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here’s the thing about elrond and elros. they’re. well. they’re not quite men. they’re not quite elves. they’re something entirely different, and they’re the first of their kind, the “half-elven”.
what does that mean? elrond asks, but he can no longer be a child, he can no longer be innocent, his parents are gone (all of them are gone) and now he and his brother must live on. we will go on, elros tells him, and elrond finishes, there is no other choice. (in the end though, it’s elrond who has no other choice; elros makes the right choice, doesn’t he?)
the way it sounds, it’s nothing but a choice. one or the other, left or right. but their great-grandmother was a maia, their grandmother faced sauron and won. their grandfather was the champion of a vala, their father was a star.
(and if you’d asked maglor and maedhros, they’d have told you they weren’t surprised at all. those little children were terrors, and they loved them, and they feared them, because one day they got separated and when they found the twins they were giggling in voices that came from fifteen different throats, poking holes with extra limbs in the body of an orc that was not yet dead, and their eyes were pure white, so white it drowns - )
the truth is that elros and elrond are nothing like anything else the world has seen, and the valar don’t know what would happen to them if they remained unchecked. and elros chooses the mortal path, and elrond the elven, but they are still something else.
elros fights battles, and he is a great king. but sometimes he looks less like a man, and more like a sun, or a black hole, or an imploding star - talons and teeth and more eyes than any person rightfully ought to have. and really, it’s no wonder numenor becomes so powerful, when their king sits on the throne, and the shadow that stretches behind him is a lion, a wolf, a god, white light, so light it blinds -
elrond isn’t a fighter, not the same way elros is. it’s gil-galad that first notices it, though, that his quiet herald isn’t...well, he’s quiet. but they found themselves in a battle, outnumbered twenty to one, and elrond opened his eyes, and it was bloodlust and being hunted, it was skin bubbling and boiling, it was terror and screaming, it was white waves, so bright it burns -
it’s the fact that they both stumble back to their homes sometimes, in different parts of middle earth, with full bellies and red-stained teeth (sharp, sharp, teeth) and hair darkened with something that is not water.
(and centuries later, aragorn is appalled and concerned and something else that he doesn’t want to name, when elladan and elrohir bring him back a deer with bites taken out of it and gory smiles, dark smiles, hungry smiles.)
it’s the fact that in different ages, different times, two girls are born. undomiel and tindomiel, girls made of twilight, girls made of the universe, with eyes that are gateways to the void, eyes that you could get lost in, eyes that could drive a man insane. they are beautiful, and they are terrible, and in different ages, different times, elros and elrond look at their daughters, growing wings made of eyes and skin made of teeth and taste that blood in their mouths, taste the stars in their mouths, taste hunger and light and the urge to devour the world whole -
but they’re just the half-elven. it’s just a choice. one or the other. black or white. right?
not quite. after all, beauty and terror tend to go hand in hand.