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Imladris, spring, Third Age 2577
The words were out like… like a handful of soda throw into the vinegar jar, is what. Like their own little private eruption. Like pus out of an abscess, her mother would say without so much as a grimace at the thought. Like a desperate last stand on a bare, lonely hilltop.
“Come to dinner.”
He wasn’t really one to stare, but he was still as a hawk for a moment, and as keen in the eye.
He said, slowly, “…on your father’s invitation? Or…”
She swallowed back the nauseous little cocklebur in her throat, and straightened, and said, firmly, “On mine.”
“Yours.”
“Yes.”
“Dinner?”
Just like that the nerves were gone and a badgersworth of irritation had taken their place. “Yes, Elrohir, dinner. You know, where someone cooks something and then people sit down together and eat it?”
He was trying not to laugh, the snot. He repeated, like she had a really bad accent or something, “Together.”
Stuff it all. “No, actually, you can just go eat all by yourself somewhere.” Her feet were bare but even a bare heel could be turned on smartly. Or would have been, except he caught the rear of her skirt and tugged her back around.
“Hang on, buttercup, I haven’t given my answer yet.”
She tried to take her skirt back but he didn’t let go. It was all atwist around her legs. She said, yanking, “The offer is about to expire.”
“What’s for dinner?”
“That’s not polite to ask!”
“I would like to come to dinner, Laurelandë, yes.”
“Well then, you can just—wait, yes?”
“Yes. Please.”
He turned her loose. Slowly, so she would not stumble backwards from where she leaned against the pull. She smoothed the linen down and could not look at him. For a breath or two, at least.
At last she rubbed a sudden itch away from her nose and said, not quite meeting his eye, “Tonight work?”
“Tonight is good.”
“Seven okay?”
“Yup. How bout I bring the wine.”
“That would be lovely.”
Seven crept closer like a wolf, aslaver in the chops and without mercy.
The wreckage of the first attempt lay blackened in the sink, still smoking from the edges. She should have gone with the salmon, except it was so obvious. At least salmon could stand a little blackening. Unlike blueberry crumbles get them out get them out sweet sleeping Nienna…
False alarm. They could stand a few more minutes. Would they even get done in the middle, why were they so soggy? She could have sworn when she stuck her hand in the oven it was the perfect temperature.
What was wrong with her? She had been feeding guests since she was old enough to wield a chef’s knife unattended, which in the house of Glorfindel was pretty young. And she had never sweated this much. Open a window, good grief. It’s going to smell like a dwarf sauna in here when he walks in the door.
How long have the gamehens been in? Did you take the giblets out? Of course you did, when you stuffed them with garlic and rosemary. All four of them? Would four be enough? She had cooked for crowds more often than for two. Maybe she should put in another. Except another was not to be had. Another side, then? What besides the wild rice risotto and roast asparagus? Maybe she was being silly, four gamehens? Not like he’s been gone for a year into the Wild or anything, his grandma laid a pretty table. He probably had lovehandles under that jerkin by now…
Whip the cream, that will get your balance back. She did so, violently, and set it aside puffing when it had formed into satisfying little tufts. Turned to the sink to soak the whisk and turned back and caught the bowl with her elbow and sent it spinning out over the tile floor and her mad snatch did not catch it but only batted it against the cupboards where it bounced and broke open on the floor like all her dearest dreams. Whipped cream scattered to the four corners of the earth.
The clever little chime over the stove went off. She dove for the oven and the crumbles, dancing through a treacherous field of cream and broken pottery, glad she had already dressed down to her prettiest shoes. Except the stuff was slippery and the only place to catch herself was on the freaking open oven door…
Of course he would be early. And he hadn’t bothered to knock in twenty-five hundred years. And he was so freaking quiet, and she had her blistering hand under the running water, and whipped cream on her skirt and her shoes. The sound the winebottle made on the tabletop made her jump.
He said, straight-faced, “Looks like you have everything under control in here.”
He bandaged her hand (knew where her mother’s box of healerly paraphernalia was in the back bathroom without having to ask) and pulled out the gamehens (dry) and damped down the stove (useless) and complimented her on the berry crumble (liar) and then he picked up his wine in one hand and her hand in the other and said, already headed for the door, “Come to dinner.”
He made a freaking delicious buttermilk pancake. For some reason the entire kitchen staff had made themselves scarce. They ate at the tiny corner table that was sized more for elflets than grown people. She and Arwen had sat there many amorning with smouched scones (not actually smouched, but set out cunningly to make them think so), or grazing on the neverending fount of a fruit basket, or sipping hot spiced cider while the snow fell out the window.
Sitting half-cramped eating pancakes (drenched in butter and syrup and pebbled with fresh raspberries) with Elrohir felt both familiar as a ratty old cloak, and as strange as drinking wine while in the same seat she had once sat in to drink cold lemonade. Which is also what they did. Wine, not lemonade. Out of canning jars, because they were the first thing he had scrounged up.
“You lay out a magnificent table, m’lord,” she said, and ate a plump berry from between her fingers.
So far he had been careful to not let their feet crowd together under the table, but sat with his stretched out to one side. He said, his elbow hooked over the back of his seat, his own wine-jar dangling from his languid hand, “It’s no herbed partridge, but it’ll do in a pinch. You looked hungry.”
“I looked pathetic.”
He didn’t respond, and she glanced up as alarm poked her under the ribs, because wasn’t silence the same as agreement?
Except he was just looking at her with his lashes sort of lowered, or his chin, or something. Like he was trying for a new angle on her face. It made the very thing light up, in any case. She looked away, quickly.
“Another pancake?” he asked, standing quite abruptly.
“Thank you. No, I’ve had enough.”
“Well, I’m having another one.”
“…might as well throw one on for me too, then.”
Somewhere in between the third set of pancakes and the second jar of wine, into what was perhaps the first lull in the conversation (he was as easy to talk to as ever, in spite of the froth she had whipped herself up into), Elrohir said, “I’m leaving tomorrow.”
She swallowed a forkful of pancakes too hard and had to stare at the tabletop and concentrate to get them down without choking. When it was safe to speak she said, “Are you?”
“To Mithlond. And then to sea.”
“To sea? Like… a pirate or something? Or…” Bright lady, what has happened? Surely he does not mean…
“Círdan's tradeships go as far south as Harad. He’s always in need of crew, and in worse need of onboard surgeons. Last time we were there I told him I’d come when I was able.”
Tradeships. Only tradeships. She hid her suddenly-shaking hand beneath her leg. “And now you’re able.”
“Elladan won’t be going anywhere for a while, yes.” His smile was soft, and full of affection. She had seen the same look on his face at the foot of the falls when they had gathered together to witness the vows, though the bride and groom had spoken them already, to the stars and to the One.
She had asked her father once, what it was like, the soul-sharing. She had been too young to really know what she was asking, and her father as ever took it in stride. He had known what she meant, and ventured no further. He had drawn her a sketch. Sketches of other aspects would come much later, from her mother the anatomist.
“Like you have a house that is your fëa, and they have a house that is theirs, both divided into two rooms, but before you bind yourselves together there is light on in only one room in each house, see? You join your houses up, so the door to your lit room is adjacent to the door in the other’s dark room. And then you throw the doors open and let the light of one another shine into that room that has only ever been dark, so far. And now you have four rooms lit up together.”
She did not know Eglerialph well yet, but she had thought at one look at Elladan upon their return that… yes. He had four lit rooms now, and the light had filled every corner.
She dragged the tines of her fork through the last dregs of dark syrup aglaze on her plate. “You’ll be lonely without Elladan.”
“Just between you and me, I don’t care to be within fifty miles of him at the moment,” Elrohir laughed. “I’m fast learning it would be better if my mind wasn’t quite so twined up with his by habit. A little distance will do us all good, I think. Besides, Tavorion’s coming, I won’t be too lonely.”
Laurelandë wrinkled her nose. “Adar says he is a menace.”
“Always has been. He’s still my friend, and a good one. A bit of seafaring will keep him busy.”
“A bit?” The Twins had been known to hare off and disappear for years.
His eyes were on her steadily. He made no answer to this. After a drawn-out silence he said, “I owe you an apology, Laure.”
Her eyes plummeted back down to the syrup. She could make it look like weave if she crosshatched with the fork. But it seemed he would not proceed until she acknowledged this strange statement, and so she laughed a little to the plate, and said, “I probably owe you a few myself, through the years. I still feel bad about that time we… borrowed—”
“Stole.”
“—what was his name?”
“I think you remember.”
She glanced up into narrowed grey eyes, and grinned. “Yup.”
“Bad etiquette, you know, taking a guy’s horse without asking.”
“So Ada… erm… informed me, when we got back that evening.”
“He’d sure take a jump though, wouldn’t he.”
“Oh, it was unreal, he could fly.”
“I shouldn’t have left like I did. Hot off the flint, without smoothing things over. I’m sorry.”
After a moment of pondering this she said, with true sincerity, “Okay. I forgive you.”
“Thank you.”
“Even though I could have drowned, and you didn’t even look back…”
“I’m not sorry for that part.”
She sat up straight in her tiny chair. “What?”
“For tossing you into the lake? You’d had that coming for days.”
“I had not!”
“Days, Laurelandë. And you wouldn’t have drowned, I took your boots off for you first. But we’re not starting that up again, not tonight. I shouldn’t have left mad like I did, we’ve been friends for too long. For that I am sorry.”
He stood, and lifted her empty plate, and was across the kitchen and up to his wrists in the washwater before she could decide how to answer.
She never did decide. They did the dishes. He walked her home. Together they cleaned her mother’s kitchen. They spoke of mundane things. He made her laugh.
In the morning with his friend he departed for Círdan and the luring sea.
He was gone for twenty-two years.