Notes: It's been a frightening long time since I've ridden a horse, so any thoughts Glorfindel has about it are probably going to be a little bit "stretched". This might end up being a big problem, since he's going to be hanging out with Asfaloth a lot. If any of you are horse lovers and notice anything that doesn't seem right, feel free to point it out—except things about the horse's endurance, because Asfaloth isan Elvish horse and has more stamina. (At least I'm assuming, from Fellowship.)
Thanks are due to everyone who reviewed! I'm glad you like it! I hope you like this chapter, too, but don't be afraid to tell me if you don't. I don't bite anyone, not even flamers.
Hidden Starlight
Chapter Two
It was two days of anxious, spring-time chill before the Elf awoke.
Chaz, Ersa and Damron's youngest child, had studied their guest most of that time in uncustomary silence. Chaz was kept inside or next to her mother, being only three years old, yet now when she played she babbled in hushed, near-reverent tones, and when perchance she slipped and fell she would cry out only fleetingly.
Ersa, after watching the child toddle carefully about the kitchen when she usually ran, would 'hm' quietly and spare a thin-lipped frown for the unconscious stranger.
Glorfindel didn't remember falling asleep. He had known, even in an agony which had robbed him of all other thought, that to sleep would likely have meant waking in the Halls of Mandos again, and he was not ready to do so yet.
He had clung to the feel of shattered boned scraping at muscles in his arm with every twitch he made; to the screams his raw throat could not form; to his own blood drying. He had felt death—felt fading—before, and it was not a sensation he would ever forget. He knew how close he was.
Mandos' Hall was a place of waiting and rest. Everything was slowed or suspended there, except for the most inconsolable grief. But Glorfindel knew he still lived not simply through the shredding pain in every part of him, or the smell of old ashes and fresh bread around him. He knew he had remained in middle-earth because of the blackness.
He hurt just to realize that it was true. He could hear the daytime just outside, could smell the warmth of the sun, but it seemed that he lay in a void,
A swell of panic took him as he felt again the vertigo the blackness offered him, the sickening tilt-and-fall as his body made him believe the earth had disappeared from under him.
Glorfindel tried to call out, to Varda, to Manwe, to Earendil; but his throat refused to do more than offer a strained grunt. The pain of that effort put an end to the vertigo, at least.
He winced and finally understood that his eyes were already open. With his good arm tied and the other broken, he had been unable to stop the blood from his head wound from oozing down to dry in the sun and seal his eyes shut. Someone, then, must have found him…someone at least kind enough to care for his wounds. So he hoped.
Whatever he was lying on now, it was hard—his good hand fumbled and he felt that it was a rough, well-used wooden plank. He decided foggily that he was either in a field infirmary tent, or on a kitchen table. Given the warm, unmistakable scent of the bread, Glorfindel guessed it was the latter, though the thought frightened and amused him at once.
He heard footsteps drawing near and went cold with irrational fear. There was a moment in which he couldn't breathe, could think of nothing but pain and terror and hatred…but the footfalls came louder, and he forced himself to believe that any Orc's steps would have been louder still. Scrambling to be rational, he decided that whoever was out there had saved him and must mean him no harm. Even so he remained still and quiet, waiting, dreading.
There was the sound of pots being moved, metal on earth, the hollow thunk of a bucket being dropped. And there! underneath it, a woman's voice muttering in Westron.
Glorfindels thoughts tumbled as he tried to reckon how far from Mirkwood he must have come, for men to have found him before Elves. The Orcs had traveled only at night, and Glorfindel had been too weak to figure which direction they went or what destination the goblins had in mind.
Had he been riding Asfaloth, he might have been able to estimate the distance (roughly every six miles the horse's gait changed subtly—a hitch in his steps or a small change of pace), but Glorfindel had been made to march, else was dragged. Asfaloth had been beaten and driven ahead.
At the thought of the horse, a rush of adrenaline granted him the strength to struggle upright, though he was barely able to stay sitting, but he managed a small whistle. He heard no response, but doubted he'd truly made enough noise to be heard—if the horse was even here.
He heard instead the woman's startled yelp and a dish or some other object clatter to the floor.
"Damron!" she cried. "Damron! Come quickly! Oh, please, come quickly!"
Glorfindel flinched at the shrillness of the tone, and found that his strength had vanished as his fears told him Asfaloth was gone. He fell heavily to the tabletop again, bruising his shoulder as he did so.
"You need not fear," he attempted to say, but heard little more than strangled words from his own mouth. At least it seemed to calm her somewhat
A man rushed into the home, breathless and smelling of sweat and alfalfa. "What…?"
The woman started to go to his side but stopped partway, so that she stood closer to the Elf than to her husband. "He wakes. I…."
Glorfindel swallowed, hoping to soothe his dry throat. It did little to help. Very slowly, sensing a quiet in which they stared at him and had no words, he formed a request.
"Nen.…" Water. He had meant the Westron word; this they did not understand.
"Damron?"
The man came to his side, leaning closer as if to hear a dying companion's final wishes. "Can you speak?"
He took a careful breath. "Wa…ter…." There was vague satisfaction in having completed that much as clearly as he had. The woman immediately brought a small clay container and Glorfindel could smell the water in it.
"Careful," she urged him. "Here now, drink it slow."
It touched his lips and rubbed raw in his throat as he swallowed; but it was clean and fresh and cool. He tried to thank them but ended up coughing instead.
They gave him water several times after that, and Glorfindel gradually felt his throat being soothed. He would not have attempted song, but he felt certain that he would be able to manage more than a single word at a time.
"Thank you," he murmured, having to carefully work out which language to use, monitoring which words in fact came past his lips.
"Here now," the woman answered after a pause. "There's no need for thanks. My son found you, and knew he had no business leaving you as you were…anyone would have helped, it was just fortune that Albaran found you first."
There was no reply to that, none that he could offer at least, so he only smiled.
"I did not know…." She set something down near his hand. "My name is Ersa, and perhaps this isn't the time for introductions but I should like to know yours."
He swallowed a few times. "Glorfindel."
"Glorfindel. It is very nice to meet you."
The usual proprieties were too long and daunting for him to use just then, so he had to settled with, "Likewise."
"My husband, Damron, is just putting the mule up for the night. Albaran is caring for your horse—it is your horse? It was with you, and so we assumed…."
"My horse?" He spoke that in a near-whisper.
"Yes, a white horse. He had bells. Albaran says that he'll be well in a few weeks—he's good with animals, you see, and trustworthy. When he says all's well, he means it."
"I feared." Ersa must already have known that, but Glorfindel had needed to say it anyway, and had poured as much gratitude into those words as they could hold.
"It's all right now," the woman answered, a distinctly maternal note in her voice. It had been many decades since Glorfindel had heard such kindness, and were he younger in his heart, were he not so shaped by the years and by wars, it would have soothed him.
He only smiled faintly again, listened to the crack of fire in the hearth, and allowed his mind to wander in Elvish dreams.
