Evelyn woke to an arm wrapped around her middle and a heavy leg tossed over her hips. The feeling of being restrained sent a surge of panic through her body and kicked her heart rate into high gear. She had one hand already gripping the handle of her knife before her brain fully caught up with her surroundings and she noticed the ticking of hair on her face.
Glorfindel!
Her mind supplied the reason for the solid, warm mass draped across her. She repeated his name in her head a few times, forcing herself to calm. When she felt her racing heart quell enough so that she didn't think she would stab him in a bid to escape, she released her blade and prodded the elf in the side.
Now, Evelyn expected that he, as any trained warrior when sleeping next to someone who had attempted murder multiple times, would leap up in an instant. She expected for him to be roused all at once with a sword in his hand and the same caution that he had shown the night before. What she wasn't expecting was for him to lazily groan and tighten his grip around her, trapping her further as he nuzzled into the crook of her neck.
"Glorfindel," she jabbed him in the side rather un-gently this time as she pushed herself away.
This seemed to finally rouse Glorfindel who slowly opened his eyes. Evelyn watched as the elf's sleep addled brain caught up with the situation, his eyes trailing from his limbs to where they tangled in hers and the spots where his golden hair had splayed out in a fan across her black wings. He inhaled sharply and quickly extricated himself from where he was holding her, apologizing profusely the entire time.
"Elenya, I- er..." Evelyn swore she saw a pink tint coloring his cheeks. "My sincerest apologies... I admit that I was untruthful when I claimed the Eldar do not feel the cold and it appears that, during the night... I became- er... my apologies," he finished his words in a breathless rush, both hands tangled in the hair at the base of his skull.
"No matter," Evelyn replied, pulling herself further from Glorfindel as she shifted her wings, trying to get the stiffness from being extended all night out of them. She was mentally preparing herself for taking down her warm cocoon, absentmindedly wondering why her heart was still beating rapidly when she had already quelled that instinctual knot of fear in her gut.
I've been waiting for you two to wake up, she heard Nightshade purr in her mind. But it seemed such a shame to... interrupt.
Not helping, she mentally snapped back. She could hear the teasing in her wolf's voice.
Evelyn rose, stretching out her wings before folding them onto her back. The air was still bitterly cold, but the morning sun allowed for a little bit of warmth admits the icy snow. It was a good thing that Evelyn allowed Glorfindel to sleep beside her and Nightshade for the wind did indeed blow a large volume of snow into the cave, enough to come very close to packing them in.
She angrily kicked aside several chunks of snow until she found her pack. Nightshade eagerly lept up and accepted the dried venison strips that Dain had been generous enough to have packed for them. Glorfindel was fiddling with the ties of his cloak and checking his weapons. The silence, which Evelyn greatly appreciated, stretched for some time. Eventually though, she was forced to break it with a question.
"How much farther with with reach Imladris?"
"A few days at most," Glorfindel was swallowing a piece of dwarfish hard-tack as he spoke. "Soon, we'll be back to the valley's-"
"Not we," Evelyn cut him off. "Nothing's changed."
With those words, she exited the cave, Nightshade beside her as they continued along their path. She didn't need to look back to know that Glorfindel was keeping up. In fact, she was putting every effort in to avoid looking back. The last thing that she wanted to deal with would be the annoying elf's gaze. She had managed to avoid it all throughout the long night before.
It had been a long night. For only the second time in a good many years, Evelyn told her story in full... how one night she dreamt of fire and flames that were far too vivid to be a mere dream, how the nightmare haunted her for years and ate away at her sleep, how she tried so hard to change it night after night and failed. Then, how one night she fell asleep and woke up in a forest where she was hunted by giant spiders. The rest of her tail unfolded slowly, her stories of Mirkwood, aside from her verbal spars with Thranduil, were dull and filled with the cruelly simple torture of confinement and solitude. She had only ever recited her story in full for Nightshade, and she was glad that she now told it shrouded in darkness for she refused to meet the elf's eyes. She hated the pity that she knew was there.
The rest of their journey was spent in silence as they descended the mountains, slowly making their way out of the bitter cold. Once the threat of freezing waned, they slept apart, Evelyn wrapped tightly around Nightshade and Glorfindel sitting propped up in that strange open-eyed sleep that elves are prone to.
There was a strange tenseness to the air for Evelyn had reveled two things: why she hated Mirkwood, and what she did to it.
Perhaps more importantly, she made her opinions on Mirkwood and its King very clear- she still despised them. She knew, somewhere in the back of her mind, in the eyes of the child that she once was, that she should be sorry. She knew that she would have been remorseful for striking a deal with Sauron and burning down an ancient Kingdom in the past. But, she didn't care. She wasn't that child anymore and she couldn't feel sorry for the destruction that she wrought upon the elves.
Given the choice, she would do it again.
Once they left the Misty Mountains behind they were able to travel with relative ease. It wasn't long until they neared the boarders of Imladris, protected by the power of Elrond's ring. Evelyn stopped and sat herself in the branches of a nearby tree, ignoring Glorfindel's bewildered expression.
"This is as far as we'll go," she gestured to Nightshade who took a seat at the base of the trunk. "Most of the things that have to happen are already in motion... so I'll just explain a few-"
"Please Elenya," he looked exhausted as he repeated the argument that they had shared time and time again in just a few short days. "You must come with me. Elrond will understand," he pleaded. "But we need you in Imladris... no one else has the knowledge that you have and Sauron will be hunting you now."
"I've avoided him before."
Glorfindel looked torn. His eyes kept flickering between where Evelyn sat perched in her tree, and the distant horizon where they knew Imladris laid. He gave a resigned sigh, turning to look at Evelyn.
"If you refuse to return to Imladris... then I'll follow you."
"What?!" Of all the things that Evelyn expected him to say, that was probably near the bottom of the list. "Have you gone mad?" She asked him incredulously.
"Not at all. But, I'm not letting you run off with Sauron and Saruman on your tail. You're not alone anymore."
"I have Nightshade," she said, the wolf adding in a light growl of acknowledgment.
"You know what I mean... I won't let you face those vile beings alone."
"They're afraid of me," Evelyn crossed her arms. "Why else would they make deals with me and come to me before killing-" the one who I marked, popped into Evelyn's mind, but she wasn't ready to mention that aloud yet. "They've always sought to make deals with me instead of fighting me. I'll be fine, but you- Saruman wants you. The safest place for you is in the valley."
Glorfindel climbed up the tree until he was standing on the branch right below Evelyn. There was a strange sort of twinkle in his eyes.
"But you see, I'm not going to let you run off and take the brunt of Sauron and Saruman's wrath. Where you go, I'll always follow. Of course," a scheming grin crossed his face. "You did promise to help us win this war and, from the way I see it, if you run off and I follow then I'm not quite sure how anyone's going to get that message-"
"Fine," she cut him off sharply. She actually couldn't quite believe why she was agreeing to this, but it seemed that she was. "We're going to Imladris."
"Excellent!" He cried in delight, leaping from the tree and practically skipping as they went.
The closer they got to the boarder though, the more obvious it became that he was nervous. Glorfindel always talked a lot, but he began to speak excessively. His hands fluttered about as he spoke, gesticulating wildly as he explained all the lovely features of Imladris: the architecture, the waterfalls, the gardens that blossomed in spring... He really could go on. For a while, Evelyn bore this in silence and watched how the nervous energy seemed to eventually fade. Evelyn began to see into the cracks of his uncertainties.
"Perhaps," he spoke casually at one point, "it would be best if you wore your hood this time."
He attempted a charming smile as he referenced the way he approached the gates of Erebor cloaked and hooded, but Evelyn met him with one raised brow.
"And you suppose they'll assume that you just happened to meet another rather large wolf?" She gestured to Nightshade who was, of course, very identifiable. "I'm sure they won't think anything of the cloaked traveler who rides upon the black wolf."
"Ah... yes. I suppose you're right," he mumbled.
Then, they reached the boarder of the valley. There were no stone archways or great walls or fences that marked the boarder of Imladris. Instead, there was a wave of warm, buzzing magic cast from the Ring that Elrond bore. Once again, to Evelyn's great surprise, the magic seemed to hum as it allowed her access. The magic blocked all dark creatures from entering the valley and so she wondered how it possibly allowed her in.
The trees that they passed hummed a welcome to her, greeting her return to their home. It appeared that despite her time away, they remembered her still. She caressed the bark of one rather young oak and she felt the way the tree nearly shivered in delight. The softness of the greeting brought the first smile that she had felt since agreeing to enter Imladris. One tree whispered something about the prince who had passed through recently and grumbled a bit about his attempts to socialize with them. Evelyn simply stroked its bark and thanked it for its loyalty.
It was then that she realized what she was doing. She was entering Imladris, an elvish realm, after her last disastrous exit. But, this time she entered by her own free will, her own choice. She was running from no one, she was afraid of no one. Glorfindel cared about this world that she was stuck in, and for some reason, that was enough to convince her to walk straight into the home of beings who by now probably despised her.
If we're walking into the home of the pup-slayers, Nightshade's voice washed over Evelyn's mind like a caress. This time they will not see us afraid.
Indeed.
And with that, Evelyn lept atop Nightshade, sitting proudly upon the wolf like a knight on his noble steed. She used to always wear her cloak in such a way as to cover her wings, to hide the feature that made her instantly identifiable as something strange and therefore evil. Now, she edged her cloak back a bit, leaving her arms and the edges of her wings uncovered. The beautiful and complex dwarfish embroidery on her cloak was still obvious, but one could easily see her wings, even from a distance.
If the elves want to shoot me from afar, let them try.
The edges of The Last Homely House became visible on the horizon and it wasn't long until they could see a small cloud of dust moving rapidly towards them. As she often did, Evelyn wove one hand into Nightshade's fur to ground herself. It was far too late to change her mind... the elves were coming to greet them.
The party was relatively small, no more than 15 elves all astride horses nearly as fine as Asfoloth. They all wore glittering elvish armor and had helmets, but Glorfindel seemed to recognize the one at the head of the party whose saddle was more decorative than the others'.
"Cuhador," Glorfindel called out with a smile on his lips. "Well met, it is good to see you."
"Well met, Captain," he replied with a customary elvish bow. His posture and phrasing was tense.
The elf was obviously quite tall, his dark hair flowing free as he was the only one not wearing a helmet. Evelyn saw the way his eyes made a rapid sweep over Glorfindel, instantly checking him for any signs of injuries or hints of trouble. She vaguely recognized him as one of the elves who had been out searching for Glorfindel that time she held him in her cave as he healed. She never met him however, and so wondered if he had been warned about her. His eyes seemed to widen slightly when he saw her wings lazily peeking out from her cloak, but he said nothing.
"You have been missed, Captain," the elf said after a moment of hesitation.
"I'm glad to be back. You can't get rid of me that easily," Glorfindel had that easy smile that he seemed capable of pulling out in any and every situation. "Could you send a runner to let Elrond know that I'm still on this side of Arda. Tell him that I've brought a friend and that I really need to speak with him and Erestor as soon as possible."
Cuhador nodded and barked a short command that had one elf turn sharply and take off towards Imladris at a rapid gallop. Another warrior lept off her horse and handed the reigns to Glorfindel before spryly hopping upon the back of another rider. Cuhador gave Evelyn one last look which she met head on. He seemed only transfixed on her eyes, but then he glanced at Glorfindel who merely shook his head, and that seemed to be enough for the elf.
Most of the patrol seemed to be continuing with their earlier task. Only Cuhador and two others broke off to ride along side Glorfindel and Evelyn as they made their way closer to The Last Homely House. Glorfindel spoke a little as they rode, but they passed the time mostly in silence. It appeared that the three elvish soldiers were uneasy around Evelyn, but they wouldn't give voice or action to it yet. In all honesty, Evelyn had half expected for them to immediately leap on her and attempt to arrest her. Instead they settled with a mildly wary gaze.
Evelyn wondered how long that would last.
"Shhhhh," the soothing voice was as unmistakable as the glowing light that he could sense without opening his eyes. "Rest now, Olorin, you've done so well."
The Maiar felt the soft caress of the Star-Kindler's touch as his eyes remained closed.
He remembered the Mines of Moria, the suffocating darkness, the looming threat of drums in the deep- then the flames of the Balrog. The beast, the monster crafted by Melkor attacked them, rushed towards the Riingbearer and he tried to stop it. He stood his ground, he hefted his staff and his sword on the bridge and then it-
"Frodo!" He cried out, attempting to sit up in alarm as he realized that the company was alone. But, something pushed down on him. The presence was feather light and yet bore the strength that only an Aratar could possess.
"Be at ease, the Ringbearer lives yet," her voice was like a soothing balm and he felt his eyes drifting shut as the white light of the Valar lapped over him like gentle waves on the shore. "Tis true, your task it not yet complete. You must return... but not now. Now you rest."
"As my Lady wills," though his voice was soft, he could already feel strength rapidly returning to him. He knew that he fell to his doom in the mines, yet the Valar had brought him back.
"Much has happened since we sent you, Olorin," Varda's voice seemed to fade and become distant as the lull of sleep overtook him. "We will have much to discuss when the time comes for you to awaken once more."