Disclaimer: I do not own Lord of the Rings or any recognizable characters and/or places.

Author's Note: For the aging of Elves, in this story, I am using the scale of one Elf year to four mortal years. If it ever says "Arwen was eight" or any such thing, just divide by four to get her age in mortal years. Also, if anything is wrong in this story and you cannot correct it politely ("do your homework", any form of insult, and any comment about my lack of right to write fanfiction stories is not polite) please refrain from correcting at all.

Chapter One

Elrond's perspective

*****

Addaliel was always a bit of an oxymoron. She was a problem child, without actually being at all troublesome. Elladan, the oldest of the four, was a true problem child, and while I shall never truly know why it was that he was so difficult I suspect he thrived on attention, be it positive or negative. Elrohir, equally, always seemed to be thinking. Even when he was asleep, his eyes looked serious and busy. He seemed very unhappy, laughing rarely, but he tells me that he was not, simply, he had much to contemplate. That child was born old.

The twins were grown by the time Celebrian gave birth again, this time to a girl. I prayed to the Valar that this one would not be so trying as the last two, and she was quite the opposite. With Arwen around, one would appreciate Elladan's antics and Elrohir's near-to depression. Nothing was wrong with Arwen, and this in of itself could be very trying; she could sew and sing and all of those things expected of ladies to a degree of perfection. The child never caused mischief and, most likely, did not tell a single lie in her entire life.

Addaliel, however, was something else. Arwen was eight years old when Addaliel was born, the twins one hundred nineteen. Luckily the boys understood perfectly well what birth and pregnancy was all about, and they managed to entertain Arwen while her sister was born, a mercifully short thirty minutes. The twins had been born after a labor of three hours and Arwen herself took four, so Celebrian was ready for about that much time.

From the moment she entered this world the girl was smaller than she ought to be. For a while we were worried that something might be wrong, for although Elves do not get sick, an Elf may still have a defect; nobody's perfect. When Addaliel screamed and cried herself to sleep that first day, neither of us thought of how Arwen and the twins had done similarly, simply that something must be wrong with her. The next morning she was just fine, and after two weeks of "just-fine" mornings, we believed her healthy.

The twins and Arwen looked similar, all sharing the same grey eyes, dark hair, and soft features. Addaliel had her mother's looks, lighter brown hair that did not look black at all, even when wet, and her face look as if it were carved out of stone. The trait shared between all of them, however, was eyes of grey, for they had no other colour to inherit.

As with all children Addaliel grew, but she did not grow much. Always she was small for her age, even as an adult she could pass off for only about seventy-six years, having neither Arwen's height nor the solid frame of the boys. Her fingers looked as though one could break them off with minimal efforts, yet there never seemed a physical burden she faced that she could not overcome. Perhaps the short hair helped, keeping her from looking buried.

The first word she ever said was "Atara", not much of a surprise to anyone. After that word, the rest seemed to follow like raindrops, each new one causing her to trip up, but repeated a second time with perfection. She was an early talker, but an ardent one, and it seemed we would have a taleteller on our hands. As things happened she was never a taleteller.

One day, eighteen years into her life, Addaliel lost her words. She shut her mouth and never spoke another word. Again we thought something was, somehow, wrong with her, and we tried to correct it. Forever I will grieve for the damage those next years did to my child, for young though she was she knew what was happening on some level, but not quite why.

But this I will speak more of later.

Personality was a word that Addaliel tripped herself over three times, more or less a record for her, and as soon as she had that word down she did not stop saying it, as if a day without "personality" was a day her heart would break. Years later, her own personality began to show.

As I started to explain earlier, Addaliel was an oxymoron. Energy seemed to explode spontaneously from within her. Walking slowly down a hallway (for Addaliel walked slowly), she would suddenly drop whatever was in her hands and sprint, turning a cartwheel around the next corner. Addaliel was more or less a girl of cloth, she could twist her body into any number of positions that would break bones or mangle most others.

Slowly it began to become clear that while her bursts of energy were unplanned, sometimes she did things to make others happy without being too obvious about this. Elrohir was her first target. The two had always been very close, although not in age. Now, by this point I had learned that the second I relaxed in any way Addaliel caused a stir, not on purpose, just because that was her way.

This particular day, there was a great thump sort of sound, then a sound of something rather heavy hitting the floor, and more things falling onto whatever it was. I dashed out into the corridor to see a lump against the wall, where there should have been a tapestry hanging. This lump was thrashing about quite a bit, and I realized that Addaliel had managed to pull the tapestry from the wall and was trapped underneath it. There had also been a short table with a number of unlit candles on it, which also seemed to have fallen over.

Addaliel was a mess, once she managed to get the tapestry off her. Her hair was in a state of complete disarray, a bruise forming over her left eye where a candle had hit her. She was grinning in a sort of way that she knew she had done something wrong, but unintentionally, and she was sorry for it.

That was when I noticed the giggling. Elladan, Elrohir, and Arwen were crowded together down the corridor, watching Addaliel, pressing their palms to their mouths to keep from laughing. "Are you all right?" I asked, offering my hand to help her up. Addaliel took my hand, pulled herself to her feet, and promptly fell over again. Tears of mirth sprang to her eyes.

Addaliel managed to climb to her feet, then looked down the hall and smiled secretly at Elrohir. She never knocked down another tapestry after that, but she did earn more than her share of bruises. Celebrian joked that perhaps she was making up for Arwen and Elrohir, who had not been very active. "In her own time," Celebrian told me, "she will grow out of it." Celebrian said that about everything when referring to Addaliel; in her own time she would learn to walk, in her own time she would stop crashing into things, in her own time. . .

***** .

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