I’d hoped—”

Celebrimbor cast his gaze about the room. It couldn’t be he was nervous before him, thought Orodreth—not bold Tyelpe.

“It’s only been good to be here, even for a little while. I have loved your son since he was a child—when he was a boy, I hope you do not mind me saying, indeed I nearly thought of him as my own.”

“Indeed,” was all Orodreth could manage.

He ached to hear this confession, a half-eaten shrimp held awkward to his chest. (At least he had not changed into his formal robes.) He was recalling the hours Tyelpe had spent with him and Gil-galad in the royal apartments, which, absent Finrod’s expansive presence, had so often seemed cold and vacant. Yet when they three had been together, there was warmth.

“I fear I made a fool of myself before him in the end.” Celebrimbor laughed grimly, and Orodreth ached again, remembering the grave account of Sauron’s battle-banner. “Though I aimed to give him succor, too, if only to ward off a doom that was my making. You know I always thought he would be the best of all of us.”

“Oh, it’s not yet time for speeches, Uncle Tyelpe.”

Gil-galad had appeared, still in semi-formal dress, though his hair looked clean and combed out from bathing. He clapped Celebrimbor’s shoulder, and fixed a breezy smile on Orodreth.

“Hello, Ada, I see you’ve found our late arrivals! It’s the strangest thing—this one here, and Prince Fingon and Uncle Finrod, they’ve been doing a survey for a new map of the archipelago, and just happened to land on Ellairë the very day of the wedding—”

“I see,” said Orodreth faintly.

Fingon was indeed discernable in the crowd, laughing charmingly as he did party-tricks with knives. Galadriel had just walked past him, in fact, with a curious look—she was bringing Elwing a drink at the far side of the yard, as Celeborn used his height to help Gwindor hang the final lamps, and Finduilas gossiped with a clutch of guests. Elrond and Celebrían had managed to make a somewhat subdued entrance, in spite of the ransom of jewels adorning their cocktail attire. That was all the family accounted for, save Eärendil who would return at dawn with the silmaril after his nightly journey, and Círdan who in his old age preferred matrimonial ceremony to celebration and would also arrive in the morrow.

And then of course Finrod, who was bearing straight for Orodreth, Celegorm and Curufin in tow.

For some reason they were all wearing ruffles, and their hair was very large.

“Nephew!” Finrod kissed Orodreth thrice Teleri-style, his strange costume jingling with— spangles? Bells? How could it be so noisy, and yet show so very much skin? “I hope you don’t mind I’ve taken the liberty of arranging entertainment. I mean, what were the odds of running into these two?!”

He rolled his brow in happy incredulity. Celebrimbor at Orodreth’s side tightened the grip on his cup. Curufin was staring at his son with eyes lacquered in silver paint—looking perhaps the least smug Orodreth had ever seen him, and at a total loss for words.

Was this the first they’d seen of one another, since...?

Celebrimbor bowed his head, murmuring to Orodreth. “You must excuse me.”

Something was caught on Orodreth’s tongue—Tyelpe, wait!—but Finrod, oblivious or else indifferent to the father-son tensions, waylaid his nephew while Celebrimbor slipped away.

“Just one number, for old time’s sake. After all my dear cousins do owe us both a great many kindnesses, after all those schemes.”

Winking at Orodreth, he turned on a very high heel and cleared a path through the crowd, all eyes turning to him and to his backup singers as they made their way to the stage.

###

Chapter End Notes

Elig-nîn - my lil' star (this nickname a universal constant for my quantum elronds!!) 
Tyelemírë - silver jewel

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“Good evening, Ellairë!” Finrod clomped up to the dais, voluminous sleeves spread wide. “Greetings, honored guests, beloved family. Holy matrimony! What could be a happier occasion.”

Yet happiness was no longer the prevailing feeling in the courtyard. An uneasy silence had spread, punctuated by murmured cries of recognition as people began to perceive the third and fifth sons of Fëanor beneath all the frilly ornament. For the umpteenth time today Orodreth felt dizzy with dread, his sight swimming with flecks of white light—but no, that was Gwindor hefting up the disco-ball, that distinctly Fëanorian invention, while Celeborn looked on in horror.

“Ah.” Beneath his spotlight, Finrod smiled chastisingly toward Curufin and Celegorm. “Perhaps you are wondering why I am accompanied by my villainous kinsmen. Weddings are awkward, aren’t they? All those estrangements and rifts and feuds we’d rather not contend with in these blessed lands—and suddenly we’re thrown together for crudités!”

Making an irreverent little gesture he looked at Elwing, who stood now at the edge of the crowd. Elrond had come to his mother’s side, as if staying her from flying off. But she had not turned into a bird yet: only her eyes had gone aquiline, gold, graven, and piercing as those of Gwaihir the Windlord.

Uneasily Orodreth remembered the enchantment carried in his uncle’s voice, and feared it stayed him too, for he felt powerless to stop the proceedings.

Finrod clasped his hands. “Let us break the ice in song, shall we? Here’s one we used to sing in the camps of the War of Wrath. Or I did, I suppose these two were dead—and deservingly so!—but they’ve gotten up to speed, for the subject is one dear to all of our hearts. Hit it, boys.”

At the command Celegorm snapped into an architectural pose framing Finrod, and Curufin followed an uncertain beat behind his brother.

Then in voices surprisingly sweet and clear, they began an unaccompanied duet.

The Star of Radiance shines on the horizon Burning bright and fell
Lit like Varda’s wells
Guided by Eärendil

Music struck in from somewhere as Finrod took up the verse in a tranquil mezzo-soprano.

You were sick and tired of the war
And the endless assault of Angband
The son of Tuor sought the distant shore
Asked the Valar to make a last stand
We imagine you were glad to see us coming
In our swan-ships rigged in might
And we’ll all take heart and comfort when he sails the skies tonight

Background choreography continued as he sang, indicating seeking, rigging, sailing, et cetera —Orodreth had forgotten that Celegorm was a lauded dancer in his youth, attendant as he had been to the Huntsman’s rites. Curufin did his best to keep up, and seemed reassured by the return of the chorus:

The Star of Radiance shines on the horizon
Work of Fëanor’s hand
(Silmaril, silmaril) (This was Celegorm, singing contrabass.) 
Hallowed treelight, sand
(Silmaril, silmaril)
His sons bound by their oath they stand

Tonight the Star of Radiance shines on the horizon Burning bright and fell
(Silmaril, silmaril)
Lit like Varda’s wells
(Silmaril, silmaril) Guided by Eärendil

Of course Finrod was having his way with the audience; he always did. Toes were tapping, and a convivial atmosphere had resumed. It didn’t seem all bad, Orodreth thought. Though Gil-galad cast a bemused look back at him, he had not stopped smiling, and unlike the day’s earlier confrontation it did not seem as if a brawl might break out at any moment.

In any case Orodreth did not want to be in the middle of things again should the situation evolve, not when he had another errand.

He melted into the crowd in search of Celebrimbor.

Back turned as to display the tight fit of his trousers, Finrod sang over a spangled shoulder with lashes batting.

Morgoth crowned with Fëanor’s stolen stones 
That had brought grace and doom on our people
Lúthien danced before the Enemy’s throne
Beren’s hand was lost, but that brightness was taken from evil
And so the silmaril was passed on through the living line of Melian 
Though those brothers tried their best
And it’s as Sirion was burning that the jewel was carried west

This last word was accompanied by a dramatic sweep of sleeves towards the mainland. By the breakdown into the chorus the singers had achieved a seeming mastery of the space: guests were clapping and harmonizing and supplementing Celegorm on his chanted refrain of silmaril.

As bodies shifted around him Orodreth found himself lost, and moreover in exactly the position he had wished to avoid: proximity to Elwing, and to Finrod, who was suddenly weaving his way toward her with beseeching reverence, a hand held out as if to offer a dance.

There on that cliff
Her fate took flight
To Ulmo’s hands, the holy jewel, she made her plight 
In white gull’s form
Borne o’er the waves
By Elwing was all Beleriand brought aid

In the course of singing this Finrod had managed to persuade his song-subject into his choreography. After the first startled twirl Elwing looked skeptical, but not scandalized, and by the end of the bridge she had become the leading dance-partner, dipping Finrod low as he flourished on aid.

As if on cue, the crystal lanterns all exhausted—indeed Gwindor must have been in on the lighting design. For it was this moment that revealed Gil-Estel had risen high above the courtyard, the brightest star in the heavens twinkling in violet dusk as it had every night for nearly seven thousand years.

The Star of Radiance shines on the horizon—

In the twilight, Elwing grinned. The beat dropped, the lights flashed, and the crowd went absolutely wild.

Tonight the Star of Radiance shines on the horizon 
Burning bright and fell
(Silmaril, silmaril)
Lit like Varda’s wells
(Silmaril, silmaril) Guided by Eärendil

Finrod had returned to the stage divested of much of his costume, which people had been grabbing at for souvenirs—indeed it seemed made for this purpose—and now lead the band in jubilant coda.

Guided by Eärendil
Guided by Eär...endil
(The Star of Radiance shines on the horizon...!)

A thunderous applause went up, shouts of encore, flowers and hair-ribbons floating toward the stage. Finrod was bowing profusely, and Curufin with an absent stare, beholding his glowing cousin with an unguarded awe not unlike that which he had displayed before his long-lost son. Celegorm was flexing his arms so hard he’d torn the flimsy fabric of his upper sleeves.

One slow clap drew power from all the others. Elrond came forth, looking like a white peacock with his ornamental braids and train—and this only the first of his wedding ensembles.

A hush passed over the guests as they began to realize the performers had not obtained the advance permission of the bride.

“Thank you, Uncle,” Elrond addressed only Finrod, with a courtesy undermined by his fierce gaze. “More gracious songs of my house have been sung to me before, but that was not as tasteless as it might have been. Though it was my impression that your accompanists had been consigned to the scullery, and out of our sights.”

Finrod dipped his golden head. “And consigned they shall be swiftly. Know only that I sing for love and memory of your great-grandparents, may the Lady Lúthien and her Beren walk together forever beyond the borders of Arda—”

A great shadow was cast presently above the party. In gull-shape Elwing swooped over the stage, darting toward the skies to seek her husband. Though not before bequeathing a parting gift of birdshit: not a little reserved for Finrod, though Celegorm and Curufin remained her principal targets.

“Ha!” Finrod blew a soiled braid off of his face as his cousins groused behind him; he raised a drink he’d been passed by some admirer. “I suppose I’d better keep things brief, then. To you, Lord Elrond, and to my niece Celebrían and my grand-nephew Rodnor. May this consummation be a blesséd one—for us all!”

###

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As cheers to Finrod’s toast resounded in the courtyard, amid the gaiety Gil-galad felt a great and ambient dread. There were plenty of issues to raise his concern—he supposed most of them were his own fault.

At the moment he was wondering where Orodreth had gotten to. His father had not seemed satisfied by what seemed to be a perfectly cogent explanation for their three unexpected guests.

(Of five total, but Gil-galad hadn’t the faintest idea why Celegorm and Curufin had turned up, and this too churned his addled mind.)

“Ereinion?” Celebrían passed him a shot of miruvor, the first of many persons who were attempting to do so; her own jeweled knuckles were crowded with little cups. “Are you well, my love?”

He knew she could read his anxiety, even without the mind-speech of long marriage. They’d spent enough hours together bearing the theater of polite society, all those well-intentioned questions about Middle-earth as it seemed that it was speeding toward its downfall.

One wonders what the point of sticking around there really was. And what became of your herald, anyway—oh, he’s her husband as well? How curious!

Celebrían’s hand lingered in Gil-galad’s as the sweet burn went down his throat, her eyes inquiring.

It was then Elrond slipped between his spouses without an upward glance to scry this subtle tension. He prided himself on reading the both of them better than anyone, but he was evidently reeling from his own social ordeal and subsequent alcohol consumption.

“You heard your uncle, my darlings. Our marriage bed awaits.”

Yet he was rubbing at the point between his brows as if to fend off a migraine.

Gil-galad set down his shot, holding up a hand. “If you would but permit me—one moment, one moment only—I will return—”

Elrond’s gaze sharpened heraldically. “My liege, I would strongly urge—”

Yet this protest was drowned out by the thrum of the crowd, music and laughter—and gossip, eyes lingering on Gil-galad as he crossed the floor—

“Rodnor!” Finrod’s firm grasp spun him around, and with more laughter Gil-galad found himself drawn in an asphyxiating embrace, then propelled back to a chummy clasp. “Oh, I hope you didn’t mind the little performance. Couldn’t be helped, you see, couldn’t be...”

Gil-galad inched out from under his hand. “Indeed, Uncle, it was...most unexpectedly... festive—if you would excuse me.”

But Finrod’s grip was strong, and his gaze unfocused. Gil-galad thought of how much wine had been on that boat, not to mention how many rounds had been raised in honor of the song and its singer.

“Oh, I’m so very glad you asked me here — you’re a bigger man than your father. Little Artanáro!” His look turned maudlin. “I would have spoiled you rotten if I was still around. Valar, but you would have been shiny, such a darling, shining boy, the Crown Prince of Nargothrond! You might have been my son...”

Now Finrod’s face crumpled in sentiment, and Gil-galad found himself likewise frozen by the display of emotion, confession close to welling from his heart—

“On the subject of sons, has anyone seen Tyelperinquar?” Dabbing his soiled face with a handkerchief, Curufin slunk up. His roving glance fixed upon Gil-galad. “Ah.” A beringéd hand was proffered. “Curufinwë Atarinkë Fëanárion. We’re related, somehow or another. Great party.”

This conversation was thankfully cut short. Finrod, festive mood recovered, was suddenly making eyes and murmuring things at his cousin, while Curufin attempted to retain the air of disaffection he’d seemed completely stripped of during the performance, mesmerized as he had been by Finrod.

Gil-galad had little interest in seeing where this was going, and so resumed his task, scanning the dark and crowded courtyard for Orodreth.

This was of course when Fingon came directly into his path. 

###

Orodreth sought the starlit terrace. While its many comfortable chaise lounges would surely come in use during later phases of the evening, there was no food or wine here, and so for the meantime it remained abandoned — save for a tall and handsome shadow standing in the corner.

“Tyelpe,” Orodreth said.

The endearment came out breathless, unbidden. Yet Orodreth felt no mortification at his overfamiliarity; he could still feel the kiss in his fingertips. He rushed across the tiles, propelled by the same gravity that brought him tumbling earlier through that trapdoor.

But Celebrimbor did not bend toward him. Leaning on the balustrade he kept his eyes locked on the moonlit waves, and his long clever fingers knit together tightly.

Orodreth slowed as he came to his side. “That wasn’t—” he started, then sighed. “So you didn’t know your father and uncle had come out of Mandos.”

Until this morning Orodreth hadn’t either, which he was about to say. But Celebrimbor laughed bitterly.

“I have no father.” He shook his head. “Nor any uncles.”

And Orodreth remembered the court of Nargothrond, his own voice declaiming from the throne as Celegorm and Curufin were cast out.

Tyelpe had been steadfast at his side. It was not just the matter of Lúthien and Felagund. Centuries of rancor cleaved him from his blood—from the Oath that had not bound him, barely more than a babe at its speaking, and yet had torn him from his mother, made him kinslayer, tossed him across the Sea.

Across the Sea that day, he had become a man completely his own. That tense hour in the caves Curufin had betrayed no feeling, save a bitter glint to his eyes that mirrored Celebrimbor’s. Yet for all the discontent Orodreth bore against the sons of Fëanor in lives past and present, this evening under the dancing lights he had recognized a kindred sentiment in Curufin: a parent equally awed and terrified to be reunited with their child.

He recalled the morning Gil-galad had appeared at the inn-gate, still shrouded in the garb of the Halls, and asked if he might stay here.

Before he could stop himself Orodreth had reached out in the darkness.

“Indeed,” he said, and took up Tyelpe’s hand into his own. “But your father may yet think he has a son.”

###

“Drink with me.”

Fingon spoke with urgency, shouting over the roar of the crowd; double-fisting glasses of miruvor.

Gil-galad’s head was already spinning, but it seemed to him he had little choice in the matter. Fingon maintained a searing eye contact as they went through the rhythms of their toast.

When it was done he wiped his mouth and stepped to bridge the gap between them, allowing no word edgewise.

“I know why I’m here.”

Fingon was a half a head shorter than Gil-galad. Still even in this silly atmosphere his presence felt larger than life, the aura of his bright flame on the battlefield, of Utúlie’n aurë! cried out to the risen Sun.

Gil-galad’s nervous laughter caught in his throat. “Do you?”

Fingon’s answer was to come forward and clasp him on the shoulder, drawing their brows into a warriors’ embrace.

“Hail Gil-galad Nelyafinwion,” he uttered gravely. “Scion of Kings!” In the close between them Gil-galad saw his eyes were brimming.

“Nelyafinwion.” He slowly backed away to take a look at Fingon, with his dark brown hair, his umber skin, his slate-blue gaze so very like his own. “You think I’m the son of... Maedhros?”

“My son,” corrected Fingon softly, holding Gil-galad’s cheek. “For Maedhros surely was your sire, and what was Maedhros’ was mine in kind. We were bound in all things, though we dared not name it then.”

For an awkward breath some gloom threatened to prevail over his gladness. Yet Fingon swiftly recovered, remembering himself in laughter. “Look at you!” he cried, and gripped Gil-galad’s arms; he twirled an unpermitted finger in Gil-galad’s hair. “The height, the hue— very like Nerdanel’s in the winter, though of course like Haldanárë’s—”

Gil-galad patted the probing hands from his braids, parsing the feminine name: one who hides fire.

“Haldanárë?”

“Oh yes, of course, Maitimo’s captain, a most doughty woman.” Fingon smiled, dabbing a tear with his thumb. “She had been—aiding us, for I was in want of an heir, indeed not long before the Nirnaeth...”

Here he trailed off in memory or ellipsis. Gil-galad surmised that he still might have been sired by either Fingon or Maedhros; he did not doubt this Haldanárë’s doughtiness. He suddenly wished to know everything about her.

“Where does she abide?” he rushed to ask. “Might I meet her?”

It was the closest Gil-galad had come to admitting he believed what Fingon said. The idea that he might have a mother...

Yet Fingon was solemn. “I know little of her fate, save that she followed her lord in all things.” He needed not say any more than this; Gil-galad swallowed, remembering his error in seeking Sirion too late. “And she was always slower to forgive herself than some.”

He glanced away to Celegorm, who was presently doing some sort of striptease on top of the bar.

“The Halls must have her still.” Fingon shook his head. “I have not met her again on these shores.”

All around them lights still flashed, and music thumped and trilled. Gil-galad took in all he’d learned, feeling lost.

It seemed both that a swarm of eyes surveilled him and that no one could see what was happening to him at all.

The truth—whatever it happened to be—was something he had brought upon himself. Yet could he bear it?

“I’m sorry.” Gil-galad looked to Fingon, for a moment letting their faces mirror the same sorrow. “But I must find my father.”

Again he did not turn back to witness Fingon crestfallen, but walked away reeling, more resolved than ever in his errand.

### 

Celebrimbor drew away from Orodreth’s touch.

“Many have named you soft-hearted,” he said.

His voice was not unkindly, yet it was cool. Orodreth sighed. “I suppose they’re probably right.”

Embarrassed by his forwardness, he’d turned away from Tyelpe to fiddle with the silver rings on his fingers. He had much nicer stuff somewhere, but it seemed he was never going to find the time tonight to dress.

“Not I.”

Orodreth stilled. “Oh?”

Now Celebrimbor’s lovely hands flew up into the air, as if to illustrate a theorem.

“You held Minas Tirith against Sauron until the bitter end, and lived. When I came to Nargothrond they were still singing songs of that.”

Orodreth scoffed. “Songs of lamentation, perhaps.”

But Celebrimbor did not seem to hear him. “I faced the very same fate and perished.” He paused in grief. “The same enemy. You were with me, it seemed, as Ost-in-Edhil fell. The thought of you—I must say it brought me great comfort, before the end.”

Warmth rushed Orodreth’s cheeks; he barely found the air to reply. “It did?” he said. “I did?”

“And brought me here, to Ellairë.” Celebrimbor was looking upon him with those eyes of amber fire, passionate and sincere—before his speech quickened again. “Which is why I must express my gravest disappointment that you would bid me embrace a man with whom I have left all ties sundered—who bears my name but none of my love. I did this, you would do to remember, out of my fealty to you.”

Orodreth felt as if he was sinking, for Tyelpe’s warm words had borne him so high—and yet his voice rose in defense.

“Celebrimbor, I did not say this.”

“‘Your father may yet think he has a son?’ Yes, Orodreth, evidently Curufin does think this, whatever mediocre Maia stamped him out of the Halls — and he is quite mistaken.”

“Then say this to him,” Orodreth muttered; he still thought he might wilt, and yet he had not managed to. “Else he will skulk at you again, and you will run from him, and it will start all over. You must acknowledge him directly, with honesty, if you hope to be free of him.”

Confrontation had never been his own strong suit. Still he had achieved it in his day—or at least once, in the halls of Nargothrond—and come out the victor. Against Curufin and his brother, no less.

But Celebrimbor spat his words. “He is not worthy of my breath.”

Later Orodreth would not exactly remember from whence burst his objection. He was only remembering the first moments he had laid eyes on Finduilas and Gil-galad restored to their second lives: how his heart had broken and reforged within a single instant, sealed up again with silver like a shattered pot.

“A father has a right to know his son!”

The cry shook through him, so that Orodreth stopped to steady himself—though there was more to say, that it mattered not if all there was to know was enmity. Yet in his pause for breath he glanced up.

Gil-galad stepped out of the darkened corridor, standing before them in the moonlight. “Ada?”

He looked from Orodreth to Celebrimbor. There was a confusion on his face that Orodreth had not seen since his son had woken from a nightmare as a child, convinced some shadow in the caves was moving of its own accord.

And of course Orodreth remembered it had been him and Tyelpe then, too, playing backgammon in the royal chambers deep into the night, and no doubt discoursing as they just had. When his cousin stood to leave, his tall and slender silhouette must have been cast somehow against the door of the boy’s room.

“Rodnor, darling, we were just—”
But Celebrimbor was gone, had slipped back unseen into the shadows.

“Oh, Varda’s milk-pail in the heavens.” Orodreth raked his fingers through his yet-to-be- braided hair. “What an awful mess.”

“Ada,” Gil-galad stepped before him. “Let me—”

“Hush.” Orodreth stayed his son, and took his hand. “Don’t be troubled, it’s only—oh, one never knows who’s going to cross the threshold, does one.”

After Celebrimbor’s reminder he was thinking of the night that Sauron’s army had surrounded the watchtower. At least this wedding had not been so disastrous a day as that one.

“And besides, my starlight.” He reached up to slip a braid behind Gil-galad’s ear. “Shouldn’t you be with your betrotheds? The two of them were looking all loveliness. I’m sure they’re wondering where you’ve gotten to.”

Some odd sheen still clouded Gil-galad’s eyes. But then he looked down bashful. “I suppose they must be.”

Orodreth clapped his cheek. “Then go to them. You only get one consummation—at least so they said in my day.” He waved him off. “Go on!”

Gil-galad went, though he turned over his shoulder.

“May I come see you later? Before daybreak. I still must get dressed.”

First undressed, thought Orodreth wistfully, though he spared his son the commentary.

“As it happens so must I. You know where to find me.”

They shared a grin, and when Gil-galad was gone Orodreth sank down to the stones and wept.

Of course the moment his long-lost love appeared and showed a hint of interest, he’d managed to bring it all to ruin. Who would expect any less of Artaresto Angarátion?

And on such a joyous day. He could see the lights of the party, feel the pulsing music through the floor—

—and suddenly a seismic rumble. A loud crack.

It did nothing to stop the revelry. Yet Orodreth startled, eyes refocusing in the moonlight to perceive a long, thin fissure through the tiled hallway that went down to the courtyard.

Uinen was the patron goddess of Ellairë, of all the surrounding barrier islands bathing in her waves. Their residents lived in her gentle guardianship, held off from the storms and surge and underwater volcanoes that Ulmo bandied about from his benthal domain.

Orodreth had made an offering to the Lady of the Seas this morning, hadn’t he? Sent her some symbolic invitation, in supplication for a wedding blessing?

“You knob.” He sighed to himself. “You absolutely didn’t. Patience, O Maiden of the Tides!” Orodreth stood and called out to the Sea. “I’m very, very sorry!”

A Maia’s wrath was the last thing he needed. And yet that it might befall him was somehow not surprising, given the day’s events.

“I swear I’ll make it right,” said Orodreth, to himself as much as Uinen. “Just please don’t destroy my inn.”

###

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When Finduilas cracked an eye open in the hour before dawn, she saw Gwindor sleeping peacefully on the pillow next to her. And yet it seemed her husband had grown another pair of hands, or perhaps a second body, for two arms were also slung about her from behind.

Recollection resolved through the fog of miruvor; she turned about and knocked into a gently-snoring Celegorm, who murmured and flopped over, taking up even more of the bed.

“Oh, Gods.” Finduilas stretched upward as her husband’s lashes fluttered open, and spoke into his mind: Did we really?

Gwindor cast over a single glance and snuggled back into the coverlet, though the sleepy thread of his thought spooled into hers: He wasn’t bad.

Finduilas rolled her eyes. “Enough of you.” She shoved at the leaden body beside her, as Celegorm jolted from slumber like a hound hearing a chicken. “Leave us in peace.”

“I thought I might stay.” Celegorm pulled the sheet up about himself. “Pillow talk, another drink perhaps...”

“Oh, you thought. Get up. We’ve had our use of you, and now we’ve got the ceremony to get ready for, so if you’d kindly go and ravish someone else—”

“I’m not all ravishing and bloodlust, you know. People always seemed to think that about me, so I began to think it about myself, but in my seven thousand years of grave repentance—”

“How lovely for you.” Finduilas cut him off by climbing over him to find her caftan, unsure why she and Gwindor were the audience for this self-reflection. “But don’t you have closer family with whom to share these sentiments?” With little patience she began to brush her hair before the vanity. “I mean, does your mother even know you’re out of Mandos?”

“I think she does.” In the mirror she saw how Celegorm’s look had turned sad and distant. “But it seems she doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

Finduilas groaned.

###

While the rest of the inn’s denizens lay abed, whether sleeping or otherwise occupied, Orodreth busied himself with the offering.

Somehow there was wine left, a stash someone—perhaps even him—had left in the corner of the larder. He set out a glass and lit a candle, and arranged in this small circle of light a ring of shucked oyster shells (smelly, but the Lady would like that) in the middle of the courtyard, at the crack’s epicenter.

Orodreth was kneeling before this makeshift altar in meditation, attempting to become inspired into prayerful song, when he felt approaching footsteps. His eye peered open on Celebrimbor toeing at the crack.

“Shoddy masonry.” Tyelpe squatted down to examine further, his face glowing in the candlelight. “I know some Dwarves who’d have a thing or two to say to it—at least I used to.”

After the abrupt end of their last conversation his presence was discomfiting, yet Orodreth inhaled deeply.

“Someone called Gimli, son of Glóin is here, and already tried to talk my ears off yesterday —and that was before anything broke.” He shut his eyes again. “You should go find him.”

“Oh?” Celebrimbor sounded intrigued. “Well, he might say that Song and wine is a very elvish approach to a construction problem.”

“I’m making amends to Uinen.” Orodreth was more curt than he meant to be; he was not certain what interest Tyelpe still had in talking to him. “I forgot to invite her to the wedding.”

Celebrimbor slowly nodded. “Maiar are weird about marriage, aren’t they.” Then to Orodreth’s surprise he began to sing.

The language was unfamiliar, wrong-sounding; it seemed impossible it could be shaped by an elvish tongue. Orodreth recalled the few times he’d heard Valarin in the temples of Valmar, how it itched at the edge of one’s hearing, just on the cusp of comprehension. Celebrimbor only sang a short while, yet when he was done the air was buzzing, and the candle flame shuddered.

Orodreth’s voice felt a feeble thing in comparison. “What was that?”

Yet Tyelpe put a finger to his lips, and then he was pouring the wine. Lifting the cup to Orodreth’s mouth.

Orodreth tasted the sea and starlight—some cool and mineral tang, as if the frequency of light that caught on air and water had been rendered potable. It seemed the very essence of blue, the delight of the Lady Uinen.

“That ought to appease her,” said Celebrimbor, while Orodreth coughed in disbelief. “Protection for your realm—lasts a little longer if you catch it in a stone or something, but, well.” He set aside the cup and stood, awkwardly straightening his breeches. “I don’t do that

sort of thing anymore. Anyway, think of it as a wedding present—the rest of my gifts I left with Celeborn.”

Orodreth looked up at him.

“You’re not leaving?”

Celebrimbor shrugged. “You did ask me to.”

“Oh, yes.” Orodreth stood too, uncertainly. “I suppose I did.”

Tyelpe was very near to him. Orodreth might reach out and take his hand again, draw himself between those strapping shoulders. And yet he already seemed so far away, receding again into the distance, or else deep into the past.

“And I must go for my own sake,” Celebrimbor added, clasping hands behind his back; the fire had returned to his eyes, and Orodreth knew he was thinking of Curufin. “This has been a strange visit, but it was good to see you, Artaresto.”

With this Tyelpe stepped forth to pat his shoulder, the touch electric, though Orodreth did not dare lean in.

He thought he heard himself say farewell, but whatever he spoke was lost to a rush of air. For Celebrimbor had unfurled the wings that somehow he had been concealing on his back through their entire conversation, and when Orodreth looked up he was already soaring away into the gloaming skies.

###

Just as dawn crept on the horizon Gil-galad pulled himself away from bed—from Celebrían’s arms, where he had been resting for some sweet unconscious interval. Elrond was already gone, for his costuming for the next phase of the wedding was quite elaborate.

The sheets were strewn with remnants of his previous ensemble, a gossamer spun out of little more than diamonds and spider-silk. After a brief and passionate reprimand directed at his king, Elrond had donned this garment exclusively for the eyes of his spouses.

Memories of the night’s consummation curled Gil-galad’s toes. He leaned down to kiss his sleeping wife upon her silver brow—his wife! indeed, for they all had made their vows in witness of the stars, the marriage ceremony to come a mere formality.

Remembering the ceremonial aspect sobered him, and renewed his creeping dread.

It was he who had wanted his father at his side on his wedding morning. As his sister had said, Gil-galad would have already had him there twice over: Orodreth who had given him his sheltered boyhood, and gruff Círdan who had raised him to a man.

And yet. Now he had drawn three other men into the wedding’s orbit.

Fingon, who seemed more than certain he and/or Maedhros had been his sires.

Celebrimbor, at whom Gil-galad had now witnessed Orodreth shouting something about sons and fathers, corroborating his diary’s vague allusions—only for Celebrimbor to disappear again the moment Gil-galad came into view.

And Finrod—well, Finrod really seemed like he’d just wanted to sing a song. Perhaps Gil-galad could rule him out.

Yet only one person had acted anything like a father to him these past hours. Gil-galad had an appointment to keep.

With a lingering glance on Celebrían’s lovely form, he found his laundered robes and hurried down the walkway to Orodreth’s apartment.

Orodreth was not there. Gil-galad sang alight the crystal lanterns and stepped into the wardrobe, pulling out a few selections; he ransacked the jewelry case on both of their behalfs, for in truth in his wedding jitters he’d left most of his good stuff behind in Tirion and wanted to see if there wasn’t an ear-cuff or two he might borrow for the occasion.

When Orodreth walked in some moments later he looked bemused. 

“What’s all this?”

Gil-galad glanced up from the mirror, testing out a set of studs. “Don’t you need to get dressed? I took the liberty.”

“I’d say it’s far more important for you to suit up.” Orodreth was weary; Gil-galad heard the long night in his voice. “Believe me, no one is going to be paying attention to the fathers this morn.”

Gil-galad's ears pricked at the word 'father', but then he saw where Orodreth’s attention had caught: upon a set of jewels laid on the bedspread, braided mithril and platinum with green and yellow stones. The bracelets bore the motif of the Arafinwëan serpent; when Orodreth slipped one down his wrist it cinched viselike to his skin, as if it were alive.

“Tyelpe made this,” said Orodreth with wonder. “In Nargothrond.”

“And it ended up in my treasury at Lindon, remember? Then Elrond got saddled with it, like everything else—he brought it over for you.”

Gil-galad kept his tone light as he spoke, belying trepidation.

It seemed only a matter of time before he had to tell the truth, or learn it. The idea of both filled his heart with strange fear.

“I suppose the smith will be glad to see his handiwork.” Gil-galad detangled the tassels of his formal underrobe. “Won’t he?”

“I’m afraid he won’t have the chance.” Orodreth spoke plainly, fastening the snaking necklaces over his collar. “He’s gone.”

Gil-galad wanted to ask him to say more, but it did not seem that Orodreth might wish to answer—though he went on adorning himself with Tyelpe’s jewels, setting aside his everyday pieces on the bed as they were replaced.

When he was done he looked radiant, kingly and silvered, even in that wretched houserobe he still wore.

Gil-galad tilted his head, considering. “Some silks would better become your ornament, Ada.”

But Orodreth reached up and steered him by the shoulder. “First things first: the matter of your braids.”

He sat his son before the mirror.

The first memories Gil-galad could recall were of his father’s hands in his hair. Now as Orodreth slipped his fingers into those second-nature patterns it felt as if they were back in Nargothrond, even in those last weeks before Gil-galad had been sent to the Falas, for what they all thought would be the summer, for wouldn’t it befit a prince to learn to sail—

“There we are.” Orodreth kissed the crown of his head. “How do you feel?”

Gil-galad ran his hand over the fishtails neatly woven to keep the sides off his face, leaving the fall of his hair to cascade curling down his back. Simple, perfect.

“Nervous,” he said.

“No need to be!” Orodreth fussed at a flyaway, then grinned at his son’s reflection. “You’ve gotten through the hard part: getting someone to love you. But then that’s always come to you easily.”

It would not be an audience with his father without some backhanded self-detriment. Yet for all that this wedding had done to test him, in this moment Orodreth seemed happy. In the mirror Gil-galad watched as he hummed and sauntered back to the clothes-strewn bed, considering his own outfit.

“Ada.”

Orodreth glanced up. “Yes, Rodnor?”

He looked at Gil-galad expectantly, as his son sought exactly what it was he meant to say.

Perhaps it did not matter whether Orodreth ever learned the truth about the invitations Gil- galad had sent on impulse. Perhaps it did not matter whether Gil-galad ever found out who his parents were by blood. He knew whose hands had raised him.

“The cerulean robes,” Gil-galad suggested. “I think they’ll go best with the gems.”

###

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When he and Gil-galad again passed through the courtyard, it seemed to Orodreth that Uinen was appeased. No further fractures were apparent in the masonry, and the day had dawned clear and calm; from the rampants of the inn, risen Arien’s rays could be seen sparkling on her sister’s gentle seas. Though her gold glow mingled with a queerer and more beguiling incandescence: that of true Treelight, and the star that had come ashore with Eärendil. In his off-hours the silmaril was typically kept in a safe, but it was a very special occasion.

As they crossed the gates of the inn, Orodreth fussed with the sprig of aeglos at Gil-galad’s collar, hoping this would hold off his tears.

“I suppose that means it’s time.”

But Gil-galad stalled at his side. “I suppose it does.”

“Then what are you waiting for?” Orodreth gave him a gentle push. “Go off and get married! Círdan must have gotten here, for there’s incense rising from the temple altar — I know your old Adar will be wanting a moment with you before the ceremony, even if he won’t say it himself.”

Or provide adequate time for such a conclave — but then the old Shipwright was a peculiar sort. So Orodreth had learned over a few centuries of sharing custody of the son they both had parented. Particularly since his governmental and magisterial duties had been left behind at the havens of Mithlond, Círdan preferred to minimize his time on land. As a sea-captain he still happily officiated weddings, however.

“That he will.” Gil-galad sighed. It seemed to Orodreth that some anxiety simmered within him; he watched as his son straightened his robes and assumed his bravest and most noble countenance. “Wish me luck, Ada?”

“May a star shine on the hour of your marriage.” Orodreth reached up to cup his cheek. “And I suspect one will!”

He watched him walking off into the mingling light, sun and silmaril. Guests acknowledged Gil-galad reverently as he passed in his raiment all of blue and silver, stepping aside and bowing as he made his way to the little temple of Ulmo on the hilltop.

Orodreth steadied his own step. He’d never put much stock in weddings, having not had the chance to go through one himself (only a moonlit tryst and some awkward paperwork). And yet it was the same as when Finduilas and Gwindor had plighted troth some years ago: his whole body trembled with feeling, exhaustion and overwhelm and delight and joy. And memory, of the too-short time that Gil-galad had been a child in his care, of the man he had become. Even had the preceding day not been so disastrously eventful Orodreth suspected this tide of emotion would have come to take him over, to sweep him up the hill to where this moment so long-awaited would come to pass.

With welling eyes he walked forward, only for something—some elf—to crash-land directly in front of him.

“I must speak with you,” Celebrimbor insisted, stumbling up with his dented wings still spread.

For an instant Orodreth was too stunned to speak, but then he strode on past. “If you’ll excuse me, I have somewhere to be.”

“It concerns the wedding, I made the utmost haste to return before—”

“What, Tyelpe?” Orodreth whipped around. He watched as Celebrimbor’s eyes sought his snaking jewelry; now he wished he could tear it all off. “How many times in a single day can you tug me about? If I have been called soft-hearted, it is because I am! Yet I must now harden my heart against the vagaries of yours, before it breaks into a thousand tiny bits!”

“Artaresto—” Celebrimbor’s gaze flinched between Orodreth and the sky; he could not even maintain eye contact. “If you would heed me, just but a moment—”

“Heed you?!” Incredulous laughter spilled up Orodreth’s throat. “First you arrive here utterly unasked for, all charm and musculature and freckles, then you treat me as an anvil against which to dash your malcontent, then you—well, fortify the island against Uinen’s wrath, which was nice, I guess, then you disappear, and re-appear, and this was supposed to be a very happy day for me. And while I still have a chance at happiness I will heed that, and go to see my son wed, for I know as long as I live in these undying lands, I am certain I will never be happy if I am anywhere near you—”

The kiss was a shock. Yet after a muffled squeak Orodreth yielded to Celebrimbor, lips parting to receive him as one who had long been starving.

All too quickly it was over, but Tyelpe still held him through the heartbeat that followed, strands of their hair entwining copper, gold, and silver in the hillside breeze.

“I’m afraid that was all the time I had to explain.” Celebrimbor laughed, and not charmingly; Orodreth saw his darting eyes in fact were flush with panic. “Better hold on.”

Orodreth was far from finding words to voice objection. Before he even attempted, Celebrimbor had taken off into the air, and they were flying at speed toward a wisp of strange cloud that was hovering above the wedding ceremony, Orodreth clinging on for dear life.

###

Before the altar of the open-air temple Círdan was presiding over the presentation of parental gifts, his long beard looped over his shoulders like a chain of office.

Through the litany of archaic prayers Gil-galad tried to mask his anxiety about his father—all his fathers, confirmed or otherwise. Now of course Orodreth was running late, though it seemed Gil-galad had seen him moments before.

(Then he’d already given Elrond and Celebrían their gifts—two olive trees planted in a little grove overlooking the Sea—and they had loved them very much.)

Galadriel’s sparkling gaze fixed Gil-galad’s attention back to the present moment: she was passing him a carven box that he knew contained mallorn-seeds of Lothlórien. Gil-galad bowed, grinning to his new mother-in-law; these were the descendents of saplings that he had once been given by Tar-Aldarion of Númenor, and they had never grown in Lindon. Yet in the Golden Wood that he had never seen it was said their trunks had held up the skies.

Beneath those storied boughs had once walked Celebrían. Now she stood before Gil-galad, tall as her mother and silver as her father, beaming and beautiful with strands of varicolored pearls cascading over the collar of her pale-green wedding robes. Gil-galad wore a matching necklace, for this had been their gift from Elwing, a careful harvest from seven thousand years of oyster suppers.

Beside Celebrían, as it always and ever would be, stood Elrond. If his wife’s raiment was green, and his husband’s blue, he was their perfect mingling in a gown the color of light on water, a shade impossible to capture and yet contained somehow by the light of the silmaril set upon his brow.

From the crowd of guests came murmurs that he was the very image of Dior Eluchíl returned to life. Eärendil and Elwing stood holding one another, mesmerized by pride and wonder.

Oh Gods, I can’t bear to look at them—I’ll ruin my kohl.

Elrond’s voice flickered through Gil-galad’s heart—so strange and wonderful was the feeling of mind-speech, brought on by the new marriage-bond! When he looked upon his husband he did see that Elrond’s eyes were glossed with tears.

In their braided thought Celebrían steadied him.

Come, elig, we’re the ones who’ve gone through this show before.

Though grinning wildly at his spouses, Gil-galad kept glancing back toward the temple gate. Fingon kept trying to catch his eye from the back row, though as Orodreth had said Celebrimbor now seemed absent. But then where in all the themes was Orodreth? At least it seemed this wasn’t going to happen quickly: Círdan had now begun a slow and solemn orison in Old Telerin invoking the waters of Cuiviénen. Some guests stumbled to follow along, though most swiveled their heads to observe each other’s wedding outfits, or else catch sight of new arrivals.

Swiveling prevailed when Finrod arrived, fashionably late, in a ransom of gold and malachite. On his arm was Curufin, who looked hungover, eyes shaded by dark glasses, and behind them Celegorm, who blew a kiss to Gwindor while Finduilas glared. It seemed it had been an eventful evening for everyone.

Still it was the Fëanorians who drew the most intrigue. An appearance at the party had been one thing, but the ceremony? With all the crowd cast in the silmaril’s light, and Elrond at the fore blazing like Lúthien? Galadriel looked at her brother petting wretched Curufin as if her eyes might burn holes in both their silks, and Elwing seemed about to summon all the pelicans of Ellairë to tear the smug look off Celegorm’s face.

The eyes of the crowd shifted from the infamous brothers to Elrond and the silmaril, then back again. A hush descended, all breath bated. Just when Gil-galad was about to step forth and say...something high-kingly, he wasn’t sure what yet, Curufin thrust up his sunglasses into his tangled hair, and squirmed out from under Finrod’s arm to walk into the aisle.

“O brother mine, is that not a silmaril, the hallowed jewél of our father’s make.”

He gestured flatly toward furious, glowing Elrond. Celegorm squinted in response.

“Hm...think so. They looked a bit like that.”

Curufin nodded as if to prove a point, and continued with vicious enunciation, like he stood before a lecture hall full of dullard students.

“And do you, Turcafinwë Tyelkormo Fëanárion, feel inveterately compelled at this moment to seize the gem from the grasp of this Elda and Maia and Aftercomer, Man yet unborn, in one single person — in the face of law, love, league of swords, dread, danger, and Doom itself.”

For a moment Celegorm considered Elrond, and Elrond’s gaze bore back on him in turn. One imagined similar confrontations in Nargothrond of old, involving Elrond’s foremother. Yet now the hungry hunter made to shield his eyes from grace divine.

“I’m all right. Now what I’d really like is breakfast—d’you suppose we missed the pastry?”

“Ipso facto!” Curufin swept a hand, “we have been reborn without the clutches of the Oath. I believe many of you have spent time in Mandos; you are aware that they are rather stringent. I cannot speak for the rest of my siblings—perhaps they are still shackled to guilt and shame, or sad about their mortal girlfriends—but after seven thousand years, utter repentance was starting to look good. Which is why the Doomsman directed me to Ellairë, to make amends, starting with family and thereafter...continuing outward.”

He swallowed this last bit somewhat, with eyes that had been at Alqualondë and Menegroth circling him—though this was undermined by the singular exuberance of Finrod (and only Finrod) applauding loudly.

Curufin drew a long breath like a forge-stroke, and concluded:

“I have come therefore to seek my son!”

Fëanor’s namesake did have a flair for the theatrical, even in a haggard state. He turned to the gate, having certainly seen Celebrimbor’s arrival from the corner of his eye. Indeed his son now stood before the gathered crowd with a rather frenzied look upon his face.

Gil-galad was glad to see Orodreth at Celebrimbor’s side, if again curious as to why it was they kept gathering so furtively. (Not to mention perplexed by the state of his father’s wedding-finery, which in the space of ten minutes seemed to have been caught up in a hurricane.)

Yet there was no time for Celebrimbor to give an answer. “Then our purpose is alike, cousin.”

With a single step into the aisle Fingon shoved Curufin from the silmaril’s spotlight. He gravely approached the altar, the gem’s fey gleam caught in his eye.

“For I have come to bless a scion of my house, my own son and the son by birth of my beloved. Ereinion Gil-galad Nelyafinwion! I am most honored by your invitation.”

Gasps of intrigue rose up from the crowd as Fingon bowed low.

Oh, the Tirion gossip-rags would make a meal of this—yet that was the least of Gil-galad’s worries, for he saw Orodreth’s face crumple at the far end of the temple, and his pale eyes filling—

—then turning up, as all their eyes were turning, for the dawn skies were growing shadowed with strange clouds, and the caressing breezes cold—

A chilling laughter echoed like the roll of thunder, resonant in Gil-galad’s ribcage as the beat of his own heart.

Now a voice rose up from everywhere and nowhere: a voice like smoke from the altar, like a silk ribbon tied about the throat.

“Silly incarnates. Always so troubled by the question of kinship.”

Two gleaming, gold-flecked eyes resolved before the wedding-party. The body that followed seemed also to be made of molten gold, though it settled soon enough to elven-shape: pale of skin, pale of hair, sashed in red and black—and with a flame playing about the fingers, that hand held aloft which had once burned two kings in the tower’s shadow—

Impossibly, unmistakably, Gil-galad perceived his old enemy in fair and ancient form.

“I thought you would have learned by now.” A smile curled the lips of Sauron the Deceiver. “What truly matters is creation.”

###

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Gil-galad had inhabited his new body a thousand-odd years, and it had never been burned save perhaps at a barbeque. Yet he now felt scorched, unable to move, as if his feet were molten to the temple floor.

Sauron hadn’t even touched him. It was as if the fire rose up from within—

In a flash of silmaril Elrond stepped between his king and the enemy, fell and defiant as he had been in the shadow of Barad-dûr.

“What is this illusion? The Dark Lord was destroyed utterly with his ring. How dare you blight our marriage rites with cheap conjuring.”

“The half-elf.” Sauron drawled, undaunted by the light. “How tedious. But of course Naneth and Ada’s princess must have his perfect wedding day.”

His beautiful lips twisted in a simper at Elrond’s sour, still fearless expression — at shocked Eärendil and Elwing who had rushed to their son.

Then that fiery gaze flashed across the temple. “Where’s my wedding, Tyelpe?”

All eyes now turned to Celebrimbor, though Gil-galad could only see Orodreth beside him, he who had once faced Gorthaur the Cruel at Minas Tirith. Their hands were locked together tightly.

“Celeborn?” Celebrimbor called unsurely, although he did not cower. “Do you still have my gifts?”

Celeborn, albeit with confusion, dutifully held up some items of handsome cast-iron cookware.

For a long moment no one seemed to understand what was happening, including Sauron. But Celebrimbor laughed.

“The skillet! That should do.” He left Orodreth and came down the aisle. “Same principle as the Ring, you know. Circle.”

This aside was spoken to Mithrandir of Lórien, called Gandalf the Grey in Middle-earth, who did not look like he knew at all.

Passing Celeborn, Celebrimbor armed himself with the pan.

Sauron’s look had turned amused, like a wildcat playing with what soon would be the corpse of its dinner.

“You think to turn my own arts against me,” he spoke, as Celebrimbor chanted guttural Valarin, holding up the skillet like a glaive. “Our arts, rather, for it was of our mingled spirit that all the Rings were made. Would you like to tell everyone why I’m here, Tyelpe, in these lovely lands from which we were both exiled?”

Broken from the shock, people were now straining to come to Celebrimbor’s aid, for the temple was filled with many who had been named Sauron’s enemy—but the smith’s foreboding glare held them off. When Gil-galad made a single step forth Celebrimbor shook his head chillingly, but he did not cease his chanting.

“It is the Elvish custom, I believe.” Sauron smiled anew. “One need not have such pomp and ceremony to be wed. All it takes is a solemn vow of mind and body, and the honeymoon lasts all the ages of Arda.”

His speech brimmed with wicked delight. Celebrimbor cried out with his weapon held aloft and glowing strangely, empowered by his spell.

“I kept no part of you in Mandos. What taint there was upon my soul burned off, lost to the Void as the rest of your evil.”

Yet his friend of old stepped in to close the gap between them, as the air crackled with Song, and a sinister perfume wafted from Sauron’s wrists.

“Come now, Celebrimbor. Ever did you strive to see the good in me. Surely there was some fond memory retained in your rebirth, a slim thread that still ties us. For you sensed my coming this hour, did you not? As you fled?”

With emphasis upon his final word Sauron let this sink over the crowd, to another rabble of astonishments.

For a moment Gil-galad saw contrition in Celebrimbor’s eyes, and shared it—thinking none of this would have happened without his foolish desire, his utter selfishness in seeking out his sundry fathers.

Would he even find the answer he had so vainly hoped for, before it all came to ruin?

Before Gil-galad’s eyes, with practiced hammer-form, Celebrimbor slammed the skillet down upon his foe.

Yet it was unstruck Gil-galad who fell, ears ringing and vision darkening as his wedding day gave way to total nothingness.

###

Orodreth ran.

Past the scandalized guests, past Celebrimbor—his frying-pan falling with a clang—and Sauron gleeful and unharmed, he stumbled to kneel by Celebrían and Elrond, who had rushed to aid their husband, and Círdan who held his foster-son by the shoulders, anger roiling his stoic, sea-grey eyes. Elrond was muttering diagnostic cantrips, but to Orodreth Gil-galad looked deeply asleep—though breathing still, he felt with a flood of relief, before he turned back in rage.

“What have you done to my son?!”

“Ah. The little lord of Tol Sirion.” Sauron made a mocking little bow. “Your son, you say. How amusing it is, that you continue to believe you have anything that was not first your uncle’s.”

A hush prevailed as Orodreth, and everyone else, parsed this rhetorical implication. But then Sauron swept his flaming hand before the crowd.

“How amusing you all are, blesséd Children! You have called me Deceiver, and yet my greatest deceit has never been unveiled. My soul was summoned to Aman this day by the fortunate proximity of two reborn bodies. To one I am bonded by marriage.” He flicked his tongue at shattered Celebrimbor. “And the other by parenthood. For your perfect prince, your King of longest reign across the Sea—Ereinion Gil-galad was born of me...and of him!”

His taloned finger-point landed on Finrod, who had leapt out into the aisle with several daggers somehow drawn from his diaphanous robes. He now, however, looked rather flattered.

“Me!? I never...! But—well, I’ll take him, I suppose!” Finrod attempted humility at the revelation, then pursed his lips: “Is this because of that one night I, er, offered myself...?”

“You really did it.” Galadriel stepped forth to face her brother. “You fucked Sauron.” 

“Mother!” snapped Celebrían.

“As a tactical maneuver, dear sister.” Gravely, Finrod straightened himself. “In effort to bring succor to my fellow captives at Tol-in-Gaurhoth.”

“And Finrod fell before the throne, indeed. There are many unsavory rumors about you, Ingoldo, and yet the reality manages to exceed them all.”

“Excuse me, but why would anyone believe the testimony of Morgoth’s lieutenant on this matter?” Fingon gestured with one of his own several daggers. “Gil-galad is the image of Maedhros. Everyone knows it.”

“Don’t you mean the image of you?” said Finrod, before remembering Sauron’s claim: “But he really could be mine, too, you can see it about the eyes, and in that light he’s practically blonde.”

“There’s a silmaril shining on his face, Finrod, I’d say that makes us all look rather washed out.”

“Would you all just shut up! Shut up!”

Orodreth found he did not care about any of these revelations, nor if and how they could be true. He had been gripping Gil-galad as Elrond persisted in a healing song, maintaining crystalline focus in spite of the many distractions, and finally Gil-galad’s eyes had flickered open, fixing unsteadily on the scene before him.

“...Ada?”

His gaze whirled from Finrod to Fingon to Celebrimbor—to Sauron who during all this interchange had gathered his own eerie light, biding time through elvish squabble—

Yet it was Orodreth who Gil-galad turned to in the end.

“Ada I’m so sorry, I was the one who invited them, I wanted to know who my father was but I know, I’ve always known.”

In spite of—because of—present circumstances, Orodreth did not feel particularly troubled by this confession either. After all that had led to this moment, he soothed his son’s brow. 

“You’re all right, Rodnor darling, your husband took care of you—all will be well.”

But he did not believe his own words, and indeed as they were spoken Sauron laughed, outglowing now the silmaril that Elrond wore.

“Oh, well indeed. Did you miss the part where any injury you do to me will be absorbed by your precious Ereinion? It is his body that brings me here, and you will never destroy me again without destroying him. For he was forged in my crucible, from the seed of golden Findaráto and...other of his recovered biological material.” (Sauron spoke this dispassionately, as many winced, and perhaps wondered if this meant Gil-galad was also part wolf.) “I fooled you all—I made the perfect Finwëan, a bland facsimile of his predecessors, and you went and took my weapon for your king—for nigh four thousand years!”

“Weapon?”

It was Celebrían who turned to face the enemy, scars silvered in the clash of light, and she was laughing.

“You intended Ereinion to be a weapon against the Elves? I would call that a spectacular failure.”

Something in her presence seemed to discomfit Sauron. Celebrían was not unmarred, as others who had come to confront him—her body too bore the work of his hands, in other kind.

“He was only a first draft. Such things come in handy for the able craftsman. Sometimes an idea comes along before its time—and now it seems the time has come.”

As Sauron spoke with prideful pedantry, he had risen up into the air robed in gathered lightning; he feigned to wipe a tear from his gold-rimmed eye.

“Oh, Tyelpe.” The Dark Lord sighed, as Celebrimbor glared at him unflinching, kneeling with the dented skillet. “You’ve given me something so much better than a wedding: the chance to kill all my greatest enemies at once.”

And with a flick of his wrist, fire rained down upon the temple. 

###

It was quenched instantly by the wash of great watery tentacles, borne up out of the Sea.

One aqueous tendril surged up to circle Sauron in a vise of surface tension. The others loomed protectively above the ceremony, undulating for a disorienting moment in swiftly brightening sunlight, before expending themselves upon the guests with a great and sudden splash.

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It was a wonder that they went on with the party, but Uinen had insisted.
Just as Celebrimbor said, thought Orodreth: Maiar are weird about weddings.

After taking her prisoner, the Lady forsook her squid-shape to calm the waters of the bay, and she’d set her naiads about preparing the beach cove with blossoms full of sweet hibiscus liquor and yet more of the finest oysters. Once everyone came down and removed their drenched formalwear it was actually rather nice.

Still Gil-galad insisted on not continuing with the ceremony.

“This was all my doing.” He shook his head and worried at the towel hanging on his neck. “How can you possibly want to marry me after everything that just happened?”

Celebrían draped herself over Gil-galad’s shoulders. “You’re not getting rid of us that easily.”

“Indeed.” Divested of the silmaril, Elrond laid his head against Gil-galad’s chest. “It seems we’re all quite thoroughly wed.”

“Perhaps in the sacred sense, but not the legal.” Círdan was paging through his pocket-copy of the Laws and Customs. “Seeing as two of you are now first-cousins—oh, but that’s all Noldorin balderdash. Anyway, would anyone else like to get married while I’ve got the book out?”

Orodreth had managed to find a beach-chair, and was lying there in a half-mad state, giddy and exhausted and more than a little punch-drunk on a fragrant drink served inside a small melon. He turned again to Celebrimbor, taking the smith’s callused hand without a second thought.

“You saved us.”

Celebrimbor stared across the water. “I unwittingly endangered the lives of many in seeking to fulfill foolish desires, and then improvised a foolish solution that did not particularly work.”

This had the ring of history repeating itself. But Orodreth dismissed him.

“I don’t mean whatever you were doing with that frying pan—it was you who summoned Uinen’s protection!”

“It was you who started and finished that spell,” countered Celebrimbor. 

Orodreth supposed he was right.

“Tell me.” He brought a hand down the plane of his collar, which though he had otherwise disrobed was still adorned with gem-eyed silver snakes. “What were the foolish desires you wished to fulfill this time around?”

Celebrimbor drew Orodreth upward, toying with his jewels. “I always hoped you’d wear them this way.”

“I’ll wear them any way you’d like,” said Orodreth, pulling a strand of russet behind Celebrimbor’s ear.

When they broke their kiss, Círdan was standing there hopefully with his little book. “Hello. Keen to get married while I’m still on land?”

“Oh.” Orodreth flushed. “Well, we’re not technically—I supposed we’d need to—Tyelpe, do you...?”

Celebrimbor clapped the Shipwright on the shoulder.

“My lord, if you would but give us a quarter hour, I and my lord intended will find a private place in which to complete the most solemn of the marriage-rites.”

Somewhere offshore, in the company of the more vicious naiads—those who took the shape of orcas and dolphins, manta rays and stinging electric eels—Sauron’s screams echoed over Uinen’s uncaring waves.

### 

“A toast!” cried Finrod. “To my nephew.”

“To my son!” protested Curufin from Finrod’s lap.

Celebrimbor still seemed uneasy whenever he saw his father at the table. But Orodreth took his husband’s hand, and then raised his own cup.

“To my son. And Findaráto’s. And, well...”

Gil-galad took a chance on the awkward silence. “Uncle Tyelpe, it seems you’ve been my stepfather twice.”

It was a joke only he could truly make, and everyone laughed for a long time—except for Fingon, who was still muttering to himself.

“Maitimo and I must have a son around somewhere.” He looked up at the mysterious dark- haired elf across the table. “What did you say your name was again?”

Erestor, former Chief Counsellor of Imladris, archly drew a dessert spoon from his mouth. 

“I’ll have you know that I was born in Tirion forty years before your father.”

“Tyelko!” called Curufin at the other end, as his brother drifted away toward the sea’s edge. “What ever are you doing slinking off?”

Celegorm tallied reasons on his fingers. “As you recall, no one wanted us here in the first place; Elwing still looks like she wants to pluck me like a partridge; and lastly, as I have a great deal of experience in the service of a god, I was wondering if Uinen might not be accepting new acolytes.”

Curufin grinned and slapped his brother’s palm; together they performed the ancient, sacred, secret Fëanorian handshake.

“Don’t drown.”

“Don’t get eaten by a snake.”

“Oh, he will be,” muttered Finrod with Curufin in his clutches. “Frequently.”

On the bridal dais a little further down, Celebrían rested her head against Gil-galad’s shoulder.

“Where do you suppose we should honeymoon?”

“Avathar,” declared Elrond through a mouth half-full of cake. “Always wanted to go.”

“The realms of Unlight?” Gil-galad wondered at the suggestion. “Might there not be giant spiders?”

Elrond smudged frosting on his husband’s nose. “Maybe.”

“And many other fascinating specimens,” added Celebrían, “preserved from earlier ages of Arda. Yes, there may be peril there, and strange things. But I’m married to a couple of strange things, aren’t I?”

“And we have faced much peril together,” said Elrond very gravely, reaching his fork over to feed her a taste.

###

At twilight in his bedchamber, Orodreth watched as a little boat launched from the harbor and steered its sails southward.

“He thought he was being so selfish in asking you here,” he said, while Celebrimbor came behind to hold him. “And yet he was giving me a gift, as he always has—he was a gift to me from the moment I first saw him.”

“And you to him,” said Tyelpe at Orodreth’s ear. “Thereby you gave a gift to all of Middle- earth, Artaresto. Whatever Gil-galad was meant to be, he became a good king.”

In spite of his urge to protest that Gil-galad’s goodness was all his own doing, Orodreth let out a sigh that spoke agreement. His husband had a way of making him think differently about himself.

Husband. The concept drifted contentedly between them, nascent in the new connection of their minds. How impossible it would have all seemed only yesterday morning.

Orodreth turned about in Tyelpe’s arms, letting his lids go heavy. “As I recall we have yet to observe our proper wedding night.”

Celebrimbor looked on him with mocking pity. “Fifteen minutes in a sea-cave wasn’t quite sufficient?”

It had been, and quite scenic besides. But Orodreth found he was done with the merely sufficient, of being content with the leavings of life. Now he would take what was his.

There was a brief and spirited tussle that brought them both to the bed with Orodreth on top, straddling his husband’s hips and pinning his storied fists back to the sheets.

“I surrender,” Celebrimbor cried out laughing, though he seemed delighted to have given up the fight.

In both of their lives they had known more loss than victory. But there was always time to turn the tide, thought Orodreth as he bent to take Tyelpe’s lips—knowing his fate was here, and promising through the kiss that followed, and all kisses subsequent, that it would be forevermore.

Chapter End Notes

THE END!

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