One of the Green Elves did. A strange elf was standing on another of the elm tree’s branches below where the twins were hiding. With clothing as green as the young elm leaves and hair and skin as tan as the bark, only the outrageous choice of headgear disrupted the camouflage. Had the elf not spoken, the twins doubted that they would have noticed the Nandor bowman, for such was the mastery of his woodcraft. Even with that flower crown.
Not a simple daisy ring, either, that flower crown, but a botanical creation with the towering audacity and flamboyant weight of Morgoth’s iron crown. Branches thickly laden with bright pink flowers were too eye-catching to overlook, yet somehow the Nandorin elf accomplished the feat of near-perfect stealth to climb onto the same elm tree. Exhaustion and hunger perhaps played a role. It was the flowers’ scent that alerted the boys. So incongruous was the strong scent of blooming cherry blossoms that it forced the twins to turn around on their perch until they found the source staring up at the twins in matching bewilderment, mouth and eyes wild.
Neither Elros or Elrond remembered screaming. Still, they did. Though regrettable and counterproductive to their goal, the loud noise was involuntary and understandable. A stranger on the same tree, close enough to leap up and grab their feet, was frightening. The scream did make the elf lower his bow and cry out an apology. And the elf needed his hands free to catch the falling Elrond who had unbalanced off his tree branch in the shock. The Nandorin bowman immediately released Elrond, more to dissuade a struggling Elrond from tipping them both out of the tree than the threat of Elros with his knife crawling towards them.
“Peace, my princes!” the elf shouted in the Laegrim accent. The difference in accent between the Green Elves and the Sindar was most noticeable as a subtlety of vowels - a lack of diphthongs and overall terseness - but one that the twins could notice. It was their mother’s accent. She had been born in Ossiriand and both her parents raised among them, so although her family moved to Menegroth when she was very young, by some quirk Elwing retained the traces of the accent that marked her as the daughter of Dor Firn-i-Guinar. Instantly the sound of the words soothed Elros and Elrond before the context of the message could. “My princes,” the elf repeated. “My princes, come down before you fall. I did not intend to startle you, nor you I.”
Their mother’s accent - and that the twins did not recognize the elf’s face, which meant he was not a follower of Maedhros and thus safe, earned him their trust.
And, Elrond was honest to himself, his curiosity overruled his caution. Cherry blossoms did not flower in the months of summer. How had this Nandor bedecked himself in a dense pink profusion?
The descent from the tree was made awkward and slow because the twins could not decide if maintaining eyesight or placing the bulk of the tree’s trunk between them was safer. That the Nandor bowman leapt from the lowest branches straight to the forest floor without use of rope only sparked envy.
On the ground, Elros hesitated between unsheathing the knife again or reaching for his brother's hand for reassurance. Elrond overruled the internal debate by claiming his brother’s hand, fingers squeezing in the all-too-familiar signal to wait for adults to make the first move.
More Nandor revealed themselves, stopping at neighboring trees to encircle the twins while keeping enough distance for the illusion of escape. The speed and silence of their movement and the lack of threat meant that the twins were not planning on bolting from the gathering Green Elves, though the peredhil boys were unaware of their own feral and wide-eyed faces and thus why the Nandor were so afraid of spooking the children. Only three rangers joined the Green Elf on the ground. Two were bowmen; another carried a long iron spear. All were taller than the flower-crowed elf but looked towards him as their obvious leader. With wonder and caution clear on their faces, the emerging elves murmured the names of two princes. The wrong names. Eluréd. Elurín. As more of the Green Elves came from the summer foliage, their voices grew louder as reverence became excitement and joy. “Elrond, Elros,” the names became, or a shouted, “Elwing’s sons,” and the twins forgave the first names. Elros and Elrond had not expected wandering hunters amongst the Green Elves this far south of the River Adurant to know their names. It was painful to be reminded that the others were still looking for their uncles Eluréd and Elurín, but a comfort that the hope had not been abandoned.
Elrond never considered the possibility that friendly elves would find them so far from the Isle of Balar. A little sadly he dreamed that these Nandor were correct to still cling to the hope that their uncles were not dead. A flight of fancy, that Elwing’s brothers had survived and fled south, also hiding in the woods of southernmost Ossiriand. In a sweeter song, the pair would have found each other, like Cousins Tour and Túrin staring at each other across the lake. That sweetness only existed in songs where time stopped in the branches of ancient starlight trees. Was that how this Nandorin bowman kept his pink flowers from fading? Had they wandered into an enchantment?
“Who are you?” Elrond asked.
“Captain Orothaiben,” the Green Elf answered. “We have been hunting and killing orcs and the lesser dragons that dare south. And scouting the Kinslayers to warn Balar if they turn towards the sea once more or flee over the mountains. Though they do not fell our trees as the mortals once did, their presence is a dishonor. Rumors we had that the Kinslayers held you captive. Our plan was to interrogate one of their followers, a former kinsman, to learn the truth.” The hatred that Orothaiben felt towards the Nandorin followers of the Fëanorians twisted his face into an ugliness that the beauty of the flowers could not offset. Elrond dissected the name in his head. Cherries and rage fit the captain of the Green Elves. Elrond wondered if it was a mother-name or later bestowed. “Such is their skill that we dared not chance discovery, until a few days ago, a great tumult, we feared that one of their scouts had finally noticed us.” Some of the Nandor in the trees muttered curses and spat. Elrond understood that professional pride had now been salvaged, knowing that the uproar was over the twins’ disappearance.
“We loosed the horses,” Elros bragged.
“Like clever outlaws,” said one of Orothaiben’s men on the ground, the only one carrying an iron spear instead of a wooden bow. He was the only elf with pale gray hair instead of brown or black, but his thin-lipped face shared no signs of immediate kinship with the line of Elu.
“Twas a marvelous escape,” the Nandor captain, Orothaiben, proclaimed, his vigorous head nod dislodging some of the pink petals of his flower crown to fall into his shoulders and litter the forest floor, “but I beg that you allow us to escort you, my princes. For the love that I bore for King Dior and Queen Nimloth, kinswoman of our slain king Denethor.”
“You will take us to Cousin Gil-galad?” Elros asked, and the Nandor captain answered by swearing an oath.
Elrond, disappointed with the loss of his dream raft, hoped that said disappointment did not show. This would be safer. And the Green Elves would have food.
Elrond’s nod of acceptance was the sign that the rest of the Nandor must have been awaiting, for almost all of the company descended from the trees and began to crowd around the boys and their captain, speaking over another in excitement. Amenities like blankets, sturdier shoes, and food were bandied about in the overlapping discussions. From clues, the Nandorin camp was nearby and a debate on if to have the boys rest there or quickly move further out of the Fëanorians’ range was breaking out in furious whispers among those standing farthest away. Flower-crowned Orothaiben made a sharp hand movement that silenced his men’s chatter and redirected all eyes to him. “Thou all give me quiet. Camp first. A balrog company was sent over the valley of Thalos. We have only a few seasons before all of Ossiriand is burning. We must plan for after we return the boys. To sate my heart’s wounds, I must increase the number of orc corpses.”
This, though neither twin knew it at the time, was the debate that would embroil Balar well into the early years of the War of Wrath that none had any idea was coming, for Orothaiben’s followers were the only elves not of the soon-to-be arriving army that were still willing to fight Morogth’s forces upon the fields of Beleriand.
“You will come with us?” Orothaiben asked once more, fluctuating back to that polite hesitancy by which he addressed the children but did not show towards his men. Elros realized that the knife-brandishing must have made a great impression, or that the boys’ wariness was not as masked as the twins had assumed. Strange how it had so fooled Maedhros and Maglor. A willful blindness or arrogance perhaps from the sons of Fëanor, thinking that they had fully won the trust of their young hostages.
“Yes,” Elros and Elrond answered, “take us home.”
The Nandor did not cheer, but the flurry of hand movements and wide grins conveyed the joy.
The captain of the Green Elves apologized once more to the twins. “The likeness with your uncles is truly uncanny. Your faces mirror those of Prince Eluréd and Elurín.”
“Nonsense,” one of the rangers interrupted. He shoved to the front of the huddle to stand beside his captain and point at Elros’s face. “Look at that weird little mole below this twin’s eye. That’s Tuor. Your grandfather had that same mark, like a tear.”
The last name that Elros or Elrond expected to hear was that of their mortal paternal grandfather, and a barrage of questions swelled up to replace everything that they had initially planned to ask their rescuers. Quickly it was established that the tall elf - the same spear-carrier with pale hair- was a native of Hithlum and kinsman of Annael. The ranger from the north buckled under the weight of the twins’ demanding questions about Grandfather Tuor and Great-Grandmother Rían and living with Great-Grandfather Annael. Elros kept touching his mole reverently, and Elrond felt jealous that they were not identical twins. To placate himself, he pointed out various moles and freckles on his arms and one on his chest, asking the captain if any matched those of Grandfather Dior or Great-grandfather Beren. Orothaiben knew Grandmother Nimloth and swore that Elrond had her teeth-shape. Privately Elrond thought the observation weird until the flower-crowned elf removed a glove and held out the flesh of his palm where it met his thumb. There was a small crescent scar.
“Queen Nimloth bit me as a child,” Orothaiben said, as if it was his proudest memory. “As fierce as her father’s spider.”
None of Elwing’s stories ever mentioned spiders.
“Approach!” one of the Nandor still in the trees shouted, and Orothaiben quickly pulled on his glove.
“My princes,” he began deferentially, but Elrond interrupted.
“They heard me scream. They’re coming.”
The captain of the Green Elves did not look at the twins with the pity that they were so accustomed to but a burning intensity that both pretended was not familiar. If Elrond compared it to a hawk, Orothaiben was not scary. “You shall be safe with us.”
Those were Maedhros’s eyes, battle-crazed and heedless of injury.
Each twin was picked up by one of the Nandor and hauled up into the trees, then carried through the canopy to a thicket of elm surrounding a fallen oak. At first confused, the twins soon learned that a pair of small wooden platforms had been created high in these particular elm trees, a lookout flet with a foliage camouflage woven on the underside of the platform. Here the twins were deposited, motioned to remain quiet, and shown where to peer over at the correct angle to watch the clearing without being seen. A Nandor scout that the twins did not recognize joined them and the spearman on the flet, clarifying that the approaching Fëanorians had been spotted by this scout, and the relaying of his signal was the cause of alarm. Orothaiben and a few other Green Elves positioned themselves in the surrounding trees with bows strung and arrows held loosely. Still hidden from the ground, the hunters waited for their quarry. The boys had no reference for this ambush, for it held no sense of danger like the stories of Túrin’s slaying of Glaurung or the Hunt for Carcharoth. The Nandor were smiling. After the stories of Menegroth and the destruction of their home, the twins believed that fighting back against the Fëanorians was as dire as fighting Morogth’s dragons that had sacked Gondolin and Nargothrond, won only by sacrifice. But Orothaiben and his men had no fear, as if they were hunting deer and not a more dangerous animal like a boar or bear. And, watching Orothaiben pluck another petal from the crown he wore and flinging it towards the forest floor, the mystery of the cherry blossoms was answered. The captain of the Nandor knew that the scent and colorful petals could be used to track him. Bait. The confident madness which taught orcs to recognize and fear the scent of cherry blossoms. That no hunter besides Araw was more skilled than the Green Elves of Ossiriand was a fact that the twins now had proof.
In the long wait, birdsong returned to fill the silence, but the twins knew that to hope for a false alarm was foolishness - and an insult to their rescuers. Still, over an hour passed before the caution of the far-eyed Nandor scout was validated.
As certain as the pain of a burn after touching the metal of a pot atop a fire, Maglor and Maedhros, garbed in russet red cloaks that matched the elder’s hair, entered the clearing of the fallen oak tree.
The first arrow hit the ground before Maglor’s feet, angled so that it would have skewered his leg had the singer entered the clearing at a run. The second arrow came from behind, whizzing past Maedhros and landing beside the first arrow. It had been only an inch, two at most, from his shoulder, and would have ripped through fabric had the arrowhead been larger. Maedhros leapt to the side like a frightened animal. A third arrow joined, angled high. It would have pinned Maedhros between the shoulder blades had the archer not waited until he moved. A fourth arrow, also from behind, sailing over their heads to land behind the fallen oak.
Nothing could have been a clearer threat, and the cruelty of the implied death from behind was particularly insulting. Three more arrows, aligned like a trick shot, thudded into the trees in behind the two Noldor, then the captain of the Nandor hit the young sapling growing out of the exposed roots of the fallen oak as showy proof of how surrounded the two Noldor were and how willing the hidden archers were to spend arrows to prove a point.
After the first arrow Maglor drew his curved blade and spun defensively, cloak held to shield his body. Maedhros half-unsheathed his own blade. Neither were carrying projectile weapons, unless a sling was hidden under a cloak. The lack of companions or horses confused the boys. Surely they had recaptured the horses. Did the Noldor no longer trust their men or beasts, or had they thought to track the boys alone and on foot and reach them? Elrond refused to calculate how quickly the pair had caught up to them.
After the second or third arrow the nature of their unseen enemies must have been obviously hostile elves and not orcs. Elros wondered if that was frightening or reassuring to the two Fëanorians. There was nothing distinct about the Nandor arrows or fletching to his untrained eyes, but the boy doubted that one could mistake them for orcs’. And the Fëanorians had no allies besides the outlaws of their small camp and the few Bór.
Orothaiben shifted, deliberately allowing the pink of his floral attire to peek through the foliage. The movement and color drew Maedhros and Maglor’s attention. The Nandorin captain whistled a short and mocking note, as if he did not think the pair of Fëanorians keen-eyed enough to notice him without aid. Orothaiben languidly notched another arrow. All was calculated disrespect; the whistle and slowness was the same playfulness as the cherry blossoms. Everything spoke of someone who had grown bored of his own mastery and whose joy came at the expense of his enemies.
Maedhros and Maglor stepped back from the clearing into the border of shadows, though this did little. Not even a fool could misunderstand the warning, and though they must have known that they were surrounded, they looked only in the direction of that flash of pink. If Maedhros or Maglor had looked up, they might have noticed one of the Green Elves in the tree directly above them, weapon pointed downwards. Maglor shifted away from his brother, a sign that they perhaps sensed the immediate danger, but it was Maedhros who opened his mouth.
The Nandor bowman’s arrow did not graze even a strand of Maedhros’s hair as it thwacked into the tree beside him, but as with the other warning shots, these near misses were only due to the archer’s incredible control. Only on Orothaiben’s whims would those inches change. Fast could be Maedhros’s blade - but no speed or reflex that the swordsman possessed was faster than the archer, despite what Maedhros’s desperate ego may or may not admit. And Maedhros’s fear was wiser than his pride.
The left hand rose in a gesture of surrender. The mouth closed without a word.
Only then did any of the Nandor make a verbal response.
Short mocking barks and whistles assaulted the two Fëanorians from the branches that hung above their heads, encircling them in scorn. Some of the Green Elves could throw their voices and others moved silently around the perimeter of the clearing, disguising the sources of the mockery. The Nandor laughed at how the two Feanorians flinched, prolonging the sounds. Then as swiftly as the laughter started, it stopped. In this silence did the leader of the Nandor eventually deign to break with a taunt. “Be at ease, Kinslayers. My arrows will not pierce thee, though my heart doth sing for it. Yet I shall not be thee. If I e’er become like the orcs, murdering elves and men and despoiling fair cities and refuges, it shall be the Black Foe himself that turns me into a monster, not my own hand.” This barb turned Maedhros as red as his hair, his eyes alight with the same murderous rage that the boys remembered when he cut down their nurse. Orothaiben laughed again, and there was only cruelty in that sound. “If thou linger within my sight, perhaps my hands shall attempt to end thee. The temptation is strong. And it is not the last time that thou hast brought malice and violence in thy wake. Thou has not offered any decent man or elf peace for many a long year, and so thou cannot demand that anyone treat thee with such. When first the orcs came, before we fled west over the mountains, we thought them kin as well, and reached out in brotherhood and pity to give the orcs succor. They did to us what thou have done, Kinslayers. Orcs, I name thee, though you look still fair,” and here Orothaiben laughed again, “instead of foul.”
Maedhros’s rage deprived him of speech, so it was Maglor who opened his mouth to attempt to bargain or refute the Nandor bowman’s evaluation of their character and deeds. He achieved no more success than his brother, for the bowman spoke over Maglor, “We do not listen to the words of orcs. They have no value but to the Great Enemy and even he, I think, listens not to his minions’ prattle.”
“We are not-” Maglor started to deny the accusation, but the forest erupted into raucous laughter, uncalculated and involuntary, as every single Nandor elf gave into the absurdity of Maglor’s denial. As loud as a giant flock of crows were they, and Elrond and Elros were infected by the sound. Smiles unbidden unfurled on their faces.
Orothaiben whistled once more, a rising note longer than the one he had taunted the two Fëanorians with, and made the one-handed gesture that the twins now understood as a command for silence.
“Crawl back to your camp, Orcs. And fetch your horses before my men mistake them for deer. The beasts look underfed,” the Nandor captain taunted.
“The boys!” Maglor shouted, and Elrond felt a pang at the emotion in Maglor’s voice- but as always the child could not identify how much of the racing in his heart was fear. The fear of Maglor never left, no matter what other feelings also grew in his heart.
“The children that you stole are not yours to know, Thief,” the Nandor bowman spat. Again the insult drew colors to Maedhros’s pale and scarred face.
Another long silence, the Nandor waiting for the Fëanorians to dare hypocrisy and claim innocence of that accusation. Elros glanced at his brother’s face. Hurt, and the cause of that expression the same confusing mixture of sources.
Once more Maglor pleaded, “We do not wish them to come to harm.”
That lie drew not only raucous laughter from the Nandor but pain in Elrond’s hand as his twin squeezed it in furious disbelief. Elrond was doing the same to Elros, digging his nails into his twin’s flesh like the stolen knife had cut into the corral gate.
Maedhros and Maglor were liars. Their mother was dead. They had hurt the boys by destroying their home and the home that they should have had -just as Morgoth had destroyed the city of their father’s grandfather- and by stealing them away and not letting them leave. Elrond wanted to leave. More than he wanted to stay with Maglor, more than the fear that there was no place safe to go and all of their family and the families of the elves and mortals that the boys grew up with were all dead, more than fear in how there was something mean in the Nandor bowman’s face - that same meanness inside Maedhros and Maglor and the outlaw men and elves that obeyed them. Only some of the Easterling women and children in the outlaw camp lacked that meanness. Bledda’s mother had been nice, like Meleth, and Elrond prayed that one day Maglor or Maedhros would not stick their sword through kind Kreka.
“Go north!” Orothaiben commanded. “Find one of the balrogs that despoil our lands and die fighting against their might, Ship-Burners! Choose a worthy, selfless death instead of cowardice.”
“My brother and I shall not leave until we know that the boys are-”
“Thou shall do nothing!” Orothaiben interrupted. “All thy grand choices have been to the cause of evil, even when they were not meant so. And death to elves and mortals alike has thou chosen, again and again like the orcs thou art.”
This, Elrond thought with a nod to fairness, was not completely true. Maedhros and Maglor had spared them instead of murdering them besides Meleth. Nor had the Fëanorians abandoned Elwing’s sons in the cave, though that would have been better, for then they would have been rescued by Círdan. However the only reason that the twins had been there was because Maedhros and Maglor had decided to invade the last free settlement on the mainland, the last safe refugee from Morgoth’s forces. Mentally Elrond withdrew his objection.
“Are they safe?” Maglor pleaded.
“As they are no longer in the hands of their enemies,” Orothaiben murmured, then shouted, “Begone. I offer thee the mercy that I do not give other orcs, for the sliver of it that thou creatures still possess, in the hope that thou might redeem thyselves. As my father once offered succor to the first orcs, thinking to aid a tortured kinsman who escaped the Dark Lord. They slew him.” The flower-crowned elf smiled. Nothing in his face spoke of joy or kindness.
Had Maedhros less self-control, he would have been shuddering. Once more Maglor covered for his brother’s silence. “And are we safe to depart?”
“Thou insult me by ascribing thy character to me,” Orothaiben spat. The multitude of arrows embedded in various places around and in the forest clearing betrayed or confirmed his words, depending on if one focused on the fact that no arrow intentionally had touched a son of Fëanor. “Had I wished to instigate an attack, I would have done so when thy brother built a fortress upon the gravesite of my fallen king and kin, when Amon Ereb was despoiled by those that have the blood of my people upon their blades.
“I do not, because I am not as low as thee.” Orothaiben shifted on his arboreal perch, allowing the twins a better angle in which to see his face instead of guessing from tone of voice and arm movements.
“By thy oath and actions are thee the hunters of men and children alike, pursuing their deaths. Back to thy lairs, foul dragons of thy own making. I have no rich gems or gold upon my corpse to loot. North to the Rathlóriel thou canst go and dredge it to satisfy this immoral greed.”
“I do not care about gold!” Maedhros shouted.
Orothaiben made a face of bemused acknowledgement. “Your brother,” he said, referring to Caranthir. “I cannot tell thee apart,” he jested in a flippant imitation of Noldor disdain. “Thou cares not who thy enemy is and has made of it the world. ‘Tis a sad existence, this that thou hast chosen. But in truth I feel no pity. No more than I can the orcs that slew my father or my king Denethor. Or the ones that slew my King Dior, his fair queen, and his children. Thy presence is poison upon my soul. I will not pursue thee, for the foulness that corrupts like dragon miasma.”
Years later, a gray-haired Bledda would explain the root of that emotion to the twins in a confession of compatriotism. Disgust and sorrow fueled that hatred of Orothaiben’s, because the source was love made unhallowed. Bledda as the last Scion of the People of Bór felt the same emotion when confronted by the Easterlings that kept their allegiance to Morgoth. Where should have been a happy reunion between two mortal tribes was thwarted by all-consuming fury that those that could have been distant kinsmen were willing to chase the promise of evil at every offer. In Dor-lómin, men ruled over conquered people with the tools of despair and cruelty, corrupted by the promise of a rich home. Bledda accepted the fearful and hateful glances from the children and grandchildren of the Hadorim women spared to be kept as Easterling wives, children who looked at their own fathers with either fear or love or an all-too-familiar blend of both. “My mother and her mothers clung to honor, even when we lost our homes and then renounced our second. But we never renounced our heritage as the People of Bór, because ever since the Choice made by Bór of the Great Soul, the only foes that we have slain are those of the Dark Lord. I know this, even if the victims of Dor-lómin do not. And I will not blame the ones that show me fear because I would not change my garb or songs.” Bledda paused before continuing his confession, knowing that the parallel that he was drawing would hurt the brief companions of his childhood. “Those that hate me because they see me as a traitor for siding with the Army of the Valar, those have my sorrow. And disgust. For they have identified themselves with their family’s murderers and captors. Not all could be Aerin and slay their second family, or Tuor and escape. Not all could choose death, or had the luck to find allies to evade recapture. To live by siding with the victors, choosing the friends of Morgoth as their masters and ignoring their deeds, giving those men their love, and hating their fellow victims and those that escaped the whip and blooded sword. To mistake for true kindness this corruption under the guise of safety. And that feeling will curdle into a matching hatred if I allow it. It is poison, and it fills me like heady wine if I indulge, eager to steal my wits, and I wish to. Because anger towards evil is not wrong, but the blindness towards mercy is.” Nodding towards the refugee camps that the Vanyar soldiers established for the remaining mortal inhabitants of Beleriand as the continent was slowly washing away, Bledda continued. “The fighters that denounce their old ways and their fathers' oaths, that will no longer attack the helpless and terrorize women and children, I will help to save, though if it were to be my sole judgement I would rule to give them death, or at least stay my hand and watch from high as the flood waters and avalanches bury them. Instead I give to the Gods the task of judging their sins.” Bledda’s deep sigh came not from an old mortal man’s weariness but a young man’s pain. Kreka’s son accepted his limitations on who he could not save. Neither Elrond nor Eönwë yet reached the same conclusion, holding out on a hope as little as could be nurtured, though the slain from Sauron’s unwillingness to submit to judgement and give true repentance would come later and of far higher toll. “The young, they will be comforted by your stories of the island. You and your brother should go among them more often and tell the story of arriving on the Isle of Balar, of how crowded it was with faces familiar and not, of sharing the sorrow of lost family and joy of your survival. Your brother soothes their fears when he reminds them of the experiences that they share and soon will. To them give your attention, as I remind myself to. My job is easier when the refugees trust us, and they trust when given bittersweet truth. That your arrival to Balar did not reunite you with kin thought dead, but among your people did you return. The children have never seen the ocean.”
The night before the twins sailed to the Isle of Balar, Orothaiben camped amongst the remaining beech trees of Nimbrethil where the twins had first been taught to climb. The smooth silver trunks and low branches called out to be explored, and it was with nostalgia that Elros and Elrond raced up the nearest tree until they could peer over the late summer leaves. Under the glow of moonlight they could see the rest of Arvenien. Stumps of felled trees dotted the surrounding hillsides. Turning they could see the glint that was the distant reflection off the ocean, but the Cape of Balar was too far away to see. There was a small fortress there now built by the orcs, according to the Nandor scouts, hence all the felled trees. Orothaiben wanted to attack it after dropping off the twins. The orcs had no watercraft to launch an invasion to the Isle of Balar, another location too distant to see from their arboreal lookout, but a stronghold worrying close to the last safety of Beleriand’s free people was unconscionable. Neither twin wanted their Nandorin friends to leave them so soon after arriving in Balar, but it was a selfishness that they could not voice.
The Nandor also lacked boats, but the elves knew how to make dugout canoes. However, with seventy-five miles of seawater, they would not chance the voyage but wait for contact with Círdan’s mariners. The Bay of Balar was mild enough for amateur sailors to venture into the coastal shallows on calm days, hoping to spot a friendly fishing vessel or pearl diver. Here the Green Elves needed the twins’ knowledge. As natives the boys knew its weather. The air smelled of home, the wind that caressed their faces as they leaned out of the beech trees as soothing as Meleth’s hands. At night the seagulls, sandpipers, and terns were asleep. In the morning the birds would cry, and Elrond and Elros would delight in the sound of their returning neighbors, the ones that the Third Kinslaying had not slaughtered. A short-lived delight that grew to highlight which sounds and sights and sensations were missing.
“Grief,” Elrond said, “for all the people I could never see again and the homes that were lost, even those that I did not think I would miss. Father told me the same, of Gondolin. Of how, as much as he hated his Uncle Maeglin who tried to kill Grandfather Tuor and himself, a little part of him still loved his uncle, despite the evil. And though Eärendil loved the sea more than any place in all of Arda, he still missed the walled mountains of Gondolin and its towering white buildings, cage though it was. But he would not choose it over the forests or the shore or the sea, which he would have never known without Gondolin’s destruction. And that all paled before Mother.”
Bledda chuckled. “For me, I like these mountains. I like the blue of the sky and the clear canopy of stars. The cold stone and snow, the strong winds, the bright yellow-green lichen. I was never at ease in the forest.”
“I have tried to teach you,” Elrond said. “How you can climb the sheerest cliff face and fall from a tree astounds me!”
“Squirrel,” Bledda teased, “that is what your elf-blood is. Or cat, with your night-sight. I am too old, my bones too brittle, to test against the whims of fickle branches.”
Elrond hated this reminder of the disparity of their aging. The War of Wrath was not yet ended, so Eönwë had yet to gift the boons of power, wisdom, and life span beyond that of any mortals to the Edain (and the last of the Bór, equal in loyalty) - or the choice that would one day permanently divide the peredhel twins. To change the subject, Elrond asked, “Well, Goat-friend, what happened to the horses all those years ago?”
Hi! Could you do a preference in which you pass a nude or a +18 photo to your partner before a game?? I think that preferences could be with Gavi,Pedri and João or the ones you prefer 💖
This is super late but it's now out - sorry for the late reply, I was gathering inspiration to write it.
Did you post a fic called “under your spell” cause I got a notification and I pressed on it but I didn’t show up? not to be seen as rude but I’m just confused
Hi anon🙃 yep! It was prematurely posted but it's up now! You can find it here
