It started with the smell of salt.
It was a not wholly unpleasant stinging of the nostrils, starting as a small ember in the tip of the nose that gradually spread through the sinuses and burst into flame from within. Sitting in his study, lit by the warm glow of a small candelabra, he sniffed the air cautiously. He rested a long-fingered hand on the heavy leather tome. His stern eyebrows drew together, furrowed in slight confusion.
Rising from his chair, he placed a thin bookmark in the crook of the tome's spine, lest a small breeze ruffle the pages. He left his study, walking slowly down the long halls until he came to the kitchens. Opening the woven door that separated the kitchens from the dining terrace, he peered inside, expecting to see a stew boiling in a cauldron, or perhaps a seed-cake being baked in one of the enormous clay ovens. Instead, the cauldrons were unlit and the ovens were dark and cold.
Puzzled, and determinedly ignoring the small ache that was starting in the back of his head, he returned to his study.
The next day, the smell of salt returned.
This time, he was in his laboratory, distilling healing tinctures. The scent was so strong that he nearly broke an alembic as he lifted it from the flame, startled. While the scent of cloves and mints - by turns spicy and herbal - had been his brewing partners for the past hour, this new scent clashed viciously.
He carefully reviewed his bottles and ingredients, making sure that something had not been mislabeled. The wrong mixture could be ineffective at best and fatal at worst. He found all of the parchment labels to be correct, sniffing the occasional glass vial of chopped green herbs judiciously to make sure. He peered under the table, to be sure he hadn't spilt anything.
All was in order.
Another furrowing of his brows, and he continued to mix, and pour, and ladle, all the while ignoring what he was suspecting to be true.
That night, he heard a thunderous crash while sleeping.
He rose, chest heaving, reaching for Hadhafang, which never left his side in the night, and was concealed at his hip by day. It gleamed comfortingly in the moonlight, silver edge grinning wickedly. It had not tasted blood in some time, and he hoped it would not soon again.
Rising slowly, he crouched in a familiar martial stance, his muscles having never forgotten the taut, tense days of war and battle, cries in the night and the singing of steel. His bare chest, laced with gossamer-silver scars, was stiller now, rising silently in fewer breaths as he steeled himself for whatever skulked outside of his bower.
Barefoot, he circled his chamber warily, peering behind draperies and tapestries. Convinced at last that the room was secure, and the door locked, he stepped cautiously to his balcony, which overlooked the cascading waterfalls and graceful willows below.
The balcony was unoccupied, save for a chaise and a side table. He peered into the valley below, gray eyes prodding every leaf and fern, every cyclamen and mossy rock. A nightingale flitted from one cypress to another, twittering softly. Mist roiled at the base of a waterfall.
Nothing else stirred.
He returned to bed, slipping his blade under his pillow and curling a fist around its hilt.
He did not sleep that night.
A bird cried out the next morning, its call raw and throaty and piercing.
He paused in his review of the star-charts, and frowned. The sound was not one he had heard here. This bird was new, perhaps blown in on a storm, or lost in some malfunction of its navigational instincts. Here, he knew, sparrows and orioles flew in sparks of dun and flame, and the nightingales of the night before sang softly. Bleeding heart doves cooed in the undergrowth, and the occasional hawk would wheel overhead.
But this was different.
He strode onto the terrace, and while he did not expect to see the newcomer fowl he nevertheless scanned the treetops and the skies, pale pink and blue in the morning light.
He returned and sat heavily, resting his head in his hands. He knew, deep in his soul, that he would not find what he was seeking. That the sea-bird was not there, nor would it ever be. He knew the signs, he had known that they would come for him, as they came to all Elves. He had not known that it would be like this, a miasma of haunting scents and jarring sounds.
That night, he dreamt.
He smelt the stiff, bracing salt wind, felt it toss his hair and move chill fingers through his robes. He heard the crashing of the waves, blue and turquoise and gray in turns, the white froth crashing on rocks and lapping at the sides of his wooden boat. He saw the horizon, seemingly infinite and yet cloaked in mist. He heard the calling of the sea-birds, as their slashes of white sliced through the sky, high above the waves and mist and salt.
That night, the sea called Elrond Peredhel home.