A/N: So I have several chapters of Lightning Glass banked but I'm trying to get it and Second Time completed quickly because NaNo is fast approaching and I have much to do around the home (planting season and lots of building to do. ((Oh the pain.)) Hopefully, I'll be posting some of my gardens on P-atreon and Instagram. ((ps. my fencing material was just burned because someone didn't agree with my idea... I was miffed. Now I'm more philosophical about it.)) I probably was an elf in another life. Ah well.) so I'm trying to move quickly before the muses go on vacation. A little chocolate, some Chinese food, and brandy would help... or at least some reviews. (Thank you Nyx! Always a good day when I hear from you!)

Now as I hope I have made obvious I write fanfiction for practice in the craft of writing. And if you like my writing style, my original works are much the same style, although varying subjects and genres. I just need to get over my own nerves and publish them. Can I get a supportive hug, please?

Well on with the show and here we go! (I'm a poet and I didn't know it. Bad poet, but hey.)

Like, Subscribe, Favorite, Follow, Kudos and Review, (and consider following or supporting on P-atreon and Ko-fi. Cause you know adulting.)

Much Love

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. Maybe even some world-building polls. I dunno. I'm winging it. 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. (Edit: There is a poll up on my P-atreon page now! You can help me choose my 2021 NaNoWriMo project!)

Pps. I've caught up on posting on my older stories to Ao3. I am now free to post any deleted "scenes" and extras in conjunction with the older stories and the ones I am currently working on. They will only appear after a story is completed. And after Patrons get the first crack at them. Sorry. What do I delete? Mainly anything that needs to be edited out to meet the rating rules on this site. But also little interesting snippets that just slowed down the pacing. I will not be posting them here on this site. Apologies. But it has more "interesting" rules.

Chapter 2

Darkness had fallen when they made their way outside the small prayer room and walked back to the cottage. The entire time Sherilynn had watched her friend, who in her distraction and fatigue kept fading in and out of sight like one of the wraiths. But unlike those dark creatures, she glowed in the darkness to Sherilynn's vision as if pure sunlight filled her. "Why do you glow like that?" She finally asked when the silence had become worrying.

The queen turned to her, a query in her muted gaze.

"All of the elves do," Lyn explained. "And I get that they were designed by Eru himself. But I noticed that you glow more than the others. Even I glow. But not as much as you. What's up with that?"

"I saw the light of the trees," Caelann spoke slowly as if every word sapped just that little bit more strength from her already fatigued body. "Glorfindel too. And Galadriel. Elrond didn't, but he is a closer generation ta those who did." She sighed, nearly fading from sight. "Ye didn't but ye were brought here by the power of Eru so yer glow is closer to mine and only slightly muted." She swallowed heavily, closing her eyes tightly for a moment. "I would advise a heavy cloak if ye need ta stay hidden."

"Caelann," Lyn reached for her out of instinct and winced when her hand went right through the space where her friend stood and came back cold. "Maybe you better go invisible for a while. You don't look good."

The Scot snorted, her arm going across her middle. "'Tis more than just the fatigue o' staying visible." She breathed heavily, raising her eyes from the path that she had looked back to in order to stay upright. "'Tis my injuries in the other world. Can feel them. Fatigue makes it more so." She admitted on a pained gasp.

"Then go invisible." Lynn insisted. "I'll find my way back to the house and see you later." She saw the answer in the set of her friend's jaw. This was more than just stubbornness. "You're angry."

A bitter laugh was her reply as her friend straightened, the set of her shoulders that of someone all too used to not having anyone to rely on. That of someone far too used to having to stand on her own. And seeing that? Once more Sherilynn felt the ache in her chest that had caused her to befriend the unnaturally stubborn woman. Her father and brothers had always teased her for her bleeding heart, and for a time she had thought it was a bad thing to feel for people as she did. But Caelann? She had become her sister in more meaningful ways than blood.

"I'm furious." She hissed past gritted teeth, beginning to walk again. "I'm being punished and they dropped ye into a world with no training, no nothing. Ye donnae ken how ta use the gifts that ye've been given. I'm beyond angry. I'm beyond furious." She laughed bitterly. "And I'm the one who changed the blasted rules on ye? Ye're damn right I'm angry. At mesel', at them, at the whole mess."

"Cael!" Lynn held a hand in her friend's path, stopping her in her tracks. Caelann could have walked through her, Sherilynn knew, but her friend would never be so rude. Personally, she would if the situation called for it but Caelann wouldn't. "Are you planning on leaving me to all this by myself?"

"Nae."

"Good." Lynn pinned her friend with a look. A look the Scot knew all too well. It was what she called the enforcer look. It always said 'argue with me at your own peril.' And it was times like this, when she was being incredibly stubborn, that she was rather grateful for the way it pulled her up by the short hairs. "Then we'll figure it out together and if you need to disappear for a bit to recharge then go and I'll meet you back at the cottage."

Taking a deep breath that made her ribs ache for all that they weren't there, this incorporeal thing was getting tiresome rather quickly, Caelann nodded and faded from view.

Picking her way along the disused path, over raised roots of trees that were older than her grandmother's grandmother, Sherilynn thought about all that she had learned. Weighing it carefully, and honestly if she had been in Caelann's position? She would have fought harder to change things. But maybe that wasn't fair. Maybe she had tried and been prevented. Maybe she had tried and history corrected its course on her. The only way she would know the answer to that is by asking. But thinking back that did seem to be what Tulkas meant by "cannot change large events." But what exactly did he mean by "no one person?" Did he mean that two could? Or ten? Fifty? A hundred? A thousand?

Many thoughts coursed through her as she walked along the darkening path with fireflies and moths fluttering through the air around her. So many that she failed to notice the ellon who leaned back against the trunk of a tree, nestled between two raised roots, his legs crossed at the knee. "The last singer I met," he broke the course of her thoughts amusement dancing in his tones, "at least had the courtesy to say hello as she passed. Even if she couldn't stop and talk."

Blinking in surprise, Sherilynn turned to the dark-haired male that looked so much like a male version of Arwen. He was a pretty boy, and immediately she felt herself stiffen like a cat arching its back. "You must be one of the twins. Elladan or Elrohir."

"At your service, my lady." He returned, standing to bow as fluidly as a fluttering breeze. "It has gotten quite dark for someone unused to our woods. May I be of assistance guiding you back to the cottage?" He asked, brushing the leaves that clung to his trousers off.

Not quite sure how to take the offer, in her modern world a guy could be accused of several things for offering and not many of them were complementary but here things were different, she nodded. "I wouldn't mind the company and a conversation if you can handle that." She answered, holding out her hand to him.

"For a beautiful woman?" He laughed, bowing gallantly until his dark hair brushed the crushed leaves that carpeted the ground beneath him before he straightened and took her cool fingers in his. "If I cannot be a decent conversationalist my naneth would faint away in despair."

Slipping her hand into the crook of his arm like he was an old friend, she teased "well, we can't have that now can we?"

"Indeed not."

Sooner than she would have thought possible she had gotten used to him, he reminded her of one of her not so frustrating brothers and was laughing along to stories of him getting in trouble with his twin and trading stories of her own youthful indiscretions. Laughter inevitably faded as similar tales of loss crept into the conversation. He shared the story of how his mother finally could no longer bear her pain and sailed west. And she returned the intimacy with her own tale of how her mother, burdened with a weakening body from stillbirth and miscarriage after stillbirth and miscarriage could no longer fight to stay alive and how the grief drove her own family apart.

"I haven't sung much since then." She found herself confessing as he walked with her through the careful wildness of the cottage garden.

Elladan frowned. "Will that not make your task as a singer difficult?" He asked quietly as he opened the door of the cottage for her.

"I suppose so." She admitted, shrugging a shoulder.

For a time, he seemed to be considering the interesting puzzle of her and, turning to the glowing embers of her hearth fire and took a seat on the raised stones that formed it. "Arwen tells us that Queen Caelann of the Greenwood is stuck in the Unseen Realm." He bit his lips with pearly white teeth that fairly glittered in the restful darkness that was lit only by the coals that he began stoking with swift practiced moves.

"She is."

"But you can see her?"

"When she's visible," Lynn answered, narrowing her eyes at the male. Had befriending her been an effort to pump her for information about Caelann. She had never considered the possibility that the "Fan Culture" that existed in her world also existed here, and that she was friends with one of the biggest celebrities there was. And no one had seen her in nearly two thousand years. "Is there a reason you're asking about Caelann?"

Elladan came back to himself with a start, blinking rapidly. "Apologies." He winced. "I am afraid that I forget how what I say sounds to others. Most of the ones around here are used to my thought patterns and how they jump about." Waving her toward one of the comfortable seats with their high backs and deep cushions, he leaned back against the walls. "One of the hazards of being my adar's son is that my brother and I are more used to duty than how others feel. And a singer without a song is an alarming thing. I was thinking that before you begin anything that the Valar sent you to do you must find your voice again. And that the only one who can truly help you is the Queen."

Frowning, Lynn leaned back in the chair. "No," she nodded thinking about it. "You're right." Running a hand through her light pink hair, giving her scalp a frustrated scratch, Sherilynn arched her back until it popped them relaxed once more. "I just…"

"Do not wish to believe you have failed before you have even begun?" He guessed. He had always been good at reading people. While both of his siblings and himself had been trained by their father to think analytically, he had always found himself drawn to the more delicate arts of healing the mind and the emotions. Between learning as much as he could at his naneth's knee until she sailed, then his grandmother's, and the journals that the Queen had written and had copied and sent to all the elven kingdoms, he had learned as much as he could. Not that it had helped his mother heal as much as she needed to. But at least he had been able to ease her suffering.

He smiled and stood. "You have not, you know." Moving to the sideboard when a small carafe of wine, he pouring them both a glass, he handed it to her. "You remind me much of young Elessar. So convinced that he will fail the people of Gondor if he tries to reclaim his seat as king. He will grow out of his fears in time and decide there are things more important than his fears. But you have less time and you fail, most assuredly, if you do not try."

Despite the admitted truth of his words, she snorted. "Do you charge by the hour for this advice, Doctor?" When a puzzled look crossed his almost delicate masculine face, she sighed. Sarcasm wasn't funny if you had to explain it. "You're right, okay? I know that. I'm just so used to being the one helping others heal, to get back into shape, that I'm not a very good patient myself I suppose."

"Then we will aid you until you can aid yourself," he offered, holding out a friendly hand for her. "Is this how one makes a deal in your realm? You shake on it?"

Laughing, she took his hand.