'There long the golden leaves have grown upon the branching years,
While here, beyond the Sundering Seas, now fall the Elven-tears.'
- The Lord of the Rings
JRR Tolkien
~
Journey
For Cirdan
- Part three
The dark-eyed elf glared at them.
"Why are you staring at me while I bathe?"
Turgon coughed delicately.
"Why are you bathing with your clothes on?"
The other elf seemed to meditate the question for some time. His left hand played with a pebble, turning it over and over in his palm; somehow, though she did not know why, the repeated gesture made her uneasy, and she would rather have been elsewhere.
The elf looked up.
"I don't know. I guess you have a point here." He paused for a second, and let go of the pebble; the small rock was carried away by the current and was soon lost to her sight. "Does this give you an excuse to stare?"
Turgon shook his head.
"No."
With a grin, the other elf stepped out of the stream. Droplets of water fell everywhere about him as if he was a dark cloud filled with rain. It looked like he was clothed in black, but, she thought, maybe it was only because of the overly high rate of dampness of his garments' fabric.
"Well. I guess I'll just have to wait until my clothes dry, then." He looked skywards. "The weather is fair."
Then he began walking away.
Silently, Turgon took the sack with the lembas and handed one to her, before taking one for himself. They sat down on the grass and he took a small bite of his slice. She stared at hers.
"Makalaurë!"
Turgon's voice sounded hesitant, and she startled at the name, though the call did not address her. Far away already, she saw the black silhouette stop.
Turgon waved his hand at him.
"Why don't you come and share this meal with us?"
Maglor tilted his head sideways.
"I never eat."
She smiled at him.
"It doesn't matter. Join us for once. It's been far too long since we've been together."
Warily, he walked towards them again, and stood behind Turgon. The latter shuffled for some moments in the tattered leather bag, then shook his head.
"There's no more. Here."
He broke off a piece of his own and handed it to the other elf.
"How can there be no more?" she wondered aloud. "There still was aplenty yesterday."
Turgon shook his head again.
"I don't know."
Maglor was turning his bread around in his hands, as if wondering what to do with it.
"You eat it," she offered. "You put it in your mouth and you eat it."
He tried, and swallowed the small mouthful only after having carefully chewed it.
"It tastes good," he said. "I did not remember it tasted like that."
Then he sat down with them.
"What is a son of Fëanor doing in these parts of Doriath?" Turgon demanded after a while. "Didn't the Girdle keep you off?"
Maglor looked up from examining his lembas.
"Am I in Doriath?"
"Yes." she said. "We are very near to Menegroth now. It's a wonder the guards haven't caught us already."
"But what about you?" Maglor asked Turgon. "Shouldn't the Girdle be closed also to you?"
There was a short silence.
"I don't know," the taller elf confessed. "I hadn't thought about that." He had finished eating and stood up to wash his hands in the river.
"I don't think the Girdle is enough to keep us out." Maglor said after his half-cousin came back. "We can always unwittingly go anywhere we did not wish to go."
She had also finished eating, but politely waited until Maglor had finished too. His clothes had dried noticeably fast, she mused. Maybe a kind of magic.
There was a minute during which they all stared at the ground, uneasy about standing up and parting once more.
"We are headed to the South." she said finally, looking the older elf in the eye with a faint air of defiance. "South along the river, all the way to the Sea. Where do you seek to go?"
"Nowhere." he admitted, looking surprised at such a question.
Turgon laughed.
"Then our paths are but one and the same!"
Maglor smiled.
"If you say so."
He stood, and whistled, a shrill, high-pitched note; and something in the surrounding woods shook with a kind of fear.
Out of nowhere, seemingly, a tall grey steed stepped out, and went towards them. Still smiling, Maglor bent over its mane, and petted its robe; into its twitching ear he whispered some words that she did not hear.
~
Turgon pushed his horse into a trot, and came just beside Maglor.
"I've always wondered" he said casually "who you really were."
"Maglor son of Fëanor." The answer came just as heedless.
"No, I did not ask you what your name was, but who you were."
Maglor raised a slender eyebrow and glanced at the other elf as if he were mildly mad.
"Where do you see the difference?"
The question seemed to shock the other, yet after five minutes of silence during which Maglor clearly thought that the conversation had come to an end, Turgon shrugged.
"Reckon there's none."
Maglor turned to him again.
"Pardon me? I have forgotten what we were talking about" He said with an apologetic smile.
Turgon stared off into the distance.
"I have also," he admitted.
Then they rode in silence.
~