Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

it's an old song

it's an old tale  from way back when

and we're gonna sing it again and again

There are three things people don’t tell you about dying. 

The first is how much it hurts. 

Fire searing against your skin as it bubbles and boils. The scrape of glass on your hands and knees as you try to fight your way out by grabbing a hammer and knocking the window of your apartment into pieces. You only succeed in letting the oxygen fuel the flames. Your lungs burn and choke you as you crumble to the floor. Your fight is gone and your flight is barred, and so you give in while you still can, letting the fire engulf your body the way you always hoped it would. 

The second is what you see when you die.

A flash of blue and red on your ceiling as your eyes begin to cloud. Darkness creeping in while your mind buzzes from sensations you barely remember. 

Your first kiss in a game of spin the bottle

( The touch of plastic as they press the respirator to your lips )

Your last heartbreak as a shadow walks into the streets of the world you once knew.

( The crack of your ribs as two hands press deep into your chest )

Your mother pressing her lips to your forehead as you head off to college. Your father tracing patterns of sunlight on your cheek. Your sister’s laugh ringing like a melody of a song you once knew. Your brother’s yell as you try to convince him to come home. 

( the lips of your mother are cold, the hands of your father shaking, your brother’s yell echos off the walls of the ward and your sister will never laugh again )

The slow beeping of a heart rate you are not sure belongs to you. 

( they refuse to unplug the monitor )

A pair of blue eyes in a face you remember wrinkled and grey as they tucked you in and sang you lullabies you no longer remember. 

( even so you can hear the melody on the wind, calling you home )

The world darkens and then it is made light once more. 

Gold dances before your vision and you blink, the wind soft and pure as it settles over your skin.

The last thing no one tells you, is how beautiful heaven is when you finally reach it. 

An almost endless peace weaves its way through your wearied bones as the silver leaves of ferns and pine frame the celestial body above you. The grass is soft beneath you, mossy and greener than anything you’d ever seen while wildflowers bloom on either side. 

She plucks the gold star-shaped flower with a smile, pressing the stem between two fingers while a snowdrop gleamed in the distance. 

She always loved the flowers. 

Strength returns to you, slow and sure while the sweetness of heaven surrounds you. The sky brightens above you in lapis lazuli, while a butterfly lands gently on your cheek, exactly where your father traced the sunlight. 

Its wings are brightly colored amethyst as they flutter against the skin, tickling her cheek and urging you to follow. 

Her legs find their footing and she does. Through boughs of pine and beech on bended knee, barefoot in dirt paths as the white of her dress somehow remains untouched by this valley of Eden. 

You understand now why Eve cried kicking and screaming as they tore her from paradise. 

In the back of your mind, you hear a song. The plucking of harp strings and soft bells chiming as spring unfolds in your hand. 

A song appears in her mind and the strings and bells seem to bend to her whim. A ballad she recalls from her studies, one that spoke of faeries and forests and the dangers of young women wandering in places they ought not to be. 

Her feet recited steps once thought lost to memory while her voice echoed just as loud and clear as it had when she was alive, but then she supposed this was heaven after all, and all that was made wrong would be made right once again. 

A battement, a pas de bouree followed by an arabesque.

She twirled on her feet, grasping the skirts as she did. She offered her hand to the trees, dancing around them like they were the ones leading her to the dance floor.

It felt right, as though her body still belonged to her. As if she still had heart to beat and breath in her lungs as she sang and danced while the sun lounged lazily above her. 

She stopped, out of breath and drinking in the fresh air while she expanded her arms and let the warmth of heaven wash over her. 

It truly felt like home in some ways, but with an ethereal sheen like the stories of the feywild. Colors bright and pigmented, the music of the angels singing in her ears. Even the air tasted sweeter as she gulped it down. 

And then she heard it. 

The crack of a twig, followed by the rustling of cloth against leaves. 

“Hello?” A voice, soft and low. It didn't belong to her. “Is anyone there?”

She turned but saw no one. 

A figment of her imagination, she continued to dance and sing. Somewhere, the crash of waves and the tinge of saltwater punctured the air. 

A flash of blue, a glimmer of gold, a twinkle of starlight.

“Tinúviel?” 

The word caught her attention, coming from the same gentle voice as earlier. Nightingale. It was a question, one that had been asked once in a dream, on the pages of man deeply in love with a woman dancing in a glade of hemlock. Few knew her love of the tale, and fewer still would dare to call out the name in reference to her. 

She turned and met the gaze of an angel. 

Pale skin glittering in the bright golden rays like starlight while his eyes—kind and open—were fresh mist coming in from the mountains. Twilight curled around his head, threaded with russet as he stepped further into the sun. 

He stopped. 

His breath shook.

She tilted her head. “I didn’t realize angels would be so beautiful.”

Soft pink tinged his cheeks and spread up to tips of his ears, which she now realized were pointed near the end, like an elves. Maybe Tolkien was right in his depiction of the messengers from above. The being before her was made of starlight and summertime, ageless and graceful, yet there was something uncanny about him. He took the appearance of a human, but she could see the divine hidden in the cracks of his jaw and the divets of his collarbone. 

Just west of human.

Not quite a god, not quite a man. 

His brow furrowed, as though not understanding her meaning. 

“I am afraid you have me at a loss, my lady,” He spoke as though carefully considering each word. A smile tugged at the edge of his lips, “I am no angel.”

She tilted her head. “Aren’t you?” Perhaps this was how they made people feel welcome. To ease the blow rather than rip them from their perceived reality. She had long been expecting death to take her, and while she never believed her mother’s statements that the afterlife existed, she welcomed it with open arms now. “What else could this place be but the boughs of heaven and you his devoted messenger to take me home?”

The angel’s eyes traced her figure, confusion wrought across his brow. Perhaps they didn’t expect her to figure it out this easily? Or maybe they were used to more reluctant passengers.

“You speak in tongues I fear to understand,” The angel replied, “But if it is home you are looking for, perhaps I may help you,” He held out his hand, smooth and unblemished yet dotted with smudges of ink under his fingernails.

For the first time since arriving, a shadow darkened her heart. Something felt wrong. 

Instinct had never led her astray. Maybe it was the belief that things were too good to be true, maybe it was his kind demeanor and his confused brow. Or maybe, it was the elven name still ringing in her ears. 

The name he’d called her. 

She took a step back.

He took a step forward.

The birds began to chip. 

She thought she heard the sound of a nightingale. 

“What is your name?”

“My lady?” His voice cut through the fading light, the sun now descending behind her as an idea, terrible and impossible seized hold of her heart and refused to let go. It was a fairytale, a fiction, and yet she could not shake the idea from her mind. 

“Your name.” Her words are sharp and snappy, silencing the sounds of nature as the angel stares at her. His gaze reminded her of a fierce gale of wind, stripping any and all pretense from whatever it landed on and eroding even the harshest of stone. 

His jaw clicks and he lowers himself into a short bow, “I am Elrond Peredhel, Herald to High King Gil-Galad of the Noldor.”

She froze. 

As if suspended in time, her heart came rushing back into her, breath filling her lungs. 

It can’t be. Could it?

She’d died. 

Perished in an onslaught of ash and flame, and yet…here was a man with pointed ears and ethereal beauty claiming to be an elf from the legends of Tolkien himself. 

The most famous one next to Galadriel, at that. 

His furrow deepened, “Might I know yours?”

Her breath caught in her throat. Her name…what was her name? It sang in the back of her mind, just out of reach. She’d had one, she knows she did. She recalls her mother’s mouth forming the vowels and consonants, her sister forming those same syllables as she splashed her in the pool and tugged at her hair. 

She thinks it started with an ‘M’. 

Her answer comes in the whispers of the wind, a chime on the air as it weaves around her throat, willing her to speak once more.

“Mariana. I think my name is Mariana.” 

“Mariana,” Elrond speaks her name with a deep inflection, focusing as much attention on the last syllable as he does on the first. His vowels are long and twisted and she can tell it doesn't feel right in his mouth, but still he smiles. 

A soft and precious thing and yet it seems to light up the entire glade. 

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Mariana,” He brings a hand to his chest and slowly pushes out, “May I ask what you are doing in the Grey Havens?”

She almost wants to laugh. 

Of course. 

The Grey Havens.

The last place the elves go before the Undying lands. 

A cruel irony she wakes up here after experiencing death for the first time. 

She decides for now, it’s best to be honest. If it does end up being heaven, she doesn’t want to get kicked out for lying to an angel. 

“I thought I was dead,” Mariana couldn’t help but smile as she said it. It was absolutely ridiculous. Elrond blinked in surprise, “Until I woke up in the woods and found out I was not.”

He squinted, just slightly, as though trying to gauge whether or not she was telling a joke. 

“You have a strange sense of humor, my lady,” An involuntary chuckle rumbled in his throat, “You don’t appear to be injured, although I must confess I do not have much experience with dead women.”

She threw her head back and laughed.

He smiled. 

“No, I don’t suppose you would.” She tucked a piece of loose hair behind her ear as she tilted her head. It wasn’t meant to be sad, but still it caused her chest to twinge, just slightly, like a minor chord plucked on the strings of a violin. Slow and mournful, yet it was ever constant. 

Elrond’s eyes never left her face.

They twinkled in quiet curiosity, hand restless at his side like he was reaching for something that wasn’t there. If the ears weren’t enough to convince her he was an elf, the way he was dressed was. Fine robes of silken velvet, as bright and clear blue as the sea on a summer day, it brought out the deeper shades in his misty eyes and suited the pale starlight of his skin, like foam on the ocean. A silver pin kept his cloak on his shoulders, the same deep blue-green as the rest of him. 

She resisted the urge to pinch her lips together at the sight. 

Such clothing would have gotten her half a month’s rent at least, and the gold band on his clenched hand twice that. 

She was stuck between two worlds. The living and the dead. One where her old survival instincts kept surging and the other begging her to leave them behind and start anew. 

But there was that voice in the back of her head. 

The voice that had been with her since she was a child, steering her in the right direction when she didn’t know which road to take. It was that voice that was urging her to be careful now, that this place—real or imagined—was just as dangerous as the world she’d left behind. 

And yet, some other part of her, deeper and quieter than any of the others, yearned for her to take the leap.

“If it pleases you,” Elrond’s expression turned sheepish, pink dusting his cheeks as he tried to close the gap once more. Mariana took a step back. He ceased his steps immediately. “I would very much like to hear more of your story, preferably over a hot cup of tea.”

A shiver erupted across her skin. 

The light fabric grazing her skin did nothing to protect her from the short breeze threading itself through the glade. It lifted the hair off her skin and she shuddered under the gentle force. 

She brought her arms up to wrap around her torso, her only armor against the winds. 

In spite of the voice screaming in the back of her mind, she wants to take the man up on his offer. She was cold and alone and tea was exactly what she needed right now. 

Elrond held out his hand. 

She knows it is a trick. A way to test her vulnerabilities and see whether or not she is a threat. No one is kind for the sake of it, least of all when they're faced with a strange woman in an even stranger glade who threatens their peace. But his eyes glimmer with unspoken optimism, his words guarded but his heart open for all to see and for a moment, she truly believes he may be genuine. 

Her stomach growls. 

Her muscles quake.

She takes his hand. 

Her callouses felt out of place among the unblemished skin of the man before her, the bronze of daylight meeting the pale silver of twilight as he began to lead her out of the glade. He escorts her over babbling streams and mossy fields, and as they grow closer to the road, she can see the trees beginning to bloom. They change from bright evergreens to slowly flowering dogwood and healthy oak, seasons changing before her eyes as the fresh buds of spring fight against the late winter cold for their place in nature. 

Still, the smell of pine and cedar won’t leave her, and she wonders how much of it is leftover from her hometown, the last thing she smelled before ash and soot overtook her lungs.

The road is open dirt, like the trails by her house, but overgrown with moss and wildflowers on all sides. Elrond tells her things that spark her memory, but only because of how familiar with the professor’s work she is. 

She’d been an English major before she’d dropped out and before then she’d been an avid reader and consumer of all things Tolkien, movies and books. 

He speaks of the history of the Grey Havens, of the elves who rarely leave the shores of Arda to gaze upon the beauty of Valinor when their souls have grown too weary or they have finally earned the right to put up their swords. His eyes light up as they do, and Mariana finds she cannot look away when he speaks. His voice weaves tapestries of words she can only dream of crafting and his fondness and passion when he does drips from his lips like nectar from the gods. 

He is a poet, she realizes with a smirk. And he cannot help himself when he speaks, just as she cannot help herself when she sings. 

She stops in her tracks as the taste of saltwater fills her lungs, hearkening the sound of crashing waves against rocky shores, just as it had outside her bedroom window as a child. The air grew thicker and colder and she knew she was near the sea. 

She sprinted towards the sound, skirts billowing out behind her as she left her escort behind. 

He gave chase anyway, calling her name like an echo on the wind.

Pain splintered up her bare feet as they collided with rock and gravel and she shudders. It feels like shards of glass pushing through her skin, bloodied and bruised as a flash of a window breaking crosses her eyes. It’s followed by flame and images of a woman who looked like her crawling across the floor to safety. Another image, of a hammer flying through the window, followed by the piercing pain of glass entering her forearm. The phantom pain splits up to her shoulder and she falters just before she reaches the border of sea and shore. 

Thick winds tangle her curled hair and mist her skin, the music of the ocean singing in her ears as she stares out at the dying sunlight gleaming on the edge of the horizon. Rocky ledges give way to soft sand and waves wash over her feet. The pain disappears. 

Her lips break out into a smile, “It’s here,” She whispers to herself, wishing to submerge herself in the high tide and foamy waves as they crash against the shore. She can see caves and caverns cut out of the cliffside, easily swimmable in calmer waters, but these raged. “Even in death or a fantasy world, the sea is still here.” 

She says it to no one but herself, and stretches her fingers, as though she can almost touch the haze of clouds coming in as twilight falls. 

“You are faster than you look, my lady,” Elrond finally catches up with her as she sits on an outcropping of rock just below the bridge. He lets out a similar sigh of wonder as he gazes upon the sunset, taking a seat next to her as he catches his breath. “Do you know how fast you need to be to wind an elf?”

A chuckle slides past her lips, harmonizing with his. 

“I shall count it as one of my many accomplishments,” Her voice is hoarse as she leans against the finely constructed bridge, limestone cooling her head while she lifts her gaze to the skies. The first light of the stars peek up above the mountains. Breath flows through her lungs and blood pounds in her chest. 

She is alive. 

Gloriously and fantastically alive. 

The voices tsk and click their tongues, but she silences them with a soft exhale. Gold appears in her periphery and one of the star-blossoms from earlier shines in Elrond’s hand as he holds it out to her with a bright smile. 

“Come, the hour grows late, and I would very much like to hear not just of your many accomplishments, but of how you came to find your way to our havens.”

She knew a veiled request when she heard one, and even though she’s told him the entirety of it, she has a queer feeling he will not rest until he learns all he can. 

Almost instantly, she wants to run. 

To disappear into the woods and never be found. It was a powerful instinct, tampered down only by the promise of tea and warmth emanating from a small cottage on the edge of the shore. 

Night was drawing near, and the world was growing colder.

Survival and safety outranked the fear of being found out any day. 

She took the budding flower from Elrond’s hand and pressed it into her hair. 

Turning to face him, she was surprised to see he was already looking at her. 

He blinked, as if not expecting her to look his way.

The tips of his ears redden.

“I am sorry, I—“

“I believe…” She cuts him off with a smirk, leaning in like they were sharing a secret. It only served to redden his face further, “You promised me tea.”

Elrond sighs out a nervous chuckle and gestures towards the small cottage. 

A weight disappears from her chest as he shuts the door behind her. 

Chapter Text

Elrond wasn’t entirely certain he wasn’t hallucinating. 

He’d finally been granted a week of reprieve from his duties as Herald and he’d chosen to spend it, like most of his time, in the forests by the sea of his former master’s holdfast. The waters of the Grey Havens calmed him, and the sweet songs of the nightingales as they flitted about the pines brought to mind the story of his foremother. 

It was a place to rest his weary head, to be free of the intrigues and intricacies of courtly politics. Always dancing around the point, trying to find the right word for each situation, all in the hopes of impressing the hearts of lords who still thought him beneath them. 

The irony of his position was not lost on him. 

It was as old as the elves themselves, holding tight to ceremony and precedence, the right hand and heir of the king in all but name. It was a responsibility he did not take lightly and one that weighed heavy on him even now. 

Still, he couldn’t help but crack a smile at the irony of the word. 

Herald. 

A messenger bringing news. 

A sign bringing forth the change of seasons.

He was little more than a mouthpiece, the voice speaking through a mask bearing the High King’s visage. Mockingbird was too kind a name for him. 

He brought no messages, foresaw no changes.

He was simply another voice lost in the crowd of thousands. Which was why when he saw a chance where he could finally be alone with his thoughts and his scrolls, he took it. 

It was rare enough to find a moment of silence in Lindon, but here in the Havens it surrounded him on all sides, allowing his mind to roam free and unburdened, his own words flowing forth onto the parchment like poets of old rather than the practiced tenor of a speechwriter. 

Here, nestled in the bough of an oak tree older than Gil-Galad himself, his tidy letters became messy scrawl, making notations in his copies of the elven sagas and texts he’d grown up beside, letting the nightingales sing their songs and the breath of spring surround him. 

Until it went quiet.

The birds stopped their songs. The winds suspended their gales. 

And even the trees themselves stopped their ancient conversations to listen. 

For what, he did not know. 

He perked up from his position, ears tilted forward.

And then, he heard it. 

A single note, sweeter than any that came before it, rang through the silence of the Grey Havens. 

His head tilted and he nearly dropped his latest notes on his recent translation of The Fall of Gondolin into the muddy earth below. 

Elrond paused, breathing soft and slow as he waited to hear where it came from. 

Silence fell over the forest once more.

And then it pierced the air again.

Several more notes, all in succession, each sweeter than the last. The voice was soft and bright, like the first rays of sun over the Ered Luin and it made his heart sing to hear such beautiful words recited in such a cadence. 

Most of the elves these days played the harp or strung the bells, but rarely did they sing like they had in the Time of the Two Trees, choosing instead to hone a different type of craft. 

The drumming of the hammer against the nail, the music of the forges of Eregion. 

It warmed him to hear such beauty in the Havens, carried by the wind like it was meant for his ears. 

His focus, once sharp and impregnable, now disappeared amongst the dancing branches and limbs of the trees, little more than a wisp. 

For the first time since he’d arrived in Mithlond, he abandoned his scroll and ink, tucking them deep into the pouch at his side as his feet carried him like a feather on the air, entirely at the mercy of the voice calling out to him, drawing him further into the shadows of a glade he’d visited many a time when the world proved to be too much for him. 

It held memories of his tears every year on his begetting, when he felt the loss of his brother most keenly, a phantom limb that itched every time the sea crashed against the shores. It held the anger he’d spewed at his father, reigning from his place of honor in the skies as Elrond fell on bended knee and cursed him for abandoning them in his pursuit of the West. It held the pensive thoughts the nights he truly felt all 3500 of his years, age stretched out before him like frayed strings on a tapestry, remembering how it felt to hold a pen in his hand for the first time, followed by the rough shove of Elros as they sparred with live steel while a head of dark hair and a low voice watched from the shadows. The moments that happened over a thousand years ago, yet felt like an instant when he languished on them for too long. 

Now it held his latest curiosity. 

A song of honeyed wine and gentle winds, causing all of nature to cease its constant symphony and turn their ear. 

“Hello?” A crack of twigs beneath his feet. He winced. “Is anyone there?”

Naught but silence met his words. 

A breath. 

Then another. 

And then the silence broke.

She hadn’t pulled a rose, a rose,

A rose but only one

When then appeared him, young Tam Lin

Says ‘lady let alone’

The words are as unfamiliar to Elrond as the voice singing them, but still he cannot help himself as he curves around the entrance, snagging his fine cloak on shrubs and thorns as he pressed forward to see a figure standing in white in the middle of the glade.

It is a scene Elrond knows well. Of a man stumbling into a forest to find a woman singing and dancing alone against the sky, careless to any of her surroundings. 

Her hair weaves shadow with starlight and all of the birds have stopped their songs to listen to hers. She dances, barefoot and strange, like a lily on the wind and Elrond’s breath catches when her face—golden and shining—catches the sun. 

“Tinúviel?”

Her singing stops and she turns to look at him. 

The name leaves his lips faster than he can stop it. To give it to anyone else is near sacrilege, but as dark eyes meet his for the first time, he cannot bring himself to name her anything than what she is. 

There is little resemblance. 

Her skin is burnished gold where Luthien’s is pale silver, small where Luthien was tall, eyes wide and rounded like a fawn’s where his own—inherited from the elleth herself—were hooded and shaped like the stars. 

And finally, perhaps the most damning contrast of all. She was but a man, with rounded ears and a beating heart he can hear racing through her veins. 

Edain, not Eldar. 

She is not Lúthien Tinúviel. 

And yet he cannot find anything else to name her. 

She is lithe and frail, a curtain of darkness falling between the blades of her shoulders as she grasps her skirts and drops her foot to her side with an unblinking stare. There is something familiar, a tug in the back of his head, a puzzle slotting perfectly into place. And yet he knows this is the first and only time he’s seen her. 

Angel, she named him. 

Messenger, she called him. 

And when he told her his true name, her face paled in the orange of the twilight. And then she spoke hers, unusual and unfamiliar, yet he could not find anything to protest. 

“Maeåriana,” He spoke once, and the slight tilt of her lips and furrow of her brow alerted him to the fact he’d woefully mispronounced it. 

If it was elvish, it was none like he’d heard, with an even stranger meaning. ‘Well of sun and sea’ as the literal translation, but in his mind, with how it was conjugated, it would be more precise to say it meant ‘beauty of the sun and sea’. It fit her well, he later learned, chasing after her through the thicket of turning trees and stone roads until he found her staring out at the sea with a wide smile, dying rays of sunlight dappling her hair and illuminating her bronzed skin in a way that made Elrond wondering if this was what the Valar once beheld as they gazed upon the Laurelin. 

Now he sat across her at his former master's table with a steaming cup of herbal tea, listening intently as the woman described what led her to the Havens in the first place. 

She spoke of a great fire engulfing her home, burning it to the ground as she hastily tried to climb out her window or break open the door to no avail. She spoke of ash in her lungs and flames licking her skin, yet Elrond could see no earthly wounds to corroborate it. 

Whoever had healed her held remarkable skill. 

It made him want to flex his own hands again, to grind the herbs beneath his palms and stitch up skin until it left no mark. Clearly, whatever elven healer she was placed in the care of was an artist. It was a shame she did not know who had saved her from the flames, nor how she ended up in the glade. 

“I go to reach for the memory but all I find is blank space,” She spoke solemnly, a twinge to her tone he does not recognize warps her words, yet her westron is strong and knowledgable. “Snippets of breath in my lungs and the slow beat of a pulse, but…” Her eyes wander, far and away westward, over the rocky shores of the Havens and down the Straight Path, “I thought for sure I had died and somehow ended up in the afterlife.”

“Afterlife?” Elrond’s interest was thoroughly piqued. He’d heard tales in the halls of Edain of men who claimed to see a great light at the end of their lives. As an elf, he would never know such things, for he was destined for the Halls of Mandos, to await the Valar’s judgement before knowing what his own fate was to be. Forever tied to the Music of the Ainur and its woven thread through Arda. 

But Elros, in the waning years of his life, had written to him accepting what he called ‘the Gift’. A blessing to free him from this land and send him into the arms of another, where he would never walk the shores of Arda ever again. 

It was the only time Elrond truly regretted his choice to remain apart of the Eldar rather than join his brother among the race of men. 

The woman's face softened, dark eyes blinking slowly as they caught his elven ears in the low firelight. Realization washed over her. “Right, you don’t have those here. It’s like…” A small crease formed between her brows as she pinched them together in concentration, “Like your soul leaving your body and getting to join those who died before you in a place beyond this life. It’s better, brighter…” her face fell as she stared into the seashell shaped cup, “Sweeter.” She stirred the tea with her pinky finger, “Where all toil and hardship disappears and everyone is on equal footing, regardless of where they stood in life.”

If this was indeed the place Elros went to after death, Elrond understood why his brother saw it as a gift.

“It sounds wonderful.” He spoke softly, gently tracing the handle of his cup as he tried to catch her eye once more. They remained firmly on the leaves in front of her. 

“I hope it is.” 

Her words carry the melancholy of a much older woman, but he knows the Edain in front of him cannot be more than twenty. It is almost like he is looking at one of his peers gazing into the stretched out fabric of their age rather than discussing the fates of elves and men with a woman claiming to have risen from the dead. 

Elrond knows in his heart her story must be true. No one else would dare come up with such a fiction, and if they did, it wouldn’t have so many holes easily poked in it. At one time, he would have thought her constant mutterings of ‘I don’t know’ would have meant she was being elusive, but here, in the soft firelight of Círdan’s cabin, he can see her heart clearly. 

She is wounded, certainly, but evil does not take root in good soil. 

He wants to reach out a hand to her, to offer his condolences on what must have been an incredibly traumatic event for one of her kind. Elves could heal themselves as quickly as the sea crashes upon the shore, but for one of men to make it out of a place like that unscathed…

His fingers twitch, but his next words are cut off by the swinging of wooden doors and the clattering of a tool belt being slung across the back of a chair. 

“Ah, there you are Elrond, I wondered where you’d wandered off to.”

Círdan’s eyes—as bright as stars and just as keen—landed on the woman sitting at his table. He arched a brow and smiled. “I see you’ve brought home a new friend.”

Elbereth, not this again—

Maeåriana’s cup clatters against the finely polished table as she stands up in haste, “I’m terribly sorry sir, Elrond said—“

“No need, my lady,” Círdan reassures her as he dries his freshly washed hands with a smile, “A friend of my former apprentice is a welcome addition to this household. Especially one whose fairness outshines the sun.”

He can practically feel the tips of his ears turning the color of an overripe strawberry. 

Her eyes flit between Elrond and Círdan, as if trying to discern something neither of them know. 

Elrond takes a sip of tea, its calming effects allowing him to indulge in a bit more than he normally would, in the hopes of going unnoticed. 

“Are all elves so flirtatious or should I count myself lucky?”

Elrond nearly chokes on his tea as Círdan lets out a hearty laugh. 

“Mae govannen, my lady,” the Shipwright’s eyes twinkle as he stares between Elrond and the woman beside him, expecting an introduction Elrond does not know how to give. “Although, I must admit I grow weary of waiting for my nephew to remember his manners and introduce his guest by name.”

Her brow furrows as she takes another sip of tea, “Nephew?”

“Not by blood,” Elrond speaks up before the older elf can jump in, “Master Círdan knew my father, and taught me well in the art of woodcraft after my brother and I washed up on these shores with little more than our wits.”

Círdan grabbed the still hot kettle and poured himself a cup as well, “They were the tiniest ellons I had ever laid eyes on,” Elrond resisted the urge to roll his eyes as the shipwright settled himself directly across from his guest with a sly smile. Every time he told this story a detail changed. Elrond supposed it was more out of boredom than out of holding fast to memory. The man had the mind of a Valar, unable to be pierced or altered.  “I almost mistook them for men, until I came across this one in a very heated discussion with the Lady Galadriel.” 

His ears reddened. 

It was not a memory Elrond liked to relive. Back when he was more hot-headed than she should have been, back when Elros was still by his side and able to champion him when others could not.

“His quenya was appalling,” the statement seemed to draw some laughter from the dark-haired beauty, who was staring up at Círdan with wide eyes and barely concealed awe, “Stilted and stunted, he barely knew how to conjugate left from right,” Elrond resisted the urge to look up as Círdan’s eyes landed on him. The whole story was an embarrassment from start to finish. A culmination of everything Elrond had worked so long to put behind him. He’d taught himself the languages until he could quote every saga and poem from memory in both Quenya and Sindarin, tempered his hot-blood until it cooled into a soft trickle. “But I knew to whom he belonged to when I first laid my eyes on his face.”

“Let me guess,” Maeåriana jumped in as she leaned forward on crossed arms with a toothy grin, like it was a guessing game, “The beauty of Luthien dancing behind eyes of starlight.”

Círdan arched his brows. “You know your history well. But it was not Luthien’s likeness that drew my eye. Rather it was the striking resemblance he bore to his father, Eåriendil. I would swear upon the Valar that night my old friend was walking the earth with me once more.”

Elrond’s stomach stilled. 

It appeared this was the detail to be changed tonight. 

He withheld a sigh as he took another sip of his tea, the drink nearly having gone cold. 

Maeåriana’s gaze softened and she settled back against her seat with a sympathetic look. 

“I felt a kinship with them,” Círdan continued wistfully, tugging slightly at his beard as his eyes met Elrond’s once more, “And promised to mentor both of them in the ways of Lindon as best as I could.”

“That’s beautiful,” Her voice was barely above a whisper now, tea abandoned as she got lost in the stories of the old shipwright. 

It was a familiar feeling. One followed by the unknown pronunciation of her name once more. 

“Mariana,” She offered it freely, cheeks slightly rosy from the soft wind blowing in through the open windows. She presented her hand parallel to Círdan’s own, and he eyed it curiously before taking it in his own. 

Círdan, like Elrond before him, woefully mispronounced her name, which eventually led to the woman throwing her head back in laughter.

Elrond’s heart thumped against his chest. 

Bright and brassy, it reminded Elrond of the horns used to herald Gil-Galad’s entrance to court. It was loud and abrasive and drew all the attention of the room. And he found himself wishing to hear more. 

“Ma-h-ree-ah-nah,” She repeated slowly, emphasizing each word and syllable in an impromptu language lesson. The vowels were too rounded and the consonants too soft, but Elrond was pleased to hear their initial pronunciation wasn’t too far off. 

“Mariana,” He repeated for the third time. The look in her eyes told him he hadn’t quite mastered it, but had managed to come close enough for her liking. 

“You can call me Mari if it’s easier.”

“Mari,” Elrond repeated again. Yes, that was much easier. It allowed him to place emphasis on the twirls of the tongue without gnashing his teeth together. He didn’t understand. He’d met plenty of Edain before, and none of their names had ever given him this much trouble. 

Círdan pressed a pensive thumb to his chin as he leaned back in his chair, letting his gaze wash over the girl for a brief moment. “It is a strange name. I would assume it is not Quenya or Sindarin based on your reaction.”

Her chuckle was soft, like a feather drifting against the skin of the cheek, “No, it’s not. It’s origin comes from a language that no longer exists.”

Elrond’s chest panged. 

He knew it was a possibility. The idea that such a language would go extinct from lack of use or all its knowledge would pass out of memory. But to know it had happened, and there was an entire library of words and phrases he would never know… 

Something deep twinged in his chest and he clutched tight to the inkwell and parchment hidden inside the pockets of his robes. It made his work that much more important. 

Elves were blessed with long memories. He would ensure those languages lived on, even if he had to go through every dull scroll and book until a library of his translations existed for all to access. 

“May I ask what it means in this forgotten language of yours?” His own question surprised him, but he wished to know. What did it share with the language of the Eldar and where did it differ? What roots were planted in the seed of her name, blossoming as she did with the spring?

Her eyes drifted to him, brassy and bright laughter filling the air once more, “Well, see now that depends on who you ask.” Elrond’s brows pressed themselves together, trying to understand her meaning. “If you ask my mother she’ll tell you it means ‘beloved’ and claim it was a way to honor the legacy name of my grandmother.”

“Legacy name?” Círdan asked, curiosity sparking in his eyes. 

Mari took another sip of tea, “Yeah, it’s an old naming tradition passed down through the family.” She explained, gesticulating wildly as she drew imaginary lines in the wood grain, “The oldest daughter in each family had the middle name ‘Anne’ or ‘Anna’, so my mother decided to keep that tradition going with me, but added it to the first name rather than have it be a whole separate thing.”

Elrond had heard of men naming their offspring after one another, so that didn’t confound him nearly as much as the idea of a ‘middle name’ did. From the way she phrased it, it seemed to be the Edain’s version of their mother-name and father-name. Two different ones for two different contexts. 

“Of course, if you ask linguists what my name means, you’ll be stuck in an argument with them for days.” She rolled her eyes as though exhausted, but Elrond could spy a small twitch to her lips as they formed a smirk, “Some will say it comes from the root for war, some will say it comes from the root for bitter, but many will say it comes from the root for the sea and then its’ just argument after argument after argument.”

Círdan chuckled lightly at that, no doubt recalling his younger days when the elves of Valinor would no doubt get into the same spats regarding Quenya and Telerin and Sindarin. 

“But my favorite was always my father’s,” Mari’s eyes reflected the amber of the firelight, turning them golden. She let out a contended sigh as her gaze flickered over to the window overlooking the harbor, “He said it meant ‘star of the sea’ and then of course proceeded to call me that for the rest of my life.”

Her smile faded and suddenly Elrond remembered why she was here. Why she was sitting across from him shivering in a thin silk robe telling them about her name and archaic languages that no longer existed. 

“In our tongue, we would have called you ‘Gil-Aer’ or perhaps ‘Eleårien’” Círdan interjected with a kind smile. The elder elf’s eyes never left the woman sitting across from him, but they held no judgement or suspicion. They were simply kind and curious as they always had been. 

Elrond recalled too many days when those eyes were cast upon him in understanding rather than judgement. And when he would fail, when he and Elros had gotten into trouble or done something worth judging, it had been those eyes which bore into their fea, ripping the guilt out from under them and forcing a confession without so much as a word. 

Now the weight of that stare was pressed against Mari’s shoulders, but she bore it well and with a smile that threatened Elrond’s breath, hitching nearly every time it danced across her face. 

“Your words are beautiful, but I struggle to understand them,” Mari confessed with a blush, “It’s gibberish, in one ear and out the other.”

Elrond’s brow furrowed deeper as he leaned forward, trying to decipher the word she’d spoken. It was nonsense to him, unrecognizable and incomprehensible. He tried to push the consonants together like she had, but all he succeeded in doing was trip over his tongue. 

His attempt made her laugh, however, and Elrond supposed it wasn’t entirely wasteful. 

“I have never known one name to have so many meanings,” He confessed with a low chuckle, drawing another smile from her. Her language sounded arduous and inelegant, and yet there was something to be said about linguists languishing over what the root or morpheme could mean even after it had all but disappeared. 

“The downside of a dead language is that there’s nothing left to correct one and contradict the other,” Mari spoke with a spark of mischief, but the phrase turned Elrond’s heart to stone.

Dead Language. 

He’d never heard it before and it made him shudder. As an elf, he did not fear the word as so many of the race of men did. One day he would sail west and be judged, but that was not death. But what she talked about seized his heart in a way he’d never experienced before. 

“What do you mean dead?” Elrond summoned the courage to ask. He’d never been one to deny his curiosity after all.

Mari turned to meet his gaze and he was struck by the sadness in her eyes. “You know, extinct. Gone. No one left alive who speaks it or understands it. It’s dead.”

“You speak it,” He urged.

She blinked and her smile faded, “Is that what you think I speak?”

Her question lingered in the air, a blade threatening to cut the invisible line of tension between them, but she provided no answer. Nor did Elrond follow his curiosity. 

A small piece of his chest twinged at what she described. 

How lonely it must be, he thinks, to know the words of your people will never be spoken again in living memory. To know the last of their voices were buried under stone in the the ground or washed away at sea. He thinks of the elves and when they finally leave their shores. 

Will there be any left to speak the names of his kin? Or will Quenya and Sindarin suffer the same fate at this unknown language of men?

“And what is it you speak, Mariana of…” Círdan’s lilt left his trailing thoughts open ended. A question for her question. The shipwright arched his brow as he looked at her. 

Mari’s eyes darted between them, narrowed and artful as Elrond could see the wheels in her mind begin to turn. 

Círdan hadn’t heard her story. Hadn’t given her the chance to tell it. 

Now he was.

But his words brought up something Elrond hadn’t quite considered yet. Mari mentioned home. Clearly a wooden house or cottage of some kind if it was so easy to set aflame, with glass panes and access to tools. But she’d never said where it was. 

She danced carefully around the subject, almost masterfully, he thought. Plenty of Edain had found themselves too close to the shores of the Grey Havens, helped by the kindness of elves and the beauty of the harbor. None, however, had claimed to die. 

And Elrond had found himself lost in the sunlight of her beauty, his own curiosity died in his throat as she continued to weave word after masterful word of her circumstances while never truly speaking honestly. 

The knife fell and the string between them snapped. 

“Westmarch,” She spoke with a sly tongue and a twinkling eye, “Just outside the far downs.”

Círdan surveyed her carefully, “Is that what you call it?” Silence met his words and the shipwright hummed. “You are very lucky to have found yourself in my nephew’s care.”

“Oh, I know,” She replied with a smirk.

Elrond stared between the two and suddenly it felt like he was back in the High Court of Lindon, officials playing their games and spinning their courtly songs, never truly saying what they mean. It seemed this Edain knew their craft well. 

“Come, Elrond,” Círdan slapped a hand against his shoulder, grasping it tight enough to pull him back to the moment at hand, “We must show our guest to her new quarters.”

“What?” Elrond and Mari both spoke at the same time.

They locked eyes as Círdan’s chair scraped the floor.

His stomach jumps into his throat. 

Her smirk vanishes from her face.

Círdan laughed.