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Year 2951 - spring
The trio rode across the Bruinen, tired and dirty but still in good spirits. The rushing water seemed to slow as the their horses splashed through it, sending sprays of clear droplets up at their riders' legs; the spring breeze, lazily drifting past with the clouds overhead, carried the scent of pine and apples from the southwest, the site of Elrond's newest orchard, and Estel breathed in the smells of Imladris with a smile as he urged his horse up the bank, illuminated against the setting sun's last rays.
"And that last Orc!" Elrohir was enthusing, his grey mare charging up the steep bank after Estel's mount. "Amazing, Estel, really, with the reversed spear--"
"I ought well be able to use the spear decently," Estel replied, pleased at the praise nonetheless. Elrohir, kind and patient as he was, still was not one to exaggerate skill. "You two taught me, after all."
"And we can still best you with spear and bow," Elladan laughed, as they reached the path leading toward Elrond's house.
"And knives," Estel said indulgently, knowing full well that it was true. "But I can beat both of you with a sword, and Lhach is faster than any horse either of you have." He patted his horse's neck affectionately.
"Well, you know what they say - the faster the horse, the slower the rid--"
"In any case, brother," Elladan cut in, "why couldn't you have found that particular skill to use during the last Orc-hunt? Before that Orc nearly cut my head off?"
"Perhaps he was holding back for a reason," Elladan put in with a sly grin.
The banter went on through the entire ride back. Estel put in the occasional remark or two but left most of the teasing to his foster-brothers, the light-hearted jibes passing over his head like water around the boulders lining the Bruinen.
He was surprised to see Elrond waiting for them in the courtyard - not that he was unaccustomed to Elrond's habitual warmth toward all three of them, but the elf was usually too busy with the administration of Imladris to linger at his leisure with his sons, nor check on them following every hunt. Nevertheless, it was a pleasant sort of surprise, and all three dismounted almost simultaneously to hand off their horses to waiting grooms and head toward Elrond. "Ada!" Elrohir greeted him. "Have you been so anxious for our return that you've waited out here?"
"I should hope that after two thousand years I shouldn't have to wait anxiously for your return," the master of Rivendell responded dryly, accepting a short embrace from all three. "As it is, you have all returned in more or less the same state I sent you off in, so I must assume that none of you have sustained any life-threatening injuries and wish to wash up immediately."
"As if Elrohir ever washes," Elladan kidded as he headed past his father and into the house. Elrohir followed suit, good-naturedly muttering something about dwarves and the state of Elladan's hair.
"Ah - Estel," Elrond said before Estel could follow the twins. The young man paused mid-step, turning to face Elrond. "Will you walk with me? I've been meaning to speak with you, but the messages from Lorien have stayed my attention until now."
"Gladly, ada." And he changed his course to fall into step beside Elrond, heading around one of the side passages that extended up toward the balcony outside Elrond's study.
"You recall how all your life, you've been told you were not ready for certain things," Elrond started thoughtfully, eyes slightly downcast. "To follow Elladan and Elrohir to the hunts. To use bow, sword, knives. To learn of your true heritage." Estel's expression darkened slightly at the mention of the last, but he merely nodded as Elrond went on. "You have proven to your mentors that you were ready to join your brothers. To learn the use of weaponry."
He turned onto the veranda outside his study, brushing aside the draperies that blocked the harshest of the sun's rays from the interior and slipping inside before Estel. "I have realized that you are also ready to learn of your lineage. Perhaps you have been, and I had not noticed - but now, I tell you." He went to one of the shelves, taking down a box and unwrapping a tiny parcel from within it. "Do you know what I hold?"
Estel's mouth went dry, and he swallowed hard, glancing between the ornate ring outheld in Elrond's hand and the elf's face. He shook his head once, finding enough voice to rasp out, "No."
"Here is the ring of Barahir, the token of our kinship from afar. And here also," Elrond pressed the ring into Estel's unresisting hand before turning, drawing forth a roll of faded blue cloth and setting it upon his desk as he unfolded it, "are the shards of Narsil." Estel could do no more than stare at the fragments of broken sword, trying dimly to recall stories of old from the Hall of Fire and the significance of one such, one Sword that was Broken; Elrond continued, a gentle smile on his face. "With these you may yet do great deeds; for I foretell that the span of your life shall be greater than the measure of Men, unless evil befalls you or you fail at the test. But the test will be hard and long. The Scepter of Annuminas I withhold, for you have yet to earn it."
Estel nodded, mute, gaze dropping from his foster-father to the ring in his hands, to the shards of sword on the cloth, and back to Elrond. Elrond took a step closer, laying one hand on Estel's shoulder. "But I do not fear that you will not earn it. For your true name is Aragorn, son of Arathorn." He stepped back, carefully rerolling the shards of Narsil in their cloth and offering it to Estel. "Heir to Isildur, and Lord of the Dunedain."
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The next morning found Estel wandering around Imladris's forests in a daze. A pleasant, proud daze, true, but a daze nonetheless. He had seen both Elladan and Elrohir at dinner the previous night, and their exchange had done much to reassure him, even in his state then.
"Did you know all this time? And never told me?"
"We were told that you weren't to know, brother. Calm down. 'Twas all thought to be for the best."
"By the Valar, how can you still call me that? Knowing he to whom I am heir? You know the stories, of Isildur's weakness as well as I do!"
"Better, even. And why should we not call you brother? Isildur's deeds will not shadow your future, and they do not erase your past. You are a brother of our hearts if nothing else, and being one of the Dunedain will not change that."
He had not gone back to his rooms that night, unable to face his mother yet - instead, he had slept outdoors in Ithil's beams, lulled to a troubled sleep by the familiar sounds of the forest and the soothing noise of the ford's waters nearby. When he had awoken, his mind hadn't been entirely eased, but some measure of pride at his lineage had sept into the confusion that surrounded this revelation.
He spent the entire day after that trying to recreate every skill he'd ever learned from Elladan and Elrohir, Glorfindel and Elrond, anyone in Imladris. No, of course he'd never been as good as they. He was mere humankind; destined to death, and to the weakness of the forebears he'd always heard stories of but had never thought on more than as simply a legend. By the time Anor started setting, casting shattered golden reflections on the ford's surface, he lingered among the birch forest within view of Elrond's house in the most turmoil he'd ever been in all his life, wavering from tulmultous joy at having finally learned of his ancestry - and what an ancestry it was, the son of kings! - to utter desolation at having been untimely torn from his brothers, much as they would deny any change.
A sudden wind rasped through the trees, unusually harsh for the spring eves - with it came the faint sounds of footsteps, carelessly placed among the growing things on the ground. Estel was immediately on guard, eyes straying toward the direction from whence the noise came. What he saw stopped all thought for a long moment, casting away even the doubts that had been pounding at his brain all through the day.
A maiden - no, goddess, surely - walked with unfamiliar leisure through the trees, the wind softening as she passed; long hair as dark as his own, as the night sky lifted in the breeze, straying across shell-pale skin. Blues and silvers from her simple mantle reflected in her eyes, warming the wondering half-smile upon her lips as she reached upward to graze long fingers across a birch branch.
Tinuviel was dancing there // to music of a pipe unseen, // and light of stars was in her hair, // and in her raiment glittering. . .
Before he could stop himself, he heard himself cry, "Tinuviel!"
She turned, and he flushed in mortification - no, it could not be Luthien, and he was a fool for having burst out with that name. But she only smiled and came a few steps closer, and he forgot his sudden shame. "Who are you? And why do you call me by that name?"
Estel was abruptly aware of the feeling described in the romantic poems included in most of the works he'd read, recopied for Elrond - perhaps it wasn't such 'sentimental rubbish' as he'd termed it once, not so long ago, to compare faces to those of the Valar and voices to the sweetest of bells. He swallowed hard before he could speak. "Because I believed you to be indeed Luthien Tinuviel. But if you are not she, then you walk in her likeness."
"So many have said, yet her name is not mine." The maiden's smile softened a degree, a touch more gravely though the light in her eyes did not dim as she regarded him. "Though maybe my doom will be not unlike hers. But who are you?"
"Estel I was called, but I am Aragorn," and his voice faltered slightly, the name foreign on his tongue. "Arathorn's son, Isildur's Heir, Lord of the Dunedain."
She laughed then, and he lost all remembrance of his former dejection. "Then we are kin from afar! For I am Arwen," she said, "Elrond's daughter, and am named also Undomiel."
"Often it is seen that in dangerous days men hide their chief treasure," Estel started, feeling unabashedly idiotic at trying to say something resembling proper elvish to the beautiful Evenstar. He went on, anyway. "Yet I marvel at Elrond and your brothers, for though I have dwelt in this house from childhood, I have heard no word of you. How comes it that we have never met before?" He dared an attempt at humor. "Surely your father has not kept you locked in his hoard?"
This time, she only smiled again, and looked to the east toward the mountains that rose, jagged spires against the sunset-reddened sky. "No. I have dwelt for a time in the land of my mother's kin, in far Lothlorien. I have but lately returned to visit my father again. It is many years since I walked in Imladris." She mistook his wide-eyed look for wonder at her seeming youth, and went on to add, "Do not wonder! For the children of Elrond have the life of the Eldar."
In truth, he did not care about her age; living with Elladan and Elrohir had ceased his amazement at the stretch of elven lives long ago. And too, he knew of the circumstance that had sent Elrond's wife Celebrian across the Sea into the west. No - he could not comprehend that Arwen was in Imladris only to visit; only briefly, and that she would again leave. Years to an elf passed quickly, and if she left, he knew that he would be forgotten, never to see her again. His heart nearly broke just to listen to her bid him a good night and begin the walk back to Elrond's house.
And he did not want to imagine what he would do if she were to leave Imladris altogether.
That night, he slept again under the stars, troubled again but by reasons far different than his lineage. He dreamt of stars reflected on the ocean, blues and silvers pooling in a sea of black that surrounded the face of the fickle moon, casting herself back into indeterminate darkness and out of his sight forever.