The waves rolled softly, singing as mother to her child at night, and the stars flickered in that moving mirror called the sea beyond the shores of Mithlond. Elanor remembered the wrathful song and also the gentle lullaby of the sea which had lapped upon the shores of Sirion, though it was a distant, hazy sort of remembrance except for the day she'd 'woken up' during what had been the Third Kinslaying.

Somehow, and she definitely blamed it on Gil-Galad, Elrond had convinced her to stay for the past years in Lindon instead of going off to travel right away after the War of Wrath. Peace, he'd said, would be no peace at all without his sister, as his brother was leaving them behind to chart out his new destiny as King of Númenor. But Elros hadn't gone right away to the new land the Edain were gifted; it had taken years of hard work just to build the ships which would bear them there, and much did Elros and his new people have to learn if they were to sustain and govern themselves, far off as they would be between Middle-Earth and Valinor.

Still, Elanor didn't think it had been all bad, staying in Mithlond. She dearly loved the beach, and sitting on the cool sand under the night sky with the moon and stars bright overhead was not a terrible way to spend her time. The sea-breeze was gentle, salt and brine scented, and had her unbound hair flying around her like pale-gold wisps of threads.

The only problem, really, was the king himself, Erienion Gil-Galad.

Sure, he was an affable ellon, she couldn't deny that. And he was a decent king, a good one even. He was not the typical royal in the sense that he did not have an inflated sense of entitlement, his ego was not the size of a small planet, and he while he was generally well spoken, he was no true word-smith with a silver tongue. Really, on good days, she might even say she could like the cousin—however convoluted the family tree branched to name him such—who was king. Elrond loved him as well as he loved any family who'd taken an active interest in both his well-being and him alone. The king was a good friend and kinsman to Elrond, and Elanor could not fault him for that.

The only problem, really, was Elanor herself, she supposed.

Gil-Galad had said he would not make her swear in service—fealty, she'd called it—but it was rather hard to ignore the single person in his kingdom who, while she sometimes worked as a healer these days, tended to just do nearly whatever caught her fancy. A princess of both the Sindar and the Noldor who didn't quite act like the lady she was supposed to be seen as was not who people wanted her to be and she had no interest in caving to the visions of others.

And, Elanor just did not want to get too close to the elf.

This seemed to baffle both Elrond and Gil-Galad himself. Elanor tended to avoid council meetings whenever she could and even more so the councilors themselves. Since Gil-Galad was nearly always around those who Elanor would prefer to keep at least an arm's length—though if she could help it, many miles—away from, that meant avoiding the king. Though Elanor would never tell neither Elrond nor Gil-Galad, she avoided the king for his own merit as well as the members of the court.

Erestor—someone who'd quickly become a reliable scribe and junior councilor—Elanor could handle. He was quiet, didn't ask anything of her after a political fashion, and could be quite witty when she desired company or a debate. But everyone else tended to want something from her as either a princess of the Sindar or a princess of the Noldor, and not for Elanor herself.

Elrond had it worse in that regard, she knew, but he also had the patience to deal with the irritating quagmire that was politics, where Elanor would rather bluntly tell her opinion and walk away from the mess her words created in such a situation. Oh, she had ideas and opinions aplenty to be sure, but the problem was that no one actually wanted to listen to her. No, they wanted her to listen to them and they wanted her to back them up in the capacity of her station to lend their voices more weight. Elanor wanted nothing to do with that at all.

But yes, she tended to avoid the king, avoided spending too much time with him in private—with Elrond there as well of course—and certainly treated him with cordial politeness but not as a close, personal friend.

She didn't understand why the elf couldn't just take a hint already and be happy with his closeness to her brother.

"Avoiding yet another dinner with our esteemed king and your lordly brother?" a tesing voice said as the one to whom it belonged sat down beside her with exaggerated dignity.

Elanor rolled her eyes and looked to find Erestor reclined with his elbows holding his weight behind him on the sand. "If I said no and that I was simply enjoying the breeze under the stars would you even believe me?"

Erestor snorted and his dark eyes glimmered under the moonlight with amusement. "Not at all," he admitted. "I think your avoidance is the second highest ranking piece of gossip in court."

"And has been for years," Elanor was unashamed. "No doubt it shall continue until I finally head off to go exploring. Then, if I am gone long enough, people will simply forget I ever existed in the first place and it might be safe to come visit my brother."

This prompted a chuckle from the otherwise stern-faced junior councilor. "I doubt very much many could forget you, Elanor." He paused for a moment, eyes twinkling madly under the starlight, then added. "A princess who vanishes into the wild is more likely to be cause for gossip and intrigue than one who simply seems not to like the king's seeming attempts at gaining her affections."

Elanor choked on air as she whipped her head towards him, eyes bulging in disbelief. "Please tell me," sputtered, "you're not serious."

"Well that is what most of the council lords believe," he continued blithely. "That the king has tried and failed many times to court the elusive princess and sister of his herald and she has spurned him most ardently."

"I'm not even a real princess," Elanor muttered as she buried her head in her hands. "The Sindar don't truly want me as I was raised by Fëanorians and have demonstrably shown I hold no ill will to my erstwhile captors, let alone claim them as family, and the only Noldor I could have been considered a princess of are the few remaining Gondolindrim."

"There are more than you think in the city," Erestor informed. "And the Sindar see both you and Elrond as legacy bearers of Thingol and Melian."

"And Doriath is sunk beneath the sea," Elanor groaned. "I don't get it. Elrond is welcome to the legacies."

"Ah, but the king can't marry Elrond," and there was that amusement at her expense again.

"He very well could if he wanted to," Elanor shot him a narrow-eyed glare. "He wouldn't be the first Noldor king to have different tastes."

"Maedhros was never involved with Fingon," Erestor said. "Not like that at any rate."

"That didn't stop a good many people from believing it," Elanor retorted. "Besides, I am not marrying Gil-Galad."

"There are worse people you could—"

"I warn you, Erestor," Elanor cut him off quickly. "I only like you because you don't ever try to push an agenda on me."

"Ah, well," he sighed, and added with a shrug, "I suppose I can say I tried."

Elanor did not respond right away, but the curiosity was beginning to eat at her the longer the silence remained. "He doesn't really? Does he? Because that would be…unfortunate."

"I don't think so," he considered. "But then who knows? I am not as close with the king as your brother is."

"Stars above!" Elanor groaned. "Elrond is the one the court should be pushing for, honestly. He acts like he's a besotted adolescent. Whenever Gil-Galad is not around he speaks of him constantly. Has for years."

Erestor's eyes narrowed and Elanor could tell his sharp mind was working through several thoughts rather quickly. "You always seemed closer to Elros before he left for Númenor," he settled on. It was a statement, and one that had Elanor been nearly anyone else she would have thought it a change of subject. It wasn't.

As much practice as she'd had by now with donning masks and controlling her bodily reaction to statements, she couldn't help but tense as a deep lance of longing and envy pierced through her.

Erestor, sharp-eyed as well as sharp-minded, noticed. "You spent more time with Elros before his departure than Elrond did, and Elrond is his twin."

There was nothing for it, then, Elanor decided as she sighed. "Elrond was very…disquieted by Elros' choice," she admitted softly.

"Yet you were not."

"Not in the same way as Elrond, no," Elanor said with slow, careful precision, as if any wrong word would cut too sharply against the stricture she had been bound with directly after the War of Wrath. The one King Finarfin had somehow cut through and guessed so correctly about. "I will miss him," she added.

There was a long silence as Elanor very carefully did not look at Erestor but out over the sea, as if she could reach Elros by sight in reflex.

"But you understood his choice," he said. "Perhaps envied it."

Again, Erestor was far too sharp for her good. She didn't deny it, but said, "Elrond's friendship with Gil-Galad has, if not filled the hole, helped to keep it from deepening."

"And you don't want to take that away from him," Erestor picked up the thought. "So you avoid making better friends with the king."

Elanor did look to Erestor then, and her smile was both sharp and sad. "You are wasted as a junior councilor, Erestor. But something tells me you prefer working from the shadows."

He barked out a laugh, the light in his dark eyes as brilliant as the stars above as he favored her with a true, genuine smile. "You, my dear lady, are far too perceptive."

Elanor made a mocking incline of her head. "Why thank you. I do my best work illuminating that which hides in the dark." If she'd been standing Elanor would have made a dramatic theatrical production of bowing.

After a time, Erestor quietly commented, "You grow used to it, after a while. The years begin to slip between your fingers like a stream flowing into a river which feeds into the sea."

Elanor inhaled slowly and let out a breath just as painfully. "I don't think I will ever accustom my mind to the sprawling stretches of time," she said, coming nearly as close as she dared to saying the truth she wanted to scream aloud. "Elrond's mind was already wired like that, even when we moved camp to camp and life was…hasty, a day by day effort to survive. Now that there is some peace…"

"You wanted to choose as Elros did," Erestor rasped out, and Elanor felt sorry for him, but she knew he'd already guessed close enough to that truth. At least she didn't have to try to word her way around it with him anymore. "Why didn't you then? Elrond?"

Elanor closed her eyes tightly, refused to cry, and really no tears came. Not now. "I am glad that Elrond will have at least one of us with him forever, even if I am not physically at his side. But I am not his twin."

"Elrond loves you, Elanor. You have to know that."

"Of course I know that!" she replied in a harsh whisper as she looked at him with burning eyes. "But he and Elros were close in a way that he and I could never be. Add in their twin bond—"

"They truly had that connection?" And she didn't know why this, of all things, shocked Erestor, but the eyebrows disappearing into his hairline, the freely wide eyes, spoke volumes of Erestor's shock, especially as he was usually so very good at hiding behind a facial mask of neutrality. Perhaps he simply felt he didn't need to hide from her.

"You didn't know?" she asked and he shook his head wordlessly. "They were always very close. They could speak to each other effortlessly in their minds. I was the one both Elrond and Elros had trouble communicating with mentally." Elanor shrugged. "I suppose it didn't help that I hid my mental self as well as my Fëa behind impressively thick walls. I still do, if you're wondering. But even Maedhros and Maglor had issues breaching those walls—not," she held up a hand in the face of his outrage, "not that they ever tried to force their way into my thoughts and mind, but even they found it difficult to…brush up against it, if you will. What hope did two young boys, unlearned and untried, have at similar access, for all the blood we shared? Especially when between the two of them it was so easy?"

Erestor sat up and rubbed at his eyes. "I never guessed," he muttered as he sent his gaze over the sea. "I always thought—forgive me, but it always seemed to me that it was you and Elros were the two closest to each other. But then, I suppose, if their bond had already fractured with Elros' choice and Elrond began to spend that much more time with the king," he sighed and shook his head. "So it's really only that you do not wish to take him away in any way from Elrond? Do you fear that if you become friends with Gil-Galad that Elrond will resent you for it?"

"Not really," Elanor said with a small smile. "Elrond is not…he's not petty like that. But I don't need Gil-Galad as much as he does. I don't want him as much as Elrond does." Elanor snorted out a bitter, rueful laugh. "And I suppose it comes down to the fact that I am the petty one. Gil-Galad became close with Elrond first, and quickly. I…" Elanor trailed off, unsure how to put into words what she felt.

Erestor's eyes were sharp and penetrating, and Elanor felt as if he truly could see through to her soul at that very moment as he said, "And you already have such issues with people wanting what they do from or of you simply due to an accident rather than for the sake of yourself."

Elanor's throat burned. How was it that this elf, Erestor, taciturn and jaded as he usually appeared, could see her heart so clearly even as she shrouded it? All of a sudden, she wasn't sure she'd made a good decision in becoming his friend, in allowing him to somehow get so close to her that he could understand her as well as he did. Even Elrond…

"Yes," she croaked, turning from his pointed regard and taking a gulp of air before calming. "It's one of the reasons I've wished to leave."

"So you can give them space," Erestor once again spoke the truth of her heart, "and so you can achieve some space of your own."

Elanor merely nodded.

"You really aren't that close with your brother, are you? Not deeply."

"No," Elanor breathed out. "We are close, as siblings who have gone through a terrible war and traumatic events. But Elrond's mind is…he is so elven."

"And yours isn't?" Erestor asked, both curious and knowing at the same time.

Elanor did not answer that statement of a question. "And even with Elros, our closer relationship before he left to be a King of Men came through his knowledge that I truly understood—as much as I was able—the choice he made, and my lack of…scorn for him making that choice. Which only further widened the gulf between Elrond and I. He has not been happy that I was not so terribly distraught in the face of being sundered from Elros by our separate Fates."

"Ah," Erestor hummed thoughtfully. "And so you avoid Gil-Galad also to make it clear to Elrond that you will not steal another person whom he has come to cherish."

Elanor laughed again and it was a little wet. "Elrond often remarked that my relationship with both Maedhros and Maglor was different than his or Elros'. That even though I am two years their junior I was treated as if I were far older. He wasn't wrong—though neither Maedhros nor Maglor ever saw me as anything but a child compared to their very long years of age—but he was also correct. I did not come to see either of the brothers as a father." Elanor turned to Erestor again, calm once more. "Uncles? Older brothers? Cousins? Sure, and at least cousin was somewhat correct, though the branching and removes are quite tangled. But they were both fathers to Elrond, and Elros too. That they were not so to me is something Elrond, and even Elros, could not and will not ever understand."

Erestor's gaze turned inward as he thought over Elanor's words in silence for long minutes. Finally he asked, "What did make it different then?"

Elanor's heart pounded in her chest, but she kept her face blank as she warred internally over a decision which could destroy her friendship with Erestor, or worse. "This," she said, and held out a hand in which she conjured a soft blue ball of light above her palm.

Erestor's gasp was predictable, but his eyes showed no fear. Instead, awe coupled with a kind of recognition flitted across his eyes and face. "You know," he said with careful casualness after watching the light in her hand for a few moments, "Melian used to be able to do similar things such as that."

The light in Elanor's palm blinked out suddenly, such was the shock of Erestor's statement. After a few beats, Elanor asked with calculating deliberation, "Erestor, just how old are you?"

Erestor's smirk was smug. "A lot older than most people assume, princess."

Elanor narrowed her eyes. "You've never called me that unless you were trying to raise my hackles."

He shrugged, eyes twinkling. "It has never made it any less true. Lúthien hated to be called princess in private too."

"I am no Lúthien."

Erestor scoffed. "Of course not. And no, do not look at me like that. I am not comparing your looks—which yes, you are opposites in color—but I'd say you're more thankful for that than you want to admit. She lived for far longer than you have, and she also had her parents around for nearly all her life, not to mention your lives were completely different."

Elanor blinked. Then blinked again. "You're very strange Erestor," she settled on. "And I don't know whether to be cross with you for keeping such secrets from me, or whether to be thankful you hadn't sprung them on me like all the other Doriathrim."

He raised a brow and just looked at Elanor. "As you said, I prefer the shadows."

She had so many questions. About her family, her ancestors, the ones living and dead. But she settled on, "How is it that none of the Doriathrim recognize you?"

"Celeborn knows."

"Which means that Galadriel does as well," Elanor followed. "But what of Oropher, or, well any of them?"

"I tended to stay out of court," Erestor said flatly. "At nearly all costs."

"So, no then." Elanor paused, considering. "How did you know my great-grandmother and her mother then?"

"They liked to walk in the forest. Frequently." Erestor seemed to consider something, and added, "I left Doriath before the rise of the sun and moon."

Now that was interesting. Elanor burned to know more, but suddenly the influx of new information, the length and breadth of their conversation under the stars, it was enough to have her head spinning and she was tired. "Perhaps someday you'll tell me about it, O Ancient One?"

Erestor's smirk at her address made her smile. "Perhaps, O child."

Elanor groaned. "I'm not a child."

"Of course not," Erestor agrees blithely with a nod. "Just very young compared to my oh so ancient self."

"Does Elrond know?"

"Not yet."

Something warm suffused her chest at that simple declaration. Elanor knew he would eventually out himself to Elrond, but he'd told her first, if in a round-about way. She smiled. "Thank you, Erestor."

"I'm glad you're feeling better."

And she was, she realized. Somehow he'd taken her from the itchy, crawling need to escape and lightened her mood and heart.