Ugly Duchess, this is not the end, but we are getting close.

Y'all are also reading a new chapter written by Acharion, BSN, RN, your new crotchety and sleep deprived Emergency Department Nurse. Damn that feels good to write. Anyway, enjoy the angst.

Elrond

Maglor was the one to tell us that we would no longer be staying at Amon Ereb. With hushed and solemn words we were ushered to his chambers, which had been scrubbed pristine since the last time we saw them. The walls and floors were purged bare and the only evidence of his strange episode was a stack of thin volumes bound in black leather sitting upon his desk. On the cover, in gold foil, was stamped "Noldolantë" and slightly below it "Kanafinwë Makalaurë Maglor Fëanorion". His full name and the title written in the language that had been forbidden to be spoken in Beleriand by our own forefather. Not so foreign as it had been in our youth, for Maglor himself had taught us to speak and read Quenya. Though we were not nearly as fluent as he and his brother were, I felt little regret that we now possessed the skill.

I didn't need to open the cover of those books to know the contents; the words of that song were already impermiably writ into my mind. I am one of the few left in Middle Earth who is lucky enough to have heard the author himself manipulate the words of the Noldolantë into real imagery. After the finalization of that project he'd sung it more than once before the people of Amon Ereb and had always been met with an audience of either stunned or teary eyed subjects.

"You must understand," my captor said (and as I sat before him he was suddenly and unexpectedly our captor once more, free to determine our fate), with red eyes and his voice more tight than normal, "That this decision is very much in your best interest. Erenion is your..our king, and he will treat you well and will be able to place you in positions that adequately befit your status. Maedhros and I will never be able to do that. Any further association with us will only harm you both. And Maedhros believes that you-"

"Maedhros decided we'd be leaving, then?" Elros cut him off with a tone that curdled with anger.

"Yes" He said abruptly, "but no," Maglor replied to his own answer, shaking his head as if confused, and I knew then with certainty that it had actually been Maehros' decision. "Yes, he was the one to speak of it first, but he and I are in agreement in this matter."

Elros was furious, I knew, I could feel him rippling with rage and disappointment beside me. I understood it but I did not feel the same. It was not a surprise really. I was unhappy as he was. I did not want to leave Amon Ereb. I'd found my stride there, had made friends with their soldiers, had come to love the brothers I once only thought of as Kinslayers. But I was not surprised when Maglor said those things, perhaps because I had been expecting them the whole while. Everyone you care for leaves and nothing lasts forever. My mother had leapt from the cliffs at Sirion and my father had sailed away and I believed our captors must have grown tired of caring for us, so much so that they thought it better to send us away. That belief didn't ease the sting.

I looked at Maglor then, tried to understand what it was that he was thinking. Because I had come to assume, I had believed with all my spirit, that he loved us and cared for us as the children he never had. When I looked at him I felt sick, because I knew that I was correct, that this separation would pain him far more than it would me or my brother. Maglor's whole body was slouched down in the seat of his chair, and his hair was in front of his face and he looked utterly miserable.

"You must understand," he said, through the dark strands of his hair. He sounded tired. "That staying here will be detrimental to you both. And Maedhros doesn't wish that for you. I don't wish that for you."

He sighed and turned to look out the window. The windows of his chamber were shut despite the cool air of the summer in that area.

"My nephew is the one who is coming. You'll like him. Celebrimbor has always been a good..a good man, and he'll see that you're taken care of."

And despite the reassuring tone of Maglor's voice, I couldn't bring myself to believe him.

The night before Celebrimbor was to arive, Maglor had checked, then rechecked our trunks and ensured that our best robes were pressed neatly and that we had been bathed to shiny pink perfection. Although we picked at our dinners, he had insisted that we finish. He did not finish his own.

Despite our age and the fact that we had gone to bed unassisted for many years, he made meticulous pains to ensure that we have every measure of comfort that night. Crisp sheets donned our mattresses, full cups of clear water were on both bed stands, the fire in our shared chambers were stoked extra high. He sang us a silly lullaby from our youth which only served to make me feel more melancholy and drive further home the realization that we were really departing soon. When he thought us asleep, he had leaned in gently and kissed both of us upon the brow. In desperate deceit, I had paced my breath in a steady and shallow rhythm.

Through the partial view of my half-closed lids, the fragmented scene viewed through my eyelashes, I watched Maglor pause at the doorway for many long minutes, a frown turning the corners of his mouth downward and his forehead furrowed deep before he turned away and closed the door silently.

I laid awake for a very long time. At least it felt like a very long time. It wasn't Isil had filled our chamber with silver light that I felt bold enough to slip out of bed and down the hall towards Maglor's own chambers. The floor was cold under my feet and a draft in the poorly fitting windows stirred the curtains that Maglor had long ago replaced. I feared waking Elros. Nonetheless, I crept out silently and padded down the corridor that connected the brothers' chambers to our own. The door that separated their sleeping chambers, one that opened into a sort of seating area that was suitable for meeting guests was open. I had spent many hours in that room, listening to Maglor play absently on his harp, watching Maedhros study maps. We often had spent the evenings together there. Light spilled out into the corridor that was otherwise unlit and undrafted and unperfected music washed over me. Maglor was inside, as I had hoped.

I stopped at the doorway, suddenly feeling like an intruder on a place that had come to feel like home. I stopped there and quietly listened, drinking in the music that was spun from the bard's fingers, intoxicating the very air around me. I had not hidden there long before the music stopped and Maglor's smooth voice called out softly for me, for of course he had known that I was there.

I had not quite yet accepted how much I would miss this quiet comfortable space between us all. I had not yet realized that I was crying. I flew forward at his beckoning, once more into the now well known and warm embrace of my former captor.

The silver harp that he so often played for us laid at his side as he opened his arms to me one final time. The tears probably should have come before that moment, but the floodgates suddenly burst open and I found myself sobbing into those familiar encircling arms. Once more he sang to me, snatches of the happier parts of the Noldolantë, parts of familiar lays of our people, bits of those same lullabies he'd just sung, but in a slightly different key. I drenched the front of his tunic with my tears, and more than once he used his sleeve to wipe up my eyes and nose before pulling me close once more.

"Celebrimbor is a good man, he'll take good care of you." Maglor had whispered again between the verses he sang.

My last memories of that night are of the first pink strands of dawn peaking up over the horizon through his windows, and the smell of my salty tears mixed with the scent of fresh laundered linen, clove and wine.

It was the sun that awakened me, many hours later, slowly coming awake on the carpeted floor covered with a blanket that Maglor must have placed over me. I had grown too large to easily carry to bed anymore.

Maglor and his silver harp were gone.

I would not be until I came to Balar that I would find that harp at the bottom of my truck, delicately wrapped below all my less precious belongings.

Despite Maglor's insistances, I felt a creeping doubt when the Fëanorion flags came into view, announcing the arrival of their nephew. We stood out on the plain before the fortress of Amon Ereb, my brother and Maglor and Maedhros and I, our trunks packed and Elros and I dressed in suitable attire to meet our guest and new guardian. Maglor had taken extra care that day to do our hair neatly in the braids that I had come to realize were of Fingolfin's house, rather than the Fëanorion plaits he's always made before. That morning I'd savored his fingers against my scalp, knowing it would be the last time I'd feel them there.

And no matter the assurances Maglor doled out, I didn't like Celebrimbor when I first met him. He surveyed his uncles with a strikingly cold gaze that spoke of a lifetime of distrust. He approached alone, leaving the company that we would soon join behind him. With Maglor's coloring, dark hair and pale skin, he resembled my captor. And though his eyes were the same dark silver as the brother's, his gaze carried the same leaden weight that Maedros' did.

I don't believe I can truly be blamed for being distrusting, not at that age. It was much later that I realized that the isolationist tendencies that Maglor and Maedhros had both criticized in both Thingol and Turgon they had actively engaged in as well. Perhaps it was understandable, for alliances had not served the Fëanorians well. Elros and I had been raised among the same throng of companions and soldiers who had stood by them through Siron and Doriath and before, barely encountering anyone outside of their close circle of entrusted followers. It was not until I was much older that I realized their folly in that matter and vowed that I would not make the same mistake.

"Greetings to you, uncles. It has been a long time since we have met in good company." The grey-eyed newcomer said, a mist of chilliness clouding words that might otherwise have been friendly.

Maglor stepped out of the line we had formed to embrace his nephew, but Celebrimbor drew away before they met. I felt a shot of pity for Maglor, to be so obviously rejected. Nonetheless, he carried on smoothly.

"Yes, Tyelpe, It's been a very long time."

I have never been sure why and I never had the courage to ask, though I suppose he was afraid, but Elros stepped forward and wrapped his arms around Maglor, maybe in comfort that at least one member of his kin would not leave him. Perhaps it was one last desperate but silent cry to not let us go. I almost wept then, to know that my closest companion felt the same as I did when we had been divided on so many issues before.

"I go by Celebrimbor now, thank you." The new captor before us said icily.

Maglor didn't flinch. "Yes, of course. Celebrimbor. These are the boys, Elros and Elrond." He ignored my brother's desperate clutch to him and simply patted us both on the head, as if we were acquaintances rather than the children he'd raised for the past 18 years.

The impetus was on us then, I knew, to say polite and respectful words to Celebrimbor, this new relative that we should greet kindly. One who should be welcomed into our good graces. I could not do it. My tongue would not form the words that were required of me, even if I knew Maglor wanted me to say them.

"Boys!" Maedhros barked in an unusually harsh tone. "Your manners! You were raised better than that!"

We were, and the correct and courteous words finally slipped past my tongue and I thought I heard them from Elros as well. Introductions to their nephew, no matter how little I wished to give them. For even if I had understood Maglor's arguments in an academic way, this felt utterly unfair. I shouldn't have to leave them. I shouldn't have to venture to some new place.

Maglor wrapped his free arm around Elros and I felt his voice like vibrations on the air "You'll dine with us tonight, Celebrimbor?"