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Durin had known Elrond for about a year before he noticed it. A slight absence in Elrond’s usually very present and engaged manner, a sudden silence from someone cheerful and chatty. It always happened on clear nights, when they were huddled around a fire in wherever they’d ended up – on the side of a mountain, in a forest clearing, wherever, as long as it had a view of the sky. Elrond would, sometimes halfway through talking, look up at the stars and go quiet.
And then there would be this look on his face. It was a look Durin had seen once before as a young nipper on a mining expedition – they had finally found an elusive vein of gold in the rock, only to realise it was completely inaccessible for even the most reckless of Dwarves. The look on the head miner’s face was the same that day as it was on Elrond’s face now. The same loss one felt when something they desperately wanted was eternally out of reach. The same helpless frustration. The same yearning.
At first, it made no sense. Then Elrond once talked of his father who had been made into a star, and then the next time he went quiet, Durin looked up into the sky and the pieces in his head clicked together.
“So which one is he?” he said.
Elrond blinked, momentarily drawn away from the sky and back to Middle Earth. His eyes were wide and open, dark pools to swallow up as many stars as they could. “I’m sorry?”
Durin gestured to the starry sky above them. “Your father. That’s who you’re looking at, aye? Which one is he?”
Elrond gave Durin that look, the one he’d been giving more and more recently, the look that said Durin had surprised him, as if it hadn’t been obvious where this thoughts were going, as if his feelings hadn’t been written all over his face. And then he smiled. “Come here,” he said, and patted the leaf strewn ground next to him.
Durin went, shuffling out of the glare of the fire. Above them the sky was speckled with an impossible number of stars, so many more than Durin remembered when he was back safe inside the mountain. As a rule Dwarves didn’t do much stargazing, but Durin had always been a bit different in that respect. In a lot of respects, actually. Dwarves didn’t make friends with Elves either.
Elrond leaned down to get on Durin’s level, the silk of his sleeve brushing against Durin’s bared bicep. His hair smelled faintly of lavender. Durin had thought that smell was coming from flowers near their campsite, but it was Elrond.
Elrond pointed. “Look up,” he said, so Durin did, trying to follow Elrond’s unwavering finger.
“Which one?” he asked.
“The brightest one,” Elrond said, but to Durin all the stars seemed as bright as each other, all twinkling with terrifyingly faraway light.
“That one?” he hazarded and pointed as well, trying for the one that maybe seemed a little bigger than the rest, but Elrond only hummed.
“No, not there. Here.” And he gently took hold of Durin’s wrist, pale fingers curling like moonbeams around Durin’s gold-flecked arm, and directed his finger slightly to the left. Durin squinted through suddenly blurry vision, and at the end of his corrected pointer was a beautiful star, blazing so brightly out of the heavens that Durin was amazed he had missed it before. Of course such a sparkler of a star would be part of Elrond.
“Got you,” he murmured, and Elrond made small affirmative noise and let go of Durin’s wrist. Durin’s skin tingled where Elrond had touched it. He had a mad notion and turned his pointing finger into a little wave. Elrond huffed with amusement next to him.
“What are you doing?”
“Introducing myself,” Durin said. “It’s only polite. Greetings, star father, I’m Elrond’s friend.”
Elrond actually laughed. “Fool,” he said, but his voice was laced with affection, and when Durin nudged him, he nudged right back.
They lay still for a while, watching that fire of a star progress against the sky. It seemed so unbearably unreachable, but Durin didn’t mention that to Elrond – there was no point stating what was not only very obvious but clearly very painful too.
After a moment of staying quiet, Elrond said suddenly, “I should check on the horses.” His voice was level, but when Durin looked at him, his face was turned away.
“You’ll want to get some more firewood as well,” he said, which was unnecessary – they had more than enough – but it gave Elrond an excuse to be alone a little longer. Elrond made a noise of affirmation and fled, and Durin went back to looking at the star.
It had to be his imagination, but he had the strangest sensation he was being watched. Almost like the star had paused in its progression across the sky so it could survey Durin with the same intense interest Durin was bestowing on it. There was some kind of sharp angle to its brilliance, like the cut of someone’s gaze from under dark eyebrows. Durin felt a chill on his arms that had nothing to do with the light drizzle that had started to fall around them.
“I’ll look after him,” he said, apropos of nothing. “I swear it.”
And he must have said something right, because the star twinkled and carried on moving across the heavens.
“We’re lost,” said Narvi.
“We’re not lost,” Durin scoffed, marching their little party onwards. “Dwarves don’t get lost. We’re just…wanderin’.”
“Aye, wanderin’ in the wrong direction,” Narvi said, but he willingly followed Durin’s lead.
The problem was, Durin secretly thought to himself, they were lost. He and the little company of engineers he was leading had been lost for the better part of a day. They’d gone to a new quarry on the edge of the mountains, gleaning the engineer’s thoughts on how to access a promising quartz deposit, but the weather had worsened as they’d been returning to Khazad-dûm and now they were somehow stuck in the forests of the foothills.
The problem with forests, Durin thought grumpily, was that every tree looked alike. How were you meant to tell the difference? How did Elves do it? Durin was willing to bet the whole quarry of quartz that they whispered to them or smelled their branches or something equally as lunatic. Not for the first time, he wished Elrond was with them.
Not that he’d heard from Elrond for five years, the wretched Elf. Durin knew time moved differently for Elves, but this was just enough time for Durin to start feeling insulted. Elrond better turn up at his door soon, or there was going to be hell to pay.
“Hang on,” one of the Dwarves said, interrupting Durin’s rapidly growing irritation at Elrond’s absence. “I think I pulled my sleeve on this branch an hour ago.”
They all stopped and groaned. “We’re going in circles,” another Dwarf said, and Narvi pulled on his beard thoughtfully. Durin sighed. He was meant to be leading this group, and he was doing a terrible job of it. His father was going to kill him – if they ever got home.
With some desperation, Durin looked up. He could just about see the rapidly darkening sky through the treetops, but it was overcast with clouds. There was no chance of seeing the stars – or seeing that one star in particular. Which was annoying, because Durin had been using that star to navigate for years now. Elrond’s father was turning out mightily useful indeed. Well, except in this situation. Durin did a very un-Dwarfish thing and silently prayed to the Valar to help him.
And then a rather large seabird suddenly dropped out of the sky and landed on a branch of the tree next to him.
All the Dwarves took a wary step back. They weren’t frightened of birds by any means, but this one was particularly big. It was also beautiful, a stunning snowy white colour that seemed to gleam with its own light in the gathering gloom, and when it cocked its head, it gazed upon Durin with a fixed, bright stare.
It wasn’t a normal stare, Durin thought. Not the sort birds usually gave you, a hungry, calculating stare. This one was…well, it was oddly familiar.
Durin took a cautious step forward, despite the murmured warnings from the others around him. The bird didn’t move, didn’t even break its gaze. Durin got the sudden sense that there was something – someone – looking out of the bird’s eyes. An intelligence. And then Durin realised where he’d seen that look before – it was the look in Elrond’s eyes when Durin was doing something loveable but irritating. A sort of fond exasperation.
And Durin remembered then what Elrond had said about his mother.
“Oh, you have got to be jokin’!” he exclaimed.
The bird fluttered its wings and took off suddenly, flying behind Durin to a tree the opposite way to which they’d been going. Then it looked at Durin again, and Durin understood.
“Follow that bird!” he said, and took off after it.
“The bird?” Narvi said, but they all followed Durin anyway, and Durin followed the bird, who would flit from tree to tree, confusingly going in different directions and making the Dwarves mutter behind him.
“M’lord,” Narvi said finally as they panted their way up a small rise, the bird flapping and flying ahead of them, “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“Am I Crown Prince or not?” Durin snapped back, which was when they finally rounded the peak of the rise and found themselves back on the mountain path to Khazad-dûm, far above the trees.
“You did it!” said a Dwarf and the band let out a ragged cheer. Durin turned to the seabird perched on a rock, who fixed him with a steady stare as if to say, You’re welcome.
“Thank you,” Durin said softly and the bird let out a cry – so pure that it almost sounded like a song – and lifted into the air, and Durin watched it fly all the way back to the sea.
Afterwards, he told his father it was his natural sense of direction that had led them out of the forest and Narvi – bless him – backed him up.
And somehow he forgot to mention the encounter to Elrond at all.
Durin found it in the Mirrormere not long after he’d been crowned. He’d gone there to ponder, and to miss his father. The Mirrormere, as a rule, was so still you could see stars reflected perfectly in it, and Durin was just spying out Elrond’s father among the mass when a sudden and completely unexpected wave broke over his toes.
“Ow!” Durin said, because the water was cold, and jumped away, and then noticed what had been swept ashore. It was a large, blue swathe of fabric, embroidered with gold in some areas. Durin recognised it at once. He’d once sneezed and wiped his nose with it, and Elrond had instantly cuffed him around the side of the head.
It was Elrond’s old cloak. The one that had been his brother’s.
Durin remembered suddenly what Elrond had said about jumping off a waterfall in Lindon – actually, the whole interaction had been memorable because Durin had burst out laughing and begged to know what the Gil-galad’s face had looked like at being disobeyed so, and Elrond had said, “Stop laughing, Durin, it’s not funny,” but then he’d started laughing too, and then neither of them could stop for a solid five minutes, despite the worries that beset them both.
Had Elrond jumped with his cloak on? And lost it in the sea? But how the hell had it got here?
Durin leaned down and picked up the cloak. It was sodden and ripped in a few new areas, but it was definitely Elrond’s cloak. Durin had the same feeling he’d had before, with the star, with the seabird. A feeling he was being watched.
“Aye I see, am I just your bloody messenger boy now?” he snapped to the Mirrormere in general, and stomped off to get the cloak dried.
He presented it to Elrond when next he saw him, which thankfully wasn’t too long – Elrond had learned his lesson about their twenty year absence and seemed determined to never let it happen again. And so he came to Khazad-dûm to greet its new King and Queen, and partly to make amends for Durin’s absence at Eregion, Durin had presented the cloak to Elrond.
Durin could count the number of times he had shocked Elrond on one hand – Elves, being so farsighted and living such long lives, were not easily surprised. But this was one of those times. Elrond went utterly still, and his eyes got rounder and rounder.
Then, after a long pause, he said, “How…?” and his voice was hoarse, as if he had been shouting.
Durin shrugged, still holding out the cloak. “Beats me. Found it in the Mirrormere. I’ve got a theory though.”
“Oh?” Elrond’s eyes were fixed on the cloak.
“Aye. You had some ancestor that the sea god favoured, didn’t you?”
“Tuor,” Elrond said vaguely. “My grandfather.”
“Aye, him. Well, I was thinking. Maybe this god favours all his descendants as well. Throwing their lost possessions into lakes and whatnot. And apparently,” Durin sniffed, “Choosing this poor Dwarf to be their courier. I do have responsibilities as well, you know. I am a King.”
His irritation seemed to shake Elrond out of his funk. He laughed, a sort of wet little laugh, and reached out his hands to the cloak. “Can I…?”
“Aye, it’s yours isn’t it?” Durin handed the cloak over. “It dried fine, but there were some rips in it that Disa tried to mend as best she could. It’s not quite the same though.”
He shut up after that, because Elrond was clutching the cloak with a grip so tight that his knuckles had gone white, and his big round eyes were shining. When he spoke, it was shaky, as if Durin had rattled him to the bones.
“The loving care of my friends could only improve it,” he said, and then suddenly he was setting the cloak aside and dropping to one knee so he could wrap his arms around Durin’s shoulders in a fierce embrace. Durin staggered into it, surprised, and Elrond squeezed him so tightly that he thought his crown might pop off his head.
“Thank you, Durin,” he said into Durin’s beard, and after that, Durin couldn’t help hugging him back.