A/N: As much as I love fireworks, I hate the noise. On top of a four-day migraine, today is not a fun day. That's it. Night.

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?

Also because my Ao3 readers have caught up with my readers you are now on the regular update schedule so you get parts of insanely long chapters. Cause 25+ pages in my writing program is a bit of an eye strain for me to write and edit each week. So love you all but I love not being sick all week from migraines and pain more.

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.

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 3 Waiting for the Dwarves Part 2

The days had passed slowly for Caelann. With only two beings around who could currently see her, she often didn't bother to be seen unless she knew they needed her. So that left great swaths of her day that she was left to her own devices.

With nothing to do but seethe over what she had learned from Ulmo and be in pain from the other world, she quickly found her temper frayed until she might have set the plants around her on fire if that wouldn't have taken enough energy to knock her out for days. Which only served to annoy herself.

She could hear when one of the others asked her a question no matter where she was and found she didn't necessarily have to be there to answer if she only did so by voice, so she didn't have to be with them all the time. And they didn't talk to her all the time anyway.

Finally sick of her own dark mood, it only took a day, she started walking or floating as may be the more accurate case. But the movement felt like walking to her. It seemed to be much faster for her though than normal as well unless she could always walk faster than horses could run which she very much doubted. She had followed the patrols one day, following Elrohir and Elladan who met up with the very young Elessar.

He was such a cute lad, but she could see the quickly growing strength in him. That humility and iron-like will that time and experience would turn into steel that could move mountains. And the kindness he showed to others, the ones that many would consider lower than themselves? It was a rare quality even at the best of times. For it wasn't how someone treated their equals or betters that showed who they were, but how they treated the weak, the pitiful, the ones lower than them. And Aragorn worked hard to take care of his men. Even the horses he treated with better care than he treated himself.

He still had the youthful arrogance that time would rob of him. But it was the haunted look in his eyes when he was alone that she was most bothered by. He was too young for that look. That look of having been through the wars and not coming back whole.

She caught him outside the small camp of the patrol one day, sitting on a log overlooking one of the great rivers of Arda, gently tamping pipeweed into his small traveling pipe as he watched the gently lapping water and took a seat next to him. Pride filled her as she watched him, his own mother was not alive to see the man he had become, so Caelann felt it for her.

With a heavy breath, his shoulders sagged under the weight of his worries. As a mother, she ached to hold him as his own could not. So she did. He may not feel it, but to her, that didn't matter at all.

"If I could help ye shift the weight of this worry from yer shoulders, I would in a heartbeat." She whispered into his dark hair as he slumped further feeling a warmth soak into his shoulders and along one side as if he was sitting beside a warm crackling campfire. "Ye may no be my son, but would ye mind if I worry over ye like ye are? I think yer own mother would rest easier kenning that someone does. And Celebrain is no here to do it either though she would in a heartbeat." She sighed, his hair tickling her nose.

Slowly she ran a hand up and down his back, frowning at the raised places that she felt. Scars she knew, having more than a few of her own. Injuries were unavoidable when hunting orcs and in battle, but that didn't mean she liked feeling them. "Remind me ta tell Elrond that ye need more knowledge of the healing ways. Ye can no allow yersel' to fall before ye reach a good old age, ye hear me?" She asked knowing that he couldn't.

Unthinking, she rocked the great bulk of him and began humming a quiet song of healing, placing her hands over the worst of them that would impede his range of motion and affect his sleep. Finding the song in a video game before Dagorlad had been a blessing, but she wasn't sure it would work with her in the Unseen Realm.

As the song ended, Aragorn straightened with a groan. It wouldn't do to fall asleep during his watch of the river, however unlikely it was that anything would come from that direction. He would have to speak to his men and remind them that he knew what they were doing giving him the easy direction to watch while they took the more dangerous ones to their sides and the forest behind.

With a sigh, he stood and rotated the shoulder that had been paining him all day trying to work out the stiffness that had settled in with the cool morning rain that had caught them out of doors. And stopped with a start. It was gone. The pain was simply gone. As if it had been no more than a morning mist, not even the lingering memory of it was there in his muscles.

Quickly he reached under the leather jerkin he wore to the thin linen shirt beneath and felt along the muscle and bone to the scar that should have been there. It had been there this very morning. He had seen it when he pulled on a fresh tunic. It had been raised and still an angry red, only just healed. But only smooth skin met his touch.

With an alarmed cry, he pulled off the jerkin and the shirt beneath and twisted to try to get a better look at the injury.

"What is wrong?" One of his fellow Dunedain asked, springing to his feet and reaching for the sword that was ever-present at his side. "Have you seen something?"

Always more observant to his cousin and friend, Halbarad narrowed his eyes on the twisting and turning Aragorn. "Where is the injury that was on your shoulder?" Slowly moving to his feet, he caught Aragorn to stop the dizzying turning and get a look for himself. "It was there this morning. I saw it. Now only a red line is visible," gently prodding the line his voice dropped in an awed whisper. "As if it had only been a scratch. Can you move your arm at all?"

When Aragorn demonstrated by raising his arm over his head and then fully behind and in front, Halbarad and the rest of the men gaped in shock. It would have taken months to heal to that extent if it ever did. "Este has truly blessed you this day." He said, running a probing finger over what had been a nasty bruise across Aragorn's back that had made him uncomfortable in the saddle. It too was gone, not even a halo of yellow remaining.

"Este has blessed whom?" Elladan asked, carrying an armload of fallen branches to the center cook fire. When he was told and saw the healed injuries for himself, he gaped as if he had been struck in the face. "I do not believe that is the work of Este." He murmured, looking around for evidence of who he thought might be there.

A twig covered by dead leaves rustled near the fallen tree that Aragorn had been sitting on when he left to fetch wood for the fire. It might have been thought to be just the wind. But there was no wind. "Thank you," he directed to the twig. "Your majesty."

"Majesty?" Aragorn asked, glancing to where Elladan looked as Elrohir walked up, his own arms equally as full as his brother's. "Which royal as you speaking to?"

"He speaks to the Queen of Greenwood who is lately returned to Arda." Elrohir shrugged. "In a rather odd fashion but nonetheless, there are once more Singers in Middle Earth."

Jaw-dropping, Aragorn felt for the fallen tree behind him and sat down hard on in. "The Queen of Greenwood who fought at Dagorlad?" He asked, his voice barely above a whisper. "I used to hear stories of her. Not just the ones of the battles but of her travels." Looking up, he pressed back the almost giddy feeling that bubbled up in his chest. "Is it true that she sailed all the way around Arda? Past the northern fields of ice to the western shores then down to the southern deserts? Did she really step onto the shores of the Dark Lands?"

"She and a companion have returned, aye." Elrohir nodded, carefully stacking the branches. "Our adar and her journals say she not only traveled the Dark Lands but actually saw the Wall of The Sun and Kalorme. Most of her traveling party still reside in Greenwood as far as I know. Waiting for her return."

"But if she has returned," Aragorn asked, looking once more to where Elladan had. "Why do they not travel to Rivendel to be with their lady?"

"That is part of a much longer tale." Elladan began, adding his own load to that of his brother. "I think we can tell it while someone, not either of us, makes evening meal." The Dunedain and elves, that sat in various states of rest around the fire chuckled at that announcement. After a few failed attempts at that duty rotation, it was fairly obvious that the twins had no skill beyond setting water on the fire to boil when it came to cooking. And if anyone wished to eat, they would never let the twins at the food.

Smiling to herself, Caelann allowed herself to be pulled back to Imladris.

The next days passed as the previous ones did with Caelann pushing her limits and then being exhausted and in even more pain the next day. But she couldn't regret healing Aragorn. Just as she couldn't regret dying Glorfindel's hair a nice shade of mossy green with the help of a few plants, even if it knocked her flat for nearly two days. Who knew carrying some berries when you didn't have a body could be so tiring?

But every day since she had been back in Middle Earth there had seemed to be this… pressing weight that got heavier with each breath she took until it felt as if her very chest was trying to cave in. Could it be from the accident? Could it be something else?

Each morning it was lightest, at first a warm happy featherweight like a happy dream, but as the day went on it became colder and heavier. The weight became like an icy boulder.

The only place it lightened any was under the grandmother tree behind the cottage.

Most beings, even most of the elves, had forgotten the true strength of the trees. Their memories were long and they felt more deeply the pain of the earth and the beings on it than anyone else. And when she sang to them, even in the Unseen Realm, they heard her. They heard everything. Because they were all connected. A tree in Rivendel could hear what was said around a tree in the White City of Gondor. The pain of a Mallorn tree when an orc chopped at its base could be felt in Lindon. And the all-consuming anger of the trees in Fangorn echoed in every corner of the world. Because all the trees were connected.

So as she sat beneath the grandmother tree in the little protected woodland behind her house she could feel one who sat beneath a similar tree, that seemed to be half a world away, cradled in the protective embrace of its roots. Her husband. Who battled every day with the grief she now shared and fought fading, because he had faith in her.

And that was something to be in awe of.

What kind of love was it that, through the thousands of years that passed for him, it hadn't faded? It hadn't waned. It was just as steady now, even through grief and pain and fury, as it had been all those years ago when they first told each other. When they had overcome their own doubts and fears to declare it to the world. And when they weathered the king's arguments and ravings that they were both mad.

She had loved Oropher in the end too. Because, through all his coldness and at times disdain of her, he loved his son and his people. And before he passed into the halls of Mandos, he had loved her too.

Quietly, under the tree with no one to hear but the trees themselves who she trusted more than the great eagles to send him a message, Caelann began to sing. "Hearts beats fast."

Closing her eyes as the words filled her mouth, she stood and raised her arms as if she was resting them on his shoulder. "I have died every day waiting for ye."

Swaying and turning in time with the song she changed a few of the words to better fit. "Darling don't be afraid, I have loved you for four thousand years. I'll love you fer a thousand more."

As the song and the dance came to a close, Caelann knelt at the tree's base and placed her hands on the smooth bark as the last verse swelled within her. "All along I believed I would find ye. Time has brought your heart ta me and I have loved you for four thousand years. I'll love you fer a thousand more."

As the last words faded, she knew he had felt them in the wood he rested his forehead on. She knew he had seen her dancing for him in the song of the trees, and she felt peace for the first time since arriving.

Over the mountains, Thranduil had once again decided to fall asleep beneath the tree his son planted so many years ago. The tiny sapling had grown into a giant shade tree that perfumed the entirety of the royal family quarters with the scent his wife had worn.

Days before he had received the letter from Elrond, and once again his study had born the brunt of his anger and only that precious rug had survived the storm. She was here, in Middle Earth, but not. She was stuck between realms, existing but not. Two beings could see her that he knew of, and he was not one. She was even tied to one of those that could see her, who was currently in Imladris, and could not come to him.

He was afraid that the guard also felt the bite of his impotent rage at the situation. He would have to apologize to Legolas eventually for that. But he found he had no energy for the needed task.

So tired of the waiting, the longing, he found he could barely breathe at times. The weight of years, millennia without the other half of his fea bore down on him nearly crushing him. If it had not been for their son and her promise to him, he would have faded long ago.

Instead of finding hope in her return, all he felt he could do at times was breathe through the agony. Bloody claws of grief still dug into him, trying to tear his mind and heart and will to ribbons. No longer was it the old friend he had gotten to know well in her long absence, now that she was so close it turned vicious and hungry. As if it was a living breathing entity and was determined to see him fall just before relief came.

That feeling, at least, was not new. He remembered it well from the battles that seemed never to end. He knew the numbing fatigue that stole over you, pressing on you like a weighted blanket until it pinned you and then constricted the life out of you.

She had saved him, once before, from that in the bloody fields of Dagorlad right after his adar had been slain right before his eyes and swept away in the flood of orcs. He had returned the favor when they lost their first child, which they had not even know existed, due to an injury on those same fields a year later.

Just a little while longer, he told himself, settling into the curved roots of the tree. "Soon." He whispered, closing his eyes to better listen to the gentle song of the tree that guarded the garden.

And was swept away in the song it sang and the vision it gave him. He could feel his wife's arms resting on his as they danced to a song he had never heard before. Her words curled around him and sank into his soul like a soothing balm.

The ache was still there. The anger, the pain, the exhaustion, and sadness, none of them had disappeared, but he had the strength to deal with them once again. And he knew… Just knew why.

A slow exhale turned to a sigh of relief.