Chapter 2: Watch the Weather Change

Legolas stared at his former valet. He had not seen him in centuries, and yet he knew every contour of his face, the exact shade of his hair, the shape and colour of his eyes, the geometry of his lips. Here he was, as if not a moment had gone by, as if he had never left to relocate to Imladris, as if he had never been ambushed and slain, lost, unburied somewhere in the foothills of the Misty Mountains. Legolas had had many other valets, several other servants, and some other friends, but he had never had another Allaë.

"I thought you were…" his voice trailed off.

"Dead?" Allaë offered calmly, face still and unreadable.

A moment of silence.

"Yes." There were still two yards of empty space between them, but neither of them moved to close it.

Allaë smiled ever so slightly, and something in his face seemed to soften, if only for a moment. "I was. But I am not dead anymore."

Legolas composed himself. He did not know what to say. "I am sorry… I am sorry you had to suffer that way." It felt so weak and insufficient as to be almost disgraceful.

Allaë exhaled softly through his nose and looked away, but only for a moment. "It was a risk I knew I was taking. After all, it is I who left."

Legolas shook his head, "it is I who forced you."

Allaë almost laughed. "You never had that power. But…" he thought, choosing his words, "you had changed." He looked Legolas up and down, taking everything in, his gaze quickly flicking back to meet his eyes, "You have changed." His green eyes were cool, watchful, calculating.

Legolas knew it must be true. Not even elves were static, and indeed he knew how he had changed, how cold he had become since he had been young. And in realising this, in seeing himself how Allaë must see him, how detached. He let himself be examined, felt the weight of the gaze travel over him, as if measuring his life, his soul. This too was a test. Their eyes met and he did not look away. He held Allaë's gaze, which contained not even a shred of deference. He felt naked, but not threatened.

"Come," Allaë said, extending his hand, open and palm up. "Let me take your coat."

Some unspoken tension vanished, as if they had been holding their breath and had only just noticed they could relax. It was as if everything was forgiven. Or rather, not forgiven, but accepted. Their separation was part of their past now, their shared past. The events of the centuries since their last meeting were an intermission, a pause of sorts that was relevant but not a source of contention, something that must be tolerated and worked around and lived with, but not fought. They had each returned, and that was enough. There was nothing more to do but move on.

Legolas pulled his arms from his coat, closed the distance between them, and handed the garment to Allaë. They did not touch as the valet collected the coat and folded it neatly over his left forearm before silently turning and vanishing into the dressing room.

"How did you manage to leave the Halls of the Dead?" Legolas asked as Allaë returned.

"Oh, it was easy. I asked." He came back into the light and stopped in the door frame. The distance felt strange, but anything closer seemed dangerous. Too much, too soon.

"You asked?" Legolas was surprised, "As in, 'Greetings Mandos, I would like to leave now'?" Legolas still could barely believe that Allaë was here, was real, speaking, moving, breathing. He seemed surreal, yet so familiar, his presence so natural.

Now Allaë laughed shortly, "Well, no, not exactly. I said, I have heard my prince is arriving soon. He will fare poorly without me, and I request leave to return to the living world in order to do my duty in tending to him, and I was allowed to go." He shrugged slightly. "I had expected it to be more complex, but I will not complain."

Legolas smiled. "How generous of him. Yes, I do need you. I must write to him and send him my thanks."

"I doubt he will care. Save your ink. And your paper." Allaë gave another small, dry smile, "I did wonder, how did you survive without my help for so long?"

Legolas pretended to be offended, "I am not so bad as that!"

Allaë shrugged. "Sometimes you eat with your hands."

"Or a knife. We both know I happily live like an animal. My grace and good manners always came from you." It was only half in jest.

The banter was refreshing and easy, but the unspoken words sat heavily between them, waiting to be addressed. They ignored them with practiced avoidance, and for a moment there was a comfortable silence.

The moment stretched and breathed, diffused, and faded as their eyes flicked around the room for something comfortable to look at.

"Well," said Allaë, "I must check that everything is in order below. I am sure you will be wanting some rest."

Legolas nodded, "Thank you,"

"It is nothing," Allaë gave a slight bow of his head and left, silently closing the door behind him as he walked towards the stairs.

Legolas wondered what Allaë was thinking, how he had known that he would arrive effectively alone. Had Legolas' wife told him? Had he guessed correctly? And why did he wait, when it had been centuries since they had last seen each other? All of that time, and he had not built himself a new life.

Legolas did not understand how, or why, or how mad he must be to have waited all this time. But Allaë had waited, and now he was here, and Legolas was more grateful than he could even begin to express.

– X –

The soft morning light filtered through the pale curtains, painting everything a delicate shade of gold. Everything flickered slightly as the wind moved the sheer fabric. Legolas could hear the sea out of the open balcony doors. It was a good room to wake up in. But he did not wake up. He had never slept.

Meeting Allaë had shaken him.

He had never truly believed in the return of those he had loved. He knew it was promised, but he did not envision himself ever truly meeting them again. Not until he was aboard The Acorn, out of sight of all land, did he start to think about the fact that it might happen. He had travelled to Aman because he had to, and not until Gimli had asked him about who he expected to meet had he realised what that might mean. He felt foolish for not having thought of it more seriously, and sooner. It seemed so stupidly obvious.

However, in justification or amelioration for himself, he had thought the dead were, well, dead. He had thought them gone from his world, treated them as lost to him, grieved for them as if they had vanished into the void. And now he was to understand that they were just fine, living and breathing in this land of peace and plenty, waiting to welcome him back into their lives. Their separation was just an intermission. The reality of the next few days of coming reunions clashed with how he had lived for centuries, and he did not know how to feel about it. The lack of excitement was uncomfortable, the trepidation was shameful, and the optimism was too thin for his liking. He clung to it anyway, out of necessity and habit.

Allaë was in the adjoined servant's bedroom, the door closed. There were some things that could not immediately resume. Delicate things should be moved with care, not haste, lest they break. And besides, Legolas appreciated the time alone to think, to process.

He had arrived. He had made his final, greatest journey, and there would be no return. Only now that it was over did its significance begin to sink in. Everything he had known — the land, the people, the structure, the culture — all of it was part of his past. There would be no more visiting the places he had loved, or the sites where important things had happened. And those important places, pivotal moments, would stay in the past, slowly fading as he stretched into the future. And they would grow smaller and be eclipsed by other pivotal moments in important places, and slowly, inexorably, his old life would fade, muddle, and eventually vanish. It was the closest thing to death he would ever experience, and he did not see any truly meaningful difference.

This is the end you have been fighting for. You have done it.

Are you happy yet?

– X –

Legolas was on the balcony, looking East when Allaë came in with tea.

"Did you sleep at all?"

"Yes, well. Thank you." he lied compulsively.

Allaë did not look as if he believed him, but that did not matter. "Well, here is your tea. That friendly thing from The Welcome will be here in two hours to collect you and bring you to the city for your reunions."

"Ilvor?"

"Yes. He is about as sharp as a circle, but his job is simple, and he is authentically that friendly, so it turns out there is a purpose for everyone in Aman no matter their shortcomings."

Legolas snorted. He rubbed his eyes and groaned. "Were you always this nasty?"

"Yes, although perhaps I was more restrained when I last lived with you."

Legolas drank his tea as Allaë walked around the room, pulling open and fastening the curtains. "You have brought a dwarf to Aman." It was not a question.

"I have. Do you mind?" Legolas was committed to being unapologetic, but it was useful to know how others felt.

"Of course not — I admire you both for it. What a thing to do. How… unorthodox." Allaë spoke the last word as if he savoured it like a sweet, potent wine. "I look forward to getting to know him better."

Allaë walked back over to where he had set the tea down on a small table and poured himself a cup. Legolas raised an eyebrow at the breach of protocol, "You were never one for rules were you."

Allaë took a sip and smiled, "No." His eyes fell upon a pile of small, worn envelopes next to the piles of books, papers, and other half-unpacked personal items on the little table. He looked at them for a moment but did not touch. "You still wrote to her?"

"Hmm?" Legolas looked up.

"To your sister, Erien. I remember you started to write to her after she was slain, but that was many years before even I left. But these envelopes cannot possibly be so old as that."

"Yes, I did continue to write to her." Legolas wished he had hidden the letters. Some things were too close even for Allaë, especially now.

"She is here." Allaë turned away from them, sensing or guessing that they were not for him to know about. "She will be glad to receive them, I am sure."

Legolas nodded, continued drinking, and decided to change to a slightly less uncomfortable subject. "Have you seen Miriel?" She was his wife, at least nominally; they had never truly been partnered in any way.

"Yes, I have." Allaë said. There was a moment of tension.

"And? Go on, how is she?"

Allaë thought for a moment and sighed. "She does not despise you, but only just. I think your arrangement took a much harder toll on her than she let on."

Legolas pursed his lips in frustration, but he was not surprised. "So it is best I leave her in peace."

"Yes, I think so. It will be somewhat of a controversy, but it cannot be helped now. She will not return, and I cannot fault her for that. And she has that guard with her. What is his name... Evoril's father."

Legolas thought of their convoluted life together. Miriel had married her guard secretly and created Evoril, the son Legolas had pretended to have and truly attempted – and perhaps failed – to raise. They had each covered for the other's unmentionable affairs. Legolas sometimes thought that the shame of publicly marrying far below her station would have been better for Miriel than the lie of being married to him, but the damage had been done. He pushed away the nagging sense of guilt; it did not help any of them now. "I will have to visit them at least, if only to prevent an excess of speculation and uncomfortable questions. Then I will let them be."

Allaë shrugged. "There will be some small talk whether you visit her or no. It will be noticed that you are not together. But it will be convenient to keep the talk behind your back where it can be ignored, rather than to your face where it may be an inconvenience."

Legolas' eyes narrowed; being exposed was inherently worrying, whether in public or private. "All talk is an inconvenience that should not be tolerated. We must minimise this."

Allaë smiled at him almost as if he were stupid, "The talk will be minimal either way — and you will still benefit from not hearing it. Remember, you are no-longer the heir to a great kingdom. Within the grand arcs of history and power, you are a footnote, close to irrelevant. They have better things to think about than your failed marriage."

– X –

As he had bathed and dressed, he had thought about the coming meetings with his mother, his twin sister, and how very much he had missed them both. He had felt a small glimmering of hope in his heart at the prospect of seeing his family again. He knew that often things did not go as smoothly as planned, and that everyone changed after so long apart. And yet he had missed them, whether he had said it or not. He had hoped that when he saw them again, he would feel something heavy lift off, like a pressure on his chest being released. Finally, he would have what he needed.

But when he saw his mother again, he did not know her. Not since he was very small had he seen her, and then she had been bloody and pale. He knew her as a spectre of death, but here she was, warm and elegant and alive.

For her, her son was a just as much stranger as she was to him. She remembered him as an active, passionate, and deeply contemplative small child. The cool, collected, reserved prince who stood before her was someone she had never met, and she could see only a faint trace of the son she had known in his face.

Legolas had greeted both of his parents formally, his father because that was their custom, and his mother because he could barely remember her face. After he rose from his bow, she embraced him and held him for a very long time. She smelled unfamiliar, like a stranger. He felt nothing but a deep, childish memory of danger.

They exchanged polite words for an hour or so. She bade him come to dinner some time, and he said that he would. He was secretly glad to leave. All he could smell was blood.

– X –

The letters for his sister were folded in his front pocket. He had cared for them as he had cared for nothing else, keeping them safe for so many years. Some of them had become too aged and begun to fade, and those he had copied so as not to lose their words. He had confided everything to her that he could to no-one else. He had cried, celebrated, laughed in those letters. They contained his heartache and heartbreak, his triumph and his loneliness. He had always been able to tell her everything, before and after she died, and had never considered that that would ever change.

Now the time approached. He would see her again, and he could finally share with her his life and learn about all the things she had done in hers.

They had arranged to meet in a private courtyard in the city. He waited with a glass of deep red wine in his hand, looking out over railing across the pearly buildings. Strange purple flowers climbed up the balcony, wrapping around the ancient white stonework, their smell delicate and sweet. The houses below glittered, their rooftops gold and copper in the evening sun. Everything was so beautiful, and the beauty did not wear off with time and careful observation, but rather deepened, became wider, longer, richer.

He knew he should be happy to see her, but it was only as the moment approached that he realised he was also afraid. Might he not recognise her face after all the years? Memories could fade and change over time, and he had visited and spoken to her memory so frequently he was no-longer sure whether the scenes he recalled had really happened, or whether he had dreamed them into being. They had a shared life, but most of their time together had been inside his head and not hers. The life they had actually had together was, in perspective, a tiny blip at the beginning of his youth. Perhaps his twin was now only a memory of a memory, and therefore did not exist. Perhaps a stranger would come walking through the door, just as his mother had.

Did she have these same thoughts about him? Would he too receive a tall stack of letters from the many centuries of their separation, only to open them and find that they were written to a version of him that never existed? Would she have played his memory again and again, speaking to him, telling him everything?

He paced back and forth along the balcony. The beauty of the city seemed a distraction, somehow threatening in its brilliance. More wine. He would give her the letters straight away, he decided. He would trust her completely, as he always had.

He heard a small rustle behind him and turned. There she was. Her hair was just the same as his, long and white-gold and braided away from her face. Their eyes were the same bluish grey. They had the same nose, the same lips, the same arch to their eyebrows. They were even the same height. How could I ever think to forget you? he thought, for her face was his face, as it always had been.

Erien's face broke into a massive glowing smile. "Brother!" She said, and her voice was like music, like water, like childhood, "I am so glad to see you again!" She ran forward and clasped him in a tight embrace. She smelled like youth and cleanliness and green things, and she held him for a long time. "Oh how I have missed you."

"And I you, sister." He spoke into the soft, comforting sweetness of her hair, foreign and familiar. She was real, she was alive. He closed his eyes and tried to pay attention, to be present and appreciate the moment.

After a time they separated. "Come," she said, "sit. You must tell me everything." She pulled up two delicate silver chairs and a spindly table and called for grapes and cheese and bread to be brought up. She was looking at him expectantly, "So, how was your journey?"

And so they began. Legolas had not known where or how to begin, but Erien did. She knew the right questions to ask, added just the right amount of commentary and detail, and gasped in all the correct places. She was vibrant and lively, entertaining and entertained. He felt fortunate to be her twin, as if sharing her blood somehow conferred upon him some additional grace and quality just by proximity.

He told her briefly of what he had done with his life, but he asked more questions than he answered in full, and whether out of courtesy or self-centredness she did not seem to mind. They kept their conversation light and on the topic of her past and their futures. It was superficial but pleasant, and she seemed pleased to have seen him, and he was pleased to have seen her.

However, the depths of their differences grew more apparent as they spoke longer. Their closeness and shared childhood experiences were precious, but the rest of their lives could not have been more opposed. Erien's last view of violence had been her death at the boarder of adolescence and adulthood. From that moment on she had lived a life of pale clouds, fresh white grapes, purple flowers on trailing vines. While Legolas' life had built upon the foundation of those early hurts, cementing them into a bedrock of pain, the years of calm had soothed Erien. Her wounds had scarred, and time had softened those scars into pale, fading memories. She spoke as if their shared life had happened to someone else — the detached air of someone who thought of a small and unpleasant thing a long time ago.

She told him of her husband, her children, her playing the flute, the poetry she read. She had a garden and raised birds that were rather like chickens. Her favourite colour was periwinkle. She liked to sing and study ancient languages, and she was excited to introduce him to all of her best scholarly friends.

At the end of their meeting, the letters were still in his pocket. The thought of sharing them made him feel small, and shrivelled, and angry, like being naked and cold in front of someone who will laugh at your vulnerability. The intimacy they shared was much shallower, much smaller than he had expected it to be. The Erien he had written to was not the same person as the one who sat across from him, the one who had academic friends and read poetry and hadn't seen blood since the last time she scratched her finger on a rose thorn. The Erien in his head was not married and did not have children. She did not wear soft dresses with flowers and silver brooches in her hair. The Erien he had written to was dirty and barefoot and fierce. She was barely older than a child. This new, sophisticated woman was a stranger wearing his sister's face. He loved her and he wanted her to leave, and for the Erien he had known to come out from behind her face. He still missed her.

"Brother, I would please see you again soon," she said as she was about to leave. "There is so much between us that must be said, so many more stories to tell. And I have many things to show you — there is so much bright and beautiful here that I am sure you will enjoy greatly!" Her eyes searched his hopefully and he tried to match her enthusiasm. He thought he saw a shadow of something heavier flicker across her face as she looked at him, but perhaps he was imagining it.

He smiled and thanked her and said that yes, he would love for her to show him the city's beauties. And then she left, and he gathered his things and returned to his home. He climbed the stairs to his bedroom, sat at his desk, and opened a bottle of wine. He tucked the letters deep into a bottom drawer and closed it.

He took a long drink and looked over the smooth grey water, back East, as if searching for something that he would not find. He watched the clouds move and change and darken. She was not there.

She is not here either.