Elrond gently thumbed up one slack eyelid then touched fingers to the pulse at Glorfindel's neck while Aldon arranged splints and bandages.
"He is deeply asleep now and will feel no pain when we perform the manipulation." Glorfindel's friend sighed as he settled on the bed and ran his fingers across the injured forearm, easily tracing the knot of inflammation above the break. Aldon sat in a chair at the bedside, ready to assist.
"Are you sure you want to do this. It must be distracting, working on a friend," the apprentice healer suggested.
His mentor chuckled. "He has been injured many times since we have known each other. I am well used to repairing the damage and it is a minor injury. The reason I asked you to assist me on this occasion is that there is something I would like you to learn. Lay your hand above the break and tell me what you sense."
Aldon reached across and laid a hand lightly above the swelling, his eyes becoming unfocussed as he slipped into healing trance. With his inner eye he saw the bones beneath his hand. One was unharmed, but for a slight crack that would heal without assistance. The other, however, had been snapped. He concentrated and found the reason for Elrond's comment. When the bone had shattered a small fragment had been sheered off, becoming lodged alongside the two longer pieces. Physical manipulation alone would not slide such a shard back into place.
Refocusing upon the outer world, the apprentice scanned the supplies upon the bedside table. "I see no surgical kit."
His comment was met with a smile. "A mortal healer would be obliged to resort to surgery but we can do otherwise."
When Aldon cast him a questioning glance he continued. "You have learned how to use your healing song to strengthen and support your patient so that the body can heal itself and in many cases, particularly with elves, that is all that is required. On this occasion however, although it will help there is another use to which it can be put, with practice."
Elrond settled more comfortably upon the bed and took hold of Glorfindel's wrist and elbow. "Do you remember when we met? You helped me heal a soldier with a damaged skull."
The younger elf nodded, watching as Elrond found the right grip to ensure a firm and steady stretching of the limb. "I remember. I have often wondered, since then, how you did it. You seemed to move the bone of his skull back into place. I have sometimes wondered whether I imagined it."
"You did not imagine it." Elrond was finally satisfied with his hold upon his friend's injured arm. Perhaps next time he would be more careful of riding in the rain and listen to Elrond, when he warned that the trails would be too slippery for the horse. It was small wonder that the horse had not been hurt too.
"Lay your hand upon the break and move into your healing trance . . . ready the song of your fae as you have been taught."
Aldon complied, green eyes growing hooded as his hand came to rest lightly upon the bruise beginning to purple on Glorfindel's pale flesh. He gathered the spring song of his soul and searched out Glorfindel's steady golden melody, not surprised to find Elrond's cool strong presence waiting for him.
"I find it easiest to visualise this part. I imagine my song becoming a physical thing . . . whatever tool is needed for the job." Aldon watched in amazement as the liquid cool presence of his mentor became a fine pair of pincers, grasping the shard of bone. The apprentice watched with his inner eye, even as his hand felt it, as Elrond stretched out the ends of the broken bone. A gentle nudge and the dislodged shard was slipped in while the longer sections of bone were carefully manipulated back into place. The pincers dissolved and Elrond wrapped his cool and soothing song about the angry inflamed tissues surrounding the bone.
As he had done so many times before, Aldon slipped in to help his teacher, sealing tiny damaged blood vessels and speeding the circulation to draw away the gathering fluid. Once the inner healing was done he brought his focus back to the outer world and padded the arm, prior to applying splints and strong bandages to hold them in place while Glorfindel's own body could repair the broken bone. It would stand a better chance now that all the pieces were back in their proper position.
Elrond laid the arm across Glorfindel's chest and fastened it in place with a sling to support it, although he knew his friend well enough to guess that he would not tolerate such a thing for long once he was awake. He looked across at Aldon.
"Do you think that you could do that? Did you feel the shift to the physical?"
Silver eyes met his. "I saw it and felt it but, whether I could do it, I do not know."
Elrond nodded. "It is not an easy thing to explain and can only really be learned by doing." He smiled ruefully. "Perhaps fortunately, the opportunity to try does not arise often, but when next it does I will let you test out your skill."
Aldon looked a little uncertain. "Are you sure I can do it? What if I cause further injury with my blundering?"
"I will be there to help. And I have watched your progress over these past years. You will be able to do it." Elrond's voice held a certainty that the younger elf would not dare gainsay.
0o0
Elrond wrapped the tiny squalling bundle in a soft blanket and moved to lay it in Celebrian's arms, leaning down to plant a delighted kiss on the cheeks of both mother and babe. His firstborn's tiny screwed up eyes squinted at the vague shape that was his mother's face and she enfolded him in her soul's song. At once the tiny mewling cries slowed, faded to hiccups and then ceased as he nestled against her breast. The proud father could only watch, a slight smile gracing his face.
Suddenly, Celebrian's face contorted as another contraction overtook her and her fingers clenched in the blanket wrapping her firstborn.
"Elrond, I think you had better take Elladan before I crush him," she half joked around the spasm. Her husband rushed, all too willingly, to oblige her and gathered up the tiny bundle to lay it in a crib at the bedside. There, for a moment, he stood gazing down at the perfect form of their child before he was drawn back to the urgency of the moment by Aldon's voice.
"Elrond . . . I believe you are needed here." He had learned to carefully modulate his voice, in the way of all healers, and only Elrond would have caught the slight note of concern it held.
The younger elf had his hand upon Celebrian's swollen belly and his friend and mentor joined him, laying his own hand by Aldon's and reaching out with his healer's senses to discover what was disturbing the other. His mind encountered the confused and mildly irritated soul of his second son and touched it with a little comfort before moving on to check the child's surroundings.
The babe had turned slightly in his mother's warm cocooning womb, deciding that he would prefer to stay there after all, and was being pushed relentlessly, nonetheless, towards the world, bottom first. Fortunately the contraction ended and Elrond felt his wife's muscles and fae relax once more. He looked up at her and smiled, his eyes twinkling.
"It seems that our other son has decided that he knows best and does not wish to arrive head first as is usual. When the next contraction arrives try not to push. I shall go and have words with him." Even as he finished the instruction he felt Celebrian tense and saw her struggle to comply but the battle was hard fought, for by now her body was acting upon instinct, and finding the correct signals to cause the muscles to relax was not a simple matter.
Elrond laid both his hands upon her belly and began to try and manipulate his child into a more sensible position for birthing. The babe protested but finally relented as his father's familiar song touched him, coaxing and comforting. Elrohir allowed himself to be turned, just as his mother lost the battle with her body and the little head was pushed closer to the birth canal.
Suddenly, Elrond heard a note of panic from the babe and refocused within. What he found pushed all healer's detachment from his mind. The turning of the tiny body had looped the natal chord about his neck and it was beginning to constrict as he was nudged into leaving his mother. For a moment his father was too stunned to react.
Aldon felt his mentor's hesitation and, knowing that Celebrian's body would soon force the issue, he gathered his healing song . . . almost without thinking fashioning it into a soft hook that he slipped between chord and tiny neck. Gently he loosened the loop and slid it over the babe's head, just as he felt the renewed ripple of Celebrian's muscles as the next contraction began. He sensed a tendril of thanks from Elrond and heard his voice.
"Push, My Love."
Aldon watched in elation as the child's head engaged with the birth canal and then looked across to meet Elrond's grateful smile. Once more in control of his emotions, the teacher moved to await the arrival of his second son's down covered, head.
"I said you would master the skill when the need arose," he quipped and Aldon allowed himself a small laugh.
Elrond skilfully dealt with the arrival of the rebellious second twin, laying him on the bed while he saw to the chord and then holding out the soft blanket to Aldon. The younger elf wrapped the bleating child and watched as his father picked him up. To his surprise, however, Elrond laid Elrohir in Aldon's hands.
"I think the honour of presenting this child to his mother lies with his rescuer."
The younger elf looked down into the slightly unfocussed blue eyes of the life that he had helped to bring into the world, surprised when the cries quieted as soon as the babe was laid in his hands. Elrond chuckled.
"It would seem that he recognises you."
Aldon could not tear his gaze from the tiny form. One little hand escaped the blanket, waving aimlessly and Aldon slipped his finger beneath the chubby fist, smiling as it closed firmly around his slender digit. For a moment he found himself totally enraptured by the minute pale half moons on each perfect shell pink nail.
He looked up, to find that Elrond was laying his firstborn on Celebrian's chest and he moved to hand over the second twin. Both parents smiled at him. A cool blue melody, laced with bright mithril harmony, reached out and touched him and, tripping lightly within the conjoined songs of the Lord and Lady of Imladris, was the tiny duet of two new lives.
"Thank you, Aldon."