A/N: Hi everyone! So we're now in the count down to beginning The Second Time which is the first of the long multi-chapter stories in The Singer Saga. Eek! I'm gonna need a lot of tea and whiskey... Or brandy...

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JR

P.s. P-atreon and Ko-fi update: Why aren't there tiers and goals yet on either? Mainly because I'm trying to get used to writing regularly on them. I don't want to promise my patrons something and not be able to deliver. So I'm working on building slowly and getting my routine down, then I will be doing some patron-only content like polls for story design and personalized thank-yous and inspiration videos or packages that contain some of the things that inspire each story and other various things. So hang in there with me, I'm still learning, and sign up to follow me so that when the tiers and goals go live you'd be the first to know.

Storms And Songs

Taking a day off of training she found herself on the beach watching a storm as it blew in off the waters to the north. She had come to love the storms. The energy of them. Sometimes they were violent and rage-filled, other times they were unrelentingly gentle. Sometimes they lasted for hours, and other times they might be gone in a blink.

Like any good Scot, she had never been put off by the weather. After all, there was never any poor weather really, just the wrong clothes for it. But this had become something else.

For it was in the weather that she felt closest to him, her husband. In the icy storms that raged, churning the northern waters into whitecaps. In the warm summer showers that turned the hillsides into a quilted pattern of blossoms. In the gentle snows that wrapped about the cottage like a warm blanket in the middle of winter. In the blizzards that drove those same snows into great drifts. In the beating sun. In the creeping fog through the trees.

He was everywhere.

"Will you come on?" Sherilyn called from the road behind her and the small food truck where she was getting something hot to drink. Poor southerner, barely used to the chill in London, let alone the wind and wet of the wild highlands. "I'm cold!"

Idly, Caelann wondered how Lyn would deal with something like the wilds of the Rohan plains where there was nothing to block the icy winds of winter. Luckily the winters there were rather quick, and it was unlikely that she would ever need to test herself there. As far as they knew, Lyn had only had dreams about the place but had never been able to interact with anything there. She had never been pulled there.

Pushing to her feet slowly, Caelann brushed off the sands that clung to her jeans and hands with a huff before looking back out to the storm that rolled closer. There was an odd energy about it. The winds and the waters whipping into a frenzy weren't odd in and of themselves. But there was just something.

Bubbling up within her, she felt the oddest need to hum. To sing. She hadn't felt the need to sing about anything since leaving the hospital. Before that, she had hummed, whistled, sung, even played a merry little tune at the drop of a hat on a whistle or a bodhran if the mood struck. Didn't matter where she was at the time.

But the question was. What did she sing?

Something to match the storm? Or something to soothe the one inside? Passion or grief? Love or anger? Hate or acceptance? Fast or slow? Chuckling softly at her own musings, she walked down the beach to where the water churned against the sands and felt them slide from beneath her feet.

"If you get electrocuted I'm not coming out until after the storm to save your foolish hide!" Sherilyn yelled as the wind began picking up.

Would this even work in this world? She wondered, thinking back to all the other times she sang. Nothing really happened as far as she knew. No rain in the desert. No sunshine on a cloudy day. Nothing out of the ordinary. But then again… She hadn't known the rules then.

Softly humming a country song in honor of her companion, who was yelling at her to get out of the water, she shifted from foot to foot as the waves pulled at the grains she stood on and watched the roiling clouds pour down their loads on the open ocean.

At first nothing. The storm raged and drew closer to shore at its own pace just as she expected it to.

Honestly, what did she think? A human could affect the weather by singing it? She felt very foolish all things considered.

Then she thought back to a day she had spent with Celebrain. Long before her wedding to Elrond, and Caelann's own to Thranduil, they had snuck away like naughty children from their tasks for the day. It had been so hot that they made their way to what they had thought was a hidden pool and jumped in, leaving their clothes over a branch.

Of course, they had been caught, by none other than the two ellon that they married years later, although the males didn't actually see much before she had hustled the elleth away in a fit of laughter. At first, embarrassment had flooded her for her more innocent friend, but Celebrain and only laughed harder. "Honestly!" She chuckled, nearly collapsing on a fallen tree trunk as her lungs begged for air. "It isn't as if they hadn't seen other ellith before!" Her friend protested. "We aren't deformed," she continued. "We're rather pretty, even if I do say so myself."

"But yer naneth…"

"Would have joined us!" Celebrain insisted, stretching out on her back on the trunk to soak up the sun that pierced the branched. "If you can not be a bit ridiculous and foolish at times then what is the point of it all?"

Celebrain may have left for the west already, Caelann thought. Spirit broken by what had happened to her, she may have left for the healing that the Valar offered.

Caelann grit her teeth at that. Celebrain had been innocent and light and good. As her children were. As Legolas was. If she had to act a bit foolish to find a way home and help them? So be it.

"I dinnae ken if this will work, Lord Ulmo." She whispered to the waves and salt spray. "I dinnae ken if you all are still listening ta me. Maybe I am crazy. Maybe it's delusions of an injured mind seeking ta protect itself. It's been so long tha' I feel like I am losing my grip on my faith, even reality some days. But if 'tis no delusion, if 'tis real, if ye are listening, please give me a sign. Let this work."

Softly she began singing. A song about storms running out of rain and heartaches fading away. Words about dark nights fading into day. And slowly the waters slowed at her feet until the waves barely lapped at her ankles as if they were listening to her. But the storm didn't stop its slow progression.

Thunder cracked.

Closer it came by the second until she could hear the hiss of the raindrops on the waters.

So she did the only thing she could. She changed songs and poured her heart into the words.

This one, a song about lovers rewriting their stars, she belted into the wind in a way she hadn't sung since the war. Not the one she had been injured in. But the war of The Last Great Alliance.

Then she felt it. The storm didn't stop. She simply didn't have that kind of power in a world that didn't believe in that kind of magic. But… The Valar had heard her she was sure. Because the storm cracked and split around her. But not a drop fell on her. She could reach our her hands and touch the stinging, pelting rain. But none of it fell on her.

She couldn't help the laughter that bubbled up from her heart.

Unfortunately, when she stopped singing the rain pelted her and soaked her to the skin within seconds.

"Nice, Ulmo!" She yelled at the water, still laughing.

Somewhere far away, Ulmo stood chest-deep in the waters that surrounded Aman. He bowed in her direction, his long hair dipping into the waters. Things were about to get interesting, he decided.

Frowning on her beach as she felt something underneath her feet, she bent into the water and pulled it out before it went tumbling back into the ocean. Quickly she rinsed it off and blinked in surprise. It was a ring. Familiar design, she thought. It looked like it was Elven. Not one of the rings of power, thank god. She could only imagine what dangers that would bring to a world that was utterly unprepared to battle something like that. But very familiar.

Sliding it into her pocket, she turned and made her way back to Sherilyn.

Ulmo smirked.

"Why did she not put it on?" Manwe asked from behind him safe and sound on dry land.

"Because it is not hers and she knows it." He shrugged, walking back to shore. "She will find what belongs to her soon."

"Sooner would be better."

Both valar turned, wide-eyed as a screech happened in the faraway land. "No." Both breathed, seeing what happened on the road.