Chapter Four: The Way Things Were

The first years Drogo lived in Rivendell were some of the happiest of Cali's life. She was always smiling, and sang and danced more than she ever had before. Drogo himself was full of life and enjoyed every new experience he was exposed to. The others doted on him constantly and even Elrond seemed to enjoy his company.

I even found myself warming to him quickly and we had many long talks about elves and hobbits, histories, genealogies, legends, songs and many other subjects he seemed well versed in. I learned all I know of the nature of Hobbits from him, and he in turn learned a great deal about Elvish lore and craft. Cali saw to that.

She would always be teaching him something. When he mastered Tengwar she taught him Runes. When he learned our songs, she taught him to dance. Drogo tirelessly took it all in and learned his new arts eagerly. I thought to myself that he simply loved the time with her and that what he learned was secondary. The only thing he refused to do was swim.

"Come on, Drogo, it's easy!" Cali called to him from the water. Cali, Tyssa, Hallath and I had taken Drogo to the pool at the bottom of the waterfall. We soon found that hobbits seemed to have a deeply ingrained fear of water. Drogo stood several feet from the edge of the water with crossed arms shaking his head.

"Come on in, Drogo, it's not deep," said Tyssa.
"Not for you," Drogo said, "but if I go in there I'll drown!" The water actually came up to our waists, so I guess to Drogo it was fairly deep. Cali swam up to the shore and Drogo crouched in front of her.

"I would never let that happen, Drogo," she said in what Hallath and I referred to as her 'Drogo voice'. We grinned at each other. "But you don't have to if you don't want to."

Drogo ended up just watching as we swam for a few hours. It never ceased to amaze me that he could be quite content to just sit and do nothing for hours. When we left I saw that he had made several lengths of braided grass and flowers, which he presented to Cali.

And so Drogo's years in Imladris passed, each melding into the other and seeming to Cali as a blur of happiness. Very little did they outwardly show their affection for each other, and so it is difficult for me to recall any specific moments they had together. They were very private about it, and I think part of the reason for that was so that Elrond would not hear of it. Despite what she had said to me his opinion still mattered to her.

Around this time I finished the dagger I had been working on for the past few months. Laspis I called it and I always kept it with me after that. It was special for some reason, but I couldn't figure out why. I took it with me on every assignment and it saw quite a lot of use.

After a few years Cali became anxious. She wished to go back out and help protect the lands as she used to. Drogo was not fond of the idea, but told her she should go if it made her happy. He, after all, could always find something to keep him occupied.

She would go out in stints, no more than a month or two at a time so that she could see Drogo often. We weren't in the Shire, however, for this time we had been called to Mirkwood. I was glad of it, since it had been a long time since I'd been to my home.

"Why don't you just move to Imladris, Lindir?" Cali asked one night as we sat around the campfire. We sat side by side just out of range of the firelight cleaning our weapons.

"I do still have friends in Mirkwood," I said. Laspis was getting sharpened as I spoke. Around the campfire the others were singing, or having their own conversations. A little way off I saw Tyssa and Hallath playing a game.

"No family?" said Cali. I froze. We had an unspoken agreement that the past was the past and it should stay that way. I was a Teleri and she was a Noldo. We both knew this. I looked up at her and saw that she just realized what she'd said. We sat in silence for a long time and we each went back to our tasks.

I looked over several times at what she was doing until I had stopped my own work altogether and just watched her. I had never in all my years seen anyone treat their weapons as lovingly as she did. To others, weapons were mere tools, but to Cali they were almost an extension of herself. She handled them with the same care as another would to a delicate flower. After a moment she caught me staring and looked up.

"What?" she asked, slightly amused. "Jealous?" I grinned and looked away. For as long as I'd known her she'd always joked with me about our relationship. We were best friends, and we both knew it could never be anything more than that, but that didn't stop her from playing with it.

"I know I could never tear you away from your swords, Cali," I said with an equal amount of sarcasm. "I'm surprised you don't sleep with them on."

"I used to..." she said. I laughed, but I heard a faint note of seriousness to her tone. When I looked up, she wasn't smiling. "Lindir," she said, "I never really told you about my family, did I?"

"And you don't need to," I said, attempting to change the subject.
"But I do," she said. "No secrets, remember?" I sighed and shook my head.
"Cali, I don't need to hear this-"

"I came from the house of Fëanor," she said, cutting me off. I fell silent, partly from the shock at what I was hearing and part from the realization that she had just bared her soul to me. All at once I remembered long ago in my childhood watching as my parents were slain defending the ships that we had helped to build.

I remember it all very clearly. I had heard the shouting on the boats and saw the Noldor entering our city. Fights broke out all around me and I hid under a table in the market. I watched in horror as my own father fell lifeless in front of me. I then looked up and saw Fëanor, tall and proud, sail away on our white ships and leaving utter devastation in his wake. I looked now at Cali, one of his descendants, and could not bring myself to hate her. I kept my feelings to myself, struggling to control the bitterness and grief I felt stirring within me.

"My parents were both born in the Blessed Realm," she continued. "They were just children when Fëanor stole the ships from the Mariners. They had nothing at all to do with it, and yet were doomed along with their kin by the Curse of Mandos." She was silent for a long time. It occurred to me to ask what had become of her parents, but I held back my questions, part of me not wanting to know.

"It's not fair," I said instead, putting a hand on her shoulder. "You shouldn't have to pay for someone else's mistakes." 'I should know,' I thought in my heart, 'I paid dearly for them already.' Just then Tiranen came rushing through the trees.

"Elladan says get ready," he announced. Everyone got up and grabbed their weapons.
"What's going on?" I asked him.
"Orcs on the Eastern borders. He thinks they mean to burn the forest." I swallowed hard and nodded. We were pretty far southeast of Thranduil's realm, but any threat to the forest was, to me, a personal one. I took a mental tally of my weapons as Cali came up beside me.

"You ready?" I asked. She twirled her daggers in the air with a playful grin and looked at me.
"Always."

We arrived at the southern tip of the forest and saw that there was indeed an encampment of Orcs not far from the tree line. Orcs that bore torches. A few feet away I saw Elladan and Tiranen talking softly.

"What do you think?" I heard Cali whisper to me. Tyssa stood beside her and Hallath was talking with Elladan. I shook my head.

"There's a lot of them," I said, "It's going to be tough. We have to keep them away from the trees." She nodded. Several of the others had taken out their bows and had them trained on the closer targets. I heard Cali unsheathe her swords. Just then Elladan spoke up.

"We take the entire camp," he said, "Any who flee are to be pursued. None make it back to the Black Lands to alert their Master." There was a cry of agreement from all present and we left the woods.

The battle was long and fierce. In all there were one hundred and fifty Orcs to about forty of us. None of us doubted the outcome, however, and we fought fearlessly.

About an hour into the fight I was injured. I was fighting an Uruk when he struck me with his scimitar and broke my arm. I remember falling, almost in slow motion, and thinking to myself that it was over. I couldn't fight with one arm and I thought I would surely be slain. That was when Cali came towards me.

I lay on my side cradling my throbbing arm and watched as the blur of blue and silver that was Cali took down every orc that approached us. I had fought with her before and we had often trained and sparred together, but I had never actually watched her fight. Now that I could, I felt a profound sense of awe as I saw the swiftness and precision that she had and I almost lost myself in the beauty of it.

When the last orc fell she ran towards me. I instantly felt ashamed for getting hurt and having to let her rescue me. She didn't seem to notice and began looking me over for injuries. She lifted me up by the arm and I cried out in pain.
"Your arm?"
"Yeah, it's broken," I said, lifting myself up with my good arm. She helped me to my feet and that's when I noticed my sprained ankle. She grabbed hold of me before I fell.

"Lindir, I have to get you to a healer," she said as she helped me limp back to the forest.