Glorfindel's voice in louder-than-necessary dismissal alerted Lindir and Melpomaen to the fact that the servant had left. Mel pushed aside the curtains which had been screening the balcony as Glorfindel came towards them.

'That was to say Elrond wants to see me. Can guess what it's about... So, Lindir, have I seen you? Or haven't I? In case he asks.'

'Of course you have seen me; I would not expect you to deceive Elrond. But by the time you speak with him, you will not know where I am, if he asks...'

'True. Are you all right, though?'

Lindir nodded slowly.

'It was the suddenness, the thought that Elrond would simply assume I would... I am fine.'

'Good. Stay here as long as you wish. Both of you.'

Once Glorfindel had gone, however, Lindir got to his feet.

'I think if it is possible, we should warn Erestor not to hurry home.'

'If we hasten, we can get a message off to the Greenwood today; the falconer will assume it is on Elrond's behalf. My workroom is not far from the mews; it would be a good place to retreat to, once we have the message sent.'

'Good idea... thank you, Melpomaen.'

The message was soon written: 'From Melpomaen and Lindir from the House of Elrond, greetings to Erestor and to Elrohir. This to inform you our lord now intending to arrive in Gondor for the New Year festival, he is leaving Imladris before the next full moon rises. Unless you ride with urgent haste through bad weather, you will miss his departure. Be well...' and Mel carried it off to the mews, leaving Lindir alone staring into the flames of Melpomaen's workroom fireplace and nursing a mug of chamomile tea.

He was starting to calm now, no longer fearful, but ashamed of his anxiety and, worse, disappointed and miserable... it had been a chance to seek Kovalia, but instead, he had backed away from Elrond as if Briot were standing at his shoulder waiting...

Because, surely, if you loved someone, you would brave anything for them? And yet he would not even do this...

'Lindir, I am back!' Melpomaen's voice sang out. 'It went really well, the falconer said he had a peregrine just in its prime, he will send the bird as soon as he has told it where to go... Lindir? What's troubling you?'

'I... perhaps Elrond was right, perhaps I don't really love Kovalia... maybe it was just my fëa trying to find some comfort where it could...'

'What has brought this on, mellon-nin?' the young healer asked gently, easing the now-cold cup from Lindir's hands. 'I have heard you speak of her, of how you feel about her, and it sounds like love to me.'

'What do I know of love?' Lindir shook his head. 'Only what I sing or read or see around me! Surely, if I truly loved her, I would be eager to go...'

'If you had not been so terribly hurt, right down into your fëa, possibly. If she wrote and said, Lindir, come to me, I need you, for instance...'

'Then of course I would... I would try... but... what Elrond said... the time comes when we must all face our fears... and yet I cannot, so I fail myself, and Kovalia, and... and Elrond, although I care less about that but... still, I am a failure.'

Melpomaen knelt in front of Lindir and took his hands comfortingly.

'Do you think Elrond is right?'

'I... he is Elrond, he knows about these things...'

'No, I think, when it comes to facing our fears, Glorfindel the Balrog-Slayer knows about these things. Why do you not ask him, later?'

'Well, perhaps...'

'Besides which, do you not think Elrond may have had a vested interest in saying that to you?'

'P... perhaps...'

'Do you think Elrond advises everyone in this manner? Could you imagine him having told our Lady Celebrian she must face her fears...?'

Shocked, Lindir blinked and stared.

'Melpomaen! She was tormented by orcs; it is hardly the same thing...!'

'I know it is not; you were raped by a human man. The two cases are entirely different. Yet it was the wound to her fëa that caused her to sail, and this was an injury for your fëa, also.'

'Besides, it would have been unkind of him!'

'It was unkind of him to say it to you, too. These things take time, Lindir, and yes, perhaps the time does come when we must face things... but I think it takes more than a few weeks to recover from something as terrible as your ordeal.' Releasing Lindir's hands, Melpomaen got to his feet and began brewing more tea. 'I think you do love your Kovalia, and I think it entirely understandable that your fëa still wants to protect itself by staying far from the danger of her brother. I will go with Elrond, and I will bear any missive you want, I will say anything you need, carry any letter... I will not attempt to sing your song to Kovalia, Lindir, but I will be your message-hawk.'

'Thank you.' Lindir's face wavered between a grimace of misery and a smile. 'Your words give me comfort, but... but the difference between what I hear, and what I feel...'

'I know. This, too, is something that becomes easier, with time.'

'And you really will go?'

Melpomaen nodded.

'I really will, as long as Elrond will find me an acceptable translator. Believe me, the opportunity to travel, with a large group, to Gondor, it is no hardship to me. I promise you, I will take care, I will learn Glorfindel's lessons, I will take no risks.'

After supper that evening, as Lindir prepared to sit at the harp for an hour, he found Elrond standing with his arms clasped behind his back in his official avuncular-lord stance.

'Lindir...' he began, breaking off as he found Glorfindel suddenly at his elbow. At a seat nearby, Melpomaen and Elladan tried to look nonchalant as they sat within earshot. 'Lindir, if you do not wish to travel to Gondor again so soon, Melpomaen has offered his services as translator... you can still change your mind, of course, but I am sure we will cope without you.'

'I know the word for 'horse' if you get stuck, Elrond,' Glorfindel said.

'You will not be riding with us, Glorfindel. As seneschal, you will, of course, be staying here to make sure all is well in my absence. Elladan also will stay... and, Lindir, before I leave you to your music, I am not sure whether there was a misunderstanding earlier...'

'My lord?' Was this going to be an apology...?

'Yes... I hear that you and Melpomaen sent a message off by hawk to Mirkwood; it was well done of you, but I had not intended you to take my remarks concerning Erestor and Elrohir as a request to send to them... it was thoughtful of you, however, and no harm done.'

'Thank you, my lord. I will gladly stay, and work on my music, and endeavour to keep the library in order while you are gone.'

'Well, do not let me keep you from the music, Lindir. My thanks once more.'

Lindir woke in the night clutching at his chest, staring wildly about him.

The dream had changed... this time, as Briot had stood over him, gloating and talking incomprehensibly, he had heard Kovalia's voice in the background, imploring, pleading, and it came into his thought that she needed him, that his cowardice kept him from her, put her at risk...

'It is not so,' his dream-self had insisted. 'This is a device of my mind, a merging of my present fears with memories of old terrors... I need not be victim to this...'

He had woken, then, but it had been a struggle, and it took him a few moments to recover his composure. On his nightstand, the dream sifter's suspended gems turned and twisted silently in the dimness.

Lindir covered his face with his hands, striving for control. The fear in his heart now was not for himself, it wasn't the dread of what-had-happened mingling with his terror of if-it-were-to-happen-again; it was other, different.

It was fear for Kovalia.

'The focus of your night-terrors has shifted, perhaps,' Melpomaen said when Lindir confided in him the next day. 'It is good, I think.'

'Good? How can it be good when I dream of Kovalia in danger and him – Briot – between us?'

'Because it is no longer only you, Lindir. I feel it shows you are beginning to recover, if you can see beyond your terror like this.'

'I do not know what to do, Melpomaen. I thought that the dreams would stop, in time, and be less frequent. But this thing did not happen, so how can I tell myself I have endured it? How can I use my coping techniques here when they do not fit? I told myself, it was a mingling of past events and my fears for the future, and I woke, but will it continue thus?'

Melpomaen turned away to pour hot water onto herbs for tea. He did not want to admit he didn't know, but he could not quite bring himself to lie, to utter reassurances about which he was unsure.

'In my experience,' he began cautiously, 'it is usual for the mind to alter how it processes difficult things. And if you remember how distressed you were yesterday, with Elrond talking about facing your fears, and maybe it is also my fault, because I said, if Kovalia sent that she needed you, would you go? So I put that thought in your mind. Only you can say if you felt that the dream was about what you endured, or about your misplaced sense of shame and failure.'

He handed Lindir a cup of spiced winter tea and sat next to him, looking into the heart of the fire.

'So, my opinion is that this is hardly a surprising development, under the circumstances. And being reminded of everything with the impending visit to Gondor, with Elrond's request, it would have been odd, I think, if your sleep had not been disturbed.'

'But... I thought I had been doing so well...'

'And you have.' The young healer put his arm around Lindir's shoulder for a moment in a comforting hug. 'You are truly inspirational in how courageous you were, in how strong you have been... in fact, Elrond can almost be excused being an idiot yesterday, for forgetting how you suffered for you are so very, very brave and have tried so hard not to dwell on your terrible ordeal. Almost forgiven... but not entirely... he really is an idiot sometimes...'

'But, I suppose, we are part of his household so he is our idiot,' Lindir said, managing a smile. 'Is it not odd how much wiser he seems when Erestor is home?'

Melpomaen giggled, and Lindir laughed, and felt better.

'Shall we talk a walk up the valley?' he suggested, when the tea was finished. 'Or have you too much to do today?'

'A walk will be nice,' Melpomaen said. 'But if I walk this morning, I must work this afternoon on my language skills. Will you help me, or must you practice your harp?'

'I will work with you, of course,' Lindir said. 'Perhaps my helping you will also help me.'

By the time the party was ready to depart twelve days later, Lindir had settled down again. The dream had come to him twice, once in its old form, Briot leering and muttering, and once with Kolvalia's voice, anxious, in the background. But each time, Lindir remembered the power the dream sifter gave him to alter the dream's progress, and he called out to Kovalia not to fear, that help was coming, and after that he slept more easily.

On the morning of departure, the friends met in Glorfindel's rooms to say a private farewell to Melpomaen after breakfast. Elladan didn't stay long; his father wanted to give him last-minute advice as to the running of the Last Homely house, and so Glorfindel and Lindir were left alone with the young healer.

Lindir took out a carefully folded and sealed piece of parchment, passing it to Melpomaen.

'If you see her – if you can – this is for Kovalia.'

'I will do my very best, Lindir, I promise.'

Glorfindel saw the exchange and grinned. 'Don't get that mixed up with Elrond's speech of formal greeting, will you?'

'No, I will not... What's the word for horse again, Glorfindel?' Melpomaen asked, making Lindir laugh.

Glorfindel told him, and went on to offer it as his opinion that Melpomaen was now as skilled in the dialect as Erestor had been. He was less complimentary about Elrond's abilities, but didn't see it as necessarily a problem.

'The less he knows how to say, the less trouble he's likely to get you all into,' he said with a grin. 'Remember what I taught you, Melpomaen, if you meet with any throuble; go for the nose, the eyes, the groin, bend back a finger, pull the hair... fight dirty, or fight like a girl... but I hope there will be no fighting.'

'I am sure there will not be,' Melpomaen said. 'We will be travelling with the company of the King, no less. Who would dare?'

Before going down to the stables for the formal leave-taking, Lindir and Glorfindel took the opportunity to hug Melpomaen and wish him well.

'For we can't part like friends downstairs, not with Elrond watching. He'd be making up his own stories,' Glorfindel said. 'Well, come on. Help you with your saddlebags?'

They gathered to see Elrond and Melpomaen off; Glorfindel and Elladan and Lindir standing on the steps of the Last Homely House and its Lord preparing to leave in a strange reversal of the natural order. Glorfindel having insisted on sending almost all the knights as escort, it was a substantial little troop that gathered around the courtyard.

'Glorfindel, take care of everything while we are gone,' Elrond said. 'Elladan, you are in charge, but do not forget to consult with Glorfindel or Lindir if you need to. And hopefully Erestor and your brother will be back before much longer.'

'Be well, Adar. And give my love to Arwen.'

Elrond nodded and gave the order to depart, wheeling his horse and riding under the arch and off towards the south. Melpomaen turned in his saddle to wave, his face a mixture of sorrow at parting and excitement at setting off on his first real journey. Lindir made himself smile broadly as he waved back.

Soon the company were lost to sight, the hoof beats of their horses diminished.

'Well, I suppose we can relax now,' Glorfindel said, throwing his arms across both Lindir and Elladan's shoulders. 'Come on. Let's go in and get warm.'