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“Erestor! This is madness! Let us stop and rest for the night.”
“Nay!” Erestor called back over his shoulder, forcing his voice over the power of the wind. “The House is but seven miles distant—”
“And we shall suffer the whole night through!” Glorfindel forged a path through the snow to seize the cloaked shoulder. “Turn from your mulish will and let us go south to the shelter for the bitter night!”
Facing his companion, Erestor blinked through frozen lashes and again shouted over the wind. “Two days set back we are already; I shall not delay longer whilst holed up in your guardsman’s hovel!”
Pulling his fur-trimmed cape closer, Glorfindel stood his ground and glared from between the folds of his headscarf. “Erestor, from what world of reason are you descended? If the snow lay silent beneath our feet, I would not say you nay, but still the wind shrieks and the ice throws down its stinging gauntlet.” A leather-gloved hand reached out from Glorfindel’s dark-swathed form toward Erestor’s face. “Look at this bruised flesh,” he said of Erestor’s ice-scarred cheeks. “Even Elves were not made to weather such storms.”
Shuddering out of Glorfindel’s reach, Erestor bowed his too-pale face and grunted. “Lead, then. I will follow thee.”
Glorfindel pursed full lips and tugged Erestor off what the generous might call a path. He led the unerring way through snow-tumbled brakes and under evergreen boughs pregnant with snow. Ice-crusted branches barred the way as the two Elves fought the press of the wild winter wind.
A mountain of snow drifted against a low cabin, which lay hidden in a small clearing. Glorfindel slid through the ice to the lee of the log structure, where he and Erestor together pried open the door.
Tiny shards of ice whipped past them into the darkness and Glorfindel pushed Erestor in before him, following swiftly.
When they heaved the door closed once more, the harsh silence within the cabin shocked the ears. The rush of the wind grew suddenly distant, and the travelers’ loud breathing spit vapor into the frigid gloom.
“I shall attend the flue,” Glorfindel said after a moment, tossing aside scarf and gloves. He knelt at the hearth while Erestor retrieved the kindling box from the stone mantel. Dry wood stacked along the wall was already provided, and they worked in silence until they could be sure the fire would not go out.
“Someone’s taken it upon themselves to decorate,” Erestor said when there was enough light to observe their shelter.
Looking up from his place upon the tattered hearthrug, Glorfindel smiled. “That would be Dinendal,” he said. “For a swordsman, he is graced with an undue sense of… style.” He sniffed as though unimpressed, but then smiled at the pine garlands woven through the ceiling beams. “No detail is beneath his notice.”
“Indeed,” Erestor said, observing the mistletoe above the door. “I hate these things.” He turned coldly to a corner, away from his companion. “No windows.”
“The shelter is for protection, not pleasure,” Glorfindel said, thoughtless of his words.
Erestor hunched further into the corner and into his cloak.
“Come away from there, Erestor. Come to the fire.” Glorfindel stripped himself of his outer layers, leaving cape, coat, and trousers to hang upon pegs near the door to dry. There he also set his sealskin boots. From the stacked pallets in one corner, he pulled several thin mattresses stuffed with down and straw; these he set on the floor near the fire and piled blankets and furs upon them. “Erestor.”
But Erestor still stood in the corner, letting the frosty dew slowly melt from his lashes and eyebrows.
Glorfindel stood in leggings, shirt, vest, and slippers, regarding the anomaly. “Are you ill?”
With the same care an aged human takes in his movements, Erestor slipped the cloak and cowl from his shoulders. He hung these on the pegs, where their combined raiment slowly dripped slush to the woven grass mat. He toed off thin boots unsuited to the weather and shucked off thick, canvas trousers.
When Erestor turned to face the room, he found Glorfindel sitting upon the makeshift nest, wrapped in several blankets, prodding the fire with a long stick. “Sit beside me, Erestor. And tell me what makes you so restive this eve.”
“I am—”
“Stubborn,” Glorfindel said, blue eyes peering up in a challenge. “Not only stubborn, oh no.” Glorfindel resumed his assault on the fire, poking at the flames. “This night, and these past days, you have been… cross, irrational, and uncommonly obstinate. Tell me, why is that, Erestor?”
Pale and motionless, Erestor stared down at his companion. “’Tis the winter… This year, the—”
“Stop lying.”
Erestor gasped and regarded those steady blue eyes.
“Sit,” Glorfindel said, digging his stick into the embers.
Erestor’s face contorted in several directions before deciding upon anger. He added fuel to the fire and plopped upon the bedding.
“Perhaps,” Glorfindel allowed, “the winter is misfortunate. Perhaps it has an effect upon you. Yet I sense in you a turmoil greater than seasonal unrest.”
“You ‘sense’ this?”
“Aye. And my senses I trust, more so than your unfair words to me.”
“In my words you have trusted before, more so than the deeds of others.”
“For you are an Elf worthy of such trust.” Glorfindel turned his face toward Erestor’s. “But not tonight. Tonight, you rail against sense and you carry with you such scornful melancholy I must remark upon it, and I must ask: Erestor, what harm have I done you that you so fear my company?”
Shocked, Erestor regarded those hurt and fearful eyes, so luminous and blue.
Glorfindel continued, “You have made it clear in no uncertain terms that you much prefer the arctic night to sharing this meager residence with me, and I must know why.”
“’Tis not of your doing,” Erestor said. His voice grew mellow and low as he muttered into the quietly sparking fire. “’Tis my own divergence of spirit.”
Glorfindel asked then no more questions, but instead let the silence settle like a snowfall, one quieter than that which surrounded them.
With an anxious air of discomfort, Erestor shakily drew the soft comfort of blankets about his shoulders.
They heard the sharp wind whipping the trees, and the rush and tumble of the snow. Elven ingenuity prevented the worst wind descending the chimney, and the door stood firm in its frame, locked against the cutting cold.
Within the cabin, the fire ate away the dry wood, water dripped to the floor from the winter clothes hanging on the wall.
The Elves sat silent until Glorfindel deemed enough time had passed.
“Will you speak of it to me?”
“No.”
“Yet you often counsel such remedy to your petitioners. I oft have heard you to say, ‘Speak of sin and fear… to expel the poison. A shared burden is one lightened, and my ear is here for you.’”
“You give my words back to me, but it is not fair, Glorfindel. Dispassionate you can never be, as I must remain to benefit my supplicants.”
“Is a friend, then, a less meaningful confidant than a stranger?”
“Never. But nor can a friend be impartial.”
“I see. So it is something to do with me.”
“Glorfindel, why must you always make of yourself more than you are? I am glad to say you do not figure prominently in most people’s problems.”
“Ah, no. Only in yours.”
“Such self-interest…”
A smile leeched into Glorfindel’s response. “Not at all. Quite the opposite.” He paused, examining the profile, the face to which lively color slowly returned. “You make no reply.”
“I have none to make. To your dogged persistence, I give in.”
“To what the occasion?”
Erestor almost smiled and nodded toward the decorations. “Yule.”
“Your surrender is a priceless gift, Counselor.”
“And you bespeak your acceptance with charming words. I cannot be surprised.”
“The Elf you call self-interested one moment is charming the next?”
“The two are not mutually exclusive,” Erestor said, running a nervous hand through tangled hair. “And you are too good a friend to badger all the night long. Now we have our shelter and home lays a storm away; shall we not sleep the long night through with peace between us?”
“Your manner has goodly changed. What has affected it?”
“Whether or not I answer, your next question will be if my ‘goodly manner’ be feigned.”
“I confess it so, for you know me well.”
“Too well,” Erestor said and glanced aside to his companion. “Cohorts we have been in many things and I have treated you wrongly in recent days.” Erestor sighed. “Shall you achieve rest this night?”
“Not without my satisfaction.”
“As I thought. You are more stubborn than myself.”
“It is the only way I learned to befriend you.”
“Is that a mark against my character?”
“It is.” Glorfindel stared at Erestor. “Now stop delaying. Tell me; give me my satisfaction.”
“Then it is this: I confess you do frighten me. Confined in such close quarters without distraction is not how I would choose to spend my time.”
Glorfindel frowned. “Do you say this to wound me?”
“Nay. You bid me speak truth.”
“What manner of friend am I that my companionship you disdain?”
“Of late, methought that a question to which you ought to know the answer.”
His frustration mounting, Glorfindel threw the stick into the fire and turned his whole body to face Erestor. “You are a master of words and riddles, but I beg you cease toying with me.”
“’Twas not my intent,” Erestor said, managing only a glance toward wild eyes. “I find you too much with me in my heart, Glorfindel.” An expression mingling both love and pain suffused Erestor’s countenance, brightly lit by the fire. “Your very presence chafes my inmost thoughts, and ‘tis true I fain would weather the fiercest storm rather than my intimate wishes.” Erestor turned away and lay back upon the bedclothes to hide his face. “No doubt you will sleep less well now than before. I’m sorry for it, but cannot take back my words. And if you can sleep, the better for you. But I shall not.”
Livid, Glorfindel nearly grabbed Erestor with force to turn him round, but stayed his hand at the last. “You speak of sleep; tis an outrage to suggest!”
“What would you have me?” Erestor returned with force, sitting up once more, as easily impassioned. “I could sooner return to the path,” he flung out an arm to indicate the wilderness without, “than take back what has already been spoken!” His arm outstretched, dark eyes wide and gleaming, Erestor breathed heavy and pleaded without words for a way out.
Glorfindel reached deftly to catch the pale and shaking hand. Tender gestures soft with love brought the hand to his chest.
Such gentle delicacy Erestor did not expect, and his eyelids fluttered closed as his breath stuttered and he reached for the strong, hard warmth of Glorfindel’s broad chest. “This solidity have I longed for.” He opened pained eyes.
An expression of wonder lit Glorfindel’s chiseled features as he pressed the hand to his heart. “I always felt the love you bore me to be… familial.”
“Fraternal?” Erestor said. “It is not.”
“So I see.”
Glorfindel cradled the white hand with its smoothly tapering fingers in his warrior’s hands, strong and callused. He brought it to his lips and to kiss cool knuckles. “Do you know,” he whispered, ashamed to look up into dark eyes, “I was too fearful to love?”
Erestor spoke not, moved beyond ability to articulate.
“Your friendship was more than I ever thought possible; I thought you all hard ice through and through.”
Erestor pushed through Glorfindel’s hold, tracing full lips with the pad of a nervous thumb.
Glorfindel blew out a bracing breath of air and took the digit into his mouth, sucking shortly before releasing it.
Erestor’s narrow nostrils flared and his grip on Glorfindel’s hands involuntarily tightened. “Have I, too, been so fearful for naught?”
“You feared to betray yourself to ridicule?” Glorfindel asked.
“Even to indifference: ‘twould have been an irreparable break between us.”
“And now?”
“I find the opposite occurring. Can it be…?”
Glorfindel smiled and turned the hand to kiss the pulsing palm. “It can.”
“I’ve not the strength to speak the words of affection that fill my heart; it is too soon.” A frown pulled at Erestor’s mouth as he reached to run a finger up the soft shell of Glorfindel’s ear.
“You don’t need to,” Glorfindel vowed, leaning in to kiss brow, cheek, lips, neck.
Overwhelmed, Erestor wrapped strong arms around the Elf and held on as though to a lifeline. “You call this place a shelter.” Erestor’s voice shook and broke as he spoke, rattled as he was with the hot kisses. “But always in my time with you, the sanctuary I have found has been your company…”
“That you should have feared that companionship for any reason is a horror,” Glorfindel promised. “I would that it had not been so, but never has any road I have taken been easy.”
“No, ‘tis so along my ways as well.” Erestor leaned back into the bedding, pulling Glorfindel with him. “But along an easy road there lies no satisfaction. Fulfillment at the end of a hard, long haul is far better, despite the lengthy toil.”
Glorfindel threaded strong fingers through night-black hair and lifted the silky tresses to breathe in the winterberry scent. “You speak truth in all things, my dearest. Let us keep the night together side by side.”
In return, Erestor caught up handfuls of golden hair and smiled. “You would not have more of me?”
“’Tis too soon,” Glorfindel said, blushing with the sweetness of innocence, “as you said.”
“Then hold me tight, that in my rest I forget not your nearness.”
Glorfindel shrugged the blankets and furs overtop of them as they nested together, curled as close as young birdlings. “You shall not forget, though you dream the most distant reverie…”
Outside the cabin, the storm raged on, the cutting wind and blowing snow rushing over the land. But within the Elven shelter, the fire sparked and the Elves drowsed lightly in the loving embrace.
= = = = =
The End