Further Tales Of Elbereth's Bounty

Title: Further Tales Of Elbereth’s Bounty – Rohrith’s Tale, Part 2
Author: Gloromeien
Email: swishbucklers@hotmail.com
Pairing: multiple OMC/OMC, Tathren/Echoriath, references to Legolas/Elrohir, Glorfindel/Elladan
Summary: This is a companion piece to Of Elbereth’s Bounty, which takes place between the action of the final chapter (16) and the epilogue, set centuries in the future. Some of the characters from OEB deserved to have their own stories wrapped up outside of the actual narrative of that tale. This particular tale, along with Ciryon’s Tale, concern the majority rites of two of Tathren’s triplet brothers.
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimers: Characters belong to that wily old wizard himself, Tolkien the Wise, the granddad of all 20th century fantasy lit. I serve at the pleasure of his estate and aim not for profit.
Author’s Note: While I think parts of this story can be understood on their own, I think it better to read the whole cycle, or at least Of Elbereth’s Bounty, to completely understand the world I’ve created and the character histories. The series is as follows: Part One is ‘In Earendil’s Light’, Part Two is ‘Under the Elen’, and the vastly larger Part Three is ‘Of Elbereth’s Bounty’.
Feedback: Would be delightful.
Dedication: To Eresse, as always.

***************

Further Tales Of Elbereth’s Bounty

Rohrith’s Tale – Part Two

Early Summer, Year 260, Fourth Age

The surgery was swathed in the warm, metallic scent of blood, flint-sharp with adrenaline and as coolly fragrant as a flask of Forochel ice wine. Purple gore was crusted over the front of his tunic, was flecked over his sleeves and was spattered over his neck, blaming him as predator. The table before him was nearly varnished with a thick crimson glaze, but naught could compare to the filmy, teary red he saw when he marked his own ghostly reflection in the scalpel’s blade.

Dioren held fast against self-disgust; this was no time for either grief or glowering.

Rohrith’s listless body was laid out on the table before him, limp and ragged as doll abused by the love of an over-exuberant child. Drifting from moment to moment between a beatific lucidity and a humble forbearance, his titan-hearted friend focused himself on the steady accomplishment of constant breaths, on the maintenance of wakefulness, on the grateful endurance of Elrond and Erestor’s fleet but gutting ministrations. As their agile fingers repeatedly dabbed a clotting cloth over the clean-sliced edges of his severed abdomen, purified the wound with spirits, and sewed their patient’s belly back together, he murmured a warrior’s chant to himself, to stave off the excoriating pain. Elrond had not dared administer a tranquilizing draught to his already overexerted grandson, lest his fea slip away to Mandos in that heady, drugged sleep. Unwilling to distract Rohrith from his lynch-pin concentration, Elrond had only once murmured, with the first, terrible prick of his needle, that the young swordsmith was bearing through this trouble with Elrohirian poise. Other than a slight quiver of lip, Elrond had received no other response from his resolute patient.

Rohrith’s hand was trenched in Dioren’s grasp like an anchor in the sand amidst the riptide. The only quaver in his focal hold came when his black velvet eyes looked to Dioren. They were so mercifully gentle that the peredhil would have wept, had he not himself been so adamantly committed to supporting his friend, to praying for his survival. Though the acid tongue of guilt was by the second rusting over the walls of his stomach, corroding his innards to nasty orange dust, though the skin of his heart still fumed from the traitor-brand his grievous deed had singed there, he had careened his yet swimming senses into a single, determined flow long enough to steer his friend through this calamity. On countless occasions, their roles had been reversed; Dioren had known succor such that Elbereth herself might beg to be indulged in. He could not now give in to the fugue that burned the back of his eyes, that bit at the edges of his perception with brilliant, twinkling fangs. He must suffer as Rohrith was; if not through bodily maiming, then through the consistent and relentless flagellation of his soul.

He could no longer ignore the truth, as vivid and visceral as the pools of Rohrith’s blood around his prone form. He was a menace.

A curse was wrung from Rohrith’s sallow lips, as a viscous bile gurgled from the wound. The initial cut had been deep, but mostly superficial, his vital organs were unblemished. Some spirits, however, had spilt onto his liver; a mostly harmless trip of tense fingers, except for the searing fire it incited within the patient. His afflicted stomach instinctively convulsed, but Rohrith valiantly swallowed back the spew, the effort squeezing teardrops from the corner of his clenched eyes. Dioren wiped these away with a pristine tissue – the only unsullied rag in the entire surgery – tormented all the more by the shameful repercussions of his berating reverie, even though it had been Erestor who slipped with the alcohol.

Corralling himself to the task at hand, he petted the length of Rohrith’s arm with brisk sweeps, hoping to further distract him. No babbling tales nor swordbrother songs were needed when their eyes locked; Rohrith’s were hard as pearls with fearsome, undaunted spirit. Their piercing obsidian stare struck to the core of him. Lost in the endless black well of their depths, Dioren understood, then, that even in such dire straits it was Rohrith who was keeping him moored in harbor, his senses from being cottoned in by fog and his mind from drifting out to sea. A steel grip nearly broke his hand, as those onyx eyes demanded his attention, his allegiance, his compliance in his own protection. With one bold look, Rohrith commanded him to stay alert to his own vulnerability, to keep safe whilst his chief guardian recuperated, to overcome the misery of his own guilty conscience and to fight for his bright future. Worst of all, in those scintillating midnight climes a radiant forgiveness sparked, starlit and ethereal, an off-splinter of the Lady’s own benevolence. With a wink sweetened by his strained smile, he erased any wrong with which Dioren could charge himself and silently pledged anew to their eternal friendship.

In that blithe moment, Rohrith seized a strangle-hold upon his birthright as Elrohirion and entitled himself with the gracious legacy of his sire, the Elf-Knight.

With a mewl of defeat, Dioren sagged on his rickety stool, his head suddenly as weighty as a runic stone. The sickly kiss of his bleak mistress fugue besotted him with a cozy numbness; the blank aftermath of his visionary spell beckoned him from the otherworld. His want of sentience, of wellness, was so thick in his mouth that he almost spat at the air around him, but in his weariness he knew he was powerless to resist. With Rohrith’s blessing affirmed, he would sink into the mire, to forget forever the murky woods, the ephemeral presence of his unknown companion, the creature’s upraised sword that had caused him to unwittingly strike his friend. He would be a scroll untainted by ink, his early memories embedded therein, but invisible. Only the sight, upon the fugue’s breaking, of his wounded friend would remind him of his deed, though the guilt would be summoned swiftly enough and Rohrith’s absolution would require a desperate repetition. As he dropped his dear friend’s clammy hand and staggered back apace, he could not induce a further thought from conception into action, so dense and drooping was he.

“Grandsire,” Rohrith rasped assertively, his face awash with sorrow. “Look to Dioren.”

Two cloaked ravens flew by him, fluttering about their injured brother with warming caws and clucks. When his legs gave way, arms lithe and limber scooped him up, cradling him as a bud on a bough. The misty, fertile scent of wood-elf roused him some, enough for Dioren to perceive that he was being carried off to the ward, to the welcoming sheets of a cot, then rocked quite tenderly to sleep by – astoundingly – Legolas himself.

His last thought was something akin to relief, before the fugue frosted over him.

***

The giggles lured him back from the nothingness, mad and manic peals of them that echoed through the patient’s ward, like bubbles floating on the breeze. As innocent and enrapturing as an elfling’s elated trills, the giddy laughter poked at his somnolent mind until it was goaded into wakefulness. A groggy, meandering wakefulness, but a mostly cognizant one. Dioren was leaden upon his cot, his muscles creaky and his throat choked with phlegm. His head was typically stuffed with cotton, such that he could naught but reason he awoke from a fugue, of indeterminable length but of considerable potency, if his body’s doleful response was accurate measure.

For a time, he collected memories as elven children collect stray leaves, woozily piecing together the moments before his lapse. Fear shot through him such that he wrenched upright, until he realized that the cackling elf in the cot beside was, indeed, Rohrith.

Unnoticed for the present, he lay back to observe his friend awhile, or more specifically the damage done. His middle was cocooned in a thick, gauzy bandage, which stank from the usual mullseed compress within. Rohrith’s face was not a whit invigorated by his strange hysteria, his look gaunt and his skin bleached to a startling pallor, even as his features grimaced in delight. Dioren could not quite fathom what matter was so mirth-inducing as to utterly besot him with glee, since there was not another elf in sight save the two of them.

After some casual reflection, a thought flared bright; one that might similarly incite him into a giggle-fit. For one so often beset by gaps in his own memory, Dioren had seized upon the answer more acutely than even the esteemed Lord of Telperion. He wondered that Elrond was not aware of his grandson’s peculiar reaction to sleeping draughts, which far from easing him into repose, had an altogether opposite effect upon his beleaguered person, as was only too evident from his present state of overabundant merriment.

His sentient mind still buffered from the harshness of circumstance – and his most dreadful part in it – by the last, lingering clouds of fog, Dioren lurched off his own cot and all but crawled over to Rohrith’s side. His friend’s focus was so scattershot that he went mostly unremarked, even as he gathered his considerable peredhil bulk into a nearby chair. As if slowly sinking into a scalding bath, Dioren allowed the shame of his earlier, injurious actions to well up within him, suffering every whip, claw, and smack of self-berating anew. Although he also remembered Rohrith’s cutting-table forgiveness, one glance at his broken body blinded him to the image of that genteel smile, those rapt obsidian eyes. He did not in his wildest imaginings deserve such a friend as this one before him, who blessed him with every clutch of support, every encouraging word, every second at his side.

He would not need to ponder the matter of his worthiness for long yet. This last, gutting action had sealed his fate. He would not be allowed to repay a moment of that kindness, not because he was not overwhelmed with gratitude, but for the sanctity of the one he held in such regard. This was, perhaps, the last time he would lay such unguarded eyes upon his goodly friend. Dioren himself nearly hoped for this, such was the indignity of his treacherous act. No parent in their right mind would grant one so hazardous as he further access to their son, no father was so misguided, no mother so pathetically foolish. That he had been blessed with the time before, that he had known the blitheness of Rohrith’s friendship for so long, was a miracle in itself. Even if those in this noble house were indeed blind to the dangers of his condition – for they were an incredibly honorable lot – he himself will not conscionably imperil his bosom friend, not for either of his wretched lives.

Bleak as the out-spread future seemed without Rohrith’s sun peaking over the horizon, Dioren would remain in the cold. He was a marginal creature at the best of times, skirting the limits of society, until he had been dragged into its seething heart by the boundless care of his friend. Yet for all Rohrith’s tireless efforts, he was still a specter; a formless, ephemeral thing better cast in shadow. There, he could mutate into his final form. He could feed on the darkness that had born him into this second life, exist for the last of his time as this bisected, monstrous spirit, for Dioren did not truly believe that his two souls would meld, that he would come to know his whole self. He would retreat from elven society if only to save Rohrith his despair, after the passing of Dioren’s majority left him perpetually haunted. It was enough to know he had his fondest affection, his platonic devotion.

It was enough to have been his friend a golden while.

As the onset of clarity burned through his misty mind, Dioren smiled upon his friend. He ached with the realization that, in their final moments together, Rohrith would be the one with addled-brain and roving focus, but Dioren could not chance a confrontation with his regular, impetuous and unyielding self. He would be gutted with misery at the loss of that bright flame’s balming warmth, but he would bear through his shivers, all-too-deservedly suffer the chill, until Mandos welcomed him to eternity. There were no more manly descendants to sire him anew, even should his mother be released. Perhaps he would find a home there, with her ghost. Ever had he belonged to the waiting halls; even to the present day, he had not entirely quit them. His elfling self mewled and bleat through their ominous passageways, calling him back to the shadows.

He would go presently.

With an urgent clasp to Rohrith’s hand, Dioren begged his friend’s swimming attention. Rohrith grinned euphorically at the swaying sight of him, folding his hand snugly between his forearms. The fringe of the bandage tickled the wispy hairs of his arm, another flirty reminder of the wrongdoing his friend had suffered for him. Yet at his dark frown, Rohrith whimpered sympathetically.

“I feared for your wellness,” the darkling elf whined, to Dioren’s never-ending dismay. “Ada-Las said you fainted away in his arms.”

“I am well enough,” Dioren dismissed his concern. “Fear not for me, gwador. Think only of your own health, of your own recovery. I am so sorry, my friend, for my carelessness-“

“Hush,” Rohrith ordered, but gently. “Tis but a scratch.” He was struck by a rolling chuckle. “The Valar thought but to chasten me some, to cure me of my thoughtless daring. They grow weary of my wiles.”

This last piqued him anew, and he giggled infectiously. Were Dioren not so somber, he might have joined in.

“You are the very instrument of their will to ever show me such kindness,” Dioren murmured, with heartbreaking earnestness. “Such concern and always such incredible care. You must know, gwador-nin, before sleep does take hold, of my… my endless gratitude for your presence in my life. For your example and your encouragement. If you had not befriended me, I would have known no sweetness in the world. I will…I will treasure the memory of our times together. Eternally.”

“Such pain, meldiren,” Rohrith muttered, distracted as he was. “I could never conscience such acute suffering, even when ripped open. Must I bleed again, to soften you?”

“Nay,” Dioren whispered, entirely overcome. “I will take leave of you, gwador, though it guts me to do so. You will never again bleed at my hand. At my bedeviled sword.”

Dioren was nearly heartsick at the confused look foist upon him, struggling as it was to fully comprehend the meaning beneath his solemn pronouncement. No calming draught nor sip of spirits could have prepared him, however, for the words that followed suit.

“You must take heart, Dioren,” Rohrith reassured him. “I could not rightly shun one whose company I crave so. I will ever keep you by my side.”

“I am the most wretched thing you ever held dear,” Dioren emphatically pronounced, somewhat disturbed by his familiar tone. “You must release me to the wilds, Rohrith, for your safe-keeping. Forget me.”

A stray hand, though lazy with weakness, touched to his cheek.

“You are of a luminous loveliness, even in sorrow,” Rohrith languidly declared. His eyes suddenly shone like the most bedazzling obsidian stone, sparkling with raw, relentless emotion. “How is it than so radiant an elf can be so treacherously unaware of his own comeliness? Of the utterly besotting power of his person?” Warmed to his subject and oblivious to Dioren’s gaping shock, Rohrith blazed on with conviction. “How is it that such a sterling soul wastes his charms on the most insipid maids in the vale, when he is so hotly coveted by shipwrights, builders, and swordsmiths alike, whose loving would sear away even the most cloying brume? It unravels me nightly, lirimaer, to think of you… of you rutting away with care only for completion, when you could be so ecstatically filled, so… so bliss-drunk!”

“B-bliss… drunk…?” Dioren muttered, smacked dumb by his brazen admission of regard.

“Though of ethereal countenance,” Rohrith meandered on, his smile broadening with every second he could bask in the glaring perusal of Dioren’s astonished features. ”You are blessed with a sinuous sensuality, but ever shroud in mystery. Others long to unravel you, to delve into your secret places and know you from within.” If he had not already made his desire overt, his next words could not honestly be mistook. “*I* have thusly longed… but ever been denied. Why should those who gave you not a whit of care, who never stood vigil by your bedside nor succored you through a raging spell have the privilege of giving you pleasure? If you wish to speech about my suffering, then you must add to your dour toll how I have pined, broiled, and been raucously tormented, how I nearly faded from want of you!” Rohrith sighed quite contentedly at the end of this litany, as if the very utterance of the emotion gave him some measure of peace.

Dioren, however, was desperately fraught.

“The drug has dulled your wits, gwador,” he tried to coo, but it came out like a squeak. “It has befuddled your mind.”

“Tis you who are befuddled,” Rohrith shook his head with giddy conviction. “Sated in body, but of a restless mind, even after your so-called sweeps of passion. Tis not lust that drives you to a maiden’s bed, but mental relief. Spiritual distraction. You have not known even the barest hint of love, Dioren; indeed, your exploits often seemed to sadden you more than hearten. You jest to cover your awkwardness and take false pride in virility, but have you ever truly been affected by another’s touch? By their mere presence? By the most fleeting sight of them? For I am so afflicted when I but think upon you. Even if you are not fated to return my love, I want only for your happiness, and as your dearest friend, I greatly fear it will not be found in the arms of a maid. You want for something… more commanding. I sense it keenly when we spar. Tis for this your mind retreats into a fugue. Twas most plainly felt, this day.”

Despite his flaring reservations, Dioren was flagrantly struck by this too-pointed statement. His buried hands began to tremble, then to shake, his earlier chore of bidding farewell to his friend entirely forgotten in the fray of provocation, of realization.

“Tis cruel to… to be so… sharp,” he sputtered.

“One who has weathered your trials is no delicate bloom,” Rohrith dismissed. “You give no credit to your resilience, though it be far overdue. I could not so esteem one of unpalatable weakness, you know me well enough to know the truth of this. Even if I will never know of your care… I would that you embrace a love that will pierce into the core of your heart, that will bless you with a wholeness never even glimpsed, even in our blithe friendship. You need not fear my scorn should such a commendable event occur, meldiren, for I want only for your own peace of mind.” This last he pledged with eyes of luring velvet, so gorgeously enveloping that Dioren feared he had fallen into one of his own spells and was conjuring up the entire encounter. “Ever will you be the focus of my care, my protection, regardless of future ills that might beset you. Ever, maltaren-nin, will you be the finest and most beauteous of elves in my too-loving regard.”

Dizzy from the continuous, pummeling blows of his friend’s lightheaded conversation, Dioren fell to his knees before the bed. He clutched at the sheets, at Rohrith’s iron hold, but could not further bear the adoring glitter of those onyx eyes. He penitently bowed his head, silently praying to Elbereth, to each of the panoply of deities within the Valar above, for guidance, for wisdom in this watershed moment between him and his great friend. He was so intent on subjugation that he did not note the rustle between the sheets before him, nor the tender touch that stroked down the side of his face and gently lifted his shuddering chin.

Not until those velveteen eyes were as two black, pearlescent moons before him and a plump pair of satin lips smoothed over his own did he break from supplication, only to be kissed with an effect and ardor heretofore unknown. All sense of shame, of worry, even of self was obliterated by that lush embrace, its purity of such resonance he was breathtaken.

A flick of tongue laved along the inner ridge of his lips, hot breath lured him into sultry climes. A luscious taste, such that one might gorge upon for endless hours, teased at him, but pulled away before he could be properly indulged. Still giggling kisses were fluttered around his mouth, but he was denied even the most chaste suckling. He had not yet quite figured why he would want to suckle his friend’s lips, nor why he was suddenly quite so desperate to peruse the texture of his tongue and to feast upon that maddeningly sweet taste. He only had wits enough to indefinitely delay his planned leave-taking, if only to know fully of such rapturous pleasures.

Dioren was, as never before, so utterly besot by feeling that he quite gladly relinquished his sentience and gave himself entirely to fiercely surging emotion.

Rohrith broke off with a groan of discomfort; he had strained his abdomen in leaning so. Dioren eased him onto his back, shook his head to clear it, but to no avail. He was entranced. He beamed a doting smile down upon his sickly friend, licking his lips to savor the remnants of that taste, that tongue. Nearly listless with fatigue, Rohrith seemed almost entirely unaware of what had just transpired; he groped about for Dioren’s hand until a firm, possessive hold twined over his.

“Sleep, my dear one,” Dioren whispered, before softing a kiss over his cheek.

Frazzled and thoroughly mystified by these last few moments, as well as by his emphatic response to them, he gazed upon the darkling elf for a longly while, battling to make coherent sense of the emotions swirling within, to understand what newly sprung current rushed through his meager veins. Dioren had always suspected that the curse of elven duality would be known to him, if only because his very nature was split twain. He vowed to wait-out Rohrith’s recovery before questing with him towards an undisclosed conclusion, the weight of his true vocation of sudden, stunning clarity to him.

Dioren was charged with keeping his heart safe. This hallowed task was unknowingly bequeathed to him long ago, and he had used the tender organ woefully, but no longer. Twas for this that spell beset him when it did, for this that the Valar let Rohrith be hurt at his hand. He had begged them for revelation, for completion. They had gifted him with an enigma for the ages: to know the lost recesses, the abandoned caverns of his cleft heart. To know in present tense another’s passion, to somehow reconcile this with tragedies past. To know of himself, through the challenge of accepting, if not retuning, another’s love.

Dioren prayed, with renewed conviction, that wholeness might be his at last.

**************************************

One Week Later

A humid, yet gusty breeze blew through the open doors of their bedchamber balcony. The cindery scent of brimstone, swept down from the mines upon distant Taniquetil, laced the effervescent smell of moss, moist bark, and ripe fertility from the forest far below. This confluence of odors, climates, and conflicting environments had moved them to build their talan so high, their floors ever flirting with the unreachable treetops. Warriors at heart, they loved to watch the thunderclouds roll forth like a filmy gray infantry, feel the bruise of the wind at full blast, watch over their resplendent wood as if perched in the crow’s nest of a ship. The experience of this seasonal clash was of elemental necessity to them, as vital as the reaffirmation of their binding vow through bodily love.

A relentless pursuit that still, after centuries of devotion, kept them as dewy as newlyweds. As one of the veteran couples that inhabited the vale, Glorfindel and Elladan were not immune to the pride they undoubtedly drew from the admiration of younger lovers at the strength and the affection of their binding. Their once troubled and, unfortunately, oft recycled tale was referenced on countless occasions by those spurned, stricken, and anguished by the one they held dearest of all. Many of these fledgling suitors, in their frantic desperation, would be pushed to themselves seek out one of the hardy pair, for advisement unparalleled among brash, soldier-types. Glorfindel in particular found this phenomenon highly amusing, as he had been by far the least valiant, the most mule-headed, and in truth the ignorant beloved to Elladan’s grieving trueheart. Yet he would neither discourage these younglings from consulting him; he would merely take careful pains to give credit where it would forever be due, to his strident, gallant, and gorgeous mate.

When summoned to Dioren’s aid, however, Glorfindel had finally recognized that none but he alone was as expertly suited to advise the fraught, beleaguered young peredhil.

The mellifluous scent of yasbrinth blossom mingled with the breeze, emanating from the oil - sizzling with the restorative herbs mixed into its concoction - being so sensuously kneaded over his skin. His beloved mate, knowing instinctively how the last week’s trials had taxed him both mentally and physically, had arranged one of his all-too-rare evenings of slow, luxurious massage. Elladan had worked over enough muscle-strained soldiers in his time to be both deft and proficient at his task. Better yet, he adored his husband such that even the most brusque stroke was as intimate as a caress between them, a show of care both accomplished and tender.

Though Elladan’s intent was for the moment remedial and relaxing, not seductive, he could not help but pepper Glorfindel’s broad shoulders, crowning mane, or soft of knee with the occasional kiss. As lionhearted as they come in all other aspects of his life, Elladan was ceaselessly unmoored by the abject worship of his mate and effected it relentlessly, such as with these stolen kisses. In private quarters, he was often as pliant as a lamb, though ever driven by the insatiable need to be possessed by his beloved, to be filled with him, to be of one flaming soul. Once embroiled in lovemaking, this sense of urgency never entirely quit him; when gifting his husband with such chaste ministrations as this, such spontaneous flutters of affection were expected, as his fierce love could never entirely be tamed.

Glorfindel was only too thrilled to give himself to such an impassioned, madly amorous lover, especially after such an exhausting time; possibly the most strenuous of his entire rebirth.

That Dioren resisted treatment with a ferocity that tripled his own, in more unenlightened times, only rallied him further to his cause. To be sure, Dioren’s resistance was all the more impossible to combat for its being unconscious, but Glorfindel had not faced the fiery Balrog that was his own fears of earnest, eternal love of another without gaining a considerable emotional arsenal. Thus, as Dioren’s emergent self feinted at control, retreated into his fugues, and struck out through haunting visions from the wasteland of his early memories, Glorfindel patiently and effectively smoked him out. His accidental eviscerating of Rohrith had forced Dioren into a pledge of compliance so unimpeachable as to be nearly binding. In but a week’s time, their compact, which involved visceral sessions of meditation, lucid hypnotism, and the exorcism of his keenest fears, had budded, if not entirely born, some embittered fruit. With cautious, considerate steps, they traveled together through the labyrinthine layers of trauma hidden within Dioren’s past and present existence, a much more convoluted structure of afflictions, incidents, and parental rejection than Glorfindel had ever thought possible among one of elf kind.

Dioren, however, was not entirely an elf, a fact which had caused him to be inflicted with the scorn of his peers in the formative years of both his lives. Twas little wonder that he reinvented himself, when the chance arose, as Rohrith’s shadow; too needful of support to be fool enough to reject his friendship, but yet too besieged by thoughts of unworthiness to believe himself equal. For this one of so many reasons, he could not embrace the love Rohrith so blatantly bore him, nor the long-dormant feelings Glorfindel suspected had been kindled within him by this latest incident. From what little Dioren had remembered of his past life – at present, merely brief glimpses of happier times and a spare sketch of his home environment – Glorfindel could intuit that his elfling self had been no great lover of maids, but whenever he urged Dioren into the shadier areas of his memory, where lurked events both sultry and brute, he instantly snapped out of his trance, or seeped into a fugue.

Dioren himself had become frustrated at this tendency, as it kept him from knowing what had incited his attack on Rohrith; though ever was he hotly aggravated by his weakness and his indecipherability. His mounting dissatisfaction had greatly impeded their progress that very afternoon. Dioren had kept vigil by Rohrith’s bedside the previous night long and, rendered insomniac by stressing over his friend’s yet enfeebled state, had once again viciously whipped himself from within for this unpreventable action and its grievous consequences. That morn, he had burst into their private session room famished for some sliver of result, some crumb of progress, but his own riled attitude had even further destabilized his typically brittle command over his pernicious senses. By the end of the day, he had beat his knuckles bloody, ripping the skin clean off the mounds of his left hand with a deft punch to the wall, after wrenching awake from a foggy vision of a dulcet walk through the Mirkwood. Part of Dioren understood that his psyche would not be fully penetrated without first embracing patience in their explorations, but his nightly visitations with a slumbering Rohrith always revivified his sense of emergency, his need to know in an instant what might take months, if not years, to uncover.

Worse yet, Glorfindel was nearly certain that there was some errant fact, some missing link in the playing out of their relationship that further impelled his charge to so relentlessly chase true recovery. When directly confronted, Dioren had only barked: ‘Is the maiming of my dearest friend not cause enough?’ Glorfindel’s suspicions remained intact, but he knew better than to press the issue. Dioren was beset by a relentless downpour of pressure from sources well-known and only guessed at, as his counselor and as his guardian he would not add to the will-battering surge.

This had led Glorfindel to a regretful, but crucial, decision. Initially, he had been inordinately reluctant to refuse Dioren the right to see Rohrith, despite the weighty urging of his Lord. There had been no objections from Elrohir, Legolas, Nenuial, or his twin brothers as to the fact that Rohrith’s attacker be allowed into his recovery room, all were too enlightened for such preposterous talk and knew well it would be beyond the patient’s own wishes. Elrond, however, had ventured the theory that Rohrith’s progress might be aversely affected by his friend. They were, after all, thick as thieves, and Rohrith was perhaps perilously aware of his friend’s suffering. Knowing the brash young elf as they did, he would no doubt force his own progress, anxious as he would be to attend to his guilt-wrecked friend. The point, though a valid one, was rendered moot by, of all things, scheduling. As their sessions spanned the day long, unbroken except for a brief noontime meal taken in the room itself, Dioren would only be able to visit Rohrith at night. Rohrith’s condition improved quite slowly, to everyone’s great concern, so he was rarely awake past late afternoon and, in his few moments of sentience, was appeased by brief tales of Dioren’s renewed dedication to his own wholeness. Elrond had come to fear that his grandson was stricken by his friend’s absence and this impeded his recovery, but Brithor and Ciryon had quickly disabused him of this notion. They assured him that their brother was more or less spiritually peaceful; the injury had been severe.

The time had come, however, to distance the two friends. Dioren suffered too savagely at the constant reminder of his witless attack on his friend, he required sanctuary from this particular pain, from the bleak self-image conjured of his bisected self. Glorfindel would require his company on a brief expedition to the shore, merely for a fortnight, where Elladan was needed to inspect the state of construction on the new portside town. Tathren would be there, as well, to counsel his charge on the realities of a peredhil’s voracious libido, come majority, and to suggest some remedial activities tailored to the further realities of his affliction. This, Glorfindel hoped, would be a welcome distraction from more trenchant issues, as well as a chance for some necessary physical exertion. No peredhil of Dioren’s insurgent development needed to spend days at a time cooped up in a middling room, when there could be surf to swim, game to hunt, and a wide expanse of beach over which to vent his frustrations. If Dioren could be convinced of its benefits, Glorfindel did not doubt that he could reach a plateau of stability on this short trip, perhaps even a small measure of inner-revolution.

His own lagging spirits buoyed by this hopefulness, Glorfindel hushed his racing mind, instead focusing on the sultry sweep of Elladan’s now covetous touch over his firm buttocks. He thought of a time when he himself had rather pig-headedly refused the blessing of such pleasures, then thanked the gods for giving him will enough to best his fears and to embrace the peerless love of his forever mate. Without the warmth of his Elladan to berth him, life would be harsh indeed.

As he caught his husband’s balm-slick hand, as he teasingly caressed its fragrant palm, he vowed that he would not rest until his stubborn charge also knew the rapture of such a love.

For he was convinced that Dioren’s hassled spirit already knew of its mate, even if the half-elf did not.

************************************

Without so much as a creak of the door, Elrohir slipped into the Healing Halls. With careful steps, he glided over to the entrance to the patient’s ward. He loomed for a time under the archway, observing his dearly son’s restless repose awhile, caught in rapt examination of his current condition.

Rohrith had struggled into wakefulness late the previous morn, flush with a light fever. His wound burned and seethed something awful, which promised of its mending but was a constant torment to one already so overwhelmed by fatigue. His proud son, impetuous as ever despite his injury’s waylaying, had nearly bit his tongue through when his grandsire had applied a new, more potent wrap that afternoon, swallowing curses and almost losing consciousness. Unlike the last seven days, however, the simmering pain had kept him from necessary rest, though sleep pressed just as weightily upon him. Ragged with exhaustion, he had violently abused his grandsire when a draught was suggested; its giddy effects so shaming to him that he would rather suffer prolonged wakefulness than be so idiotically besotted by false mirth. Elrohir had tucked his shocking reaction away for later reflection and urged his father, whose eyes brimmed with tears at his grandson’s scathing words though he knew too well of their incidental provenance, to leave Rohrith to his brothers’ care. Curling up beside their upstart twin, Ciryon and Brithor had cooed and petted their brother into a deep, restorative sleep, from which he had only emerged that following noon.

With twilight misting the horizon anew, Elrohir had taken up the task of appeasing Rohrith this eve. As the fever had persisted on that afternoon, his son’s focus had been fitful. Nenuial, who had sat with him for a longly time, told Elrohir that he had babbled on about random, unreasonable subjects, such as the state of dwaven government, the uselessness of hedges in elven design, and the need for more birdbaths in their gardens. Unable to cradle her hurting child, she had vigilantly listened to his every mumbled word, though inwardly despairing for him. Having shouldered the loss of her mate, she was deathly frightened that she would loose her son, as well, and with him her two other triplet treasures. Her giving heart was too goodly made to conscience such a truth as her son’s near disembowelment; in private consultation, she had raged at Elrohir and Legolas’ allowance that Dioren visit him each night. Elrohir had always known a mother’s love was not a thing to be crossed, nor denied; he had sharply questioned his own motives even as he fought to convince her.

He questioned them still.

Every flinch of Rohrith’s clenched body screamed of the pain that wrecked him. His limber frame had withered to a skeletal emaciation. The blunt angles of his face made him appear, perversely, all the more wolfish. Were it not for the opulence of his darkly ringed eyes and the voluptuous snarl of his pale lips, his severe manner would seem entirely predatory, excepting that he had not force enough to rise from his own bed. Though in this blatant weakness he was taciturn and maudlin, he craved affection as never before, hating isolation and demanding near constant contact from family, trusted friends, and even some of his nursemaids. His fever was accompanied by shivering chills, for which his grandmothers were even now furiously knitting the finest of woolen blankets to cover him.

Yet his brash Rohrith was rarely so easily satisfied. While these external and injury-born ailments no doubt afflicted him, Elrohir had longly pondered whether they were entirely the cause of his inherent restlessness. Rohrith pretended contentment and approval well enough when the subject of Dioren’s sessions had been broached, but the memory of his friend’s accidental betrayal must still concern him. Though the moments when his mind was clear enough to properly unravel these issues were but fleeting, there was no telling what sort of bleak visions might be haunting his son’s dreamscape, disrupting his rest in vulnerable moments and inciting him to wake to the very face of his anguish. Dioren had reported no awakenings during his nightly audiences with his somnolent friend and Elrohir believed he would not fail to do so, but yet… his lassitude lingered, his wound was terribly slow to heal, his fever would not abate. He staved off wellness as if by need of respite; from what, Elrohir must uncover. He must rail against his dimming light.

Rohrith marked him with woozy eyes, smirked softly.

“Ada,” he beckoned, reaching a hand out for him.

A paternal charge fired within him; he went to his son’s bedside and eased down beside him. Aglow with affection, he kissed the brow still beaded with perspiration, tucking about the frail frame as best he could. Rohrith lolled his face in Elrohir’s direction, his droopy eyes begging for whatever tale, song, or soothing might trick him into sleep. If these proved ineffectual, he would take some coddling; he was long past his earlier, misbegotten dignity, when promised his father’s warmth and care. Elrohir effected a brief examination, before stroking long, rhythmic touches over his son’s sodden chest, hoping to woo his exhaustion into complacence.

“Though I do not care for its sallow gaunt,” the elf-knight murmured to him. “Your face has whitened some. The fever may be close to breaking.” He paused but long enough to wipe away a wisp of hair stuck to his cheek, then continued his ministrations. “How do you fare, nin bellas?”

“As ever,” Rohrith rasped, trying to relax his body enough to indulge in Elrohir’s balming presence. “I would be galloping across the meadows with my swordbrothers or dressing for a night of uproarious debating, but just the mere thought of such activities curdles my stomach. I pray for sleep… though I would like to wash. Or swim. I must be rank.”

“Nay, you smell as sweet as jasmine,” Elrohir chuckled, gesturing towards the bouquet Nenuial had brought him that very afternoon.

Rohrith himself coughed up a laugh.

“Twas for this Nana brought them?” he protested wanly. “I should have suspected…”

“Are they not your preference?” Elrohir asked, wondering that he had been so mistaken. “Twas for this she gifted you.”

“Aye, they are indeed,” Rohrith responded, already heartened by his father’s closeness. “They summon up visions of my guild, at Gondolen. When seated by the west windows in the common room, their fragrance drifts in from the fields beyond… I wish I could be there again, Ada.”

“One day, ioneth, you will return,” Elrohir assured him.

“Twas such a golden time,” Rohrith commented. “I discovered… my passion, I suppose. Or perhaps the depth of it.”

Elrohir was strikingly tempted to inquire as to which passion it was his son had discovered within him, but instead chose a more gentle, though straightforward, tact.

“I have brought news,” he began. “Though I fear it might pain as much as hearten, so I am loathe to inflict it upon you.”

“Do not spare me,” Rohrith insisted. “If I cannot sleep, then I would be somehow engaged, other than in anguish. You would speak of Dioren, I presume. What has come about?”

Elrohir could not help but marvel at his son’s acuity, even under such strain, and was honest with him.

“Glorfindel feels his progress is presently imperiled,” he explained. “By such simple conditions as his everyday exposure to our kin, to what Dioren feels is our scorn, thought I swear we want only for his wellness.”

“It matters not what you would, Ada,” Rohrith acknowledged. “He would suffer his action. For too long a time, but that is his way.”

“But if he is allowed to escape awhile,” Elrohir pointed out. “Perhaps he will profit from some space, some breathing air.”

“Aye, that is well reasoned,” he sagely considered. “For where will he depart?”

“He will accompany Glorfindel and Elladan to the coast,” Elrohir told him. “For a fortnight, to begin, but if his continued sessions prove extremely beneficial, then perchance for longer.”

“That is also well,” Rohrith answered, without a flinch of emotion. “Ada-Fin clearly thinks of naught but his betterment. He will prove an able guide. I pray their venture will succeed, if not immediately, then in time. He deserves…he deserves to know himself.” This said, Rohrith sighed softly, pressing his hot forehead to his father’s cheek. “Ada… will you sing for me?”

Elrohir ignored his son’s request for a long minute, stunned at his so casual acceptance of the absence of his most cherished of friends. He had expected a minor mutiny at his announcement, even with Rohrith so sluggish; a volley of protests at the very least or a plea to delay such a hasty maneuver, but never such quiet resolution, pronounced as if by rote. Had the incident so blackened Dioren in Rohrith’s regard that he could so frivolously dismiss their near-sacred friendship? Was Rohrith so needful of respite from his never-ending vigilance over his friend’s safekeeping that he would bear through an indefinite time of estrangement? Though at the mercy of any of the above scenarios, Elrohir could not entirely digest that Rohrith would be so self-protective. No sickness nor severe wounding could effect such upheaval in the emboldened world of the unshakable young elf he had reared.

Elrohir suddenly perceived this prolonged period of recuperation in a broader scope.

“Dioren is at your bedside nightly,” Elrohir noted, with feigned nonchalance. “Have your brothers told you this? He cannot sleep himself, so he waits in vigil over you.”

“He is… ever true,” Rohrith responded, with evident difficulty. “As well as in the grip of remorse, no doubt, though I forgave him in the surgery. Not that he acted with deliberate malice… I wish… *saes*, Ada, help me sleep.”

“Will you verily sleep?” he asked him. “Or will you fret? Will you pine, when I am gone, to save face before your sire and keep him from succoring you proper?”

“I will not pine for what… what I have lost forever,” Rohrith bleat. “No amount of succor will change that I am a fool, a blind, stubborn fool who… who has clung, for decades, to an impossibility. A mirage.”

“Your close friendship is no mirage,” Elrohir insisted, cinching his hold about him though he knew this must cause some pain. “Nor was his devotion to you, these last nights.”

“Then he is a greater fool than I,” Rohrith huffed, his black eyes brimming from frustration, from every sort of illness imaginable. “His guilt would not allow him to do otherwise. Perhaps this absence will indeed be beneficial, will force realization upon him.”

“What is he to realize?” Elrohir inquired patiently, prodding as gently as he dared.

“That tis *I* who am unworthy of *him*!” Rohrith groaned, the tears spilling as they did not even under the surgeon’s knife.

“How could one so kindly as you,” Elrohir soothed him. “So goodhearted towards one shunned by all others, so devoted to his betterment and so committed to his uncertain future be deemed wanting of worth in any capacity? You have been like a brother to him.”

“For years I have misled him,” Rohrith retorted, in a cloggy wheeze. “All my efforts towards him were false. I did not want for his heart to be secured by another, so I effected all in my power to keep him by my side. Every stride towards his recovery was spurned on by my wrongful belief that if he was whole then… then… I have burdened him with the knowledge of my unanswerable desires-“

“Ioneth, you have never burdened Dioren,” Elrohir countered. “If ought, he is too dense to perceive them.“

With a grimace of immense, undoing torment, Rohrith whispered: “*Nay*, Ada.” When he had Elrohir’s rapt attention anew, he hushly continued, as if delivering his own eulogy. “The sleeping draught addled my mind… I was tipsy, I could not think… I do not know what I thought to say… but I confessed it. I confessed… I am not rightly sure, but I may have… I may have kissed him...” The shame of it walloped the fragile young elf like a punch to the face. Rohrith sobbed as if struck a deadly blow, awash with cruel grief for himself, for the confusion he must have inflicted so witlessly upon Dioren, for the ruin of their dearest of friendships. Elrohir clung to him as he quaked, unsure of what words could possibly sate this rage of sorrow, could possibly convince his son that Dioren would not judge him for this one slip of tongue. “He must loathe me. Tis best that we are parted.”

“Best for his sanity?” Elrohir questioned, with utmost tenderness. “Or best for your pride, my dear one?”

“Ada, tis no matter of pride,” Rohrith sniffled, as he burrowed his face into his father’s neck. “I have betrayed my own pact with myself, never to burden Dioren with my care. Now, when he is in most need of me…”

“Yet he has flourished in Glorfindel’s care,” Elrohir remarked. “And may find his path to wellness through those sessions. Why should you be responsible for his constant occupation, for his every thought or feeling? He is an elf of his own making, same as you, my heart. You have been the guiding light in his second life, true, but you are not the only light. Perhaps you have kept him… too close. He needs to feel the support of his community. He needs to come to the realization, at his own pace, that we all adore him and want for his future. Tis true enough that he will want for you, especially in this most troubled of times… but if he holds your company so dear, then he will not quit you now. You are more to him than a friend, ioneth, this you have ever known.” After some thought, Elrohir added: “Indeed, it may be you who has need of him, before long, if he does not come to return your affection. His hotly-held friendship may be all that can save you…”

“Ada, I will heal,” Rohrith swore to him. “I am not one for Mandos. I have merely been… waylaid, for a month or so. I will soon be back to galloping and debate.”

“A father’s care will heed no promise until the deed is done,” Elrohir hectored good-naturedly. “And you are restored to wellness, my precious son.”

“A father’s care is of great comfort,” Rohrith thanked him, barely stifling a yawn. “Even to this too-prideful son.”

“Not too prideful,” Elrohir reminded him. “Just enough to strain himself.” After plucking another kiss from that sticky brown, he extrapolated his point. “The heart is a resilient muscle. It will bear through any burden, any strain, for a chance at love. Dioren may be conflicted in his soul, but fear not, for his heart is as strong as any. Before long, he will learn how to keep you locked there.” With a soft sigh, he stretched Rohrith back out into an easier position for him, though still nestled tight in his arms. “Now, tell me, what shall I sing?”

“A ballad of mannish lore,” Rohrith requested, already sinking sweetly into that warm embrace. “Learn me of… their wants and woes…”

Before Elrohir could sing a note, his son found slumber at last.

**************************************

Several Days Later

Dioren grappled towards wakefulness as if rappelling towards a towering summit, his worn body weighing him down. The wind that ruffled the hide flaps of his tent also wafted salty gusts of sea air about, a rousing scent if every there was. The crisp promise of morning, of a bleached sand beach, of gnarled coral reefs, of a brisk swim in the skipping tide and of the sooty drink made of brewed beans that Glorfindel preferred swept his senses clean of slumber’s dust and clog, compelled him to wake.

With a groan and a flex, he did so; the invigorating rush of blood pollinated his burgeoning peredhil body, caused a rose-red erection to bloom amidst his full-flowering loins. The effect of awaking so contentedly, with nary a whiff of the acrid scent of fear-sweat about him, was somehow erotic to him. Though hardly novel to one of his impending majority, his emphatic response to even the simplest of pleasures baffled him entirely. When not in the throes of a vision or dumbed by a fugue, in these last days his newly meaty shaft was in a state of near-perpetual engorgement. Perhaps the melancholy clime he inhabited of late made leisurely moments all the more stimulating to his overwrought mind, but this did not account for how effortlessly he could be deployed. To say nothing of the vertiginous dreams, which sizzled as if his very veins coursed with broiling lava: bodies tumbling about with skins steamed scarlet, singeing tongues lapping over every possible orifice or tumescence, manhandling such as he’d never experienced with a maid, pinching, kneading, wringing, and worrying galore.

But then, not one voluptuous maiden gambled through his sultry dreamscape. Not a one.

Though his subconscious had flirted with these nightly preoccupations in Telperion, they had come to full, firm embodiment here by the shore, once he had ceased his day-long sessions with Glorfindel and been allowed the mornings to roam free. The plethora of builders, seafarers, and consultants had done much to inspire his rabid imagination, power-ripped frames he would not have given a second glance ten days before. Yet here, with his sentience keen, his spells considerably abated, his fugues tremendously shortened, and his whipping shame cast aside for adventure, his body craved their attentions with a ferocity previously unknown to him in carnal affairs, his loins knotted in an altogether more fiery pain when he forced vital restraint upon himself.

For he was ill-prepared for such indulgence, nor was he entirely sure he wanted to so indulge. His body hungered voraciously for a brute coupling, true. He was *aware* of the males around him as never before: the maddening musk that hung about them, the affability with which they charmed all and sundry, the easy camaraderie that instantly put one at ease. He regarded both strangers and familiars as if a veil had been lifted from his sight, seeing comeliness in a face he’d confronted a thousand times before or marking a taunting swagger in a step he’d met on the training fields on countless occasions. Though tormented by lust nightly and often provoked while in their very midst, he was far too unlearned in the ways of male loving to bed one, nor did he esteem such a venture to be entirely beneficial to his gentle progress. These were, after all, the very same species of elf who had shunned him the better part of his two childhoods, so any hunter worth his wiles would proceed with caution.

Not to mention that, despite the swampy marsh that was his bed roll upon waking each morn, incidentally aired-out by an erectly-propped canopy, the sudden onset of such previously unattested desires for males greatly, *intensely* distressed him. Dioren was not such a fool as to ignore the obvious evidence that Rohrith’s druggy compliments had struck a live nerve within him. This fact in itself, however, only led to further confusion. Could he desire his friend in such an unsightly fashion? Rohrith had certainly played a part in some of his more volcanic dreams, but his was hardly a dominant presence, either in slumber-fantasy or in his libidinous self-explorations. How could he justify explorations with other elves, when Rohrith’s regard had been so flagrantly revealed to him and, despite his friend’s own protests, he owed him no small measure of opportunity? Did he even want to try out these insurgent passions with any lover, when calamity might strike, bold and deadly? Of greatest import: how had his feelings towards his friend evolved since this timely, though still shocking confession and could he even think of bedding him without being sure of returning his love?

Dioren was yet bewildered by so many issues surrounding his rebirth, his former life, and his present circumstance that he could not give either credence nor credit to any of his emotions, not in such a period of upheaval, of blindsidingly rapid change. In just the ten days since Rohrith had declared himself, he had replayed his astonishingly shrewd remarks a million times over, drawing insight into his own fraught spirit, into his earlier self-protective actions and into his ritual techniques for the maintenance of some frail stability within. These had been extremely useful in his sessions with Glorfindel. His last spell, so perilous to Rohrith, had opened up a portal to his past existence he could now journey through with some slight measure of control. Through the empowerment of lucid meditation, he lately revisited various scenes, situations, and environments from his first elflinghood. While all of these had currently proved only positive, both he and Glorfindel felt some kind of breakthrough was imminent.

His raging lusts, in their own embarrassing way, had helped him all the more. While his dreams were a haze of foggy images and burning sensation, through self-pleasuring he had discovered that he could forge a link to his former self, who had desired ellon almost uniquely and even, he believed, physically coupled with one. The fever of such scorching emotions summoned this tender one back to him, yet another positive effect of his once-tragic spell. The wholeness he experienced when in such thrall caused him to stave off orgasm as long as possible, though in completion he was flooded with both ecstasy and awareness of his entire self. He had never thought that self-release could be remedial, but then he had also never felt such hope for his own eventual oneness as he did presently.

That all this was due to Rohrith - the initial spell, the acute appraisal of his desire’s repression, the revolutionary sessions with Glorfindel - only pricked him all the more, gnawing at his sense of devotion and nagging at his ever-ready guilt. He had been a friend beyond compare for a century’s span, ever giving, every kind, but Dioren did not want to recompense him for his heart with further agony, further deceit. Though he adored him as dearly as a friend could and did indeed feel a too-tempting desire for him, he did not, if he was sharply honest, know love for him. Perhaps he could, with time; at present all was dark and uncertain. Yet he could not satisfy his friend with vagaries and vows would be unconscionable before he had achieved his wholeness.

The rub was, he earnestly wondered if such wholeness could be his without the sterling help of his friend.

This was, however, a matter that perhaps should be put to Glorfindel. There was also the hard state of his stiffness to consider, which had yet to be indulged by even a graze of fingertips over its bulbous head. The chance such needfulness presented for further spiritual exploration, as well as physical relief, could not be ignored; not that one so aroused as he could possibly ignore his turgidity. As he and Glorfindel were to hunt this morn, his activities would be packed with necessary exertion, hardly the moment to sneak behind a tree and abuse oneself. He must revel, then, in indulgence, drawing out this most sensual of acts with patience and skill, until he could stand no more stimulation and must complete himself.

After exposing himself entirely to the moist air of his tent, he smoothed eager hands over his planes of skin, bulges of muscle, and new-grown thatches of hair. His physical development rushed on apace, every dawn seemed to herald another change. Tathren had counseled him to monitor his progress and to appreciate his transformation, to see his brawn as a special gift, not as a lack of elven grace. Unlike Tathren’s bashfulness, Dioren was proud of his potent physique; he had always been considered meek, vacuous, a walking specter, so to now be heftier than most elves suited him quite well.

That this bulk also vivified his dreams of brute coupling only added to the allure. As his hand snaked down to palm himself, he admired his greatened girth and his elongated member, other fringe benefits of manly provenance. With a purring sigh, he lost himself to the hot, coursing pleasure of perfectly timed strokes, his half-mast lids helping him to dip into his dreamscape. Almost instantly, his other self flared within, filling his mind with bawdy thoughts, long-lost sensations, and a completion far more spiritual than carnal, though both were flamed by desire. The youngling’s emotions were kin to those of flush, gangly adolescence, when even a chaste thought could turn instantaneously florid. Dioren fed off the rapaciousness of this pyre-boy; *he* had been a bold one, unafraid to gawk at those he thought impressively ravishable or to imagine himself sexually engaged with them. He thought of the rough-hewn seafarers that had landed the day before, of their sinuous bodies and of their rope-burned hands as he quickened his pace, fisting himself with abandon and bucking hard into every gorgeous stroke. He felt the fangs of impending release bite beneath his purpled bollocks, swollen fat as plums, pounded himself as he groaned savagely, needing just one last thought, one last smoldering image to finish him.

He thought of Rohrith, sword in hand, poised to strike viciously.

He spent like a geyser, coughing and moaning until he had been milked of every last shot of seed, which streaked across his belly like the festering stripes of a lash. He brimmed full of the heady sense of wholeness, stealing more slivers of his old personality to settled into his skin. He found he could almost sleep again, but for the speckles of sun that seared through the hide’s sewing, the rakish smell of the sea beckoning to him.

Fumbling groggily to his feet, Dioren did not ponder that final image too intently. He had sea to swim, shore to scour for crabs, and his own sanity to consider.

***

He emerged from the ocean swells like some mer-creature of myth, sinuous legs tangled with seaweed and flaxen hair fanned across his muscular back. His swimming trunks stuck to his slender hips like a second skin, though their silvery-blue color did little to camouflage the considerable endowments of the mature peredhil form. He brusquely wrung out his sodden hair, then coolly slicked it back, before sopping up the bank of sand to their humble camp.

Glorfindel awaited him with a cup of the bean-brew, its pungent odor and velvet texture the perfect antidote to the frigid ocean. With a nod of greeting, he threw a woolly towel over himself and gladly accepted the cup, huddled over one of the hearthfire logs as the Balrog-slayer smeared some jam over toasted lembas for him. Knowing that his charge had never truly experienced the indulgences of parental care, Glorfindel and Elladan had been only too keen to dote upon him, though not without good reason. His fugues may no longer test the endurance of even the most patient guardian and his spells may only have involved some vigorous log-chopping, but Dioren’s sweetly character still inspired a constant, mellifluous compassion in those that cared for him. As longtime parents, the couple could not help but give quite generously of themselves, hardly immune to the empathy his fits and struggles evoked within them.

As if in testament to this, Dioren spied that his clothes had been washed, dried, and waited for him by his tent, a cheery note from Elladan awaiting him atop. Though he could not bring himself to resist, quietly object, or even dissuade his guardians from such surreptitious treats, neither could he come to rely on them; once they returned to the vale, he would claim his independence anew. Yet their giving attitude did hearten him, such that he had realized how empty his early life had felt, without his mother’s warmth to succor him. His first turn at elflinghood was overshadowed by his father’s rejections, his second by his being the cause of his mother’s ill health; Dioren had not appreciated how this had darkened him until he was affected by Elladan and Glorfindel’s light. Even now Glorfindel, though respecting his need for some quiet introspection, tucked down onto the log close beside him, his very presence emanating warmth, understanding, and welcome. It was all Dioren could do not to set down his plate and curl up against him, nagging him impishly to tell him a familiar tale.

Yet perhaps he could, instead, inquire after a long sought-out confidence from him.

He turned towards his guardian and opened his stance, to invite conversation. Glorfindel, with an ingratiating smile, waited him out. He had come to treasure these fireside chats between them, with Elladan already away at work and the morning long to tease out all the delicacies of the problem. Dioren inwardly debated all the different tacts he could take to cautiously approach the sensitive matter, as he was a philosopher of some finesse, but in the end chose a more blunt route. He would have his answers presently, not in a long hour’s time.

“Glorfindel?” he queried, though knowing well he had his attention. “Will you hear me on a matter of some… vulgarity?”

“Any matter that concerns you is of interest, pen-neth,” the Balrog-slayer assured him. Though he was far beyond his elfling years, Glorfindel employed a diminutive endearment with him, as he could not even casually name him as a son. Dioren well understood the tribute behind the appellation and had never objected to its use.

“Very well,” he smirked, then charged forth. “What is it like to be breached?”

Glorfindel spit out his coffee in a soaring arc, but had the wherewithal to laugh at himself. After some necessary slurps and swallows, he reflected upon the various ideas and emotions that underlay his question.

“In earlier times,” Glorfindel replied. “With my lovers at Gondolin, it was but a trifle. I liked the game of it; the chase, the pounce. I kept no one lover past his due and was neither of finicky palate. Ellon, ellyth, some mannish nobles of both genders, I went only by allure. And willingness, of course, but even proficiency mattered little. I knew how to teach. I did not, however, know how to love. After our lengthy, near-tragic courtship - which I am sure wagging tongues have well appraise you of - when I first lay with my Elladan… this was no trifle. Tremendous, enrapturing, and altogether sundering, perhaps, but certainly no common thing. I had never known the like, and proved terribly ill-prepared. Thankfully, he knew implicitly how to ply me, though anything he would have done would have finished me, I was so raw with need of him. Dire circumstances also surrounded us; Elladan was of poor health and terribly weak. It took us years to mate with frivolity, without some sense of urgency about the act, as if some calamity might break us apart though we were already bound years before. Despite the fact that I was by far the elder, he was my guide in loving. He taught me every thing of love.”

“There is naught but the most tender love between you,” Dioren remarked. “One would never even think of your past troubles, lest they knew of them beforehand. You appear… blissfully matched.”

“He is my own, my soul and every speck of my heart,” Glorfindel reminisced, though eventually pried his thoughts from his mate, back to the present concern. “His oft mercurial nature marked well how you goggled the sailors yesterday, as if catnip to a mountain lion. He noted as much as we lay abed.”

“They proved… intriguing,” Dioren feinted, though not with much accomplishment. “I find, to my dismay, that my tastes have turned somewhat brute, as Tathren predicted. I have come to desire males.”

After a time, Glorfindel asked: “Does this distress you? Are you shamed by such a want?”

“Nay,” Dioren answered. “But I fear I am in no state for dalliances, though my body hungers with a previously unknown fervor. Tathren did counsel some indulgence… but I cannot see how this can be possible, what with my spells and fugues. Worse still, the elfling surges within me when I think on lying with males. If his knives should come out…”

“You fear being afflicted in the performance of the act?” Glorfindel digested more than asked. “Doing further harm?”

“I do,” Dioren whispered, disheartened. “Yet in some ways… I also fear not being afflicted. What does it bode if I feel… nothing at all, with another? If I can only find fulfillment with the phantom presence in my lucid visions of old?”

“You will not feel nothing,” Glorfindel insisted. “Of this you can be assured. One cannot be unaffected by a breaching. There is such oneness… even if there is no heart’s love, there is ample surrender. In my own experience… it is entirely enrapturing, even performed for lust alone. I hope only that you might experience the act unburdened by haunting memory. You deserve to know such bliss in its purest form.”

“I pray nightly for the chance,” Dioren told him, then, upon reflection. “With body as well as soul.”

“So we have well heard,” Glorfindel chuckled, merry at Dioren’s resultant blush. One should never speak of such things too seriously, even if the matter called for sobriety. “Though I am sure our own play could neither be ignored, as our children are so fond of informing us.”

“Tis well that you are yet so lively, after so many centuries of devotion,” Dioren commented, still ruddy as a peach.

“I will share a wisdom with you, youngling,” Glorfindel grinned, quite enjoying the turn in their conversation. “Tis the very nature of a true-heated binding that the pleasure increases through the years of togetherness. As our souls become even more closely knit in their eternal search for complete oneness, our bodies meld even more explosively than in times past. Next year we will know even deeper satisfaction than this, and so on until the end of days. Our love is voracious, unquenchable and ever-yielding. I hope you might, one day, know such fulfillment as ours.” Dioren’s answer was implicit in his silence; *he* hoped but to survive the present year intact. Conscious of this, Glorfindel pressed on towards a remedy for his roving eye. “It has occurred, in my contemplation of the method of your affliction, that your most vicious spell may have been provoked by the disparate - but each in its own way affecting - elements of your environment.” Dioren grew attentive, so he continued to posit his theory. “You were slain by an orc’s blade, for instance, and you were engaged in swordplay.”

“But I have rallied countless times without incident,” Dioren countered.

“Aye, but so furiously?” Glorfindel wondered aloud. “The aggression of your maneuvers may have instigated your vision. And have you never considered why you take so well to the sword, when in your earlier years you were an archer? This smarts of vengeance.” Dioren started at this suggestion, his reason fully engaged. “But this is not our present concern… As I say, each of the elements all conspired to propel you back into memory, to experience a past attack anew. The sword, for one. The aggression and speed of play, for another. The murky woods of that morn, a third, and… do you see?”

“Nay, I do not see,” Dioren shrugged, after some examination. “Which is the fourth element?”

“Desire,” Glorfindel spoke softly.

Dioren gaped outright, though could not rightly dismiss the notion. When he inwardly revisited Glorfindel’s suggestion, he hotly felt the truth of it. His desire for Rohrith, combined with all those other elements so like that forgotten day in Mirkwood with his dearly suitor-friend, had brought on a spell such as he’d never experienced before, which had lead to so many consequences for him. Facilitated access to his past memories. His work with Glorfindel. The knowledge of his preference for male elves. Rohrith’s confession…

Glorfindel, as his healer, knew of all the fraught occurrences of the last ten days, even that stunning moment in the Healing Halls when his friend had… had kissed him. In truth, he knew of the kiss, but knew not the effect it had on Dioren, how he had been maddened by his friend’s taste and longed for the scorch of that tongue in his most intimate places. Fearing he would be pressed into an admission of a love he did not actually feel, believing that his response to the moment would be gravely misinterpreted in Rohrith’s favor, and trying somewhat vainly to protect his friend from his fumblings, he had mislead his guardian.

Glorfindel sage face, however, currently showed no signs of being at all deceived as to his covetous reaction to Rohrith’s giddy overture.

Dioren knew, then, where the Balrog-slayer was leading him.

“I have burdened him enough,” he insisted forcefully. “He, too, requires vital time to heal, perhaps more vital to his survival than wholeness to my own. He has been my champion for a century entire. He needs renewal, spiritual renewal, not further heartbreak.”

“He would be the perfect candidate,” Glorfindel gently opposed. “With which to effect some discreet, comfortable, and all too necessary explorations into the sensual arts. Who better would know how to slowly immerse you in the realm of passion, so that your merging spirits do not revolt? Who better to succor you, or indeed to battle you down, if you should be provoked by a particularly striking act? Who else knows you so implicitly as to detect the merest tremor of discomfort, long before trouble rears up? And who… who adores you such that he would agree to undertake such a task without a flinch of fear, would devote himself entirely to its accomplishment and your unparalleled satisfaction? You must regard such a friend as a boon, a miraculous turn of fortune that you have one to care for you so deeply, and care so little for the trappings of your condition that he might risk the venture.”

“Yet the risk is to his very precious heart,” Dioren underlined, his frustration mounting even as Glorfindel’s arguments stirred within. Yet Rohrith had been of titanic strength for him, and even in straights he could not fold so easily. “I would not seal his fate to fading, even for my own future.”

“Can you be sure you would not come to love him?” Glorfindel responded, so delicately he might be speaking to a babe. “You are divided now, fraught with shame, anguish, lust… when you have settled into your skin, you may hear the pure tenor of his feeling and know this song within yourself.”

“And if I do not?!” Dioren shot back, bristling with emergent anger. “The friend who has succored me, has championed me through all my sorrows, is dead at my hand. No better than if I had slain him in the wood, that day.”

“His fate is the same, whether you love with him or no,” Glorfindel reminded him. “If he loves you as no other, as he claims. If he has tempted fate already by grieving over you. A tryst may even prolong his life, give him the sustenance - through your passion - to survive his grief.”

“Then our friendship would be sundered, at my breaking from him!” Dioren growled, aggravated beyond compare by his lack of palatable options. “How can I dare to lie with him knowing that he loves me? How can I tease him so, then shun him after? Have him know me intimately, see the need for his succor, the despair in my eyes, and have him believe, as he *will*, that my heart is there with me? Let him convince himself that I have changed mind, when all I truly promise is allegiance?”

“Let him make his own mind, then,” Glorfindel suggested. “Put the matter to him, honestly, with all the salient facts, and let him decide for himself if he could endure the loss.”

“He will agree without question,” Dioren dismissed the ludicrous notion. “He never thinks of himself. Tis I who must play the gallant, on this most vital occasion. Tis I who must keep him safe from himself!”

Seeing that to push harder would only cause him to rile, Glorfindel demurred for the present time.

Still, he had one last gambit to play.

“Then who will sate you?” he asked plain, enveloping his words with the fondness he ever felt towards his charge. “Tathren says that your yearnings will only grow more ardent, before their fiery bloom at your majority. Has he not counseled a course of remedial bedding at least thrice a week, for sanity’s sake alone?”

“I will bear through,” Dioren announced, immovable on the subject. “I must.”

“A more practical plan would appease me some,” he smirked, as both took a hardy breath.

“Tis not entirely dissimilar to the task before an elfling seeking his first majority,” Dioren remarked. “I am fragile, and tender. There must be one who could learn me with gentility and understand the complications of my fugues. An older elf, perhaps.”

“It will grieve him, to know you have chosen another for lust alone,” Glorfindel pointed out. “I know from whence I speak, pen-neth. I, too, once faced a similar conundrum: to lie with my beloved and thereby make him vulnerable to a horrid fate, or to valiant keep from him and watch him suffer torment at my rejection.”

“Which did you choose, Glorfindel?” Dioren wondered, impressed as ever by his wisdom.

“For a while I blundered through the second,” Glorfindel replied. “Denying us both pleasure, unity, peace of mind. Love, in all its resplendent design. I nearly lost my Elladan – twas the very night ere his passing to Mandos – before I came to my senses and chose his love’s nourishment for my obstinate heart.” He finished their discussion with emphatic meaning to his words. “Before you err on the side of caution, which has its own valor and strife, know this: we have not been parted since, have lived every day in bliss. Eternally together and entirely whole.”

Glorfindel smiled softly, then left him to his pondering.


End of Part Two