Eye of the Ice Dragon
By Elarin
LONG TIME NO SEE: since fan fiction has been running into –ahem- technical difficulties I have not been able to post the continuation to many of my stories. Nah. I'm just procrastinating and getting through all the wondrous college-application-processes… ack…. Let me tell you, I haven't even started writing my essays but I'm burnt. Anyways, here's the next chapter.\
ANGST WARNING: if you're the type of person who loves a beautiful happy ending, I'm warning you… there is no happy ending in this story. It's going to be terribly angsty.
*
Chapter 8 | Warmth of the Heart & Healing
5 years later
Telperiel sat on a stone bench beneath wreathing vines of white wysteria flowers their hanging blossoms releasing the fresh scent of newly opened blossoms and calling the warmth of spring. Elrond watched her from afar with some admiration. She had grown to reflect the beauty of the elven maids though she was mortal and Elrond guessed that some the past beauty and dignity of the line of Numenor ran through her veins as well.
Five years had passed. Five years had gone by and Imladris suffered no danger from her presence. Elrond suspected that the Witch King had been thrown off by the power of Vilya that protected the haven he had established long ago. Mithrandir had come to visit a few times to check up on things. Estel was growing to become a bright and clever boy and Gilraen had found a place to live out her days in Eriador, as she had decided that perhaps it was time for the future king to have some time away from his mother and learn to fend for himself under the tutelage of Elrond and his sons.
Elrond sighed deeply. Gilraen did come to visit from time to time but the creeping signs of age were beginning to mark her. Her once golden hair was being dulled with a shade of gray and the youth of her face was beginning to fade away with small lines that Elrond hoped came more from laughter than from tears. News from the east was becoming bad as well. The dark power of Dol Guldur had not faded from Mirkwood and it seemed, from his correspondences with Thranduil, that it was only strengthening though as of late it had been quiet and Dol Guldur remained only a brooding shadow over the forests.
Elrond stepped lightly down the garden steps toward her. Although the puzzle of her identity and her origins had not been wholly solved Elrond found a strange comfort in her presence. When Celebrian died
Elrond had found solace in Gilraen's presence, now that she had moved away, he turned to Telperiel for that comfort.
Not even an elven lord, echoed Galadriel's voice in his mind, such as yourself can suffer loneliness for too long.
He had always been gently teased by Celeborn, Glorfindel, and even Cirdan for being much too serious and much too worried.
Fall in love, Elrond! Gil-galad teased in his memories when they were camped before the long march to Barad-dur, You're too young to be so worried. Earendil was not so tense as you are.
Elrond managed a smile, something he seemed to have to practice. Have the years been so cruel to me? Perhaps, he should have counted more his laughter than his tears.
Sing then, sing and he'll hear you. He's part of the song now.
"Elrond, your steps are slow and cumbersome as if the world entire lies upon your shoulders." Telperiel turning toward him and squinting her eyes. Elrond smiled at her observation. Though she could not see things it seemed that the peace of Imladris had somewhat cleared her visions that from shadowy shapes she now saw things as blurs from that last she described her condition to him.
"I was thinking." He said taking a seat by her on the stone bench.
"Of what?"
"The past, the present." He said with a shrug.
"The future?" She asked. Elrond frowned.
"I was once told not to dwell too much on the future lest it makes me ill with worry."
"It is just not as well to dwell too often on the past lest it makes you ill with sadness." She replied.
Wise words. Elrond thought and he thought about them for a moment. He realized this was one of the many reasons he liked speaking with her. She always seemed to know the right things to say to him.
"And what of the present?" She asked him in her soft spoken tongue, it seemed to be a habit she always had, speaking softly as if sympathy poured from her to everyone else's worries.
"The present is quiet." Elrond said as he plucked one of the flowers from the vine above him, "and peaceful." A smile graced her features.
"Then keep yourself here." She told him, "And you will find that the present has yet to teach you of stillness as the world whirls about you." Elrond smiled and put the white flower in her hair.
"And what of you, nimloth?" Elrond asked her affectionately, "You have been quiet today. You did not want to ride out with Elrohir and Estel? Or perhaps walk with Glorfindel and Neniual?" She looked down weaving her fingers in her lap.
"I too have been thinking." Telperiel said more quietly.
"What of, my lady?" He asked her. She looked up at her amused.
"My lady?" She mused, "I have never heard you call me that." He took her hands and playfully kissed them.
"Well now, I should start calling you by that," Elrond said, "For you have grown up to be fairest of the mortal maids in all of Endore!" She blushed fiercely pulling her hands away.
"You're being silly, Elrond." She told him.
"Nay, I am being truthful." Elrond laughed, "But you have changed the subject. You have not divulged your thoughts to me yet." There was a moment of silence.
"I've been thinking of the spring." She said softly, "I love the spring, and the summer; It seems that everything is alive. And here, in Imladris, the song is brighter warmer."
"I pray that it is meant to be." Elrond told her standing up and taking her hand and leading her for a walk through the woodland trails, "For if it pleases you, my lady, then it too pleases me." She smiled.
"You have been acting oddly as of late, Elrond." She told him.
"Oh?" Elrond asked, "How so?"
"You have been treating me differently than you used to." She told him. Elrond looked at her surprised for a moment. He, at least, had not noticed a change in his own behavior. But because of her lack of sight she has gained 'insight' to other things. Elrond smiled at her observation.
"You shall have to explain me this, my lady, for I have not noticed my change towards you." Elrond told her.
"Well, I am not the only one who has noticed." Telperiel told him, "Even Elladan and Elrohir think you have been acting odd. You lock yourself in your study for long periods at a time. Why it has been many days since I have spoken to you! Estel has been complaining to me that you never come out to play with him as you used to." She smiled slightly, "He has been eager to show you his mastery in archery." She added.
Elrond settled down beneath a great oak tree by a stream and she sat next to him, "As I said I have been thinking."
"You have not told me all your thoughts." Elrond looked at her fondly.
"You have a keen sense, Telperiel," Elrond said, "But how shall I word my thoughts to you?" He asked her.
"Sing then." She told him. Elrond smiled.
"Long has it been since I have sang."
"And I still remember your voice." She countered, "And I would hear you sing." Elrond found her demand amusing.
"Would it please you, my lady?" Elrond laughed feeling mirth find its way to his heard, "To hear me sing?"
"Yes, my lord!" She teased in return, "It would!"
"Very well," Elrond replied, "But remember you asked." And he started a to sing in clear Sindaren.
*
"Deep within the forests old Beyond the emerald valesAway from ice and cold
There dwells a lady
Silver and fair
Of elven beauty, starlit eyes
And dark as nightfall is her hair
She sleeps beneath the jeweled sky
On a bed of phlox and clover she does lie
For where the river flows
And sings its song
The wind and the trees of her do long
For her soft voice with the water's tune
That calls the rising of the silver moon
And the golden hem of twilight
That quells the sorrows and the pains
The anger and the might
Of the rumbling clouds above her
Telperiel walks this land
The lady, silver-fair
Starlit are her eyes
Dark as nightfall is her hair…"
Elrond stopped his song partially surprised at what he was singing. He turned to face Telperiel who looked quite surprised herself. "I…" He began trying to find words for the reason why he sang those verses and from whence they came to him. "You are beautiful." He said softly though he felt awkward. He had not felt awkward in a long time and the feeling was refreshing and he almost welcomed it.
"Thank you." She said softly. But he heard something beneath it: wariness. Elrond expression fell.
"You did not like my song?" He asked so only her ears would here. She shook her head quickly.
"Nay, it was beautiful!" She protested, "It's just that…" She trailed off.
"What is it?" asked Elrond looking at her intently.
"When you sang your song," She said quietly, "You sang of your mother." Elrond blinked twice as if to blink away any confusion that lied before him but then he found her words right as always. He stared into her silver eyes that looked at him just as innocently as he had gazed upon them the first time in Ered Mithrin. She waited silently for his reply. Elrond looked out to the stream and gazed at the moss there.
"How did you know?" He asked quietly his gaze staring off elsewhere, deep within his memory.
A! Earendil! Whispered a soft voice in a song of longing. Onen i-urenlye...
She looked at him in quiet thought, "The song, the way you sang it. There was sadness in your voice and a desire for warmth." She replied, "Like… a child… left behind." She said choosing her words carefully. Elrond managed a sad smile.
"Aye, you have chosen your words well." Elrond said, "You told me once you could learn from simply hearing a song. I now know that you read beyond a song and within it, nimloth."
"I pray you are not offended." She said carefully. Elrond clutched one of her hands and entwined his fingers in her kissing her on the forehead.
"Nay, I am not offended." Elrond said, "I find peace when I am with you, Telperiel."
"May I ask you a question?"
"Certainly." There was a short pause and then she continued.
"Do I remind you of her?"
Once more Elrond gazed at her. Silver eyes and dark hair and face young yet carried with an age beyond years.
"Yes," Elrond said softly, "Even your demeanor reminds me of her at times. When you sing in your own tongue I hear heartbreak and pain and all the elves of Imladris too feel it. My mother used to sing as you do when my father left for his voyages. I was very young then but I still remember the tone in which she sang. Piercing notes that even made the sky rain with her longing for my father to return."
Telperiel sat quietly thinking of his words.
"I do not wish to bring sadness in a place so filled with joy," She said quietly turning towards him, "I will then make my songs brighter for you to listen to even in the winter's gloom that I do not like." Elrond smiled.
"You need not fear. Your songs are sad but they are filled with another kind of beauty that the elves do love. There will always be longing and sadness and every being, from a lowliest mortal, to the highest of elves has always something more to long for. Your songs, though in alien words they are to us, we understand them and that is why the elves of Imladris become silent when you sing. You sing of a pain we know all too well."
"That everything is beautiful in the world." Telperiel replied softly, "And that beautiful things fade."
"Yes," Elrond said helping her to her feet, "But since they fade away quickly we learn to appreciate them better for so short a time they remain with us."
Telperiel smiled.
"That is true and even with the autumn the trees always promise a spring after the cold of winter." Elrond smiled.
"Yes," Elrond agreed, "And a warmth that brings out perhaps not only the beauty of the flowers and of the world but a small beauty within ourselves for admiring it."
*
AN: Yeah, a short chapter. THERE WILL BE MORE! What do you think?