"Elladan was correct," Morwinyon said a week later. She sat with a piece of parchment before her, deciding what to write to Alia. "No one has even one word of Aragorn that is not praise."

"I couldn't even wheedle out childhood pranks," Kili said, once more flopped on her bed. "I'm really good at wheedling out childhood pranks."

The elves of Rivendell had closed ranks, in the way only the elves of Rivendell could. So Morwinyon assumed, anyway: her father's Silvan could be close-mouthed and wary. Never had she seen them turn such blandly smiling faces on interlopers that the interlopers decided to leave. Never had she seen eyes linger on those of the Silvan with scars, either, but here she supposed that here Elrond would heal such hurts before they had time to scar.

Doubtless he could have saved her eye, and perhaps brought Fili back to life too, she thought sourly. The Dunedain had never stared sidelong at her scars, but then, many had their own.

"Maybe if I was better fed I'd be more creative," Kili said. "I thought I'd prepared myself, but I'd forgotten."

Morwinyon crumpled up her parchment and threw it at him. He did not so much as flinch when it hit between his eyes and bounced off. She had practiced long and hard to regain some semblance of her former aim, but here in a room she had been in for over a week she could make the calculations without pause: it was on new ground that she still had difficulty with distance. Shooting a dragon in the eye would not be a feat she repeated unless the dragon was kind enough to confront her in a place she knew well and gave her a moment to calculate their size.

"Who haven't we talked to?" Kili asked, staring up at the ceiling. "We've canvassed the whole of Rivendell, surely."

Someone knocked at the door. Morwinyon rose to answer it with a sigh, and met Arwen's eyes.

"May I come in?" Arwen asked.

Morwinyon stood aside, and Kili sat up, crossing his legs underneath him. Morwinyon closed the door and joined him on the bed, leaving the desk chair for Arwen.

"Your asking after Estel will have given you no worries of his suitability," Arwen said.

"I worry to meet him," Morwinyon replied, exchanging a glance with Kili. "Such a paragon as he will surely be intimidating."

Arwen ducked her head, but Morwinyon thought she saw a smile. "I am hardly unbiased."

"Why do you come to us, cousin?" Morwinyon asked. "Is it only to tell us something we already know?"

"He is your cousin too," Arwen pointed out, still looking at her lap.

"All royalty in Middle Earth are in some way my cousin," Morwinyon retorted.

"I'm not related to at least three of the dwarf lords," Kili offered.

"Rohan," Arwen murmured.

"Who rules the easterlings?" Kili asked.

"Most royalty," Morwinyon amended. "What do you want, Arwen?"

"You should meet him," Arwen said, still without looking up. "You should form your own opinions."

Morwinyon let herself fall back onto the bed. Kili shook his head at her and said to Arwen, "Unless Aragorn has appeared sometime during the last hour, meeting him is out of the question. Unless your father lied to us when he said he sent him on a quest of great importance."

Arwen shook her head. "My father does not lie. You should go after Estel. How better to learn of him than to travel with him?"

Something in her tone made Morwinyon sit up again and examine her, and Arwen looked up and met her eyes.

"I worry for him," Arwen said. "I worry for Middle Earth too, but I worry most for him."

"You want me to bodyguard your beloved," Morwinyon said flatly.

"You wish for insight into his character?" Arwen asked. "I will give you that. I will have my brothers tell you his every waking moment from boyhood. I have all of his letters to me - you may read them at your leisure, from his teens to only three months ago. He has written to me since before he loved me, and before I loved him. Only please, help him? You have lived when others have not, you have triumphed where others have not-"

She cut herself off, hands clutching convulsively together in her lap.

Kili said, "It isn't that I don't sympathize, my lady, but he has left already, and we don't know his goal."

"I know his goal," Arwen said, eyes going hard. "My father tried to keep it from me, to keep me from worry, but Elladan told me. They journey to Mordor. They will destroy Sauron's ring if they can. I would go, but - well. I have a duty here."

Morwinyon, whose reading on the subject had been in Mirkwood, frowned. Sauron's ring had been lost after the war for it, had it not? She supposed it could have been found. Arwen had no reason to lie.

"They?" she asked.

"His companions," Arwen replied, sounding surprised. "Gimli, son of Gloin, and Mithrandir, and hobbits aplenty. Your brother goes too."

Of course Legolas went, Morwinyon thought. She tried not to be bitter and failed. Legolas had always been able to go and to do things she would not have been allowed. Who was Aragorn, though, that the prince of Mirkwood would declare him king and then go with him into danger?

That argument would not likely sway the clans. Alia maybe, because Legolas was Morwinyon's brother, but no one else. She could write that Aragorn worked well with other nations. When had she begun to think of ways to present Aragorn so that he might be accepted? When she learned her brother had spoken for him, probably, and now her cousin was in love.

Morwinyon looked at Kili, who shrugged. Their message to Dis, sent with Gloin's messenger, would at least assure her they were alive for the moment. It was becoming rapidly clear that they could learn no more in Rivendell. They could send another note to Dis with the missive to Alia.

"Do you know their route?" Morwinyon asked.

Arwen did not know their intended route, but she knew the destination and could make a good guess. Morwinyon packed Aragorn's letters away with a pang and a sack of lembas made by Arwen's own hands. Arwen's expression did not waver as Morwinyon wrapped waybread and letters carefully.

"I will bring them back," Morwinyon assured her.

"Bring Estel back," Arwen said. "You can keep the letters if you bring me the person."

It was on the tip of Morwinyon's tongue to ask if she could keep the letters if she did not bring the person, but she gripped Fili's clasp and decided not to.

Elrond met them at the gates with no retinue. Not even Arwen was there: she had had to leave to deal with a problem in the storerooms. Bandages were running thin, or being nibbled on, or something. Morwinyon had not been too clear on the details. Arwen, clearly, kept busy as one of her father's stewards.

"I will not ask you not to go," Elrond said. "Your mother would not have stopped, if she set her mind to something."

"I know already that both my parents were stubborn," Morwinyon replied, hefting her pack.

Elrond laughed. "Well, then. Know also that so are the rest of us, and we will not believe you dead without a body this time."

Kili snickered, and Morwinyon kicked his ankle.

"We would prefer not to find a body," Elrond said, somber now.

Would you? Morwinoyn wondered. My mother's body was never found, and it has caused all sorts of anguish, and, too, you say people sorrowed over my nonexistent corpse.

She knew what Elrond meant, though, so she said, "I will endeavor not to die."

"And Estel - I have had the raising of his forefathers, and each I sent back when they were grown, to live or die, but most have had one or another of their parents still. Estel-"

"I have children, my lord," Morwinyon said. "I know what you would ask. I cannot promise anything more than I promised your daughter."

"No promises and no oaths," Elrond said, with an expression that might have been a smile. "Fair enough."

Morwinyon hesitated. Something about Elrond was welcoming even when he was sad, and he had lost his wife and countless children he had at least helped to raise, and he gave Arwen work to do and let her ride out if she truly wished to, and his sons too, and he had loved her mother.

Elrond had told Morwinyon stories when she was small and Tauriel was not there. Morwinyon stepped forward and very carefully hugged him.

He hugged her much less carefully back.

"I will do what I can," she told him. "I do not know that it will be much."

He held her away a little and examined her face. "I do not know that you know how to do 'not much'," he said, mouth quirking. "None of your parents ever did. Even nothing they did with considerable flair."

He pressed a quick kiss to her forehead, and she realized he had to raise himself on his toes a little to do it. Elrond's presence was such that she had not noticed she was taller. The kiss landed on the band that held her eye covering, but the heat burned through it. The ever-present little ache in her eye-socket, as if the muscles there were always tired from holding up something that should have been supported, eased.

She had thought she was as healed as she was going to be, and she was not sure she liked that her own body had not taken care of things as it apparently should have.

Elrond said modestly, as if he could read her mind, "I am very good at what I do."

Morwinyon snorted, patted his forearm awkwardly, and pulled away. He let her go, but when Kili stopped just out of the valley to look back she did too. Elrond still stood at the entrance of his home, watching.