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Thranduil was nothing if not an excellent host, but there always came a point where the autumn festivities in Greenwood became a little too rambunctious for Elrond’s taste. Usually, this happened around two o’clock in the morning when it seemed all of Greenwood the Great was gathered in Thranduil’s caverns and submerged up to their ears in wine.
Elrond had never had much of a stomach for alcohol. It affected him earlier than the others (a point Celebrían loved to tease him on), and so eventually he left her to enjoy the current musical game she was absolutely thrashing their table at and slipped out on his own for some peace and quiet.
The cool night air snapped Elrond’s muddy senses back into place, just the way he liked it. The moment he was outside he felt as if he could finally think again.
He went for a walk down beneath the crimson maples and sparkling-gold aspens, enjoying the crunch of the dry leaves underfoot and the particular crisp quality that the air always had this time of year.
After about five minutes of walking, he took a turn down a smaller trail and that was when he heard it: quiet crying.
Whoever it was did not sound particularly upset. The tears were more fretful than anything else. Still, Elrond gravitated toward the noise without really thinking and came across an ellon sitting on a bench beneath a giant blood-red maple tree, fussing with his half-braided, rather jarringly messy black hair.
As soon as Elrond entered the glen, the other elf looked up and flushed bright red and ducked his head.
“I don’t mean to intrude,” Elrond told him with an apologetic half-step back toward the main path. “But…are you well?”
“Yes! Yes,” the other elf insisted at once, and then just as quickly backtracked to: “No, not strictly speaking. I ought to be honest. But I will be. ‘Well’, that is. I will be well shortly.”
It was such a roundabout answer that it made Elrond smile. There was something too: a quality to his cadence of speech that was peculiar.
His face was blotchy and tear-streaked and he looked as if he was just one misstep away from dissolving into tears all over again, and so Elrond couldn’t help but fish out his handkerchief from his pocket and offer it to him.
“Oh, I couldn’t,” the other elf said, sniffling.
The corners of Elrond’s mouth twitched. “I insist.”
Tentatively, the other elf reached out and accepted it. He held it like it was a holy thing, only cradling it in his lap, not daring to bring it to his face.
“If you would rather be alone, I understand,” Elrond tried again. “But you seem quite upset.”
“I am,” the other elf said abruptly, and then blushed again.
“Would you like company?” Elrond offered.
“--You’re the King’s honored guest!”
Elrond actually laughed. “Thranduil considers me a bore at parties and will try to get me far more inebriated than I generally like to be. I will not be missed.”
“No, I mean…I’m—” the other elf looked down at Elrond’s embroidered handkerchief in his hands. “I’m nobody. And I would be truly awful company right now— and I am sure you have better things to do because you’re Elrond Peredhel and you’re a lord and I— here I am blubbering in the gardens for no good reason—”
“What is your name?” As a general rule, Elrond disliked interrupting people, but he worried that the other elf might dissolve into a circle of self-abasement if left to go on much longer.
“Lindir,” he answered.
“Lindir,” Elrond repeated. “Well met.”
“Well met!” Lindir replied in a baffled, surprised voice. He let go of Elrond’s handkerchief with one hand to push self-consciously at his tangled hair.
“Would it be alright if I joined you, Lindir?” Elrond asked, for the other elf still had not given him a direct answer.
Really, what he was trying to say was that he did not think the other elf should be alone. There was something about this that felt instinctively wrong, and even if the other elf did not wish for company, Elrond would have insisted on walking him back to somewhere less isolated.
To Elrond’s relief, Lindir was indifferent to company. Elrond came over to sit on the stone bench with him beneath the giant spreading maple tree. They were quiet for some time (save Lindir’s fretful sniffling), and Elrond was content to sit and look up at the stars and trace shapes in them, waiting to see if Lindir would talk or if he would prefer to sit in the silence. Either suited Elrond just fine.
Red maple leaves sifted down to the ground beneath their feet. The air was alive with the sound of all the night-things: crickets, warbling loons, mockingbirds, the occasional screech of an owl as it hunted through the canopy overhead. Thranduil’s party could be heard, too, but the din was pleasantly muffled and thus wasn’t intrusive.
What was intrusive, however, was the anxious pressure that seemed to be mounting in Lindir’s body. Elrond could feel it: Lindir’s heartbeat speeding faster and faster; the nervous tapping of his foot against the ground; the pressure like steam in a bot of boiling water, threatening to spill over.
Eventually, it did. Lindir blurted: “I enjoy the King’s parties. He is a very good host.”
Elrond hummed his agreement but offered nothing else on the topic.
This only seemed to make Lindir fret more. He fidgeted with the handkerchief in his hands, then fussed with the ends of his hair.
“It’s just that…I am not…” his voice shrunk. “I am not very well-liked. Or— or wanted there. I don’t like the noise and— and I am the only one who doesn’t braid his hair, because I cannot-- I am not allowed--”
It clicked, all at once, falling into place. Elrond realized what Lindir’s accent reminded him of.
“You’re Silvan,” Elrond said, turning to look at him. Lindir had an almost perfect Sindarin accent, but there had been a peculiar quality that Elrond hadn’t been able to name but now could: the effort of a trained tongue, painstakingly taught to corral the Silvan lilt.
Lindir swallowed and nodded, still fussing with his hair. “I have never… I haven’t earned any good braids. I am the only one my age that hasn’t. I’m a coward. And they…” he sniffled again. His round eyes were growing wet again, and he looked so horribly embarrassed and small. “They talk about it. About me. So… I never have a good time. That’s all. The King is an excellent host.” The refrain was repeated. A hasty deference: the way a dog will show its belly or lick its pack-leader’s mouth.
“The King wears no braids,” Elrond pointed out.
“He’s Sindarin,” Lindir protested. “And no one doubts that he is a mighty warrior.”
Elrond cocked his head. He knew, of course, the importance Silvans placed on such things. Silvans perfected the art of bushcraft and hunting as obsessively as the Teleri perfected their ships and wayfinding arts and the Noldor perfected their masterworks and lore. Silvans were disallowed from wearing certain styles until they had earned the right to them through deeds of valor or feats of great skill.
Lindir, apparently, had neither?
Gently, Elrond said: “I find it hard to believe that you are a coward. That’s a strong word to use.”
“Oh, I am,” Lindir sighed with miserable resignation. “I am afraid of high places, and of spiders, and of very deep water or strong currents. I cannot swim and I cannot skin an animal without losing my lunch. Dirt and mud upsets me. Death upsets me. Just about everything upsets me. My first instinct upon seeing anything even remotely dangerous is to hide. I am a useless coward who can’t even make a good joke and I couldn’t get a campfire started if you held me at swordpoint to do it, and I shall never earn any braids, save a minstrel’s which are hardly worth anything—“ and at this he fussed with the ends of his hair again, at the crimped mess where it seemed a set of braids had been hastily unwoven, “So—” he sniffled and finally gave in to using the handkerchief to dry the tears that were beginning to leak out of him again. “I am not really sure what the point of me is— for I shall never amount to anything—“ and there he cut himself off to apologize, to shrink, as he seemed so accustomed to doing: making himself smaller so as not to take up more than his due.
Elrond found himself growing quite hot.
“Who told you that?” he demanded to know.
Lindir’s pink mouth parted. Two bright spots of color came into his cheeks and he looked down at his shoes. “Well, no one. Not specifically.”
“Were these minstrels’ braids?” Elrond asked, tentatively touching the crimped, mussed strands of hair by Lindir’s ear. It always felt strange to be so informal, but time and marriage to Celebrían had eased that very Noldorin sensibility.
Lindir looked so ashamed of himself that he was on the verge of bursting into tears. He nodded, seemingly too upset to speak.
“Did you take them out?”
Elrond’s stomach sank when Lindir shook his head.
“Did someone else?”
A long, heavy pause passed between them. Then Lindir said: “They— they were very drunk— it was meant as a joke—”
“A joke is only a joke if everyone finds it funny,” Elrond seethed. “Who was it?”
Lindir shook his head in a panic, and though Elrond wanted to press him he forced himself to take a deep breath and tamp down his outrage. It was, of course (he had to forcibly remind himself of this) not quite the same thing as if it had happened to a Noldor, but it was still unthinkably cruel to pull out the one set of braids that Lindir seemed to have actually earned.
“It’s— It’s stupid. That’s why I’m a coward,” Lindir muttered tearfully, “I have no mirror to fix them and I’m too ashamed to walk back like this—”
“Let me,” Elrond said at once.
Lindir stared at him. Elrond resisted the urge to backtrack. Such an offer was not nearly so intimate for Lindir as it was for him, and he could shove down his own discomfort. This was far more important.
Something broke in Lindir: a crack the way a dam cracks. Air rushed out of him like water: a sigh, a choked, relieved nod and then a quiet: “Yes, thank you. If– if it isn’t a bother—”
“It isn’t,” Elrond said fiercely, and asked him what kind of braid he ought to make.
He accepted Lindir’s guidance and set to work. They fell into silence while Elrond braided, and Lindir —to Elrond’s private relief— seemed to relax enough to allow himself to actually use the proffered handkerchief.
Elrond tied off the first braid and brought it around Lindir’s shoulder so he could feel the shape, then set to work on the next one.
Lindir ran his slender fingers over the texture thoughtfully, then quietly remarked: “You know. You’re really quite-- quite good at braiding hair.”
He sounded so shocked that Elrond had to bite back a laugh. “Were you expecting me not to be?”
Lindir’s cheeks stained pink again. “N-no! I only— I had thought that—” He scuffed the toe of his boot against the red earth, seeming to grapple with his words the way a person might grapple with a wet bar of soap. “You seem like the kind of person who-- who has-- you know-- the kind of person who--”
“The kind of person who has my hair braided?” Elrond finished for him. “Rather than the other way around?”
It was a distinctly Silvan custom: the braiding of a senior’s hair as a sign of deference and respect. Their leaders hardly touched their own hair. Captains would have their hair braided by subordinates before skirmishes or hunts. Children, when old enough to be taught, learned on their older siblings and parents, and on and on it went.
When Lindir nodded, Elrond went on: “The Noldor do not have the same sensibilities.”
Lindir sounded genuinely shocked. “They…they do not?”
“No,” Elrond said, and offered nothing more on the subject because if Lindir did not know, then he would not tell him what the Noldorin sensibilities on hair were. It would only serve to make things awkward and the last thing Elrond wanted was to give him the wrong impression.
The thought occurred to him: “Have you not left Greenwood?”
“I–I have never had the occasion to,” Lindir admitted.
Elrond tied off the second braid and started work on a third. “Would you like to?”
“I am not sure where I would go.”
Elrond’s hands paused their work. He measured his words with care when he said: “If you are unattached here, you could return with my company to Imladris. I think it would suit you well.”
Regardless of Lindir’s answer, Elrond would tell Thranduil about Lindir’s treatment. This was, of course, not strictly a crime, but he knew his friend. Thranduil held vehement contempt for weak-minded bullies and Elrond had little doubt that he would see this matter swiftly sorted.
But still, it bothered him. Lindir was only one among thousands of Elves who resided in Greenwood, and Elrond could not ask Thranduil to see to his continual personal safety. This had clearly not been the first time such a thing had happened to him and Elrond was certain it would not be the last. Imladris by comparison was smaller, more diverse, and would suit someone of Lindir’s temperament very well. Though Elrond had only known Lindir for an hour, he felt compelled— no— responsible— for his safety. How could he abandon him to be tormented for traits he couldn’t help? Elrond would not leave him like this. Not when it was in his power to offer sanctuary.
Lindir had been quiet for some time. The space between was filled with the warbling loons in the nearby lake and the rustling of the turning maple leaves overhead. Elrond felt the need to clarify.
“It is merely an offer. Do not feel obligated to say yes only because it is a lord making it.”
“No–!” Lindir blurted out. He turned to face him on the bench, leaving the third braid only half-finished. “No, I have always wished I was somewhere else, but I never knew where that somewhere else might be. I only...I don’t want to be a burden on your house. I have no talents to speak of.”
Elrond touched the half-finished style with a soft smile. “Are these not a minstrel's braids that you have earned?”
“Well…” Lindir flushed red. “Yes, but—”
“I and my House hold a great deal of love for minstrels and song and poetry and lore,” he said, strategically leaving out the fact that he was a minstrel himself, lest Lindir find it intimidating. “You would be wanted and welcome in Imladris.”
Lindir’s luminous blue eyes grew somehow rounder, wet, and heartbreakingly hopeful. “I would? I would be wanted?”
It was if he had never been told such a thing.
Elrond swallowed back the choking mixture of rage and sadness welling up in his throat and simply inclined his head once.
“Yes, you would be wanted.”
He returned to his work on Lindir’s hair to give Lindir some space to think. It took him twenty more minutes to finish the style, for even though it was not a lot of hair to braid, Silvan braids were much smaller than the ones Elrond was used to weaving. He doubted that the ones he wrought were anywhere near to being as intricate and well-shaped as whatever Lindir had been wearing before, but it hardly seemed to matter for how Lindir would not stop touching them with that small, wondrous smile.
Once Elrond tied off the last braid, Lindir turned back to Elrond with shy determination.
“I would like to go to Imladris and be a minstrel,” he announced.
Elrond beamed at him.
“Then you shall.”