Elrond woke to hushed voices and vague black shapes hovering all around

Rubies and Fire

Elrond woke to hushed voices and vague black shapes hovering all around. Full awareness slipped away from him quick as an elusive eel. Only short snatches of dialogue pierced his comprehension.

"This epidemic will surely take him…"

"… has hit him so much harder than the others…"

"… there is no cure…"

"… close the curtains."

With agonizing clarity, Elrond realized the mysterious disease had gripped him with a vengeance not felt by any one else in Imladris. A prayer to Iluvater to preserve all those in this sanctuary should he perish flew with greatest urgency from Elrond's heart just as he slipped through the fingers of consciousness once more.

Night. It registered in his mind. Elrond suddenly felt wakeful and opened his eyes. A strange relief washed over him when he looked through the slightly parted curtains and saw that evening's mantle was cast across the burning eye of Heaven. The darkness soothed him like a healing balm, held him close as a lover. His heart rejoiced in the shadows and would not let him be still.

The lord of Imladris cast off his blankets and stood next to his bed. All the lamps were gone and the candles burnt out. He marveled that his vision was suddenly so sharp in this blackness. His glance found the nurse's form reclining in a chair against the opposite wall. He recognized her, knew her to be dedicated to her craft, and wondered that she could sleep when her lord lay deathly ill. Slightly disgruntled at the thought, but nonetheless thankful, for it gave him the opportunity to move about unhindered, he slipped silently through a door onto his terrace which overlooked the flowing Anduin.

The weakness of his condition finally forced him to sit down on a finely carved wooden bench. He leaned his head upon the sill of the terrace and gazed up at the waning moon. Sleep nearly claimed him once more when a voice drifted out of the stillness.

"My lord," it said simply. He straightened and turned to look for the source of the voice. His mouth dropped open. He wanted to ask what she was doing there, how she had gotten in.

"You," was the only syllable his lips would allow to pass.

"Narwen."

"I know."

Elrond was astounded. She created her own glowing silhouette against the velvet cloak of night. Her eyes, which he had never seen open, smoldered black and bright as coals. Steady as a candle flame the fire-maiden approached him, her ember-bright hair fluttering wistfully just at the tops of her ankles. She stopped within arm's length; only then did the gaping lord find the words he wanted to ask.

"Why are you here?"

"She bade me come to you."

"How did you get in here?"

"She cast a spell over the nurse and entreated the lock to open."

"Who is 'she'?"

"You know." Narwen stated quietly as she reached out one white hand to indicate the small pin-prick wounds on the left side of his throat. Elrond shuddered. Something he'd tried very hard to forget reared to life before his mind's eye.

Last night… a woman, blood red, all the world was blood red. White teeth bared at my throat. Wolfish hunger….

He shuddered again and clenched his fists to fight the remembrance back into the oblivious world of forgotten nightmares.

"Don't be afraid. She didn't mean to hurt you. She sent me to help you, to give you back some of the strength she took." The elf maid gently pried his fingers loose. She held his hands in hers for a single breath. It seemed then as if she woke from a trance while holding this mighty lord's hands in her own. It only lasted for the time it takes a thought to fly across the mind, before her own will was thrown down and the trance resumed. But Elrond caught it.

"What sort of spell has she cast over you?" Narwen replied with an uncomprehending stare. She stepped back slightly and regarded her lord as a diver would contemplate the leap off a tall cliff. A zephyr rose from the woods below, swirling her hair with its guileful gusts, making it dance across and cling to her own form so that Narwen shone like a flickering spark. Elrond watched, hypnotized.

She leaned into the breeze, tilted her head, and allowed the wind to reveal the newly reopened wounds on her throat.

"Take all that you need," she whispered. "But, she warns you not to take too much, or it may kill me."

Incredulous, Elrond nearly shouted for the nurse to help this delusional child. A sudden change stopped him. His world shifted, his mind twisted into a new shape at the sight of this girl's bared neck. A hunger, he knew it was the same hunger he'd seen in those other eyes the night before, banished every thought except satiation. He saw through the elf girl, every vein in her body leapt to his ravenous gaze and begged for him to discover them like gold in the hills. Black desire and blind rapture seized him, thrilled him, coerced him to their waiting outstretched arms.

With the devil's strength, Elrond stood and enfolded the fire-maiden in his mad embrace. The top of her head barely reached to his chest, but he bent and put his lips to her exposed nape.

The wounds that had remained sealed now opened at his touch. The blood flowed freely for this lord of elves. He feasted on this maiden with all the vigor of a starving thrall upon a fine banquet. He reveled in evil and pain, as her hot blood burned a path down his throat.

He heard her sigh and felt her arms reach up to clutch his shoulders lightly. Slowly, beauty reappeared in Elrond's world again. As if waking from a nightmare to find a dream stretched alongside him, he felt the woman in his arms. His lips left her neck to search for her lips. Elrond felt tears slide a sparkling path from his eyes to where his mouth joined Narwen's. Hardly able to stand, he guided both of them onto the bench, still locked in that tearful embrace.

Elrond pulled away from Narwen, laid his head against her delicate collarbone, and sobbed. He hadn't held a woman or been held since Celebrian left him. Visions of his wife, his mother, his daughter all spun across his imagination. He cried for Elwing, his mother far away in the paradise of Valinor. He sobbed for Celebrian, his wife who, captured and tormented by orcs, was unable to carry on and departed centuries ago into the west. But most bitterly he wept for his beloved daughter, Arwen. If the war was lost, all Middle Earth would be lost and all those in it, including her. If it was won, Arwen, in whom the likeness of Luthien had been born again, would make Luthien's choice. Thus did Elrond's grief tear through him: that his only daughter should choose to belong to the second children of Iluvater. She would not go with him to the immortal shores of Valinor. He would never see her again until the day her soul departed the living realm and passed through the halls of Mandos before journeying to the unknown destination of mortal spirits. Only then, when his treasured daughter died, could Elrond look on her again. And then, he did not know if the souls of elves and mortals mingled even after the world was ended. Elrond's countless tears fell with the knowledge that his daughter may be lost to him for all eternity.

The grieving elf lord tightened his arms around Narwen, desperate for someone to hold as he would never hold his child again. He felt her gentle hands stroke through his obsidian black hair, and he loved this little maid. He loved her because she was there, because she hadn't left him yet like Elwing and Celebrian and Arwen.

Without realizing it he whispered, "They left me."

"I will never leave you." Narwen lifted his face so he was forced to look into her eyes. He saw no enchantment there, the spell was gone and she gazed on him with complete awareness of all she did. Astonishment overtook Elrond as she lowered her face and kissed him of her own accord.

He held her close to him, and so they stayed while the moon set and the stars watched over all with glittering tranquility.