"You knew Gil-Galad," Morwinyon said. Elrond had given up being surprised by her appearances or by her questions, but he did wonder what interest a four year old had in Gil-Galad. He did not wonder how she had heard of him: aside from Gil-Galad's fame, her parents could hardly keep from mentioning him forever.
"I knew Gil-Galad," he agreed as he shuffled through papers, looking for the latest border report on a desk full of all sorts of reports.
Morwinyon made a face at him. "Must I ask?"
"One should always ask," Elrond replied, looking over at her with a raised brow. Today she was curled up beside a bookshelf, still on the floor. He had not seen her earlier, and he had not heard the door open.
"My mother wrote a poem," Morwinyon said. "She knew him. I would know how, please."
Elrond sighed, though he did not really mind speaking of Gil-Galad.
"As your mother told me," he began, "there was a boy who did not expect to be king…"
Gil-Galad was the second child and only son of Orodreth, who was Lord of Nargothrond until Nargothrond was no more and Orodreth died with it. Gil-Galad was born years before that, though.
The boy was a solemn child, staring at everything with wide grey eyes as if taking in details even as an infant. When his mother showed him off to his father's subjects they cooed and said what a beautiful child he was, and how sweet and easy - and he was an easy child. It worried his mother how easy, sometimes, as he grew. He had companions, but even those older than he stopped to listen when he spoke and none seemed to remember how young he really was. Only his sister Finduilas could tease him into childish pique, and she was so much older that she did not often bother, instead cosseting him while his parents attended to their duties and perhaps caring for him to keep back the tides of her own grief.
If Gil-Galad sometimes stared off into the distance as if he saw something no one else did or frowned at the air around him, well. Foresight was not a gift unheard of in the scions of Finarfin, kings or no.
It caused some unease, how closely Gil-Galad clung to his sister when Orodreth sent him away for safekeeping, but the siblings had always been close.
Nargothrond, of course, fell: the man who Orodreth looked to for council led not only to his ruin but Finduilas' death, and the survivors remembered Gil-Galad and how he had wept to leave his sister most of all.
Fifteen years later, at the death of Turgon and the fall of Gondolin, the lady Idril Celebrindal set aside her claim and that of her son, settling the high kingship of the Noldor on the shoulders of a not-yet fully grown Gil-Galad, and many of the elves were glad.
Dark dreams were not new to Gil-Galad. They had come when he was small, and they came more frequently with rulership of the Noldor. The trick, he had found, was to decide which were mere nightmares and which were warnings.
This one had the too-sharp quality that meant warning. He could make out the individual black hairs of the woman he faced, and the sense of familiarity was a powerful one. He could count her eyelashes – she had three fewer on her right eye. Though no one could actually see him in these dreams, he took a step back so that his nose was not nearly brushing hers.
Exactly his height. Pale. Eyes as dark as her hair. Definitely Noldorin, and the sword she held glinted eerily in the blazing light that seemed to be losing a battle with shadows. The question, of course, was whether he could see her because she was a threat or because he was supposed to help her. He looked around for clues.
Near her stood two boys who could not be fully or even mostly Noldorin, which made him lean more towards helping her: Feanori were well known for keeping to their own, especially when it came to marriage and children. Could she be a disillusioned descendant of a follower of Feanor, perhaps? She was not old enough to have crossed the Helcaraxë or sailed with Feanor herself. A thought made him look a little more closely at the woman, but she was not the boys' mother. She was not anyone's mother, or anyone's spouse. He had the impression that she was lonely, though why a warning-dream would give him that information was beyond him.
The boy to her left, the one who leaned against her arm and looked up at her fondly, was clearer than the one to her right, but Gil-Galad could see that they were identical. He did not know if it was because the dream deemed that boy more important or because he was actually touching the subject of the dream. That the woman was a subject was obvious – he only did not know if there was more than one. He looked farther back, behind the boys, and saw another woman holding aloft the light. He should have noticed her earlier – this woman was just as clearly defined, when he looked, as the first, and she held whatever was keeping back the nibbling shadows – but he still wanted to look back at the first. He knew enough to know that was not part of the dream.
What was part of the dream was the light, and when he looked again he saw it was a silmaril.
No one in this tableau was Feanori. They could not be, not with someone other than a son of Feanor holding the silmaril. The Noldo woman was not even holding it, and if the second woman had any Noldorin blood in her at all he would be astonished. Moreover, none of them were looking at the silmaril at all, not even the woman holding it. She looked at the boys. The boys looked at the women. The first woman looked out at the darkness, sword raised defensively.
As if that was what the dream had wanted him to realize, everyone began moving. There was sound, too, even if it was faint: when the first woman parried a shadow strike there was a soft ring, like a tiny bell, and the boy holding onto her gasped, "Lairë!" as another bit of shadow crept towards his sibling.
Lairë lunged, stabbing the tendril and shoving the boys back towards the other woman and the light, and Gil-Galad woke up.
