Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

oOo

25^th of March, 2024, Whitehaven

Julia’s dog, Calad, barked once just before dawn. Not frantically - just one short, sharp sound. Enough to wake her, enough to stir something she couldn’t name.

She rose as she always did, without hesitation or purpose. The kettle went on. Her shoulders ached. The cold floor bit at her feet, and she didn’t bother with socks. The rain outside slid down the windows like the world was crying very politely.

Calad padded across the kitchen and sat near the back door, watching her with those clear, unreadable eyes. He didn’t beg. He never did. He just watched.

“I know,” she murmured, brushing his head with her fingers. “It’s today again.”

She had named him Calad long before the darkness had come. Before the accident, before the move, before everything folded in on itself. Back then, she’d still believed in names with meaning. She remembered telling Tom - laughing at herself - “It’s from Tolkien. It means light. I used to love all that Elvish nonsense when I was younger.”

He’d kissed the top of her head and said, “Then it’s perfect.”

Now, she said nothing about the name at all. She just said “Come,” and he followed.

The house was quiet. Purposefully so. She had no radio, no stereo, no humming fridge or clicking clock. Even the chime of the kettle had been replaced with a mute electric one. The silence wasn’t peaceful - it was a buffer, a choice. There were no songs in this house. No lullabies.

Not anymore.

The Old Post Office in Sandwith creaked, and the roof leaked in the far corner of the loft, and the ancient stone hearth smoked more often than it warmed. But it was tucked away from everything, and the sea wasn’t far, and no one asked her questions here.

She liked that. It was enough.

At 8:00 a.m., she was at her desk in the local archive building.
By 1:00 p.m., she’d sorted two boxes of Civil War correspondence and eaten half a sandwich without tasting it. She drank her tea lukewarm.

The silence at the archive suited her - dusty, ordered, filled with things already finished. No surprises. No noise.

Once, in another life, she would have played music while she worked. Classical, folk, the occasional oddity Tom had found and sent her with a note: "This one made me think of you."

Now, even headphones were too much. Her phone was permanently on silent. Music belonged to another life. A life she no longer lived.

A tour group met her by the lighthouse at 3:00 - three women from London and a boy in a red hoodie who never looked up from his phone. She told them about shipwrecks, iron mines, Viking graves.

“You have a lovely voice,” one of the women said.

Julia smiled faintly. “Thank you.”

It was a voice she no longer used for singing, or telling stories. Just facts.

By 5:30, the wind was picking up, and her shoes were wet. She walked home with Calad at her side, his ears flicking with every gust. It was nearly dark when she reached the garden gate.

And that’s when she saw him - already waiting on the low stone wall, like he'd been there for hours, like time didn't apply to him at all.

She slowed at the gate.

He was sitting on the low stone wall as if he belonged there, as if the old moss-covered stones had been laid just to hold him. His coat was long and dark, his hair silver and untied, and he looked up at her with eyes that seemed at once tired and knowing and impossibly kind.

Calad stopped dead beside her, ears perked, alert. But he didn’t bark.

The man smiled gently and nodded once toward the dog. “He remembers more than you do.”

Julia blinked. “Excuse me?”

“I said he remembers,” the man repeated, rising slowly to his feet. “And so will you. In time.”

She didn’t move. The wind stirred her coat and hissed through the grass, but her limbs felt oddly still, as if some invisible thread had been pulled taut inside her.

The stranger stepped forward - but not too close. He took something from beneath his coat and held it out with both hands. A bundle, worn and wrapped in a faded green cloth. Tied with cord. Its weight sagged slightly in his grip.

“She wanted you to have this,” he said softly. “She asked me not to let her vanish. So here I am.”

Julia’s throat closed.

She stared at the bundle but didn’t take it. Her heart was thudding, too loud, too fast, too unearned. Something was cracking under the surface, and she didn’t know why. Or maybe she did, and that was worse.

“Who are you?” she asked, barely above a whisper.

“An old friend,” he replied. “Of hers. And now, perhaps, of yours too.”

At last, she stepped forward. Her fingers touched the package - soft fabric, faintly floral, something that reminded her of spring and woodsmoke and a warmth she hadn’t felt in years. She took it with trembling hands.

It was heavier than it looked.

The man smiled again, and there was sorrow in it, and something like light.

She took the bundle with both hands, her fingertips tracing the knot in the twine, and for a long moment, neither of them moved.

Then the man tilted his head slightly and said, “Might I trouble you for a cup of tea before I go?”

The question caught her off-guard.

“I – um - yes, I suppose,” she said. “It’s not fancy. Just whatever’s in the tin.”

“Fancy tea is rarely what’s needed,” he said kindly. “But shared tea - well, that’s something else.”

She didn’t know why she stepped aside to let him pass through the gate, only that it felt... inevitable.

Calad didn’t growl. He brushed past the stranger’s leg and trotted to the door like nothing was amiss. Like this had all happened before.

Inside, she set the bundle down on the kitchen table with great care, like it might spill light or ghosts if it shifted too suddenly. The kettle went on automatically - habit, not comfort.

Her hands moved with quiet efficiency: mugs, tin, water. But her thoughts had slipped somewhere deeper, flickering just beneath awareness.

The house was clean. Plain. Almost deliberately bare. No music, no photographs, no clutter.

When she’d come here - after the accident - she hadn’t brought much. Just a few books, some clothes, and Calad. Everything else had been sold or packed away or left behind. This place was meant to be neutral. Blank.

No reminders.

The radio in the corner had never been plugged in. She hadn’t so much as hummed a tune since the funeral. Not here. Not anywhere.

The man remained near the hearth. Not sitting, not pacing. Just standing, hands folded, watching the rain through the glass.

Finally, she said, “You look like someone out of a movie.”
“Oh?” he said, with a half-smile.
“Yeah. I mean... I know it’s stupid, but - long coat, long beard, weird timing...” She gave a dry little laugh. “There are only so many options. You’re either Gandalf or Dumbledore.”

She expected him to roll his eyes or wave it off. Just a polite chuckle and a change of subject. But instead, he turned to her, eyes twinkling with unmistakable mischief.
“Well,” he said. “I’m certainly not Dumbledore.”
She stared. Her throat went tight.

And for just a second - just a second - she was twenty-five again, sitting cross-legged on the floor of Esther’s flat, arguing about wizards and mushrooms and soul wandering and channelling. That wild, wonderful season when she still believed in signs. In soulmates. In more.

The kettle clicked off.

She turned away to pour the water, just so he wouldn’t see her eyes.

He reached into the folds of his coat and pulled something small from a leather pouch. He placed it beside the bundle without a word.

It was a silver brooch in the shape of a leaf - sleek, elegant, veined like a living thing, as though it had once grown in some forest no longer on any map.

Julia stared at it.

She didn’t recognise it - not truly - but something in the shape, the curve, the quiet shimmer of it, made her breath catch.

It reminded her of something she couldn’t name. Not a memory - more like a feeling. A note she’d heard once and never found again. A harmony too soft to follow.

“Where did you get this?” she asked softly.

He didn’t answer directly.

“It belonged to her,” he said. “She carried it for a long time.”

Julia blinked, throat tightening. “But - Esther wasn’t - she wasn’t from... some fantasy world.”

The man tilted his head, and in the flickering kitchen light, he looked at once impossibly old and entirely human.

“She was from many places. Most of them hard to explain.”

Julia laughed - a sharp, disbelieving sound. “Are you telling me she was from Middle-earth? Are you out of your mind?”

“I’m telling you,” he said gently, “that she was someone who carried more than one world inside her. And you - you were one of the few she trusted to see it.”

Julia looked down at the bundle again.

The cloth smelled faintly of rosemary. The knot was tied with a care that made her chest ache.

“I thought she made all that up,” she whispered. “The dreams. The names. The herbs. The songs she used to hum...”

Her voice trailed off.

She hadn’t meant to say that last part. It slipped out like something half-remembered.

“I thought it was just trauma,” she said more quietly. “She thought it was just trauma.”

Her fingers rested on the cloth, not yet opening it. “No one remembers her now. Just me. It’s as if she never existed.”

He didn’t answer.

She undid the knot.

Inside, wrapped in layers of cloth and memory, was a notebook - its cover worn, its edges softened with time and use. There were small bits tucked inside: a scrap of dried leaf, a corner of a pressed label, the edge of a folded drawing.

She opened the notebook. Pages over pages, written in pencil.

She would have recognised the handwriting anywhere - neat, looping, unmistakably Esther’s.

oOo

Darkness and silence.

Both were familiar, but this time, they pressed down on her like a suffocating shroud, as though the world had been swallowed whole. A dull throb pulsed in her skull, anchoring her to consciousness, but everything else felt distant, like she was drifting between worlds.

oOo

She closed her eyes.

Darkness and silence.

Both were familiar.

But this silence wasn’t hers. It didn’t come from grief or survival. This was different. Deeper. A silence that had weight to it. A hush that pressed in from all sides, like the world had been wrapped in shadow and set adrift.

A dull throb pulsed in her skull as she read—like the words were tugging at something lodged far beneath awareness.

She looked up. “Is this… what happened to her? Before…?”

Her voice was softer now, careful.

“Before - and after,” he said. “She wanted you to know.”

“But why? Why me?”

He sighed.

“You were home to her, for a time. And something told her you would need this - that it needed to be told.”

Julia skimmed the next few lines, but the words were blurred by rising emotion.

“So much to tell,” she murmured.

She turned another page. The edge of a dried petal fluttered loose. She caught it instinctively, held it without looking.

“Is she dead?”

He looked at her, steady.

“Yes. And - no.”

She muttered, “Never ask a wizard for advice...”

He smiled. “No, that’s the Elves you should never ask for advice. They’ll tell you both ‘yes’ and ‘no’ in the same breath.”

“Well, you just did the same.”

“She is lost to this time and age,” he said. “But back where I left her - she is very much alive.”

She had stopped reading - just for a moment - to breathe.

The pages smelled like crushed herbs and candle wax, like memory. Calad had curled against her feet, warm and snoring gently. The man still sat across from her, tea long gone cold.

She looked up at him, the weight of it all suddenly enormous.

“Should I do something with this?” she asked. “Tell someone? Share it?”

He studied her quietly, then nodded. “You could. She hoped you might. Stories have ways of finding those who need them.”

“But no one’s going to believe it.”

“That’s not the same as no one needing it.”

She stared at him. “Will I see you again?”

He rose, slowly, brushing the creases from his coat. “You might,” he said, glancing toward the window, where the wind had begun to shift. “Or you might not.”

Then he looked at her more closely, eyes bright with something half-knowing. “But I have an inkling this is not the last of Middle-earth you are going to see.” Then, as he reached the door, he murmured: "Strange, isn't it? How sometimes the world forgets the very foundations it was build on..."

And then, just like that, he was gone.

oOo

She stood there long after the door had closed, the bundle still clutched to her chest.
The house was silent, save for the faint ticking of the kitchen clock and the slow, rhythmic breathing of Calad at her feet.

There were no memories here. She had made sure of that.

No echoes of small feet. No lullabies or morning coffee left cooling on the side. No forgotten toys beneath the sofa.

That was another life, in another place.

She had come here to forget.

But now, holding Esther’s words in her hands, she realised she didn’t want to forget anymore.

She wanted to remember.
Not just Esther.
All of it.

She didn’t read all of it that night.

But she read enough to start remembering the way Esther used to laugh. The way she’d hum old melodies under her breath in the flower shop, or whisper odd little facts about herbs as if they were sacred truths. And slowly, as the hours passed, the ache in Julia’s chest shifted. Not gone - but less sharp.

She read until her eyes ached. Until the sky turned pale.

At one point, she laughed aloud, a half-sob in her throat.

“I knew it,” she muttered, wiping her face with the sleeve of her jumper. “I knew there was something weird about that cat.”

Later still, she whispered, “Oh my God. I did not call the King of Gondor a brooding tree of a man, did I?”

Calad huffed, unimpressed.

She flipped back a page.

Esther smiled. If she took the flower symbols at face value, she'd just met a man who seemed straight out of the Middle Ages - a knight in spirit, if not in name. Tall, dark, and ruggedly handsome, he certainly had the looks for it.

But if she was honest, the guy (the tree-guy, as she’d mentally dubbed him) had come across as... a little intense.

And suddenly, Julia was crying again. Quietly this time. The good kind. The kind that leaves room.

When dawn broke, she lit a candle. Not for mourning.

For telling.

oOo

1^st of January 2025, Whitehaven

The house was quiet. Calad was curled up beside the fire. A mug of forgotten tea sat cold on the windowsill.

Outside, the street was still. A few distant fireworks had crackled hours ago, echoing over the sea. Now, there was only the wind and the faint hum of the new year settling into its bones.

Julia opened her laptop, cracked her knuckles, and stared at the empty text box blinking back at her.

She had created the account months ago - picked a username, filled in the barest of details. Then let it sit there, untouched. Waiting.

All the while, she had spent her evenings putting Beriel’s writing into some kind of order—untangling the fragments, structuring the entries into chapters, sorting out which part belonged where.

She realised, slowly, how much she hadn’t known.

And how much she did.
The gaps she used to accept without question were no longer empty; they were waiting.
Memory layered over memory, like mist curling back to reveal the shape of a landscape she’d once called home.

And still, she knew no one was going to believe this was the real story.
Not with everything else out there. Not with the fanfiction, the theories, the films, the jokes.
It had all become myth wrapped around myth.

This would be just one more voice in the noise.

But the story didn’t care.
It had chosen her.

She hesitated.

And then she typed:

Some stories wait centuries to be told - this one found me somewhere between the cracks of a life I thought I knew. It’s not the kind of story I ever imagined myself carrying, but it’s stayed with me, quietly waiting, even as everything else slipped away.

I’ve thought about it during sleepless nights and empty mornings, tried to tell it before, but there was always something else - something easier. Grief is like that. It fills every corner, leaves no room for words, and yet, this story wouldn’t let me go.

You might think you’re not the type for stories, that your reality leaves no space for them. I thought that too. But then something changed, and I realised some stories are more than daydreams - they’re lifelines.

For me, this is that story. And now, it’s time to tell it.

She hit Post. Her username and story title blinked to life on the screen.

“Rosemary and Time.”

Somewhere, not very far away, the wind changed direction.

oOo

Chapter Text

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Chapter 02 – Scribbles on the Margins of a Book

oOo

1^st of January 2025, Whitehaven

The sea smelled of iron and old things.

Oliver Mitchell tightened the scarf around his neck as he stepped onto the marina boards, boots steady despite the slick wood. It was just past eight in the morning, and the harbour was quiet - boats resting like hibernating creatures, rigging clicking softly in the breeze.

New Year’s Day. Most of the town was still asleep, or hungover, or nursing some champagne-soaked illusion of a fresh start.

Oliver was oiling the hull of a fishing skiff because it beat thinking.

He hadn’t celebrated the turning of the year in decades. The count had lost its meaning after the first four centuries or so. Years rolled into each other now, uneventful and grey, save for the rare moments something ancient stirred beneath the surface.

Once, he had marked the night in other ways. A candle on the hilltop. A cup raised in silence. A name whispered to the dark, just to see if the wind would answer. But even those rituals had faded. The longer he remained, the less the seasons seemed to ask anything of him.

“Morning, Oliver!” a voice called out.

He looked up, startled.

It was Dylan, the young apprentice who worked down at the boat shop. Eager, well-meaning, twenty-something, always a little too cheerful.

“Happy New Year, mate!”

Oliver gave a nod. “And to you.”

Dylan didn’t linger. Just a wave and a grin, then off down the dock.

Oliver returned to the skiff, wiping down the treated wood with slow, methodical strokes. He hadn’t planned to be here today. Not really. But when he’d woken - alone, silent, still breathing - it had seemed simpler to go where no one expected much of him. There were no awkward invitations here, no empty toasts. Just tools, salt, and routine.

And Whitehaven.

He hadn’t meant to stay when he first passed through, three years ago. But the name had caught him - like a note slightly out of tune, familiar in a way that made his breath catch.

White Haven.

Mithlond. The Grey Havens.

That name belonged to another world, but the echo of it was here, tucked into this windy harbour town, all whitewashed stone and cold skies.

Something about the place had kept him. It was quiet. Honest. Unpretentious. The kind of place people came to disappear without fanfare.

He understood the appeal.

oOo

By mid-afternoon, Oliver was back in his bungalow. Harbour View, the sale listing had said. Too poetic for his taste, but the view was sharp and wide, with the marina below and the sea beyond, stretching out like time itself.

He boiled the kettle. Made strong tea with a splash of honey. Then, with mild reluctance, he sat down and opened the battered laptop on the side table.

The ancient machine wheezed to life. He had learned enough to use it. Enough to keep his alerts running.

There was a time he had walked through forests no longer mapped, spoken with stars, listened for names carried in birdsong and water. Now, he monitored keyword notifications.

The alert system wasn’t complex. Just a handful of terms. Names most people wouldn’t recognise.

And yet today, one had pinged.

Keyword: “Beriel.”

He stared at it.

There had been false pings before. Dozens of them. An anime character. A wellness influencer. A Dungeons & Dragons campaign with questionable plot mechanics.

Still… he clicked.

He had seen enough of the internet over the last few decades to know better than to hope. The early 2000s had been a deluge…everyone with their own version of the stories. 

Eventually, he’d shut off the obvious ones: Aragorn, Elrond, Legolas. The search results were endless and useless.

Only the obscure ones remained.

Beriel.

He almost closed the tab on instinct. But something - call it intuition, call it weariness - held his hand.

The story title blinked up at him.

Rosemary and Time
By ElanorGardner (Adelaise)

Rating: Mature
Archive Warning: Graphic Depictions of Violence
Category: F/M
Fandoms: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types / Books / Movies

Relationships: Aragorn (Tolkien)/Original Female Character(s), Aragorn & OFC
Characters: Aragorn, Legolas, Elrond, Original Female Characters, Original Male Characters

Tags: Slow Burn, Very Slow Burn, AU - Arwen is dead, Psychological Trauma, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, modern character in Middle-earth (sort of), Middle-earth character in the modern world (sort of), after events of LOTR, unhelpful prophecies, found family, mystery, emotional baggage, Legolas being Legolas, Aragorn carrying the weight of the world, Esther needs another coffee soon, soft moments with existential dread, alternate universe - canon divergence, modern setting (for a time)

He stared at the tags. One eyebrow lifted.

"Esther needs another coffee soon."
"Soft moments with existential dread."

It was absurd.

And yet...

He clicked.

And then the first line of the chapter caught him like a hand around the throat.

1st of January 2025, Seventh Age of this World, Whitehaven

He went still.

His breath faltered.

He stared at the date.

Today.

The place.

This town.

The phrasing.

Seventh Age of this world.

Not common fan-speak. Not fantasy. Not even Tolkien’s own language - not quite.

This was something else.

A recognition. A statement.

Not from someone writing from the outside, but from someone standing close enough to the edge to see through it.

He read on.

Some stories wait centuries to be told - this one found me somewhere between the cracks of a life I thought I knew…

It wasn’t Beriel’s voice. But there was something in the cadence that stirred the air around him. A gentleness layered over grief. Words not chosen for effect, but simply because they were true.

And then the shift:

2005, Third Age of Middle-earth, Castle of the line of Sorolfin, Rhovannion.

Oliver’s hands tightened on the mug.

That name - Sorolfin - was a name no casual reader would know.

A bloodline buried before the War of the Ring, forgotten even among scholars of the old tales.

And the rest - the darkness, the cell, the beatings, the silence - it wasn’t stylised. It wasn’t imagined.

It was remembered.

He scrolled back up, hand trembling now, and clicked the author’s name.

ElanorGardner (Adelaise)
Local historian, tea enthusiast, accidental author.
Somewhere in the northwest of England. I give tours, talk too much about old maps, and now apparently write fanfiction.
Not here to be right - just here to tell the story.
She promised not to disappear. This is me keeping that promise.

The world tilted.

He read it once, then again.

She promised not to disappear.

Had she said that to someone?

Maybe not to him.

But it sounded like her.

Like something she would whisper with defiant certainty, chin high, eyes sharp with fire, even as the shadows closed in. She had never begged. Never pleaded. But her promises had always come out like challenges - as if the world would have to fight her to forget her.

A memory surfaced - uninvited.

Snow falling in soft spirals through the courtyard at dusk. She was young then. No more than thirteen, by human reckoning. Wild-haired, breath misting as she darted across the flagstones. He’d just stepped outside when something smacked him square in the chest.

A snowball.

She grinned  - impish, smug - and shouted across the frost-dusted stones:

“You’ll miss me when I’m gone!!!”

She laughed as she ran, boots skidding, cloak flying behind her like a banner.

He hadn’t said anything back.

He’d just watched her go.

He exhaled sharply, pressing the heel of his hand to his brow. The tea sat cooling on the side table, untouched. Outside, the sea was a stretch of slate, still and endless.

What was this?

Some part of her - or something she left behind - had survived.

And it was calling.

He didn’t comment. Not yet. He didn’t know what to say. Not to the person writing her voice. Not to himself.

It could still be nothing. A coincidence. A well-constructed fabrication. A clever writer with too much time and too much lore. He’d fallen for less convincing echoes before. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d mistaken invention for memory. The internet had no shortage of people blurring the line between fiction and belief.

His hand hovered over the trackpad a moment longer. Just long enough to know better.

He stared at the page, unmoving.

He should have closed the tab.

He didn’t.

Instead, he clicked Subscribe.

And sat very still, as if the slightest movement might cause the whole moment to dissolve.

He stared at the screen for a long moment, the glow fading as the screensaver kicked in - a rotating view of some digital mountain range he'd never bothered to change.

“Local historian,” he murmured to himself. Whitehaven.

He knew how small this town was. How tight the circles ran.

If that location in the story was true…if that person gave tours… someone would know their name. The harbour librarian, maybe. Or the council website.

He hadn’t felt this particular tension in a long time - the stillness before a trail opened. A path not seen until suddenly, unmistakably, it was there.

He didn’t know what he meant to find. Or who, exactly, he hoped they were.

But old habits were hard to break.

And he had always been good at finding things others had stopped looking for.

Just before shutting the laptop, he whispered, half-broken, half-wondering:

“Beriel… what did you do?”

oOo

He sat there a while longer, the room dimming as clouds thickened outside the window. The tea was long cold. The words on the screen echoed in the back of his mind like a bell rung too far away to trace.

He stood eventually, crossed to the fireplace. The gas heater flickered behind its false grate, casting uncertain light across the floor.

He stared into it, not really seeing the flames.

And memory, unbidden, crept in.

oOo

Paris, Summer of 1734

A salon on the Left Bank, thick with candlelight and arguments. The room was packed wall to wall with wigs, lace, and intellect - restless minds dressed in velvet and wine. Philosophers flung ideas like weapons; poets clutched notebooks like shields. Reason, they claimed, ruled this age. But magic still hummed beneath the floorboards, if you knew how to listen.

He had gone by the name Jean Terrasson then - not just a name borrowed, but a persona he had carefully built, layer by layer. Scholar. Priest. Hellenist. Publicly, he was the brilliant eccentric who had scandalised the Académie with theories on ancient rites and sacred geometry. Privately, he translated fragments older than the Empire and wrote in languages no one alive remembered. He’d lectured on Plato and Pythagorean echoes, written half a novel about Egypt, and was widely regarded as a charming madman.

It suited him.

The truth was far stranger than any of them suspected. He no longer remembered how many lives he had lived - only that none of them were his. Just vessels. Shells. Masks to wear while the world changed around him.

He hadn’t come to Paris for the company or the acclaim. He had come because something pulled. Not someone he had known, but something adjacent. A whisper in the bones of the city. A forgotten thread. A memory that didn’t belong to him.

There were no names. No certainties. Only traces.

That night, he’d followed one of them to a salon hosted by a libertine duke and his sharp-eyed sister. A bookseller had recommended it with a smirk: "One of the poets found something strange. In Lyon, I think. You'll like it, Monsieur Terrasson - it's your kind of madness."

The poet in question - Madeleine, or something like it - stood by the hearth. She was younger than the rest, less polished, her hair a touch too wild for fashion. But people listened when she spoke. She held a glass in one hand, and in the other, a loose sheaf of paper.

She read aloud without ceremony:

"I dreamed of a woman the world forgot,
her name a splinter in my throat.
She walked the years in silence kept,
a vow held where no words float..."

He froze.

The room dimmed. The words bent. Time rippled sideways.

The poem wasn’t hers. Not really. Not the way she claimed.

The cadence. The language beneath the translation.
It was Elvish once.
Bent through time and ink, twisted in the mouth of another tongue.

And for one sharp, stinging moment, he thought: someone had passed through here. One of the Lost Ones. Someone might have forgotten their own name but remembered enough to leave behind a few broken syllables - scrawled in a margin, later found and mistaken for something else.

Madeleine finished, shrugged, and took another sip of wine.

"Found it in a folio in Lyon," she said later, when someone accused her of borrowing from the Psalms. "In the margin. Probably nonsense. But it stayed with me."

She didn’t know what she’d carried.
He didn’t ask.
She vanished from the city before spring.

He never saw her again.

Later, he tracked down the folio - a tattered volume of mystic commentary. The paper smelled of dust and centuries. The marginalia was faint, the ink nearly lost. But the shapes of the letters…

They weren’t mortal, not entirely.

Someone had written this with hands that remembered another alphabet. Someone whose blood still carried the echo of Valinor, however faint.

He sat with the page for a long time, before he opened his notebook and tore a slip from the back to leave a note:

You are not the last.
If you remember the western light,
return where the slow river runs through the forest,
north of the river, in a bend where the winds cross,
and silence holds the stone high above.
Come on Midsummer’s night.
The flame still burns.

He folded the note once and slipped it into the folio, just beneath the damaged page - visible only to someone who truly looked. The sort of person who would know what it meant.

Then he recorded the place in his journal: Paris, Rue Saint-Jacques. March, 1734.

It wasn’t enough, but it was something.

Centuries earlier - on a hill high above the Loire, the “slow river” - he had stumbled upon a crumbling chapel tucked into a forgotten curve of forest. It had no roof, no name, no altar that still bore a cross. Only silence, and stone, and wind.

He had left a message there once, on a whim. He hadn’t expected to return. But now - after Paris, after the poem - it became a habit.
Each Midsummer’s Eve, he went back and lit a candle. Left a fresh note in the hollow behind the altar.

No names and no promises, just a line for any who might come:

Return on Midsummer’s night.
The western flame still burns.
We’ll find a way across the sea.

A chapel forgotten by the world, a place that hadn’t changed in centuries.

Another trace. Another ripple. Another maybe.

It wasn’t enough.

But it was hope.

And so -
he kept going.

oOo

Chapter Text

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Chapter 03 – One Line in the Comment Section

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January 2025, Whitehaven

In the weeks following her first post on the website, Julia’s life settled into a quiet rhythm: work, walks with Calad, writing Beriel’s Story - as she’d come to call it - posting twice a week, replying to comments, waiting for the next update day.

She couldn’t quite say what she was waiting for. After all, it was just an obscure story in an obscure fandom, tucked away in some forgotten corner of the internet. And yet, it felt like a mission.

She knew she was compensating. Working through the grief and loss and impossible drama of Beriel and Aragorn somehow helped her not work through her own. Thinking about how they lost and found each other helped her not think about what she had lost - and would never find again.

And so, in those bleak January days, there was comfort. And forgetting.
And maybe even a kind of grace.

oOo

24^th January 2025, Whitehaven

By the time she reached Chapter 6, she had a handful of regular commenters - familiar names who replied with banter and enthusiasm. So she wasn’t surprised when a message came in, notifying her of a new comment.

Comment by Elrandir:

A bold first impression from Estel: looming silently in the rain, startling strangers with transport inquiries, and radiating that signature “I swear I’m not intimidating” energy. Classic.

Also, glad to see he’s finally learned where flowers come from. That’s progress.

-E-

Julia blinked.

Then read it again.

It wasn’t the joke itself that gave her pause - though it was… oddly specific. It was the tone. Casual, dry, with just the right amount of familiarity. Not the usual reader banter. Not fandom speak. No “omg love this” or “Estel is so dreamy!!”

Just… observation. Clean. Wry. Like someone commenting on a memory instead of a story.

She checked the username: Elrandir.

Elrandir
Professional witness to things that never happened.
My pseuds: Elrandir
My user ID is: 24430378
Location: ...between the lines of old stories...

Bio:
Not much to say. Just here for the stories. Probably shouldn’t be, but here we are.

No works. No visible bookmarks. Just the one comment on her story.

She opened a new tab, typing the name into the search bar, half-expecting it to be taken from some obscure forum or a piece of lore she’d missed. But it didn’t lead anywhere obvious.

She frowned, leaned back, and stared at the screen for a few long seconds.

Maybe it was nothing. Just someone having a bit of fun. A lurker who enjoyed dry humour.

Still…

The phrasing. Radiating that signature “I swear I’m not intimidating” energy.

She hadn’t written that. But it fit him – Estel…Ian, as she had known him.

It fit him almost too well.

She closed the comment, opened her editing doc again, and stared at it for a while - not unsettled, exactly. Just…

Aware.

oOo

In the bungalow overlooking the harbour, Oliver sat motionless in front of his laptop, hands resting on the table.

He shouldn’t have commented.

He hadn’t meant to - he never meant to. That wasn’t what this was about. Observe. Confirm. Leave no trace. He’d managed that for over five hundred years.

So why now?

Why here?

He let out a slow breath and leaned back in the chair, as if that might settle something. It didn’t.

The pseudonym hadn’t even been planned. He’d typed it without thinking. Elrandir. A name that didn’t exist, but might have. Should have, perhaps. He hadn’t used it before. It tasted strange. Familiar and false all at once.

But it wasn’t the name that troubled him most.
It was the words.

They had slipped out from somewhere deeper. From an old place of recognition. A corner of memory undisturbed for years.

The way the writer described Estel… it had been so him.

In the rain, awkward and stoic, pretending not to care while caring too much. That particular gravity. That habit of standing just slightly apart, as if unsure he was allowed to belong.

The description had undone him - quietly, completely. Not because it was beautiful. But because it was true.

Like hearing someone speak at a funeral and say, softly, under breath and memory, “That was so him.”

And you know it’s not performance. Not fiction. Just fact. Undeniable and suddenly too close.

That was where the comment came from. Not mischief. Not recklessness.

Grief.

He rose slowly, crossing to the window. Outside, the wind moved restlessly across the rooftops, rattling a loose gutter like a breath caught in the throat.

They would read it. Of course they would.

Would they recognise it for what it was?
A thread, tugged by accident. Or maybe not.

He paused. He kept thinking she, though he didn’t know why.
The username suggested it. The tone, maybe.
But it could be anyone. He knew that. He’d seen stranger veils.

Still, the voice felt familiar.
Not known. But felt.

Too late now. The site didn’t allow comment deletion – not unless the account vanished entirely. And that would look worse. That would invite curiosity.

The writer would probably forget it. Just a comment. A clever one, maybe - but easily lost among the noise.

Still, some part of him knew: something had shifted.
Slightly.
Enough.

He didn’t know what came next.

He just knew he’d taken a step without meaning to.

oOo

He stayed by the window long after the screen had gone into screen saver mode.

He’d thought of searching for the author before. Of course he had. The moment he’d seen the story - the story - being told by someone online, the idea had sparked. Find the author.

“Local historian. Guided tours. Whitehaven.” A search like that would’ve led to a result. To a person.

He could have.

But he hadn’t.

Not out of laziness. Out of principle.

Because whoever they were, they weren’t hiding. They weren’t spreading lies. They weren’t even trying to be clever about it. Just… writing. Quietly. Consistently. As if it had all lived in their memory.

And as long as they stayed anonymous, he could pretend it didn’t matter. That it was coincidence.

But tonight…

The way they’d written Estel. That moment on the bus. The timing. The tone. The ache beneath it.

It had caught him off guard.

Not because it was accurate.
Because it wasn’t performative.
It wasn’t dramatised.

It was just… true.
Down to the bone.

He hadn’t meant to reply.
But something personal had slipped out. Just enough.

And now, the balance had shifted.

For the first time, the thought came with real weight:

Find them.

Not because they were dangerous. Not because they’d done anything wrong.

Because he needed to know who could write about Estel and Beriel like that.

He let the thought sit with him. Held it carefully.

And then let it go.

For now.

He had held the line this long.

He could hold it a little longer.

oOo

He had just started to walk away when the soft chime sounded.

Not loud. Just a quiet ping from his inbox - one of a hundred daily noises in a world far too noisy.

But this one… he already knew.

He crossed the room slowly, almost absently, and reopened the laptop.

New comment reply
You have a reply to your comment on “Rosemary and Time.”

He stared at the subject line for a few seconds before clicking.

Comment Reply from ElanorGardner
Re: A bold first impression from Estel...

Honestly? You had me at “looming silently in the rain.”

But yes - he does have that “I swear I’m not intimidating” energy. You nailed it.

Are you sure you haven’t met him? Asking for a friend.

–EG

Oliver sat very still.

It wasn’t much. Light, teasing. The kind of thing any writer might reply.

But it wasn’t nothing, either.

There was something beneath the tone - an alertness. A tilt of the head. Like someone listening for something between the lines.

And maybe… so was he.

He read the username again. ElanorGardner.

Whoever they were… they had known something. Or someone.

He didn’t reply.
Not yet.

But his cursor hovered over the comment box for far too long.

He shouldn’t respond again.
That would be the second step. And he wasn’t even sure why he’d taken the first.

But the words stayed with him.

Are you sure you haven’t met him? Asking for a friend.

It wasn’t meant as anything. Just internet banter.
But it hit like a pebble thrown into still water.
The smallest ripple in years of silence.

He opened the comment box anyway.

Typed. Paused. Erased.
Typed again.

Elrandir:
Let’s say I’ve met someone like him.
The rain would’ve suited him. The silence too.
And if he ever asked about the bus, he’d probably apologise for startling you after. Twice.
(He was like that.)

He sat back.
Read it.
Read it again.

Too much.

He deleted the last line.
Then retyped it.
Then added:

But then again, maybe I’m just projecting.
–E

He hovered over “Post.”

Then clicked away.

He didn’t send it. Not yet.
But he didn’t delete it, either.

Instead, he opened a small text file.
Pasted it in.

Somewhere across the city, someone was telling a story they weren’t supposed to know.
And now they’d answered back.

He sat with that for a while - the echo of memory stirring like a breeze in an abandoned room.

oOo

Julia stared at the comment thread for a while longer.

He hadn’t replied.
Not yet.

But she had the distinct, ridiculous feeling that he’d read her reply more than once.

She closed the tab. Then opened it again. Then huffed at herself and shut the laptop entirely.

Calad looked up from the sofa as she passed, his tail thumping once in vague canine concern.

“I’m fine,” she muttered, grabbing a blanket and her tea mug.

Just another reader. Just another username.

She knew that.

Still… she couldn’t help the way her mind kept circling back to that phrase.

Looming silently in the rain.

She hadn’t written it that way. But it was him.

And whoever Elrandir was -

He’d seen it too.

oOo

27^th January 2025, Whitehaven, 2:47 am

The search bar stared back at him, quiet and black.

He’d told himself he wouldn’t do this.

But something had shifted.
The comment exchange.
The latest chapter with the Midsummer scene.
The way the story breathed with the shape of truth. Of memory.

He typed slowly:

tour guide local historian Whitehaven

The results appeared in an instant.

Midway down the page:
Whitehaven Borough Council - Cultural & Historical Affairs

He clicked.

Julia Stokes
Resident Historian and Lead Tour Guide

Specialist in local folklore, maritime history, and historical cartography.
Available for speaking engagements and educational outreach.
Contact: [email protected]

There was a photograph beside the listing.

She wasn’t smiling exactly - just looking straight into the camera, calm and unguarded. Auburn hair, a little windblown. Freckles. No makeup. A dark green shirt. Her expression was open, present in a way that felt… old. As if she’d already weathered more than most people would guess.

Not striking. Not hiding. Just real.

Something twisted deep in his chest.

Beriel had spoken of her - often. Her name surfaced in memory like a thread pulled through a seam:
“Julia did understand.”
“She kept everything alive. History, stories… me.”

And there had been that rough sketch in the margin of one of Beriel’s journals - just a soft pencil outline, unfinished, the corner torn. A sketch surfaced in his memory. Done by Beriel’s hand. Lively eyes. A crooked grin.

And now, here she was.

Julia Stokes.
Living in Whitehaven.
Holding the story.

And no longer just writing it.

He sat back in his chair, the weight of it all settling around him like dusk.

Beriel’s voice, long gone, felt suddenly nearer.

“Julia’s the one I trust with making good tea and always telling the truth.”

A friend.

Julia.

This woman wasn’t just a tour guide or an amateur historian.

She was the Julia.

The one Beriel had spoken of like a sister.

The person posting Rosemary and Time wasn’t just a curious stranger, or someone with a lucky sense for the shape of things.

She was the one Beriel had trusted.

And now - she had the story.

He leaned back, staring at the ceiling. His thoughts spun, sharp and unfinished.

He didn’t know how she had received the story.

Only that she had kept the promise Beriel had made once, long ago:

“I won’t disappear.”

He stared at the name on the screen.

Julia Stokes.

He opened a new tab. Typed it into the “To” field of a blank email.

--

To: [email protected]
Subject: [empty]

Julia,
I…

--

He stopped.

What could he possibly say?

That he knew Beriel? That he had been there at the end? That he’d walked centuries in silence waiting for someone to remember?

That he found her because he couldn’t stay silent anymore?

It all sounded mad. Or cruel. Or worse…unwelcomed.

He deleted the “I.”
Typed again.

You’re not wrong about him.
That scene in the rain - it was true.
All of it was true.

He stared at the blinking cursor.

Then selected the entire message.

Delete.

He closed the tab.

Not yet.

oOo

He leaned back in his chair, eyes still on the photograph.

Julia Stokes. The friend Beriel had spoken of. The one Beriel had trusted with everything.

He switched tabs.

The chapter was still open.

Saturday, 16^th of June, Year 2018, Seventh Age.

He closed his eyes.

Seven years too late.

Of course he had tried to find Beriel - years ago. Again and again. He’d kept search alerts running, obscure ones, tuned to patterns and words most people wouldn’t use. But nothing ever surfaced. Nothing real.

And in all the accounts - those long nights in Minas Tirith, the fire crackling, Aragorn holding her hand while she spoke - she had never offered specifics. Not once.

Not even when their children were old enough to sit beside them, wide-eyed and silent, listening to a world that didn’t sound possible.

He remembered the way she said it, almost offhand:

“It was far from everything I knew. Everyone thought I was mad.”

No cities. No names. No dates. Just silence wrapped in memory.

And Legolas and Aragorn - of course they had spoken of it too. The modern world. Cars. Escalators. Streets lined with blinking lights. Parks and planes and strange music in strange places.

But not once had either of them said:

“It was Summer 2018, when we met. The city was Bristol.”

He stared at the words on the screen. The ones Beriel had written.
The ones Julia had now placed into the world.

They glowed - quiet and clear - with the light of a world already gone.

What would he have done, if he’d known?

Would he have tried to reach her?

Tried to find her before the others did?
Even from afar - just to let her know she wasn’t alone?

He couldn’t have joined them to return to Middle-earth. That much was clear.

Two versions of himself in the same time…

That would have been more than magic could manage. It would have risked fracture. Rupture. Unravelling.

But still - he might have tried to reach her, somehow. A note. A sign. A name whispered where she could hear it.

Or maybe…

Maybe he would have found a way to get a message to his younger self, to be prepared for the choice in Mandos’ Halls.

Back in the grey quiet  - when he stood on the threshold of unbeing, and the voice had asked:

“Will you return?”

Not to the life he'd known.
But to one that had not yet unfolded.

Find the others, it had said. Those who’ve wandered too far. The ones who forget what they are. The ones who were left behind.

And he had said yes.
Not out of certainty.
But because it felt like a way forward, even if it led away from everything he loved.

He hadn’t known how long it would take.
How much would be lost.
How quiet it would become.

Would he have chosen differently?

He didn’t know.

But tonight, for the first time in years, he let himself wonder, if silence was still the right answer.

oOo

Chapter Text

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Chapter 04 – Charcoal Smudges on the Skin

oOo

Friday, 14^th March 2025, Whitehaven

For weeks now, he had buried himself in work…

Stripping wood, restoring hulls, sealing leaks no one else could see. Anything to keep his hands full and his mind quiet. Anything to stop the ache that sharpened every time he returned to that damned website.

He told himself he would stop reading.

Stop hoping.

Stop looking at the picture on the county council’s website like some lovesick teenager.

But still, every Tuesday and Friday, he returned.

Not just to the photograph - the tight-lipped smile, the wind-tossed hair - but to the story.

Beriel’s story.

He had followed Julia’s uploads with the same reverent dread one reserves for reading prophecy. There were details in the prose too specific to be chance. Turns of phrase Beriel herself had used. Secrets no one else could know.

He wasn’t sure what compelled him, exactly, but on Friday night, just before midnight, he found himself commenting again.

The scene was unmistakable: Beriel, misreading the bond between Aragorn and Legolas, offering her awkward sympathy with devastating sincerity.

It was foolish. Endearing. And too familiar.

He opened the comment box and typed without overthinking:

Elrandir (comment posted March 14, 2025, 23:28)

I’ve seen bonds like theirs misunderstood before. Loyalty mistaken for longing. Devotion mistaken for desire.

And yet... perhaps it is no mistake at all, only a failure of language. There are ties that defy easy names.

Lucky her she did never abandon her instincts. She only got better at tempering them with time.

(And yes, I laughed. Quietly. But with fondness.)

He meant to leave it there. Anonymous wisdom tossed into the tide.

But about ten minutes later, her reply appeared:

ElanorGardner (reply posted March 14, 2025, 23:44)

Okay… I wasn’t expecting to feel seen by a stranger on the internet at nearly midnight, but here we are.

“A failure of language” - that line’s going to haunt me a little (in a good way, I promise).

And yes, she did get better - but how do you know? Have you been secretly reading ahead??? Mostly by embarrassing herself often and with flair.

That’s the second time you’ve left a most unsettlingly specific comment. I say this with affection.

And a little suspicion.

He didn’t answer.

But he stared at the words for a long time, his thumb resting against the corner of the screen, the glow of it casting a dim halo in the otherwise dark room.

“A little suspicion.”

She wasn’t wrong.

oOo

Monday, 17^th March 2025, Whitehaven

He returned his attention to work, but the thread of her voice - imagined though it was - followed him. That had been three days ago.

Now, on Monday, he was back in the workshop, the scent of linseed oil clung to his hands.

Warm, metallic, with a sharp undertone of salt and rot, like the sea itself was rusting.

Oliver stood over a battered rudder, brush in hand, the grain drinking the oil greedily.

The world had never stopped breaking. It had only learned to do so faster.

He blinked against the scent –

- and the cold -

- and the silence.

Then the memory rose.

oOo

February 1847, London

The city had no stars.

Smoke poured from chimneys like mourning veils, and the sky was the colour of old bruises. Ash clung to windowsills, to collars, to lungs. Children coughed in their sleep. The Thames was a grave.

He had called himself Elias Fenn back then, had tried to fight it. Quietly, discreetly. Funding projects no one else cared to back: green squares in grey streets, public access to air and trees. It had felt futile, even then.

The machines were multiplying.

Iron rails split ancient hills. Canals drained wetlands. Trees came down faster than new ones could rise. He remembered a grove outside Hampstead where nightingales once sang; by 1846, it had become a coal depot.

They do not know what they ruin, he had thought. They cannot even hear it screaming.

That was when he met Clara.

She sketched the city like it was a dying body.

“London’s lungs,” she called one of her drawings: a map of vanished gardens turned to smoke and soot.

She never tried to save anything, just to remember.

“You can't draw silence,” she told him once, flicking ash from her fingers. “But you can draw the space where it used to live.”

She was not like the others.

She listened. She saw. And it terrified him.

Because she asked questions. Because she looked at him and saw too much.

Because when she pressed a violet behind his ear and said, “You need colour,” he forgot - just for a moment - how the world ended.

She called him Nobody. He let her.

And still, he stayed too long.

They spent winter in the flickering light of oil lamps, the windows fogged with smoke and condensation. She painted until her fingers cramped. He read aloud in half a dozen languages she never quite recognized.

It should have been a refuge.

Instead, it became a reckoning.

Because one night, after rain had stained the walls and turned the city into shadow, she lay beside him in the dim light of the stove - skin warm against his, breath slow with sleep and something more fragile.

Her fingers traced the inside of his wrist, idle and unguarded.

“You’re not from here, are you?” she whispered.

The words were barely more than breath, a ribbon of curiosity threaded with affection and wonder. Not accusation. Not fear.

She hadn’t meant to say it aloud.

And he - he almost answered.

The truth rose in him like a tide: ancient names, long-fallen cities, the silence of stars she would never see. He could have told her everything in that moment. Could have placed the weight of it all in her open hands and trusted her not to flinch.

For a heartbeat, he believed she might understand.

But he had seen what happened to those who came too close.

He had watched mortals burn themselves trying to hold fire they could not name.

And there was something in her - too bright, too brave - that made him afraid. Not for himself.

For her.

So he kissed her temple, said nothing, and let the silence stretch between them.

He lay awake until the sky paled.

And then he left before dawn.

No goodbye. No explanation. Just the violet she had given him, pressed flat inside a torn sonnet, left among her ink-stained brushes.

He did not look back.

After Clara, he stopped pretending.

Not just about love.

About hope.

oOo

Monday, 17^th March 2025, Whitehaven

Back in the workshop, the oil had cooled.

Oliver wiped his hands clean. The sea outside the open door was gunmetal-grey, churning quietly beneath a thin winter light.

Smoke still stained the sky - now from trucks, not chimneys. Plastic bobbed between moored boats. There were no nightingales.

Mortals, he thought, had learned to name every tree and forgotten the songs they once carried.

Julia lived in this world.

A world Clara had feared, and he had failed.

Julia…she didn’t even know him yet. And already something in her was beginning to unmake the armour he’d spent lifetimes building.

But she reminded him of silence. Of the moment before the grove fell.

And that was the most dangerous thing of all.

oOo

Tuesday, 18^th March 2025, Sandwith

Julia woke just before dawn.

Not with a jolt, not from a dream - but as if something had left the room.

The old Post Office was silent around her. Pale light crept through the edges of the heavy curtains, brushing against bookshelves and dust motes. The pipes groaned faintly in the walls, settling like an old man sighing in his sleep.

Calad lifted his head from the foot of the bed, ears twitching, then dropped it again with a quiet huff.

She lay still for a long moment, staring at the ceiling. There was a weight in her chest - not fear, not exactly sorrow. Something quieter. Heavier.

She didn’t know why she thought of him…

Not Estel. Not Legolas. Not of the chapter about that ridiculous misunderstanding she posted at the end of last week.

Not Tom, her husband.

The commenter.

Elrandir.

She’d laughed at his words a few nights ago, typed something light and teasing in response, then gone to bed without thinking twice. But now, in this grey hush, the memory of his comment lingered like the taste of a dream.

There are ties that defy easy names.

A line like that shouldn’t have stayed with her. But it had.

She turned onto her side, pulling the covers up to her chin. Calad shifted with her, one paw tapping against the mattress as he resettled.

Maybe it was the story getting under her skin. Maybe it was the loneliness.

Maybe it was nothing at all.

But still, she whispered into the soft dark of the room:

“Who are you?”

Calad gave a soft, low whine.

There was no answer. Just the hum of pipes, the rhythm of breath, and the slow light of morning climbing the walls.

oOo

Friday, 21^st March 2025, Whitehaven
It was late afternoon. The sky hung low, pale and indistinct, like it hadn’t made up its mind about rain.

Oliver Mitchell arrived early. He stood at the edge of the gathering crowd beside the visitor centre, hands in the pockets of his worn coat, gaze fixed on the cobbled path ahead. The harbour breeze carried the scent of brine and diesel - modern, functional, hollow.

There were already a few people gathered outside across the green: a retired couple with matching waterproof jackets, a young man with a camera he didn’t seem confident using, and a mother trying to convince her child that the harbour ghosts wouldn’t eat him. Oliver kept his distance, hovering by the corner of a brick wall, just close enough to hear.

He scanned the group out of habit. It had been centuries since he'd needed to memorise exits or count potential threats, but the instinct never left. No one here looked out of place. Except, perhaps, for him. But he’d gotten very good at appearing slightly boring.

Then she arrived.

She wore dark jeans, a faded green jumper, and a long coat the colour of damp stone. Her auburn hair had been pulled back loosely, strands tugged free by the wind. A dog walked beside her - large, silver, with a steady, quiet demeanour that reminded him of old friends long buried.

“Afternoon, everyone,” she said. “I’m Julia Stokes. I’ll be your guide today. Thanks for being brave enough to take the harbour route. It’s the less glamorous side of town, but it’s got the better ghosts.”

A few chuckles. The child stopped complaining.

Oliver hadn’t heard her voice before - not like this.
Not in person.
He’d read her words. He’d imagined her voice while reading Beriel’s story, trying not to assign tone where there was only text. But hearing it now, real and whole and weathered by wind and time - it stopped him.

It wasn’t that it sounded like Beriel.
It sounded like something Beriel had listened to.
Like the same river that carved two different stones.

Julia began to walk. The group followed, shuffling politely. Oliver trailed near the rear, quiet, unnoticed. It feels absurd to walk among these buildings, to hear this voice in this place. For four years, he lived less than a mile from here and never saw her. Never heard her. And now she was narrating history as though she hadn’t been quietly altering it with every chapter she posted.

“This alley here was once the main path to the shipyards. You can still see the grooves in the stone where cart wheels wore them down.”

She gestured as she spoke, pointing out invisible lines in the landscape, coaxing memory from stone and shadow. Her tone was even, but never flat. She had the gift of making you believe what she said had weight.

He watched her, watched how she held her hands when she wasn’t speaking: folded lightly behind her back, like someone keeping something to herself. Her stride was unhurried, but there was a kind of tension in her posture, like she wasn’t entirely in her body. Like someone who hadn’t fully come back from wherever they’d been.

They stopped in front of a cracked courtyard wall.

“That stone used to be part of a hearth. They say you could still smell rosemary when it rained.”

Rosemary.

That again.

He should have expected it. But the words struck him all the same.

She continued, voice gentler now.

“And here’s where the apothecary once stood. It burned down in 1912. Some records say it was rebuilt. Some say it wasn’t. But the stories always say the last scent smelled here was rosemary and…”

She faltered.

Her eyes moved across the group, almost casually - until they found him.

It lasted a second. Maybe two.
Not long enough to be strange.
But just long enough to catch.

Her brow creased, ever so slightly. Not suspicion. Not recognition. But a shadow of something old and nameless brushing against the edge of her memory. He felt it pass through him, sharp as glass.

He looked away.

oOo

The tour moved on. They passed the chapel ruins, the dock markers carved with dates worn smooth. She told stories about sailors who never returned and women who sang on the cliffs, waiting. The usual folklore. But in her telling, it felt like she meant it. Like she believed they still might be out there, walking just beyond the edge of the fog.

When the tour ended, Julia thanked everyone. The group began to disperse, trickling back toward shops and parked cars. The wind was picking up again. The dog, sat beside her like a sentinel.

Oliver lingered.

Julia knelt briefly to tighten the leash on Calad’s collar. She spoke softly to him, not words - just sounds. The kind you make when you’ve lived with silence too long and still want to fill it kindly.

Oliver almost stepped forward.
He almost said, “Thank you for the tour.”
He almost said, “I think you tell stories the way they deserve to be remembered.”
He almost said, “Beriel trusted you.”

But he didn’t.

Instead, he turned.
Walked back down the path, wind at his back.

Behind him, Julia rose. Her gaze followed his retreating figure for a moment - nothing unusual. Just a flicker of curiosity, maybe. Or the kind of interest you give someone whose face feels slightly too familiar.

The wind shifted again.
Somewhere above the harbour, a gull cried once and was silent.

oOo

Chapter Text

oOo

Saturday, 22^nd March 2025, Sandwith

Julia didn’t usually remember the faces.

People came and went on her tours - tourists, locals, wanderers looking to fill a quiet afternoon with something interesting. She kept things friendly, professional: easy to forget, by design. That was how she liked it.

But this morning, standing in the kitchen with half a cup of lukewarm tea and Calad pressed against her thigh, she kept thinking about him.

She couldn’t have said why.

There’d been a man near the back. Quiet. Hands buried in his coat pockets, saying nothing. Nothing unusual about him - a little older than her, perhaps, weatherworn in that way that made him seem like he could belong anywhere: coastline, forest, underground train station.

And yet, something about him snagged in her memory.

Not his face - she could barely bring that up. It was already blurred, as if she’d seen him through fogged glass.

It was the sense of him.

Like someone who didn’t belong there. Or belonged there too much.

She exhaled and tried to shake it off.

Maybe it was the rosemary, she thought.
Maybe it was just the strange mood that had settled over her like mist since waking - the comment, the echo of someone she hadn’t met.

“You’re being weird,” she muttered aloud.

Calad looked up at her with the tired expression of someone who had patiently witnessed many such mornings. She scratched behind his ear. He leaned his full weight into her.

She set the mug down and wandered over to her laptop, her fingers opening it almost before her thoughts caught up.

The website…

New comment: None.

New followers: One.

No name she recognised. No comment, either. Just that additional one follower reading along, perhaps.

But for a second, her stomach did something odd.

She clicked into the previous chapter and scrolled through last week’s thread. Her eyes lingered on the comment.

There are ties that defy easy names.

She stared at it longer than she meant to. There was something in the cadence, in the knowing of it.

Then she closed the tab.

“Weird,” she said again, to no one in particular.

Calad sighed in agreement.

oOo

It was a Saturday - the kind where the sky stayed grey and noncommittal.

Saturdays had always been the hardest, she’d learned. Weekdays at least offered the illusion of structure: tasks to check off, emails to ignore. Sundays, by unspoken agreement, were set aside for silence and solitude. But Saturdays - those carried expectations. You should go out. You should get things done. You should see people. The weight of the word “should” was always heaviest on a Saturday.

So she told herself it was time.

Time to go through a drawer.

Not the important ones - she wasn’t that brave today. Just clutter. Just the usual. Things that hadn’t mattered in a long time.

She made coffee. Fed Calad. Told herself - aloud, as if that made it binding - that today was the day she would sort through the top drawer.

The one she never opened.

She didn’t expect it to hurt.
Not immediately.

Mostly sweatshirts, a few folded museum tees from her old job. A tangle of charger cables. Headphones she hadn’t used in years. She moved mechanically, letting the rhythm of folding and sorting keep her hands occupied, her thoughts at bay.

Then her fingers brushed something tucked deep into the back corner.

Soft flannel.

Wrapped around something small.

She stilled.
She knew what it was before she even unwrapped it.

Plastic. Cool to the touch. Familiar in the way a memory becomes a shape in your hand.

She pulled it free and sat back on her heels.

A pale blue music box, shaped like a rabbit. Scuffed along one ear from the time one of the twins had dropped it on the kitchen tiles. It had survived the fall, but the music had never sounded quite the same afterward - slightly warped, like it was underwater.

She remembered putting it there. Not to preserve it. Not even to protect herself from it. Just to get it out of sight.

She should have put it back.

But her fingers were already turning the tiny key.

Three soft notes. Slightly off-key.
Then a fourth.
Then silence.

The song had never been long. But it had always been enough to make them giggle.

The memory swept in before she could brace against it:

Tom, sitting on the edge of the sofa, guitar across his lap, one of the twins balanced in his arms. The other crawling perilously close to the dog bowl she'd forgot to clear away that morning. Tom plucked the same melody by ear, grinning over the strings.

“It’s basically Chopin,” he’d said. “If Chopin wrote lullabies for rabbits.”

She’d laughed. Not because it was funny, but because that’s what love did: it made ordinary things shimmer.

It was how they moved through their days.

Tom’s fingers trailing over the piano keys while she cooked.
Half-finished melodies drifting through the house like sunlight through curtains.
Guitars leaning in every corner, always slightly out of tune.
Singing softly to the twins in the car, both of them half-asleep, the road humming beneath them.

And sometimes - when the babies were finally down and the house had settled - it was Tom coming home late from a gig, the scent of stage smoke still clinging to him, his voice worn but bright with adrenaline.

Music was how he touched her, too.
How they found each other in the dark.
How their love moved - not in words, but in rhythm.
The hush of breath. The slow unravel of chords beneath fingers.
A song he never quite finished writing.

It had been in everything.

She hadn’t played since.

Hadn’t sung.

Hadn’t even listened.

Not because she couldn’t bear it.

But because silence had become her way of remembering.
And forgetting.

She set the rabbit gently on top of a folded sweatshirt and leaned against the bedframe, arms crossed tightly over her chest.

Calad padded into the room and nudged her leg with his head. She didn’t speak.

But in her mind, she could still hear that unfinished melody.

And for the first time in years, she didn’t turn away from it.

oOo

Sunday, 30^th March 2025, Sandwith

The café was busier than he’d expected - all clatter and chatter, chairs scraping across tile, balloons bobbing at uneven heights, and someone’s playlist battling valiantly against the noise.

Oliver Mitchell had been promised tea, cake, and no fuss.

What he got was bunting made from old birthday banners, two helium balloons that had definitely seen previous lives, and a long, groaning table lined with folding chairs, local gossip, and what appeared to be a barely-disguised group effort at matchmaking.

Apparently, Pat - the boatyard’s formidable office manager - was turning fifty with a vengeance.

“It’s nothing formal,” she’d said on Friday, wiping her hands on a rag. “Just a few people I’ve known too long and a cake that probably won’t survive the breeze.”

And then, in a tone that allowed for no protest:
“You’re coming, Oliver. That’s final.”

He should have known better.

Now he was perched at one end of the table with a paper plate of Victoria sponge and two women on either side who had already walked him through their yoga schedules, Pinterest boards, and the cleansing power of magnesium supplements.

There was no obvious route of escape that didn’t involve launching himself over the hedge.

“He’s very quiet,” one of them stage-whispered, just loud enough to be heard.

“Mysterious,” the other replied. “I bet he’s hiding a tragic past.”

You have no idea, Oliver thought, and took another bite of cake.

At least the cake was good. He focused on that. Nodded when required. Smiled faintly. Avoided eye contact.

It was going exactly as badly as expected.

And then -

She walked in.

Hair windswept. Jeans muddy at the cuff. That same silver dog trotting beside her like some mythic creature forced to make peace with linoleum flooring.

Julia.

Their eyes met across the table - brief, neutral, the way strangers do when both are trying to decide whether they've met before.

She doesn’t recognise me, he reminded himself. Of course she doesn’t.

“Oh! Julia, isn’t it?” Pat’s voice rang out like a church bell. “Come on in, love! You’re just in time - we were about to cut the cake!”

Julia gave a tentative smile. “I just came in for lunch. Didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“You’re not interrupting. Sit, sit - there’s room. Oliver, would you mind?”

She gestured vaguely toward the one empty chair at the table. Because of course there was one. Waiting. Like it had always been there.

One of the women gave Julia a slow once-over, the kind of side-eye usually reserved for assessing fencing rivals.

Oliver got up, stepped back, and nudged the chair out with his foot.

“Please,” he said quietly.

Julia hesitated, then stepped forward and sat down.

The dog immediately flopped beneath the table and dropped his head across Oliver’s boot like he’d found the only sensible person in the room and decided to stick with him.

“Traitor,” she muttered.

Oliver didn’t answer.

But a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

“You’ve walked a mile, haven’t you?” he said, softer now.

“A few,” she said. “We took the headland trail. He needed it.” She gestured toward the dog, who was now enthusiastically sniffing Oliver’s knee.

“It suits you,” Oliver said.

The words escaped before he could stop them.

Julia glanced toward Pat, who was definitely listening.

Oliver didn’t look, but he could feel the collective lean of curiosity from their end of the table - like a weather shift.

oOo

The birthday cake arrived: lopsided, entirely too large, slathered in lilac icing and silver sugar balls that threatened dental calamity. Pat cut generous slices, determined to ensure everyone had one - even those who clearly tried to refuse.

Julia accepted hers with a polite “thank you,” then added, a touch more lightly than before, “I’m going to have to climb Scafell to earn this.”

“Don’t encourage her,” Pat said, eyeing Oliver over the cake knife. “She makes the rest of us look like we commute by sofa.”

“I prefer to think of it as avoidance by elevation,” Julia replied smoothly.

Oliver, mid-sip of tea, let out a quiet cough.

“Are you all right?” she asked, turning toward him, one brow lifting.

He nodded once. “Just surprised. That was… unexpectedly specific.”

“You look like you’ve been ambushed,” she added, glancing down the table at the gathering of women.

He arched an eyebrow, the faintest lift. “I was promised cake. No mention of matchmaking.”

Her smile tugged slightly wider. “Classic trap.”

They both looked at the cake.

Then away.

Beneath the table, the dog sat up and sniffed again, his nose now dangerously close to Julia’s plate.

“Don’t even think about it,” she warned him.

Oliver tilted his head. “Does he always assume he’s invited?”

Julia gave a quiet laugh. “Only when food’s involved.”

“He picked his spot well.”

“He’s strategic like that. Knows where the weak links are.”

She glanced at Oliver’s plate, then down at the dog. “Calad, behave.”

The dog thumped his tail once, entirely unrepentant.

Oliver stilled - just for a breath.
Calad.

Of course he knew the word.
Light.

But he only nodded, voice even. “Unusual name.”

“Old word for ‘light,’” she said, a little self-conscious now. “Bit of a long story.”

He looked down at the dog, now settled again beneath the table.
“Suits him,” he said.

Across the table, someone said mildly, nodding into Oliver’s direction “He talks now?”

A few chuckles. Someone poured more tea.

Julia smiled into her cup, not quite meeting Oliver’s eyes.

Pat, of course, heard everything.

“Well, maybe he just needed the right conversational partner,” she said brightly, slicing another piece of cake with the expression of someone who very much saw what was happening.

Julia blinked, clearly caught off guard.

Oliver turned his cup slowly in his hands, expression unreadable.

But inside, something very old - and very still - had begun to stir.

Beneath the table, her dog gave a long, satisfied exhale.

oOo

The sun had shifted by the time people began to leave, casting long shadows across the paving stones. Laughter drifted off in pockets as groups peeled away in twos and threes. Teacups were stacked. The last crumbs of cake surrendered to the wind.

Julia stood, brushing a few cake crumbs from her coat. Calad rose with her, stretching with the slow dignity of someone older than he looked.

“Thanks for the chair,” she said, not quite looking at Oliver.

“Thanks for rescuing me,” he replied. “I was nearly asked about my five-year plan.”

She gave a faint huff of a laugh. “You’d think cake would be enough.”

“It never is,” he said.

That made her pause - just for a second. Her expression didn’t shift, but something behind her eyes flickered - like a light passing through an old window.

“Well,” she said quietly. “Good luck with the rest of the party.”

“I think this was the party.”

“Even better,” she murmured, and turned.

Calad trotted beside her as she headed towards the harbour path.

“She’s a quiet one,” said Pat beside him - suddenly there, holding her third cup of tea and radiating the casual omniscience of someone who always knew more than she let on. “Doesn’t usually linger like that.”

He didn’t reply.

Pat followed his gaze, then added, “Moved here a while back. Just her and the dog. Keeps herself to herself, mostly.”

He turned slightly. “Where from?”

“Further south, Bristol, I think. After...” She hesitated, unusually careful. “There was… a loss. A few years ago.”

Oliver said nothing.

Pat didn’t fill the silence right away, which surprised him.

Then she said, gently, “Her husband and the little ones, twins, I think. Car accident.”

The words hung there - simple, quiet, and soft at the edges.

Pat glanced toward the café door. “She never talks about it. Not in town, anyway. People give her space. She keeps going.”

The breeze stirred the edge of the tablecloth. Somewhere behind them, someone laughed - light, careless.

“She’s steady,” Pat went on. “Kind. Never complains. But you can tell she’s lived through it. Grief like that…” she exhaled, “…it’s not loud. But it settles in. Like salt in the sea. You don’t always taste it, but it’s always there.”

He didn’t answer. But he knew what Pat meant.

She gave a small shake of her head. “Anyway. I’ll box up the last of the cake before it ends up in seagull territory.”

Pat had wandered off, humming to herself as she boxed up cake and gathered leftover napkins.

The wind stirred again, lifting the corners of the tablecloth. The harbour glittered faintly under the dying light - shards of gold on grey.

Oliver didn’t move.

A car crash. Her husband. Her children.

The knowing settled behind his ribs - heavy, quiet. Not sudden like a blow. Just there. Like a memory you forgot you carried.

There were things he’d learned to hold at a distance.

Let it pass through you, Elrond had once said. Let it pass through and leave no mark.

He told himself it wasn’t his story to hold.

He told himself not to think about it.

But he kept seeing the way she had thanked him - softly, like it had cost her something.

The way the dog had lain at his feet without hesitation.

The way she didn’t flinch at silence.

And now this: the shape of her grief, stitched into the spaces between her words, barely visible - except to those who knew what to look for.

He turned his head slightly, watching the last edge of her disappear around the curve of the path.

And suddenly, unbidden, he saw another path.

A memory, or something older than memory - the outline of a place he hadn’t let himself remember.

A cottage: southern light falling on pale stone, lavender blooming in the cracks between steps. All in a world long gone.

A woman’s voice, distant as birdsong:
“You’re back!”

Children’s laughter - high, fleeting:
“Ada! Ada’s home!”

The ache caught him off guard - deep, sharp, like a breath drawn too quickly.

He blinked. Once. Twice. Let it fade.

Not now.

Not yet.

He turned from the table and walked toward the boatyard, his steps quiet and measured.

Behind him, the sea kept breathing.

oOo

The sun was warm on Julia’s back as she crossed the harbour road, though the wind still tasted faintly of salt and rust.

Calad trotted ahead, tail swaying in loose rhythm, glancing back now and then to make sure she was still with him.

The café had been louder than expected. Not in a bad way , just… full. Full of voices, overlapping stories, shared laughter. The kind of familiar chaos you didn’t realise you missed until it wrapped around you again.

She hadn’t meant to stay.

She’d only gone in for lunch. A bowl of soup, maybe. Something hot after the wind off the cliffs.

And yet -
She’d sat down.
She’d stayed.

And something inside her had quieted.

That man - Oliver, Pat had said - had stood without hesitation when he saw her. Not in a chivalrous way. Just… aware. Like someone who’d spent enough time on the margins to recognise the shape of it in someone else.

She didn’t know what to make of him.

Quiet. Watchful. He didn’t take up space the way people usually did. If anything, he seemed to withdraw from it - like light retreating behind a cloud.

But for a moment, she’d felt seen.

And the strange part wasn’t that it had happened.
It was that it didn’t feel threatening.
Or embarrassing.
Or even flattering.

It felt… familiar.

She frowned at that and tugged her coat closer around her ribs.

Calad veered toward the low stone wall at the pasture’s edge, pausing to sniff something only he could sense. She let him. The walk was nearly done.

The wind lifted again, brushing loose strands of hair across her face. She tucked them back, still thinking of the way Oliver had looked at her - not intensely, not with interest exactly. Like recognition. Like a forgotten song you suddenly remember the rhythm of.

She remembered him, vaguely. But this felt like something older than memory.

She turned the corner toward the Old Post Office, its chimney silhouetted against the pale fire of the setting sun. The windows were beginning to glow gold.

“You’re being strange,” she muttered.

Calad let out a soft huff, clearly in agreement.

She gave his head a slow pat as they reached the front step.

Still, as she fitted the key into the door, something tugged faintly at the edge of her thoughts.

Not a voice. Not a face.

Just the sense of something old.

Like music she used to know.

oOo

Chapter Text

oOo

oOo

Chapter 06 – Two Mugs Cooling

oOo

Wednesday, 2^nd April 2025, Whitehaven

The lantern light wavered at the edge of the harbour square, casting flickering shadows across the stone. Oliver lingered just beyond the ring of gathered tourists as Julia stepped from the dark in full costume.

She wore a deep green cloak, the hem catching on the cobbles. A heavy keyring swung at her hip, clinking with each step. In one hand, she carried a brass-handled lantern, its glass fogged and glowing like something alive. Beneath the cloak, her dusk-blue gown hugged her frame - fitted just enough to catch his eye. Her hair was pinned up, but a few wind-loosened strands shimmered in the light.

She didn’t see him at first.

She was working: voice clear and warm as she described the jailhouse that once stood on the square and the smuggler who’d vanished from his cell one stormy night. There was a practiced ease to her: how she swung the cloak, timed a pause, let the light flare at just the right moment. She’d done this before.

Oliver barely registered the story.

He wasn’t used to this version of her - so sure of herself, vivid in the dark. The night cloaked her in something unexpected: presence. She looked like someone who had always belonged in the shadowed corners of old places, and for a moment, the centuries collapsed in his chest like a card house.

Then she caught sight of him.

Her gaze skimmed the group - then doubled back. One brow arched. A slow smile curved her mouth, dry and unmistakably teasing.

“Well,” she said, just loud enough for a few guests to glance over, “are you following me around now?”

He met her gaze, exhaled into the cool air.

“That obvious?” he murmured.

She narrowed her eyes, amused. “A little.”

A pause. Then she added, “I should be flattered. Or concerned.”

“I’ll take flattered. Concerned would hurt.”

She let out a huff of laughter - surprised. Pleased. Then turned back to her crowd.

Oliver fell in behind the last of the stragglers, hands deep in his coat pockets. He told himself it was curiosity. That he wanted to see how she moved through her town. How she carried herself.

But the truth was harder to name.

Watching her - lantern raised, cloak drifting - he felt…recognition. Not memory. Just... pattern. Something old. Something that hummed low and familiar in him when she walked too close.

They wove through crooked alleys and narrow lanes, past rusted gates and crumbling walls. Julia spun stories of shipwrecks and waiting women, of buried bells and ghosts in the stones. Sometimes she shook the keys at her hip. Sometimes she tilted the lantern just so, letting its light throw shadows across her face.

And Oliver couldn’t look away.

She wasn’t acting. She inhabited the stories: jailer’s wife, lost lover, gravedigger - slipping between them like she’d lived them. The crowd laughed, gasped. But he watched only her.

Half an hour in, they stopped in a small courtyard between two Georgian buildings. A few guests peeled off. Julia moved through the group, answering questions.

Then, without warning, she was beside him.

No fanfare. Just the quiet clink of keys as she adjusted the lantern.

“You’ve been watching me all night,” she said. “You going to leave a good review online, or just keep staring?”

Oliver tilted his head slightly. “I’d need more tours first. You might be setting the bar too high.”

Her eyes caught the lantern-glow. Something flickered there - interest, maybe. Or memory.

“You’ve got a thing for women in cloaks, is that it?” she asked, light but edged.

He hesitated.

“You don’t know how close you are,” he nearly said.

Instead, a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

“Maybe just this one,” he said.

And this time, in the pause that followed, she didn’t step away.

oOo

They parted with polite nods and half-smiles. The group dispersed in ones and twos, boots clattering over wet cobbles and laughter trailing off into the night. Julia disappeared toward the small car park by the harbour wall, her lantern now unlit, tucked beneath her cloak.

Oliver walked up the hill alone.

The climb to his bungalow was steep, lined with slick stone walls beaded with mist. When he reached the top, he paused - not to unlock the door, but to lean against the railing on his patio, eyes drifting back toward the harbour far below.

From here, the town looked hushed and pocketed in shadow, the square dim and mostly empty, save for the amber glow of one remaining streetlamp.

And there she was.

Julia moved within the lit rectangle of the car park, bent over the driver’s side door. He couldn’t hear her, but the sound of her car reached him all the same: a stuttering ignition, followed by a hollow grind of metal. Then silence. Another try. The engine hiccupped, wheezed, and died.

He frowned.

The light rain that had started on his walk up had thickened into something steadier now - he could see it catching the lamps and slicking the bonnet of her small car.

Julia stepped back, looking tired in a way the cloak and keys no longer disguised. She pressed her phone to her ear, shoulders hunching against the rain as she began to pace slowly between puddles, waiting.

Oliver didn’t think.

He turned back inside, grabbed his coat, and was in his car, and on his way back down the hill two minutes later.

oOo

Julia was on the phone when his headlights cut across the car park.

She flinched, raising a hand to shield her eyes from the glare. The other still held the phone to her ear. Rain clung to her - darkening the cloak, soaking her gown, plastering strands of hair to her face. The keys at her hip clinked as she shifted, half-turned toward the approaching car.

Oliver slowed to a stop beside her. She blinked against the light, expression unreadable for a moment - then he opened the door and stepped out.

“Seriously?” she said, lowering her hand. Her voice carried through the rain, not sharp, not unkind.

“Do you just pop out of nowhere like that for everyone, or am I special?”

He glanced at her car. “You looked stranded.”

“I am.” She held up her phone. “Apparently, I’ll stay that way for the next two hours.”

Her laugh was tight. Tired. “Left my coat in the office. It was supposed to be a short drive.”

He opened the passenger door of his car. “Come on. I’ll take you home.”

She hesitated.

“It’s Whitehaven,” he added. “The car’s not going anywhere.”

Her gaze met his, searching.

“You don’t have to,” she said, quietly.

“I know.”

And after a pause, she slipped past him into the seat.

By the time he got behind the wheel, and she told him where to go, she’d folded her cloak into her lap. The dress beneath clung in dark patches - shoulders, thighs, buttons damp down the front. He noticed. He looked away.

The dash cast a faint glow on her face: relaxed now, distant, still streaked with rain.

Then: “You’re taking this ‘following me around’ business very seriously now, are you?”

“I saw you from my place,” he said. “Bungalow’s above the harbour.”

She turned to him, amused. “Disappointingly reasonable.”

“Sorry to ruin the mystery.”

She huffed a small laugh and fell back into the seat. “I was prepared to walk it. Would’ve been a long one.”

“In that dress?”

“I make bad decisions in costume.”

Silence again. But warmer now. Softer.

The road curved along the coast. The lamps grew sparse. Rain tapped like static on the roof.

“I don’t usually do this,” she said. “Let strange men drive me home.”

“Do I seem strange?”

“You’re quiet. Formal. You watch people like you’re waiting for them to slip.” A pause. “Yes.”

“Fair enough.”

She turned to the window. “I wasn’t sure what to make of you at Pat’s birthday.”

“Neither was I.”

“You seemed uncomfortable.”

“I was.”

Another pause. Then she said, “Pat thinks you’re mysterious. I think you’re hard to read.”

“Is that worse?”

She didn’t answer right away. “It depends what you’re hiding.”

He said nothing.

They pulled up outside her cottage. The porch light blinked on automatically.

Still, they sat. Rain ticking on the roof. The heater whispering low. Her keys lay quiet in her lap.

Then she turned, just slightly.

“You don’t have to drive back straight away.”

He looked at her.

“You can come in,” she said. “If you want.”

Her voice wasn’t flirtatious. Just quiet. Honest. Tired in a way that had nothing to do with the weather. There was an ache in it, not asking for comfort, only for the chance to stop pretending she didn’t need any.

He didn’t answer at once.

Because he knew all the reasons he shouldn’t.

And still…

“All right,” he said.

oOo

The rain had eased, but the gravel still crunched wetly beneath their feet as they stepped out. Julia led the way up the short stone path, cloak clutched in one hand, keys jangling faintly in the other. Her dress clung to her calves with each step.

She unlocked the door, nudging it open against the swollen wood. Warm air greeted them, laced with the scent of roses and something darker, damp stone and herbs, maybe. Familiar in a way that didn’t make sense.

“Watch the step,” she murmured, flicking on a low lamp by the door.

Oliver stepped in behind her. The cottage was small, the furniture mismatched: a worn armchair by the fire, books in uneven stacks on the floor, a few old photographs on the mantel. The kind of place that hadn’t been decorated, just lived in.

No music. Just the soft patter of rain, and the hush of two people unsure of what came next.

Julia slipped off her boots, hung the wet cloak on a peg, then brushed curls from her forehead.
“I’ll put the kettle on,” she said, and vanished into the kitchen.

He hesitated, then followed.

The light in the kitchen was low, catching the curl of steam rising from the kettle. Julia moved with purpose: tea tin, mugs, water. Her back to him.

A soft scuffle of claws announced Calad’s arrival. The dog flopped near the table with a huff, casting Oliver a long, measuring look.

“He’s a good judge of character,” Julia said over her shoulder. “Mostly.”

Oliver glanced down. “He seems... cautious.”

“Oh, that’s him being friendly. He likes you.”

She set two mugs on the table. The scent of tea drifted up.

“Give me a minute…I need out of this corset. It’s trying to kill me.”

She disappeared down the hall, and he was left with steam, the dog, and the quiet thrum of her home.

He wrapped his hands around the mug. Let the warmth settle there. Let the stillness stretch.

From the other room came the creak of floorboards, the muted rustle of fabric, the soft knock of a drawer. He didn’t picture her changing. He tried not to. But the image arrived anyway.

When she returned, she was barefoot, dressed in a soft charcoal hoodie and leggings, her hair towel-dried and tucked behind her ears. She looked... real. Not dressed up or performing. Just herself.

She sat down, curling her hands around the mug.
“This wasn’t planned,” she said, eyes on the tea. “I wasn’t thinking.”
A pause.
“But I’m glad you’re here.”

Her voice was low. Not uncertain…just tentative, like she’d already braced for regret and hadn’t found any.

Oliver watched her. Something in him unclenched. And then clenched tighter.

She shifted slightly in her chair, sleeves pulled down over her wrists, one knee tucked close. The collar of the hoodie dipped just enough to reveal the hollow of her throat. Her hair was still damp, curling at the edges. Her eyes kept flicking to him, like she needed to be sure he was real.

She glanced up again, her voice softer this time.
“It’s strange. Sitting here with someone I barely know, and not… wanting it to end.”

A breath passed between them.

“You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to,” she added. “I just…didn’t want the night to end like that.”

Oliver met her gaze. And for a moment, he had no words.

Because it was strange. But not in the way she meant.

She thought she was being polite. Giving him an out. Maybe assuming he was too decent to linger past a warm kitchen and a cup of tea.

But he didn’t want to leave.

He wanted her to keep talking. To reach for his hand. To say something that would undo him.

And he wanted to stop wanting all of it.

So he answered quietly.
“It does feel strange,” he said. “But not in a bad way.”

Julia held his gaze for a moment. Then: just the faintest smile. Sad. Curious.

“I know what you mean,” she said.

And she reached out - not far, not bold - but her fingers brushed his, barely there, as she reached for her mug again.

The contact was nothing.

And everything.

A whisper of touch, but it cracked something open between them. Not dramatic. Just a shift. Like a door unlatched without anyone meaning to turn the handle.

She didn’t pull away.

Instead, she let her fingers linger near his for a moment too long, the ceramic mug warm beneath her other hand.

“I don’t do this,” she said quietly, her voice almost lost beneath the soft hum of the kettle still cooling on the stove. “Invite people in. Sit like this.”

She looked down, not at him.

“I used to. Before. When life was... louder.”

Oliver didn’t answer. His heart was thudding now, and he didn’t trust his voice not to give something away.

Julia glanced up. Her eyes weren’t asking for reassurance. They were just open. Honest. Something in her expression had dropped its guard.

“It feels weird,” she added, with a small, rueful breath of a laugh. “But I’m not sure I want it to stop.”

And Oliver - torn between everything he was, everything he knew, and everything he wanted - found himself answering before he could think better of it.

He let his fingers settle over hers.

No pressure. Just contact.

Warm skin against warm skin.

A breath held between them.

Her hand turned and her thumb shifted beneath his. A small, unconscious motion, but it sent a pulse through him like sound through water.

He hadn’t touched anyone like this in over a century. Not out of need. Or duty. Or healing.
Just because he wanted to.

He looked down at their hands: her smaller, calloused fingers, the way her wrist curved into the frayed sleeve of her hoodie. She wasn’t reaching for anything more.

But she wasn’t pulling away.

Her voice came low, almost uncertain.
“I keep thinking I’ll regret this.”

He looked up. “Do you?”

She met his eyes then. Still uncertain. But clear.
“Not yet.”

oOo

Outside, the rain had faded to mist, clinging to the windows like breath. Inside, the kitchen was still. The only sound, Calad shifting in the next room - half-asleep, but always aware.

Julia exhaled. A soft, shaky breath that released something unspoken.

She stood, slowly pushing back from the table, her fingers still in his.
“Come with me?”

Not a question with one answer. Not even a clear question at all.

But he stood.

She led him through the hallway in silence. Past Calad, curled on his blanket. Past shelves stacked with leaning books and dust-softened frames. She didn’t speak. Neither did he.

The bedroom door creaked as she opened it.

The room was small. Spare. A narrow bed beneath a faded quilt. A dresser. A mirror. A worn jumper tossed over the back of a chair. Knitting needles rested on the nightstand.

She turned in the doorway.

“You don’t have to stay,” she said. Soft. Steady.
“But I’d like you to.”

He stood for a moment too long.

Not because he was uncertain.
But because something in him was splitting. Clean and silent. Like ice breaking under moonlight.

She stood barefoot, sleeves pushed up, the faintest crease between her brows - not from doubt, but from feeling.

She wasn’t pretending to be fine. She wasn’t seducing him.

She was simply asking - without words - do you want this, too?

And Valar help him…
He did.

oOo

His body remembered this before his mind would allow it: the pull of skin, the ache for breath, for the grounding of another heartbeat within reach. He hadn’t let anyone touch him like this - want him like this - since Clara’s fingertips brushed the base of his throat in 1856. Even that had been fleeting. Tender. Careful.

This…

This was not careful.

He stepped inside, and the door clicked shut behind him.

She didn’t move.

He did.

His hand found her jaw, slow but certain, thumb brushing along the damp edge of her hairline. She leaned into it - barely, but there. Her lips parted just slightly, breath catching.

That was enough.

He kissed her.

Not gently.

It was searching, unscripted - his mouth finding hers with a hunger that startled even him. Not rehearsed, not perfect, but human. He felt her gasp, felt her clutch at his shirt like she wasn’t sure what she was doing either.

And that undid him.

He had gone too long without this. Without heat. Without the friction of another body against his. Without the ache and fire of being wanted - not out of duty or legacy or legend. Just wanted.

Her hoodie bunched in his hands. He pulled her against him, her body solid, warm, alive.
He kissed her again, deeper this time, letting the weight of years pour into it. The shake in his limbs. The burn of her teeth against his lip. The sound she made when he pressed her back toward the bed.

And still, beneath all of it, something inside him whispered:

She doesn’t know.

But she didn’t stop him.

And he didn’t stop.

The back of her knees hit the edge of the bed. She pulled him with her - hands tangled in his shirt. Her mouth found his again. This time, he kissed her harder - less afraid of needing too much.

Because that’s what it was now.

Not curiosity.

Not restraint.

Not even hope.

Need.

A hunger pulled from some locked-away place.

XXX

Her hands slipped beneath his shirt, warm against his ribs. He gasped, actually gasped, because it had been so long since anyone had touched him like that. Not by accident. Not in passing. With intention.

He yanked the shirt over his head - clumsy, unthinking. It landed somewhere behind them. Her hands were on him again, tracing his chest, his shoulders, his spine like she meant it.

Her hoodie followed. He helped her, fingers grazing bare skin as it rose away. She wasn’t delicate beneath it - she was solid. Real. Breathing hard. Her bra strap twisted slightly on one shoulder. Her mouth was open. Waiting.

He kissed her collarbone. Then lower. Pressing into her skin like he could learn it with his mouth.

She arched beneath him, legs parting instinctively as he settled between them.

Their bodies fit awkwardly, perfectly…his trousers catching against hers, knees bumping, breath stuttering between movements.

They laughed once - low and a little breathless - when he lost his balance trying to kick off his jeans and nearly knocked her sideways. “We're both not very good at this,” she murmured, teasing.

“I haven’t had practice,” he breathed.

And then words were gone.

Her leggings. His jeans.
Clothes fell in pieces like leaves.
Skin to skin.
Heat to heat.
Friction.

Her fingers dug into his back, and his head dropped to her shoulder as he slid into her - slow at first, careful, reverent.

She arched to meet him. A soft sound escaped her throat, raw, involuntary.
It made his jaw tighten.

She felt like fire and memory and something he hadn’t known how to want until it was already happening.

His body moved on instinct - centuries of stillness shattered beneath her hands, her breath, the press of her mouth against his shoulder.

There was nothing quiet in him anymore.
He was starving.

For her. For this. For the impossible miracle of being wanted by someone who didn’t know his past and chose him anyway.

She gasped his name – Oliver - and something in him flinched.

Because it wasn’t his name. Not really.

But he kissed her hard to chase it away. Buried himself in her. Let it come undone.

She came first - her cry muffled against his shoulder - and he followed a heartbeat later, eyes shut, breath broken, her name lost in the hollow of his throat.

XXX

Later, they lay still.
Breathing.
Warm.
Tangled in silence and sweat.

He didn’t move.
He didn’t know how.

Because now, the question was no longer:
What am I doing here?

It was:

What have I done?

oOo

Chapter Text

oOo

oOo

Chapter 7 – Flowers Pressed Between Pages

oOo

Wednesday, 2^nd April 2025, Whitehaven

His breath was still warm against her shoulder.

The quilt lay in loose folds around her hips, and his hand rested on her thigh. Not possessive. Not forgotten. As if he’d meant to move it and changed his mind halfway through the thought.

Julia stared at the ceiling, one arm folded beneath her head, the other curved across her chest. Her pulse hadn’t settled - still murmuring low in her ribs, brushing the hollow at the base of her throat.

The lamp on the dresser still burned softly, casting a spill of light that stretched across the edge of the bed. Light touched his back, mapping the pale line of a scar she hadn’t noticed before. The rise of a rib. The dip of his waist.

She felt hollowed out - but not in the way grief had hollowed her.
This wasn’t pain.
This was… startling.
Like stepping off something tall and not knowing if the fall would break you - or catch you.

What have I done?

But the thought didn’t come with panic. 

He hadn’t rushed her. Hadn’t tried to charm her. Hadn’t made promises or asked for any in return.

He’d just been there.

Raw. Real. Starving, if she was honest. As if her hands on his skin had undone something in him - unspooled it past the point of no return.
And it scared her, how much that mirrored her own undoing.

She didn’t know what it meant.

Didn’t know if this would last beyond the hush of the sheets or the strange stillness of the hour.

But for the first time in years, she didn’t want to move.
Didn’t want to explain and didn’t want to undo it.

She slowly turned her head and watched him again.

He wasn’t quite asleep.
Face half-buried in his arm, brow drawn faintly together, jaw tight. His hair mussed from the pillow, shadow stubble catching the light. He didn’t look peaceful.
He looked... unmoored.

She shifted.

Just enough to make the sheets whisper.
Then, softly, almost without thinking, her fingers brushed his shoulder. Just to be there.

Warmth. Connection.

His breath caught.

The touch was nothing - light, maybe even accidental. But it landed like a pebble in still water.

A single ripple. Then another.
And then, he shivered.

Not from cold.

From something else. Something buried.

It moved through him like a wave: shoulders tensing, then letting go. A faint tremor rising from the base of his spine until it reached his hands - where it stilled. His breath came uneven. Shallow.

Her hand stilled mid-stroke.

“Are you cold?” she asked softly, not wanting to break the hush.

He shook his head.
“No.”

But his voice was hoarse. Thin around the edges. And it betrayed him.

She didn’t pull away.

Didn’t press either.

Her fingers moved again - slow, tentative - tracing the slope of his shoulder, the dip where muscle met bone. Then stillness again.

He didn’t speak.

But she could feel the shift in him now. Not in words or motion, but in the way the space between them had changed.
It was no longer just shared breath and warmth and sheets.

It was something else.
A presence, not quite peaceful.

She watched him.

Not with expectation. Not even worry. Just... attention.
A kind of seeing that didn’t need answers.

She didn’t know what had changed.
But the air felt different.

Like they were both waiting to breathe.

oOo

He didn’t turn to face her. He couldn’t. Not yet.

Because if he looked , if he saw the softness in her eyes, the open quiet still suspended between them…

He might unravel completely.

And he wasn’t sure what would be left when he did.

Her fingers didn’t move again.

She just lay there, hand resting lightly against his bare shoulder, the sheets soft and loose between them.

Then, barely louder than breath:
“How long?”

Oliver closed his eyes.

She didn’t clarify. Didn’t need to.
It wasn’t how long since you did this or how long since someone touched you.
It was: how long have you been like this?
Held tight. Closed off. Unreachable.

Of all the things she could’ve asked - Are you okay? Do you want to talk? - this was worse.
Because it was too close.
Too precise.

As if she’d reached into the dark and placed her hand on the one part of him still locked away.

He swallowed.

His first instinct was to answer honestly.
The words even rose - since Clara, since Paris, since 1856 -
But he stopped them before they could reach his lips.

She doesn’t know. She can’t know.

So instead, he exhaled and offered the shape of the truth, if not the whole of it.

“Too long,” he said. “Years.”

Vague. Safe. Still real.

She was quiet for a moment.
Then her fingers moved again - slow, soft, a drift across his shoulder blade.

“Yeah,” she said. “Me too.”

She didn’t ask anything more.

And that, somehow, made him want to tell her everything.

But he didn’t.

He just lay there, breath slowly evening out, her fingers drawing invisible lines across his skin, both of them suspended in that strange, impossible space between confession and sleep.

He shifted.

One leg easing from under the quilt, foot meeting the cold floor with a creak of wood.
He hadn’t decided where he was going.
Just knew he couldn’t stay, her hand on him, heart still caught in his throat.

He didn’t deserve this.
Not her trust. Not her touch.
Not the stillness of this house wrapping around him like a kindness.

But before he could rise fully, her voice cut through the hush.

“You can stay.”

He froze.

Not because she begged.
She hadn’t, instead her tone was calm. Practical. Already laced with sleep.

“If you want,” she added, rolling slightly toward him, head resting on her bent arm. “I’ve got work in the morning. Early. So I’ll probably be gone before you’re up.”

He turned toward her, slowly.

She looked at him without pressure, her expression unreadable in the low light. But her voice remained soft, practical. Like she’d said this before, to someone she trusted once.

“Feel free to make coffee. It’s in the cupboard above the kettle. Bread’s in the fridge - don’t ask. The toaster’s awful, but you can fight it if you want toast.”

A faint smile tugged at her lips, almost apologetic.

“Just pull the door closed behind you.”

She looked at him for a long moment, then closed her eyes again, her fingers slipping back beneath the pillow.

It undid him more than the sex had.

Because she wasn’t asking for anything, and she was giving him everything.

He stayed where he was: perched on the edge of the bed, spine bowed, elbows resting on his thighs, hands loose between his knees.

The cool air crept up his back where the sheet no longer covered him, but he didn’t reach for it. Didn’t lie back down.

He just watched her.
Her breathing was slow, even. One arm tucked beneath her cheek, the other curled across the quilt.
She looked unguarded in sleep.
Softer. Less wary than he’d seen her before.

There were still faint lines near her mouth, but now they seemed... tired, not tense. Like someone who had stopped holding it all together, if only for a night.

And he…
He didn’t know how to hold anything at all.

His eyes drifted to the small shelf near the bed. No photographs. No mementos. Just a battered paperback, a half-burnt candle, a hair tie that had slipped from her wrist and never made it back.

The detritus of someone trying to live without leaving traces of who she was before.

She’d said he could stay.
Said it like it didn’t matter.

But it did.
More than she knew.

Because no one had offered him that in longer than he could let himself remember. Not shelter. Not coffee. Not the freedom to move through a home like he belonged there.

He rubbed his hands over his face. He could still feel her fingers on his skin. The way she’d touched his shoulder like it meant something. Like he meant something.

And maybe that was the problem.

He didn’t know how to mean something to someone without unraveling the lie he lived inside.

He looked at her again.

She didn’t stir.

Didn’t know he was still watching.
Didn’t know she’d made something inside him ache in a way nothing had for a very long time.

He stayed sitting for a while, watching the slow rise and fall of her back.
Trying not to want more than this.

He breathed in. Held it. Let it go.

He didn’t lie down yet, but he stayed.

That was the choice: Not to pretend. Not to vanish into the night the way he always had before.

But even as he sat there, watching her in the soft half-light, the thought returned.
The one that brought him here in the first place.

She knows things she shouldn’t.
Names. Places.
Details no one could have known unless…

He hadn’t come here to fall into her bed.
He’d come to find out how she knew the things she knew.

And in a few hours, when the house was quiet, when the kettle was still warm from her morning coffee…
He might go looking for the truth.

But for now…
He stayed.

oOo

Thursday, 3^rd April 2025, Whitehaven

Oliver woke to the faint scent of coffee and the silence of an empty house.

For a few slow seconds, he lay still, eyes open to the pale light stretching through the curtains. The bed beside him was empty…sheets cool, her pillow indented. The kind of absence that meant she’d been gone a while.

He sat up.

The house was quiet. Too quiet. No footsteps. No kettle boiling. No rustle from the dog in the hallway. Just the faint tick of a clock and the distant caw of a gull outside.

Julia was gone.

So was Calad.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed, running a hand through his hair. The air was cool, sharp with morning. A breeze moved faintly through the open window down the hall, carrying the smell of sea salt and something herbal…pine, maybe, or wild thyme.

When he stepped into the kitchen, the kettle was still warm.

A single mug rinsed in the sink. No dishes. No crumbs. Nothing left behind - except a folded note on the counter.

Oliver.

The handwriting was clean, slightly angled, penned in dark blue ink. No flourishes. No hearts over the i.

He opened it.

Had an early meeting with the council, Calad insisted on coming too.
Didn’t want to wake you.

Coffee’s fresh. Toast is edible, if you conquer the toaster.

Stay as long as you need.
Pull the door closed behind you.

—J

He read it twice.

Then he folded it carefully and set it back down.

No awkwardness. No morning-after questions. No hints of regret. Just the same generosity she’d offered him the night before.

Stay as long as you need.

But what he needed - what he’d come here for - was not sleep, or warmth, or even her.

Not at first.

He looked around the room.

Bookshelves in the sitting room. A narrow hallway with closed doors. A faint hum from the old fridge.

She knows about Beriel. Somehow.

And now, with the house silent and time ticking fast toward the moment he’d have to leave for the boatyard…

He had the chance to find out how.

oOo

He hesitated at the end of the hallway.

Two doors. One slightly ajar. The other closed but unlatched.

He chose the one on the left.

The room was small, barely big enough for a desk and a narrow window that faced east, where pale light was just beginning to catch on the glass. A worn office chair sat tucked neatly under the desk, and beside it, a low bookshelf stuffed with local history volumes, old OS maps, guidebook drafts, and pamphlets in various stages of production.

On the desk sat a closed laptop. Next to it, a notebook. A shallow ceramic dish with a few dried petals crumbling around its edge.

He stepped inside.

Which, somehow, made it feel worse.
Like trespassing into something sacred.

He opened the notebook.

Not ink. Pencil.

The lines were faint in places, smudged by use. Some words pressed deep enough to leave indents on the next page, others barely whispered onto the paper.
The handwriting was precise, slanted, efficient - looping just slightly at the ends of certain letters.

And suddenly, he knew.
He knew this hand.

He’d seen it before - ages ago. Notes made in a script and language he hadn’t known how to read then. Seeing it here brought back scribbled lists, lesson outlines, plant names…back then, in a place that did not exist anymore, only in his memory.

It was her hand.
Beriel’s.
He’d suspected as much since he first started reading that website - but now, seeing the words again in her script, pressed faintly into the page... it landed harder than he expected.

This was it. The source.
The same lines he’d seen online, posted under another name - but here they were in pencil and pressure, smudged graphite and memory.

Not imagined. Not adapted.

Real.

Line after line - exact in rhythm, in phrasing, in voice.
Memory, made physical.

The next page held a longer passage, almost poetic. And beneath it:
A sketch of the White Tree, its branches bare, roots curling into cracked stone. A single blossom, half-open, drawn with a delicacy that made his throat tighten.

Below that:
A rough outline of the Citadel gates, one of them slightly ajar, as though someone had stepped through and left it that way.

He stared.

These weren’t decorative sketches.
They were memories. Fragments. Symbols of something lost, or maybe not yet restored.

And all of it - so unmistakably her.

His pulse picked up.

He turned the pages faster now.

More sketches. More dates. Notes in the margin. “He always called her that.” “Lanterns on the river.” “Ada in the tavern, I’d loved to see that.”

These weren’t fantasy scribbles. These were witness accounts. Memories someone had lived.

And then he found the flowers.

Folded gently between the pages. One he didn’t recognise at first, but the second made his breath catch.

It was real.

No mortal flower held that kind of shimmer. Pale lilac at the tips, soft white in the center. It had grown on a slope below Cerin Amroth, where few ever walked.

He’d seen it bloom there once.
A fragile, elusive thing. Untouched by even the elves who passed near.

He touched it now.
Carefully. Reverently.

And then it hit him, the scent.

It rose faintly from the pages, not imagined, not invented.

The smell of water moving through stone. Sun on leaves. The breath of Arda before it changed. Not memory. Not nostalgia.

Home.

The ache came sudden and sharp, stealing the breath from his chest.

He bowed his head over the open book.

For a moment, he couldn’t breathe.

oOo

He stayed by the desk, one hand still hovering above the open pages, the other gripping the edge like he might fall without it.

He couldn’t look away.

The flower’s petals were delicate, papery now with age, but the faint shimmer still clung to them, just enough to catch the morning light. Just enough to prove it had come from somewhere else.

Somewhere he hadn’t been in ages.

The scent still lingered. He closed his eyes and breathed it in again, slow and deep.

His chest ached with it.

How?

How had Beriel's notebook ended up in Julia’s hands?

It wasn’t a copy. It wasn’t guesswork. These were real things. Real places. Real voices, echoing in her words like distant song.

The room spun faintly.

He reached out, fingertips grazing the edge of another page.

And there, scrawled, just above a sketch: Estel.

He hadn’t seen that name in handwriting since…

He swallowed hard.

He couldn’t read more.

Not yet.

Not when every word felt like it was cutting him open with a thousand memories he’d spent a lifetime folding away.

The smell of the flower.
The line of a sketch.
The exact way Beriel used to press her thumb into the corner of the page as she wrote…

She was here; not in this house, not in this time, but somewhere, somehow: her truth had survived.

And Julia had been entrusted with it.

His throat tightened again, and he had to sit back, pulling his hand away from the desk as if it burned.

He didn’t know if he wanted to cry or scream or just curl into the silence and let it hold him.

Because for the first time in centuries, he didn’t feel lost.

He felt found.

And that was almost worse.

His fingers trembled as he reached for his phone.

He hesitated for a breath - then tapped the camera open and snapped a photo.

The sketch was faint but unmistakable: Estel. Not in battle, not crowned, just sitting, alone, cloaked, the suggestion of mountains in the distance and rainclouds curling low over the horizon. His face half turned, looking at some piece of wood in his hand that he was carving.

Oliver took another.

A page of poetry this time: handwritten, delicate, almost musical in its precision.

And in Tengwar.

He stared at it, stunned.

The rest of the notebook had been in Latin script. Quick English, the modern sort, with abbreviations and margin notes.

But this?

This was ancient. His. Not stylised like Tolkien’s renderings. Not calligraphic. Just functional, intimate. Real.

He hadn’t seen Tengwar written like this in a very long time.

Oliver touched the edge of the page like it might vanish.

His gaze slid to the laptop on the desk.

It sat closed. Innocent.

He stared at it.

No.

He shouldn’t.

It wasn’t what he came for, not like this.

And yet…

He reached forward and opened it.

The screen lit instantly. No password.

He shook his head, exhaling through his nose. “Of course not,” he muttered.

A folder sat on the desktop, clearly labelled:

Rosemary and Time.

He clicked it open.

His breath caught.

Scans. Dozens of them. Each page of the notebook, digitised in high resolution, dated and labelled with historian’s precision. Even the pressed flowers had been documented: notes on condition, provenance guesses, conservation steps.

Julia hadn’t just been reading Beriel’s notebook.

She’d archived it.

Of course she had. She was a historian. She worked in records offices, handling fragile documents every day. She had the tools, the skill, and the instinct to preserve what mattered.

Oliver reached into his coat, pulled out a thin cord, and connected his phone to the laptop.

The screen blinked once. Then the sync began.

He downloaded the entire folder without hesitation.

He could look through it later, slowly, properly.

But in that moment, what struck him more than the detail, or even the impossibility of its survival…Was the care.

Each scan was immaculate.
Pages centred. Shadows corrected. Corners flattened beneath a glass weight.
Clear, consistent filenames.
The pressed flowers photographed beside meticulous notes:

Condition stable. Source: possibly Cerin Amroth or Imladris hillside.
Initial preservation sufficient. Humidity low.

Julia hadn’t just kept Beriel’s memory alive.

She’d honoured it.

Not out of fantasy. Not as a fanfiction writer chasing wonder.

But because she knew.

She knew it was all true.

She might not have fully understood at first where Beriel had gone. But she had believed her. Trusted her enough to carry the story forward.

It was a tribute.

A historian’s act of love.

He sat back slowly in the chair, the light outside climbing toward full morning, and pressed a hand to his chest.

The ache there wasn’t sharp anymore.

But it was deep.

oOo

Oliver closed the folder, disconnected his phone, and shut the laptop.

He sat for a moment longer, staring at it, letting the silence settle around him again.

Then he rose.

He put everything back exactly as he’d found it.
The notebook returned, its edges aligned.
The dish of petals untouched.
The chair smoothed back into place.

Then he walked back down the hall.

The kitchen was still quiet, soft grey light filtered through the window over the sink.

The note Julia had left still sat where he’d first found it, just a little more curled at the edges.

He picked it up.
Turned it over.
Found a pen.

After a pause, he wrote his number in small, neat digits.

Beneath it, just one line:

If you ever want to meet again. No pressure.

He stared at it a moment.

Then set it gently back where it had been.

By the time he slid behind the wheel of his truck, the sky was a pale wash of early cloud.
Gulls were already wheeling over the marina.

He drove slowly at first, out of Sandwith, down toward the water.
The roads were mostly empty.
He could hear the sea in the distance.
Wind moving through the hedgerows.

He first told himself he had what he needed now.

The notebook. The scans. Proof the story was real.

He should leave it there. There was no need to see her again.

Then he told himself he still had questions. That he needed to know how she’d come by it. Who gave it to her. If there was more she wasn’t saying.

Logical reasons to stay in contact.

But he knew the truth.

He was lying to himself.

He didn’t want to question her.

He wanted to touch her again.
Her mouth on his.
Her fingers tangled in his shirt.
The soft heat of her breath against his neck.

The way she looked at him like he wasn’t half a ghost.

He wanted her in that bed again, pulling him toward something he couldn’t name.

And may the Valar help him…

He wanted to stay.

Even now.
Even knowing he shouldn’t.

oOo

Chapter Text

oOo

oOo

Chapter 08 – A Post-It with a Number

oOo

Thursday, 3^rd April 2025, Whitehaven

Julia woke before the sun. Calad was already upright on the rug beside her bed, as if he’d known she wouldn’t linger.

She slipped out without a sound, dressing in the bathroom: jeans, a wool jumper. His scent still clung to her skin…something like woodsmoke and the sea. She almost hesitated to brush her hair, to wash her face. As if doing so might erase something she wasn’t ready to lose.

She didn’t look back toward the bedroom.

She didn’t dare.

Because she already knew what she’d see: Oliver, still asleep, curled slightly away from the morning light, breathing slow and steady, one arm stretched toward the space where she’d been.

And if she let herself see that - really see it - she might never leave the room at all.

So she didn’t look.
Not when she passed the open door on her way down to the kitchen.
Not when she came back up to fetch her raincoat.
Not even when every part of her wanted to turn back - to touch him again, just to check if he’d been real.

Instead, she made coffee, scribbled a note, and left the house with Calad trotting close at her side, leash loose in her hand.

The sky was still bruised at the edges with blue-grey clouds, but the air was fresh. Salt and damp heather and cold grass. She walked fast at first: out toward the edge of the cliff path, where the wind tore at her cheeks and the dog sniffed every inch of moss and mud like he’d never smelled it before.

By the time she reached the council offices at half eight, her lungs were clear and her skin flushed.

And still, he was there.

Not physically of course, he was likely still asleep at her house, or already gone. But the idea of him hadn’t left.

The weight of him beside her. The curve of his hand between her shoulder blades. The way he’d looked at her: not like she was fragile, or broken, or something to be managed, but like he wanted her.

With hunger, yes. But also with recognition.And that scared her more than anything.

Because she hadn’t meant to let anyone in like that. Not again. Not after everything.

She powered on her work laptop. Opened her inbox. Answered two emails automatically before she even realised what she was doing.

Then she paused.

Not because of anything in particular - just a flicker of awareness, a sense that her hands were moving faster than her thoughts.
The kind of pause that comes when something internal shifts, and the rest of you hasn’t quite caught up yet.

She exhaled, closed the inbox, and stood for a moment, listening to the hum of the radiator and the tick of the office clock.

oOo

The garage had promised to call once they’d confirmed what was wrong with the car.

“Shouldn’t be anything major,” the man had said. “Bit of damp in the electrics, most likely.”

She’d nodded, thanked him, and walked out into the chill without checking her phone again.

The walk home was quiet.

Her boots thudded over the familiar grit of the coastal path, gulls crying in wide loops above the headland. The breeze off the sea had sharpened since morning - brisk now, laced with salt and the faint sting of something colder waiting inland.

She walked with her head down, not from mood but habit, eyes tracing the worn track ahead. Calad stayed close, falling into step beside her without needing to be asked. He always did when she got quiet.

By the time they reached the gate, the sky had shifted again - blue leeched from the edges, clouds rolling in like they meant it this time. Light thinned over the hedges, flat and colourless.

She let herself in, exhaling as the door clicked shut behind her - not relief, exactly, but something quieter. A small unwinding.

Her scarf slid from her shoulders. Calad padded in behind her, shaking the damp from his coat with a sneeze, and she reached down to unclip his leash with half-numb fingers.

The house felt still, like it was holding its breath.

She hung her coat on the peg by the door, turned toward the kitchen - and stopped.

Her note was still there.

Still propped on the counter where she’d left it - but turned over.

She stepped closer, heart lifting to her throat before she could stop it.

She told herself she was being silly - it was just a piece of paper, just handwriting.
His handwriting.

If you ever want to meet again. No pressure.
079–…

Her fingers hovered, then closed around the note, and for a moment, she felt touched in a way she couldn’t quite name.

This wasn’t flowers.
It wasn’t sweet words or promises.

Just a number.
And a choice offered to her.

She stood there for a while, the paper warm in her hand. Behind her, Calad circled once in the hallway, nails ticking softly across the floorboards.

He’d left, of course.
But he’d written this.

And somehow, that meant more than anything else

oOo

She remained in the kitchen, the silence around her deepening. Her tea had gone cold. She hadn’t noticed.

Outside, the light had begun to shift again, flattening into dusk. Inside, it was still dim — still full of morning’s echoes. She hadn’t turned on a single lamp.

The note rested in her hand.

If you ever want to meet again.

What kind of “thing” was this?

What had they even done?

She’d read enough novels to know this was the part where things could tip - where you either made a mess of it or stumbled into something real. But she didn’t know the rules anymore. Was there a time window? Some kind of etiquette?

Did she even want rules?

She wasn’t young. She wasn’t stumbling through awkward half-dates or texting in secret, waiting for a reply from someone whose last name she didn’t know.

She had loved. She had lost. She had grieved - properly, privately. Followed the rules: stay hydrated, take breaks, cry if you need to. Structured days. A life narrowed down to what she could manage.

She hadn’t needed anyone since Tom.

She hadn’t even wanted to.

And then…last night.

Gods.

She leaned both hands on the counter, the note still caught between her fingers, and let her head bow slightly. The shiver that passed through her felt absurd, almost inconvenient…but undeniably real.

It hadn’t been romantic. It hadn’t been careful. It hadn’t been anything she could explain.

It had been desperate - not in the pathetic sense, not in the broken sense, but in that older, wordless way. Something deeper than grief. Older than guilt. Older than the version of herself she’d carefully rebuilt. Older than language itself.

She didn’t do need.

Even with Tom, it had been about rhythm. Trust. Surrender. That love had grown slowly, like a vine finding its way up a wall - steady, rooted, sure.

But never like this. Not this hunger. Not this heat.

Not because what she’d had with Tom hadn’t been love. It had. But this was something else entirely.

This was fire.

Last night had been different.

He had been different.

The way he’d looked at her - like she’d startled him just by being there. The way his hands had trembled, just slightly, when he touched her skin. The way he’d tried to leave - and couldn’t.

She had felt chosen.

Not out of habit. Not out of loneliness. Not because someone thought she was strong.

Chosen out of hunger.

And now he’d left her a note that looked like it meant nothing at all… but also, somehow, everything.

She turned the paper over again, smoothing the edge between her fingertips. She wanted to text him. Or call. Or say something. Anything.

But suddenly, she felt old and out of practice.

“How are these things done now?” she whispered into the quiet.

From the hallway, Calad sighed - curled up and patient as ever.

She stepped into the sitting room and sat down into the chair by the window. The note rested in both hands, but she didn’t touch her phone.

She didn’t know if she was waiting for courage or permission.

She only knew she wasn’t done.

Not with him.

Not with this.

Not yet.

oOo

Later that evening, she found herself in her study again. The screen cast a faint glow against the dusky room. The mug beside her had gone cold again. She hadn’t meant to sit down here - hadn’t planned to open the file. But her hands knew the motions.

Rosemary_and_Time_Chapter29.docx

Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. The chapter was already written - well, most of it. Beriel’s story. Her voice. Her memories.

Julia was just the transcriber, the keeper of what had been left behind.

But tonight, something in her wanted to say more.

Not about the past.

About now.

She opened the platform. Navigated to the draft. Read over the chapter one more time: Estel being Estel, caught between love and duty, unsure how to speak the truth even to himself. Beriel, still unaware of the shadow twisting behind his eyes.

It felt too close tonight, after everything.

The kind of close that made your chest tighten, made your ribs ache.

Still, Julia hit Post.

Then paused.

And typed an author’s note.

A/N:
There’s a moment in this chapter - when Aragorn notices her by the fountain - where something shifts before it can be named.
That kind of moment lingers.
Not a declaration. Not a decision. Just the edge of realisation.
The light catching, briefly, on something that had gone unnoticed.
I think those moments matter.
—EG

She stared at the blinking cursor. Then hit Update.

The chapter was live.

She shut the lid of the laptop, but didn’t move. Just sat there, her heartbeat uneven, a chill crawling across the back of her neck that had nothing to do with the draft in the walls.

It felt like something had been spoken aloud, even if no one else would hear it.

oOo

Thursday, 3^rd April 2025, Whitehaven

Oliver read it three times.

The chapter. The note.

Each word felt like it had been folded directly into his ribcage.

He’d been checking more often today. Telling himself it was just to follow the story. To honour Beriel.

But when he saw the update notification, he hadn’t waited. He’d opened it like a man starved for oxygen.

And there it was.

That kind of moment lingers.
Not a declaration. Not a decision. Just the quiet edge of realisation.

He let out a long, slow breath.

He knew what she meant.

Of course he did.

And she didn’t even know he, as Oliver, was reading along.

He wasn’t ready for that.

Not yet.

But still, he had to answer.

He clicked the comment box, and began typing:

Elrandir

Sometimes it’s not the moment itself, but the air around it -
the way time seems to pause while something begins to turn.
Just a shift in the light, or the way a glance lingers half a second too long.
The kind of moment you don’t understand until it’s already passed.
And still, it changes everything.
—E

He hovered over the Post button for a long time.

Then clicked it.

And leaned back in his chair, heart beating faster than it had all day.

oOo

The laptop was closed.

Her phone, however, was still in her hand.

She didn’t remember picking it up again - just that it had been there for the last half hour, screen dimmed, thumb hovering over nothing. Not texting. Not scrolling. Just... checking.

For what?

She wasn’t sure.

She told herself she wasn’t about to text him.
That she hadn’t been staring at the screen imagining what she might say.
That the number folded in the note still sitting on the counter wasn’t burning a quiet hole in her memory.

And maybe that was true.

Mostly.

Instead, she’d checked her email twice.
Checked the story platform three times.

She opened it again.

Refresh.

1 new comment on Chapter 29: Poppy and Tansy

Her breath caught.

She tapped it open and read, brows lifting slightly as her eyes moved down the lines.

…
The kind of moment you don’t understand until it’s already passed.
And still, it changes everything.
—E

She blinked. Slowly, and then almost rolled her eyes…typical. Elrandir. Again.

Always just on the edge of what she was writing - never commenting directly on plot, never asking questions, never leaving praise or constructive criticism like the others. Just some poetic reflections that felt less like feedback and more like echoes. Like footnotes left in the margins by someone who already knew the story.

She didn’t understand how he did that.

How he always seemed to pick up on the real thread she hadn’t meant to tug.

Shifts. Glances. Memory.

She’d written that author’s note half in a haze, half thinking of Beriel, half... of something else. Something she couldn’t name.

But Elrandir had responded as if he knew.

Not the details or the context, but the feeling beneath it.

She stared at the comment a while longer, thumb hovering.

Then smiled - just faintly.

Who are you?
She didn’t type it.
She just wondered.

And closed the app without replying.

oOo

Chapter Text

oOo

oOo

Chapter 9 - A Hand drawn in Ink

oOo

Friday, 4^th April 2025, Sandwith

The bedroom was still cloaked in half-dark.
The rain had started again: a soft, steady hush against the window.
Calad, sleeping in his usual spot once more, huffed in his sleep, shifting his weight to nudge her thigh.

And the note was still there - folded neatly on the nightstand.

She reached for it and opened it slowly.

His number was written there in careful print. No name. No emoji. Just... possibility.

She sat up, the blanket slipping slightly from her shoulders. Her thumbs hovered over the keyboard, unmoving.

What did one even say?
Thanks for last night?
So that wasn’t nothing?
Hi, I’m still thinking about your hands?

She almost laughed at herself.

She didn’t do things like this.

And yet...

She opened a new message. Entered the number.
Paused.

Typed:
I found your note.

She backspaced almost immediately.

Tried again:
So. That happened.

No. Too flippant.

She deleted it all and started fresh, her fingers slower this time.

I keep thinking about last night.
I wasn’t expecting any of it.
But I don’t regret it.

She stared at it for a moment, then added another line without thinking:

I’d like to see you again. If you want that too.

Her thumb hovered.

Outside, the rain softened, a gentler tapping against the glass.

And then she hit send.

She exhaled, letting the silence stretch around her again. For a long moment, everything held still.

Then, beyond the walls, the wind shifted, stirring the ivy along the sill.

A sound so faint it might have been nothing.

But it brushed the edges of something she could not name.

And then - it passed.

oOo

Friday, 4^th April 2025, Whitehaven

Oliver felt sleep reclaiming him in slow tides, and the dream came: heavier this time, shaped not only from memory, but from the deep fault-lines of his soul.

It was the year 1518.

The year he left the Halls of Mandos and returned to…

…not Arda - not anymore.
The bones of the world were the same, but the music had changed.
It moved differently here: sharper, narrower, quicker to fade.
And he, newly remade in flesh and burden, was alone in it.

He found himself naked and disoriented in a wood he would later learn was part of western France.

He remembered the cold first: the wind knifing through unfamiliar trees, the sodden earth beneath bare feet.
The weight of a body that felt both too heavy and too fragile - no longer fully elven, because the blessing and music that once sustained his kin were gone.

And yet, he was not mortal either.

The silence roared in his bones.
Once, he had felt the hum of stone, and leaf, and sky.
Now, nothing.

He wandered for two days beneath branches he could not name.
The trees were strangers and the stars looked back at him with unfamiliar faces.

He was driven only by a purpose he could not yet speak aloud:
Find the Lost Ones. Bring them home.

Beyond that - no plan.
No map.
No language.

When the Benedictine brothers found him - simple men in coarse robes, returning to their monastery with small torches against the dusk - he barely understood they were mortals at all. Their speech was noise: warm, fast, incomprehensible. But their gestures were clearer: open hands, no weapons, cautious welcome.

He went with them because there was nothing else to do.
Because even in his confusion, something in their faces - perhaps a reflection of his own lostness - felt familiar.

The monastery of Fontenelle, as he would later learn the name, smelled of old stone and damp wool and the iron tang of cold fires.
They gave him a cell.
He slept without question, too exhausted for thought.

And when he woke, the world was still foreign - but at least not hostile.

They called him Frère Séverin, giving him a name because he had none they would understand.
He took it like a coat against the cold.

And slowly – painfully - he began to learn.

How to bow his head when passing through the chapel door.
How to mimic the slow crossing of hands at prayer.
How to answer gestures with nods or silence.

The language came later, piecemeal - shaped more by listening than speaking.

He learned the names of bread and water.
The difference between bell and prayer and work.

And he learned - most painfully - the rhythm of mortality. Once again, and still not his own.

The brothers’ coughs in winter, the way their backs bent with the seasons, the steady attrition of flesh against time.

At first, he thought himself only an observer, a silent pilgrim among the dying.

But he soon understood:

If he was to find those who were lost, he could not remain apart.
He would have to live among Mortals.
He would have to belong.

Not in name alone, but in breath and in voice.

The dream shifted, deepened.

He stood again in the stone chapel, the morning mist grey and cold.
The brothers gathered in their familiar order.

At the front, the choirmaster raised his hand.

Each joint, each turn of the fingers marked a note in the ancient fashion - the old Guidonian hand that sang without parchment, without writing.

Séverin lifted his voice with theirs - unsteady at first, then steadier - following the invisible map traced in air. His voice wove itself into the chant, a thread among many.

Not leading, not apart…simply part of something larger than himself.

And for the first time since Mandos - since silence - he felt the faintest echo of peace.

Not because he had found the Lost Ones.
Not because he had fulfilled his charge.

But because he had learned the first lesson of the mortal world:

Before you can lead, you must first learn to walk among those you seek to save.
Before you can call another home, you must know what it is to be lost.

The choirmaster’s hand moved again - signalling the next note.

But it was no longer the gnarled hand of a monk.

It was another hand.
Younger.
Warmer.
Alive.

Julia.

Not in robes.
Not bound by time or dust.
Just reaching - steady and sure - through the distance between them.

A hand not of memory, but of something still possible.

His heart surged toward it - and the dream blurred at the edges, dissolving into waking.

oOo

Friday, 4^th April 2025, Whitehaven

He woke with a sharp breath, the early light cool against his skin.
The sky beyond the window was pale steel - the colour of a world still learning how to breathe again.

It was 5:15 a.m.

He lay still for a moment, the weight of the dream heavy in his chest.
The memory of confusion.
The slow building of trust.
The first frail note of belonging.

At last, he reached for his phone.

The screen lit softly in the dim room.

1 new message
Unknown Number
12:38 a.m.

He opened it and read:

I keep thinking about last night.
I wasn’t expecting any of it.
But I don’t regret it.
I’d like to see you again. If you want that too.

He read it once, twice - as if anchoring himself in her words.

And in the silence that followed, he realised:
The feeling stirring inside him was the same as it had been then, in 1518.
Hope - sharp and bright and terrifying.
The sense of standing at the edge of something he did not yet fully understand, but could no longer deny.

He began to type without hesitation.

Yes.
I’d like that very much.

He paused, then added:

Can I call you later today?

He sent it without overthinking, and laid the phone gently aside.

Outside, somewhere beyond the walls of his small house, the world was waking - slow and imperfect, but alive.

oOo

Friday, 4^th April 2025, Sandwith

Julia woke to a pale, brittle light seeping through the curtains.
The rain had eased sometime during the night, leaving the world washed clean but cold.
Calad shifted beside her with a soft sigh, his warmth pressed reassuringly against her calf.

She blinked into the quiet of the room, reaching automatically for her phone.

One new message.

Her heart lifted before her mind could catch up.

Yes. I’d like that very much.
Can I call you later today?

She smiled and brushed her thumb across the screen as if the words themselves might vanish if she wasn't careful.

She tapped out a reply without overthinking:

Travelling today for work - Lancaster University. History archives and conference. Feel free to call while I'm on the train? Travelling until 10 and then after 4pm again. Would like to hear your voice again.

She hesitated a moment longer, then added a single, unadorned smile before hitting send.

It was not yet seven. She had an hour to gather herself.

Outside, the clouds hung low and heavy over the hills, the landscape still stitched with threads of mist.
The day felt suspended - as if something unseen waited just beyond the horizon.

oOo

The train from Whitehaven was half-empty, a quiet hum of motion carrying her south along the coast and then inland.
Fields slid past, blurred with the pale green of early spring.
The sea gleamed occasionally between folds in the land - a distant, restless silver.

Julia sat by the window, her bag tucked at her feet, a notebook resting idly on her lap.
She watched the world unfold without urgency, letting her mind drift.

There was a lightness in her chest she had not expected. Not happiness - not yet - but the barest beginning of it.
The sense of something stirring after a long, hard winter.

oOo

Friday, 4^th April 2025, Lancaster

Lancaster rose out of the mist like a city half-remembered - old stone and narrow streets, the traces of centuries seeping quietly out of its bones.

The university conference was unremarkable: polite conversation, presentations on local histories, faded posters curling at the edges.

Julia moved through it with practiced ease, taking notes where needed, smiling when appropriate.

During a break - her tea cooling forgotten in her hands - she wandered the corridors of the Special Collections wing, letting her feet lead her without thought.

The place still smelled the same.
Binding glue, dust, old vellum - all faintly sweet, faintly musty.
She drifted past glass cases of maritime charts and yellowing parish records.

“Julia?”

The voice stopped her mid-step. She turned.

An older man stood by the edge of one of the cases, hair greyer than she remembered, but the same alert brightness behind his glasses. Professor Armitage. Medieval music history. She’d written her dissertation under his guidance, a lifetime ago - he’d been in Bristol then, and was now based in Lancaster.

She managed a smile. “Professor. I didn’t know you attended the conference.”

He returned it warmly. “I usually am somewhere around here. But I don’t often make it over to this part of the collection - it’s been quite a while, really. The conference gave me a good excuse. And then I saw the program and thought - surely not that Julia Stokes.”

She laughed softly. “Well. Sometimes the past finds you, I suppose.”

He gestured toward the case beside him. “Strange coincidence, actually. I’ve been meaning to show you something for years. It’s usually tucked away in our archives…and now: here it is, on display.”

She stepped closer. The glass held a single, aging manuscript fragment, tucked discreetly between early migration ballads and seafarers’ prayers.

“I thought of you when we acquired it,” he said. “I remember how much you dug into medieval notational systems back in the day. This… well. I can’t make heads or tails of it.”

She leaned in. The page was brittle, its ink faded almost to nothing.
But there, alongside the remnants of an old staff, were drawings: hands, fingers bent and marked in strange, deliberate positions.

At first glance, it looked like someone’s idle doodles.
But not quite.

“They’re careful,” she murmured. “Structured.”

“I thought of the Guidonian hand,” Armitage agreed. “But the correspondences don’t quite match any known chant. It’s like it’s trying to teach something - but the language’s gone. And look, here…”
He took out a key, pulled on a pair of gloves, opened the case, and carefully turned the fragment around. On the other side was writing, but in a flowing script she did not recognise… or did she?

She took out her mobile and snapped several photos, of both sides.

She looked again, breath catching slightly.

“You were always good with things like this,” he said gently. “Would you… take a closer look? Just when you’ve got time. I think it’s waiting for the right pair of eyes.”

Julia hesitated.

“I’m not doing anything musical anymore,” she said, a little too quickly. “That part of my life is… closed.”

The professor didn’t argue. He only nodded, quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Even closed doors remember the shape of the wind that once passed through them.”

She blinked.

He smiled, warm and without pressure. “Just think about it.”

She looked again at the fragment.

A drawing of hands. A lost code. A forgotten song.
She didn’t know why it tugged at her, only that it did.

She checked her photos again: clear, not blurred.

It wouldn’t mean anything.

Just something to puzzle over later, that was all. Still, she lingered a moment longer than necessary, one hand resting lightly against the glass - as if something in her wasn’t quite ready to move away.

oOo

The return train rattled northward under a grey sky, the fading light pooling in long streaks between clouds across the fields.
Julia sat by the window again, the photo of the music fragment tucked safely among dozens of others she had taken for work.

The rhythm of the train was steady beneath her feet.
The low murmur of conversations and the clink of a tea trolley at the far end of the carriage were the only sounds.

Her phone buzzed against her thigh.

She drew it out, thumbed the screen.

Incoming call
Oliver

Her pulse quickened, with something warm, almost tender.
She accepted the call and lifted the phone to her ear.

"Hello?"

His voice came through a moment later - lower, quieter than she remembered, threaded with something that made her chest ache.

"Hello," he said. "I hope I'm not catching you at a bad time."

She smiled, unseen but real.

"Perfect timing, actually. I'm on the train home. Just watching the world go by."

A pause - not awkward, but full.

"I was wondering," he said, carefully, "if you might want to see me this evening."

"I do," she said, without hesitation.

A soft breath escaped him - a sound she felt rather than heard.

"Good," he said. "I... could come by? Or we could meet somewhere, if you prefer."

"Come by," she said. "If you don’t mind the company of a woman too tired for anything but food and chill out."

“I would mind very much,” he said, and she could hear the smile behind the words. Then, a pause. “Would it help if I brought something for dinner? So we don’t have to cook.”

Her heart lifted - just a little - and she let herself smile again.
“That would be perfect.”

There was a pause. Then, lightly:
“Though… we’ve apparently reached the point in this… relationship…”

The word caught her off-guard. Not because it felt wrong. Just… sudden.

“…where I have to admit I have no idea what you like to eat.”

She laughed. “That makes two of us.  We should probably fix that. Before someone shows up with pineapple on pizza and ruins everything.”

His voice was warm with amusement. “All right. No pineapple. That’s noted.”

“I’m not that picky,” she added. “But maybe something simple? Something that doesn’t need plates or effort?”

“I can do that,” he said. “Curry? Thai? Something comforting?”

“Thai sounds perfect,” she said. “Surprise me - as long as there’s coconut rice.”

There was something in his quiet agreement - not just ease, but the sound of a man tucking the detail away like it mattered.

“I’ll see you soon,” she said.

And he answered, gently, “Soon.”

The call ended, but the connection between them remained - something unseen, but very much alive.

Outside the train window, the first stars began to prick the sky.

oOo

Friday, 4^th April 2025, Sandwith

The knock came just after seven.

She’d heard his car pull up, the crunch of gravel under slow tires. She wiped her hands on a tea towel, glanced once at her reflection in the hallway mirror - hair pulled back, jumper a little oversized, sleeves pushed up - and opened the door.

He stood there in the porch light, a sea-dark coat he hadn’t worn yesterday slung open, and a bottle of wine in one hand, two paper bags in the other.

“I didn’t know exactly what you’d want,” he said, a little sheepishly. “So I got a bit of everything. And wine. Because… well. People bring wine.”

She gave a half-smile and stepped aside to let him in. “Wine’s safe. Coconut rice?”

His mouth quirked. “And mango salad. I take my orders seriously.”

She laughed softly, more of a breath than a sound. He hesitated, then crossed the threshold.

It wasn’t like the night before.

There was no rain. No soaked costumes or foggy windows. No breathless collision.

Just a man in her kitchen and a woman who still didn’t know where to put her hands.

They stood there for a second too long, neither moving. Then she gestured toward the counter. “Plates or straight from the boxes?”

He smiled. “Boxes are fine. Less washing up.”

She busied herself unstacking food containers, finding forks. He opened the wine, his movements slow and careful.
They spoke quietly - about the train ride, the roadworks near the harbour, a strange bird Calad had barked at that morning. The small handholds of familiarity.
But it took time for the air to shift.

They didn’t touch.

Not at first.

It wasn’t until she brushed his hand as she passed him a dish that something flickered - uncertain, remembering.

By the time they sat down with rice and noodles and a glass each,
the warmth had started to return.

Just quiet, and presence, and the slow rhythm of being together.

At some point - maybe after the second glass - she said,
“You didn’t have to call, you know.”

“I know.”

She looked at him for a moment, then added,
“But I’m glad you did.”

He gave a small nod.
Not quite a smile.
Just something that said: me too.

And that was all.

Later - when the boxes were folded closed, when Calad had curled himself into his usual heap by the stove, when the lamplight turned the kitchen golden - they stood facing each other by the counter, glasses still in hand.

“I don’t know how to do this,” she said, not quite meeting his eyes.

“Neither do I,” he said. “But I want to.”

And that was enough.

This time, when they kissed, it was slower. Not urgent. Not rushed. Just deliberate. The kind of kiss that says: I know a little bit more about who you are now. And I still want to.

The rest unfolded gently – his hands at her hips, her fingers at the back of his neck, breath hitching only once when he whispered her name like it mattered.

And later, beneath the duvet that had forgotten how to hold two bodies, they made love again.

But this time, it was not desperate.

It was tender.

And when they fell asleep, they were still touching - her knee against his, the back of his hand resting just beside hers on the pillow.

oOo

The room was dark.

No storm this time. Just the soft creak of the old house settling and the occasional sigh of the wind through the eaves.

Julia stirred first.

Not fully awake - just a shift beneath the covers, the kind of movement that comes when your body remembers before your mind does. Her hand brushed against his chest and felt the steady rise and fall of breath beneath it.

Warmth.

She kept it there.

Oliver didn’t speak. He wasn’t asleep. He’d woken minutes before, heart still thick with the remnants of a dream he couldn’t quite name - faces he hadn’t seen in centuries, voices lost to time. Beriel’s laughter. Estel’s hand on his shoulder.

But it was Julia’s touch that pulled him out of it.

He turned his head just slightly, his cheek grazing the pillow. Her hand hadn’t moved.

“You awake?” he whispered.

“Mmh.” Her voice was hoarse with sleep. “I wasn’t sure you were real.”

He let out a quiet breath, not quite a laugh.

“I’m not sure either,” he murmured. “Sometimes.”

She was quiet for a while. Then, softer: “Do you ever feel like… like your body forgot how to want this? And then suddenly it remembers. All at once.”

His throat tightened.

“Yes,” he said, voice low. “Exactly that.”

She shifted closer beneath the covers. Her forehead touched his shoulder.

“It’s terrifying,” she said. “But it’s also…”

He finished for her. “Human.”

She nodded against his skin.

He didn’t say what he was thinking - that he hadn’t felt like this in a very long time. That this - her breath on his skin, the weight of her knee resting lightly against his thigh - anchored him in a way nothing else had.

Instead, he turned slightly toward her and, without asking, slipped his arm around her waist.

They lay like that in the hush of the small room, pressed close, breathing slow and steady.

Neither said anything else.

But neither let go.

oOo

Chapter Text

oOo

oOo

Chapter 10 - A Name Under a Fading Sky

oOo

Saturday, 5^th of April 2025, Whitehaven

Julia woke slowly.

Not to an alarm. Not to the bark of Calad at the door or the buzz of her phone. Just... light. Pale and soft, stretching across the old wooden floorboards and brushing the edge of the quilt.

The bed was warmer than usual.

And for once, the space beside her wasn’t empty.

Oliver was still there.

His arm lay across her waist, hand resting palm-down just above her hip. His breathing was deep - not the shallow rhythm of someone caught in dreams, but the anchored kind of sleep that only comes when the body finally, finally lets go.

She didn’t move right away.

She just watched him.

The lines at the corners of his mouth were softer now, his jaw shadowed faintly with stubble, hair mussed where it curled back from his temple. The kind of softness you weren’t meant to see. In sleep, he looked both younger and older - not tired, but timeless. Like someone who had held on for far too long.

She reached up slowly, brushed a fingertip across his brow, smoothing the faint crease there.

He stirred.

Eyes blinked open slowly, still heavy with sleep.

For a moment, he didn’t say anything.

Then: “You’re still here.”

It wasn’t a question.

And it made something in her chest ache.

“So are you,” she whispered.

He shifted a little, face turning toward her on the pillow. “I thought I might wake up and find I’d imagined you.”

“You didn’t.”

She didn’t smile. But her voice was warm. She couldn’t find the words for what she felt – only that she did not want to leave this moment yet.

He exhaled. “Good.”

They lay there for a few long moments in the kind of quiet that didn’t need to be filled. The kind that held.

Then she glanced toward the window.

“I should get up,” she murmured. “Work.”

“It is Saturday. You have time.”

“Not much. I have a tour later. And yesterday on the conference someone asked me to check something for them.”

He brushed his thumb lightly over her waist. “Five more minutes?”

She didn’t answer.

But she didn’t move, either.

oOo

They never said it aloud.

That they were spending the day together, filling the gaps between her tourist tour and him checking on a boat that came in late in the evening the day before with a broken cabin roof.

There was no question. No “Are you free?” or “Do you want to…?”, just the slow unfolding of the morning around them, and neither of them moving to end it.

Julia made coffee in bare feet, jumper sleeves pushed up, hair still messy from sleep. Oliver fed Calad without asking, scooping food into the bowl and crouching beside him with a murmured, “Good lad.”

They passed each other in the narrow kitchen without bumping, without apology. Without awkwardness.

And that, somehow, was the strangest part of all.

The ease.

The warmth.

The stillness that felt… real.

She had toast. He had coffee. They both stood at the window for a few minutes in silence, watching a fishing boat move slowly across the grey water.

Later, they walked the coastal path with Calad, who leapt through bracken and seagull feathers with abandon. The wind was crisp but not cold. The air had the smell of salt and wet lichen. They didn’t speak much - but when they did, it was easy.

No questions about the night before.

No analysis.

Just… conversation. History. Weather. Local folklore. She teased him gently for not owning gloves. He said nothing, but slipped his hand into hers for warmth as they walked back. The contact surprised them both, but neither let go.

At the house, she reheated soup from the freezer. He fixed the back door latch without being asked. They shared the couch for an hour while Calad snored at their feet and the old clock in the hallway ticked out its careful rhythm.

It all felt normal.

And that was the thing.

It shouldn’t have.

Not for him.

Not when his head was full of scanned notebooks and pressed flowers and a name that hadn’t been spoken as if it was real in this world.

Not when the woman in front of him had somehow held on to Beriel’s truth without knowing what it meant to him.

Not when he still hadn’t told her anything.

And yet - he hadn’t felt this still in years.

And that was where the ripple began.

Right there.

In the place where comfort met guilt.

He watched her tuck her legs beneath her on the couch and sip her tea, and thought, I should tell her everything.

But the words didn’t come.

Not yet.

oOo

She disappeared down the hall with a murmur about someone from the conference having shown her something to check on. Nothing dramatic. Just a fragment they thought might fit with the region’s weirder manuscript anomalies.

Oliver didn’t follow. He just sat there a moment longer, listening to the low whirr of her printer and the occasional creak of floorboards under her steps.

Eventually, he made another round of coffee.

He brought hers in without ceremony, knocking lightly against the doorframe with his knuckle.

“Fuel,” he offered.

“Sanctified,” she muttered, not looking up. Her hair was twisted into a loose knot, fingers smudged with graphite from some annotation, and the sleeves of her cardigan pushed to her elbows. She was beautiful like that - serious and alive with thought.

He stepped in, set the mug beside her elbow.

And saw the printouts.

At first glance, it looked like a diagram of the human hand, annotated with strange glyphs around each joint and along the lines of the palm. A notation system, perhaps. A mnemonic device. One any medieval musicologist might have puzzled over.

But Oliver didn’t see that.

He saw memory.

Not human memory.

His.

The lines weren’t anatomical. They were tonal - structural indicators of resonance, not pitch. Meant to guide not just singers, but chanters, healers, pathfinders. The marks at each knuckle weren’t notes but sound-lights, fixed points in a harmonic language older than any stave. He had seen them carved into stone circles at twilight, painted in ochre on sacred wood, taught in whispers by voices who had learned them from those who stood beneath the stars long before there were Moon or Sun.

He reached out without meaning to, fingers brushing the edge of the paper.

And there it was - in the bottom margin, beneath a scholar’s typed footnote, half-faded.

A phrase.

"Incantation for the Way West."

Not in Sindarin. Not Quenya. Something older. Older than the breaking of the world. A script rarely written, meant more often for air and tone than ink.

His throat tightened.

Julia was still flipping through pages, brow furrowed. “He said it looked like a variant of the guidonian hand,” she said. “But there’s no matching example in the archives. Thought it might be continental. But I swear some of these marks almost look... botanical. Or calendrical? Hard to tell.”

He made a sound - meant to be a hum of interest - but it came out rough.

She looked up at him properly for the first time. “You alright?”

He nodded, too quickly. “Just - just surprised.”

“By?”

Another pause. Then: “It’s familiar.”

She tilted her head. “You’ve seen something like it before?”

Something like it. Yes.

He could lie. Say it reminded him of a carving in Brittany or some manuscript in a long-defunct chapel.

Or he could speak the truth.

He met her gaze, the warmth there. The trust.

He decided for something in between.

“I’ll help you look into it,” he said.

“So you’ll know about ancient manuscripts and musical notations?” she asked with a grin. “I’ve come around. Seen things. It just…reminds me of something. I think…it is not just a musical notation…I mean, it is, but I remember that it is more than just that, that it shows…directions…” He was talking fast now, to hide his shock.

She looked at the printout again, then at her laptop, where he just noticed the photograph was enlarged in a high-resolution setting.

“You know what? That’s brilliant, you might be right. Here, this indentation. It looks like a musical notation, but also almost like an indicator for the points of a compass, highlighting the West…”

Her voice was calm, almost excited. But it made something inside him falter.

She didn’t know.

Of course she didn’t. She was circling something vast with the language she had: compass, calendar, song. And she was close. Too close. She didn’t see the cliff edge she was dancing toward, not yet.

He stepped back slightly, the distance no one would notice unless they’d been sitting too close for too long.

“You alright?” she asked again, softer this time.

He hesitated.

And then: “I think I need some air.”

She blinked. “Did I say something wrong?”

“No,” he said quickly. “No, it’s not you.”
He took a breath. “It’s just… it’s been a long time since I’ve seen anything like that.”

She looked at him for a long moment, then nodded. “Want me to give you space?”

He almost said yes.

But the air around her smelled faintly of salt and old paper, of ink and something blooming early. Something that did not belong to this world, and something that did.

And something else stirred, somehow just in time.

A memory.

Not of war. But of its aftermath.

oOo

Rivendell. A quiet evening, long after the noise had passed. He had been younger then. Grieving a lost friend. Avoiding the Hall of Fire. Lying to himself about the reasons why. Standing alone on the bridge beneath the stars.

Elrond had found him there without needing to be called. His footsteps had made no sound on the bridge.

They hadn’t spoken right away.

And then he had said, simply:

“The hardest battles are not fought with sword or bow. Not even with grief.”

He paused, then continued:

“They’re fought with truth. The kind that could break something. Or build it. But you have to choose to speak it first.”

Back then, he hadn’t answered. Just clenched his jaw and stared at the water. Truth had felt like surrender.

But now, now the words returned like breath against his ribs.

He didn’t want space.

Not from her.

“No,” he said instead. “Would you… come for another walk? Just a short one.”

oOo

The sky outside was beginning to fade, not into dusk but into the slow grey between weather fronts. The sea was restless, all glitter and churn.

They didn’t speak for the first few minutes. Calad ran ahead, nose to the wind.

Finally, Julia said, “You scared me back there. You looked like you’d seen a ghost.”

He stopped. Not abruptly, he just slowed, letting her catch up, letting the air move between them.

“I did,” he said.

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

He didn’t answer right away. Just stared out over the water, as if it might offer him the right words.

Then:
“I knew someone,” he said quietly. “A long time ago. Who used… not that exact system, but something like it. Very like it. The notation, the shape. The compass point, especially the West.”

Julia stayed silent. Waiting.

He went on:
“He teached me enough to understand what it meant. It wasn’t just music. It was… direction. Memory. Sometimes healing. Sometimes warning.”

“He sounds…” Julia trailed off. “Like someone important.”

He nodded. “He was.”

His gaze didn’t shift from the water, but his voice softened.

“There was a winter, long ago. Snow all through the valley. The river froze in the shallow parts, and no one wanted to spend time indoors.”

He paused, the edge of a smile flickering and then fading.

“My father found me in the library, trying to make sense of a fragment like that one. Older, rougher. I thought it was a map at first. Or maybe something magic.”

He exhaled slowly.

“He sat beside me. Said it wasn’t meant to be deciphered like a puzzle. That it wasn’t about finding your way through something. It was about finding your way back.”

A gust of wind caught Julia’s hair, and she tucked it behind one ear, watching him.

“He said,” Oliver went on, voice almost lost in the breeze, “‘Not every path is marked with ink or stone. The oldest ones are carried in memory, and in song. If you listen with the right part of yourself, you’ll find them again.’”

He was quiet for a long time after that.

Then, finally:

“It stayed with me. That idea - that direction isn’t always a place. Sometimes it’s a sound. A call. A name you haven’t heard in years.”

Silence again. This time heavier.

“Oliver,” she said, “what is this, really?”

He looked at her then, properly. Not through the lens of a borrowed name. Not as a man trying to blend in. Just as himself.

“I’m not who you think I am,” he said. “And that manuscript - what you’ve found - it’s not from this world.”

Her breath caught. Not in fear. Not quite.

But in knowing.

Something flickered across her face - something he couldn’t name.

She didn’t answer. So he went on.

“I knew Beriel,” he said.

The name landed between them like the first drop of rain before the storm. He looked down, thumb brushing absently across the worn seam of his coat.

“She was my sister.”

oOo

Chapter Text

oOo

oOo

Chapter 11 – A Story not in the Notebook

oOo

Saturday, 5^th of April 2025, Sandwith

“I knew Beriel,” he repeated, his voice quiet but unflinching. “That story you’re posting as fanfiction…
It’s real.”

Julia stood very still.

The breeze tugged at her sleeves like it didn’t quite know what season it was. Somewhere nearby, a gull shrieked. She didn’t move.

It wasn’t that she didn’t understand the words. She did. Each one had landed perfectly clearly in her ear. But her brain hadn’t caught up yet. It was just… floating above her, watching the moment like a strange theatre piece.

Her mouth worked before her thoughts could object.

“Well, obviously,” she said. “I mean, Gandalf gave it to me.”

There was a pause. She watched the line form between his brows.

“I’m sorry…Gandalf?”

“Yes. That’s what I said.” She could hear her own voice like it belonged to someone else. Measured. Calm. A little sharp at the edges, like a slightly overdressed coping mechanism.

“But hold on,” she said, frowning now. “You were reading on that website and didn’t bother to tell me?”

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

“Well, obviously. I thought you’d think I was mad.”

Her eyes narrowed. Her pulse had started to do something odd - fluttery and irregular, like her body knew more than she did.

“You’re telling me Esther…Beriel was your sister? That her story is real? And your main concern was what I might think of you?”

He shifted slightly. “...Yes?”

“Right. Sure. That tracks.”

For a moment, they just stared at each other. Then:

“Gandalf gave you the notebook? The Gandalf?”

“Yes, you know - elderly chap, big grey beard, pointy hat…” She waved a hand vaguely, then frowned. “Scrap that. He didn’t wear a hat…Wait a minute: How do you know it was a notebook he gave me?”

She looked at him, suddenly suspicious. “So not only did you stalk me on that fanfiction website, you also broke into my study?”

“I did not stalk…and the door was open!”

“That’s not an excuse. That’s just a… technicality.”

“I know.”

A long breath. She tried to anchor herself in the realness of dirt and salt air and the distant sound of a lawnmower back in the village. Something normal. Something graspable.

“Okay. Right. So you knew Beriel. You say she was your sister. You know the story’s real, as well as I do. I got the notebook from Gandalf. You’ve been reading along like some kind of elvish lurker—”

“I never said I was an elf.”

“You didn’t have to.”

That stopped him.

And now she was looking at him differently. Not like he was mad. Not like he was dangerous.
Like he was familiar - in the way that old songs were familiar, even if you couldn’t name them.

She took a half-step back. “Wait…you’re her brother? As in…foster-brother? You’re not saying that you’re…”

She paused
“Oh my god. You are, aren’t you?”

He didn’t move. Just held her gaze.

“I told you,” he said softly. “I’m not who you think I am.”

And that was it.

The moment landed, heavy and irreversible.

Julia’s knees wavered. The world didn’t spin, but something tilted. Her balance shifted without permission, like her own body wasn’t entirely on her side anymore.

He reached out, apparently without thinking. Just one hand resting against her upper arm, guiding her back a step. Then two. And then she sat down, not quite sure if it was her choice or gravity’s.

The bench was cold.

So was her face.

She blinked again. “Okay,” she murmured. “Right.”

But the word had no shape anymore.

There was a pause, long enough that he shifted, as if to speak, but she beat him to it.

“Which one?” she whispered.

He blinked.

“Which twin?”

A breath, then:
“I am Elrohir, son of Elrond Peredhel.”

His voice sounded like it hadn’t spoken his name in an age. Like it had been waiting for this moment to remember who it belonged to.

“Elrohir…” she repeated, the syllables fragile in her mouth.
All at once, she felt dizzy…unmoored in a way that had nothing to do with belief and everything to do with knowing she couldn’t unknow it now.

Another pause.

“Can we go home, please?” she asked, her voice small and uneven.

“Of course.”

They walked the rest of the way in silence.

Not the heavy silence of argument, or the awkward one of people with nothing left to say.
This was the kind that wrapped around them like fog, thick and disorienting. She wasn’t sure if she was still walking on the same road as when she came this way. Or if the world had cracked underfoot and simply hadn’t told her yet.

He kept glancing at her. Not intrusively, just often enough that she could feel the shape of his worry. Like he thought she might bolt. Or collapse. Or vanish entirely.

When they reached the cottage, he lingered just outside the door.

“Listen,” he said, his voice careful, “I’ll just…grab my things, and then I’ll be off. I understand that you…”

“Don’t you dare.”

She turned so sharply he flinched.

“Don’t you dare drop a bomb on me like that and then disappear. You don’t get to come into my life, upend everything, and leave me standing in the wreckage.”

Her hands were fists at her sides. She hadn’t realised until just then how much of this was anger, rising through the confusion like heat through frost.

His face tightened, not in resistance, but in something that looked like shame.

“I just thought…” he began.

“You thought wrong.”

oOo

Inside the cottage, she headed straight for the kettle.

Not because she needed tea.
Not really.
But because the motion was familiar. Measured. Something to do with her hands while her brain fell apart.

She filled the kettle, flicked the switch. The soft click was disproportionately loud in the silence.

From the living room came the gentle creak of the old armchair as he sat down.

She stood there, gripping the edge of the countertop with both hands.

Elrohir is sitting in my living room.
Elrohir is sitting in my living room.
Elrohir is sitting in my living room.

The words didn’t get less ridiculous. They just circled her skull like birds refusing to land.

She took a breath. Then another. Then turned to face him, arms folded across her chest like a barricade.

“I need proof,” she said flatly.

He looked up.

“I know how that sounds, but I don’t care. I don’t want symbols or shiny hair, glowing eyes or something out of a Peter Jackson film - I want something you couldn’t have read. Something real. Something… only Esther would know, and I.”

He studied her for a moment. Not offended. Not defensive.

Just… weighing something.

Then, gently:
“She told me about the Midsummer festival.”

Julia blinked.

“She said you drank too much cider.”

Her stomach dropped half a floor.

“And tried to kiss Legolas behind the torch stand.”

Her mouth opened. Then shut. Then opened again.

“She said you missed,” he added, voice calm and maddeningly gentle, “and kissed the banner pole instead.”

Julia made a small strangled noise.

The kettle clicked off.

Neither of them moved.

Julia stared at him, mortified beyond speech. Not because he’d lied. But because he hadn’t.

“That wasn’t in the notebook,” she said at last, her voice thin.

“No,” he said. “It wasn’t.”

She turned away sharply, reaching for the mugs just to keep her hands busy. They weren’t cooperating. Her fingers felt strangely separate from the rest of her.

As she pulled the tea caddy down from the shelf, she muttered under her breath - half to herself, half to the ceiling:

“Bloody hell. Of all the things he could’ve picked that weren’t in the notebook, he chooses this scene?”

Behind her, the armchair creaked slightly as he shifted.

Then his voice came again, quieter. Warmer.

“She also told me about the day you brought her a honey and lavender tart. From that little place across the square.”

Julia stopped, one hand hovering over the mugs.

“She said you walked in during a rainstorm, soaked to the knees, swearing at your umbrella and furious that the baker had run out of the proper size box. You held the tart like it was a priceless artifact and told her she looked like she hadn’t eaten all day. Like it broke your heart to see her that way.  ”

A breath escaped Julia’s mouth. Shaky.

“She said… it was the first time in years anyone had done something for her just because. Not because she was considered “mad” or “a case” or “something broken”.”

Julia turned slowly, a protective edge in her voice.
“She told you that?”

He nodded.

“Is she gone?” she asked then, voice thin. “I mean really… is she…?”

He paused, clearly not having expected the question. Then he nodded. “After she’d lived a long, full life. After she married Aragorn. After she raised children and ruled beside him.”

He met her eyes gently.
“I was there when she died.”

Julia didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.

“She wasn’t afraid,” Elrohir said. “She said she had no regrets. That she’d seen more than she ever expected. And that, wherever she went next… Estel would be there.”

“Her first child was a boy, and then the second, a girl.” Carefully, so carefully he reached out for her hand. She didn’t pull away.

“Her name was Julia.”

Tears welled up in her eyes before she even understood what they were responding to. She looked at him as if the floor had just shifted - like he’d knocked the breath from her with a whisper.

“That’s not…” she began, but the words died in her throat.

She pressed her free hand to her mouth. Her shoulders trembled once, not a sob, more like a shock through the system.

“She named her after me?” she finally managed, the question barely audible.

He nodded. “You were one of the first people who reminded her what kindness felt like. She never forgot it.”

Julia stood frozen in the hush of the kitchen, her fingers curling instinctively around his where they touched. For the first time, she didn’t pull away. Didn’t laugh. Didn’t deflect.

She just stood there, throat tight, eyes full.

Silence settled around them like soft cloth. Just memory, and the ache of knowing some stories really did end well.

After a long moment, Julia looked down, her hand slowly retreating to the countertop.

“And you?” she said softly. “You stayed behind?”

He nodded once. “I couldn’t go. Not then. Not yet.”

oOo

The stillness wasn’t heavy now. Just… present. Like the house itself was holding its breath with them. Somewhere behind her, Calad gave a soft thump as he rearranged himself in the living room. The sound was oddly reassuring.

Julia blinked, then glanced toward the window.
“…It’s dark.”

The sky outside had slipped quietly into indigo while neither of them had been looking. Shadows now filled the corners of the kitchen.

“We never did make that tea,” she murmured.

Elrohir shifted, then stood. “Let me feed Calad. I think he’s pretending not to notice we forgot.”

That earned the faintest smile from her. “Tell him I said sorry.”

“I’ll translate.”

He moved quietly across the room while she turned back to the kettle, flicked it on again, and reached for the mugs. No trembling this time. Just tired hands, remembering the pattern.

The scent of dry kibble drifted in as Elrohir emptied the scoop into the dog’s bowl. Calad padded over with a soft whuff, tail giving a half-hearted thump of approval before crunching away.

The sound was homely. Comforting. Almost enough to pretend for a moment that the world hadn’t just turned inside out, that she did not have a figure from a fantasy book sitting in her living room, who just told her that the best friend she ever had was his sister.

That he’d been stalking her to find out how she knew it was all true.

She turned around and repeated her earlier question.

“So…you stayed.”

“I couldn’t go,” he said again, softer this time.

Julia nodded slowly, though she didn’t understand - not really.

They settled onto the sofa without speaking. The tea sat cooling on the table in front of them, untouched.

She didn’t press him. The room felt fragile. Like a word spoken too soon might fracture it.

Instead, she sat beside him, hands wrapped around the mug she hadn’t tasted, waiting, listening.

He was quiet for a long moment. Then:

“There’s never just one reason,” he said, eyes fixed somewhere beyond the fireless hearth. “First it was Beriel. And Estel. I couldn’t leave while their story was still unfolding. And then…”

He paused. His jaw tightened, just slightly.

“I stayed for someone else. A mortal woman. She didn’t ask me to give anything up for her, just to stay. For a while. Long enough to build a life.”

Julia felt something shift in the air beside her. Not sadness exactly. Something deeper. Older.

“We had children. Mortal, like her. And I stayed for them, too. I stayed until they were grown, and I stayed until I buried every one of them.”

He didn’t look at her.

“And by then… the ships were gone.”

She didn’t speak. She barely breathed.

“I faded,” he said. “Not all at once. Not visibly. Just… piece by piece. You stop singing. You forget the taste of things. You forget what it is to be seen. And then I was… where Elves go after death.”

Her throat tightened. “Mandos’ Halls.”

He nodded, and said, with a faint smile: “You know your Tolkien.” She didn’t answer.

“They offered me peace. Or purpose. I chose the second.”

He finally turned toward her then.

“I came back. Not to Arda. Not to what it was. I was sent here. Earth, as it is now. To search for the ones who never found their way home. The Lost Elves.”

She stared at him, struck silent by the sheer scale of it. Not just the time. Not just the loss.

The trust of him telling her this.

“You’ve been here since…?”

“Sixteenth century,” he said. “Give or take.”

Five hundred years.

And now, impossibly, he was sitting in her cottage. With tea he hadn’t touched. And grey eyes that held centuries.

Julia looked down at her own hands.

The mug between them.

The silence between them.

oOo

Chapter Text

oOo

oOo

Chapter 12 – A Guitar in the Corner of the Room

oOo

Saturday, 5^th of April 2025, Sandwith

The silence stretched.

Julia’s fingers curled a little tighter around the mug, though the tea had long gone lukewarm. Somewhere in the walls, the old pipes clicked - settling, or shifting, or maybe just echoing the sound of time passing in this house that had seen far too much of it tonight.

She didn’t look at him.

When she finally spoke, it wasn’t a question. It was a statement that landed like a stone.
“You lied to me.”

Oliver…Elrohir…didn’t flinch. But the quiet of him changed.
“I didn’t know how to begin,” he said softly.

“That’s not the point,” she said. “You began. You began when you signed up to that website. When you read my words. When you followed me on that tour.”

She looked up now, eyes sharp.

“Wait…”
Her breath caught.
“You were the one with the strange comments, weren’t you? The ones that made no sense unless…”
A flush of heat rose behind her eyes.
“Oh, God.”
Her voice broke on the edges.
“You were Elrandir.”

He didn’t answer. Didn’t need to. The silence between them confirmed it.

She let out a breath - part laugh, part gasp of disbelief.
“I replied. I actually replied. I thought I was being clever.”
Her eyes flashed, furious now - but not just at him. At herself.
“I thought I was clever and kind and funny, and all the while you were just… watching me walk right into it.”

He took a step forward, slow. “That wasn’t how it was…”

“Don’t.” Her voice sliced clean through the air.

“You came into my life under false pretences. You walked into this house, slept in my bed, touched me - and never said a word.”

A breath caught in her throat, sharp and fast.
“I invited you in because I thought you were a little strange, and because you made me laugh, once or twice. Because I didn’t want to feel alone. I trusted you.”
Her voice dropped to something quieter.
“And you were already halfway through my life story. Through her story. You already knew me in ways I didn’t even know myself.”

“I didn’t come here to deceive you,” he said.

“But you did deceive me.”

Her hands were shaking now. She set the mug down with a thud.

“So that night - was it me you wanted? Or would anyone with that notebook have done?”

His expression cracked - just for a moment.

“No,” he said quietly. “It mattered. You mattered.”

She stood up.

He rose too - not quickly, not defensively.

“So when did it change?” she asked. “Before? After we…”

A pause.

“After I let you in?”

“I don’t know the exact moment,” he said. “But it was long before that.”

Her arms folded. Jaw locked.

But behind the fury - something flickered.

A different kind of alarm.

“Oh my god,” she said suddenly, breath catching. “Wait - hold on.”

She stared at him, colour draining. “Is that it? Are we - am I - married to you now?”

He blinked. “What?”

“I mean - isn’t that what it means? Tolkien said that’s what it means for Elves. That when you…” She gestured“…have sex, it’s forever. Souls bound. No take-backs. Is that - did you - did you know?”

There was real panic rising in her voice now, jagged and fast.

“I mean Jesus Christ, you sleep with me and then I find out you’ve been alive since the Third Age and maybe I’ve just accidentally entered some kind of mystical elf marriage without even knowing it -”

“Julia…”

“…and don’t you dare tell me it’s romantic, or sacred, or beautiful, because right now it feels insane.”

He held up a hand. “Stop. Please. Just…breathe.”

She didn’t. Not for a long moment. She felt like she was trying to outrun her own thoughts.

“No,” he said, more firmly this time. “It doesn’t mean that. Not anymore. Not here.”

She narrowed her eyes. “What does that mean? ‘Not anymore’?”

“It means…” He looked down, then up again. “The world has changed. I have changed. What once held true - those deep bindings of soul and spirit - they required something more than flesh. They needed the world to hold us. They needed Middle-earth, as it was. And that world is gone.”

“You’re saying the magic wore off,” she snapped.

He didn’t flinch. “Yes.”

She folded her arms tighter. “Good. Great. Just checking. Because it would have been nice to know before I accidentally eloped with a millennia-old ghost in a shipbuilder’s disguise.”

He didn’t argue. Just stood there, still and quiet and wrecked.

Her arms folded. Not protectively - defiantly.
“Did you come back because you wanted to see me again - or because you saw the notebook on my desk?”

He didn’t answer immediately.
“I thought I could let it go,” he said finally. “I told myself you deserved your peace. That I’d had no right to touch the past again. But when I saw it, I... I knew…that it was real. That she was real to you. That her world was real to you. That you weren’t just someone who remembered her - you were someone she trusted. Someone who knew her.”

Julia’s jaw clenched.
“I know what it is to be treated like a convenient memory.”
She turned away. Looked toward the hallway.
“And I know what it is to be used.”

“I didn’t use you,” he said, and for the first time his voice rose.
“I should have told you sooner. I meant to. But the more time I spent here…the more afraid I was that saying it would break whatever was happening between us.”

“What was happening,” she said, “was that I thought I was safe with you.”

A long silence fell.

She didn’t tell him to leave. He didn’t reach for her.

Eventually, she crossed to the cupboard of the far side of the room and took out a spare blanket and a pillow. She placed them on the sofa without a word, then stood for a moment, not quite looking at him.

“You can sleep here, if you want” she said.
Then, softer:
“But if you ever lie to me again, I don’t care if you’re Elrohir, son of Elrond – or bloody Glorfindel riding a Balrog - you don’t come back through that door ever again.”

oOo

The stairs creaked beneath her feet.
She didn’t mean to walk heavily, but the weight of what had just been said - or not said - clung to her bones.

In her bedroom, she didn’t bother changing. Just lay back across the duvet, arms folded under her head, staring at the ceiling. She hadn’t turned the light on. The lamp on the landing was enough. It bled through the cracked door and threw faint gold across the plaster above her.

For a while, there was only breath. Hers, and the dog’s. Calad had followed her up – silent, warm, curled up next to her.

Her anger wasn’t gone. Just quiet.
Like coals under ash.

The words she’d thrown at Elrohir looped back through her mind.

“I know what it is to be treated like a convenient memory.”

She hadn’t planned to say it. It had come out like something pulled from an old wound, unbidden and unhealed.

She shut her eyes.
And of course…there it was.

That morning. That smell of lilies and old coffee. The sun had been shining, absurdly bright, on the day after the funeral. As if the world hadn’t read the memo.

Julia had been in the kitchen - aching, her grief still raw enough to bleed if you touched it. And then Claire had shown up.

Claire, who had been in their wedding photos. Claire, who had cried at the christening. Claire, who had hugged her tightly at the hospital and said if there’s anything you need in that syrup-sweet voice.

She’d brought flowers, which was kind. And chocolate, which was weird. And then she’d looked over at the guitar in the corner of the living room.

Tom’s guitar.

And said:

“Would you mind if I took that? For the kids at school. He’d have wanted that, wouldn’t he?”

Julia hadn’t answered. Not right away. Not even sure she’d heard it properly.

The accident had been less than ten days ago. There were still toys from the kids strewn on the living room floor. There was still milk in the fridge that he’d bought. His shirt was still on the back of the chair.

And Claire - Claire had seen his death not as an absence, but as inventory.

Julia hadn’t spoken to her since.

She opened her eyes now, blinking back the dry tightness behind them.
The memory no longer stung like it used to. But it still etched.

Elrohir hadn’t asked for a guitar. But he had read the words she’d written down. Commented and got a reply from her. Walked in with knowledge she hadn’t given him. Slept in the space where grief had lived for two years and hadn’t told her why he’d really come.

He hadn’t seen her as a charity shop shelf. But he had seen her as a means to an end.

The thought made her jaw clench.

She shifted slightly on the bed.
Calad stirred, adjusted, tucked his head against her calf.
She reached down and ran her fingers slowly through his fur. The motion was habitual, thoughtless. Soothing.

She didn’t cry.
She didn’t speak.
She just lay there.

Awake.
With too much to say, and no one left to say it to.

And somewhere below, Elrohir lay too.

Not a word passed between them now. But the house held them both - adrift, apart, and still within reach of one another.

oOo

He didn’t sleep at first.
Not for lack of exhaustion - that had taken root in him long before tonight. But rest required stillness of the heart, and his own kept circling the same wound.

The sofa was too short. The throw too thin. The house too full of her. Her voice still hung in the air. Her words, sharper than truth.

He’d broken something. He could feel it. And still - he hadn’t lied. Not exactly. Not in the way she thought.

But what he’d done was worse. He’d taken her truth and approached it from the wrong end. As if knowing her history gave him permission to step into her present.

He’d thought it would be enough to be kind. To wait. To be honest later.

He’d forgotten how little later counts when trust is supposed to begin at now.

He let his head fall back against the cushion. The ceiling above him was just old beams and cracked plaster - but in the dark, it almost looked like the night sky.

He used to lie awake like this and listen for the sea.

Now he listened for her footsteps.

But they didn’t come.

And so, he stayed. Awake. Waiting.
Not hoping. Not yet.
Just... waiting.

Because that’s what he’d always done, in the end.

Stayed.

Even when the silence was unbearable.
Even when no one asked him to.

He didn’t know how to be forgiven.
But he knew how to remain.

The room held still. His eyes stayed open.

Not sleep. Not even dreaming.

Just memory - slow and quiet, like snow.

oOo

Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland, 1941

Snow.

Not a storm, not yet - just the kind that settles and buries everything in silence. A thin wind moved between the cliffs, keening like something wounded. Lauterbrunnen’s steep faces rose on either side.

He moved in that hush like someone born to it - no crunch of boots, no steam of breath. Only the faint brush of his coat, the whisper of frost breaking beneath his fingers as he lifted the fir branches away.

A trail ran beneath them. Narrow, near-invisible.

But he’d laid it.

Three nights ago, a man had come to the priest in Wengen. Said there were five people trying to cross. A woman. Two children. An old man and a boy - barely more than a shadow.

“I can’t help,” the priest had whispered. “But there’s someone who lives above the tree line. He… finds people.”

So he had.

They weren’t far now.

He crouched beside the cave mouth, checking the dry tinder he’d hidden there earlier that season. It would light. He’d carry the youngest, if needed. The mother could carry the pack. The grandfather… he wasn’t sure.

They always came with too much. Not possessions - those had been left behind long ago - but fear. The weight of what they’d fled.

Once, he’d asked a woman her name. She hadn’t answered. Just taken his hand and whispered thank you in a voice that cracked like melting ice.

He never asked again.

oOo

He came to Lauterbrunnen in 1913, chasing the faint scent of memory.

Someone had spoken in a Parisian bookshop of wild people in the Alps - too tall, too quiet, walking across the snow.

He followed the whisper.

He found a hut. Empty. A symbol carved into the threshold - circular, Elvish, familiar. A name half-scratched in the wood.

Then the first war came.

Then the next one.

He’d stayed through them both.

What else was there to do, when the world forgot how to sing?

oOo

The dream shifted again.

Now he was kneeling in the snow. The skies pressed close, thick with stars. He was kneeling in the snow, and a little girl clung to his neck, her legs looped around his waist. Her fingers were ice.

“You smell like trees,” she whispered.

He smiled - though he doubted she saw it.

She looked up. “Are you an angel?”

He didn’t answer. Just shifted her weight, pulled his scarf higher around her ears.

But when she rested her head against his shoulder, she murmured, “You’re sad. Angels aren’t sad.”

He’d buried one, once.

Not the girl. A boy. Twelve years old. Fever had taken him in a storm. His mother hadn’t wept. She had looked at Elrohir like she could see through him, and said, “You came too late.”

He hadn’t gone near another refugee for two months.

But he had stayed.

Because staying, at least, felt like not failing.
Even when it wasn’t enough.
Even when it changed nothing.

It was the only thing he knew how to do.

Just stay.

The room flickered back around him now.

Julia’s sofa. The quiet weight of a house that still carried breath and heartbreak in its walls.

Elrohir didn’t move.

He thought of that child - the one who asked if he was an angel. Of the woman who never said her name. Of the moment when he looked into a broken hut and saw Elven script, half-faded, carved in a language no one spoke anymore.

And now… now he thought of Julia.

The way she had turned away. The way she had not told him to leave.

I know what it is to be used.

So did he.

But he also knew what it was to stay anyway. To keep showing up. To carry what others couldn’t.

Because sometimes, even when trust was broken, you still lit the fire.

Still cleared the path.

Still waited - just in case someone found the trail again.

oOo

Sunday, 6th April 2025 , Sandwith

The light was grey, soft, undecided. Elrohir sat up slowly, his body aching - not just from a poor night’s sleep on a too-short sofa, but from everything left unspoken the night before. The house around him was still. Not welcoming, not exactly, but it hadn’t turned him out.

So he stayed.

In the kitchen, he filled the kettle and waited for it to boil. The pipes groaned as they always did. Steam rose in a thin breath, curling into the air, and he poured two mugs - one for her, one for himself. He didn’t add anything. She might not drink it. That wasn’t the point.

Upstairs, the steps creaked under his weight. He paused on the landing, not to gather courage, just to take a breath, then knocked - gently, only once.

After a moment, her voice came through. “Come in.”

She was sitting on the bed, legs drawn up beneath her, hair tousled in the vague way of someone who might not have slept at all. Her arms were loosely wrapped around her knees. She looked at him without expression - not cold, not warm, just present.

He held out the mug. “I made tea.”

She didn’t reach for it right away, but eventually gave a small nod. He crossed the room and placed it on the table beside her without comment. Their hands didn’t touch.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d want it,” he said. “But I wanted you to know I was still here.”

She glanced at the mug, then back at him. “You could have left,” she said. He shook his head. “I didn’t want to.”

She lowered her gaze and picked up the tea, holding it in both hands, though she didn’t drink. He remained standing, uncertain whether to stay or go.

“If you’d asked me to leave,” he said, “I would have. But you didn’t.”

That earned a faint nod. It wasn’t agreement, exactly, but it wasn’t dismissal either.

“You can sit,” she said, her voice quieter now. “I won’t bite.”

He gave the smallest laugh and crossed to the chair near the window. Neither of them spoke for a while.

They sat like that - two people, two mugs, the morning pressing in through the window with its uncertain light - not broken, but not whole either. Something between them remained unsettled, but it hadn’t fallen apart.

The tea cooled in her hands. She still hadn’t tasted it.

Her fingers curled around the mug and she didn’t look at him. For a while it seemed she might not say anything at all.

Then, without shifting her gaze, she spoke.

“You never asked what happened to them.”

Elrohir didn’t reply. He didn’t move. He understood, instinctively, that this wasn’t a question - it was a threshold.

“I wouldn’t have answered,” she added after a moment. “Not before now.”

She set the mug down on the table beside her and rested her hands in her lap, one curled inside the other.

“It was a car accident. Two years ago this April. My husband, Tom… and our twins. They were two and a half.”

There was no tremor in her voice, but it had gone very quiet.

“I wasn’t with them. I was at home. Tom had picked them up from nursery. He said he’d take the long way back. They’d fall asleep in the car - that was the plan. Music on, sun coming through the trees.”

She gave a faint shake of her head. Not as refusal - more like disbelief, still.

“I was in the kitchen when the police came. Two of them. A man and a woman. They stood in the doorway like they didn’t know how to begin.”

She let out a breath, almost soundless.

“I offered them tea.”

She didn’t look at him as she said it. She wasn’t trying to be dramatic. It was simply part of the story.

“I made tea while they told me my family was gone. I asked if they’d like sugar. I don’t remember much after that. A few flashes. The neighbours arriving. Someone taking the cup out of my hand. I think I collapsed.”

She reached for the mug again but didn’t lift it.

“There are things that happen in a single moment that never quite un-happen. That was one of them. Not the grief - that came later. But the rupture. That sudden, irreversible shift in what the world feels like.”

Her eyes met his now. Calm. Unflinching.

“So when someone steps into my life knowing things I never told them - when they pretend not to, and build trust on top of that… it doesn’t matter if their reasons are good. It still feels like that moment. Like everything just broke again, and I’m back at the beginning, trying to understand how the floor moved.”

She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t accuse. But the weight of what she said hung between them with more clarity than any anger could have carried.

“I don’t care what else you are. Half-elven. Five thousand years old. None of that changes the fact that you walked into something fragile and didn’t say who you were.”

She glanced down at the mug again. Then back up, slower this time.

“You broke into my reality without knocking.”

The room felt different after that. Not colder - just closer, as if something had shifted in the air itself.

Elrohir didn’t reach for her. He didn’t speak immediately. When he did, his voice was quiet, even.

“I’m sorry.”

It wasn’t a performance. It wasn’t a plea.

“I thought silence might protect something. I thought if I waited, it would be easier to say. That maybe it would feel less like trespassing if I gave it time.”

He shifted slightly in the chair, resting his hands on his knees.

“But the longer I waited, the harder it became. I didn’t lie with words, but I let the silence grow over the truth until it turned into something else.”

He looked at her now, fully. “I was wrong.”

No excuses. No mythology. No appeals.

“I wouldn’t have chosen to hurt you,” he said. “But I did. And the only thing I can do now is stay, and not run from it.”

She watched him, unreadable at first. Then she picked up the tea and finally took a sip.

It wasn’t very good. But it was warm.

“You’re not the first person who thought silence was kinder than the truth,” she said. “You might be the first who’s admitted it.”

She paused. Then added, “I don’t know if I believe you yet.”

“That’s fair,” he said.

“I believe you’re trying,” she said. “That matters more than I expected.”

She unfolded her legs and let her feet rest on the floor. Her voice, when it came again, was quieter. Not softened exactly - but settled.

“I need time.”

“I know.”

“And I need to know you won’t disappear.”

“I won’t.”

She studied him for a long moment, then gave a slight nod.

“Well,” she said, picking up the mug again. “You make terrible tea.”

He smiled. Just a little.

And this time, it didn’t feel like something breaking. It felt like something beginning to hold.

oOo

Chapter Text

oOo

Sunday, 6th April 2025 , Sandwith

It was Julia who spoke first, once they were downstairs again. Her tone was level. Not guarded - just matter-of-fact.

“I need to get out of this house,” she said. Then, after a pause: “Take a walk. Or drive. Or… something.”

Elrohir stood by the window, watching the clouds. He nodded once.

She reached for her coat, then looked over at him. “I’ve not seen where you live.”

That surprised him. Not because it was untrue - but because it mattered to her. He met her gaze. “Would you like to?” She gave a shrug that wasn’t quite casual. “Seems fair.”

They drove.

The roads were quiet - Sunday-quiet. Slate clouds hung heavy over the sea, and the hedgerows trembled in the breeze as if trying to shed the last of winter.

Neither of them spoke much. Calad leaned against the backseat, tail twitching, occasionally huffing as if judging the silence.

oOo

When they pulled up to the bungalow - the one she’d only ever glimpsed from the footpath above - Julia realised she’d not pictured it until now.

It was small. Whitewashed. The garden was unkempt but not neglected. The kind of place no one noticed unless they were already looking.

Elrohir unlocked the door and stepped aside, letting her enter first.

The air inside was warm, and held the faint scent of woodsmoke - and something else. Green. Not chemical, not sharp. Just... lived in.

There were bookshelves - of course there were bookshelves. Tools hung neatly along one wall, beside a battered coat and a length of coiled rope.  Elrohir turned to the fireplace and soon had a low fire crackling in the grate. Everything felt useful, quiet, and worn-in.

But there were other things, too.

A small carving of a tree on the mantle - not decorative, but precise. Practised. A hand-drawn map, folded with care, half-tucked beneath a pile of notes. A box of what looked like seeds or stones, she couldn’t tell which.

He watched her take it in, but said nothing.

Julia moved slowly, letting the space settle around her. She didn’t want to intrude. Didn’t want to make it strange by noticing too much.

Still, she asked - softly, so it wouldn't feel like a demand -

“How long have you been here?”

He stepped beside her. “Three years. A little more.”

“And before that?”

A pause.

“France. Then Ireland.”

She turned toward him. “And before that?”

He gave a half-smile - not evasive, just a little tired.

“Do you want the whole list?”

She studied him. Then nodded. “I think I do.”

oOo

Elrohir poured them both something warm - not tea this time, but something herbal. He didn’t name it. She didn’t ask.

They sat on the old couch by the fire. Calad settled near the hearth with a heavy sigh, content.

He spoke in fragments. Not a history lesson - memories.

Of walking the Swiss passes in winter, listening for voices that never came.
Of sitting with a woman during the great earthquake in Lisboa, their hands clasped through a hole in the basement wall.
Of leaving Clara and London, because he did not dare to tell her the truth, only to find out she died a year later…pneumonia, they said, or maybe heartbreak. And he was too late. Again.

He didn’t romanticise it. Didn’t grandstand.

He just told her what it was like - to live, and live, and live, without knowing who would still be there the next time you looked up.

Julia didn’t interrupt. She asked a few questions, but mostly she just listened - watching the shape of him shift in the telling.

And the strangest thing was - she didn’t seem pushed away by the weight of it.
She leaned in. Not physically, but in presence.

And that, more than anything, made him want to keep talking.

At one point, her stomach grumbled.
Elrohir laughed softly, almost surprised, and apologised.
He gathered a late second breakfast from the cupboard: pears, oranges, dried fruit, a handful of nuts.

They ate in silence. Not awkward - just companionable.
Calad sniffed the rug, turned a slow circle, and lay down.

After a while, Elrohir reached for his coat and glanced toward the door. “Walk?”

She nodded. Calad’s ears perked.

The wind had picked up, but the sun was still behind its veil - bright enough to silver the water, soft enough to warm the path.

They didn’t go far. Just followed the edge of the bluff and let Calad roam ahead. He darted through grass and scrub, nose to the ground, tail high.

“He likes it here,” Julia said.

“So do I,” Elrohir answered.

When they came back in, Calad drank noisily from a bowl by the back door, then flopped by the hearth again with a satisfied grunt. They returned to the couch. The fire still held steady - just enough to keep the chill off. Their mugs were still half-full.

Elrohir went on. He spoke of fading. Of returning. Of living among monks, and poets, and scientists and refugees. He realised, distantly, that he was speaking more than he had in the last five centuries - perhaps more than he ever had.

And still, he couldn’t stop.
Because she listened.
Truly listened.

The room was quiet again, but not empty. They sat side by side now. Not tangled. Not deliberate. Just… near enough to feel the warmth.
And when he turned toward her, she didn’t retreat.
When he reached out - tentative, asking - she answered. And when they kissed again, it wasn’t hungry like before. It was slower. Stranger. A kind of remembering.

But they didn’t move beyond it. Not yet.

She drew back eventually, and he let her.

She sat cross-legged again, a half-empty mug in her hands. Her eyes were on him.

Not in suspicion. Not in anger.
In wonder.

And that was the problem.

He knew that look. He’d seen it in Gondor, in Rohan, in the distant courts of the East. He’d seen it in the way mortals regarded his kin - first with admiration, then with reverence.

Then with suspicion.
Then envy.
Then fear.

Julia’s gaze wasn’t there yet. But it was close. She was staring at him like he was something else. Like he might vanish if she blinked.

He shifted.

“That look,” he said, voice low.

She blinked. “What?”

“That thing you’re doing. Looking at me like you don’t quite believe I’m real.”

Julia sat back slightly. The spell broke a little. “You just told me you’ve lived through seven wars, talked to Gods and crossed half the world on foot. Forgive me if I need a second.”

His lips twitched. But there was no smile in it.

“I don’t want to be a story to you,” he said. “I’m not here to be ancient or wise or tragic. I’m not here to be… admired.”

Her brows drew together. “I’m not...”

“You are,” he said, gently but firmly. “And I understand. It’s what mortals do.”

Her face hardened slightly at that. “Right. Because we’re all the same to you.”

“No,” he said quietly. “But I’ve seen this before. Enough times to know what it becomes.”

She looked away then, jaw tight and didn’t say anything for a long time.

And then, quietly, like it didn’t want to be said but couldn’t stay silent -

“I bet they were all impossibly beautiful. The ones you loved before.”

A pause. Not bitter. Just honest.

“I’m not them.”

And he hated the way the silence rose between them again - this time not from grief, but from distance.

So he crossed it: slowly, deliberately, he leaned in. Not urgent. Not aggressive. Just there. Real and solid and near.

“I’m not perfect,” he said. “And I’m not untouchable. You don’t have to handle me like glass.”

His hand came to rest gently against her cheek, thumb tracing the line of her jaw.

“And you are not less.”

Julia looked at him then, sharply. Whatever haze had softened her gaze was gone.

“You think I don’t know that?” she asked, voice low.

“I think,” he said, “you’re starting to doubt.”

He didn’t say it as a challenge. Just a truth. Because he saw it - flickering in her eyes, brief but unmistakable.

That question: How could someone like him want someone like her?

And now he was here. Real. Fallible. Wanting her to see that.

So he moved again, just a breath closer. And when he touched her, it wasn’t careful - it was sure.

He felt her breath hitch. Saw the flutter of her lashes.

He leaned in, kissed one eyelid. Then the other.

Beneath his hands, something in her shifted. A tightness giving way - not surrender, just release.

“You’re not just worthy,” he said. “You’re wanted.”

His hand found the back of her neck - not to claim, not to hold. Just to stay. And she leaned into it. Not shying from his strength - but meeting it. Matching it.

Then he pressed his forehead to hers, and said, quietly:

“This matters.”

He didn’t know what answer he was expecting.

But her hand rose, not to push him away.

To pull him in.

And this time, it wasn’t a truce.

xXx

Her hand was warm on his chest, and his mouth found hers with hunger that didn’t need permission.

They didn’t speak.

Didn’t ask.

They simply moved - toward heat, toward contact, toward truth.

He pulled her jumper over her head in one smooth motion. She followed suit without hesitation, layers falling away - her shirt, her jeans, her bra, her underwear - scattered between kisses that deepened with every breath.

She reached for him, but he stilled her - gently, firmly.
His eyes met hers. Dark. Intent.
“Let me.”

Julia nodded. Something in his voice held her still.

He kissed down her body with unhurried certainty - lips and hands mapping her as if memory could be made this way. She arched beneath him, breath faltering.

And then he lowered himself between her thighs.

He moved with purpose, not haste - coaxing, learning. His hands kept her grounded; his mouth undid her slowly. She gasped, helpless against the rhythm building inside her, hands tightening in his hair.

And his name on her lips made his own breath hitch.

He rose, and she pulled him up to her, mouth finding his with a fierceness that left them both unsteady.

He entered her slowly - no resistance, only heat and ache and the kind of silence that means everything.

Her fingers dug into his shoulders. He paused, buried deep, feeling that impossible stillness - that moment when time forgets itself.

And then they moved.

Not fast. Not desperate. Just real. Deep, steady. Knowing.

She rose to meet him, her legs wrapped around his hips, her hands on his face. He kissed her - not pretty, not perfect, but true.
As if this - this - could make up for everything he’d lost.

And she let him.

Her breath grew uneven, her rhythm faltered, and he felt her tremble beneath him - tightening, holding, yielding.
And when she came, it wasn’t with a cry of release - it was with a name.

“Elrohir...”

Not Oliver.

Not the name he’d borrowed to walk beside her.

But his name.

Time stilled.

His breath caught as it struck him - not just sound, but truth, spoken into the space they shared.

And he let go.

He came with a choked breath, a groan torn from deep in his throat, his forehead pressed to hers as if that might hold him together. Her hands held him there. Her eyes didn’t close.

They didn’t speak.
But the name lingered - in the air, on her lips, between their bodies.
And something in him knew: it had always been waiting to be heard that way.

xXx

By the time the fire had burned back into warmth and they’d both dressed again (she in his shirt), it was somewhere around half past three.

The light outside had shifted - not golden, but that particular silver-grey that came with West Cumbrian spring afternoons. The kind of light that made everything feel like it had just rained, even if it hadn’t.

Julia stood in the kitchen, barefoot. His shirt, her jeans, a half-hearted attempt to tame her hair. She was frying eggs.
Elrohir was slicing bread. Poorly.

She tried not to smile as she glanced over.

“You’re really not good at that.”

“I’ve never liked knives…more of a sword person.”

“Bit of a liability in a kitchen.”

“Only if you're attached to symmetry.”

He handed her two uneven slices. She took them without comment, dropped them into the pan beside the eggs to soak up the oil.

Calad was stationed near the counter like a small, polite soldier. He inched forward every time Julia turned away, then froze theatrically when she looked down.

They didn’t talk much. They didn’t need to.
There was a kind of quiet now that didn’t feel heavy.

They ate at the small table tucked near the back window. The plates were mismatched, the mugs old and chipped, and the butter had gone too soft in the sun. Julia didn’t mind.

Afterwards, she stood at the sink and washed while he dried. No fuss. No ceremony.
Just the quiet rhythm of two people finding a shape in the aftermath of closeness.

Eventually, she turned toward the door, fingers briefly brushing the frame.
“I should go home.”
He nodded.
“Want a lift?”
“No,” she said. “I’ll walk. Calad needs it. And I… I need it.”

A pause. Then: “But you can come. If you want.”
“I do.”

oOo

The walk back to Sandwith wasn’t long. The wind had picked up along the cliffs, but it wasn’t cold - not enough to make them hurry.

Calad moved ahead in wide loops, nose down, tail high, pausing now and then to check they were still following.

They weren’t talking. Not because there was nothing to say - but because the space between them had changed again.

Julia walked with her hands in her coat pockets, hair pulled back against the wind. The air felt heavier. Not with tension, exactly. With thought.

They kept walking. The cliffs were quieter now - just wind, gulls, the occasional shuffle of Calad through dry grass.

Julia watched the sea for a while, her hands still deep in her pockets.

Then, without looking at him:
“You said the ones who stayed behind didn’t fade.”

He glanced at her, but said nothing yet.

She continued. “But I thought Elves could fade. That it was something you chose, when everything became too much.”

“It used to be,” he said. “But the world changed.”

Julia looked over at him properly now.

“Changed how?”

Elrohir’s eyes were on the horizon, and he was quiet for a moment. “There was a time when the music still remembered us. When fading was a kind of release - gentle, if sorrowful. It was like… a door in the world. A soft one. You could walk through it when you could no longer stay.”

He stepped over a fallen branch. “But as the Fourth Age ended, the music shifted. The last remnants of that harmony - the things that made fading possible - went quiet. Like a song forgotten mid-verse.”

She frowned. “So it wasn’t just a choice?”

“It was a choice the world still needed to allow,” he said. “And it stopped allowing it. Not by cruelty. Just… by change. The earth no longer knew how to take us back.”

They walked a few more steps.

“So the ones who stayed…”

“…They lingered,” he said. “They still do. But they can’t fade anymore. Only die.”

“That sounds… lonely.”

“It is,” he said simply.

She took that in. “Is that why you came back?”

He nodded. “Some of them are still here. Lost. Stuck. Not human enough to belong. Not Elven enough to let go. I thought - if I could find them, if there was still a way to guide them West…” His voice trailed off.

She stopped walking. Faced him. “And if you find them?”

His eyes met hers, steady and open. “Then I’ll guide them. And I’ll go too.”

There it was.

And the silence that followed held everything.

Julia looked down at her boots. Then back toward the path. She didn’t speak again until they were nearly at her gate.

Calad darted past them, nose already pressed to the door.

But Julia didn’t reach for the latch.

Instead, she turned toward him, brows drawn, mouth set.

“You’ll be leaving too.”

It wasn’t an accusation. It wasn’t even a question, not really. Just truth, set gently between them.

He exhaled slowly. Then he said gently, “It might not happen for a long time…Years, Decades, even. The path may not be there yet.”

Her jaw tightened. “So not until after I grow old and die, is that what you're saying?”

His breath caught. And this time, he didn’t try to deny it.

Julia looked away, not to hide - just because it was too much to look at him and hold this new truth at the same time.

“I’ve already lost people I loved without warning. You’re standing here telling me you might leave with warning. That I’ll watch it happen in slow motion.”

“I don’t want to leave you,” he said, quietly.

“But you will.”

The words weren’t cruel. Just… naked.

He reached for her hand, gently. Just the tips of his fingers brushing against hers.

“You’re not a stop along the way. You’re not a moment. But I came back for a purpose. A vow I made. I can’t… unmake it.”

Her eyes flicked up to his. Searching. Hurting.

“Then don’t pretend it’s something we can build around. I need to know what’s real.”

A long pause. The wind moved gently through the hedgerows behind them. Calad scratched once at the door.

She didn’t pull her hand away. But she didn’t hold on, either.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said quietly, turned and walked up the path.

And left him standing there, in the dying light, with nothing but the scent of the sea and the shape of her absence.

oOo

Chapter Text

oOo

oOo

Chapter 14 – A Door left open

oOo

Sunday, 6th April 2025 , Sandwith

The gate clicked shut behind her. She didn’t look over her shoulder. Didn’t wait to see if he was still standing there.

Of course he was.

The lane was quiet as she walked toward the cottage. Calad trotted ahead, tail swaying in loose rhythm, untroubled - as if the words she’d left on the path behind them had no weight at all. The dusk was soft and windless, the last light silvering the edges of the clouds.

She opened the door, stepped inside, and stood still for a long moment. The house felt like it had been holding its breath without her.

The air was cool, as she hadn’t turned on the heating that morning - but the space was still shaped by them. Two mugs on the counter. His presence hung in the corners like a scent that hadn’t quite faded yet.

She took off her coat and boots, rinsed Calad’s paws without thinking, then wandered into the kitchen. The mugs were still half-full. She reached for one, then stopped. Her hand hovered over the ceramic, fingertips just brushing the rim.

She picked it up. Set it in the sink. Stared at it.

Then, without meaning to, she found herself back there.

oOo

Bristol, Winter 2020

It had been snowing that night - not the kind that stayed, but the soft, wandering kind that turned streetlights into halos. Their small terrace house felt like a cocoon: warm and dim, the smell of butter and old radiator paint in the air.

Julia was curled on the sofa, her belly heavy beneath Tom’s hoodie, her feet resting in his lap. He had one hand around her ankle, thumb tracing gentle, aimless patterns. Some cooking show flickered on the screen. Forgotten, ignored.

Outside, snow tapped faintly at the windows.

Tom shifted, stretching slightly, and let out a theatrical sigh.
“They’ll never believe we were once cool.”

She raised an eyebrow. “We were never cool.”

“We were so cool,” he said, mock wounded. “We went to Iceland. In February.”

“We got food poisoning in Reykjavik.”

“Exactly. That’s how you know you’re wild-hearted.”

She snorted and nudged his ribs with her toes. “You’re such an idiot.”

“I’m a legendary idiot,” he said proudly.

For a while, they just sat there, the kind of silence that only lives between people who’ve run out of walls between them.

Then, her voice softer:
“Do you ever wonder if we’ll still be… us? Once they’re here?”

He turned toward her. “The gremlins?”

She nodded.

Tom considered this. “We’ll be new versions. Upgraded. Tired. Possibly sticky.”

“I’m serious, Tom.”

“I know.”
A pause. Then, quieter:

“Whatever happens - we find our way back. Even if it takes time. That’s the deal, yeah?”

She looked at him: the crinkle around his eyes. The scar on his chin from when they’d tried to build a DIY garden bench. The way his fingers held her ankle like a lifeline.

She laced her fingers through his.

“That’s the deal,” she whispered.

oOo

Sunday, 6th April 2025 , Sandwith

The kettle clicked behind her - she’d turned it on without thinking. She stared at it now, as if it might explain something.

Then she walked to the sofa and sat down heavily. Calad, sensing the shift, padded over and laid his head on her knee.

The house was quiet.

She didn’t cry. The heaviness in her chest had shifted somehow, not in a way she could name, only feel.

After a while she rose and went up to the study. The notebook lay on the desk where she’d left it days ago, spine turned toward the window. She carried it back down to the sofa and sat, running her hand over the cover, slow and deliberate.

That’s the deal, yeah?

They’d said it like it was a joke. Like it was a safety net they’d never need.

And yet here she was: trying. Not moving on - but moving.

She whispered into the quiet: “I’m trying, Tom.”

And then she opened the book, and Beriel’s voice met her on the page once more.

oOo

Two hours later, the laptop had joined the notebook on the coffee table and the tap was still dripping.

Julia rose without thinking, finally carrying both mugs to the sink. The familiar rhythm of rinsing, scrubbing, stacking. Her sleeves dampening at the wrists. Hot water. Steam rising.

And then - softly, absently - she hummed. Just a few notes. A tune she couldn’t name.

Something half-remembered from a lullaby or a reel Tom used to strum on the guitar. It slipped from her lips without warning - no intention, no permission - and she froze, sponge in hand, breath caught halfway between shame and wonder.

It had been so long.

Her throat tightened. She swallowed it down. Turned off the tap. Stared out the window into the twilight, where the sea was just a suggestion of dark beyond the hedgerow.

Don’t get ahead of yourself.

Still, the silence that followed felt different now. She read until the daylight thinned, the room dimming around her. At some point she noticed her own breath had taken on a rhythm, a hum beneath the words - quiet, almost like…

oOo

The pub was packed. Lights strung across the ceiling like constellations. Tom’s voice rose over the chatter - not commanding, just alive. That particular way he had of bending a note like it was telling a joke only he understood.

And then -

“Come on, Jules.”

Laughter from the crowd. Her hands were still damp from the glasses she’d been clearing.

“I don’t sing,” she said, but he was already holding out the mic.

“You do, tonight.”

And somehow she did.

One song. Soft. Close harmony. A Leonard Cohen cover, maybe, or one of his own. The room had gone so quiet by the end you could hear the fridge behind the bar humming.

oOo

Monday, 7th April 2025 , Whitehaven

The building was still waking up when Julia arrived - the heating hadn’t yet taken the chill off the records room, and the overhead lights buzzed faintly in protest. She turned on only one desk lamp, letting the rest of the space stay dim.

Her inbox was full. Requests, reschedules, two more volunteer sign-ups for the oral history project. She didn’t open any of it. Instead, she pulled up the notes for the school tour she’d promised to revise - the emigration walk along the harbourfront.

She opened a scanned letter. One of dozens from the 1840s. Familiar territory.

Whitehaven, March 1847.
To my dear brother Samuel, now in New York…

She skimmed the early lines, expecting the usual: weather, family health, small gossip from the docks.

But halfway down:

“We stood at the quay until the ship was gone, and Mam kept her hand raised long after there was nothing left to wave at. I’ve tried to picture your life there. I want to be glad. But there are days I wish I had not let go of your hand.”

Julia stopped. The line caught in her chest. I wish I had not let go of your hand.

She could see it - absurdly clearly. Fingers entwined, not wanting to part. The moment you loosen your grip because you have to. Because holding on won’t change what’s coming.

She sat back in the chair, the glow of the screen casting her in pale light and thought of the gate. Of his face. Of the silence that walked beside her up the path.

She hadn’t looked back. Hadn’t reached out. But if she had…

If she had…

Her throat tightened. She closed the file. Didn’t save it.

She didn’t know what she would do next. Couldn’t even name what she felt - not anger, not grief. Just something low and deep and unbearably human.

But reading that line, she knew this much:
If the time came - if he truly found the way West -
She wouldn’t want to be the one who let go first.

oOo

The light had changed. Not in the sky - it was the same grey haze that always hung over Whitehaven in early spring - but inside the bungalow, Elrohir thought.

As though the air had thinned. As if something long-bound had come undone, and the space hadn’t quite remembered how to hold itself together.

The window beside him looked out over the road, and his gaze kept returning there, half-expecting her to turn up at any moment. He’d stopped pretending her absence didn’t matter. He’d stopped pretending about himself, about almost anything.

The coat he’d worn yesterday still hung on the back of the chair across from him. It was damp from salt air. He hadn’t moved it. The room smelled faintly of rain and smoke and something harder to name - the kind of stillness that only settles after a truth has been spoken aloud.

He had said too much - or not enough. He wasn’t sure which one would break things faster.

And she had said his name.

Elrohir.

It had undone something in him that had been wound tight for longer than he dared admit. Like a knot pulled loose in the dark, by hands that didn’t flinch.

He could still feel the breath of it against his skin. As if the name had been waiting all this time for someone to speak it without flinching. Without agenda.

And then she had looked at him with that steadiness only mortals have - as if she could already feel the end of it all stretching out before them.

You’ll go, won’t you?

So after I grow old and die?

He hadn’t answered her well. There were no good answers.

And then she had walked away.  She hadn’t looked back.

She hadn’t needed to.

oOo

His Monday unfolded in pieces. He kept finding himself in rooms without remembering why he’d gone there, standing for a moment before drifting somewhere else. Work didn’t hold him. Books didn’t distract him. He read the same paragraph three times and couldn’t say what it had been about.

He rubbed at his temples. He hadn’t felt like this in years - not since Ylva’s final days, when he sat beside her, holding her hand as the light in her eyes began to fade. She had never asked him to follow - in fact, she had asked the opposite. Told him not to make the choice, not for her sake and not for their children’s. 

She simply trusted him to stay, and he had.

He stayed until the end - through every softened breath, every thinning heartbeat. There was no blame between them. No bitterness. Only a love that had held fast, even as the world kept changing around them.

But that ending - gentle as it was - had still left a silence behind. A hollow shape where her voice used to be. Empty, in the way only real absence can be.

And today: he hadn’t expected it to matter this much.

Not again.

He’d promised himself - when he was sent back, when he chose to live among fading names and vanishing faces - that he wouldn’t tether himself to anything he couldn’t bear to lose.

And now here he was, sitting in a borrowed life, watching the hours pass, waiting for a knock that might not come.

If it ended here - if she didn’t want to see him again - he would not blame her.

He had lied. He had trespassed. He had let her fall into something neither of them knew how to carry.

But he could not bring himself to let go.

Not yet.

oOo

The scent of varnish hung in the air - sharp, metallic, clinging to the back of his throat. He’d been working the same stretch of the hull for nearly twenty minutes, the strokes too light to make a difference - too quick, then too hesitant. The kind of distraction that came from thoughts he couldn’t put away.
He stopped. Set the sanding block down. Rested both palms against the wood, letting the cool surface anchor him.

The yard was mostly empty. The wind had kept the others inside, even though the rain hadn’t come. He preferred it that way - quiet, undemanding. Easier to vanish into.

He reached again for the sanding block - then paused, sensing something behind him. A shift in the air.

He turned.

She was standing by the gate. One hand resting on it, her coat buttoned to the neck, hair half-pulled back. Calad wasn’t with her.

He didn’t move toward her. Didn’t speak. Not because he didn’t want to - but because part of him still couldn’t believe she had come at all.

She stepped forward, stopping a few paces from him. The wind caught lightly at the hem of her coat. She didn’t cross her arms nor look away. She just stood there, her gaze steady.

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Her gaze dropped to the hull. “That one giving you trouble?”
He gave a faint smile. “Most of them do. This one’s just being loud about it.”

A silence passed - but not a strained one.

And then, quietly, her voice barely carrying across the yard:
“I don’t know what I’m doing.”

He didn’t answer right away. He didn’t know what she meant - not entirely. With this, with them. Maybe she didn’t either. But she was here. That mattered.

He met her eyes and gave a small nod.

She looked down at the gravel, then back up at him. “If you’re not busy later… I’m making tea.”

It wasn’t phrased as a question, but it didn’t need to be.

He blinked - not in surprise, but because something in him had gone very still. And then eased. “I’ll come,” he said.

She nodded once, then turned. Walked back the way she’d come, each step even, unhurried.

He didn’t follow with his eyes. Just stood there, hands relaxed at his sides, the wind brushing against his collar.

It wasn’t forgiveness. It wasn’t resolution.

But it was a door left open. He hadn’t known what he was waiting for. Not really.
But maybe it had always been this:
A name spoken, a silence broken, and the sound of her voice asking nothing more than if you’re not busy later.

He let the thought settle, light as the wind on his collar.
Maybe that was how beginnings worked now.

oOo

Chapter Text

oOo

oOo

Chapter 15 – Shirt Left on a Chair

oOo

Monday, 7^th April 2025 , Sandwith

The sky had darkened by the time he reached the cottage.

Not with storm - just the long, slow fade of northern spring evenings. A few stars tried to push through the clouds. The porch light was already on.

He stood outside for a moment longer than necessary. Let the silence settle. Let the salt air thread through him. Let himself wait.

Then he knocked once, lightly.

The door creaked open before he could step back.

She didn’t say anything - just looked at him, eyes unreadable in the half-light, and stepped aside to let him in.

The warmth of the house wrapped around him: wood, spice, something simmering on the stove. Her coat was slung over the bannister. Calad wasn’t visible, but he heard the soft jingle of the collar from somewhere deeper inside.

He shrugged out of his jacket, and stepped into the kitchen without being asked.

It was then he noticed: A thread of melody, barely above a whisper. Coming from her lips as she stirred something in a pan, back to him. Humming.

It wasn’t a tune he was familiar with, nothing mysterious or ancient. Something folkish, maybe. Soft-edged.

He hadn’t expected it. Hadn’t imagined her voice returning like that: an offhand tune in a quiet kitchen.

She didn’t hum for him, she didn’t even seem to notice she was doing it.

But something about it - the ordinariness, the unguardedness – caught somewhere deep.
They hadn’t known each other long. Not really. Not by years or milestones. It was nothing but a scattering of days. A few nights’ worth of light and dark and silence and breath. But in the small space they’d shared - light, silence, grief, breath - this felt new.

And, somehow, the most intimate thing she’d let him witness.

She moved around the kitchen with the rhythm of someone long used to doing things alone.

He stayed back, leaned against the doorway. After a while, he asked: “Sounds nice. What is it?”

She didn’t turn. Just shrugged. “Something Tom used to play. I don’t remember the words.”

He held on to it: the sound, the ease in her shoulders, the fact that her voice had returned in that way first. Not to speak. To hum.

They ate in relative silence. It wasn’t awkward, just careful, like two people still learning how to sit in the same room again. Calad lay curled beneath the table, his chin resting on one paw. Every so often, his ears twitched at a soft word or movement, and he gave a deep breath.

The stew was rich and earthy, and she hadn’t skimped on the herbs. He complimented it softly. She made a noncommittal noise that might have meant thanks, or might have just meant she wasn’t ready for softness yet.

When the plates were cleared, she sat across from him at the kitchen table. Her elbows rested on the wood. She didn’t look at him at first.

“I read something today,” she said. “In the archive.”

He waited.

“It was a letter - from a girl in Whitehaven to her brother, after he’d gone to New York. She said she wished she hadn’t let go of his hand.”

He stayed very still.

Julia looked up.

“I think I understand that now.”

He swallowed. Gently, carefully:
“Julia…”

She held up a hand and continued: “I’m not saying I’ve forgiven you. Or that I know how this ends. I’m still… all over the place.”

“I know,” he said.

She exhaled, steadier now. “But you’re looking for traces of your missing kin. Lost Elves, exiles, scribbles in the margins. I’m a historian. That’s what I do.” She added, very softly: “I want to help.”

He didn’t know what to say.

So she said one last thing - almost too quiet for him to hear: “Just… don’t expect me to let go of you gracefully.”

Her words hung in the space between them, soft as breath.

He looked at her and something in him faltered. She wasn’t offering herself as a shadow, but standing beside him, whole, afraid - and still choosing to stay. That was harder to bear than any forgiveness.

He reached across the table. Slowly. Gave her space to pull away.

She didn’t. His fingers brushed hers. No pressure. Just presence. Warm, human, real.

“I won’t ask you to let go,” he said, voice low and rough. “Not now. Maybe not ever.”

She held his gaze.

Neither of them moved.

oOo

Her hand stayed in his. They didn’t speak.
The fire had burned low. Shadows pooled in the corners, softening the room until everything looked like memory.

The stillness wasn’t cold. Just full.

After a while, Julia stood.

He let go, expecting her to say goodnight, to head upstairs, to draw a line.

But she only crossed the room, adjusted the blanket on the sofa, then turned to him again. Her eyes found his.

“Come on,” she said softly. “I’m not ready to go to bed yet. Let’s stay here for a while.”

He didn’t argue.

She folded herself onto the sofa, legs tucked beneath her, blanket gathered over her knees. Calad hopped up beside her with the practiced ease of someone who’d claimed that spot long ago, then politely shifted to the other end as Elrohir sat down.
Elrohir was cautious at first, his body still wired with tension, like he was waiting to be told he'd misunderstood.

She leaned against the armrest, half-turned toward him.
He sat close, but not touching.

After a long pause, she said,
“You told me about what came after. After the choice. After Mandos. Middle-Earth. But what about before?”

He turned slightly, listening.

“Will you tell me something real?” she asked.

He hesitated. Not because he didn’t want to - but because almost everything real hurt.

“Rivendell,” he said at last. “The only place I ever truly felt at home. And it’s gone now, like a song no one remembers how to sing.”

“Are they all gone now to Valinor - your parents, your brother?”

“Elladan… I do not know.” He looked toward the fire. “We lost each other after Beriel’s and Aragorn’s passing. They’d lived well, and gone in peace - but for Elladan, it was one loss too many. Celebrian. Arwen. And now them. His grief had hardened into something I could no longer lift with him. The Peredhel choice had always cut him more deeply. I believe he sailed long ago.”

His fingers tightened briefly on the arm of the sofa, then eased again - the smallest sign that the words didn’t sit as firmly as he’d like.

There was something in the pause after - not quite doubt, not quite grief - that made her wonder if he believed it.

Calad snored softly on the other end of the sofa.

“Elrond believed the Song was memory made visible.”

Julia tilted her head slightly. Thoughtful. “You always say Elrond when you talk about him. Never… my father. Or Ada.”

He stilled - the kind of breath that goes too deep, too fast. His fingertip traced the mug’s rim. And with her question hanging in the air, the memory rose: clear and heavy as the tide.

oOo

Year 2 of the Fourth Age, Grey Havens

The sea was calm that morning. Too calm, as if it knew what was about to be taken from the world.

They stood beside one another on the long stone quay - the father already dressed for the journey, the son still in worn leathers and dusted travel cloaks. Elladan had said his goodbyes the night before, without ceremony. He couldn’t bear to watch the ship depart.

Elrond had not spoken yet, not since the night before.

But now, as the light rose behind the masts, he said, very softly: “She is still here.”

“She is.”

They both meant Beriel.

Elrond didn’t ask the next question. But it was there, unspoken. 

Elrohir answered it anyway. “I’ll stay a while longer. At least until…” A pause. “…Until I’ve met their children. Until I know this world is safe.”

“You mean until they are gone.”

Elrohir flinched. “No. I mean until everyone is safe. Happy. Settled.”

Elrond sighed. “You were always the one to make sure everyone else was safe and happy, ion nîn. But what about your own happiness?”

Elrohir said nothing. The silence between them was heavy, but not angry. It was the silence of knowing.

“You always said we had the right to choose. I’m not choosing mortality. Not yet. I’m just…”

“Lingering,” Elrond said gently. “Making sure everyone is all right.”

Elrohir nodded once.

“I know, my son.”

He stepped closer then, and reached up - as he had when Elrohir was a child - placing a hand against his temple, brushing a thumb along his cheek.

The gesture made Elrohir’s breath catch, though he kept his face still. 

“Forgive me,” Elrond said, and his voice was very low now. “I would stay - for you, for her, for your brothers, for all of them - if I could. But this world… it’s slipping from me.”

He looked toward the sea, as if he could still hear the Song in the wind - not the Song of Arda as it was now, but the one he still remembered.

“There’s less music now. Less memory. I have tried to hold on, but each year it costs more.”

Elrohir nodded. He felt it, too. The slow loss of his sense of connection to the Song, to the very pillars of Middle-Earth.

“I cannot bear to watch this world lose her - as I watched it lose Celebrían. And Arwen. I would not survive it. But you can.”

His father said it with sorrow, not blame.

And that, more than anything, made it harder.

“When you come, you and your brother, whether by ship or by shadow, we will be there.”

His voice trembled slightly now.

“She will be there. They will be there.” He meant Celebrían. And Arwen.

 Elrohir’s throat closed.

They embraced - briefly, fiercely. Like holding too tightly might fix time.

And then Elrond stepped away, into the light, onto the ship.

Elrohir didn’t cry.

Not until the sails caught the wind, and even then, it wasn’t for the goodbye.

It was for everything they hadn’t said. For who - and what - Middle-earth lost that day.

oOo

He blinked - once, hard - and the table came back into view.

Two mugs. Soft rain. Calad’s breathing. Julia’s eyes.

He didn’t answer her question directly, but his voice was soft when he spoke. “If I called him Ada, even now…I’d remember too much, and I’m not sure I’d find my way back.”

Julia didn’t press. She just nodded - once - and nudged his mug closer to him.

Their fingers brushed. Warm.

No more questions.

Just the rain.

They were silent for a long time, then she tilted her head. “You sang there?” “We all did. Music was part of everything. Even the silence had its own kind of harmony.”

He closed his eyes briefly, just to find it again.

“I used to sing with my mother,” he added, barely audible. “In the mornings.”

They sat in the hush that followed. Her shoulder brushed his. Neither of them shifted. And when she finally drifted off like that - warm against his side, breath steady, his arm loosely around her waist - he stayed awake a little longer. Watching the embers, watching her dream. Remembering a song he hadn’t thought of in centuries.

And just as he remembered – she did, too.

oOo

Bath, Spring 2019

She and Tom were arguing again.

About nothing. About everything.

She was behind the bar, towel in one hand, a half-dried pint glass in the other. The taps were still dripping, and someone had turned the radio up too loud. Tom stood near the stage, guitar slung across his back, mouth set in that line he always got when he was trying to be patient.

“You said you’d stay through the second set.”

“I have stayed. I’ve got early university lectures all week, Tom.”

“It’s one song.”

“It’s always one song.”

He huffed, didn’t quite smile. “I didn’t ask you to marry the band.”

She turned away, not because she was angry - she wasn’t - just tired. Just not ready to feel like his afterthought again.

The glass clinked against the sink.

Then…

Silence.

When she turned back, the bar was gone and so was the crowd.

Just a warm spill of light across a narrow stage. Wooden floor. Muffled sound, like someone breathing through velvet.

Tom sat on a stool at the center, guitar in his lap, looking at her like she’d never walked away.

“I wrote something,” he said, softly.

She blinked. “What is this?”

“I want you to sing it.”

“I don’t sing,” she said. But her voice came out wrong. Younger. Brighter. Like it hadn’t learned silence yet.

Tom just looked at her. “You do tonight.”

And somehow - impossibly - she was on stage too. No one else was there. Just him, the guitar, the two of them under a low golden light.

He began to play.

A simple tune. Old, maybe. Familiar in the way things are when they’re true.

She opened her mouth.

And the note came out whole.

Not perfect. Not polished. Just hers. Clear and strong and rising like breath after deep water.

Tom watched her like he’d never seen her before.

Not like a stranger. Like someone coming home.

Their voices met on the second chorus. No harmony. No plan. Just a single line woven between two hearts that had once shared everything.

And when the final note fell away, she was still standing there, hands trembling.

Tom set down the guitar. Walked over.

He kissed her forehead, warm and brief and impossible.

“You always did sing,” he said. “Even when you didn’t know it.”

And then…

The lights dimmed.

The room fell away.

But the music lingered - not in sound, but in breath, in memory.

oOo

And she woke in the half-dark of the cottage, Elrohir breathing softly beside her, one arm still resting across her waist.

Her heart was beating like she’d just run.

And somewhere inside her chest - deep, hidden, newly returned - something was humming.

She didn’t move at first.

The dream still clung to her - not in images, but in sensation. Warmth on her skin. The taste of melody in her mouth. Her fingers curled slightly against the blanket, as if holding onto something that wasn’t there anymore.

Moonlight spilled across the room. She turned her head - and found him already awake, watching her with that stillness, as if time had never managed to pull him all the way forward. His hand rested at her hip.
She didn’t explain. Just said, softly, “I sang.”

He didn’t ask why, and nodded - as if he’d known all along. Then he leaned in.

The kiss was slow. Careful, reverent, like touching something fragile and sacred.

Her hand rose to his cheek, thumb brushing the edge of his jaw. She kissed him back without urgency, without fear.

When they parted, neither of them moved away.

She spoke again, barely audible.

“Will you come upstairs?”

They didn’t turn on the lights. Didn’t speak again. Just moved together - quietly, deliberately - up the narrow staircase, her hand brushing his once, twice, before it found his.

The bedroom was cool. She pulled the covers back. He undressed slowly, tugging his shirt loose and putting it over the chair next to the bed. She pulled her jumper over her head…nothing urgent, no need to rush what had already been chosen.

They lay down side by side, facing each other in the dark, and this time, when she slept, his arms were around her.

Nothing haunted them now; only warmth, breath, and presence remained. But even wrapped in that warmth - even with sleep tugging at her - something in her mind stayed sharp.
Awake.

oOo

She should walk away.

She knew that.

This - whatever this was becoming - had warning signs painted all over it. He would leave, someday. Maybe not soon. Maybe not until her hair was grey and her hands were too thin to hold his. But he would. He had to. It was written into him like the grain in driftwood.

And still, when she tried to picture stepping back - cooling things off, sleeping alone again, building polite distance - her mind went blank. Like someone had taken the colour out of her future.

Because he was already in it. Already part of it.

Not just in the way he touched her - though that had cracked something open in her, something she thought had died with Tom. But in the way he listened. In the way he moved like he remembered a thousand years behind every step, and still made space for her beside him.

It wasn’t safe. It wasn’t smart. But it was true.

After two years in a world of cardboard - thin, silent, grey - she would take truth. Even if it hurt later. Even if it broke her. She’d already been broken. And she was still here.

oOo

Chapter Text

oOo

oOo

Chapter 16 – Forgotten Mug on a Stone Wall

oOo

Tuesday, 8^th April 2025 , Sandwith

He woke to the warmth of the bed, but not her.

The space beside him was empty. As if she'd risen only moments ago, the sheets still faintly holding her shape.

For a moment, he simply lay there, watching the light shift on the ceiling.

His body ached in unfamiliar ways. Not from tension, but the release of it. His breath came evenly. His thoughts didn’t rush.

And for the first time in a long, long while, he didn’t feel pulled in five directions.

He wanted.
He loved.
And yes, he still had work to do - but none of it, none of it, was the reason he’d held her last night.

That knowledge sat in his chest like something rare.

He pushed the blanket back and rose quietly, dressing without thinking, like the body remembered how to move without armour. The hallway smelled faintly of coffee and he followed the smell, barefoot, already knowing where she’d be.

The study door was cracked.

He found her exactly as he should have expected:

Hair twisted up haphazardly, the curve of her neck visible as she leaned forward. Reading glasses perched low on her nose. A pencil tucked behind one ear. Bare legs folded beneath her in the desk chair, wearing only a pair of worn grey pyjama shorts and - unmistakably - his shirt.

She hadn’t even buttoned it all the way.

The photo of the manuscript with the sketched hand glowed on the screen before her. A notebook lay open beside her elbow, scrawled with half-legible notes. Her other hand moved between the page and the trackpad, flipping between tabs, cross-referencing symbols with something online.

She was so absorbed she didn’t hear him.

He stood in the doorway for a long moment, just watching her.

This, he thought, was the woman who would open the sea.

Not a seer. Not a prophet.

Just a historian, in a borrowed shirt, bent over an ancient text with bed-warm skin and something radiant in her eyes.

And gods help him, he wanted every part of that life.

Not just the nights.

But the mornings.

And the years.

And the work.

oOo

The kettle sat cold on the counter, but a half-forgotten mug of coffee waited beside it, still faintly warm to the touch. Calad was curled by the radiator, ears pricking as Elrohir stepped in, watching him like he was waiting for a weather report.
“She’s still alive,” Elrohir told him quietly, taking a sip. “Just reading.”
The dog huffed, unimpressed.
“Yes,” he added, deadpan. “In my shirt.”

Outside, the early light had a washed-out softness to it - a sky of low silver, the sea only half visible through the morning haze. He sat on the stone wall just beyond the cottage, the old moss cold under his thighs, his bare feet in the damp grass. The air smelled of earth and salt and something faintly green - life preparing to return.

It was quiet, but not empty.

He had once believed that silence was a kind of punishment - the long echo left behind when duty was done and no one remained to bear witness. But now… now it felt like something else.

He let his mind drift, not forward, but back - not deep, just enough to feel the shape of the weight he’d been carrying.

oOo

He remembered his mother’s breath, shallow and uneven in the stillness of Imladris, in the months after the orc attack. The wounds had healed in flesh, but not in spirit. They had tried everything - herbs, music, light. But even Elven craft could not stitch back what terror had torn open.

He had sat by her bed in silence, holding her hand while Elladan paced like a caged thing, all fury and helplessness. Elrohir never raised his voice. He just held on. For her. For their father. For the house that had begun to dim around them.

When she finally chose to sail, it was not with ceremony, but with a whisper.

He had ridden with her to the Havens. So had their father. And Elladan, though his hands gripped the reins like they might break. The sea had smelled strange that day - sharp and wide, not comforting. Final.

When the ship’s gangplank lowered, he felt the world rearrange itself around absence. She kissed his brow like he was still a child. Said nothing. Stepped aboard.

And he had let her go.

He had done his duty. And it had felt like failure.

oOo

Elladan had always burned hotter.

Even as children, Elrohir had been the quieter shadow - the one who learned quickly, who watched the world before leaping. But Elladan? He leapt. He fought. He loved too fiercely and lost too easily.

After their mother sailed, it changed something fundamental. Elladan needed vengeance. Needed to bleed the world that had bled them. And Elrohir - Elrohir followed.

He became the sword his brother needed. Not because it suited him, but because it kept Elladan upright. Because someone had to make sure he returned from the edge each time.

Years passed in a haze of pursuit - orcs, wild lands, blood on the snow. They stopped keeping count. Elrohir trained harder than he needed to. Killed more than he ever wanted to. Smiled less. Slept rarely.

Once, Beriel had said quietly, “You’re not like him.”
And he’d replied, “Doesn’t matter.”

It did. It always had.

But duty was louder than nature. And love, louder still.

oOo

It was far into the Fourth Age.

The Days of the King were gone. Beriel and Aragorn were gone. Legolas and Gimli left. His brother Elladan missing in the wild, still hunting the last remnants of the dark.

Elrohir’s days had gone quiet. Grey. He travelled without aim, the silence growing heavier with every year. Sometimes he thought of the Grey Havens. Thought of leaving. But still the sea did not call to him.

That’s why Dol Amroth had startled him.

The sky was too sharp. The air too clean.

And then there she was - Ylva.
Voice like winter and fire. Laugh like music he hadn’t heard in years.

Ylva saw him. Not the history. Not the name. Just a man who showed up in the market one day with too much time on his hands and no plan. She teased him. He thawed.

Then the question came.

The choice.

And he’d almost made it - would have, for her.

But she stopped him.

“Don’t,” she’d said, her hands on either side of his face.
“Don’t bind yourself to death out of guilt. Or life out of fear. If you love me… you’ll have to let me go one day, knowing you’ll go on.”

He had stilled then, unsure what she meant. But Ylva had known. She always did.

“I could not bear it,” she said, “if you chose death because of me. You’re not made for this. You’re bound to your kin, Elrohir.”

He’d tried to argue - gently. If she did not want him to choose her path, then would it not still be their future children’s right? To choose, one day, as he could?

But she had shaken her head, firm.
“No long lives,” she’d whispered.
“No strange blood. No grey ships hanging over their childhood like a shadow. We live now in a world that no longer sings for your kind - a world that is beginning to fear what it once revered. Let them be of this world”, she said. “Let them belong. Let them live and die as men, not myths… before the word Elf becomes a danger in itself.”

He had wanted to give them every gift he could. But she had seen further than he had - seen the wariness already creeping into men’s hearts, the way Elves were beginning to be spoken of in whispers, if at all.

“Let them grow up without that weight,” she’d said. “Let them laugh without worrying who they’ll outlive. Do not choose, Elrohir. Not for me, not for them.”

And so he had.

He remained unchanged, as the world changed around him.

They loved in the quiet way - her hands in the earth, his building their small home.

Work, not words. Days shaped by weather and seasons, not prophecy or myths.

They lived by the tide and the turning of leaves. There was music in the hearth crackling, in the sound of small boots on stone, in the hush of her breath at night beside him.
He learned how to repair fishing nets. She learned the songs of the Hall of Fire.

Their children came - two boys, fierce and bright, with his eyes and her cleverness. Mortal, like her.

He buried her in the spring, many years later - and even then, it was far too soon.
He buried their sons in the years that followed.

And stayed… aching, rootless, too unchanged to grieve cleanly.

He had loved them as best he could.

But still, he felt like a ghost in their story.

oOo

And in the end, that’s what he became.
He hadn’t died in battle. The ships were gone by then.
He had just… faded. Quietly. Without fury. The path was already closing. But something in him still resonated with the old music - enough to slip through, perhaps the last one who ever could.

He thought he would rest. That he had earned it.

But then Mandos came.
Not in words, but in presence. A question ringing through his bones.

Stay?
Or return?

And with it, flashes:
The Lost Ones. The ones like him - half-faded, half-forgotten. Those who never found the sea. Those, who could no longer fade, no longer follow the Straight Road. He had seen them in dreams, flickers at the edge of memory, broken notes in half-sung songs, names no one remembered but him.

Perhaps that was why he’d been asked. Because he had crossed the line between memory and silence. Because he could still hear the echoes that others no longer could.

And something in him said yes, not because he longed to live again, not because he hoped.
But because someone had to go.
Someone had to remember.

So he returned.
Not to joy. Not to healing.
To duty.
Again.

oOo

Until now.

The mug in his hands was cool now. The garden mist clung to his skin.

All this time, he thought, I have loved like someone who owed.

He closed his eyes.
But maybe - just maybe - I could love like someone who lived.

oOo

He didn’t hear her approach.

It was the warmth of her beside him that pulled him back - the faint brush of fabric as she sat, cross-legged on the stone. She had a second mug in her hand. Her hair was still damp from a recent shower. Her cheeks pink with cold.

For a while, she said nothing.

Then, lightly, “You’re going to freeze your ass off out here.”

He huffed a breath, almost a laugh. “It’s already gone numb.”

She passed him the fresh coffee without comment, tucking her own hands around her mug like a barrier against the wind.

Another quiet moment passed. Then she said, almost offhandedly:

“If you’re not busy, I could use another set of eyes.”

He turned to look at her.

There was no ask in her voice. No angle. She hadn’t come to draw him out, or ask what was wrong, or even invite him in. She’d just… included him.

As if he was already part of this. Of her. Of whatever came next.

He felt it catch in his chest, soft and seismic.

“What?” she asked, catching his expression.

He shook his head. “This is all so… simple,” he said finally. “And yet so extraordinary.”

Then, without looking at her, he continued - voice low, more confession than comment:

“I don’t know how to do ‘simple.’
How to separate everyday love from duty.”

He watched the steam rise from his mug, not expecting a response.

“I never learned how,” he added, after a moment. “Everything I’ve cared for… I’ve tried to protect. To keep them from breaking. I was always the one holding it.”

A pause. Then, with a ghost of a smile:

“But I think I broke myself trying.”

She was quiet for a beat longer than before.

Then she blinked, and smiled - not wide, but something settled in it.
“You’re allowed to want simple,” she said softly. “Even after everything.”

That did it.

Something in him slipped loose - gently, irrevocably.

He reached for her hand.
She let him.

And then, with quiet agreement, they stood.
Back through the garden.
Back into warmth.
Into the hush of a house still filled with the scent of sleep and sea salt and second chances.

oOo

He followed her down the hallway, each step clear, yet wrapped in the strange hush of a dream.

The weight of her hand still lingered in his.

She didn’t speak. Neither did he. There was nothing left to explain, nothing that words could press more clearly than the echo of her voice in his mind:

“You are allowed to want simple.”

He did.

He wanted her - not out of loyalty, not out of grief, not as a stand-in for anything lost. Just her. Her presence, her sharpness, her hands.

He just didn’t know what to do with wanting. Not cleanly. Not without guilt trailing behind it like smoke.

But when she stepped closer again - not cautiously, not as invitation, but as continuation - his breath caught.

She touched him, lightly. Fingers brushing the edge of his collarbone beneath the fabric of his shirt, her eyes steady on his.

“Does this,” she murmured, just above a whisper, “feel like duty to you?”

He blinked. “No.”

Her mouth curved, faintly. “And this?” Her hand slid to his waist, drawing him closer, her palm warm against his skin.

“No,” he said again, voice rougher now.

She rose onto her toes, brushing her lips beneath his ear. “And this?”

His hand closed around her waist. He breathed, “Gods, no.”

She smiled against his skin. “Good.”

And when she pulled him down to kiss her - slow, certain, nothing tangled with anyone else's name - he didn’t think of Valinor, or Ylva, or duty.

He only thought of now. Of the want that was finally his.

She led him through the darkened hallway, neither of them speaking.

The air between them had changed - not charged, exactly, but taut with awareness, like a breath held just before release.

When they reached the bedroom, she turned to face him.
He still didn’t know whether to thank her or fall to pieces.

Julia reached for the hem of his shirt, slow, deliberate. Her knuckles brushed the skin of his abdomen, and he sucked in a breath, not from surprise, but restraint.

“You’re allowed to want this,” she said softly. His hands came to her waist then - reverent, still uncertain - and she stepped into him, pressing her body flush to his.

His mouth found hers, and this time there was no caution in it. No careful testing of boundaries. Just heat, and hunger, and a need so long starved it trembled on contact.

There was no weight of history here. No vow unspoken. No ghost.

Just her.

He kissed her like he had been holding his breath for too long. Like want was a language he had almost forgotten how to speak.

And still, she answered.

They undressed each other slowly - not with ceremony, but with care. As if she already knew how much of him had been kept behind walls for centuries, and wasn’t going to tear them down, only open a door.

When she lay back on the bed and reached for him, he followed without hesitation.

He moved over her like a man who knew he would never deserve this but was allowed to have it anyway.

His hands mapped her skin with reverence. His mouth traced the curve of her breast, the dip of her hip, the softness at the centre of her. Her body opened to him with something like trust, something like certainty - and he answered in kind.

When he entered her, he felt the breath leave his lungs like a prayer he hadn’t meant to say aloud.

She wrapped her legs around him, drew him deeper. Their bodies found rhythm, not as choreography, but as instinct - movement unbound from obligation, entirely shaped by need.

And through it all, for the first time in longer than he could name, he felt it happen:

Duty.
Love.
Want.

Unwinding. Separating. Breathing.

He hadn’t known it was possible. That desire could exist without being claimed by grief. That closeness could be given without something being taken.

When she came apart beneath him, it was with a sound that made him tremble - not with hunger, but with awe. A laugh, soft and broken and whole. Like her body had just remembered joy.

He followed her with a hoarse groan, his face buried in her neck, and collapsed into stillness.

Her hands found his hair, warm and unhurried.

And then her voice, lazy and sharp at once:

“So… does that feel like duty?”

He laughed, helpless against it, low in his chest.

His lips brushed her shoulder as he whispered,

“Not even a little.”

oOo

Chapter Text

oOo

oOo

Chapter 17 – Carving in Stone

oOo

oOo

24^th April 2025,  Whitehaven

Julia stared at the unread article on her desk - The Musical Traditions of the Outer Hebrides – and sighed. Normally, she had patience for even the driest corners of academia - but lately, every line of inquiry into the Lost Elves felt like a cul-de-sac. Promising leads dissolved into legend. Patterns collapsed under scrutiny.

She and Elrohir had settled into a rhythm - research, long walks, shared meals, quiet nights. It was strange, how something could feel so easy and yet so entirely unfamiliar. Like living inside a question. Maps spread across her kitchen table, books stacked precariously by her bed, a spreadsheet with pins on her wall like a True Crime documentary.

Her phone buzzed across the desk. She didn’t reach for it right away. But when she saw the name on the screen, she sat up straighter.

Dr. A. Armitage.

She picked up.

“Julia Stokes,” came the familiar Edinburgh lilt. “Ignoring me again, are we?”

“I’m not,” she said, half-laughing. “You only called once since we’ve met.”

“Aye, and then emailed. Twice. Left a voicemail. I’m beginning to think you’re hiding something.”

“I’m not hiding,” she said, her voice softening. “Just… slow.”

There was a pause. Then, more gently: “How are you now, Julia? I was a bit worried about you, when we last met.”

A kind question, asked without agenda. It caught her off guard.
“I’m working again,” she said. “Researching. Writing. A lot, actually.”

“Good. Because I’ve something for you. That manuscript I showed you in Lancaster - the one with the marginalia we couldn’t decipher, but you had… strange ideas about it - ”

“I never said any of those aloud.”

“You didn’t have to,” he replied dryly. “I’ve taught you long enough to know when you’re evading an answer. You don’t even need to speak - you give it away in the way you breathe.”

She laughed, startled and warm.

“There’s more,” he continued. “A folio fragment turned up in the Advocates Library misfiled in the Charteris collection. It’s not the same hand, but it’s kin to it. I swear it’s the same language.”

Julia stilled.

“Come back to Lancaster,” he said. “Let’s see what we can make of it. I want to know if your ghosts match mine.”

She hesitated for only a second.

“Okay,” she said. “But I might bring someone with me. He’s… sort of an amateur expert in weird ideas.”

Professor Armitage gave a delighted snort. “A fine trio we’ll make, then. Bring him along. The more, the madder.”

She hung up, turned toward the window, where Calad’s “office bed” was stationed - and caught him watching her like he knew. She sighed. “Yes, you’re coming too. We’ll find a dog-friendly B&B. But you’re not getting any wild boar ragù.”

oOo

25^th April 2025,  Lancaster

The reading room of the Lancaster University archive was hushed and high-windowed, the light diffuse and grey with northern cloud. It smelled of paper, vellum, and the particular damp persistence of old stone.

“Julia Stokes,” a familiar voice rang out - warm and amused.

Dr. Alastair Armitage crossed the room with brisk purpose, eyes sharp as ever. “God, you’re pale. Come to donate your bones to the collection?”

“You’ve been out of the sun since 1998. You don’t get to judge.”

He grinned. “Fair. But you look well. Truly.”

She smiled. “So do you. In a crypt-keeper sort of way.”

“Flattery will get you exactly to the manuscript table.” He paused, noticing the man beside her. “And this is…?”

“Oliver Mitchell,” Elrohir said evenly. “Julia invited me to join.”

Armitage offered a hand. “Alastair Armitage. Professor. Marginalia obsessive. Danger to no one except cataloguers and the Oxford Paleographers' Circle.”

They shook hands - Armitage’s grip firm, Elrohir’s precise.

Armitage narrowed his eyes. “Have we met?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Hm. You’ve the look of someone who’s read too much and slept too little. Academic by contagion, then?”

“Something like that,” Elrohir said.

Julia cleared her throat. “The folio?”

“Ah, yes. Come along. I want to see your face when you see it.”

He led them to a long table where a conservator had just lifted the protective cloth. Beneath it lay a single folio leaf - yellowed and foxed, the edges worn to translucence.

“The main script’s dull - an estate inventory, written in a coarse northern hand,” Armitage said. “From somewhere near the old Grizedale holdings, maybe late 14th century. Sheep tallies, roof repairs, brewing records - riveting stuff…but look in the bottom margin…”

They all leaned in.

It was almost nothing. A faint line of slanted script - looping and sharp, half-faded into the parchment. And next to it: a sketch. A star. Five-pointed. Unfinished. One line trailed down but never crossed.

“I found it last week in the supplemental register,” Armitage said. “It was misfiled. No attribution, no known scribe. But this hand - it’s deliberate. Not the usual scrawl. Someone meant this to last.”

Julia said nothing. Her pulse had started to race.

Armitage continued, “It’s not Latin, not early English. Might be private code, or one of those pseudo-scripts you see in mystical texts. Cabbalists. Alchemists. Take your pick.”

“And that symbol - the star?” Armitage tapped it lightly through the protective sleeve. “Common enough motif, sure. But unfinished like that? Intentional. Maybe ceremonial.”

Julia said carefully, “Could it be linked to any known order? A family sign, maybe?”

“Possibly. Or someone invented it wholesale. People were mad for secrecy by the late medieval period - especially around the borderlands.”

He stepped back and looked at her. “Well? Doesn’t it remind you of anything?”

“Something I dreamed once,” Julia said lightly. “Nothing I can footnote.”

Armitage laughed. “Good. That’s the spirit.”

Then, more gently: “I know I’m pushing. But I’d love to hear something about your results.”

She nodded slowly. “Soon.”

Armitage smiled. “I'll hold you to it.”

Then his eyes flicked to Elrohir again. “And you, Mr. Mitchell - what do you see?”

Elrohir met his gaze. “Someone trying to be remembered.”

That gave Armitage pause.

Then he said, “A romantic. Dangerous breed.”

He turned back to his notes, whistling softly.

Julia glanced sideways. Elrohir’s hand was faintly clenched against the table.

“You know it,” she whispered.

The smallest nod.

“Who?”

His reply was almost breath: “Someone who vanished before the Fourth Age ever began.”

oOo

The room at their B&B in Lancaster was small, warm, and a little old-fashioned - patterned carpet, brass lamp, the faint hum of pipes behind the walls. Julia sat curled at the top of the bed, leaning against the headboard, Beriel’s notebook open across her knees. The lamplight caught the worn edges of the pages, turning them to gold. Calad was already asleep in the corner, snoring faintly in his travel bed - exhausted from the long walk they'd taken after returning from the archive.

Elrohir stood near the window, back half-turned, watching the city begin to sink into dusk.

“I’ve never seen you do that,” she said.

He glanced over.

“Go… vacant like that. Not just quiet - like something inside you folded shut.”

He said nothing.

Julia closed the notebook. “Who was she?”

He turned fully now. His voice, when it came, was precise. Low.

“She was one of the early ones. Born before the Great Journey, before language settled into script. She chose exile when most chose silence. Her name was Lóna.”

Julia frowned. She repeated the name softly, as if testing a shape that didn’t quite belong on her tongue. “That does not sound like elvish.”

“No,” he said. “It wasn’t. It’s a lot older.”

She hesitated. “Did you know her?”

A pause.

“She was one of my ancestors on my mother’s side. They called her the Stone-Reader. She walked the coasts after the fall of Doriath, carving signs into cliffs and chapel walls. She said there would come a time when songs would rot but stone would still whisper.”

Julia blinked. “So you think this - this marginalia - was done by her? That she survived from...” Her voice slowed, trying to shape the scale of it. “From the First Age?”

He shook his head. “No, she vanished, long before that. I think someone who knew her marked it. Or remembered. Or found her signs somewhere in the corners of this world, or Arda.”

The notebook still lay open in her lap, but Julia wasn’t reading it. She was watching Elrohir instead.

He hadn’t moved from the window. Hadn’t quite come back into the room.

“You’re sure it’s not her?”

He didn’t answer.

“Elrohir.”

His gaze lifted. “No. I don’t think so. But the symbols - someone knew her. Or read her trail. I have seen marks like that before. Not here, further south, in France. And Switzerland. Never here in England.”

Julia sat forward. “Then we should go to that estate.”

He hesitated. Long enough that she noticed.

“You don’t want to?”

“Yes. No.” He exhaled. “I’m not sure I can explain it properly.”

“Try me.”

“I’ve done this before,” he said. “Left messages. Hoping someone might find me.”

She only watched him, quiet and expectant.

“Each year,” he continued. “On Midsummer’s Eve. I go to a place - a ruin, inland. Chapel once. I’ve left a note there, always the same message. A mark. A promise. I’ve done it across centuries. In different countries. Different names. For any of them who might still be looking. For the ones who didn’t sail.”

Her voice gentled. “Has anyone ever come?”

“Not yet.”

There was no bitterness in it. Just distance. A bone-deep quiet.

“What does the message say?”

His voice was soft. “Return on Midsummer’s night. The western flame still burns. We’ll find a way across the sea.”

She didn’t speak for a long while.

Then: “That’s not just a message. That’s hope.”

She swung her legs over the side of the bed, stood up with easy resolve. “We’ll go to Grizedale tomorrow. Look for signs. Ruins, chapel stones - whatever’s there. We’ll find it.”

He didn’t respond.

But she smiled - quick and quiet. Not performative. Not polite. Just there, warm and unfinished.

“I’m hungry,” she said.

He blinked.

“There’s a little Italian place near the university,” she added. “They had wild boar ragù on the menu. Which, frankly, is reason enough to exist.”

He nodded, slower than usual. “I’ll come with you.”

Her smile deepened. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

She brushed past him toward the bathroom, and the door clicked softly shut behind her.

He stood for a while longer. Then sat - carefully, as if his body remembered things he hadn’t told it - and rested his hand over the place where she’d laid the notebook down. As if anchoring himself there. Because that ‘we’ had slipped out of her mouth like breath. And it hadn’t felt wrong.

oOo

The restaurant was narrow and warm, the kind of place that made everything seem closer than it was - wooden beams overhead, candlelight on small tables, the air fragrant with garlic and crushed rosemary.

Julia took the chair by the window. He folded himself into the chair across from her, careful with the cramped space. He always had to be. Every movement felt like a negotiation with a world built for someone else. Yet here, with only a table and candle between them, it struck him: this was simple. No vow, no burden. Just sitting. Just staying.

The conversation, at first, skimmed the surface. Weather. Food. A memory of Lancaster cobbles after rain. It didn’t matter what was said; the strangeness was in the ease of it. But beneath it, something warmer moved - like current below still water.

He watched her across the flickering candlelight. She sat without performance, her gestures unforced, as if nothing was being asked of her. At one point she laughed, and it struck him like music, unexpected and full. He looked up, caught by the sound. And forgot what he was about to say. His gaze flicked, unthinking, to her mouth, just for a moment.

She noticed, but did not mention it – and did not look away either.

Later, the plates were cleared. No dessert. Just two espressos and the soft hush of a candle burning low. He realised then how rarely he had lingered at a table. Since Ylva, his life had been built on movement, on leaving before ties formed. Sitting, simply staying, felt more dangerous than battle ever had.

He hadn’t spoken for a while.

“You’re very still again,” she said, her voice low and almost amused.

“I’m watching,” he replied.

“Me?”

He nodded.

She leaned back slightly in her chair, letting him.

His pulse was loud in his ears. He didn’t look away. He couldn’t. Whatever this was - fragile, human, unfinished - he wanted to see it as long as he was allowed.

oOo

26^th April 2025,  Lancaster

The bells of the cathedral woke him.

Faint at first - distant chimes drifting through half-open windows, softened by fog and the thick stone of the old townhouse. He didn’t know how long he’d been awake before he registered them. Slate-grey light pressed against the curtains. Julia stirred once beside him, but didn’t wake.

Elrohir lay still, listening.

Lancaster breathed with age. The walls here had weight, and the air held a dampness particular to old buildings and older cities - wet stone and worn dust, time folded into brick. He liked it, in a way. It reminded him of Normandy. Of Oxford. Of too many places to name.

By the time they checked out, the mist had lifted and the sky turned a soft, indifferent blue.

They loaded their bags into his car and headed north. The M6 curved away from the city like a grey ribbon unspooling toward the hills. Julia sat beside him, a thermos of tea balanced precariously between her knees, her tablet open on her lap.

“I looked into this last night,” she said, scrolling. “Grizedale’s riddled with ruins, but most are industrial - mill remnants, forestry buildings, slate quarries. Touristed to death.”

“And the ones that aren’t?”

“Five that looked promising. Based on old maps, local archaeology indexes, and some extremely passionate online forums.” She glanced at him, smirking. “I filtered out anything with fairy legends or ghost reviews.”

“Wise.”

From the back seat, Calad gave a soft whine - either in agreement or protest at the lack of ghost legends.

She tapped through the list. “First one is near Force Beck. Listed as ‘chapel site, 14th c., no above-ground features.’”

He nodded.

They took a side road and followed it into the trees. The road narrowed, the forest deepened. No grand signs, no songs in the air - just earth, stone, and the next turn. Perhaps this, too, was a kind of simple: one place at a time, until the right one answered. At the first site, there was nothing - just a slight rise in the earth and a modern fence around some sheep. No stones. No marks. Nothing but grass.

The second was more promising - a hollow framed by old yews and the remnants of carved stone, now sunken into the soil like broken teeth. But Elrohir walked the full circle of it, touching moss and mortar and earth, and shook his head.

“Wrong pattern,” he said simply.

The third was little more than a ruined grain store by a narrow brook. The stones were older than they looked, but carried no memory. No echo. Only damp and decay. Calad trotted along the edge of the brook, tail high, ears twitching. He seemed to decide it was all very unimpressive, and flopped dramatically in the grass to wait.

They sat at a pub for lunch. The bread was coarse, the cheese sharp, the local beer came in chipped glasses - nothing remarkable. Yet after three empty sites, it felt like a kind of sustenance he hadn’t known he’d needed. Julia spread her map across the table, brow furrowed.

“We can stop,” she offered. “Go back. Or walk somewhere less... archaeological.”

He looked out the window. The light was changing - brighter now, threaded with gold at the edges. He had seen that kind of light before, in other valleys, other centuries. The kind of light that made things show themselves.

“Let’s try the fourth.”

She grinned. “Excellent. I didn’t come all this way to turn back before the weird stuff.”

oOo

They parked beside a tangle of brush and stone - barely a layby, just enough space to leave the car. The map had marked it simply: bridge remains, uncertain date.

It wasn’t much. Just a few crumbling walls and the bare outline of what might once have been an important crossing - thick stones stained with moss and water, a single arch still standing, weathered into almost nothing.

But something about it held watch. Not with eyes - with memory.

They stepped beneath the new bridge - a modern one, plain concrete spanning above - and the sound of the world softened. The wind dimmed as the old stone walls closed around them. Calad hesitated at the threshold, then followed with quiet steps, as if even he sensed the hush of the place.

“Here,” Elrohir said.

He crossed to a jutting slab beneath the arch. Moss clung to it thickly now, and one corner had sheared away, but the surface bore faint grooves - too shallow for natural erosion. Too precise to be accident.

Julia knelt beside him.

Carved lines - faint, worn - spiralled inward. A five-pointed star, its last arm barely visible. And beneath it, a crescent moon cradling a single dot.

Elrohir crouched. His fingers hovered above the stone. He didn’t touch it. Not yet.

“Lóna used this pattern,” he said softly. “To mark a place of waiting. Somewhere meant to be returned to.”

Julia looked up. “You think this is what the manuscript refers to?”

“I think it’s where the script was copied. Maybe where someone saw this and remembered - wrongly or rightly - and tried to carry it forward. Into parchment. Into symbol.”

He touched the stone. Not reverently. Not like prayer. Just… recognition.

“Someone passed through here,” he said. “Left this. And whoever found it later… they remembered. Not fully. Not clearly. But enough to echo it.”

Julia sat back on her heels. “Why here?”

“It’s close to the edge.”

She frowned.

“The water. The land,” he said. “The edges of things. Places that don’t belong entirely to one thing or another. Lóna liked thresholds.”

Julia ran her fingers lightly over the carving. “Like you.”

A long pause.

Then, low: “Yes.”

They stayed there a while - under the arch, beside the water. The stream murmured quietly between the stones. A breeze stirred through the broken bridge above. Somewhere distant, sheep called across the hills.

Julia’s voice was soft. “Do you think there are more?”

“Marks?”

She nodded.

“Maybe.” He looked out through the opening in the stones. “If someone learned from her… if they kept trying…”

He didn’t finish the thought.

He didn’t need to.

oOo

They didn’t speak for a long time.

Eventually, Elrohir stood and stepped back, brushing his hand absently against his trousers as if reluctant to leave contact with the stone.

Julia remained where she was, eyes half-closed, fingers still touching the carving’s shallow curve.

“Well,” she said. “Now we know.”

He met her gaze. “Yes.”

She looked down again, tracing the crescent with her thumb.

"Let’s see," she said quietly, reaching into her satchel. "I have a pencil... and paper."

Elrohir watched as she carefully laid the page against the stone and began rubbing, slow and precise. The symbol emerged in layers - smudge by smudge, line by line - until it felt as though she was coaxing it back into being.

When she finished, she held it up. "Now it’s not just memory," she said. "It’s a record.”

”What symbol do you leave?” she continued. “At the place you go on Midsummer’s Eve. What mark do you make?”

He hesitated before he replied:  “Three strokes,” he said. “One rising, one crossing, one falling. Not a flame, exactly. More like... the memory of light.”

Julia frowned slightly, picturing it.

“A triangle?” she asked.

“Almost. But unclosed. Never closed. A light still reaching.”

She nodded once. Then reached into her coat pocket and pulled out her small folding knife. The blade clicked open with a quiet, decisive sound.

“Julia…” he began.

But she was already carving. He should have stopped her. But the sound of blade on stone was steadier than he’d expected, and something in him, long unused, went quiet.

The stone was wet, and the moss made it difficult, but she worked with quiet care. Slowly, steadily, she cut three lines into the surface - one rising diagonally, one sweeping across it, one falling at a slant. The shape that emerged was simple. Incomplete. Like fire caught mid-breath.

When she was done, she stepped back, brushing a curl from her face.

“There is an answer now,” she said, looking at her work.

He crouched beside her. Reached into his bag. Pulled out a small waterproof container, worn soft by time and travel - one like he’d always carried with him, just in case.

Inside, a folded scrap of parchment. He unfolded it, pulled out a pen, and wrote quickly - in Sindarin, clean and fluid:

Midsummer. The western flame still burns. You are not forgotten. Seek the chapel near the coast. We will wait.

He tucked the note into the container, sealed it, and slid it into a hollow just behind the carved stone - tucked among roots and damp earth, safe from rain and wandering eyes, but close enough that someone could find it.

Someone who still knew how to look.

They stood together again. Julia stretched her legs, brushing moss from her knees. He stayed quiet. When they stepped back into the light - out from beneath the arch, into wind and sky - the clouds had already begun their slow fold toward evening. Below them, the valley was green and still.

Julia looked over at him. Wind in her hair. Earth on her hands. Eyes alive.

“We will find them,” she said.

He didn’t smile. But he answered: “We will.”

The walk back was nothing remarkable - damp boots, quiet air, the scent of moss. Simple. And yet, it felt like the beginning of something neither of them had dared name until now.

oOo

Chapter Text

oOo

oOo

Chapter 18 – Stories left behind

oOo

Saturday, 3^rd May, 2025, Whitehaven

The following week came and went like mist over the coastal path - unhurried, half-real. Rain fell on and off, blurring the windows of the cottage. They spent the evenings elbow-deep in notes and scanned folios, print-outs layered across the kitchen table and fragments of Sindarin scratched on the backs of shopping lists. Julia would forget to eat until Elrohir set something down beside her. He, in turn, lost hours watching her trace invisible threads through half-remembered myths. Sometimes they spoke. Often, they didn’t need to.

By Saturday morning, the study looked even more like something between a library and a storm. Julia had the desk. Elrohir, the floor. Books everywhere, maps and photos piling on the small sofa. Somewhere in the chaos, a photo of the Grizedale manuscript fragment had gone missing. Julia insisted it would turn up. Elrohir suspected it was in her dressing gown pocket again.

Calad was fast asleep under the desk, one ear twitching every time they shifted papers. He’d claimed a nest of crumpled printouts as his own, and no one had had the heart to move him.

Elrohir stepped into the kitchen. The kettle was still warm, the dregs of her first coffee sitting cold in the pot. He rinsed the mug, made another - this time the way she liked it - and added a splash of milk and exactly a half teaspoon of sugar.

When he came back into the study, she didn’t look up - just reached for the mug without breaking her focus.

“Careful,” she muttered, voice hoarse from sleep. “No drinks near the manuscript fragments-”

Then she paused. Blinked.

“Right,” she added, sheepish. “It’s a photo. I live in the twenty-first century. Thanks.”

She took the mug, sipped, and let out a quiet hum of satisfaction.

He didn’t sit. Just lingered behind her chair, looking past her at the mess of pages - and something caught his eye. A corner of the missing photo peeked out from beneath Calad’s flank. Elrohir crouched, eased it free with two fingers, and raised an eyebrow.

“Found your manuscript fragment.”

Julia glanced over her shoulder. “Oh god. Was I sitting on it?”

“No,” he said dryly. “He was.”

Calad thumped his tail once, entirely unrepentant.

Another book lay open beside her notes.

Not the notebook. A printed book. Its spine was cracked with use. The edges worn. A paperback edition of The Silmarillion - and not for show. The thing was full of stickies, little paper flags poking out in every shade of pastel. She’d underlined whole paragraphs, scribbled in the margins.

He reached for it before thinking.

She didn’t stop him.

He flipped gently, eyes narrowing as he took in the careful marks - particularly in the sections describing Aman, the Undying Lands, and the Straight Road. She had marked the passages describing Tol Eressëa, Alqualondë, and Avathar, and drawn looping arrows between them. Notes in the margins connected these to lines from the manuscript photo.

In one place, a line he knew well was underlined twice:

“The way is bent now, and hidden to mortal eyes, and only the Eldar can still find it by the grace of the Valar...”

He looked down at her.

“You’re cross-referencing Tolkien with the manuscript.”

Julia didn’t look up. “Mm. I know he fictionalised everything - but he left a map in plain sight. His descriptions of the journey West line up too closely with some of the manuscript markers.”

Her gaze drifted back to the book beside her, and her brow furrowed.

“I just don’t get it,” she murmured. “How did he know so much? The languages, the history… even the trees.”

He was quiet a long moment.

Then he said, low and almost absently - as if the memory still caught him by the throat –

“I went to Oxford. The week he died.”

oOo

Monday, 3^rd September 1973 , County Clare, Ireland

The fire crackled softly in the small stone cottage nestled deep in the hills above the bay. The smell of peat smoke mingled with sea-salt damp, blown in by winds that carried more memory than warmth.

For the last few years, the village had known him as Miles Brennagh: a reclusive natural historian, a collector of plants and folktales, a man who looked older than his years and hid behind spectacles and a scholar’s stoop. It was a mask that had worked well enough. People nodded to him in the shop, tolerated his eccentric ramblings about herbs and birds, even invited him to a ceilidh now and then.

But behind the guise, he was weary. The modern world had grown sharper, harder to evade. Census records, passports, tax offices - always another piece of paper demanding a date of birth he could not give, a trail he had to forge. Even in this quiet corner of Clare, far from Dublin or London, he lived as if the walls might close in at any moment. The centuries weighed heavily, and for the first time since his return he had begun to wonder if the Valar had been wrong to send him back. If the search for others like him was already lost.

Tonight was no different. He sat in a worn armchair by the hearth, flipping without focus through a battered herbal. A cup of tea had gone cold beside him. Outside, rain clung to the windows. Inside, the radio murmured low, a thread of noise he rarely noticed.

Until the voice changed.

“...and in today’s news, the literary world mourns the death of J.R.R. Tolkien, celebrated author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien passed away earlier today at the age of 81, in Bournemouth…”

Elrohir froze, his hand mid-turn on a page yellowed with age.

The Hobbit.
The Lord of the Rings.
Tolkien.

The names fell like stones into a still pool. Each one sent out a ripple, widening until the air itself felt altered. The voice went on - something about Middle-earth, about languages, about legacy - but he no longer heard it.

“Middle-earth,” he said aloud, just above a whisper.

It sounded wrong in his mouth. Wrong because it was real. Wrong because he hadn’t spoken it in centuries. And wrong because a mortal man - now dead - had spoken it too.

He rose slowly and switched off the radio. The silence that followed wasn’t peace. It was pressure, dense and absolute.

oOo

He walked to the village shop the next morning, just after dawn. Gravel crunched under his boots, the sea-mist heavy on the fields. Inside, the smell of bread and salt and old wood greeted him as always.

“Morning, Professor Brennagh,” Mary called from behind the counter. “You’re up early.”

He didn’t answer. His eyes had already found the stack of newspapers.

J.R.R. Tolkien, Creator of Middle-earth, Dies at 81

Beneath the headline: an old man with sharp eyes, pipe in hand. Kindness in the face, and something keener. Elrohir reached for the paper, his fingers brushing newsprint as if it might burn.

“Sad, isn’t it?” Mary said, following his gaze. “You’ve read them, haven’t you? The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings?”

He shook his head slowly. “No,” he said, voice distant. He kept his tone neutral. Safer that way. Less to remember.

“Oh, you should,” she said brightly. “It’s like stepping into another world. Elves, Dwarves, even languages. Almost feels like it could’ve happened.”

He paid in silence. The coins felt too loud in his palm. He left with the paper folded tight under his arm.

oOo

He spent the rest of the day travelling to the nearest town. The bus ride was long and uneventful, hedgerows blurring past in green and grey. He sat small in the seat, the way he had taught himself to sit on public transport: shoulder turned, eyes lowered, forgettable.

By early afternoon, he stood outside the modest town library, its weathered facade a testament to decades of quiet service. Inside, an older woman at the desk looked up with a kind smile.

“Can I help you, sir?”

“I’m looking for books by Tolkien,” he said. The words tasted strange. His voice stayed even, though unease coiled in his chest at the thought of ledgers and cards and names.

“Ah, yes. We’ve had a lot of interest.” She disappeared among the stacks and returned with The Hobbit and three volumes of The Lord of the Rings. Worn spines. Faded covers. Books that had been loved.

He stared as she set them down. His hand hovered, then touched The Fellowship of the Ring. The title alone sent a shiver through him.

“Take your time with them,” the librarian said. “They’re worth it.”

He nodded mutely. He produced the card he had taken out months ago under the village name, signed where she indicated, and gathered the books without another word.

oOo

For two days he sat by the fire, the books spread around him. He read them one after the other, devouring the words with a mix of wonder and disbelief and something like dread. The fire burned low. The cottage dimmed. He did not sleep.

By the end, the books lay scattered like fallen leaves. He had read them all.

He had lived them all, and not like this. Aragorn was there. But Arwen, not Beriel, stood at his side. Elrond was as he remembered and emptied somehow, bound in another man’s voice. And Rivendell - no, Imladris - was a whisper, not a place.

His hands were shaking.

“How did you know all this?” he whispered into the room. “And how did I miss you?”

Only the wind answered, lifting the corner of a page.

oOo

Friday, 7^th September 1973 , Oxford

A few days later, Elrohir stood in Wolvercote Cemetery, the damp air clinging to him as he gazed at Tolkien’s grave.

The inscription on the stone caught his eye immediately:

Edith Mary Tolkien: Lúthien

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien: Beren

The names carved into the stone seemed to pierce his heart.

Beren and Lúthien.

The story of love and sacrifice, so entwined with his own memories of Beriel and Arwen, of Aragorn, now immortalised for all the world to see.

He knelt by the grave, his head bowed.

“You saw what I could not,” he whispered in Sindarin, his voice thick with grief.  “But it is not the whole truth, and I failed you. I failed them all.” Elrohir placed a hand on the cold stone, his heart aching with the weight of centuries.

oOo

For days he returned - never speaking to those who came, only watching. Each day, he made his way to the cemetery, his steps quiet and deliberate, and found a vantage point where he could watch Tolkien’s grave without drawing attention to himself.

At first, he hoped for something impossible: a sign of the Lost Elves. If Tolkien’s works had resonated so deeply with mortals, perhaps they had touched the hearts of elves as well. But the days passed, and no ageless figures appeared, no echoes of elven songs reached his ears.

None came.

Instead, mortals did. They brought flowers, drawings, small tokens. A pipe carved from wood. A star-shaped pendant. Words scribbled on folded paper.
“Not all those who wander are lost.”

Their reverence startled him. They had never seen what he had seen, yet they believed.

oOo

In the evenings, Elrohir wandered the streets of Oxford, listening to the ebb and flow of conversations in the bookshops and cafes. One evening, while browsing a shelf of secondhand books in a shop near the university, he overheard two students discussing The Lord of the Rings.

“It’s just incredible,” one of them said, clutching a battered paperback. “The depth of it - the languages, the history. It’s like it’s real.”

“Well, it’s based on mythology, isn’t it?” the other replied. “Like Norse sagas and Anglo-Saxon poetry. That’s what makes it feel so alive.” Elrohir’s fingers lingered on the spine of a book as he listened, the weight of their words settling in his chest.

Alive. That was what Tolkien had done - he had taken the fading magic of Middle-earth and breathed new life into it, offering it to mortals in a form they could grasp.

One night, in the small bookshop across the street to where he was lodging, the owner - a portly, cheerful man named Harold - noticed the volume under his arm.

“Good taste, that,” Harold said, nodding to the worn paperback. “Tolkien’s been flying off the shelves since the news. Shame about him. Did you know he lived here? Taught at the university.”

Elrohir inclined his head. “I’ve heard. His work means much to many.”

“Oh, it does.” Harold’s eyes softened. “He gave us a bit of magic, didn’t he? People like to imagine a world where heroes fight the darkness. Gives us hope.”

Hope. The word lingered with him as he stepped into the night air. A fragile thing, long abandoned - yet here, it stirred again.

oOo

On the last day of his stay in Oxford, Elrohir stood once again before Tolkien’s grave. The flowers left by visitors were beginning to wilt, their petals curling inward, but the small offerings of notes and trinkets had grown. 

He knelt, his fingers brushing the cool stone as he read the inscription once more: Lúthien. Beren. The story Tolkien had immortalised - the love of mortal and immortal, a tale as old as the stars. A tale that mirrored so much of his own life.

“You saw what I could not,” he repeated his own words from earlier that week, his voice heavy with both grief and awe. “You found a way to keep the memory alive, even as I let it fade.” Elrohir rose slowly, his gaze lingering on the grave.

Though he had not seen the lost elves he sought, he had seen something else - a glimmer of hope. Tolkien’s words had kindled a spark in the hearts of mortals, a faint echo of the magic that once coursed through Middle-earth.

As he turned to leave the cemetery, the ache in his chest remained, but it no longer felt like despair. Perhaps, he thought, it was not too late to reclaim what had been lost. And perhaps, in some small way, Tolkien had already begun that work.

oOo

Julia stared at him when he finished. “You missed him just by a few days?” He nodded. “So you never found out why he knew all that?” He shook his head. “I think there is more to him than we’ll ever know. But we won’t find out for sure.”

“We still might,” she said quickly. Her eyes were alight, ink smudged on her fingers as she gestured to the open pages. “The bay. The flame. The bending of the path. He knew something. And if we find the way… we’ll know.”

He stared at her - shirt half-buttoned, hair messy, ink on her fingers - and felt something shift again, low and certain in his chest.

She wasn’t helping him as a favour or out of pity.

She was building the road beside him. Reading footnotes at dawn, trying to find Valinor.

Before she could say another word - some offhand explanation, some self-deprecating joke - he leaned down and kissed her.

Her lips were warm from coffee. She made a soft sound of surprise - and then leaned into it, hand rising instinctively to his chest. Her fingers curled in the fabric of his shirt.

When he pulled back, it was only by an inch.

She blinked up at him. “What was that for?”

He held her gaze, taking in all of it - the notes, the book, the mess, her. The fact that she hadn’t run, even knowing where this might end.

“For this,” he said simply.

It had taken a mortal once to keep the story alive.
Perhaps it would again.

oOo

Chapter Text

oOo

oOo

Chapter 19 – Seven Stars on a Prow

oOo

oOo

Saturday, 3^rd May, 2025, Whitehaven

Saturday morning still clung to the air - coffee cooling, papers everywhere, Calad sprawled in the one clear patch of floor as if he’d claimed it by right. The chaos of the study felt less like a mess and more like… proof. That they’ were here, together. That the work was real.

Julia set her mug down and reached for the pencil she’d abandoned earlier. Beside her, Elrohir was still close enough that she could hear the soft rasp of his breath.

He stayed near her for another heartbeat, then stepped back. “I should get that shower before the water goes cold.”

Julia made some vague noise of agreement and watched him leave the study. She told herself it was only for a second, that her eyes just happened to follow the line of his shoulders through the doorway.

A second turned into three.
She caught herself imagining the rest - steam curling under the bathroom door, the fall of water, the curve of his back as he tipped his head under it - and felt heat prick up the back of her neck.

“Oh, for god’s sake,” she muttered, pushing back from the table.

Calad thumped his tail from the corner, as if volunteering for distraction.

“Come on, then,” she told him, grabbing her coat. “Let’s get you walked before I disgrace myself.”

Outside, the air was sharp with salt and last night’s rain. The path up on the cliffs was quiet at this hour, just gulls circling lazy patterns over the water. Calad trotted ahead, nose low to the ground, tail swaying like a metronome.

She let her mind drift with the rhythm of his steps. What had surprised her most wasn’t just the pull between them - it was how quickly it had become part of the conversation they were having, even when no one was speaking. Touch and words blurring, his hands mapping things she’d thought were lost to her, and hers answering before she’d decided what to say.

It hadn’t been like that with Tom. Not rushed, not this fast-burn kind of gravity. They’d taken months to get here, building it in quiet increments. And she’d thought that was just how she was - how she worked. But with Elrohir, the physical had run ahead, pulling the rest along in its wake. She wasn’t sure if it made her feel reckless or alive. Maybe both.

By the time they looped back to the cottage, she felt steadier - or at least less likely to think about him… about Elrohir Peredhel… naked in her shower.

Inside, the place was warmer than she’d left it. She hung up her coat, half-listening for the sound of running water. Nothing. A quick glance toward the hallway confirmed the bathroom door stood open, steam still faint in the air.

He was in the kitchen now, hair damp, sleeves pushed back as he filled the kettle. “Coffee?”

“Always,” she said, toeing off her boots. Calad padded past her and flopped down in the doorway as if to make sure neither of them escaped again.

She crossed to the counter, glancing over the open bag of oats, the half-empty jar of honey. “So… porridge or something less medieval?”

He tilted his head as if weighing the question with grave seriousness. “Porridge is efficient.”

“Efficient,” she repeated, pouring herself the dregs of the earlier brew. “Be still my beating heart.”

He almost smiled, reaching for two bowls. That was when the phone, buried under a stack of photocopies, started buzzing.

She glanced at the screen. Unknown number.

“Expecting anyone?” Elrohir asked.

“No.” She picked it up anyway. “Hello?”

“Julia? Hi. This is going to sound strange - it’s Pat. From the boatyard. We met at the Harbour Café, Oliver’s friend.”

It took Julia a beat to place her. “Right… hello?”

“Sorry to bother you out of nowhere, but Oliver mentioned you do music?”

Julia’s head swivelled toward him. He was frowning faintly - but not in surprise. More like in the ah sort of way that meant a memory had just landed.

She tilted her head, a corner of her mouth twitching. “Did he now.”

Pat pressed on. “Thing is, I run the open mic at the Harbour Inn. Two of tomorrow night’s acts just pulled out and I’m desperate to fill the slots. I thought you might…”

“Wait, I haven’t sung in…”

“Doesn’t matter. You have a face. You have a voice. It’s fine. We’re not trying to summon Orpheus. Yet.”

Julia glanced at Elrohir again. He’d shifted back in his chair, wearing the unreadable look she was starting to recognise as I’m staying out of this.

“I’m really not…”

“Eight o’clock tomorrow,” Pat said, as if the decision had been made. “I’ll even get you a drink first. Thanks, love.”

The line clicked dead.

Julia lowered the phone slowly. “Do you give my number to everyone you know, or just the ones planning ambushes?”

He looked mildly sheepish. “She asked if I knew anyone musical. I might have… forgotten to mention it.”

“Uh-huh.” Julia reached for her coffee again. “Next time, remember.”

He made no promise.

Her hand stayed around the mug, its warmth seeping into her fingers. She hadn’t sung in public since the accident - hadn’t even hummed along to the radio. Closing that door had been the only way to keep the memories from breaking through. Now, thanks to him, someone had shoved it open, enough for the light - and the ache - to spill in.

She could still say no. One text to Pat and it would vanish. But the idea wouldn’t vanish with it.

A prickle of something - not quite panic, not quite anger - stirred in her chest. She tightened her grip, then set the cup down harder than she meant to.

He noticed - she could see it in the way his gaze sharpened - present, but not prying. She wasn’t ready to go there, not now. Not with the taste of old songs in her mouth and their echo sitting heavy in her chest.

And still, the thought of saying yes…that felt a little like Elrohir’s touch. Reckless, or alive. Maybe both.

She looked away first. Calad’s collar jingled faintly in the hall. The radiator ticked. Her thoughts skated past the music, past the sting of it, and caught instead on the one question she kept circling back to - the one that mattered more right now than whether she made a fool of herself at an open mic.

She set her mug down and looked at him directly.

“You need to tell me everything you know about Valinor.”

oOo

The shift was gentle but unmistakable.

This wasn’t pillow talk.

This was the work.

Elrohir inhaled - and for a moment, he wasn’t standing in her study, surrounded by notebooks and wi-fi and the scent of oat milk coffee.

He was elsewhere.

December, year 170, Third Age of this world, Rivendell

The library was golden with lamplight. Outside, snow had just begun to fall.

He and Elladan were curled on the floor beside a low fire, their boots abandoned somewhere behind them. Elrond sat nearby, his hands resting lightly on the open pages of a book too old for anyone else to touch.

His voice had been soft and distant.

“It is not the dream the songs make of it,” he said. “Valinor is… what the world remembers of itself before it was marred. A place where the light does not die, where the wounds do not fester.”

Elrohir had asked - quietly - “Do want to go there?”

Elrond had looked at him for a long time, then answered,
“Not yet. Not for a long while. One day, yes - that is the fate of our kin. I would see it with my own eyes. But my road is here, still.”

He glanced toward the window, where snow was falling in the courtyard.
“My parents told me of its shores - my mother, who dwells there now, and my father, who has sailed those seas. They never saw the Two Trees in bloom, for that was long before their time. But they knew the light that remains in the Silmaril, and they saw it fall upon the mountains of Valinor. Others I have known - Galadriel, Círdan - spoke of forests that do not thin with the years, rivers that carry no shadow, and a sky that remembers the older light.”

Elrohir had listened, storing every word.

“I have never set foot there, but I have carried it in my blood all my life - their voices shaped my dreams. They say its silence has no sorrow in it. Even its grief does not bite so deep.”

Elladan had scoffed something under his breath about poetry and riddles, but Elrohir had understood.

He always had.

oOo

May, year 2510, Third Age of this world, Mithlond

They had told no one but family.
No courtly farewells. No procession. Just the white quay at Mithlond, the salt wind in their cloaks, and the silent ship waiting offshore, its sails already lowered like a promise that couldn’t be unmade.

His mother, pale and still beautiful, stood on the white stone quay, her hands trembling slightly at her sides. She wore no crown. No jewels. Just a simple grey cloak and a braid down her back, loose at the ends.

She was smiling, faintly, but her eyes had already turned West - to the light she had once described to him as whole, unbroken. Not the dream of songs, but the place where even grief could rest.

Elrond’s face was unreadable and had said nothing for most of the ride from Imladris. Neither had Elladan. There was no anger between them, only the kind of silence that forms when words would only bruise more deeply.

Elrohir had stayed close to her side, even then. He had wanted to be angry - but that wasn’t what he felt.
What he felt was shame. That he had not been enough to heal her.
That they had not.

When they reached the dock, she turned and took their hands - first one, then the other. Her fingers were thinner than he remembered, but warmer.

“You are not losing me,” she said softly. “You are setting me free.”

Elrohir had nodded. He remembered that clearly.
But he had not believed her.
Not really.

She had kissed their foreheads, and then kissed Elrond’s cheek. There were no tears. Only the sound of her boots on white stone, and the gentle rise of wind in the rigging.

He had watched her climb the gangway.
The ship’s sails were like wings catching moonlight. His mother stood aboard, cloak stirred by wind, face soft and unafraid.

And this time, he heard something.

Not sung by a person. Not played on strings.
It was the sea.
It was the wind.
It was the ship itself.

The sound swelled - a harmony threading through the air like light through water. It pulled something inside him open: not sorrow, not yearning, but permission.
He had watched the ship turn, sail, vanish beyond the curve of the world - carrying her toward the shores he had only ever heard described in his father’s voice. Even after the ship vanished, the sound lingered.

No one spoke for a long time afterward. Not even Elrond.
Elladan had turned away first, fists clenched. But Elrohir had stayed, long after the others mounted their horses.

He’d watched the empty sea until the sun began to fall - and that was when he made the promise.
He would not let grief be the end of love.
He would stay.
He would carry what she could not.

He had not wept. Not then.
Only an age later, alone, when the wind still smelled of the sea and no ship remained.

oOo

Elrohir blinked.

Julia was still watching him - her head tilted, a touch of concern in her brow, but no pressure. Just waiting.

He let out a breath and sank into the chair beside her.

“Valinor,” he said quietly. “The land beyond the bent sea. The straight road. The home of the Valar.”

His hand drifted toward the book. Not to read, but to remember.

“It’s not golden clouds and white towers. It’s… silence that doesn’t rot. Trees that never twist toward the dark. A sea that forgives.”

Julia’s expression didn’t change, but her pencil paused on the page.

He added, softer still,

“I was told it could heal anything. But not everything that heals feels like home.”

Elrohir sat very still beside Julia, hands resting in his lap.

“She left when I was too young to stop her,” he said at last, voice low. “And too old to pretend it didn’t matter.”

Julia said nothing, but her hand found his beneath the table.

He let her take it.

And for the first time in centuries, the memory of the ship didn’t hurt quite the same way.

Because this time, he wasn’t the one left behind.

She ran her thumb over his knuckles, keeping the silence until she felt him steady. Then, gently: “Do you remember anything about it? The ship. The harbour. Anything that might help us?”

He didn’t answer at once.

Not because he didn’t want to. But because the memory was layered - grief first, then image. Then meaning.

He closed his eyes.

The sound of the gulls.
The wind pulling at his cloak.
The smell of salt and old wood.

The Song when the ship was gliding out into the ocean.
The gleam of white sails - but not square-rigged. Curved like a leaf in the wind.

“It was like nothing I’ve seen since,” he said, eyes still closed. “The hull was long and low, almost swan-like. Pale wood. Not painted, but polished - almost luminous. No figurehead. No weaponry. Only a carved line of stars along the edge. Seven stars, and a single one at the prow.”

He opened his eyes slowly.

Julia’s pencil was already poised over the notebook. Her voice was low. Focused.

“Seven stars. That’s Elendil’s emblem. But this isn’t Númenórean…”

“It’s older,” he said. “Quenya. Tinuvalyë - the star-path. It marked the ships that could cross the Straight Road.”

Her brow furrowed in concentration. “Were there symbols on the sails?”

He frowned. Tried to remember.

“No. No colour. But there was a faint shimmer - not like runes. More like... woven light. As if the fabric held something the sun could wake.”

She was scribbling now, muttering under her breath. “If we could find the shipwright records from Mithlond… even echoes, secondhand stories…”

Then her voice caught.

She looked up at him.

“You said the hull was curved. Leaf-like?”

He nodded. “Like a beech leaf, maybe. Long and elegant.”

Julia’s eyes flicked back to the screen - to the manuscript photo.

To the line of Elvish script beneath the faint drawing of a ship, too faded to make out clearly. But the line below it had always been legible.

“…for the leaf shall carry the song westward…”

She exhaled slowly. Then looked at him - eyes bright, alert.

“Elrohir,” she said. “You might just build a boat this world has never seen.”

oOo

They’ve worked late - Julia with her notes, Elrohir beside her, translating and clarifying until the candles gutter low. She’d fallen asleep on the sofa again, glasses still on, pencil tucked into the pages of her notebook. He’d carried her upstairs without fully waking her.

In her half-sleeping state, Julia felt like she was still hearing the music that Elrohir spoke of. And then, in the dark, the melody turned into something else, and the past rose again.

She was standing in the garden. Not here - somewhere brighter, warmer. The twins were laughing, running in uneven circles while she clapped along. She was singing something foolish and happy, the kind of song meant to be danced to badly.
The sound of their feet on the grass had matched the beat. The more she sang, the more they moved. Until they were whirling, hair flying, faces lit with a joy she could feel in her own chest.

The song wasn’t what made them move.

It was what gave them permission.

oOo

Julia woke with her heart pounding. The room was pre-dawn dark and quiet except for Elrohir’s breathing beside her.
And yet something inside her was ringing - like a struck bell.

She sat up slowly, the edges of the dream still bright in her mind. It wasn’t sorrow or yearning.
Just Certainty.

She swung her legs over the side of the bed, staring into the darkness.
“It was never just the ship,” she said aloud. “It was the music.”

Movement from behind - Elrohir shifting, now awake.
“What is it?” His voice was low, cautious.

She turned toward him, the words spilling faster now.
“You said there was music - around the ship. Not from it. Around it. Do you remember?”

He frowned, searching. “Yes. Not at the time  or maybe I didn’t understand. But it was… surrounding it. And it didn’t stop when the ship disappeared. It lingered.”

Julia’s pulse kicked. “Then that’s it. That’s what makes the road appear. The song.”

For a moment, he only looked at her - not skeptical, not startled. As if he could feel the shape of the truth settling between them.

“Do you remember the melody?” she asked.

He shook his head slowly. “Not yet. But I think I could… with you.”

Julia reached for her notebook on the bedside table.
“Then let’s start.”

oOo

Chapter Text

Sunday, 4^th May, 2025, Whitehaven

The Harbour Inn was already thick with warmth and noise when Julia stepped inside. The air smelled of beer and damp wool, overlaid with the sharp tang of the sea that had followed her in.

Pat was there in a flash, ducking out from a table crowded with friends. She grabbed Julia’s arm with a quick squeeze, eyes bright.
“Knew you’d come,” she said, half-laughing over the noise. “Go on, get your name down before you change your mind. First round’s on me if you don’t bolt.”

Julia managed a smile, shaking her head but feeling the knot in her chest loosen a little. Pat pressed her shoulder once more before being pulled back toward the table, her laughter carrying above the din.

The clipboard waited at the bar. Pen on string. The names above hers looked casual, tossed off by people who probably sang every week without thinking about what it cost. She hesitated only a breath before writing her name.

She didn’t look around for him, but she knew exactly where Elrohir was - against the far wall, pint in hand, posture easy enough to pass for idle. His gaze found hers briefly, no surprise in it, just that flicker she’d learned to read: he seemed to know she had to do this - not only for herself, but for whatever road lay ahead of them both.

The first acts were exactly what Julia expected  -  a little off-key, a little brilliant, the crowd happy to cheer for both. She sipped her drink and told herself it was fine if her turn came and went without mattering. She could still back out. Leave the chair empty when her name was called.

Then Pat was at the mic, grinning out over the chatter, calling the next name. Julia’s name. And the only thing to do was stand.

The stage was smaller than she’d remembered. The mic stand was a little too tall; she adjusted it by feel, ignoring the faint stickiness under her fingers. For a breath, she closed her eyes.

The first line came quiet. Testing. Her own voice sounded strange in her ears - thinner, as if the years had worn holes in it.

For a moment there was nothing underneath her but the scrape of chairs and a faint cough from the bar. Pat, still at the mic stand, tilted her head toward the corner where the house guitarist sat waiting. He didn’t rush it. He let Julia have those opening notes to herself.

By the second verse, she was breathing properly, the sound carrying without strain. A low guitar line slid in beneath her, tentative at first, then steady, cradling the melody without smothering it.

The song was Tom’s as much as hers - the one he’d teased her about never getting quite in tune. It should have hurt. It did. And yet somewhere in its rise and fall were intervals she hadn’t learned from him.

oOo

Elrohir felt it. From the first bar, before the guitar found her key, something old and deliberate wound its way through the melody, so faint no one else would notice. Not just a song - a line of the Song. It was there and gone in the space between breaths - enough to set every sense on edge.

His hand tightened around his glass. He stayed still, hardly daring to look toward her, not trusting his own eyes if she looked his way.

A different room, a world away: the bright winter light of Rivendell’s music hall; the curve of a harp under Celebrían’s hand. “Again,” she would say, her voice warm, “but listen this time.” Elladan’s foot tapping an impatient rhythm beside him. And then - when they finally found the harmony - a strange quiet settling over the air, as if the walls themselves were listening. His mother’s smile, proud and secret, as if she knew the song was not for the hall at all, but for the road they might one day take. The harp’s last note shimmered and thinned - and became, impossibly, the echo of her voice now, across a crowded room smelling of beer and sea-air.

By the time the last chord faded, the crowd had stilled into a softer kind of noise - the low murmur that follows when a room has been caught, just for a minute, by the same thing. Then the applause came, ragged but warm, Pat’s whistle slicing through it.

Julia smiled, because it was easier than anything else, and stepped down. Pat caught her in a quick hug on the way past, whispering, “Told you so,” before turning back to the mic to call up the next act.

At the bar, someone pressed a fresh drink into Julia’s hand. She managed a thank-you, but her eyes went unerringly to the far wall. Elrohir hadn’t moved. He didn’t smile, but his gaze held hers as if they were alone in the harbour’s quiet instead of in a pub full of strangers.

She joined him, the glass cool in her hand, her pulse still unsettled. They drank without hurry, letting the noise of the room rise and fall around them. Neither spoke, but something in the way his arm brushed hers at the counter, in the way he shifted so she had space, carried a weight of its own. Heat lingered in that nearness, subtle, unspoken.

When her glass was empty and his nearly so, they set them down together. No words about leaving, but the same thought had settled on both of them. He reached for his coat, waited as she slipped into hers. At the door, his hand brushed lightly at her back as they stepped through the crowd. She felt the warmth of it linger even after the door swung shut.

At the door he caught her eye.
“You sang,” he said.

“I did.”

They left it there.

The latch clicked shut behind them, the warmth of the pub falling away to the night. Outside, the air was sharp with salt. They walked without talking, her pulse still high, his thoughts turned over in silence. She didn’t ask what he’d heard. He didn’t ask why she’d chosen that song.

The song was still in her mouth when she thought of the last time she’d sung it in public…

The late-afternoon light had been sharp and cold. Tom had signed them up for a slot at O’Malley’s - “just for fun,” he’d said - and the twins came too, bundled into green blankets, wearing matching green hats, the kind that kept slipping down over their eyes. The pub was loud with fiddles and laughter, the smell of stout and chips, strangers crouching to wave at the children. A friend had taken the twins to the front so they could see, one on each knee, paper shamrock crowns sliding sideways as they clapped along. She and Tom squeezed onto the tiny stage between a bodhrán player and a fiddler. She’d missed a note; Tom had grinned across the mic and said, “You’ll get it next time,” as if there would always be one. They’d played until their fingers ached and the noise blurred into warmth, until the only thing she could hear was their two voices cutting through it together - and the children’s delighted squeals when the crowd clapped along.

The memory left a hollowness in her chest. She slowed without meaning to, the air from the sea cold in her lungs. Elrohir glanced at her, a question in his eyes, but she only shook her head. Without thinking, she reached for his sleeve. He didn’t speak, just curled his fingers lightly over hers as they walked on.

The roar of the St. Patrick’s Day crowd faded to the muffled thump of paws and the soft “wuff” of Calad, tail wagging as they stepped into the Old Post Office.

oOo

Julia tossed her coat onto the chair and went to her laptop out of habit. The screen lit the room in pale blue, a small square of quiet after the noise of the Harbour Inn.

A new comment sat at the top of her notifications. The username was odd  -  not the usual AO3 style, but something strung together like it belonged to another language. Guest account, no profile, just the name: TirnëParmadriel.

She tilted her head. “That’s… not random.”

From the doorway, Elrohir stilled. “No.” He came closer until he could read over her shoulder. “Quenya. Tirnë Parmadriel. ‘Watcher-maiden of the books.’ Or… ‘keeper of lore.’”

“Like a librarian?” Julia blinked at the neat, unadorned line of text beneath the name:

Some songs remember the way, like the sea keeping the echo of the Music.

Her frown deepened. She clicked back through her own archive until she saw where it had landed. Chapter 16 - the part in Beriel’s story when they had just returned to Middle-earth.

Her fingers found the stack of research on the desk. She slid free a photocopied page from The Silmarillion, one she’d underlined months ago:

And it is said by the Eldar that in water there lives yet the echo of the Music of the Ainur…

She glanced from the book to the screen.

When she looked up, he was standing right behind her, one hand braced on the back of her chair, gaze fixed on the comment.

He’d been watching her all night - not just on the stage, but after, when she walked out into the cold with her head high, her voice still in the air. That song had been hers in a way nothing had been in a long time. He’d felt it: the lift in her, the pull in him.

Now the words on the screen had dragged him somewhere else entirely. Somewhere older. Somewhere he hadn’t stood in centuries. He said something low in Sindarin, then shook himself and repeated in English: “That’s a quote, word for word. From something Elrond used to teach us. Not really written down anywhere.”

His voice had gone rougher - not with uncertainty, but with the weight of recognition.

Neither of them spoke. But the air between them felt exactly as it had in the first verse of her song - as if something older than both of them had just turned its head to listen.

Julia glanced back at the screen, the glow catching in the curve of the Quenya name. She opened a new tab, fingers poised to type. “I should…” she began, but his hand slid along hers on the desk, not catching, just grazing her knuckles before retreating. Her pulse jumped.

She tried again, “If I search - ”

He rested one palm lightly on the back of her chair. Close enough that she could feel the warmth through the cotton of her jumper, the slow, deliberate drag of his thumb along the wood. His other hand brushed her elbow as if by accident, then didn’t quite move away.

Before she could type another word, his hand closed gently over hers. “Not tonight,” he said, voice low, carrying the edge of something that had been building since the first note she’d sung.

She turned to protest, but he was already leaning closer, the heat of him pushing the rest of her thoughts to the edges. His other hand found her shoulder, and she felt the shift in him - that same urgency she’d seen when storms rolled in too fast at sea.

It wasn’t a question, and it wasn’t about distraction. It was about anchoring - now, here, them.

XXX

His mouth found hers before she could draw another breath. She turned in the chair, knees brushing his, and his hand caught the back of her chair, steadying her as he leaned closer.

She rose to meet him, the movement pulling her out of the seat. The corner of the desk caught her hip as he pressed in, closing the last space between them, his thigh braced against hers. Somewhere behind her, the laptop screen dimmed, the comment still glowing faintly in the dark.

She reached for him, fingers curling in the fabric at his back. The scent of salt and wool still clung to him, the faint trace of beer on his breath mixing with the low sound he made when she kissed him harder.

He lifted her then, setting her on the edge of the desk. Papers slid, a pencil rolled to the floor. She didn’t care. His hands were on her thighs now, warm through the fabric, sliding upward.

Her jumper was gone before she realised she’d lifted her arms, and his shirt followed, buttons scattering across the wood. Skin met skin in the thin space between them, heat sparking where they touched.

When he pushed the chair back with his knee and stepped in again, her legs parted without thought, drawing him closer still.

He kissed her like the study could vanish around them - like the walls and shelves and centuries of books couldn’t matter as much as the next breath.

His fingers found the waistband of her jeans and made quick work of the button, the sound loud in the hush. She shifted to help him, denim rasping down her thighs. His hands lingered on bare skin, thumbs stroking up and in until her breath caught.

She tugged at his belt in answer, and he stilled long enough for her to free him from the last layers between them. The moment stretched - eyes meeting, both of them breathing hard - then his hand slid between them, fingers finding her and testing gently.

She let out a sharp breath, her hips tilting toward his touch. “Yes,” she whispered, almost impatient.

Only then did he pull her to the edge and sink into her in one slow, deliberate thrust.

Her hands gripped the back of his neck; his forehead dropped to hers. The first movement stole her breath. The second made her gasp aloud.

The desk rocked gently under them as he found a rhythm, not hurried but relentless, each stroke drawing something low and unguarded from her. She met him in kind, her heels pressing into the backs of his legs, pulling him closer.

He murmured something in Sindarin against her skin - she didn’t catch the words, only the heat of them - and his mouth found her shoulder, her throat, her mouth again.

Her climax came fast, sharper than she expected, breaking her apart against him. He groaned when she tightened around him, his pace faltering for just a heartbeat before he drove deeper, hips pressing hard to hers.

He followed her with a choked breath, shuddering, holding her as if he could anchor them both in that instant.

For a long moment, there was only the sound of their breathing and the faint sound of the printer next to the desk. His hands smoothed down her back; hers rested loosely against his neck.

Papers lay scattered across the floor. The comment still glowed on the screen.

XXX

They stayed like that for a while, tangled between the desk and the chair, the room still holding the echo of them. Her jumper was half-off the edge of the desk, one sleeve brushing the floor; his was spread out on the floor. From the corridor, she heard the loud ticking of the old clock.

Her breathing slowed first, then his. Neither moved.

When she finally leaned back to look at him, his gaze wasn’t on her face but on the laptop, the faint glow of the screen catching in his eyes. The comment was still there, the name waiting.

She followed his eyes. “It won’t go anywhere, it is still there,” she murmured.

“I know.” His hand was still at her waist, thumb drawing idle circles, as if to keep her in place. “It will keep.”

She let out a small, uneven laugh. “Until the next storm?”

He met her gaze then, and there was something in it she couldn’t quite name - the same something she’d seen when she was singing, and again when he’d read that line aloud.

Neither of them spoke the thought, but she felt it settle in the space between them: that whatever ancient spirit had turned its head to listen… might not be done.

Outside, the wind from the sea pressed against the windows, carrying the faint sound of the tide. It made her think of the pub’s hush when her song had ended - that same strange stillness, as if the room were holding its breath, waiting for the next note.

oOo

Chapter Text

oOo

oOo

Chapter 21 – Sawdust in her hair

oOo

oOo

Monday, 5^th May, 2025, Sandwith

The bank holiday should have meant a late morning, but Julia woke with her mind turning toward the office. She had a tour scheduled at eleven, the kind of family-day walk she normally dreaded, and wanted an hour of quiet beforehand to get through some paperwork.
Beside her, Elrohir stirred when she slid out of bed. Calad thumped his tail once against the floorboards, then padded after her as if he’d been waiting for the cue.

As they pulled out of Sandwith, the world pressed in again: neighbours with takeaway coffees, children wobbling on scooters, flag bunting strung across the village shop. Calad pressed his nose to the back window as they drove, ears pricked at every gull cry over the fields.

Julia kept her hands on the wheel, but her thoughts were nowhere near the road. The comment still sat in her chest:
Some songs remember the way, like the sea keeping the echo of the Music.

The words had glowed on her laptop screen long after their clothes had fallen in a scatter across the study floor. Even now, she half expected to see them reflected in the glass of the windscreen, pale as tide-marks.

Elrohir hadn’t mentioned it again. He sat in the passenger seat, gaze turned out to sea, as if the comment - and what it implied - could be ignored into silence. Calad gave a low wuff, impatient with the hush.

Julia let out a breath, eyes still on the road. “Straight to the yard for you, then.”
He glanced back at her, the faintest crease between his brows. “The elm should be seasoned enough to start cutting.”
“The keel?” she asked.
He gave a small nod. “It has to be right. Everything else rests on it.”

Something about the way he said it made her throat tighten - as if he were talking about more than a length of wood.

But even with the radio muttering about bank holiday traffic and the dog panting happily at her shoulder, she couldn’t stop the rhythm of those words from surfacing again: Some songs remember the way… They seemed to ride the sound of the sea, woven into the cry of the gulls above the harbour.

When she parked outside the council office, she’d already scribbled a few notes in her head - scraps of melody, not quite hers, but pressing to be written down.

oOo

Whitehaven was already awake with bank holiday bustle. Banners flapped in the breeze, shopfronts leaned into tourist cheer, and the harbour car park was nearly full. Julia slipped into the council office with Calad trotting at her heel, stole half an hour to clear a couple of forms and print her notes, collected her folder, and met the waiting group outside the Maritime Museum.

Bank holiday tours were always a mixed bag: families with children waving drippy ice creams, couples looking politely bored, the occasional local who knew more dates than her script allowed. She let the patter carry itself, pointing out Georgian facades and the story of the coal ships, but her focus kept sliding sideways.

Halfway through her explanation of exports, a small boy tugged his mother’s sleeve. “Did the cold ships go to the North Pole?”

“Coal ships,” Julia said, smiling automatically. The word ships lingered anyway. Ships West. Ships she had no business thinking about on a bank holiday morning.

She kept talking - ropeyards, sea walls, smuggling tales - but the rhythm of the oystercatchers wheeling overhead kept breaking through. Peep-peep-peep… pause… peep-peep. Three bright pips, a beat, then two more - close enough to make her think of the Shipping Forecast. She almost caught herself speaking in time with it, voice syncing to the sharp little calls. Halfway through a plaque she realised she was counting it in her head. A phrase, almost.

At the back of the group, a lanky twenty-something with a camera and the self-conscious air of someone who lived half his life online raised his hand. “Sorry, random question - did Tolkien ever come here? Like, for inspiration? I think I saw something about Whitehaven on Instagram once.”

Julia stared for a second, then caught herself and laughed, a fraction too sharply. “Not that I know of,” she said, smoothing her voice into its professional cadence. “He did holiday in the Lake District, though.”

He nodded sagely, already typing on his phone. Julia turned back to the group, pulse unreasonably quickened. More than you know, she thought.

She barely remembered finishing. When the families drifted toward the fish and chip shops, she ducked into a quiet corner of the quay, pulled her notepad from her bag, and let the pencil move almost before she’d decided to. The oystercatchers’ rhythm fell onto the page in neat black notes. Muscle memory she hadn’t trusted in years came back as if it had only been waiting.

She stared at the line when she was done. It wasn’t beautiful; just a scrap of birdsong caught on paper. But the act of writing had left her chest tight, as if she’d opened a door she hadn’t meant to touch. And still the sound set something humming in her, the same restless awareness as the night before.

At lunch she found a spot on the harbour wall, sandwich in hand, Calad nosing hopefully at the crusts. The wind was up, driving the waves against the stone in long, resonant crashes. Each one lingered for a breath before fading - not only noise, but pitch. She caught herself listening as if the sea were trying to sing back the line on her page.

Some songs remember the way, like the sea keeping the echo of the Music.

The words felt nearer here, almost threaded into the tide. She closed her eyes for a moment, letting the salt air sting her skin, and wondered if this was what Elrohir heard in everything: echoes in the ordinary world she had never noticed before.

oOo

She finished her sandwich with Calad’s head resting on her knee, eyes drifting past the harbour bustle to the horizon. The tide was coming in, lifting the masts so they clinked against their rigging, a thin metallic counterpoint to the sea’s deeper pulse.

Almost without thinking, she pulled out her phone. A quick search for “Tolkien recordings” brought up a tangle of results: readings, lectures, grainy vinyl transfers. She tapped one.

A man’s voice, old-fashioned and deliberate, spilled from the speaker: Namárië. Not sung, not exactly. The vowels lingered, the syllables lengthened into something closer to chant than prose. The faint crackle of the old recording made it sound as if he were speaking from very far away, across not only distance but time.

Julia frowned and replayed a section. There it was again: cadence, rising and falling in a pattern too careful to be accidental. It wasn’t melody, but it wasn’t only speech either. The rhythm caught in her chest, uncanny in its familiarity, as though he had brushed against a door without knowing how close he stood to opening it.

She tried another: The Road Goes Ever On. The same thing. That odd, insistent rhythm tugging at the edge of music, like a half-remembered tune. A mortal voice, and yet threaded through it, something that felt like memory.

Her thumb hovered over pause. She thought of the comment again: Some songs remember the way…

What if he had known? Not everything, not as Elrohir did, but enough to feel the edges of it. Enough that the echo threaded itself into his voice without him realising.

She set the phone face down on the stone beside her and closed her eyes for a moment, letting the cadence mingle with the sea wind and the rhythm she had scratched in her notebook.

It was as if the whole day was conspiring to remind her: the Song wasn’t gone. Not entirely.

oOo

When the recording ended, Julia slipped her phone back into her bag. The harbour noise rushed in again: gulls, children, the slap of water against stone. But something lingered in her ear, a cadence she couldn’t quite shake. She tucked her notebook under her arm, whistled Calad to heel, and stopped at the café kiosk by the quay.

Two minutes later she was walking on with a paper bag and a take-out cup warming her hands, Calad nosing at the contents.

The boatyard smelled of resin and sawdust, sharp and alive. Machines hummed in the cavernous shed, but most of the other workers were gone for the holiday.

She pushed the door open with her hip, Calad trotting at her side. Only Elrohir was there, sleeves pushed up, dark hair fallen into his eyes as he bent over a length of timber. She held out the bag. “Before you turn into one of those people who live on wood shavings.” Calad bounded ahead, tail high, and Elrohir straightened, blinking at the smell that escaped when she set the bag down on the bench.

“Sandwich,” she supplied. “And coffee. Strong enough to stand a spoon in.”

One brow arched, but his hand closed around the cup almost immediately. The faint steam curled up between them as he took a cautious sip.

“You thought I wouldn’t eat.”

“I knew you wouldn’t,” she countered, tugging a curl of larch shaving from Calad’s fur, trying to straighten the curly wood with her fingers

That earned her a look - something halfway between amusement and the kind of warmth he rarely let through.

“Elm for the keel,” he said after a beat, nodding to the darker timber. “Larch for the hull. The rest…” He gestured at the stacked planks, the neat rows of tools. “Men build with oak. Heavy, slow. But this needs to be different. Bright wood. Light enough to answer the Song.”

He rested one hand on the beam in front of him. “The elm’s ready now,” he continued “If I cut the keel straight, everything else will follow.”

She stepped closer, brushing curls of wood from a sawhorse. The grain of the timber gleamed under his hands, dense and dark. Behind it, a separate stack of paler planks caught the light. “And that?”

“Larch,” he said. His touch lingered there for a moment, almost fond. “Larch carries light in it. Bright wood for a bright hull.” His gaze flicked to her briefly, as if the words had slipped further than he meant them to.

She noticed then the small camera clamped at the end of the bench, its red light winking. “And in the meantime, you become a minor internet celebrity.”

“I am not.”

“You’re filming for the yard’s account, aren’t you? People watching you plane planks to relax after work. ASMR with sawdust.”

His mouth twitched. “I am invisible. Only the wood shows.”

Julia laughed softly into her coffee. “That’s worse. You’re going to be one of those anonymous ‘mystery hands’ people obsess over. Wait until someone starts speculating about you on TikTok.”

“The boss insists,” he said, wry. “Publicity, he calls it. ‘Traditional craft’ makes good content. So I plane, I steam, I bend wood, and strangers on their little screens call it soothing.”

Julia bit back a laugh. “You’re an influencer.”

“I am invisible,” he corrected dryly, running the plane down the length of elm. Long curls fell away, catching on the floor like pale feathers. “No face. Only wood.”

Julia leaned against the bench, watching him work. The steady rhythm of blade against timber filled the space, as measured and certain as a song.

The plane caught the timber again, another ribbon curling high. Julia sipped her coffee, listening. The rhythm was steady, deliberate, and something in it made her think of the cadence she’d just heard in Tolkien’s old recordings - vowels stretching, words lifting and falling. As if the same music was hiding everywhere, waiting.

She shifted the cup in her hands, holding up the curl of wood shaving. “You know,” she said lightly, “plane it like that a few more times and you’ll have half of Tolkien’s chant on the floor.” 

He looked at her, slightly puzzled. She told him about the recordings, and the cadence of his speech, and how today everything reminded her of the Song, even the rhythm of the wood.

That drew the faintest spark in his eyes. “Perhaps the wood remembers what we forget.” 

Julia tilted her head. “So you’re saying I should listen harder?”

His mouth twitched. “Only if it starts reciting poetry. Then it’s your fault.”

She laughed under her breath, brushing at the shaving in her hand. “I’ll be finding these everywhere, won’t I?”

“You will,” he said, and before she could flick it away, his hand moved, slow and unhurried. He tucked a strand of hair back behind her ear himself, brushing his knuckles against her cheek. The touch was fleeting, but it left the air taut in its wake.

Julia looked away first, pretending sudden fascination with Calad snuffling among the shavings. “I’ll be shaking sawdust out of my hair for days.”

“You walked into a boatyard,” he murmured, dry - but there was a different note under it. Lighter. Almost amused.

She snorted, brushing at her jumper where another curl had landed. “Now you’re doing it on purpose.”

He glanced up, the faintest curve at the corner of his mouth. “Perhaps.” His eyes lingered on her a moment longer, and for once the weight in them seemed to ease.

Calad sneezed at the shavings, scattering them further. Julia crouched to scratch his ears, shaking her head. “We’re going to be sneezing sawdust all week.”

Elrohir set the plane aside, the ghost of that almost-smile still on his lips. “Then my work is done for now.”

oOo

When they returned to the cottage that afternoon, she still had sawdust in her hair. The laptop was open on the kitchen table. The comment sat there, unchanged, as if waiting.

Julia rested her elbows on the table. “I should reply.”

At the counter, where he was chopping veg for dinner, Elrohir stilled. “Don’t.”

“You said those words were something only another Elf would know. So either it’s a joke so perfect it deserves an award, or it’s real. And if it’s real, what are we waiting for?”

He turned to the hob, not looking at her. “Exposure. Manipulation. A trap.”

“Or someone trying to reach you. Reach us.” She leaned forward, gaze sharp. “You’ve been searching for centuries. Now one might be on the other side of a screen. You really want to walk away from that?”

Silence. The kitchen clock ticked.

Finally, he crossed to the table, leaned in, and braced a hand on the back of her chair. “If you do reply, keep it simple. No names. Nothing that gives away what you know. Not yet.”

Her mouth curved, faintly defiant. “I can manage careful.”

The cursor blinked in the reply box, waiting. She set her fingers on the keys, aware of him standing just behind her.

You write as if you’ve walked those paths yourself. If that’s true, what do you remember?

She hovered, pulse quickening, then hit “post.”

The page refreshed. The words stayed, stark in the pale box beneath the original comment.

Julia leaned back, exhaling. “There. Not a name. Nothing that gives anything away.”

Elrohir’s hand tightened briefly on her chair, more protective than reproachful. He said nothing.

Outside, the wind pressed against the windows, carrying the faint hiss of the tide. It sounded, to her ear, like a question waiting to be answered.

oOo

Chapter Text

oOo

oOo

Chapter 22 – A Curl of Wood

oOo

oOo

Friday, 29^th May, 2025, Sandwith

“We’re going to be sneezing sawdust all week.” Julia’s prediction proved only partially right.

They were sneezing sawdust, yes - but not just for a week. By the third day, fine curls of shavings clung to their clothes, drifted into her notebooks, even settled in her hair. And Julia knew this was only the beginning. She hadn’t expected otherwise: a seaworthy boat was not a matter of afternoons strung together, but of seasons. Patience measured in planks and joints.

What surprised her wasn’t the scale of it, but the way the work crept into everything - the smell of resin in her hair, the rasp of the plane echoing in her head long after they’d put the tools down.

Elrohir seemed almost content in it, as if the rhythm of shaping wood had always been his. Watching him bend over the frame, shoulders taut, Julia realised that for him, it wasn’t only a boat he was building. This was the beginning of something larger - months, perhaps a year, bent into the slow rhythm of wood and water. He was not just building a skiff or a rowboat. This was something meant to take more than one person across more than one tide. He never said it outright, but she saw it in the way he measured twice before cutting, in the way his gaze lingered on the curve of a plank as though it held more than wood.

She noticed it, too, in his hands. The fine scars she had first seen there were vanishing beneath new calluses, the kind that came from days bent over a plane instead of years spent holding a sword. When he touched her, the difference caught her off guard. His roughened palms traced heat over her skin, grounding and insistent. And sometimes - unbidden, almost unwanted - she remembered Tom’s hands, not hardened but nimble, shaped by strings and keys. Both spoke of craft, of lives given over to practice. The thought was less wound than echo: how touch carries history, even when it belongs to someone else.

oOo

It was a Friday afternoon near the end of May, the kind of day that should have smelled of cut grass and spilled beer, not resin and varnish. The boatyard was quiet in a way Julia had never heard before. Usually it was a place of clatter and voices - hammers ringing against metal, radios playing tinny pop songs, someone swearing at a rope that wouldn’t coil properly. Now only the gulls remained, shrieking over the rooftops, and the soft shuffle of Calad padding across gravel. The air still held the day’s residue: hot iron, salt wind off the harbour, the faint tang of tar from an upturned dinghy waiting for repairs.

The other workers had gone home hours ago, glad for the sun and the long weekend, leaving mugs still ringed with tea-stains on the bench, a newspaper curled and half-forgotten under a toolbox. Even in their absence, the space felt full of them - of their banter and weary laughter, of a community she hovered on the edges of but had not yet stepped into. Elrohir, though, seemed untouched by it. He worked as if the silence suited him, as if he had been waiting for it. Only the sound of the plane carried from inside the shed, steady as breath.

Julia sat at the picnic-bench table outside, her laptop open, headphones crooked around her neck. She had four windows tiled across the screen: a manuscript scan with jagged neumes and marginalia; an old folk recording with songs from the Isle of St. Kilda, warped by tape hiss; a line from Tolkien, read in his strange rolling cadence. She tapped a key, shifted a fragment, played it back, then tried again, using the fourth window, a piano app, to piece them together.

Her fingers hovered on the keys, and for a moment she thought of Tom. How he used to sit at their old upright piano, shoulders loose, humming to himself as he found the right chord. She would lean against the doorway, pretending not to listen, until he caught her and made her sing harmony. The memory pinched, but there was something new in it today. Less wound, more reminder. He had once told her that fragments always found their way back into music, that broken pieces could still belong.

She swallowed, blinked at the screen, and pressed play.

Sometimes the sea itself seemed to bleed through the headphones - not literally, not in any way she could explain, but in the back of her chest, like surf behind the notes.

She hummed, hesitant at first, stringing the fragments together. The Tolkien cadence rose into the old melody; the old melody bent toward the manuscript scrawl. And then, all at once, they fitted. Not complete, but close enough that her breath caught.

A line. Clear as water. Clear as memory.

Inside the shed, the sound of the plane stilled.

oOo

For a moment there was only silence - the gulls wheeling above, Calad’s soft huff as he settled against the wall. The notes she hummed seemed to pierce deeper than sound. It threaded through resin and sawdust, and the smell became sharper, darker. He gripped the plane, but the shed dissolved around him.

He was back in Wolfach, among the firs of the Black Forest, the air cool and damp, heavy with sap. Axes rang dull against oak and elm, each strike followed by the groan of wood giving way. Men shouted to one another in dialect rough as bark, their voices echoing down the Kinzig valley. A log crashed to the ground with a thud that shook the soil underfoot.

He had come there in the autumn of 1562, after the Abbey of Fontenelle was destroyed. Few of his brothers survived the massacre. Already under scrutiny, with whispers about how he did not age as other men did, he knew he could not stay. So he wandered east and north, working on farmsteads for coin, letting his tonsure grow out, one more refugee among many in a land torn by war.

The Black Forest had drawn him at last. East of the Rhine, its valleys and autumn colours reminded him of Rivendell - the yellowing leaves, the bite of woodsmoke, the serenity that lay over it all. He decided to remain, to live and work among those who made their living from the trees.

He remembered the rhythm of it all: axe-bites sinking into elm, the rasp of saws through beech, the rough bark tearing at his palms as he and the others shouldered timber down to the water. Rope burned his skin, and his back ached at night - but it was the kind of pain that felt earned.

The river was a living thing then - swollen from heavy autumn rains, ready to carry rafts of timber down toward Strasbourg. They bound the trunks with iron chains, lashing them into long, creaking platforms. The work was dangerous; one slip could drag a man under the current or pin him against the rocks.

One afternoon the chains slipped. A lash of iron snapped against bark, and a half-bound trunk lurched sideways, spilling into the water. The raft heaved, tilting hard enough to send two men scrambling. One lost his footing and went under with a shout that cut short in the spray.

Elrohir was moving before he thought. Rope burned his palms as he caught it, braced his heels against the slick logs, and hauled the man clear of the crush. Cold water surged around their legs, tugging hard enough that the others shouted for him to let go. He didn’t. He heaved until the current spat them both back onto the bank.

For a long moment there was only the crash of water, the man coughing river out of his lungs. Then someone let out a bark of laughter, high and shaky. Another clapped Elrohir on the shoulder, rough and grateful, and the knot of fear dissolved into relieved jeers: how Severin had arms like an ox, how the river itself had better watch its back.

He forced a smile, accepted their praise, but later, alone, he wondered if he had betrayed himself. No man should have strength to stand against the Kinzig that way. And yet none of them seemed willing to look too closely. They only laughed louder the next day, as if the river’s hunger could be appeased with bread and jest.

And so he laughed with them, too. Even in the cold, they shared bread and cheese on damp logs, wiped sweat from their brows with sawdust-streaked sleeves, cursed the Kinzig when it ran too high or too low.They called him “Severin” still - the name he continued to hold - and for a time, he almost believed it could be real.

What stayed with him most was the smell. Fresh-cut fir bled resin that clung sweet and sharp; oak split under the axe released a damp, tannic note that lingered in the air. In autumn, when the leaves turned and the first frost crisped the mornings, he would pause with his axe in hand and breathe it deep. Sap and sawdust, sharp and clean, clinging to hair and skin for weeks. It was the same smell that filled his lungs now, centuries later.

He loved the work. Loved watching a tree give itself to the current - trunks bound into rafts that creaked and groaned as they slid downriver, whole forests carried toward Strasbourg. The Kinzig was treacherous, swallowing men careless with rope or balance, but it was also alive. Its pull was westward, always westward, as if the river knew a road he could not follow. And in its rush he sometimes thought he heard an echo, a faint chord beneath the tumbling waters.

His father had told him once: Ulmo’s voice was never wholly stilled, and in every river and stream the Music lingered. Here, centuries later, that truth had brushed against him - in the Kinzig’s pull, in the smell of resin, in the rhythm of axe and rope.

But even then, whispers gathered. Eyes lingered on him longer than on the others. He had left Wolfach a few years later in silence, retreating deeper into the forest when the questions grew too sharp.

But the memory of that work - honest, physical, shaping trees into passage - had never left him. And now, centuries later, the line Julia hummed wove through him like that river. It fit the smell of resin in his lungs, the calluses reforming on his hands, the memory of Rivendell’s autumn air. It was the same thread: Ulmo’s echo in water, the Song beneath the world, surfacing again in the voice of a mortal woman bent over a laptop in the late sun.

The river dissolved, the Black Forest with it. Resin and axe-song gave way to the hush of the empty yard, to the gulls and the faint tick of Julia’s laptop keys.

She was still humming. Bent over the bench in the late light, hair falling loose, the sound no more than a thread - yet it caught the air the way the Kinzig had once caught whole forests.

He stood in the doorway, breath lodged in his chest. For an instant he thought he could hear it beyond her, beneath her - the sea itself leaning closer, as if to listen.

His father’s words stirred again: Ulmo is never wholly silent. His voice runs in every stream, in every tide.

Elrohir’s hands tightened on the frame. Five centuries of silence, of rivers that had carried only memory, and now - a mortal woman’s voice binding fragments together on a battered laptop, and the waters listening.

oOo

Julia lifted her head, startled by the absence of sound from the shed. She half-turned, humming still on her lips, but saw only shadow beyond the doorway. For a heartbeat, she thought he might have gone. Then he stepped out, his gaze fixed on her as if she had sung something he had waited half a lifetime to hear.

She pulled the headphones from her neck. “You all right?”

He blinked, as though the question reached him from a long way off, then gave a small nod. “Yes.” His voice was rougher than usual, his eyes still far away.

Julia closed the laptop gently. “That line… it felt different. Like it belonged somewhere. Like it was already there, waiting.” She hesitated, watching the shadow shift across his face. “Does that make sense?”

He didn’t answer at once. Instead, he stepped down into the yard, brushing sawdust from his arms. Calad bounded toward him, tail wagging, but even the dog seemed to sense the quiet and settled quickly at his feet.

She let the silence hold, then said, lightly, “Three weeks until Midsummer.”

That caught him. His head lifted, sharply enough that she knew the words meant more than they should.

“You go every year, don’t you?” she pressed, softer now. “Leaving your signs. Waiting.”

He looked away toward the sea, jaw tight. “Yes.”

“Then let’s go together this time.”

The words hung between them, plain as daylight.

For a long moment he didn’t speak, and she wondered if she’d pushed too far. Then he exhaled, a sound almost like surrender. “It has always been… my burden. My silence.”

“Maybe it doesn’t have to be,” she said. “Not anymore.”

Something flickered in his expression - neither refusal, nor agreement. Something in between.

Julia reached for her pen and wrote the date in the corner of her notebook, underlining it once. When she looked up again, he was still watching her, as though unsure whether to believe she meant it.

After a moment, he crossed the yard and sat opposite her at the bench. Sawdust clung stubbornly to his dark hair, catching the last of the light. Julia hesitated, then leaned forward and brushed a pale wood curl from his temple. It clung briefly to her fingertip before drifting away on the evening air.

He didn’t move, only held her gaze, as though the small gesture carried more weight than it should.

“You’ll see,” she said softly.

Her hand fell back to the table, close enough that his could have met it if he chose. Calad shifted against her leg with a quiet sigh, the only sound between them.

But she did mean it. And in time, he would see that.

oOo

Chapter Text

oOo

oOo

Chapter 23 – Memory in the Marrow

oOo

oOo

Saturday, 14^th June, 2025, Whitehaven

Even this far north, summer had finally arrived. The air held that soft weight of warmth that lingered through long June nights, the kind that blurred the line between dusk and dawn. Gardens in Sandwith were overgrown and fragrant, foxgloves leaning into the lanes, the sea glinting pale silver instead of black.

Julia loved it. She leaned against the gate of the boatyard one evening, watching Calad nose through the corners of the yard, and thought it was the first time since moving here that the season had truly seeped into her bones.

Elrohir didn’t look at ease at all. If anything, his restlessness had grown sharper as Midsummer drew near.

At the boatyard, the new ribs of the hull curved awkwardly, resisting his tools. The shape was unlike anything the yard had ever built - a vessel drawn from memory rather than design, leaf-shaped and light but meant to ride the deeper tides of another road.

Even he seemed to be doubting it. The others noticed, of course. They leaned against the rails with mugs of tea, making good-natured jokes about his “fantasy canoe” and how he’d have them building swan-boats next - half-serious comparisons to the sort of thing that turned up in films or on book covers. He usually ignored it, but lately the humour scraped against him. The unusual curve of the hull had drawn too much attention - not only from the men in the yard, but online. Someone had posted another photo of his hands planing a beam, tagged with the “mystery shipwright” nonsense Julia had teased him about before. He’d tried to shrug it off, but the thought of strangers poring over fragments of him - the angle of his wrist, the odd shape of his boat - made his jaw clench.

A rib cracked under his plane, the sound loud as a whip. His curse in some language Julia did not recognise rang harsh in the quiet - harsh enough that the academic in her wondered, absurdly, if she’d just heard Dwarvish. Or worse, the Black Speech.

“You’ll split it if you keep pushing like that,” Julia warned, half-teasing, half-serious.

His head snapped up, eyes dark. “I know what I’m doing.”

The edge in his tone startled her. He rarely spoke like that - not to her. She straightened from where she’d been perched on the gunwale. “I didn’t say you didn’t. I said you’re pushing too hard.”

Silence fell. For a moment, she thought he’d turn back to the tools without another word. But then he sighed, shoved a hand through his hair, and muttered: “The wood fights me. It isn’t made for this shape. None of it is.”

“Then stop fighting it alone,” she said. And after a moment: “Who knows. We might find more of your kin soon. And they’ll help you, won’t they?”

His eyes flicked to hers, shadowed, unreadable. “Perhaps.” His look said that he was bracing against something larger than warped timbers.

She didn’t look away. “And for the record, snapping at me won’t make the boat behave. Or make Midsummer vanish.”

That earned the faintest huff of breath, almost a laugh. He set the plane aside and rubbed at his temple. “I know.”

“Good,” she said simply, brushing a curl of wood from his shoulder. “Because I’m not walking on eggshells just because you’re nervous.”

oOo

They walked back toward Sandwith later, Calad trotting ahead, the path still washed in the not-quite-dark of midsummer twilight. Julia let the silence stretch before she asked, lightly, “What do you expect to find, when we meet them? These lost ones you’ve been searching for?”

Elrohir’s mouth tightened. “I expect… that they will not be what you imagine.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that even in the Third Age, Elves were not always the friends of Men.” His voice was low, deliberate. “You think of Rivendell, of Galadriel, of Legolas perhaps - those who carried courtesy, who sought peace with mortals. But that was never the whole truth. Many of our kind looked on Men with suspicion, or disdain. Some with hatred.”

She slowed, studying his profile in the half-light. “And now?”

“Now?” He gave a faint laugh. “Nearly seven millennia have passed since the fall of Barad-dûr. Those who remain have lived through the fading of all they knew. Centuries in hiding, watching the world they understood collapse and reform into something unrecognisable. Do you wonder if they will be whole?” He shook his head. “They may be wary. Half-wild. Some may barely remember language. Others may remember too much.”

Julia nodded slowly. But he wasn’t finished.

“Others…” His tone shifted, darker. “Others may have thrived. Without mortality, without inheritance to divide, wealth compounds. Knowledge compounds. A few of the Lost Ones may have grown powerful beyond measure, while keeping themselves unseen. And for that, they will have learned deception. They were never… humanised, as I was. Their ears mark them still. They could never be sure they would not be found out. So they hid. And hiding breeds cunning.”

Something flickered in his expression then - not memory of his own, but of something he’d once witnessed.

“I remember my father in council with Thranduil,” he said quietly. “You have heard of him?”

Julia’s brows lifted. “Legolas’s father?”

He inclined his head. “King of the Woodland Realm. He walked into Rivendell once with a crown of autumn leaves and a robe so heavy with jewels it might have sunk him in a river. My father greeted him as an ally; my mother muttered that he could out-stare a dragon. She wasn’t wrong.”

Elrohir’s mouth curved, not in amusement, but in a grim recognition. “He was beautiful, yes. Dazzling. And cold as moonlight on stone. He could charm you with a word, or cut you with silence. He spoke to my father once of Men as if they were cattle, useful only for their labour, dangerous when restless.”

He glanced at her, eyes catching the midsummer light. “He was not cruel, exactly. But he was proud. Detached. And he endured, long after kinder hearts had sailed. If one like him had lingered through the Fourth Age and beyond…” His hand closed briefly, as if on an invisible thread. “That is the kind of Elf you might meet.”

Julia wrapped her arms around herself, the sea breeze sharp against her skin. “So when we meet them, we could find someone half-starved and broken… or someone who owns half of Mayfair.”

His mouth curved, humourless. “Just so. And either could be dangerous.”

“Dangerous for me,” she said.

“For us,” he corrected quietly. “Not because they are evil, but because they have survived too long with nothing left to bind them. Do not think that every Elf you meet will greet us as friends.” He hesitated. “Even in the best of days, the Half-elven stood apart. My father bore the weight of choice, my mother bore the cost of it, and we their sons were never wholly one thing or the other. Some of my kin honoured that… others saw only weakness in it. To the Lost Ones, I cannot know whether I will be met as Elrond’s son - or as neither Elf nor Man.”

Julia folded her arms. “Then it’s good you won’t be going alone this time.”

His glance cut toward her - sharp, assessing. But she met it without flinching.

And for the first time that week, some of the tension in his shoulders eased.

The following week unfolded softer than either of them had expected. The boatyard lay quiet; they had both taken leave off work. Instead, their days blurred into long walks on the headlands, late mornings with books spread between mugs of coffee, and evenings where Julia tested fragments of old songs against his memory. Nothing was solved. Nothing was easy. But the rhythm between them steadied, enough that when Midsummer came, the thought of keeping vigil together felt less like intrusion and more like inevitability.

oOo

Midsummer Night, 2025, Whythop

They left the car at a narrow lay-by and followed a track upwards, Calad bounding ahead. The slope of Ling Fell rose dark against the half-lit sky, the last of the bracken rustling in a faint wind. Chapel Wood thickened around them, and then the ruin appeared. Low walls, rough stone, a rectangle half-swallowed by grass and shadow.

Julia stopped, catching her breath. “This is it?”

Elrohir nodded. “Whythop. A chapel once. Abandoned centuries ago.” His tone was flat, but his eyes lingered on it like one might on an old wound, half-healed, half-forgotten.

Beyond, the land dropped away in long folds toward Bassenthwaite. Here and there, pinpricks of fire glowed in the dusk - farmers or villagers marking the night with their own small blazes. For Julia they looked festive, like lanterns scattered across the valley. For Elrohir they tugged at older memory: the ring of watch-fires around Helm’s Deep, the beacon-flames of Gondor, midsummer vigils in Imladris where every hilltop carried light. Mortal fires, Elven fires - they had always meant the same thing. A cry into the dark: we are still here.

And farther still, the faintest shimmer of silver traced the horizon.

“Is that…” Julia leaned to see past him. “The sea?”

“The Solway Firth,” he said. “And beyond it, the ocean.”

Julia smiled and unslung the bag from her shoulder. “Well. If we’ve got the view, we might as well make an evening of it.”

He frowned as she spread out a blanket in the grass beside the ruin. Out came bread, cheese, tomatoes, a packet of sausages wrapped in foil, even a small pan. She produced kindling and, with a grin, a little folding grill.

“You brought a… barbecue?”

“Of sorts.” She struck a match. “Don’t look at me like that - you’ve been brooding over this night for weeks. If you won’t eat, I will. And yes, there’s ketchup.”

Elrohir gave her a long, incredulous look. “You are sure there are no hobbits in your ancestry?”

Julia laughed. “If there were, I’d have packed pipeweed as well.”

Something sharp-sounding slipped from him in Sindarin - half a sigh, half a mutter - but he crouched to help arrange the wood. His movements were quick, efficient, the kind that came from long habit - the same way he and his brother had built cookfires in a hundred other camps across Middle-earth.

 Soon a small fire crackled between them, throwing sparks into the twilight. The smell of smoke and roasting meat curled into the air, strangely domestic against the ancient stones. Calad lay with his muzzle on his paws, ears twitching. Elrohir sat cross-legged, silent, the firelight catching the planes of his face.

Julia passed him a skewer. “You don’t get to sulk while I do all the work. Even the Grey Company cooked their dinner.”

He arched a brow. “Do you truly want me to compare your sausages to the field rations of thirty unwashed Dúnedain?”

She grinned. “If it makes you eat them, yes.”

That won the smallest twitch of his mouth. He took the skewer, holding it with a practiced steadiness. “That was a long time ago. It’s long since I rode as a Ranger beside Aragorn, son of Arathorn.”

“Maybe,” she said, watching the sparks drift upward, “but you still look the part.”

For a moment the ruin, the fire, the long June night - it could have been any camp, any hillside. Simple. Almost ordinary.

Then the wind shifted. Calad’s head lifted. And Elrohir went still.

oOo

The ruin seemed to draw breath.

Calad’s ears pricked, a low sound rumbling in his chest. Elrohir’s hand went automatically to the hilt of a knife that wasn’t there - old habits stirred awake. Julia felt the hair on her arms rise.

At first it was only a sound - a faint, tuneless humming. Not close, not far. The kind of thing you’d think was in your own head until the wind shifted and carried it clear. A voice. Male. The notes drifted oddly, half-familiar, as if whoever sang them didn’t care for melody so much as the feel of sound in the air.

Elrohir rose to his feet in one swift motion, every line of him taut.

“Someone’s here?” Julia whispered.

“One of my kin,” he murmured.

From the shadow of the trees, a figure appeared. Broad-shouldered, in a patched coat that might once have been green but had faded into a dozen earthy shades. A bundle of sticks was slung over one shoulder, as if he’d been gathering kindling. His boots were muddy, his hair an unruly tangle of brown and silver, and there was a smear of ash across one cheek. A short beard, streaked the same grey-silver, roughened his jaw - not common among Elves, but here it seemed to mark the weight of years rather than neglect. His hood shadowed the line of his face, and Julia thought nothing of it.

He looked, Julia thought, like any of the odd men she’d seen in village pubs - the kind people half-knew, half-dismissed. The one who sold herbs at the market, or fixed fences for cash, or told stories no one asked for.

But when he stepped into the firelight, the hood slipped back a little, and Julia’s breath caught. His ears - she hadn’t noticed them before - tapered to a point, not sharp, but unmistakeable.

And then his eyes caught the light. Not grey, not green, but something in between, luminous as a forest-morning.

“Well now,” he said, and his voice was low, whimsical, carrying no surprise at finding them there. “So it’s you… I thought so. There was a Noldorin hand in those messages - sharp edges, like flint. But not only that. A mingling. They’ve begun to sing again, lately. About time.”

Julia’s mouth went dry. She glanced at Elrohir - taut, silent, staring like he’d seen a ghost.

The man crouched, setting his bundle of sticks down with a sigh. “Long while I’ve been waiting, listening for that sound. Long while indeed.” He rubbed his palms together as if to warm them by their little fire. “But better late than never.” His smile was crooked, but his eyes gleamed as if he saw something far beyond them - something that made Julia’s stomach tighten, though she couldn’t have said why.

oOo

Julia cleared her throat. “You… know us?”

The man smiled, a little lopsided. “Know? Not quite. But I heard you. Clear as a hammer strike in the grain.” He pointed at Elrohir. “His messages began to sing again. Couldn’t very well stay away once they did.”

He dipped his head, as if remembering a formality half-forgotten. “Thavron of Brethil,” he said at last, with a little bow that was more habit than ceremony. “Though Brethil itself is long drowned, and the trees I knew are nothing but silt and salt. Still - the name clings. Names always do.”

He smiled then, as if it were nothing. “A carpenter’s son. A beam-carver once, under tall oaks you’ll never see.”

“And of course I know who you are.” His gaze flicked to Elrohir, bright as river-light. “Son of Elrond. Blood of Eärendil. I never thought to hear your messages sing again.”

Julia’s brows drew together. “Brethil?” The name stirred something at the edge of memory - one of those half-familiar words from the Silmarillion notes she’d skimmed at some point in the last weeks. But before she could place it, Elrohir stiffened.
His face had gone utterly still. Not wary, not hostile - just… stricken.

“Brethil is gone,” he said at last, voice low. “It was gone before Númenor rose. If you were born there…” He broke off, as if the thought itself was too unwieldy to speak aloud.
Thavron tilted his head, amused. “Then I am older than you expected.”
Julia blinked between them. “Wait. How old are we talking?”

Elrohir’s gaze flicked to her, then back to the stranger. His jaw tightened. “He walked beneath the trees of Beleriand before the Sea claimed them. That was… more than thirteen thousand years ago.”

oOo

Chapter Text

oOo

oOo

Chapter 24 – Cooling Embers

oOo

oOo

Midsummer Night, 2025, Whythop

The fire popped, sending up a spray of sparks. Julia swallowed, suddenly aware of the weight of the ruin around them, the long June twilight stretched out as if it might never end. The man…no, elf…crouched at their fire no longer looked like some odd villager. He looked like something impossible - something that belonged to legend.

Thavron’s crooked smile deepened. “Impressive when you say it aloud, isn’t it? But it doesn’t feel like that long. It feels…” He tapped his temple with a soot-streaked finger. “…like waking stiff from a nap you never meant to take. Bones creak. The world’s gone on without you. Age isn’t weight, son of Elrond. It’s dust in the joints. Memory in the marrow.”

The words seemed to settle into the ruin itself, heavy as stone. And in that instant Julia realised how easily she had let herself forget. With Elrohir, the sharpness of difference blurred: the rounded ears, the features softened by mortal blood, the way he moved so easily among people. He had become - if not ordinary - then at least familiar. Human enough that she could look at him without flinching at what he was.

But Thavron was no such compromise. The firelight made his strangeness plain, and for the first time Julia wondered what it might be like to see Elrohir stand among his kin. To see the part of him she had almost stopped noticing, thrown into relief by one who had never bent toward the world of Men.

She found her voice again, though it came out drier than she intended. “And yet you came here. You knew where to find us.”

Thavron glanced at her, eyes glinting river-green. “Ah. And who are you, with the mortal voice that carried the Song back into the air?”

The question startled her. “Julia,” she said, hesitating only a little. “Just Julia. I’m… helping him.”

Thavron’s gaze lingered - sharp and oddly kind at once. “Helping, yes. But not only with the shipwright’s work. The wood doesn’t sing on its own.”

Julia cleared her throat, fumbling for the foil packet at her side. “Well - if you’ve really been waiting this long, you might as well have something to eat.” She held out a plate with sausages, tomato, and bread, managing a small smile. “Not hunted ourselves, I’m afraid. Just Tesco sausages and whatever I could cram in a rucksack.”

Thavron chuckled, accepting it with an absent bow. “Tesco or no, it tastes better than bark. Mortals always think the Elves never hungered. Truth is, we’ve gnawed bark and boiled nettles often enough. Sausages and bread will do nicely.” He bit in without ceremony, chewing as though it were the finest feast.

Across the firelight, Elrohir’s mouth tightened - just a flicker, quickly gone. Julia couldn’t tell if it was the word Tesco on an Elf’s tongue, or the thought of bark and nettles spoken with such casual truth. Either way, it made the space between her and the two elves stretch wider, as if she were suddenly seeing Elrohir from a different angle.

The fire crackled. Above the ruin, the June sky had faded into indigo, stars beginning to prick through.

Julia glanced at Elrohir again. He was still as stone, gaze fixed on the fire, his face caught in planes of light and shadow. The firelight sharpened what she had half-forgotten: the fine cut of his cheekbones, the glint in his eyes that was not quite mortal. Beside Thavron’s unsoftened strangeness, she realised she had grown used to seeing only the blurred edges.

The fire sank lower, blackened wood cracking, shadows stretching long across the stone. The ruin felt less like a shell and more like a place that remembered - walls leaning in, as if they too had been waiting.

Julia calmed herself with another question. “How did you know? Where to find us, I mean. The signs Elrohir left - how did you even recognise them?”

Thavron’s eyes warmed, distant with memory. “Because they were not just marks. They were rhythm. A flame drawn in lines, a promise hidden in words. He may have thought he carved them for no one, but they carried a pulse. A hand that has learned to listen for woodgrain can hear such things.” He glanced at Elrohir. “You never stopped leaving them, did you? Even when no one came.”

Elrohir’s throat worked. Words did not come. He looked down at his hands - scarred, dusted with sawdust, clenched against his knees as if bracing against a tide. Something crossed his face Julia had never seen before. Not weariness, not sorrow. Smallness. Like a man who, after centuries of carrying a burden, suddenly realising it would not be his alone to bear any longer.

She reached for his arm, brushing it lightly. He didn’t move away.

Only then did Julia notice the valley below had gone quiet. No voices carried up from the farms. Even the wind through the bracken seemed to pause, holding its breath.

The ruin waited, firelight flickering against old stone.
Whatever this was, it was only beginning.

oOo

Julia’s breath misted faintly in the night air. It wasn’t fear that lifted the hairs on her arms anymore. Something else. Expectancy - the sense of standing at the edge of a road just before someone crests the hill.

Across the fire, Thavron watched them with half-lidded eyes. Not threatening, not open either: a man measuring what stood before him. Elrohir mirrored him unconsciously, shoulders squared, gaze steady, an old warrior’s stance without a blade.

Kinship flickered between them - a thread Julia could sense, though she didn’t know its weave. But suspicion was there too, sharp as flint under the quiet.

She sat very still, Calad’s warm flank against her knee, and waited.

It was Thavron who broke the silence, his voice rough-edged, as if seldom used.
“I’ve been north,” he said, gaze fixed on the fire. “A village no one writes postcards from. A mile inland, East Coast of Scotland. Small enough that everyone knows when you skip the Sunday market, smaller still when you don’t change with the years.”

Julia had pictured caves, ruins, forests - not something you could find on a rail map.

He shifted, the patched coat slipping back from his hands. They caught the firelight oddly: scarred from tools, yes, but too unmarked in other ways. No swelling of knuckles, no tremor of age. Craftsman’s hands that should have been worn down decades ago, but weren’t.

“I set up a woodworking shed,” he went on. “Nothing fine - chairs, sheds, a roof beam or two. People need things that hold. I’m good with wood. With people, not so much.” His mouth pulled into a wry line, and his glance touched briefly on Elrohir. “But not swanships. Not anymore.”

The words carried irony, but also bone-deep weariness.

He leaned back, humming that tuneless note again. The fire painted his face in planes and hollows, and Julia realised what unsettled her: he looked older than Elrohir - beard, weather-creased skin - yet somehow less mortal. Not ageless. Just… other.

“I’ll have to move on soon,” he added. “Folk notice when you’re still splitting logs with the same back you had twenty years ago. Suspicion grows. And suspicion is dangerous.”

Then his gaze shifted, first to Elrohir, then - disconcertingly - to her. “You know what I mean.”

Julia found herself leaning forward. Not because he spoke softly, but because the shape of his words slipped past her. His accent wasn’t local, nor Scottish, nor anything she could place. Each sentence landed a little out of joint, carved from older timber - closer to song or prayer than conversation.

It wasn’t the measured formality she had grown used to in Elrohir. Thavron’s voice was rougher, blunt - but underneath it carried a pulse she couldn’t mistake. Like a folk song half in dialect, half in something older.

Her musician’s mind strained to catch it, but the rest of her only felt the echo: ancient, untranslatable, humming just out of reach.

Thavron let the silence hang, then said, almost offhand, “I’m not the only one. There are four I still hear from.”

Elrohir’s head came up at once. “Four?”

“A pair down south, in Devon. Keep to themselves. Another in Prague - though he moves about more than is wise. And one in Morocco. A hermit in the mountains.” Thavron’s mouth twisted. “We don’t write often.”

Julia blinked. Devon. Prague. Morocco. It sounded ordinary and impossible all at once - like a footnote that rewrote history.

Elrohir’s voice was sharp now. “And beyond those?”

Thavron met his gaze. “Others, perhaps. Twenty, thirty over the years. Whispers more than names. A banker in the City. Someone in the Alps. A famous actress - but most are only stories.” He shrugged. “Stories are all we have.”

Julia found her voice. “But you do stay in contact, at least with some of them? You mean letters? Or…”

He gave her a long, amused look. “Email, mostly. Sometimes a phone call, if the line’s worth trusting. You’d be surprised how far you can disappear behind a screen.” The corner of his mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “We pass for eccentric uncles and aunts with outdated addresses. Mortals think little of it.”

Julia blinked again. Of all the impossibilities, this sounded the strangest: an Elf in Morocco checking an inbox, another in Devon answering a call on a mobile.

Elrohir did not smile. “And beyond those?”

The humour left Thavron’s face. “There was talk, once, of a twin. Long ago. But I haven’t heard that tale in centuries.”

The fire hissed. Julia stilled, as if even the air was listening.

oOo

Elrohir kept his face still. The fire painted Thavron’s words into the air, and for a heartbeat it was like Rivendell again - waiting for footsteps that never came.

Across the flames, Julia’s head turned sharply. Her lips parted, the question plain: Who is he talking about?

A breath, a heartbeat. He gave the smallest shake of his head. Not tonight.

She closed her mouth again, confusion shadowing her features, and looked back into the fire.

Inside him, the name pressed hard against his chest, as if it wanted out. But he swallowed it. He would not let Thavron see how deep that cut still ran.

So instead he asked, with more control than he felt, “Then tell us. Why now? Why here?”

Thavron’s eyes glinted. “Because the marks you carved began to sing.”

Elrohir stilled.

“Haven’t you felt it?” Thavron pressed. “Perhaps not. You made them. The tune is yours. But to the rest of us… it is like in the old days. When the earth itself called, and we knew it was time - to journey, to settle, to unite, to lay down arms.” He gave a low hum of that tuneless note, and Julia felt the ruined walls lean closer.

“That’s how it is. And I’m surprised no one else came tonight. I told the others I would see for myself. Perhaps they’ll follow. Perhaps not.”

His gaze fixed on Elrohir, steady, unsparing. “We’re all tired, son of Elrond. The millennia have worn our reasons smooth, like pebbles in a riverbed. So tell me - why did you call us?”

Elrohir’s hands curled against his knees. The words struck deep because they were true. He had called - not with trumpet or summons, but with years of carved marks and unbroken vigils. The promise that if any still lived, they would not be abandoned.

“I called because it was time,” he said at last, his voice low. “Time to stop waiting in silence. Time to seek the road again. I cannot make it alone.”

He hesitated, glanced at Julia. The fire picked out the line of her jaw, the question in her eyes. “And I am not meant to.”

His words fell into the hush like stones into water. The ripple lingered, steady, unashamed.

Julia’s throat tightened. He hadn’t looked at her like that before - not as someone listening from the edge, but as if she already belonged inside the circle.

She cleared her throat. “It isn’t just him.” The resolve in her own voice startled her. Thavron’s gaze flicked to her, weighing, and she forced herself not to falter. “I’ve found fragments. Songs, manuscripts, scraps. They echo the same thing. We think - ” she glanced at Elrohir, drew breath, “ - we think the Road can be found again.”

The older Elf studied her as though she were an unexpected note in a tune he thought he knew. His head tilted, beard catching the firelight.

Julia’s pulse stumbled, but she held his gaze.

Elrohir spoke quietly. “She hears what I could not. That is why I trust her.”

Thavron’s eyes narrowed, shifting between them. “And you, a mortal, mean to sing us back across the Sea?”

Julia’s mouth went dry. Before she could falter, Elrohir said: “Not sing. Help us find the song. Piece by piece. She sees patterns I would have missed.”

Julia nodded quickly, catching the thread. “That’s all. I’m not - ” her voice snagged, then steadied, “I’m not the one crossing. I’m just helping… build what’s needed.”

The words tasted strange, even as she said them. But they were the truth as she understood it: her place was in the search, not the journey.

Thavron leaned back, humming under his breath, weighing the answer.

For a long while Thavron only hummed, eyes half-closed as if listening to something far beyond them. Then he gave a short nod. “If that is what you’re about - a boat, a song - I’ll not call it folly. Not yet.”

The fire had burned low. Beyond the ruin, the valley was hushed, dew silvering the grass.

Julia drew a breath. “Then… will we see you again? Could we keep in touch somehow? Come down to Whitehaven, maybe? We could use another pair of hands. On the boat.” The words sounded strange in her own ears - inviting an immortal stranger to their harbour workshop - but she let them stand.

Thavron’s beard twitched. “I build chairs and sheds, not leaf-ships for lost roads.” There was no mockery in it, only tired amusement. “Still… perhaps. I’ve a phone - even a number, if you can believe it. Easier to be eccentric than to disappear altogether.”

He fished in his coat, produced a folded scrap of paper, and set it on the stone beside the fire. His handwriting was spidery, elegant, oddly old-fashioned.

“Don’t ring me for idle chatter,” he added. “But if the marks keep singing… I’ll come.”

When Thavron rose, it seemed less a man departing than a shadow withdrawing into trees. “We’ll speak again,” he said, and the ruin seemed to breathe with him as the night let him go.

Julia watched until the dark had swallowed him. Then she looked at Elrohir. His face was unreadable, but his hand found hers in the cooling ash-glow - a quiet promise that whatever had begun here, they would not carry it alone.

oOo

Chapter Text

oOo

oOo

Chapter 24 – Cooling Embers

oOo

oOo

22^nd June, 2025, Whythop

Perhaps she had drifted off for a while, wrapped in her blanket, curled against him in the dim hush before dawn. She half-remembered the weight of his arm around her shoulders, the slow rise and fall of his chest, the quiet of him staying awake while she slipped under. When she startled back into awareness, the fire was ash and the ruin held only the faint smell of smoke.

Dew silvered the grass as they left, the sky washed thin with midsummer light. Julia walked beside Elrohir down the track, Calad trotting ahead, the hush of night still clinging to them.

She felt wrung out - not tired, exactly, but as if something in her had been struck and was still ringing. Thavron’s voice lingered in her head, the weight of his gaze, the strange tilt of his words. She hadn’t known what to expect when Elrohir spoke of waiting, but it wasn’t this. Not a man who felt at once familiar and utterly alien, as though he belonged to a rhythm the rest of the world had forgotten.

“Does he seem different to you, I mean: different to the Elves you know?” she asked at last, when the silence grew too taut.

Elrohir’s stride slowed. “He seems like what he is. One who never left.”

It unsettled her more than the meeting itself - the thought that Elrohir might have become like that, if not for his long absence in Mandos, if not for his rounded ears and the way he had learned to live among people.

They reached the car. Elrohir paused with his hand on the door, looking east toward the faint line of sea. “I didn’t believe anyone would still come,” he said quietly. “Not after so long.”

Julia touched his sleeve. “But someone did.”

He looked at her then, and for a moment she saw it: not the warrior or the wanderer, but a man startled by hope. Only there was something else behind it, something he did not voice - a flicker of reluctance, quickly shuttered.

She couldn’t know that part of him had almost wished for silence forever, that the absence of an answer might have freed him to lay the burden down.

They drove through the pale morning, the coast road nearly empty. Julia kept her hands on the wheel, her eyes flicking to him now and then. He sat turned toward the window, jaw tight, as if still listening for Thavron’s voice in the wind.

“You’re glad, though,” she said. Not quite a question.

He shifted, slow. “It proves the waiting was not in vain. Mandos did not send me back to wander for nothing.”

It was the right answer - too right. The kind of sentence that had been polished by centuries of repetition. Julia frowned at the road ahead. “That’s not what I asked.”

His gaze slid to her then, steady but unreadable. “I am glad,” he said again, softer.

But it didn’t ring true. She heard the duty in it, not the relief. She almost pressed him, but something in the set of his shoulders warned her off. Instead she let the hum of the tyres fill the silence, the ache of questions settling between them like unspoken chords.

When the road curved toward Cockermouth, Julia slowed at the sight of a corner café pulling chairs onto the pavement. She pulled in before he could object.
“Coffee,” she said, switching off the engine. “And a croissant if they’ve got any left.”

He followed without a word. The bell on the café door jangled, the smell of strong coffee and warm bread folding around them. For a while they sat in the corner by the window, Calad stretched at their feet, steam curling from their cups. Outside, shopkeepers raised shutters, the town shaking itself awake.

Only in the quiet between sips did Julia notice his hand resting close to hers on the table - not touching, but near enough that she could feel the warmth of it. Neither of them moved to close the gap.

After a while, Elrohir set his cup down, eyes on the street outside where the first shopkeepers were raising shutters.
“This won’t stop here,” he said, almost to himself. “One voice answered. Others will hear it.”

Julia wasn’t sure if he sounded relieved or resigned. Maybe both. She let the moment stand, then folded the thought away with the last bite of her croissant.

And in the weeks that followed, he was proved right.

oOo

July 2025, Whitehaven

The first ripples came quickly.

In early July, an email arrived from Morocco, the sentences sharp-edged and defensive: If you are false, leave me in peace. Elrohir sat staring at the screen for a long time before answering, fingers tight on the keys. Julia leaned over his shoulder to soften the draft, turning his brusque precision into something gentler: fewer commands, more invitation. When he finally clicked “send,” he looked as though he’d just loosed an arrow into the dark.

A week later, a phone call from Devon. Two voices at once - a man and a woman, speaking over each other, hesitant, almost giddy, as if they had been waiting years to be overheard. “We thought we were some of the very last,” Julia caught through the crackle of the line. “You can’t imagine what it means, simply knowing you’re there.” Elrohir held the phone awkwardly, as though it weighed more than it should, his answers clipped and formal.

And then a note from Prague: brisk, barbed, with a streak of dry humour. The world has forgotten us, but perhaps we are not finished yet. If nothing else, we can drink to stubbornness. Julia read it aloud, half smiling; Elrohir only shook his head, unreadable.

Meanwhile, Thavron drew closer. At Elrohir’s urging he took work at the shipyard, and by August he had moved into the bungalow above the harbour. Julia tried to welcome him, but found him difficult to read. He was courteous, even gentle, yet there was something in the way his eyes drifted past her - as if he measured her by some hidden scale.

Once, she made tea for the three of them after a long day at the yard. Thavron accepted the cup with a polite nod, but when Calad nosed hopefully at his knee, he looked at the dog as though puzzling out an unfamiliar creature. “Faithful beasts,” he said, his tone neutral, almost clinical. Julia managed a smile, but something in the room had already gone sideways.

She wondered, uneasily, what he made of her and Elrohir. Among Elves, love was bonded for life. Did Thavron look at her and see only a mortal interlude, some brief comfort before Elrohir returned to his true kind? The thought made her skin prickle. She wasn’t ashamed, but she was no longer at ease in the bungalow. After a time, she left it to the two of them.

Elrohir noticed. Without comment, he began coming more often to Sandwith: evenings by her kitchen fire, mornings with Calad at the gate. Yet the harbour still drew him back, and soon enough the pattern was clear. The bungalow, once only his, was becoming something more. A place not just to live, but to arrive.

It was Julia who gave it a name one rain-lashed evening. “If others come… let this be a haven. A door that’s open.”

Elrohir frowned, the protest already forming, but she went on: “They will need a place to be. They need to know this place is here. It cannot start to sing if we don’t name it.”

For a long moment he was silent, then gave a single, reluctant nod.

And in that quiet, Harbour View Bungalow ceased to be only his, or Thavron’s. And slowly, without ever naming it, the shape of something new began to take root: a house with lights in its windows, a table always set for more than two, a place where the lost might not be alone.

oOo

8^th August 2025, Whitehaven

Rain was sliding down the windowpanes, blurring the view of Sandwith’s lane into streaks of light. The gutters rattled where the water overflowed, and every gust pressed damp against the glass. The kitchen smelled of wet wool and salt; Elrohir had just come in from the harbour, hair dripping, shoulders hunched as though the weather had got inside him.

Julia pushed a mug toward him. “You’ll catch cold.”

He gave a short, humourless huff. “I am an Elf. We do not catch colds.”

“Fine,” she said, folding her arms. “Then you’ll sulk. Which is worse. It’s basically the equivalent of man-flu."

One corner of his mouth twitched - not quite a smile - and for a heartbeat she thought he might ease. But then his gaze dropped back to the table, and whatever softness had stirred was gone. The rain rattled on the panes, filling the silence that followed.

“Sit down,” she said finally, “before you wear a groove in the floor.”

He did, but his restlessness filled the room more than the rain. His fingers drummed once against the table, then stilled, curling into fists. “You shouldn’t have said that,” he muttered after a while, eyes fixed on the grain of the wood.

“What? About the bungalow?”

“That it could be a haven.” His jaw tightened. The words came clipped, like he’d rehearsed them in his head a dozen times before speaking aloud. “It paints a target.”

Julia leaned back against the counter, arms folded. The rain thudded harder in the downpipes, echoing her pulse. “They’ll need somewhere to come to. They need to know it exists. If we keep pretending there’s nothing here, no one will risk stepping forward.”

His mouth twisted. “Or they will, and bring danger with them.”

“They’ll bring it anyway,” she said quietly. “At least here, we can face it together.”

The silence stretched. Drops slid from his hair onto his shirt; he didn’t seem to notice. He looked older than she had ever seen him - worn, brittle, his shoulders braced as though he were carrying something far heavier than rain.

“You can’t keep building walls,” Julia said at last, softer. “I already know what it’s like to lose everything. Don’t ask me to watch you do it too.”

Something tugged at her chest. She hesitated, half-expecting him to flinch away, then crossed the room and rested her hand lightly on his shoulder.

“Hey.”

His head came up, eyes dark, searching her face as if for something he couldn’t name. She cupped his cheek, thumb brushing the stubble along his jaw. “We’ll make it sing,” she whispered. “But not if you keep trying to hold it all by yourself.”

For a heartbeat he didn’t move. His jaw worked once, as if the words hurt. Then his hands came up, tentative, curling around her waist, drawing her closer. The tension in his body shifted, not gone but yielding, as though the act of reaching for her cost him less than holding back.

He closed his eyes, leaned fractionally into her hand. Not surrender, not agreement - but something like relief.

Julia kept her palm against his cheek until his breathing steadied. She didn’t press him further.

Outside, the storm went on.

oOo

29^th August 2025, Whitehaven

By the end of August, Julia had finished posting Rosemary and Time. She pressed “Complete” with a strange ache in her chest, half-relieved, half bereft. It was done - Beriel’s story given back to the world. And with it, the faint thread of hope that AO3 might somehow open a way to the lost ones had begun to fray.

Even the most promising contact - Tirnë, who had left a single, too-knowing comment on Chapter 16 - had fallen silent. She had sent her cautious reply, but by now months had gone by with nothing. She stopped checking for an answer.

So her surprise was sharper that late August Friday when, with Elrohir and Thavron working in the yard behind her, a message popped into her inbox. The subject line was only: Reply from TirnëParmadriel.

Julia’s pulse kicked. She clicked it open.

I remember fire on the water. I remember songs that could part the tide. I remember a ship with seven stars carved into the prow, and my brother’s hand slipping from mine when I would not go aboard.

She read it three times before standing, chair legs scraping on the tiles. Her first thought was to call Elrohir inside, to make him see, but she hesitated. He had grown restless with every mention of AO3, his mistrust hardening each time she pressed the matter.

Out in the yard she could hear their voices, Elrohir and Thavron trading low phrases over the rasp of tools. Her hand hovered over the keyboard. She could leave it, wait for him. Or she could answer now.

Julia drew a steadying breath and began to type.

If you still remember, then come, we are here.

Her finger hovered over “Send” longer than it should have. Then she clicked. The little whoosh sounded too final in the quiet room. For a moment she sat very still, staring at the glowing screen. Outside, the hammering paused, and she heard Elrohir’s voice rise - deep, intent - speaking to Thavron. She couldn’t make out the words.

Another incoming comment, this time on chapter 53.

You should not know the things you do. Yet you write them: the night he said, “her light goes where I cannot follow.” No one else heard those words. How could you have written that unless you were there?

Julia frowned, reading it twice, then a third time. The tone was different - clipped, testing, edged with suspicion. Tirnë’s words had been almost lyrical; this was something else entirely. Her cursor hovered over the reply box, fingers twitching. Should she ask who they were? Should she pretend she didn’t understand?

She whispered aloud without meaning to, “What are you talking about?”

The yard felt too quiet. Even the hammering behind her and the calling of the gulls outside had stopped.

Behind her, the floor creaked. She hadn’t heard Elrohir come in, but he was there, close enough that his shadow fell across the desk.

His eyes found the screen - and in an instant, all colour drained from his face. His hand closed on the back of her chair, knuckles white.

Julia turned. “Do you know who…?”

Elrohir’s breath came ragged, uneven. His lips shaped the word before sound followed.

“Elladan.”

oOo

Chapter Text

oOo

oOo

Chapter 26 – A Hand Held Out

oOo

oOo

24^th August 2025, Whitehaven

The office had narrowed to a single square of light, the cursor blinking beside the question he had never expected to see in letters again. Her light goes where I cannot follow. Elladan’s voice, not on the wind as it used to be above a battlefield, but wrapped in the clipped edge of a stranger’s comment on a glowing screen.
The workshop sounds were there, and not there. The gulls had fallen silent. His fingers had gone white against the back of her chair. Something old and heavy rose in his chest with the force of a tide.
“Elladan,” he said, and the floor tilted.
The scent of salt crowded the room. The light from the window shifted into the light of a summer night, far, far away.

oOo

Summer 175, Fourth Age, Dol Amroth

The grass outside Dol Amroth had been brittle underfoot that night, pale in the moon. Heat still clung to the stones even after sundown. Down on the water, masts chimed softly, and the harbourside watch called the hours like a prayer to keep the dark at bay.
Elrohir waited where the dune-flowers grew, hands empty, the sea at his back. He had left Ylva sleeping with the window open and the laughter of their boys still caught like swifts in the rafters. He had written a note on the table: back before dawn.
He heard the horse first, and then Elladan came from the road without cloak or herald. No need. Elrohir knew his brother’s tread even now, after seasons apart. It was quicker than it once had been, harder, as if every step corrected for the weight of something that could not be set down.
They stopped three paces apart.
“You sent for me,” Elrohir said.
Elladan’s eyes flicked toward the city and back. “I sent because you would not come.”
“I asked you to meet them.” Elrohir kept his voice low. “Ylva. The boys. They have your eyes for mischief.”
Elladan did not smile. “You named one for a mortal king.”
“I named him Estel, for our brother.”
“A mortal who is long dead.”
“Most of our friends are dead, or gone,” Elrohir said, and wished, too late, that he had chosen a gentler answer.
The wind shifted. Somewhere on the water a sail creaked. Elladan’s gaze went past him to the line of black sea. “They are not gone. The ones who skulk in the old fen-lands, the ones who bent the knee to the Eye and now pretend they did not. You know this. You chose to forget it.”
“I chose to live,” Elrohir said.
Elladan’s head tilted. In the moonlight his face looked older than Elrohir had let himself admit. Not worn, exactly, but pared down to its uses. “To live,” Elladan repeated, as if tasting a word that had spoiled.
“Do not do this,” Elrohir said. “Not here.”
“Where, then?” Elladan’s voice stayed soft, a blade wrapped in linen. “In a quiet house with a mortal wife who will die before we blink twice? In a garden where you pretend time is merciful?”
Elrohir breathed once, steadying. “Ylva asked one thing of me: that I would not choose. Not for her, not against her, not to make burdens for our sons. I gave her my word.”
“And now your word binds you to watch her end,” Elladan said. “You will stand by while she fades to ash and the boys age and leave you, and when they are gone, what then?”
“Then I will grieve,” Elrohir said. “As we all have.”
Elladan’s mouth thinned. “We lost both our sisters. One to the Valar’s mercy, one to a door that will never open. Mortals eat and sleep and breed and still ask for more of us. They ask for songs, for rescues, for blood. Beriel gave hers. Will you pretend it was not so?”
“Do not take her name in pieces,” Elrohir said, and felt anger rise, clean as cold water. “Beriel did not die for ‘mortals’ as a kind. She loved. She chose. She did what love asked of her. You know that.”
Elladan’s eyes flashed, and for a heartbeat Elrohir saw the brother who had laughed under beech trees, who had thrown him into the river just to hear him curse. “Love,” Elladan said, and the word sounded like a door he could not open. “It is a pretty veil for a knife.”
“It is a reason to lay one down.”
“They still need us,” Elladan said, quiet again. “Not to sing to their babies or mend their boats. To keep their roads clear of the filth that waits for them on moonless nights. To kill, when it must be done. Come with me. Tonight. There is work near the marshes.”
Elrohir shook his head. “No.”
“Then promise me you will come when she is gone.” Elladan took one step closer, the sand whispering under his boot. “Swear it. Give me that.”
Elrohir thought of the note on the table, the half-cut loaf, the damp shirts drying by the hearth. He thought of the way Ylva had mended the holes in those shirts, how she touched his face, how she reached for him in her sleep. He thought of their boys, both overdue for a trimming, hair in their eyes, laughter that made the house too small.
“No,” he said.
Silence pressed between them. A gull cried once, far out, and the sound fell like a stone.
“You refuse me,” Elladan said.
“I refuse to make her death into a marker on your road,” Elrohir answered. “I will not stand at her bed and count minutes for your convenience. If you want me back at your side, ask it without putting your hand on her throat.”
Elladan’s jaw worked, and Elrohir saw the hurt land. It would have been easier, perhaps, if one of them had shouted. They did not. They stood beneath a sky that had once felt wide enough to hold anything.
“You were always the softer of us,” Elladan said after a time. Not a sneer, only a verdict. “You will pay for it.”
“Perhaps,” Elrohir said.
“Then hear this.” Elladan’s voice had gone as flat as the sea on a hot morning. “I will not come to your door again. When you are free, find me.”
Free. The word struck harder than any blow. Elrohir felt it go through him and keep going.
He could have reached for Elladan then. He did not. He had learned how useless it was to grasp what would not be held.
“May the road be clear for you,” he said instead.
“And for you,” Elladan answered, as if the words were a formality he barely remembered.
He gathered the reins. He turned. He did not look back. Hooves thudded once, then softened into sand. His shadow thinned, swallowed by dunes and moonlight and the dark line of the road.
Elrohir stood until the watch called the next hour. Only then did he go home.
Ylva woke when he slid beneath the sheet, turned to him, and set her hand on his chest without asking. He lay there looking at the ceiling while the swifts under the eaves rustled and settled.
In the morning he did not tell the boys their uncle had come, and gone.

oOo

Back in the boatyard office, the noise rushed in again. Halyards rattled. Somewhere below, Thavron set the mallet down and called to Calad, who replied with a soft huff. The fan on the filing cabinet clicked once and settled. Elrohir’s hand was still locked on the chair. Julia covered it with her own, her thumb moving once, quiet as breath, as if reminding him the present could hold.
He drew a shallow breath. Salt lingered at the back of his throat.
“I left him there,” he said. “And he left me.”
“Then he lived,” Julia said, careful, testing the moment like it was quicksand.
Elrohir looked at the screen again, at the impossible name waiting there behind the message.
“It seems so,” he whispered.

Julia’s fingers hovered over the keys. “We should reply.”

His hand closed lightly around her wrist. “Not yet.” The word came out rough.

He stepped outside. Resin and tide met him. Thavron paused mid-swing, looking at him, then continued without speaking. Elrohir breathed until the ground steadied, then went back in.

The cursor still blinked. Julia had not typed.

“What do we say?” she asked.

“Something only he will hear.”

Elrohir wrote, each word set like a stone:

May the road be clear for you.

He posted.

The reply arrived almost at once, spare and careful, as if someone were testing a bridge with one foot before crossing.

And for you. I once said I would not come to your door again. When you were free, you would find me. Perhaps I was wrong. I think I know where to find you.

It did not read like a promise or a threat. It read as tentative, a hand held out.

Julia exhaled. “Good,” she said. “Then let him find us.”

oOo

Julia’s hand was suddenly on his. Her pulse beat against his knuckles.
“Do you want him to come?” he asked.
“Yes.” She did not hesitate. “And I want you to breathe.”

He laughed, softly, and remembered how to breathe. Outside, the evening had thinned to pewter. Kittiwakes chattered to each other. Thavron’s voice drifted from the shed, low, ordinary. The world had not broken. Only one quiet hinge in it had turned.

“Come,” Julia said. “Let’s walk home.”

She closed the laptop and slipped it into her bag, hunting for her scarf and hoodie. He followed her out of the office. Resin and salt met them. Thavron stood by the hull with his mallet under his arm, reading Elrohir’s face the way old craftsmen read grain.

“All well?” Thavron asked.
“Work for tomorrow,” Elrohir said. It was not a lie.

Thavron’s gaze passed to Julia, then back. Whatever he saw, he accepted. He touched the mallet to his shoulder in a small salute and turned away. Out on the hardstanding the leaf-hull slept in her cradle, canvas drawn tight, the day’s chalk marks still ghosting her ribs. Calad padded over, brushed Julia’s leg, then leaned into Elrohir’s thigh with a weight that felt like permission. Julia clipped on the lead, and together they crossed the harbour toward the coastal path.

They walked the margin of the water, then turned onto the narrow path toward the cliffs. Julia’s shoulder touched his briefly, then again. He did not move away. The sky was the colour of old pewter mugs, dull and kind.

“Does it frighten you?” she asked.
He tasted the answer before he spoke it. “Yes.”
“Me too,” she said, and then, after a beat, “I still want it.”

He thought of the last time he had seen Elladan’s face go closed, of all the years he had learned to live inside the noise of the world and the quiet of rooms that were only his. He thought of the comment on the screen, the shape of those careful words.

“I do not know him now,” he said. “He has lived four ages I have not. The Elladan I left was… angry. Bitter. Tired.” He shivered.

Julia stopped and looked at him. “Are you worried about how he will be with me?”
He avoided her gaze. “No… and yes. I’ve seen how you are with Thavron.”
“How am I with him?”
“You are… more careful. Less yourself. You look at him as if you expect him to judge you and find you wanting.”

For a moment there was nothing but their steps on the sandy path, the wind rising off the sea, the gulls’ cries.

“I keep thinking,” she said, “that he will have your face and not your face, and that I will be foolish for staring.”
“You will not be foolish,” Elrohir said. “You will be kind.”
She tipped her head. “You sound as if you doubt it.”
“I am trying not to doubt everything,” he said, and that, at least, made her smile a little.
“Then we try together,” she said. “He will come when he comes. Tonight we have quiet.”

When they reached the cottage, none of them felt like going straight inside.

He turned to her. The wind had lifted loose hair at her temple. She watched him openly. There was grief in her face and hunger, and nothing in it that asked for rescue. He reached for her because his body already had. She came into his hands with a simplicity that steadied the spin in his chest.

He kissed her. There was salt from the air on her mouth. She made a small sound that unlatched something in him. He pressed his forehead to hers and closed his eyes.

“Here,” she said, soft. “Stay here a while.” She drew a breath. “Look at me, Elrohir.”
He did. Her eyes were dark and alive. She lifted her hands to his face, thumbs sweeping the line beneath his eyes, then to his mouth, as if she were learning a map she meant to keep. He kissed the heel of one hand, and the low sound she made went through both of them.
She said his name again. Heat flared, then quiet followed.

He slid his hands under the hem of her hoodie and under her shirt, found skin that remembered him. She shivered - from the cold as much as from something older. He set his mouth to the hollow at the base of her throat. Her breath hitched; her fingers closed in his hair.

He wanted to say I am sorry, for all the ways this was both gift and concealment, for the brother who might step out of the past tomorrow, for the nights he had learned to live inside his own silence. He did not say any of it. He gave her what he could without speech: mouth, hands, weight, attention. She answered with her own.

They chose the door then. Inside, coats on pegs, the hush of a lived-in room. He sat on the sofa and drew her onto his lap. Clothes loosened. They laughed once, a small broken sound, and the laughter made the rest easier. She swung a leg over each side, settled her weight, testing him; her hands found his shoulders, then the back of the sofa for balance. The living room was full of ordinary noises: the fridge’s low hum; a clock somewhere counting softly; the sea’s breath through a window cracked for air. Outside, a gull cried and then stopped. Calad let out a long dog-sigh and went boneless on the rug.

He thought, briefly, of Ylva’s hand finding his in sleep, of the word free falling like a stone between two men on a strand. The thought did not take him away; it folded into the rest. This, too, was a kind of choosing.

Julia’s mouth found his shoulder. He felt her teeth lightly through the cloth and then her laugh against his skin. He answered with a kiss. When she tightened her hand on his wrist, he checked her face. She held his gaze and nodded, once, deliberate.

XXX

She tugged his belt, quick and sure; he worked the buckle loose, breath catching. She rose onto her knees on the cushions and pushed jeans and underwear down in one motion. He steadied her hips while she wriggled free, one leg, then the other, leaving a dark heap beside the sofa. She settled over him again, warm and close. He freed himself, and she guided him in with a small, wrecking sound that went through his chest. They both went still. He matched his breath to hers.

“Here,” she whispered, and began to move.

She set the pace, slow at first, testing balance and angle, fingers in his hair, then firmer, a rhythm that carried both of them. He held her close with one arm around her back and the other spread at her hip, thumb feeling the flex of muscle as she rose and settled. The sofa creaked softly under them. A cushion seam pressed on his back, a real thing to hold. Resin lived in his skin from the day, salt on his tongue from the walk home. She pressed her mouth to his temple, and he answered with his hands, steadying her.

When she tightened her hand on his shoulder and breath stuttered, he met her, upward, and the sound she made was the sound of something unclasping. She spoke his name into the space between them, and the world narrowed to heat, breath, the slide of skin, the faint tick of the clock.

It rose and broke like surf, and then there was quiet. He knew the shape of it and still it surprised him.

XXX

After, the room did not rush back. It widened slowly. He rested his cheek against her shoulder while their heartbeats learned the same pace. Her hand moved in his hair with idle care. He could feel the faint rasp of sawdust on his forearm. It felt earned.

His body had settled after the storm of it. The fear was still there, but it had room to breathe. He lifted their joined hands and kissed her knuckles. She did not pull away.

“Tomorrow,” she said, “we can write him again. Or not. We can decide after coffee.”
“After coffee,” he agreed. The word made him think of mornings, of light that comes for work and not for memory.

They stayed like that until the blue went to slate. She glanced toward the hall.

“Will you go back to your bungalow?”
“Thavron’s there tonight,” he said. “I’d very much like the quiet here. With you.”
“Good,” she said, with a small smile. “Stay.”

oOo

Chapter Text

oOo

oOo

Chapter 27 – Entry Without Knocking

oOo

oOo

12^th September 2025, Whitehaven

For days afterward Julia half-expected the next ringing of her phone, the next line on the screen, to be him. Elrohir too  -  every time her phone lit up, every time Calad stirred at some imagined sound, there was a tightening in him as if the moment might already be here. But nothing came. Not for a week, not for the beginning of the second.

By the time Mid-September found them, the silence had worn thin, more unnerving than any answer could have been. And then…

…the door to her office opened without a knock.

Julia didn’t look up at once; her hands were full of photocopied maps, edges curling where the council’s old machine had chewed at them. “We’re not open to the public right now,” she said, smoothing one flat with the heel of her palm. “If you need information about…”

The words trailed off.

The man who had stepped inside wasn’t a tourist, nor one of her colleagues. He was tall, sharply cut against the pale corridor light. His hair fell long enough to shadow his jaw and collar, dark as polished walnut, but it was the arrangement of it that made her pause. Not careless. Not stylish, either. Deliberate. Drawn down to cover his ears.

And his face…

For a heartbeat, her stomach lurched. Elrohir. No. Not Elrohir, but near enough to make her heart falter, the same bones and grey-shadowed eyes. Yet where Elrohir always seemed to carry the smell of salt and sawdust, this one carried nothing mortal with him at all. His coat was tailored so precisely it could only have been made for him, the line of the shoulders unyielding. His presence filled the room like someone who had never once asked permission to enter.

He inclined his head slightly, no smile on his lips. “You must be Julia Stokes.”

Her throat was dry, but she kept her hands flat on the desk. “And you are?”

“Elladan, of course” he said, as though the name should be introduction enough. His gaze swept over the office - maps, municipal posters, the kettle in the corner - then back to her with the faintest curve of disdain. “I believe you know my brother.”

oOo

Julia let the silence hang. He was waiting for her to stumble over the resemblance, to shrink under the weight of it. Instead she straightened the stack of maps, tapped them square, and only then met his gaze.

“I do,” she said evenly. “But barging into my office isn’t exactly the best way to arrange a meeting.”

Something flickered across his expression - amusement, perhaps, or irritation at her refusal to yield. “You… are bold.” His eyes lingered on her, sharp as if testing for cracks. “Tell me - are you his watchdog?”

Julia’s mouth tugged sideways before she could help it. “Oh no. That’s Calad’s job.”

As if summoned, the dog raised his head from where he had been dozing by the radiator. A low, soft growl vibrated in the quiet room.

Elladan’s gaze dropped to the animal, cool and measuring, then lifted again to Julia. “Fitting. Loyalty is a rare trait these days.”

“I would not call it loyalty,” Julia said. “To me, it’s friendship. Watching out for each other.”

Something like the ghost of a smile touched his mouth, gone as soon as it appeared. He studied her the way one might study an unfamiliar manuscript - angles, margins, what was written between the lines.

“You don’t seem easily unsettled,” he said at last.

Julia stacked another sheet, aligning the corners with care. “I work with councillors, developers, and funding boards. Trust me, you’re not the most intimidating person who walked through that door.”

That earned her the smallest shift in his expression - not quite a smile, more the acknowledgement of a point scored.

He tilted his head and continued to study her with a precision that felt almost clinical. “Well,” he said finally, “I did not come here to pick a fight with you. Where is my brother?”

Julia set the stack of maps aside. “Working. At the boatyard.”

His brows lifted a fraction.

“And before you decide to stride in there,” she added, “that’s not the place. People know him. They’d notice. If you want to talk to him, do it somewhere private.” She hesitated only a moment, then said, “Come to Sandwith this evening. The Old Post Office. He’ll be there.”

Elladan regarded her for a long moment, as though weighing both the offer and the authority with which she gave it. Then he inclined his head, slow and deliberate. “Very well.”

He turned toward the door without further word. Only at the threshold did he pause, glancing back once. “You speak for him easily.”

Julia met his eyes. “No. I don’t. I just know he wants to see you. Very much.”

She thought she saw the flicker of something in his eyes, before he turned again and left without waiting for reply, the door shutting with quiet finality behind him.

For a moment the office felt too small, the maps and posters suddenly flimsy against the weight he had brought in with him. Calad gave another low rumble, then settled back down with a sigh as if to say the danger had passed.

Julia drew in a breath, let it out slowly, and pressed her palms flat against the desk. Not intimidating, she told herself. Just impossible.

Still, her fingers were already reaching for her phone. Elrohir needed to know.

oOo

By the time she turned off the lane toward the Old Post Office, dusk had gathered in the hedgerows. The windows were already lit. She saw Elrohir at the kitchen counter, shoulders taut, a loaf on the board in front of him.

She pushed the door open, Calad bounding past her into the warmth. Elrohir looked up at once, searching her face before she’d even set down her bag. The stew on the hob was his doing; the spoon rested across the pot, steam lifting in slow curls.

Julia toed off her boots, filled Calad’s bowl, and set it down. The dog ate without enthusiasm, pausing to glance toward the door as if he too was listening.

Elrohir’s gaze kept flicking to the window when the wind moved the hedge. He had been slicing bread when she came in; now the knife lay still on the board, his hand flat beside it.

“We should eat,” Julia said, more to give the room an ordinary shape than for hunger. “If he comes, we can warm it again.”

He nodded but did not move.

She took plates from the cupboard and hesitated over the stack. “I can give you the room when he comes,” she said. “If you would rather. I can take Calad out, or go upstairs. Whatever you need.”

He was quiet for a long moment. Then he shook his head. “Stay.”

She met his eyes. “Are you sure?”

“I’d rather have you here with me.”

“All right.” She set two plates on the table, then reached back for a third and laid it down without comment. She fetched three glasses, poured water, and set the bread beside the stew. The small clink of glass on wood steadied the air between them.

“Then we eat a little,” she said, half a smile, “and we wait.”

He picked up the ladle. Outside, the last of the light thinned along the hedge. Inside, the cottage held its breath

A knock would come when it chose. Until then, there was bread, and quiet, and the dog breathing in his sleep. Julia kept her seat.

oOo

The first sound was Calad lifting his head. Then the car, tyres soft on the lane. A door closed. It sounded like an expensive car.

Elrohir stood before he knew he had moved. Julia’s chair scraped lightly as she rose too. He took her hand, just long enough to steady his breath, and let go.

A single knock. He knew the cadence of it before his fingers found the latch. It was the way Elladan had always knocked at their father’s study in Rivendell.

He opened the door.

For a heartbeat the shape in the porch was only outline and night. Then the house light reached his face.

Elrohir had imagined this a thousand ways; none of them included a small cottage here in the north, with an almost ordinary life to hide in.

“Elladan,” Elrohir said.

His brother did not smile. “Elrohir.”

The name sounded as if it had been held in his mouth for a long time.

Elladan’s hair was a little too long, arranged to cover what it must cover. His coat sat perfectly on the shoulders, the kind of fit that came from a tailor who measured in quiet rooms. He smelled of cold air and good leather, not of boatyard or sawdust, of course. The eyes were unchanged. Grey, clear, assessing. They did what they had always done: measured distances, weighed weather.

They stood for a breath too long. The cottage behind Elrohir smelled of stew, dog and wet boots. He wanted to reach out for him, take his brother’s forearm as in their greetings of old, or embrace him, but kept his hands by his sides.

“Come in,” Elrohir said instead, and stepped back.

Elladan’s gaze went past him to Julia in the kitchen doorway. She inclined her head. He returned it and crossed the threshold. He moved with the same quiet efficiency Elrohir knew, and he wondered where all those years had gone to hide.

Calad was on his feet now, ears forward, tail undecided. Elrohir touched the dog’s shoulder, and the tail settled.

“Calad,” Elladan said, as if confirming a detail already filed. “We have met.”

“He remembers,” Julia said. “He’ll settle.”

Elladan took in the third place on the table, the loaf already sliced, the glasses set. His attention came back to Elrohir and held. Elrohir watched the exact moment his brother saw the curve of his ear where the hair did not quite fall. Something moved in Elladan’s face and was gone.

He said nothing. Elrohir did not fill the silence - no explanation yet, not without Elladan asking.

Not the old easy quiet, but not hostile. Elladan looked around the room again as if mapping this life. He shrugged off his coat in one unhurried movement and laid it over a chair with the same precision he had always given to small things.

“Would you like some stew? Elrohir made it”Julia asked, already picking up another bowl.

Elladan glanced to Elrohir, not to her, nodded, and sat down. His hands rested lightly on the table, composed.

“You came,” Elrohir said.

“I should have sooner,” Elladan answered.

Elrohir shook his head once. “It took time to find us.”

Elladan’s gaze flicked to the window, then back. “It did.”

Julia ladled stew into the bowl and handed it to him. She leaned back in her chair and kept eating. Elladan watched the normalcy of it, as if ease itself were suspect. He picked up a slice of bread, set it down again, and didn’t eat.

“You are thinner,” he said at last. “And… altered.”

“I did fade,” Elrohir said. “I am back again. Mandos had his own ideas about how to ease my road.”

For a heartbeat Elladan stilled, as if a gear somewhere had slipped and caught. He didn’t ask how. He only nodded once, sharply, and the line of his mouth softened by a fraction.

He looked once more at Julia, then back to Elrohir. “Very well,” he said quietly. “Then we start from here.”

Calad’s tail thumped once against the radiator. Outside, the last of the light left the hedge and the lane. Inside, the cottage was bright and ordinary: crumbs on the table, a scatter of sawdust on the floor, the sea and their supper in the air. At that small table the sons of Elrond began to talk again after six thousand years.

oOo

Julia later never recalled how she ended up in bed, only that at some point she must have fallen asleep. They had moved from the small dining table to the sofa, the bowls pushed aside, bread crusts forgotten. All the while Elrohir and Elladan kept talking - at first halting, then with a rhythm that pulled at something older than the room around them. About the lives they had led, about the deaths they had witnessed, about friends lost and found and buried again. Their words stretched into the night, a thread Julia clung to until she couldn’t anymore. She remembered the sound of their voices, even when the meaning slipped.

Before that…

Elladan’s eyes had settled on her with the weight of a man accustomed to measuring others. “You sit here as though it were natural,” he said quietly. “Do you know what you have stepped into?”

The fire popped. Calad’s ears flicked. Julia tightened her hands around her glass and forced herself not to glance toward Elrohir for rescue.

“I know enough,” she said.

“Enough for him?” Elladan’s gaze flicked sideways to his brother, then back again. “Or enough for yourself?”

Julia let out a breath, steadying it before it could turn into a laugh. “I know that I’m not leaving him to do this alone. If that’s not enough for you, that’s your problem.”

The silence that followed was not the brittle kind, but something quieter - like an edge testing for weakness and finding none. Elladan inclined his head once, almost courtly, though his eyes never softened. “Bold,” he murmured. “Perhaps he needs bold.”

Elrohir said nothing, but Julia felt the brush of his hand against her knee beneath the table, a wordless answer that mattered more than anything spoken aloud.

After that, the questions shifted. Elladan asked about Whitehaven, about the harbour and the coast, as if gauging the measure of this life his brother had chosen. He asked about the shipyard, about the boat. He asked whether Julia knew what song she was looking for. She answered as best she could, feeling at times like a student pressed by a severe examiner, at others like a friend asked to show her worth.

Gradually, the sharpness thinned. The rhythm of two brothers who had once fought side by side began to seep through - still wary, still marked by centuries apart, but recognisable. Julia could almost see it: young men in Rivendell, sparring in the courtyard, their father’s voice calling from a shaded study. The air in the room grew heavier with memory.

When the plates were cleared and the stew gone cold, the three of them shifted to the sofa. Calad stretched across the rug with a sigh that belonged to a creature unconcerned with millennia. The brothers’ words kept circling, first in English, clipped and deliberate, and then - later - sliding into the softer cadence of Sindarin.

Julia did not understand, not truly, but the music of it settled into her like a tide. She leaned back, eyes half-closed, listening as Elrohir’s voice deepened in answer to Elladan’s sharper tone, as questions gave way to stories, stories to laments, laments to something close to laughter.

She thought she dreamed, though she was not yet asleep, of halls with high-carved beams, of a river lit by lanterns, of the sound of two boys practicing harmonies until their mother clapped her hands and made them start again. She thought she dreamed of grey ships rocking at a harbour, of voices singing over water, and of a hand - Elrohir’s, warm at her knee - keeping her anchored in the present.

When morning came she would remember none of the words, only the feeling of them: that she had been carried somewhere far away, and yet also held fast here, in this small cottage with its cracked mugs and the leaking roof. The last thing she remembered clearly was the curve of Elladan’s profile against the firelight, his eyes distant, his mouth shaping a word she did not know but somehow trusted.

After that, only warmth, only cadence.

At some point she surfaced again, briefly, half-aware. Strong arms beneath her, the faint shift of breath against her hair. She might have murmured his name, or maybe only dreamed it. Elrohir’s step was careful on the stairs, steady as though the weight of her were nothing at all. The murmur of Sindarin still echoed faintly from the room below, Elladan’s voice low and unbroken.

Julia let her eyes fall shut again. She felt the brush of the quilt being drawn over her, and the warmth of Elrohir’s hand lingering for a heartbeat at her shoulder, as if to make sure she was truly there.

And then nothing at all, until the sunlight on her pillow told her she had slept.

oOo

Chapter Text

oOo

oOo

Chapter 28 – Gossamer in the Hedge

oOo

oOo

13^th September 2025, Whitehaven

She reached for him before she was fully awake.

But the bed was cold beside her. No dog curled at her feet. No breath except her own.

Julia blinked up at the sloped ceiling, the early light crisp on the timber beam. She had no memory of him leaving - only the drift of sleep, the fading murmur of voices from below. The brothers, talking. Talking through the night.

She rose slowly, found a jumper, bare feet silent on the stairs.

The cottage was quiet.

No Calad on the mat. No clatter of a kettle. No smell of tea. The door to the garden stood open. The morning spilled through it - dew-bright and golden, full of birdsong and salt air.

For a heartbeat, she thought it was Elrohir standing there.

Then she saw the stillness.

Elrohir moved like a man who had learned to pass unnoticed. This man – if you could call him that at all - did not move at all.

The figure in the garden stood straight-backed, hands clasped lightly behind him, as if listening to something the world had forgotten. The morning breeze stirred his hair - darker and longer than his brother’s - and utterly untouched by time. He looked neither young nor old. Only unchanging. Like a sculpture the sea might wear down, but never shift.

Elladan.

She stepped outside, the flagstones cool beneath her soles. The garden was lit gold, a low mist threading through the long grass, last night’s rain still glinting on the fence. A wren darted through the rosemary. Somewhere in the hedge, a blackbird scolded her arrival.

He didn’t turn.

“Coffee or tea?” she asked.

A pause.

“Whichever he is going to have,” Elladan said. “He is out, with the dog.”

His voice was deeper than Elrohir’s. Slower. The syllables lingered, as if carved before spoken.

She came to stand beside him, but left a polite space between them. His gaze was fixed on the sea - the silver shimmer of it beyond the fields, the edge of the world touched by light. She glanced at him sidelong. He seemed... different from the night before. Not warmer, exactly - but less brittle. The sharpness that had flickered in his words when they first met had dulled to something steadier, more watchful than wary.

She wondered what Elrohir had told him.

“It’s beautiful this morning,” she said.

“Yes.” A pause. “This land has always been.”

She followed his gaze across the rising fields, the hedgerows, the distant line of the sea under the sky. He was not admiring the view. He was remembering it.

“You’ve been here before,” she said quietly.

He nodded once. “Many times. Though not for years uncounted.” He turned to her. “I wonder why fate brought us all here. Do you know what this region was, before the Changing of the World?”

Julia stilled, but did not reply.

“This was the West of Eriador once – the Shire. Before the water came, the earth shifted, and the hills forgot their names.”

She blinked.

“You could pass through, on your way to the Grey Havens. Rolling hills, small farmsteads, friendly forests…You would have walked west through the Westfarthing to the White Downs, and farther still to Mithlond, to the Gulf of Lhûn, where the coast bends at the far north-west. Where the sea cuts now between this shore and Ireland, there was road and meadow. Now only the sea might recall their ghosts.”

He said it so simply, as if describing a path he’d just walked the day before.

She forgot to breathe. “Whitehaven is… in the Shire?”

He nodded, still looking toward the sea, shining in the morning sun.

“On a clear morning,” he added, quieter, “you could see the Tower Hills. Before the land broke.”

A bird called, sharp and sudden.

Julia’s fingers curled slightly into the sleeves of her jumper.

“And now?” she asked. “What do you see?”

He didn’t answer at once.

“Memory,” he said at last. “And the veil that covers it.”

Julia nodded slowly.

The words hung between them, vast and echoing - too large to hold, too old to answer. Her breath felt shallow. The weight of history pressed inward, until the garden, the dew, the sky - all of it seemed thinner somehow. Less present.

She looked down at her bare feet on the flagstones. At the gossamer threads caught in the rosemary, pale and drifting like spun light. At the edge of her own world, receding just a little.

“Coffee it is, then,” she said softly.

Not because he needed it. But because she did.

Something real. Warm. Grounded. A way to steady herself in the face of nine thousand years of memory.

She stepped back through the open door, the scent of earth and salt clinging to her skin, the echo of his words still unfolding in her chest like a long-held chord.

Behind her, the garden held its golden hush - and Elladan stood still as a statue, as if listening for something only the sea could remember.

oOo

A moment later, the door creaked again.

Elrohir stepped in, Calad trotting at his heels, damp and pleased with himself. The dog shook once, spraying dew across the tiles, then settled by the hearth as if the morning hadn’t happened at all.

Elrohir’s boots were wet from the grass, the cuffs of his jeans spattered with mud. In one hand, he had a paper bag of fresh rolls from the bakery, still steaming faintly.

He looked at Julia and paused.

“Did he say something?” he asked, voice low and already taut.

She shook her head, once.

“No. He just… is, I guess. And remembers. Nine thousand years.”

Her fingers fumbled slightly with the mugs. The world was still here - ceramic and steam and the sound of birds. But something in her chest hadn’t settled yet.

“It was the Shire,” she said. “This place. This garden. This air.”

Elrohir froze.

His breath caught. The hand holding the bag tightened, crumpling one corner.

“Did you know?” she asked him.

He didn’t answer at once.

“Elrohir?” she asked again, not angry. Just trying to steady the world.

“I… chose not to remember it,” he said at last. “I never looked at those maps. The ones placing Middle-earth over Europe.”

He stepped forward, slowly.

“I haven’t been here through the ages, Julia. I didn’t witness it. So - no. I didn’t know.”

He touched her elbow, gently - not pulling, just anchoring.

“You’re shaking.”

“I’m fine,” she said, too quickly. Then added, more honestly: “I will be.”

He didn’t speak. Just took the mug from her hand, set it gently on the counter, and folded his arms around her.

oOo

He didn’t let go of her for a long moment. When he did, he kept one hand at her back, as if the room might tilt again.

“Breakfast,” he said. “Before he decides to test me on my fieldcraft.”

“I made coffee,” she said. “It is… serviceable.”

A breath of a smile. “Brave.”

She poured. He split the rolls and reached for butter. When he set the plates down, a shadow crossed the threshold. Elladan stood at the open door, sea light behind him.

“Come in,” Elrohir said.

Elladan’s eyes slid from his brother to the mugs to Julia’s bare feet on the tiles, then back to Elrohir. He stepped inside without a word. Calad’s ears pricked and, after a cautious pause, the dog padded over. Elladan lowered a hand. Calad accepted the greeting, leaning once against his knee, then settled near the table.

“Coffee,” Julia offered, keeping her voice even. “And breakfast, if you wish.”

“Yes,” Elladan said. “Thank you.”

He took the cup in both hands and looked out at the pale strip of sea while he drank. Something in his face eased, and a long breath left him.

Elrohir broke a roll and set half on Elladan’s plate. “He knows who you are,” he said to Julia, quiet. “I told him.”

Her breath caught, then settled back.

“Beriel’s Julia,” Elladan said, not as a question. “You shared in this age what she could not.” He added, with visible effort, “I was glad to read your words.”

“I typed,” Julia said. “She wrote.”

A lighter silence followed.

“My wife, her name is Tirwen,” Elladan said. “Online she used Tirnë. Sometimes Parmadriel.”

“She was the one who replied first under that alias, wasn’t she?” Julia asked.

“Yes,” Elladan said. His voice softened by a degree. “Then she convinced me to write.” His gaze flicked to Elrohir, then back to Julia. “We have lived together a long time.”

“I am glad you were not alone. I have missed centuries of your life,” Elrohir said. There was relief in the words and something like shame beneath it. “I should have - ”

“No,” Elladan said, too fast. He corrected his tone. “You could not have. It is enough that you are here.”

Julia looked between them and let the line hold without pulling at it.

Elladan took the other half of the roll. The image was almost absurdly ordinary: a millennia-old being at a breakfast table in Sandwith, weighing jam against honey.

“We keep a house in London,” he said, as if she had asked, “and a place above a lake in Switzerland, and a farm in Italy.”

“You are… truly Europeans, then,” Julia said softly. “I envy you.”

His mouth tilted. “It is necessity, not tourism.” He studied her for a heartbeat. “We move when we must. Money buys privacy. Privacy and distance are our safety.”

“Are you safe?” Julia asked.

“No,” Elladan said. “Safer. Unlike you two here.” He looked to Elrohir.

He folded his hands, the gesture precise. “I do not say this to frighten you. Only to ask that you do not mistake comfort for cover. Your house is warm, homely. It is not a fortress.”

“It is mine,” Julia said. There was no apology in it. “And until now, it was safe enough.”

Elladan’s brow lifted, a tiny mark of acknowledgement. “That is clear.”

Elrohir set a mug near his brother’s elbow. “You have questions.”

“Many,” Elladan said. He looked to Julia. “How many mortals know of this?”

“No one,” she said. “Outside this room.”

“And what do you intend to do with what you know?”

“Use it,” she said. “Carefully. To find a path that has been closed so long people call it a story.”

Elladan sat back, eyes narrowing a fraction. “You speak as if the sea will answer you.”

“I speak as if it might answer him,” she said, and then, before he could dismiss it: “It already answered a little at the chapel. Thavron came when the marks began to sing.”

Elladan’s attention sharpened. “Thavron.”

“You know him?” Elrohir asked.

“Let’s say we have met,” Elladan said. “He is older than his laughter suggests.”

Julia’s shoulders eased. “He said something similar about the others.”

A flicker of amusement crossed Elladan’s face and was gone. “He may be the oldest still here.”

He turned to Elrohir. “So…you are building a boat. To try the western way again. After all this time?”

“Not alone, and not blindly,” Elrohir said.

Elladan’s reply was dry. “I have been listening and waiting, trying to find the others, and losing many of them in the ages that have passed. Tirwen does the same, with more patience than I possess. And I understand the cost of leaving a sign on purpose. This trail of yours online is not without risk.”

Julia nodded. Elrohir’s hand found the back of her chair, not quite a touch.

“May I see your notes,” Elladan said, “the ones with the pencilled rhythms and names.”

She hesitated - not from secrecy but from the reflex to guard a tender thing - then nodded and went upstairs. When she returned, she set the notebook on the table and opened it toward him.

He drew it closer with his fingertips and turned pages carefully. Staves sketched by hand. Arrows between fragments. Dates and sources. A line in quick script: leaf carries the song westward; and, bracketed beneath: not melody alone  -  vessel + voice + direction.

After the fourth page Elladan set two fingers on the margin. “Here,” he said, tapping a tiny drawing of a hand. “Where did you find this?”

“Lancaster,” Julia said. “A fragment with a teaching hand. It’s similar to what musicians call a Guidonian hand, used to teach music and rhythm.”

Elladan’s gaze moved from Elrohir back to Julia. “And you realised this is different.”

“Not fully,” she said. “Enough to hear it as a way to hold a tone in a place - to give it resonance and direction. Enough to learn the edges.”

He was quiet. When he spoke, his voice was softer. “Edges are where things begin.”

He turned another page. There were short bars of rhythm, small arrows between syllables, and a rough sketch of a hull cross-section with notes on rib spacing.

“You drew these,” Elladan said.

“Yes,” Julia said. “Trials and guesses. How to help the hull keep a held tone. Materials, curvature, where it rings too fast.”

“You measure before you believe,” he said.

“I try,” she answered.

Elladan leaned back at last. “You are not guessing wildly,” he said. “You know what you do not know and say so. That is rare.”

It was not quite praise. Not recognition yet. But it was a step toward her.

Elrohir let out the breath he had been holding since the door opened. “Stay, Elladan,” he said to his brother. “For the day. For as long as you need.”

“I will stay for the day,” Elladan said. “Tirwen is in London this week. She will want to know.”

“About your brother?” Julia asked.

“About everything,” Elladan said. “But most of all, about you. She is precise.”

Julia’s mouth tilted. “I can live with precise.”

Elladan looked at Elrohir. “You have not done badly.”

“I know,” Elrohir said. “In this regard. In others: not so well.”

Elladan’s mouth tightened. “None of us has.”

He inclined his head to Julia. “Thank you for the coffee.”

“You are welcome,” she said. “There is more.”

“I might actually need it,” he said, a ghost of wryness in his voice. “Cumbria of all places. Perhaps the way home begins here.”

“Stranger things have begun in small places,” Elrohir said, a faint smile there and gone.

Elladan nodded, then rose and stepped out into the garden. To Julia’s surprise, Calad got up to follow, as if the dog had decided that this almost-familiar stranger - whose scent was close to Elrohir’s - should not walk alone.

Julia and Elrohir sat together a moment longer. She reached for his hand and found it already reaching for hers.

“Edges,” she said.

“Edges,” he echoed. The word felt like a beginning.

oOo

Chapter Text

oOo

oOo

Chapter 29 – Lines on the Lofting Floor

oOo

oOo

13^th September 2025, Whitehaven

The light was already thinning when they came back from the yard, boots carrying sawdust and salt into the cottage. Julia set mugs on the table without quite knowing whether they’d drink them. The air held resin and damp wool, and Calad paced as if he too had caught the tension that had been tightening all afternoon.

Elladan stood near the door, coat over his arm, the lamplight sharpening the edges of his face. “I should be going,” he said, voice even. “Tirwen will be wanting to know.”

Julia glanced between him and Elrohir. There had been no sharp words at the boatyard, not exactly. Only the kind of silence that weighed more than speech, the way one brother measured and the other bristled against it.

“You’ll be in touch,” Elrohir said. Not a question.

Elladan inclined his head. “Soon. There are… matters to set in motion.”

Something unsaid stretched between them. Julia felt it as surely as the smell of salt on their clothes, or the rough grit of sawdust under her palm when she leaned against the table. She wanted to ask - what matters, what motion? - but the weight of their gazes kept her still.

Calad gave a low huff and planted himself in the doorway as if to bar the way. Elladan crouched briefly, a hand on the dog’s ruff, and for a heartbeat his expression softened. “You choose well,” he murmured to the animal, before rising again.

Elrohir hadn’t moved from the hearth. His arms were folded, his stance deceptively relaxed. Julia caught the tautness in his shoulders, though - the restraint it took not to reach across those centuries and strike at whatever grievance still burned between them.

“May the road be clear,” he said finally. The words sounded like a farewell practiced too many times.

Elladan’s reply was quiet, clipped. “And may you find it worth the walking.”

He left and shut the door softly behind him.

Julia stood motionless as the car started outside. Headlights swept briefly across the hedge, then faded down the lane. The night closed in again - owl-call far off, the ticking of the kitchen clock, the restless padding of Calad circling before dropping heavily by the fire.

She let out a breath she hadn’t realised she was holding.

Relief first - because the air no longer felt weighted, because the clash of their gazes was no longer pulling the room taut. Then hollowness, because something in that departure seemed to hollow Elrohir out with it. He hadn’t sat down, hadn’t even looked at the untouched mugs on the table.

Julia folded her arms, hugging warmth back into herself. The resin-smell clung stubbornly to her jumper; a wood shaving stuck to her sleeve, ghost of the day’s work. All of it ordinary, and yet none of it felt steady.

“You two,” she said softly, testing the quiet, “you spoke all night, didn’t you?”

Elrohir’s eyes flicked to hers at last. In the firelight they looked darker than usual, depth she could not read.

“We remembered,” he said. Nothing more.

It should have been enough, but it wasn’t, not after the weight of that silence, which pressed at her ears until she thought she could hear the faint roll of the sea itself in it, carrying some old grief that had never ebbed.

She touched the nearest mug, as if the heat of the handle might anchor her. “Well,” she said, forcing a small note of lightness, “he knows where we are now. That has to count for something.”

Elrohir didn’t answer. But his stance eased fractionally, as if her words had tugged one thread loose from whatever knot still held him.

Julia let the silence stand. There would be time for questions later. For now, she only listened - to the crack of the fire settling, to Calad’s long sigh, to the empty sound of tyres long faded down the lane.

oOo

The quiet stretched long after Elladan’s car had gone. Julia gathered the mugs and rinsed them without noticing. Elrohir hadn’t moved from the hearth. Calad lay sprawled, ears twitching, as if even in sleep he waited for something to happen.

Her hands stilled on the dishcloth. The silence was too sharp, full of everything unspoken. A sudden ache pressed in her chest, fierce and unexpected. She needed sound.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” she said, already halfway up the stairs.

The loft hatch creaked in protest. Dust sifted down as she climbed, pushing past boxes she hadn’t touched since moving here. At the back, half-buried under old blankets, she found it: a squat record player with its scuffed lid, and beside it the battered suitcase of vinyl Tom had refused to part with. She carried both down carefully, the weight awkward against her hip.

Elrohir had turned by the time she set them on the table. His brow furrowed, curiosity catching against weariness. “What is that?”

“An antique,” Julia said, brushing dust from the lid. “But it still works.”

She clicked the clasp on the suitcase. Cardboard sleeves, some split at the edges, breathed out the faint must of years. She thumbed through them, titles her hands still knew by touch, though she hadn’t dared look in years. Not since - well. Not since everything.

She chose one without looking too closely. The needle found the groove with a soft crackle, and then the room filled - not with silence stretched taut, but with sound. A guitar line, imperfect but alive, weaving into the warm rasp of a voice.

Elrohir stilled. His head tilted as if listening not just to the notes but to something beneath them. For a heartbeat he seemed almost unfamiliar, caught in that otherness Julia had glimpsed at the chapel and again with Elladan. Then his shoulders eased.

Julia sank onto the sofa. The music settled in her bones, old ache mixing with new breath. She risked a glance at him.

He was watching the record spin, but his voice, when it came, was softer. “Your songs turn in circles. Ours were always lines.”

The phrasing puzzled her. She wanted to ask, but something in his face - the half-turned profile, the weight in his gaze - kept her quiet. Instead she let the music play, the hiss and crackle almost as steadying as the notes themselves.

For the first time since the door had closed behind Elladan, the air felt less hollow.

oOo

The music from the record spun on, simple chords and voice. Elrohir closed his eyes. It was never the words he heard first. It was the timbre, the rise and fall that threaded through silence and made it bearable.

It had always been songs that held them.

A memory rose - his mother at the harp, his father with a book open but forgotten at his side, Elladan leaning against the frame of the window. Elrohir himself with a flute, shy but certain under her gaze. One voice would start, then another, weaving until the air in Rivendell’s hall seemed to glow. His mother’s laughter when they faltered, his father’s low baritone anchoring them all. That was home.

The scene shifted, as memories often did, into the Halls of Fire. Lanterns high, shadows long across carved pillars. The night before the Fellowship’s departure, when the Hall was crowded with voices - hobbits humming under their breath, dwarves tapping time with their boots, Men keeping to themselves until the rhythm drew them in. He remembered looking across the firelight at Aragorn: still Strider to most of them then, but already carrying the weight of kingship. And in that moment, even with the shadow looming, music had bound them as tightly as oaths.

Another pearl surfaced - Minas Tirith, high and white beneath the banners. Beriel with her head thrown back in laughter as children danced at her feet, small hands tugging at hers until she joined them. Aragorn beside her, his arm brushing hers as they moved together to the rhythm. Elrohir had played then too, a borrowed fiddle awkward in his hands, but it hadn’t mattered. The hall had been full of light, songs spilling out into the city below. For a time, joy had seemed possible, unshadowed.

He let the images fade, strung together only by the thread of sound. Pearls on a cord that had stretched across centuries, across loss, grief and exile.

The record hissed softly, the singer’s voice sinking into silence. Elrohir opened his eyes again. Julia was curled on the sofa, her chin tucked against her knees, listening without speaking.

And in that quiet, he knew it was not memory alone that held him now.

oOo

The record clicked, the arm lifting with a faint mechanical sigh. Julia let her chin rest against her knees a moment longer. Elrohir’s eyes were back on the room now, but she had seen where they’d gone - far beyond these walls, into some hall or memory she couldn’t touch. She didn’t ask.

The phone rang.

She jumped, nearly knocking the cushion from her lap. The sound was jarring after the hush, shrill against the fading notes. Elrohir flinched too, though he covered it quickly, his gaze flicking toward the handset as if it were a threat.

Julia crossed to the counter and snatched it up. “Hello?”

A woman’s voice answered, low and careful, with the faint burr of the southwest. She gave her name, hesitated, then added her husband’s as if to anchor herself. They had heard - through channels Julia didn’t quite catch - that there was something happening in Whitehaven. Something they ought to see. If it wasn’t too late. If they might still be welcome.

Julia’s pen found the corner of a scrap envelope, scribbling names before she quite registered them.

“Yes,” she heard herself say. “Yes, of course. Next weekend?”

Relief threaded the woman’s voice. They would come. It was a long drive, but they were used to distance.

When the line went dead, Julia set the receiver down slowly. The names blurred a little on the paper under her hand.

Elrohir was watching her from by the hearth. “More,” he said simply. Not a question, not surprise. Just acknowledgment.

She nodded. “From Devon. A couple. They want to come next weekend.”

His mouth curved, not quite a smile, not quite grim. “The bungalow will not be empty for long.”

“Well, they want to come for a visit first.”

Julia folded the envelope into her notebook. Her fingers trembled slightly. The room felt different again - no longer hollow, but waiting.

Elrohir watched her. She hadn’t noticed the way her hand trembled. He had.

“They’ll need the bungalow,” he said.

Julia looked up. “So?”

“So I shouldn’t be there.”

She blinked. “What do you mean?”

“I’ll stay here,” he said simply.

For a moment she just stared at him, as if she hadn’t heard right. The fire cracked, Calad’s tail thumped once against the floorboards.

“Just like that?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She set the notebook down, crossed her arms. “You make it sound like you’re trading bunks in a barracks. Not exactly the most romantic move-in speech.”

He almost smiled at the sharpness in her tone. “I am moving here.” His eyes lifted to hers, steady. “If you will have me.”

For a moment she simply stared at him. The fire snapped in the grate. Calad shifted with a sigh.

“Elrohir - ” she began. Then stopped, pressing her lips together. “Don’t dress it up as logistics. Not entirely.”

He felt the truth of that strike him, low and unguarded. “It is both,” he admitted. “A haven must remain open. But…” His gaze flicked to the record player, the still-spinning disc. “If I could choose, it would be here.”

Her arms dropped slowly to her sides. She exhaled, the sound halfway between resignation and relief. “Well. That’s one way to tell a woman you’re moving in.”

He let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. A ghost of wryness touched his mouth. “I have little practice in such matters.”

She shook her head, though her eyes softened. “You’re not here because the sofa’s free space, then.”

“No.” The word was rough, certain. “I am here because this is already home.”

Julia looked away first, fiddling with the stack of records as if to busy her hands. But he caught the curve of her mouth, the faintest thread of colour in her cheeks.

Calad thumped his tail once against the rug, as if declaring the matter settled.

oOo

Sunday broke damp and bright. Low clouds drifted over the harbour, their bellies lit by a pale sun, and gulls wheeled above the quay with their usual racket. Julia pulled her hood tighter against the breeze as she followed Elrohir down the worn path. Calad ran ahead, nose to the ground, tail up like a flag.

The boatyard was quiet - only the smell of wood shavings and tar lingering in the air, the sound of halyards clinking against masts in the marina below. Julia set her backpack down and joined him by the half-framed hull.

Elrohir stood with a length of chalk line in his hands, studying the lofting floor. He looked as though he hadn’t slept, but the sharp edges in him seemed muted somehow.

“Elladan was right,” he muttered at last.

Julia arched a brow. “Pardon?”

He nodded toward the curved marks. “The angle. It was off. By a hair, but off. He saw it at once.” His mouth tightened, as if the words themselves were sour..

Julia bit back a smile. “So you’re saying your brother knows what he’s talking about?”

His eyes flicked up to hers, dark with dry humour. “I despise saying it. But yes.”

She crouched beside him, balancing on the balls of her feet as he set the line across the boards. He pressed the chalk taut; she tapped it down, leaving a fine blue stripe behind. Her fingers smudged white, the dust catching on her sleeve.

The work settled them. Mark, measure, check again. Julia held timbers steady while he planed their edges. Calad wandered in and out of the slip, carrying stray bits of wood like trophies. Hours passed in the rhythm of saw and rasp, chalk and pencil.

By midday, Julia leaned back against a frame, blowing a strand of hair out of her eyes. “There. Doesn’t look half bad.”

Elrohir stood, rolling his shoulders, the plane still in his hand. He surveyed the curve of the hull, the lines set straighter now. His jaw tightened - then eased. “It will hold.”

“Elladan’s advice helped, then?” Julia teased.

His look was flat. “Once in a century he is correct.”

Julia laughed, the sound startling even herself. It drew the ghost of a smile from him, quick as it came.

By the time they packed up, light was slanting across the harbour, burnishing the water to copper. Julia’s arms ached pleasantly from the labour. She had chalk dust in her hair, tar under her nails, and for once she didn’t mind.

They went to get fish and chips from the corner chippy. By the time they returned, Elrohir appeared to be almost impatient. “Let’s try it now.” Julia hesitated, a chip raised halfway to her mouth. “Now?” “Well, we can’t do it when everyone else is here, can we?”

Julia turned around and looked at the boat.

She lay quiet on her frame, ribs rising like a half-grown creature waiting for breath. The slipway below was dark, the tide murmuring beyond, but here in the yard only oak and chalk and rope surrounded them. A lantern threw soft light over the curve of the keel.

Julia got up, her dinner forgotten, and let her hand rest on the nearest plank. The wood was cool, faintly rough beneath her palm. “It isn’t even in the water,” she said, almost apologetic.

“That doesn’t matter,” Elrohir replied. His voice was low, steady. “The Song runs deeper than tides. Try.”

She hesitated, suddenly aware of how foolish she might sound. Then she drew a breath and let out a hum, quiet at first, a line that lived more in her chest than in the air.

The wood took nothing. Her voice wavered. She glanced back at him, but he only nodded, patient, urging her on without words.

So she steadied herself and tried again. This time she pressed her palm differently against the frame, not harder, but seeking more than knowing, feeling the grain beneath her skin, searching for resonance. She let the tone linger, round and low, as if she could pour it into the wood itself.

Something shifted. Not in the air around her, but under her hand  -  a faint tremor, almost imagined, like a string quivering in sympathy.

Her breath caught. She held the note, heart thudding, and the tremor deepened into a subtle resonance that seemed to move through the frame itself. For an instant she thought she could hear it echo back, not louder, only steadier, as if the wood had agreed.

Then it was gone.

Julia broke off, startled. “Did you - ”

“Yes.” Elrohir’s answer came too quickly, too certain. His eyes were on the hull, but the lines of his face were taut, struck through with something fierce.

She ran her fingers along the plank, searching for the vibration again, but there was only silence and the ordinary feel of wood. Her voice faltered when she tried to hum once more. Nothing stirred.

“It could have been my imagination,” she whispered. “Like holding a glass and thinking it rings.”

“No.” His gaze found hers. “It was there. Only faint, but there.”

The certainty in his tone unnerved her more than doubt would have. She looked back at the frame, ribs reaching into the lantern glow like the bones of a living thing not yet clothed in skin.

For a moment she wanted to try again. To make it answer. But her throat felt tight, her hands clammy. She pressed her lips together and let the silence stand.

Elrohir stepped closer, not touching her, only close enough that she could feel his presence beside her, steady as the timber beneath them. “It begins,” he said softly.

Julia shivered. She didn’t know whether it was from the night air or from the truth in his voice.

They doused the lantern and left the hull to her silence, walking back up the path together. Calad bounded ahead, tail a pale flicker in the dark. Neither spoke, but Julia carried the resonance in her palm all the way home.

oOo

Chapter Text

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oOo

Chapter 30 – A Fire Made From Driftwood

oOo

oOo

19^th September 2025, Whitehaven

The sharp scent of onion clung to his fingers as Elrohir sliced into the last one, the chopping board littered with green and red from the salad. The knock came just then, sharp against the salt-stained door.

Calad shot up from his place by the sofa, tail thumping, then launched himself at the entrance with a volley of barks.

Elrohir was already moving, wiping his hands on a tea towel, expression unreadable but alert. He opened the door, and the dog’s noise shifted at once into a whine of welcome, tail wagging as if recognising kin.

Two figures stood in the porch light. The woman kept the car keys dangling from her hand, hair wind-tangled, face browned by weather. Beside her, a man with skin the shade of old bronze adjusted his glasses, his arms full of bags he looked in danger of dropping.

“Meren,” Elrohir said, inclining his head. His voice softened a fraction. “Elfaron.”

Meren’s grip was firm when she clasped his hand, her gaze dropping to his callused palms as if she were weighing timbers. One eyebrow lifted, but she said nothing.

Elfaron offered Julia a genial smile as he wrestled a rucksack off his shoulder. “Forgive the hour. Traffic on the M6 was abysmal. One never thinks half the country is heading north until one is stuck behind them.” He blinked at the bag in his hands, then frowned, surprised to find it there. “Ehm…this one is yours, isn’t it?” he said, turning to his wife.

Meren sighed, took the bag without comment, and set it down neatly against the wall.

Inside, Thavron shifted from his post by the window. His pale eyes caught the lamplight, half-shadowed, but there was warmth in his voice when he greeted them. Clearly, these three had shared many meetings before. Julia caught the thread of it - Thavron had been the one to tell them about Elrohir, to nudge them northward.

Together, the new arrivals moved with an ease that felt practiced, wordless in rhythm, as though tide and moon had drawn them into step long ago. Julia, watching from the kitchen doorway, saw yet another face of Elvendom and realised at last that they were not a single mould - not all pale, not all fair-haired and remote. These two, appearing to be in their fifties, carried themselves with the fluidity of much younger people, and though Meren was wearing a bandana and Elfaron had his shoulder long hair in a loose ponytail that covered his ears, Julia thought she could just make out the shape of their ears underneath it. 

They slipped, without thinking, into Elvish - the cadence quick and melodic, Julia suspected it was Sindarin - until Elrohir said something quiet, a reminder. At that, they turned and smiled at Julia, who could only guess at the words.

Elladan’s wary sharpness was still fresh in memory, and Thavron’s solitary air weighed in the room, yet these two stood together in a different harmony.

Elfaron looked up, eyes bright despite the long drive. “Clearer skies here than in Devon,” he remarked, as if it were the most natural greeting. “I’d forgotten how sharp the stars can be once you’re past the city glow.”

Meren gave a small nod, her voice low. “We made it. That’s what matters.”

Julia found herself smiling. Taciturn and abstract, sea and sky - yet already a balance the bungalow hadn’t known it needed.

oOo

The bungalow smelled of baked fish and buttered crust. Elrohir had set the dish on the table with the same neat precision he gave to his tools, though the edges of the pastry had cracked in one corner. Meren only gave it a short nod of approval as she took her seat, as if a decent fish pie were the least one could expect.

Calad settled under the table, content now that the strangers had been folded into the circle.

For a while there was only the sound of cutlery, the quiet clink of glasses. Then Elfaron leaned back, dark eyes catching the lamplight, and said, “It still puzzles me - after all this time. Why now? Why here?”

Thavron, hunched in his corner, tilted his head. “The marks sang, faintly, for the first time.”

Elfaron’s gaze shifted, not to Elrohir but to Julia. A moment’s weighing, thoughtful rather than sharp. Meren, too, glanced at her - measuring, the way she had earlier weighed Elrohir’s hands.

Julia felt the heat rise in her face. “It wasn’t me,” she began, too quickly.

Elrohir set down his glass, voice low. “It began when she was near.”

Silence settled briefly, broken only by the crackle of the stove.

Meren cleared her throat. “Then we’d best make sure the tide keeps her close.” She turned back to Elrohir, practical again. “What’s the boat’s beam? And what draught are you aiming for?”

The conversation shifted, steadier ground. Elrohir answered, still faintly defensive, while Meren pressed with the kind of questions only someone who knew the sea in her bones would ask: how the hull would ride in crosscurrents, whether the harbour mouth silted after autumn storms.

Elfaron, meanwhile, had drifted into abstraction, hands sketching invisible arcs above the table. “You’ll want to think of the sky as well as the tide. The stars still tell truer than compasses, if you know how to read them. Even your modern GPS bows to them in the end.” His smile was wry. “I spend half my time convincing students that the heavens aren’t just for poets.”

Julia found herself smiling despite the weight of it all. Meren’s steady pragmatism anchored her; Elfaron’s humour lifted the air. Together, their presence felt oddly reassuring, as if the circle had been incomplete until now.

Thavron finally spoke again, his voice soft but cutting across the warmth like a knife through cloth. “Signs only stir when the sea remembers. She…”, his eyes flicked toward Julia “…is not memory. She is something else.”

No one answered at once. Julia set down her fork, heart thudding, and Elrohir’s gaze found hers across the table - unreadable, steady, but there.

oOo

The first edge of tension eased with the second glass of wine. Elfaron had abandoned formality entirely, leaning back in his chair, waving his fork as he launched into a ramble about a lecture gone awry.

“I swear, half of them had never seen the night sky outside a planetarium dome. I dimmed the lights and tried to show them Orion, and one bright lad asked why the projector had left a gap.” He spread his hands, dark eyes gleaming with amusement. “The gap, of course, being the entire Milky Way.”

Julia laughed, surprised by how easily the sound came.

Meren only shook her head. “Your students can’t tell sky from ceiling, and mine can’t tell a herring from a mackerel unless the barcode’s printed on it. Between us, it’s a wonder the world still floats.”

Elrohir’s mouth tugged at one corner - almost a smile. “And yet the sea has not sunk you yet.”

“Give her time,” Meren returned dryly. “She’s patient.”

For a while, the table was full of such sparring, small stories traded across the lamplight. Even Thavron allowed himself a brief chuckle at Elfaron’s grumbling about “app-dependent youth,” though his pale eyes remained watchful.

Later, when the plates had been pushed aside and only the dregs of wine remained, Elrohir’s voice shifted. “Tell me - do you know of any still here who have made the crossing? I mean the other way. From the West.”

The room hushed. Elfaron’s absent hand stilled on the stem of his glass; Meren’s brow furrowed.

“It would mean they came east from Valinor itself,” Meren said slowly, her tone cautious. “Those were few. Most returned long ago.”

Elfaron leaned forward, thoughtful now rather than genial. “There were whispers, of course. A singer on a northern coast who knew words none could teach her. A harpist in the east who vanished before anyone could ask her name. But names…?” He shook his head. “No. None certain.”

Thavron’s voice was low, almost reluctant. “Some say Maglor has never left. If he yet lingers, still walking the shores he is your kin, Elrohir.”

The name struck like a dropped stone. Julia didn’t know the full weight, but she felt the ripple in Elrohir nonetheless - the silence that followed, the way his hands tightened on the empty glass.

Meren broke it with a shrug, practical as ever. “Whoever they are, if they remain, they’ve learned to stay hidden. We’ll not find them by waiting.”

Julia looked around the table - sea, sky, memory, loss - and thought again how strange, how human, how varied they were. Not one mould, not one story.

oOo

The morning broke clear and bright, the equinox sun sharpening every edge of sea and sky. Julia pulled her hood up against the breeze as they made their way down the hill, Calad trotting ahead, nose to the ground, tail a white flag in the light.

The boatyard was quiet except for the faint clink of halyards in the marina. The half-risen frame waited on the slip, ribs pale against the dark water.

Meren went straight to it. She laid her hand along a timber, knuckles brushing the grain, then crouched to run her eye along the curve of the keel. She said nothing at first. At last, she grunted softly. “Good lines. She’ll carry herself well.”

Elrohir’s shoulders eased a fraction, though he tried not to show it.

“She’ll only forgive so much, though,” Meren added, rising. “A squall will test every join. But you know that.”

A flicker passed across his face - not quite irritation, not quite agreement - and he bent to check a clamp as if to end the exchange.

Elfaron had already drifted toward Julia, hands in his coat pockets, gaze tilted skyward. “Strange to think,” he mused, “you’ll be chasing a road that’s written in water and in light. Stars still serve, if one knows how to read them. I could lend you a sextant. Most of my students don’t even know which end to hold.” He smiled faintly, half-joking, half-serious.

Julia laughed under her breath. “I wouldn’t know either.”

“I am sure you’ll be a quicker learner than most.” He gestured at her notebook. “May I?”

They found a makeshift seat on an upturned crate while the others set to work. Thavron and Elrohir wrestled with steaming clamps; Meren steadied a spar with quiet efficiency.

Elfaron flipped gently through Julia’s pages, pausing at the notations. “You see here? This breath mark - it isn’t just scribal flourish. It’s a pattern. Repetition, like a held drone. You’ve written it without realising.”

Julia frowned, leaning in. “I thought it was just… a quirk.”

He shook his head, dark eyes keen despite his mildness. “No. It’s structure. If you keep it steady, the rest might align around it. Like a star you fix on when the horizon is lost.”

Julia traced the line with her finger, a shiver of recognition stirring in her chest. For the first time, the scattered fragments looked like something that could hold.

Behind them, the sound of mallet on timber rang out, the smell of resin drifting on the air. Calad nosed at shavings in the dust, content among the work and voices.

And Julia thought, not for the first time, that the harbour was beginning to sound less like solitude, and more like a chorus just waiting to gather.

oOo

The wind dropped with the dusk, leaving the air sharp and still. They carried lanterns down a narrow path, the sea whispering just beyond the dunes. Elrohir slung a canvas bag over one shoulder - bread wrapped in cloth, a canteen of pumpkin soup still warm from the stove - while Julia balanced a flask of mulled wine. The scent of cloves and orange clung to the air.

They found a hollow in the sand where the rocks cut the wind. Calad bounded ahead, nose deep in seaweed, before circling back to curl by the fire Elrohir coaxed from driftwood. The flames licked high, sparks rising into the deepening dark.

Elfaron held his cup up toward the horizon, where the first stars pricked through the velvet sky. “I tried, once, to teach a class how to find their bearings without a phone. ‘Pick a star,’ I told them. Half of them couldn’t tell north from south. One bright boy asked if there was an app that would do the pointing for him.” He shook his head, smiling. “And these are meant to be our explorers of tomorrow.”

Julia laughed softly. Even Thavron’s mouth twitched.

Meren sipped her wine, gaze fixed on the surf. “My neighbours think I’m mad,” she said. “Still fishing off the coast in a boat you have to mend every winter. They bring in their catches with machines and ice-chests. I bring mine in with salt on my face and rope burns on my hands.” She shrugged. “The sea doesn’t care for convenience. She only cares for respect.”

The fire crackled. The waves kept their rhythm. Slowly, voices shifted into older stories.

Elfaron spoke of Lothlórien, of silver nights under the mallorn trees. Meren added her own memories - the silence after Galadriel sailed, the way the forest grew thin without song. “When we left, it was not for the West,” she said. “We followed the gulls. Ended on the coast.”

Elrohir looked up, startled. “Where?”

“South of Dol Amroth,” she said. “Small villages, tucked against the cliffs. We stayed there for a long while.”

Something flickered in his expression. “I was there too. With Ylva. With the children.”

For a moment the fire seemed to burn lower. Then Meren’s hand brushed his briefly, steady, wordless recognition.

Thavron shifted, his voice slow, half reluctant. “After Beleriand drowned, I walked east. Greenwood, they called it then. Before it was shadowed. I stayed when it became Mirkwood. Long ages. Through wars, through kings, through ruin. I remained until the trees no longer knew me.” His pale eyes turned toward the sea. “I came west only when silence grew heavier than company.”

Julia felt her chest tighten. Each of them carried centuries like stones in their pockets, worn but unforgotten. Here, on this strip of dark sand, she was the only one who could measure her grief in years, not millennia. Yet for the first time, she didn’t feel diminished by it.

The night deepened. When the fire burned low, they sang. Not loudly, not for show, but in the way one breathes - unforced, woven together, voices in a tongue Julia didn’t know but felt nonetheless. The sea hushed, as if listening.

She held the sound close, aware of its fragility, its persistence. A weight, yes - but also a proof: they had all made it this far, and for this night at least, they were not alone.

oOo

Mist lay low over the harbour the next morning, softening the lines of masts and rooftops. Julia pulled her jumper tighter as Calad nosed impatiently at the door. When she opened it, he bounded straight to Meren, pressing his muzzle into her hand until she laughed and clipped on the lead.

“I think he’s chosen me,” she said, glancing back at Julia. “One last walk, before we go.”

They followed the worn path down to the water, Calad trotting between them, paws dark with sand by the time they turned back. The tide was easing out, gulls wheeling noisily above the quay.

At the bungalow, bags were already stacked by the car. Elfaron wrestled a map into the glove compartment, muttering about the drive ahead. “Seven hours back to Devon, if the M6 isn’t determined to test us again. Perhaps next time I’ll just bring my students - turn them into deckhands. Let them see what stars look like without a ceiling in the way.”

Meren shook her head at him, fond despite herself, and pressed Julia’s hand briefly before climbing into the driver’s seat.

Julia stood at the edge of the lane, watching the car roll away into the mist until the taillights vanished. Relief pressed through her - proof that others were still here, that Elrohir’s long wait had not been in vain. But underneath it was something heavier, a new weight: they would come back. They were depending on her.

Elrohir came to stand beside her, his gaze fixed on the empty road. For a long time he said nothing. Then, very quietly, “For the first time, it feels like more than hope.”

Chapter Text

oOo

Chapter 31 – Steam in the Grain

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Mid–late October 2025, Whitehaven

By mid-October, events seemed to tumble faster than Elrohir could follow. For centuries there had been nothing, no one - only his own footsteps, his own signs left in ruins and chapels, hope fraying into despair. Now, within six weeks, the silence had broken. His brother had returned with his wife, Tirwen, and together they had taken a long-let cottage in St Bees, five miles down the coast, where the red sandstone cliffs leaned out over the tide and a Norman church kept watch above the railway line. It was a place that looked outward to sea and inward to itself - too visible, Elrohir thought, for a pair who had once made secrecy their craft.

Elladan’s arrival had already caused a stir. At the yard, Pat and the others had gasped at the resemblance. “Now, there’s two of you, Oliver! Why did you never tell us you had a brother?” They had laughed, but Elrohir had felt the ground shift beneath him. Two of Elrond’s sons, side by side, in a Cumbrian boatyard. After so many years of absence, it was reckless and impossible - and yet here they were. Every joke sharpened the risk. He kept half expecting someone to look twice, to notice too much.

He remembered that first meeting with his brother’s wife. Tirwen had stepped forward without hesitation, hair like flame, hand offered as if she had always known him. Her laugh came fast, carrying a trace of Greenwood cadence still audible after all these centuries, and her gestures were expansive, unselfconscious - she seemed to take up the whole doorway. Behind outsized glasses she didn’t even need, her eyes flicked between him and Julia with brisk appraisal. And then she laughed outright, not wary, not awed - just amused, and entirely herself.

Julia and Tirwen had fallen into conversation almost at once, discovering in minutes what might have taken others years. They spoke the same language of margins and catalogues, of fragments pieced together until pattern emerged. For Julia it was manuscripts; for Tirwen, field notes, archives, and the odd corners of the internet. They delighted in each other’s systems and immediately began comparing Tolkien’s cadences with Julia’s scraps of notation. Elrohir had stood at the edge of the kitchen that evening, half-listening, and thought: she has an ally now.

Their shorthand had sprung up so fast it startled him. One moment Julia was explaining her system of colour-coding manuscript fragments; the next, Tirwen was countering with a story about a medieval field diary so chaotic it required three separate indices. Julia laughed as if they’d shared years of inside jokes. “So you’d file Tolkien’s Namárië under poetic cadence?” Tirwen teased, and Julia shot back, “Only if you cross-reference the breath-count.”

From there it only escalated. Tirwen declared herself Greenwood-born and “a pain in the bum to Thranduil,” with the air of someone who wore the label proudly. Over takeaway one evening she confessed she was the one who had urged Legolas to press for Rivendell before the quest of the Ring - and that her king had never forgiven her. She devoured nachos with unapologetic gusto, teased Elladan without mercy, and somehow managed to turn Julia’s kitchen table into an impromptu research desk.

Elrohir could not decide whether to be grateful or unsettled. Julia had someone who understood her rhythms, someone who would encourage her to dig deeper into the fragments of Song she carried. Relief, yes - but unease too, because allies did not always know when to stop.

At the yard, the first frames were steamed and bent into place - hot, physical days that left the air sharp with resin and larch-scented vapour. The boiler hissed, clouding the slipway in a damp fog that clung to hair and skin. Larch ribs creaked as they yielded to the bending heat, each one a contest between timber and iron. A misstep meant scalded hands or a frame split down the grain.

Elrohir tightened a clamp against the swollen curve of the first rib, shoulders straining until the wood gave with a groan. Julia steadied the line from the other side, hair plastered damp against her temple, cheeks pink with steam. For a moment their hands brushed, sap-sticky, and she grinned across the ribcage of timbers.

“Messier than your neat drawings,” she teased, breathless.

He almost laughed with her. Almost. But Elladan was watching.

His brother prowled the edges of the slipway, ink-stained ledger tucked under one arm, the air of command wrapped about him like armour. Even his silence felt like inspection. Elrohir knew that posture - he had seen it over campfires and muster rolls, when Elladan’s word could mean survival. Here, in a Cumbrian boatyard, it felt no less heavy.

“Not a finger out of place,” Elladan said too lightly, eyes on the clamp.

“Noldor and their ledgers,” Thavron muttered back, low enough to sound like gravel, but not so low it couldn’t be heard. His discontent simmered at the edges, echoing something restless in Elrohir’s own bones.

Elladan ignored him, but the set of his shoulders sharpened.

On a stack of timber, Tirwen swung her legs, notebook open on her knees, red hair curling in the damp. “You’ve got the stance of a man about to deliver a sermon,” she called to her husband. “Should I take notes in shorthand?”

Elladan’s sigh was inaudible under the hiss of vapour. Julia smothered a laugh, eyes bright, and returned to her task with renewed focus.

Still, the boat rose. Frame by frame, larch bending to fire and water, iron and hand. Each rib fixed in place felt like the heartbeat of something larger-something that might, one day, carry them beyond this harbour.

The boatyard had become a rhythm of its own - damp fog, clamps, mallets, the hiss of water on hot timber. Elrohir welcomed the work. It drowned thought, gave his hands something to answer instead of silence.

Elladan, however, seemed to think the yard his command tent. He kept accounts in his neat, slanted script, set schedules, and even wrote down what tasks each of them should do on a given day. That morning, he had pinned a sheet of paper to the door, a list as crisp as a muster roll.

Julia wiped her hands on a rag and glanced at the fresh sheet. “Supplies. Errands. Really?”

Elladan didn’t look up. “It plays to your strengths. No one questions you in town, and the accounts must be kept precise.”

Her jaw tightened. The words landed too close to what she had heard after the accident - offers of “safe” tasks, things that kept her busy but away from real work. She had accepted them then, because she had no choice. Not now. “I can do more than buy nails and make tea. You’ve seen me work a plank.”

“I have,” Elladan said evenly, as if granting her the point. “But your voice is rarer than your hands. Better not to exhaust what is irreplaceable.”

The words were polite, the dismissal total.

Julia’s chin lifted. “You don’t get to decide where I’m useful.”

For a heartbeat the slipway hushed. Steam whispered from the boiler; a gull wheeled overhead. Even the timber seemed to wait.

Thavron chuckled low, muttering something about Noldorian arrogance.

Elladan’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t turn. He marked another line in his ledger, deliberate and neat, as if the page alone deserved his attention.

Elrohir straightened from the clamp, resin tacky on his palms. He could have stayed quiet, as he had so many times before when Elladan’s authority pressed down like armour. But Julia’s voice still rang in his ears, fierce against dismissal, and the knot coiled too tight to ignore.

“She’s right,” he said, voice sharp. “If you think Julia shouldn’t be on the frames, you’re blind. And if you think you can command us like this is still some company of Dúnedain rangers, you’re worse than blind.”

Elladan’s gaze snapped to him, sharp as a drawn blade. “Order keeps us alive.”

“No,” Elrohir shot back. “Trust does. And if you can’t tell the difference, then you’ll drive this into the ground before it ever leaves the harbour.”

Silence stretched. The hiss of steam sounded suddenly like threat.

From her perch on the sawhorse, Tirwen tapped the end of her pencil against her notebook. “Well,” she said cheerfully, “that’s one way to steam the frames.” Her glance flicked to Julia, then back to her husband. “Try not to snap the keel before we’ve even set it.”

Julia caught Elrohir’s eye across the ribs. There was heat there - anger still simmering - but also something calmer, a flash of thanks. Elladan’s ledger shut with a crack, but he said nothing. The work resumed, tighter now, the air still charged.

The October light was pale, washed thin by sea-mist. They had taken a pause from the yard: Tirwen with her notebook, Thavron cross-legged on the harbour wall like some wayward crow, Julia beside them with pages spread across her knees. In the background, Elladan and Elrohir worked the long lengths of larch, sawing and planing, though their ears were never far from the voices carrying on the still air. The harbour smelled of tar and salt; gulls wheeled overhead, their cries falling sharp into the hush.

Tirwen tapped a line of notation Julia had jotted. “See here? You’ve written it as melody. But there’s something beneath - the count of breath. Like a tide under the wave. You’ve been carrying both without naming them.”

Julia frowned, studying her own scrawl. The words unsettled her. She hadn’t meant to write anything but fragments, and yet here Tirwen was, reading a rhythm Julia had never named. “So it isn’t just the tune.”

“No.” Tirwen looked up, eyes bright behind her absurdly large glasses. “There’s an undercurrent. Someone must hold it while the melody moves above.”

Julia set the paper aside, palms faintly damp. She hadn’t sung properly in years, and even now her throat tightened at the thought of being heard. Still -s he drew a breath. “Alright. Try this with me. A ground note - simple, steady. Don’t follow me up, just stay where I set it.”

She gave the pitch, low and quiet. Tirwen joined easily, a clean line beneath; Thavron rumbled along somewhere near the right place, his tone rough but serviceable. For a moment their voices blended in the damp air, three threads twined.

Nothing stirred. The water lay flat, the half-built hull silent in its cradle.

Tirwen pulled a face at Thavron. “You slid.”

“I did not,” he grunted. “Nogrod’s choirs were rougher.”

Elladan’s voice carried from the slip, cool as a knife. “If mortal sound alone could wake the sea, we would have crossed centuries ago.”

The words cut. Elrohir’s hand tightened on the plane, jaw aching. “You…” he began, too sharp, too ready to snap.

Julia shot him a warning glance. Then she closed her eyes and drew another breath, deeper this time. “Again,” she said, her voice steady.

She began low, the sound not a hum but a true note - round, anchored, her chest and throat open as if she had remembered how to sing, not just test. Tirwen caught it at once, harmony slipping under the line, and the two voices met, fused, became more than either alone. Julia felt it vibrate through her ribs, a current in the bones, and held it.

The air shifted. A creak whispered through the larch frames; a faint shimmer ran across the water in the slip, as if the tide had drawn a sudden breath. The gulls went silent for a beat.

Elladan’s head snapped up. He went still, eyes narrowing, ledger forgotten at his side. Thavron, suddenly solemn, shut his mouth and listened.

Elrohir felt the breath leave him in a rush. Awe, yes - but threaded with terror. If it was Julia who woke the water, Julia who carried that undercurrent, then she would not stand aside when the boat was ready. She would try to go with them. And the sea did not forgive. It would take her, as it had taken so many before.

The thought opened like a wound, and memory spilled through…

Dol Amroth, year 176, Fourth Age

Dol Amroth, sunlight silvering the waves. The tide was running out, leaving lace on the sand. Two boys darted at his side, twin shadows quick in the surf. Estel, the older twin, had already filled his pockets with shells; Elenion leapt over each foam-line as if the sea were a game that could be won. Salt tangled their dark hair, laughter carried on the wind.

“Ada, why did Frodo sail?” Estel asked suddenly, serious beneath his bright eyes. “He was only a hobbit.”

“Because his wounds were deeper than the world could heal,” Elrohir told them. “And because those who rule the West gave him leave. That matters.”

Elenion frowned at the horizon. “If another mortal tried… could they go too? Could we?”

He faltered then, the surf curling white around their ankles. It would have been so easy to give comfort. But their eyes were on him, trusting, waiting for truth.

“Long ago,” he said slowly, “the world was made round. The Undying Lands were bent away, hidden from the paths of Men. Only one road still reaches them - the Straight Road. It opens only when the Valar permit it. Without that leave, a mortal ship finds only sea. No door, no light. Just storms, thirst, and the circle of the waters, until the end.”

Estel’s brow furrowed. “But Frodo was mortal.”

“Yes,” Elrohir answered softly. “And Bilbo. They were shown a mercy. A gift, rare and costly, given because their pain was more than this world could bear. Gimli and Samwise too, for love’s sake. But those were not rules. They were graces. Mercies. And mercy cannot be demanded.”

Elenion’s voice was smaller now. “If we sang very well, would the sea open?”

He crouched to meet their gaze, one hand on each thin shoulder. “Song can call many things, my stars. But the Ban on Men was set for a reason. Pride once tried to storm the West, and it broke a kingdom. The sea remembers. It does not forgive trespass. If you set out without leave, you would not find a road - only hunger, or storms, or silence. That is what I fear most.”

The boys were quiet, staring at the surf. A cormorant skimmed low across the glittering water.

“So there’s no way?” Estel whispered. “Not ever?”

“There is always a way for mercy,” Elrohir said at last, and the words felt heavy as he spoke them. “But mercy is not owed. It is given, or it is not.”

They nodded because they trusted him, and because children accept limits until they learn how sharp they are. He walked them back up the beach, their chatter tumbling back into shells and gulls, but the question stayed.

Later, when the house was quiet, Ylva laid her hand on his chest. “You did right,” she murmured. “Hope should not be fed on false maps.”

He held her in the dark and thought of Estel’s frown, of Elenion’s leap through the foam. How easily longing becomes presumption. How quickly love might grow into the kind of daring the sea never bargains with.

Now, on the slip in Whitehaven, the memory burned raw. If Julia woke the water, she would try to go with them. And even if the Road opened, what then? Frodo’s peace had been purchased. Gifts like that were never cheap. What sacrifice would the Powers demand of her, if she claimed a crossing not meant for mortals?

He could see too clearly the other endings. Not myths - not lightning from a clear sky - but the real human ones: a hull that never found light, weeks of cold and thirst, a gale that broke the keel, a circle of water without end.

He closed his eyes and heard his sons’ voices under the cry of the tide. He had told them the truth because he loved them. He would have to tell Julia the same, and pray the sea did not ask of her what he could not bear to give.

The sea had taken the rest. He would not let it take her.

Chapter Text

Evenings came early now, the harbour lamps flaring before Julia had finished at the council office. October’s damp pressed into everything - coats, papers, even the wool they stuffed into the larch seams at the yard. Julia was learning to measure her life by these shifts of light: work at the council by day, then hurrying down to the slip in the evenings, where Elrohir and Thavron, and sometimes Elladan, were already bent over other people’s hulls.

The Elven boat came after all that. Only when the yard work was done, only when the tide of ordinary tasks had been seen to. Even on weekends there were interruptions - ferries needing caulking, fishing boats that couldn’t wait. Julia felt the split in her bones: papers and tours by daylight, wool and pitch at night, as if she had somehow agreed to live two lives at once.

Thavron was still rattling around the bungalow on his own, though he seemed content enough in solitude. Elladan and Tirwen were in St Bees, but Elladan’s presence pressed in everywhere. He kept appearing at the yard with his neat ledger and his soldier’s eye, asking for progress reports as if they were an army on campaign.

“It isn’t going fast enough,” he said one damp Saturday morning, standing with arms folded while Elrohir tested the seams of the larch planks. Steam curled from the brazier where the caulking irons were heating. “You waste daylight.”

Julia bit back a reply - it wasn’t daylight they were wasting, but lives already full to the brim. Elrohir didn’t answer either, and that silence burned hotter than the pitch pot.

Elrohir straightened, wiping pitch from his hands. “It goes as fast as it can. You know we still have the yard’s work to see to.”

“That is exactly my point,” Elladan replied. “You divide yourselves between two masters - the fisherfolk and this.” His glance took in Julia, as if she embodied the distraction. “But the tide will not wait on your schedules. Nor will those who depend on us.”

Julia forced her jaw to unclench. “You can’t have it both ways, Elladan. Work done in hiding takes time.”

Tirwen made a soft sound, half amusement, half warning, but Elladan’s eyes stayed hard.

On the following Friday, in the evening the bungalow grew less empty. Meren and Elfaron drove up from Devon, their battered van rattling into the yard. Meren smelled of sea and diesel, shoulders broad with years at the nets; Elfaron followed with a satchel of books, his dark curls damp with rain, glasses fogging in the chill. They moved with practiced ease - voices overlapping, one hefting bags from the van while the other disappeared inside with a bundle of coats and a trailing houseplant that brushed the doorframe.

For a few hours the sharpness between Elladan and Julia blurred under the warmth of food and company.

But by Saturday the talk turned serious again. They gathered at the slip, the hull rising behind them, larch planks dark with fresh pitch. Elladan laid out his figures with a soldier’s precision.

“There are eight of us confirmed now. Thavron, Tirwen, Meren, Elfaron, myself, my brother…” His eyes flicked to Julia, then away. “And two more who have reached out. Eight souls. This hull will work for ten - no more.”

Julia folded her arms, already bracing.

Elladan went on. “But we know there are more of us. Lost ones who have not yet spoken, who will come once they believe it is possible. Which means, once we reach Valinor, someone must return. The ship cannot be abandoned.”

Silence. Only the hiss of the pitch pot at the brazier.

Julia felt her throat tighten. It wasn’t just about timetables anymore. Elladan was measuring lives, weighing who stayed and who went.

She drew in a breath, steadying herself. “And what if my song is what gets us there in the first place? What if the boat doesn’t move without me?”

Elladan’s gaze slid back, cool as the damp air. “Mortal voices do not open the Straight Road.”

Her pulse thudded. “You don’t know that. You’ve all tried, and nothing stirred. You think I haven’t noticed?”

Tirwen shifted, as if to speak, but Elladan cut across her. “It is not for you to risk yourself on some guess. The Sea takes mortals. It always has.”

Julia’s arms tightened across her chest. “So what, I’m allowed to stitch and scrape at your seams but not stand where it matters?”

At last Elrohir spoke - and the words landed harder than Elladan’s. “Julia… he’s right. The sea doesn’t forgive. You saw what it took for Frodo, what he had to sacrifice to be allowed to cross. I won’t see it claim you.”

The ground dropped beneath her. Of all people, she had thought Elrohir would stand with her. The brazier spat, pitch hissing, while her throat ached with heat she refused to let spill in front of them.

“Fine,” she said, the word sharp as glass. “You make your plans. Count your names. But don’t expect me to sit quiet and be dismissed.”

She turned before any of them could answer, Calad padding at her heels.

Later that evening, the dog trotted ahead of them into the cottage, circling once before curling onto the rug. Julia set her bag down too heavily on the table, the sound making the dog lift his head again. She pressed her palms flat to the wood, trying to steady her breath. The silence from the yard still rang in her ears - Elladan’s sharp words, and worse, Elrohir’s echo of them.

He followed only a minute later. Closed the door carefully, as though it might soften what had already cracked. For a long moment he stayed there, watching her with that unreadable stillness.

“You didn’t have to say it,” she snapped before he could speak. “Not there. Not like that.”

He stood in the doorway, eyes shadowed. “I spoke the truth.”

“No. You spoke Elladan’s truth.” She turned, heat rising in her face. “You let him dismiss me, and then you joined him. Do you have any idea what that felt like?”

Elrohir drew a breath as if the words cost him. “Julia… the Valar only opened that road for mortals after extraordinary sacrifice. Frodo bore wounds no healing in Middle-earth could mend. Sam carried the Ring into Mordor itself. They were exceptions beyond all measure. Do you think such mercy would be granted twice?”

He raked a hand through his hair, still streaked with pitch. “If I could keep you from even stepping near the tide, I would. If you try to cross, it will kill you.”

Her chest tightened. “That’s it? That’s your defence? You all tried and failed, but when I offer something different, suddenly it’s madness?”

“I am not calling you mad,” he said, voice low. “I am calling you precious. Too precious to gamble against the ocean.”

Julia turned sharply, kettle clattering against the hob. “And what exactly do you think I’m here for, Elrohir? To fetch the tea and watch you vanish?”

He flinched. “I want you alive. Whole.”

She faced him again, throat burning. “I’ve already lost everything once. Don’t you dare tell me my voice doesn’t count - not when it may be the one thing that carries this boat across. I told you, I would not let go of you quietly or gracefully.”

The silence that followed was worse than argument. He looked at her as if he wanted to speak, but the words would not come.

Julia blinked hard, vision blurring, and turned away. On the sideboard lay the envelope she had dropped weeks ago, Professor Armitage’s neat hand across the front. An invitation she had meant to ignore.

Her fingers closed around it before she quite knew why. “Maybe I need a few days,” she said, quieter now, though her voice still shook. “Somewhere you and your brother aren’t measuring my life against ledgers.”

“Julia…”

But she shook her head, cutting him off gently. “I can’t do this right now.”

Upstairs she began to pack, each folded jumper a way of breathing. She didn’t know if the conference would give her answers. Only that she couldn’t stay here, not with his silence pressing against every wall.

The Friday train south rattled long into the evening. Julia had packed lightly, a single bag at her feet. Calad had bounded after her to the gate when she left, only to be coaxed back by Elrohir’s quiet whistle. She had forced herself not to look back - the sight of both of them standing there would have undone her resolve.

Through the carriage window the coast fell away to dark fields, villages flickering past like constellations. The air smelled of damp wool and vending-machine coffee; her notebook lay open in her lap, though she wrote nothing. Four hours, five, the stations ticked past - Preston, Birmingham, then south into the Thames valley.

By the time the train pulled into Oxford the platforms were shining with rain. Umbrellas jostled, bicycle lights bobbed past like fireflies in the wet night. Julia hoisted her bag, following the signs out to a taxi, her head thick with fatigue and anticipation both.

Her hotel stood on Banbury Road, a red-brick townhouse with narrow stairs and a brass key on a heavy fob. She checked in with the kind of politeness that covered exhaustion, then set her bag down on the bed. Through the sash window she could see the university quarter lit like a lantern - towers and spires rising out of the mist, voices carrying from a pub on the corner.

A knock at the door startled her. When she opened it, Professor Armitage stood there, raincoat collar up, his umbrella dripping onto the mat.

“I thought you might have slipped in without saying hello,” he said with a grin.

Julia’s surprise gave way to warmth. “I only just arrived.”

“Well then,” he said, offering an arm like a conspirator, “come along. The Lamb & Flag still does a tolerable pint, and who knows when I’ll next have the chance to argue philology with a sensible person.”

She laughed, letting herself be swept into the drizzle once more. The streets glistened, shopfronts shut, but the pubs along St Giles were alive with talk and steam. Inside, the fire was going, the walls thick with oak beams.

They found a corner table, and Armitage launched into easy chatter: which papers he was dreading, which he secretly hoped would be terrible enough to be entertaining.

“Who could resist The Nazgûl’s Scent on a foggy October evening?” he said, eyes twinkling. “I’ll never look at mothballs the same way again.”

Julia laughed, easing back into her chair. The ache of Whitehaven felt far away here - replaced by the hum of voices, the clink of glasses, and the sense of belonging she hadn’t expected to feel again.

Saturday broke pale and misted. Julia woke to the muffled sound of tyres on wet road outside and the unfamiliar hush of a city not her own. For a moment she lay still, staring at the ceiling beams, until memory caught up: Oxford. A seminar. Armitage’s grin in the pub the night before.

She dressed in layers against the damp, packed her notebook and programme into a shoulder bag, and stepped out into the morning. The air smelled of wet leaves and coal smoke, bicycle bells chimed through the fog. Students hurried past in scarves, the bells of St. Mary’s striking the hour as she followed the curve of Banbury Road towards the college.

At St Anne’s, the sign outside announced it in block letters: The Tolkien Society Seminar 2025 – Arda’s Entangled Bodies and Environments. People clustered by the doors with coffee cups, name badges, and overstuffed bags.

It was a curious blend, just as she remembered: professors in tweed with battered satchels; postgraduates with annotated texts sticking out of their folders; stylish newcomers in oversized knits who looked as if they had come straight from an indie gig but carried The Silmarillion like scripture. A pair of teenagers with Elven brooches posed for a selfie beside a poster, while two older fans in matching Prancing Pony t-shirts compared notes on disability studies and The Children of Húrin.

Julia lingered at the edge of the milling crowd, notebook clutched like a shield. For a moment the ache of memory pressed in: she and Tom, slipping into conferences together, his whispered asides about “eco-critical jargon” and her nudges in reply. She swallowed, blinking hard, and forced herself forward.

“Ah, there you are,” said Armitage, appearing at her side with a coffee in hand and a lopsided badge that read Guest Speaker. “I’ve saved you a seat. Trust me, you’ll want to be in the room for Hale. Nothing like a paper on Singing Stones and Breathing Earth to wake you up on a foggy October morning.”

Julia managed a smile. “You make it sound like theatre.”

“It should be theatre,” he said cheerfully, steering her toward the doors. “What else are we here for?”

Inside, the seminar room smelled faintly of polish and old books. The windows were fogged from damp coats, and the buzz of chatter thinned as the chair moved to the next paper. Julia slid into a seat near the back, shook raindrops from her sleeve, and opened her notebook. The printed programme rustled as she turned to the abstract Armitage had been so insistent about:

Dr. Catriona Hale (University of Edinburgh)
“Singing Stones and Breathing Earth: Sonic Resonance in Tolkien’s Legendarium”

This paper examines Tolkien’s recurring motif of sound as a shaping force - from the Music of the Ainur to the murmuring voices of rivers and mountains. By tracing the imagery of breath, chant, and vibration across the legendarium, I argue that Tolkien envisioned Arda not as inert matter, but as a responsive medium: one that bears the imprint of song and responds to it. The paper also explores how communal rhythm - voices held together in breath and beat - creates not only harmony, but agency.

Julia traced the lines with her pen, pulse quickening. She had meant to attend quietly, keep to the back - but even the title seemed to hum against the raw edge of the argument she had left behind.

Then the chair introduced Dr. Hale, and the murmurs around her stilled.

Dr. Catriona Hale began without preamble, her voice even but carrying a rhythm of its own.

“Tolkien’s world is not silent. From its very beginning, Arda is sung into being. What is striking is that this song is not backdrop - it remains in the world, in its rivers, in its stones, in the very breath of those who walk upon it. Matter itself is never mute. It resounds.”

She let the words settle, then smiled faintly.

“To demonstrate, I’d ask you to humour me. Inhale - two, three, four. Exhale - two, three, four, five. Keep the count, tap the rhythm.”

A ripple of amusement went through the audience, but gradually the room obeyed. Fingers drummed lightly on desks, breaths fell into unison. Julia joined almost reluctantly - and then felt it, the pulse threading through lungs and tables alike, more than sound, more than air.

Her pen slid across the paper in a rush, frantic to catch it before it fled: in-two-three-four, out-two-three-four-five. Her heart hammered with it. This was it - the missing cadence she had been groping toward all along.

And with the rhythm came memory. Again: Tom at her side in another seminar hall years ago, nudging her elbow when jargon grew too thick, whispering, eco-critical gobbledygook, isn’t it? She had shushed him, laughing, and he had scribbled nonsense diagrams in her margins until her shoulders shook. She remembered the warmth of his knee against hers, the sheer ordinary joy of belonging in that world with him.

The ache of it cut deep now, but it did not undo the spark. If anything, it sharpened it: this was something she could carry back, something that mattered.

For a moment she forgot the arguments, Elladan’s ledgers, the sharpness. All she could hear was the shared beat, and the sense that the world might yet answer.

The rhythm faded as Dr. Hale lifted her hand, letting the room fall quiet again.

“You see,” she said, smiling at the scattered laughter, “what Tolkien intuited - and what we forget - is that resonance is communal. Sound doesn’t live in one throat. It lives in the air between us. When Gimli speaks of the deep voices of stone, when Legolas hears trees whisper, Tolkien is reminding us that the world itself is part of the choir.”

Pens scratched, heads nodded. Julia forced her own hand to move, though the cadence still pulsed under her skin. Hale carried on, shifting smoothly into citations and textual examples - rivers in The Silmarillion, mountain chants in The Lord of the Rings - but Julia heard them dimly. The pattern she had caught thrummed through every word.

By the time the talk wound to a close and the chair rose to thank the speaker, Julia felt as though she had been somewhere else entirely. The applause startled her, sharp and prolonged, paper crinkling in her hands as she joined in.

The hall emptied quickly for the coffee break. Damp coats and wool scarves brushed past her, voices buzzing with argument already. Someone at the next row was insisting Hale had read too much into Gimli’s “deep voices of stone,” another countered that philology all but demanded it. A student in a bright scarf wondered if the cadence of Elvish vowel lengths could be mapped to geology, while a trio near the door swapped anecdotes about Tolkien’s drafts.

Julia stayed seated for a moment longer, hand pressed to the page where she had written the count. In-two-three-four, out-two-three-four-five. Even seeing it inked felt precarious, as though it might slip away if she let go.

“Caught something, did you?”

Professor Armitage loomed at her elbow, two paper cups in hand. He set one down for her, then craned to peek at her notebook.

Julia snapped it shut before he could read. “Just… scribbles.”

He gave her a knowing look. “The best papers always leave one scribbling. Well? What did you think?”

She took the coffee, stalling, the heat of it grounding her. “That she was right. About the world not being silent. About how… sometimes it feels as if the air itself is waiting for you to breathe into it.”

Armitage’s smile softened. “Ah. You still have the knack.”

“What knack?”

“Listening.” He sipped his coffee, unbothered by the chatter around them. “Most people attend these things to prove a point or to be entertained. You still attend to be changed.”

Julia looked down at the rim of her cup, throat tight. Changed - yes. Changed enough to carry something back with her.

Chapter Text

10^th-12^th October, 2025, Whitehaven

The weekend drifted grey along the harbour. Work carried on at the slip - frames braced, clamps tightened, steam hissing in white clouds - but Elrohir’s hands moved without thought. His mind was elsewhere.

Julia had gone south to Oxford on Friday, and her absence thudded in him like a missed beat. The rhythm of the yard felt hollow without her voice beside him, without the tilt of her head over the lines, without the sudden spark of a question that cut deeper than she knew.

By Sunday the fog had thickened, rolling in low from the headland and blurring the lamps until they swam in their own halos. It clung to his clothes, wet and salt-heavy, and pressed into the boards beneath his boots. Nights like this had once belonged to the Elves, Samhain turning the skin of the world thin enough to glimpse what lay beyond. Now the mortals lit pumpkins and paper lanterns, called it superstition, and laughed into the dark.

He could not laugh.

The fog made him think of the places he had left behind, of doors half-opened and never crossed. And of Julia, walking deeper into peril with every fragment of the Song she uncovered.

He dreaded her return - longed for it and feared it both. Relief and danger, carried in the same breath.

Winter of 222, Fourth Age of Middle-earth

Snow had fallen even on the coast that winter, whitening the narrow lanes of Dol Amroth and laying a thin, brittle crust over the dunes. From the cottage windows the sea was a dull slate, muted beneath the weather, but inside the rooms were full - too full for the frailty of the woman in the bed.

Their sons, Estel and Elarion, had come, both of them grey at the temples, with wives and children of their own. Grandchildren ran between the doorframes, their voices too bright for the hush in the chamber where Ylva lay. They kissed her hands, pressed gifts into her lap, spoke farewells through tears they tried to hide. She smiled at each of them, tired but unflinching, as if she had known this moment all her life and had been walking toward it with quiet steps.

When the house settled again and the last carriage rattled away toward the city, Elrohir sat beside her bed and held the hand that had once tugged him laughing across markets, across sands, across years. Her hair was white now, her skin fine as parchment, but her eyes were still the same blue-grey that had first anchored him in a mortal world.

“You promised me once,” she whispered, voice barely carrying over the sea-wind.

“I remember,” he said.

“That you would not choose it. That our children would not be burdened with choice they never asked for. You have kept that, haven’t you?”

“I have.” His throat tightened. “They lived as Men, and they will die as Men. And I remain.”

Her fingers pressed faintly around his. “Good. Then let them go lightly, without fear of being torn in two.”

She closed her eyes, and he knew the end was close. He bent his head, unable to say the truth aloud: that in sparing his children, he had condemned himself. To watch them fade one by one, to remain when she was gone, to outlast every mortal tie until the silence drove him to the edge of fading himself.

Snow rattled softly at the shutters. Somewhere down the coast, bells tolled for another passing. He kissed her hand and stayed until her breath grew shallow, until the tide itself seemed to pause to listen.

The memory left a hollow in his chest, as if the snow of that winter had settled there and never thawed. He had kept Ylva’s wish, and in keeping it he had watched her sink into age, into weakness, into death. He had borne it in silence because she had asked him to, and because love had demanded no less. But afterwards… afterwards there had been nothing but the echo of her voice and the terrible stillness of a house that had once been alive with breath and laughter.

When his own strength faltered and the world dimmed, he had thought fading might be mercy. To let go, to vanish into shadow, would have been easier than enduring her absence. But Mandos had not left him to fade. Instead, he had been offered a choice.

And he had chosen return. Not because it promised comfort, but because it did not. Because someone had to carry it.

Now Julia.

Her face in lamplight, her voice threading with the cadence of the Song - she was already part of him in ways he had not meant to allow. If she walked that road with him and fell, as mortals so easily fell, what then? He could not watch it again. Not her. The thought of her body stilled, her laughter hushed, her house as silent as Ylva’s had been - it was unbearable.

And the terror was double-edged. To choose her might mean to fade again, unfinished. To lose her might mean to go on without her, condemned to centuries more of silence, carrying both his failure to Mandos and his failure to the living.

It was not Mandos’ judgement he feared. It was the emptiness. The weight of another promise broken, another love carried into the dark. The knowledge that if she died, he might not have the strength to go on - and if he somehow did, he might never be able to forgive himself.

The fog pressed closer, damp against his skin. He shut his eyes, but it did not help; the fear lived behind his lids, sharp as salt.

“Are you brooding, or just staring holes in the fog?”

Elrohir started. Tirwen had slipped beside him without a sound, a coil of wool tucked under her arm, her enormous spectacles sliding down her nose as if they had minds of their own. She grinned at him, irreverent as always, like a cat catching a solemn bird mid-thought.

“I am working,” he said, though the mallet in his hand had been still so long the steam had already cooled on the clamps.

“Mhm. Working on standing there like a carved figurehead.” She propped a hip against the sawhorse, regarding him with mock solemnity. “You’re worse than Elladan when he’s measuring shadows for threats.”

He frowned. “You shouldn’t creep up on people.”

“You shouldn’t sulk in plain sight,” she countered, then tilted her head, eyes narrowing through the glass. “It’s about her, isn’t it?”

His silence betrayed him.

Tirwen sighed in exaggerated patience, then lowered her voice. “Don’t bother glaring. You wear it in every line of your shoulders. You’re frightened she’ll burn quick and be gone, and you’ll be left with nothing but smoke.”

The words hit like a thrown stone. He turned away, jaw tight, but she pressed on, gentler now:

“You think choosing her means losing everything else. That you’ll fade again, or fail the rest of us.” She tapped the wool bundle against her palm, thoughtful. “But look at yourself. She’s the only reason you’re not already dust in the wind. Don’t tell me you don’t know it.”

He said nothing. The fog swirled in the lamplight, damp and heavy.

Tirwen leaned closer, voice quiet, almost kind. “You’ve carried duty so long it’s worn grooves in you. But duty alone doesn’t keep a soul walking. It breaks them. You should know that better than anyone. And that woman - Julia - she’s not weakness, Elrohir. She’s the part of you that still wants to live. Without her, what road are you even keeping open? For whom?”

Her words lodged in him, painful in their truth. He tightened his grip on the mallet until the handle creaked, wishing she would leave, wishing she would stay.

Tirwen straightened at last, adjusting her ridiculous glasses with a small smile. “Go on. Pretend you haven’t heard me. But when she comes back from Oxford, try standing with her instead of against her. You might surprise yourself.”

And with that, she wandered off into the mist, humming tunelessly, leaving him alone with the echo of her counsel and the ache it stirred.

Elrohir stayed where he was long after Tirwen’s humming had vanished into the fog. The clamps hissed, lanterns guttered in the damp, and still he did not move. Her words had cut too close.

He had lived centuries with silence pressed against his ribs. Duty had been enough to keep him walking, enough to keep the road open. But not enough to keep him whole. Tirwen was right: Julia had changed that. Against his will, against his caution, she had pulled him back into wanting.

And wanting was dangerous.

He closed his eyes and listened to the sea. Even in stillness it was there - vast, indifferent, waiting. The same sea that had taken Ylva from him by the slow tide of years. The same sea Julia now meant to test with her fragile mortal breath.

He could not bear it. He could not bear her. And yet he knew already: he would not turn away.

The fog had thickened by evening, clinging low across the fields when Elrohir walked back to the Old Post Office. He lit no lamps inside; the house felt different without her, and he had no wish to soften it. He sat with Calad at his feet, listening to the dog’s breathing, until the rattle of tyres on the lane told him a car had stopped outside.

The sound of a key, the door opening. Julia stepped in, shoulders hunched under the weight of travel. Her satchel slid to the floor with a thump, and for a moment she only stood there, eyes closed, breathing the familiar air of the house.

“You’re back,” he said quietly.

Her eyes opened, catching him in the half-dark. “Train was late.” She pushed her hair from her face and managed a smile that was more weary than anything. “Oxford in October-wet, crowded, full of people who like the sound of their own voices.”

He almost smiled, but not quite. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

Julia’s gaze flicked down, then up again. “Not all. But enough to know I wasn’t wasting my time.” She bent to scratch Calad’s ears, letting the dog wriggle against her knees, and for a moment it was only the small domestic sound of claws on the floorboards, the dog whining in delight.

She straightened, studying him through the dimness.
“You’ve been brooding again.”

He lifted a brow, trying for dignity he didn’t feel. “Elves don’t brood.”

Julia snorted, tugging off her shoes. “What do you call it then? Standing in the dark looking like someone stole your favourite saw?”

“Reflection,” he said stiffly.

“Mm. Brooding with extra syllables.”

The corner of his mouth almost tugged upward, but he let it fall again.

Julia shook her head, amused despite herself. “Well, reflection can wait until after tea. Unless you want to keep communing with the wallpaper while I eat toast on my own.”

Without answering, he was already reaching for the kettle.

31^st October 2025

Over the next two weeks, a kind of tentative peace settled between them. Not the easy rhythm Julia had once had with Tom, nor the silence Elrohir had endured alone for centuries - but something in between, awkward and fragile, yet holding. They worked side by side at the slip without sharp words. Evenings in Sandwith were quieter than before, the air thick with things unsaid, but there was no fracture in it. He let her sort through the papers she had brought from Oxford without pressing, and she let him hover close without asking more than he could give.

By the end of October, the fog had deepened, and the others spoke of marking Samhain - Halloween - in the old way: with lights on water, a remembrance for the dead. Elrohir told himself he did not want the ritual, but when the night came, he found himself walking down to the harbour with Julia at his side.

The fog had thickened again by the evening, rolling down from the headland and muffling the harbour into a blur of lamps and tide. Julia fell into step beside him without a word, her coat buttoned tight against the damp, Calad pacing at her heel. The others were already gathering at the slip: Tirwen, vivid in a red scarf that clashed with her hair; Elladan standing stiff beside her like a carved post; Thavron with his hands sunk deep in his coat pockets; Meren and Elfaron leaning close, their breath white in the air.

They looked less like the great of their kind than a handful of weary travellers, waiting on something half-remembered.

“It feels like the world is holding its breath,” Julia murmured, close enough that only he could hear.

Tirwen broke the hush first. “Well, this is a fine picture. Half of us look like ghosts already. At least let the mortals think we’re out for a late stroll, not rehearsing to haunt the place.”

Elladan’s look silenced her, but she only grinned wider. “What? It’s true. Fog this thick and we’d pass for revenants in any ballad.”

Thavron cleared his throat. “Enough. We came for remembrance.” His voice, steady as oak, carried through the mist.

Elfaron nodded, adjusting his spectacles. “It is the night for thin veils. Men call it Samhain, All Saints Eve, Halloween. We...” he hesitated, then glanced at Julia, “we had other names once. But the meaning is the same.”

Julia said nothing, her face pale in the harbour glow. Elrohir felt her nearness as keenly as the damp in the air.

Tirwen sobered at last, pulling a small bundle from her bag. Thin slivers of wood, leaf-shaped and curved. “Little boats,” she explained. “Crude ones. But they’ll float long enough.” She passed them out, one by one, with stubby candles to nest inside.

No one spoke further. The fog hushed even the water below.

Elfaron held his little boat in both hands, candle unlit. The fog had beaded in his beard and on his spectacles, and his voice was quieter than usual, but it carried in the hush.

“Long before, our people marked it as Laereth - the night of song and remembrance. When the world feels thinnest, and we send out our lights to say: we remember, we still sing, you are not forgotten.”

The words settled into the fog like breath on cold glass. Even Tirwen’s irreverence softened.

One by one they lit their candles. Tiny flames flared, wavering in the damp, and for a moment the harbour seemed to hold its breath. Elfaron cleared his throat, adding, “Not to summon the dead, nor bind them. Only to honour the road they walked, and to remind ourselves that we walk still.”

No one answered. They knelt by the edge, lowering their boats onto the tide. The water caught them gently, carrying each flame out over the dark surface.

Elrohir’s hands shook as he set his own vessel adrift. The flame was for Ylva, and for the children who had trusted him to keep the world whole. The sight of that small light sliding away into fog pressed his chest tight.

Beside him, Julia crouched low, holding her little boat steady until it found its balance. Her candle flickered once, then steadied. She whispered something he could not catch - names, he thought - and let it go. He did not ask, but he knew. Tom. The twins.

They stood side by side, watching their lights drift farther, until the fog blurred them into one scattered shimmer.

No song was raised, no speeches made. Only the sea, patient and listening, and the faint glow of candles riding out into the dark.

The last of the company drifted away into the fog until only Julia and Elrohir remained at the harbour wall. The water lapped quietly against the stones, carrying their little boats farther out, each flame a fragile star dissolving into grey. They lingered, watching until the lights blurred into one faint shimmer.

For a while neither spoke. The silence between them was different than it had been in mid-October - not brittle now, but waiting. Elrohir felt the weight of it pressing against his ribs, demanding words he had too long withheld.

At last he turned toward her, the damp curling around them. “Julia.”

She lifted her face to him, pale in the haze.

“I should have stood with you,” he said. The words came rough, dragged out of him like splinters, but once spoken they left him strangely unburdened.

Her gaze searched his, steady but not sharp. She didn’t smile, didn’t claim victory. Only nodded once. “You’re here now.”

No triumph. No demand. Just that.

Something broke in him at the simplicity of it. He drew a breath that felt like the first true one in weeks.

They stood side by side a little longer, listening to the quiet lap of the tide. The fog pressed close, damp on their skin, but the sea seemed to hold its silence for them alone. Out beyond the harbour, the last of the candle-flames flickered and vanished in the mist - not a loss, but a joining with the greater dark. Julia’s hand brushed his, light as breath, and he did not pull away.

Chapter Text

November was kind to them. Work at the shipyard finally eased into something almost calm, and the weather held steady: cold enough to bite, but dry, the sky a soft pewter that made the harbour lamps burn brighter by contrast. The first frost arrived early, and with it a clarity Julia hadn’t realised she’d missed: air that smelled faintly of salt and iron, mornings that began sharp and bright before softening into the slow rhythm of daylight on timber and tide.

Elrohir’s boss allowed him to use most of his overtime to continue to work on their “hobby project”, as he called it, provided that he kept on posting about it on social media. So they carefully managed their public appearance, ever careful not to show how strange this vessel was that they were building. They made good progress, as they now could work during daytime as long as the yard was quiet and even Elladan had to admit that they were right on schedule to launch somewhat in early spring, as soon as the winter storms would have settled down.

Cold made the mornings feel clean. Frost haloed the ropes and turned footprints crisp on the boards. The hull smelt of wood and pitch, the kind of scent that settled in hair and scarf and would not let go. When the yard was open to the public, they staged the photos: close crops of hands planning a rib, the sweep of the sheer line, a beam of pale sun lying across a clamp. Nothing that showed the leaf-curve of the bow, nothing that revealed the quiet strangeness in the geometry.

Tirwen insisted on captions. Hers ran chaotic and chatty, full of emojis and faux-lecturer asides. Elladan submitted exacting notes like a foreman writing a logbook. Elrohir posted rarely. When he did, it was a short video of steam ghosting from a kettle, a shaving unfurling from a blade, or the harbour at first light. People liked those best. In the comments, a small crowd began to gather, calling them Team Mystery Boat and arguing about whether she was Nordic, Cornish, or something no one had seen before. Which, of course, she was.

By noon the frost lifted and the yard took on its winter rhythm: a burst of sound when the saw started, a pocket of silence when someone measured and remeasured, voices low and practical. Thavron had adopted the habit of humming while he worked, a rough burr more felt in the chest than heard in the ear. Meren had a way of tapping a rib with her knuckles, listening for some secret the wood would share with her alone. Elfaron once tried to explain a pattern he saw in the spacing of the frames and then got distracted halfway through by the light on the water.

Julia found herself absorbed into their quiet choreography whenever she could escape the council office. Pass the fastenings. Warm the kettle. Hold the rib steady while Elrohir fixed the bolts. The rhythm settled under her skin until she moved within it without thought, a part of the shipyard’s pulse. The cold crept into her gloves, the smell of pitch and wood lived in her hair, and the salt air stung her lips until they cracked. She didn’t mind.

Sometimes, during breaks, she leaned against the hull and felt the curve press into her back as if the wood were remembering her touch. Beneath her palms, the grain felt alive-anchored, waiting. It was not peace, not exactly. But it was something close: a belonging that hummed low and steady, like a note waiting for the rest of the song to find it.

They hardly saw each other that month. He often worked late at the yard, long after the others had gone, and she was swallowed by budget meetings, drafts, and the slow grind of explaining the same figures to the same councillors three times over. Evenings slipped past like boats in fog - visible for a moment, then gone again into the quiet.

When he came home after she had already gone to bed, the cottage stayed quiet. The door latch clicked, boots thudded softly on the mat, water ran briefly in the kitchen. He would pause in the doorway, the dark outline of him framed by the landing light. She always felt that pause before she saw it - the way the air changed, the faint smell of salt and resin coming in with him. Without a word, she would lift the covers. He would slide in beside her, cold at first, then warming quickly, breathing out the day’s weight.

Sometimes they reached for each other - not out of hunger, but recognition. They made love quietly, like two people speaking a language that existed only between them, careful and full of things unsaid. There was grief between them still, though softer now, less like a wound and more like a tide that pressed and fell back with the rhythm of their breaths. She could feel him preparing to leave in the carefulness of his hands, as if he was already practising absence - the slow unfastening of attachment he had learned too many times before. She didn’t know how to tell him that perhaps this journey would not be their end, that some departures were not endings at all.

On mornings when he was already gone, she wrapped herself in the cardigan draped over the chair he favoured and padded downstairs. The flagstones were cold underfoot, the one obstinate radiator ticking as if it resented the effort of warmth. His mug would still hold a trace of heat if he had left recently. Sometimes a small clue lingered: a wood shaving caught in the tea towel, a pencil stub he preferred to any new one, the faint dent of his notebook on the tablecloth. Each mark felt like proof - quiet evidence that the life between them was real, however fleeting. She would touch them lightly, a blessing in miniature, before locking the door behind her and walking out into the wind that always smelled faintly of sea and iron.

The cottage kept their silence well. Its old timbers seemed to understand restraint; the rooms held the shape of absence without judgement. At night, she sat by the window with a book unread on her lap, Calad curled against her hip, and watched the autumn weather turn. The fog horn called from the harbour now and then, low and patient, a sound that belonged to no one but could be heard by everyone.

Far out where the sea met the sky, the colour deepened into slate - that blue-grey that promised snow though none had yet fallen. Against it, the town’s lights in the distance looked almost golden, warmer than they truly were. She watched them flicker and thought, without saying it aloud, that maybe warmth didn’t have to be bright to be real.

Her birthday fell on a Wednesday. She did not plan anything. Tirwen did.

By six the kitchen had warmed with bodies and the kind of steam that means food is nearly ready. Calad lurked under the table, already aware that food was involved. Tirwen arrived first, hair like a signal flare and a paper bag clutched in one hand. Out of it came a ridiculous candle shaped like a lighthouse. It was taller than the cake and leaned slightly, as if caught mid-gale.

“It rotates,” Tirwen said, solemn as a priest. “I tested it.”

“It should not rotate near anything flammable,” Elladan observed, stepping in behind her with a narrow package.

“Everything is flammable if you try,” Tirwen said, already clearing a safe radius on the table. “Happy birthday.”

Elrohir drifted in last, smelling of cold air and sawdust, a faint line of pitch on the back of one hand. He kissed Julia’s cheek and said nothing more than hello in a voice that always softened when it was just for her.

They ate sitting wherever there was a patch of chair. Tirwen’s contribution was a dish that declared itself a stew until you tasted it and realised it was a small carnival in a bowl. Thavron had produced bread so dense and perfect that it seemed carved rather than baked. Meren appeared halfway through, bringing a flask of something spiced that might once have been wine but now held the unmistakable kick of alchemy. Elladan ate with exact politeness, sleeves rolled to identical lengths, and only after he had stacked everyone’s shoes in a neat line by the door, explaining that clutter near exits was “a tripping hazard in case of emergency.” Tirwen nearly choked laughing.

When the cake appeared, Tirwen solemnly skewered the lighthouse candle into it and lit the wick. The flame began to rotate, throwing a tiny beam of light around the kitchen as if blessing everything it passed - the stew, the dog, even Elladan’s unimpressed face. They attempted to sing Happy Birthday in three languages at Tirwen’s insistence - English, Sindarin, and what might have been a vaguely remembered fragment of Latin - and gave up halfway through, collapsing into laughter instead.

Then came the gifts.

Tirwen’s was first: a tea towel printed with an illustrated chart of obscure medieval instruments, and a note that read, For shouting at Elladan with Elvish citations. Julia laughed until her eyes pricked with tears.

Elladan placed his parcel on the table with the gravity of a small ceremony. Inside the precise wrapping lay a roll of canvas; within the canvas, a set of Irish tin whistles - six of them, each polished to a dull gleam, engraved with her initials. They looked like the idea of music distilled into metal.

“I had them made,” Elladan said, almost apologetically. “A proper set will pay for itself in accuracy.”

Julia ran a finger along the nearest whistle, her reflection bending in its surface. “They’re… astonishing. Thank you.”

“They are well tuned,” he said gravely, as if that were the highest possible compliment.

Tirwen opened her mouth, clearly to make some joke about “well-tuned brothers,” but thought better of it and took another sip of whatever her glass now contained.

Elrohir had brought nothing wrapped. He waited until the others were distracted with washing up, until the laughter thinned into the quiet hum that comes when the night begins to close its hands. He stood opposite her on the far side of the table, where the lighthouse candle had finally guttered out, leaving a little tower of wax and a faint smell of smoke.

“I don’t have a thing,” he said. His voice was soft but steady. “I have a promise.”

She set her hands palm-down on the table to keep them still. “All right.”

“I’ll follow your count.”

The room seemed to pause - even Calad, half asleep by the stove, lifted his head as if sensing something had shifted. Julia didn’t know why those words struck her like a bell, only that they did. Something inside her eased, uncoiled. She couldn’t name it, so she didn’t try. She just nodded, because anything she said would come out wrong.

“Okay,” she managed. “I’ll keep it steady.”

Tirwen, who had sworn not to meddle tonight, pretended not to watch, then rescued herself by taking a celebratory bite of cake so large it precluded speech. Elladan, whether by grace or calculation, said nothing and began putting plates away with remarkable concentration.

When they were gone, the cottage exhaled back to its usual size. The noise fell away, leaving warmth and crumbs and the faint scent of burnt sugar. Julia and Elrohir stood shoulder to shoulder at the sink, washing and drying in companionable silence. His sleeve brushed her wrist every few seconds, a rhythm so small it felt like music. The window misted with their breath. Somewhere outside, a fox yipped once and then fell silent again.

“I meant it,” he said quietly, drying his hands on the towel.

“I know,” she said - and found, to her surprise, that she truly did.

Later, when the house had folded itself into night and the last cup had cooled on the draining board, she carried the book upstairs.
It had sat on the shelf since early autumn, spine uncracked. The title had always felt too large for an evening, too heavy for the hour between waking and sleep.
Tonight it felt like the right kind of warning.

She laid The Fall of Númenor open across her knees and read until the words blurred at the edges with tiredness.

It was not a comfort. It was not meant to be. Pride dressed itself as love in those pages. Fear dressed itself as justice. The island that had believed itself safest called down its own drowning. She knew the story. Everyone who loved Tolkien knew the story. It did not stop it from working like salt in a wound she had not realised she carried.

She closed the book and sat with its weight against her palms. Was she, in her way, reaching for a forbidden shore? Was this stubbornness or vocation? Was she falling into the same trap as the kings of old: mistaking longing for right?

In memory, a kitchen in Bristol rose up with such clarity she smelt the burnt edge of toast. Winter 2021. The twins asleep upstairs. Tom with a pencil tucked behind his ear he would later forget and only find in the shower the next morning. Their life full of music and laughter. The table covered in nothing much, just the life they had, the soft mess of it. She had asked him - half a joke, half not - whether any of it was worth the cost of always being tired, always stretching, always paying in small coins of time and patience and compromise.

“Even if it costs us sleep, sanity, whatever,” he had said, hand covering hers on the table, eyes very steady. “We’ll make it worth it.”

“For whom,” she had said, smiling because she knew the answer.

“For being alive,” Tom said. “For trying.”

The sound of it lingered now like a chord that hadn’t quite faded.

She looked down at the book, lying open on her lap like a silent witness. The light of a passing car swung slow and patient beyond the window, sweeping the wall in pale silver as it passed.
Pride was one thing. Love was another.
Wanting to carry someone home could be both - or neither.

She had learned, since losing him, to ask better questions.
Tonight only one mattered:

If I don’t try, can I live with that?

The answer came like breath. She stood, set the book on the bedside table, and listened to the house adjusting to the cold - the polite creak of old timbers, the soft sigh of pipes. Down the hall, Elrohir turned over in sleep; the mattress whispered under his weight, a small proof of shared existence.

Julia crossed to the window and leaned her forehead against the cool glass. Outside, the garden lay silvered under thin cloud. The light swept once more across the dark and went on, unwavering.

“We’ll make it worth it,” she said into the night. “No matter the cost.”

The words didn’t sound like defiance.
They sounded like promise - and she meant every breath of it.

The yard by night was a different place - emptied of its clatter, reduced to lines and shadows. The cranes stood motionless, masts beyond them tracing black strokes against the sky. The smell of salt and resin lingered, sharper now that the noise was gone.

On the evenings when budget meetings spat her out too late for company and too early for sleep, she walked down anyway. The harbour lamps threw thin pools of light over the gravel. The hull waited under its tarp like a sleeping animal.

She reached up, found the plank where her shoulder always rested, and pressed her palm flat against it. Breath in for four. Hold for two. Out for six. The count had lodged itself in her like a heartbeat. She had learned it in Oxford, listening to the scholar speak of resonance and the mathematics of breath as if it were arithmetic rather than invocation. She’d practised it all the way home that night until her throat felt like a riverbed.

Now she began to hum. Nothing elaborate - just the low line she and Tirwen had sketched between tea mugs and manuscript copies, a held tone that refused to hurry. The air took it. So did the wood. Not with any miracle, not yet, only with the faint sense that the sound had found somewhere to rest.

Behind her, footsteps paused at the edge of the light. She didn’t turn. Another breath joined hers, offset deliberately - a harmony made of restraint. She could feel him listening, not to the note itself but to the space around it, seeking the place where his exhale would not disturb her count.

“I’ll follow your count,” he had said. Now he did.

They stood like that for a while, two figures at the edge of a sleeping boat, the rhythm of breath the only language between them. When her voice finally faded, he waited a heartbeat longer before letting his go. The hush folded back around them, seamless.

The tarp rustled faintly in the wind. Somewhere far out, a buoy bell rang once, then fell quiet again.

He stepped closer, the gravel whispering under his boots. “You’re finding your rhythm,” he said, low - not praise, not surprise, just recognition.

“Maybe it is her rhythm,” she answered. “She is listening back.”

He nodded, the movement barely visible. “Then keep counting.”

She smiled at that - small, private. “I will.”

They didn’t try to name anything more. The air had turned brittle with frost, and the breath between them steamed faintly as they walked home under a sky washed pale with cold. Above the headland, the harbour light swung its slow arc through the dark, steady as a metronome - keeping time for them both, marking the seconds so they would not lose their place.

Chapter Text

Whitehaven, December 2025

The train from the south rolled in late, steam ghosting through the frost like something half alive. Elrohir stood at the end of the platform with Thavron beside him. The older elf had insisted on coming (“Someone should make sure this guy doesn’t mistake the harbour for a salon”) and now waited with arms folded, breath clouding like smoke.
Václav was easy to spot even among the tired commuters. There was a precision to him that didn’t belong to this century: immaculate gloves, a coat cut too perfectly for Cumbrian drizzle, a silk scarf wound with mathematical care. He paused on the platform as though composing the moment before stepping into it, a conductor waiting for his cue.

Thavron waited beside Elrohir, broad-shouldered and unimpressed. “That the Prague one?”

Elrohir nodded. “Arostel of Mirkwood. He prefers ‘Václav’ these days.”

Thavron gave a dry laugh. “Can’t blame him. I’d want to leave a name like goat-herder behind too.”

When Václav reached them, he inclined his head in a gesture halfway between courtesy and performance. “Lord Elrohir,” he said, the accent softening the r and lengthening the vowels until the name sounded like a lyric. “It has been… longer than I expected.” For a heartbeat he seemed on the verge of bowing.

Elrohir stopped that with a faint smile. “Welcome to Whitehaven. We don’t stand much on ceremony these days.”

A shadow of disapproval crossed Václav’s face, gone before it settled. “So I see. Still…order gives form to things.” His gaze slid toward the frost-whitened harbour beyond the station. “It is smaller than I imagined.”

Thavron muttered, “So’s patience,” but the wind carried it off.

At the bungalow, Julia met them at the door, sleeves rolled up, hair tied back, warmth spilling from the kitchen behind her. She offered her hand.
“Julia Stokes. You must be Václav.”

He looked at her hand a heartbeat too long before taking it delicately, like an unfamiliar instrument. “So you are the mortal I have heard so much about.” His smile was polished, almost courtly, the kind of charm that had probably worked wonders in candlelight.
“I do get that a lot,” she said mildly. “Boots off, please.”

Inside, introductions blurred with the sound of zippers and clinking glass. Václav’s luggage looked expensive enough to have its own passport: three coordinated pieces in deep green leather. He inspected his assigned room once, touched the windowsill as if testing for dust, and pronounced it adequate in a tone that made Thavron roll his eyes heavenward.

In the half hour that followed, he managed to compliment the hallway joinery, criticise the lighting as “a little provincial,” and ask Julia whether she’d studied music “seriously or merely as a pastime.”
“Mostly for survival,” she said, hanging his coat before he could object.
He blinked, thrown, and something flickered behind his mask…surprise, or irritation, it was hard to tell.

By supper the table was crowded: Meren’s stew steaming in mismatched bowls, Tirwen talking with her hands, Elladan presiding at the head of the table with his habitual air of reluctant authority. Julia served without ceremony, sliding the last bowl toward Václav.

He inclined his head with old-school grace. “You are… assisting in the Song, then?”

“She’s leading it,” Elfaron said before Julia could speak.

Václav’s brows arched. “Ah. Unusual.” The word hung between compliment and concern.

Julia met the look evenly. “So I keep hearing.”

Across the table, Tirwen tilted her head, eyes bright with mischief. “Arostel of Mirkwood, wasn’t it? You once lectured half the Woodland court on the proper angle of a bow before the King, if I remember rightly.”

His spoon paused midway. “We valued form.”

“Of course,” she said sweetly. “And now you’ll find we value finish.” Her grin softened the line, making it tease rather than taunt.

Elladan’s mouth twitched; he tried to hide it behind his glass. Václav noticed. “Lord Elladan,” he said, turning smoothly toward him. “It honours me to find you still among us. I had not expected…” he hesitated, eyes flicking toward Elrohir, “…command so wisely delegated.”

Elladan inclined his head with exactly the amount of gravity Václav seemed to crave. Tirwen sighed, stage-whispering to Julia, “He’s been waiting all week for someone to curtsy properly. Václav has made his day.”

That earned genuine laughter and let the air loosen again. But when the conversation drifted on to ship timbers and local weather, Václav’s glass refilled itself more often than anyone else’s. Julia noticed the precision of it: the measured pour, the careful set-down of the bottle, as if control itself were a ritual.

It might have ended there, but later, when they moved to the hearth and Tirwen coaxed them into testing a few tones, Václav’s composure cracked. Julia hummed a note, low and sure; he lifted a hand sharply.
“No, no. Almost right, but you force the breath. Here…” He stepped closer, too close, hand half-raised as though to shape the air around her ribs.

She shifted back before he could touch. “I know where my ribs are, thank you.”

The room went still. For a beat no one breathed, then Tirwen broke the tension with a low chuckle. “Arostel, darling, do sit down. You’ll make the furniture nervous.”

Even Elladan’s lips curved. Václav’s colour rose, and he withdrew with a stiff nod, the faintest hitch in his elegance.

When he finally retired to his room, Thavron muttered, “If he starts giving lessons, I’m moving into the shed.”

Elrohir only nodded. He’d seen that kind of pride before: the sort that hides a fracture too fine to mend from the outside.

Outside, frost thickened on the harbour railings. Inside, the rhythm of the house steadied again, though Julia’s eyes stayed distant for a long while, the echo of that near-touch lingering like a held note.

It was late when Julia came back into the sitting room, collecting her notebook before driving off to Sandwith. The others had drifted off hours ago; only a single lamp burned low, its light a faint pool across the table. Václav sat there in his shirtsleeves, tie undone, a glass balanced between his fingers.

He didn’t look up when she entered. “You move quietly,” he said after a moment. His voice was calm, almost pleasant. “You must have been a thief in another life.”

“Archivist,” she said. “Close enough.” She crossed to the hearth and nudged a half-collapsed log with the poker. “You should get some sleep. Tomorrow’s heavy work.”

He smiled faintly. “Sleep has never been my best habit.”

Up close she saw the fine tremor in his hand, the small betrayals of exhaustion that no elf’s poise could quite hide. The wine in the glass was nearly gone, but the decanter beside him was half-empty too.

“I misjudged you,” he said suddenly.

Julia blinked. “Excuse me?”

“When I arrived. I thought…” He gestured vaguely, the motion elegant even as it wavered. “Another mortal fangirl dabbling in mysteries too old to matter. But you… you have a composure I did not expect.”

“I’m not sure that’s a compliment.”

“It is. Of a kind.” He set the glass down carefully. “Most of your kind burn bright and vanish. It’s… difficult to watch.”

Something in his tone made her still. “You’ve seen a lot of that, I suppose.”

His eyes lifted to her then, sharp and unguarded. “I have watched every mortal friend I ever made wither, fade, die. Names, faces, laughter…gone, and still the sun rises. You learn to leave before it happens. Or you learn to drink.”

The fire cracked softly between them. Julia didn’t know what to say.

He laughed once, without mirth. “Do you know what’s strange? The forgetting is never clean. You remember the wrong details: the way someone folded a map, the smell of their coat in the rain. Centuries later, that’s what wakes you at night.”

Her throat tightened. “Are all of you living with this?”

“All of us who stayed do.” He studied the glass as though reading the future in it. “Lord… Elrohir wears his grief well, but it is an old garment. We envy him, you know: his purpose. Some of us only survived, but in the end, forgot why.”

He leaned back, eyes half-closed. “Forgive me. Too much honesty. Or too much wine. They amount to the same.”

Julia set the poker down. “Maybe not. Sometimes people need to hear it.”

He smiled, soft and tired. “And sometimes they don’t.”

When she left him there, the lamp still burned low, throwing his shadow long across the wall. Outside, the frost had thickened again, glittering on the harbour rails. She drove back to the cottage with the sound of his words still echoing…We envy him, his purpose.

For the first time, she wondered if love was another chain to bind Elrohir. Maybe the kindest thing she could do was not hold too tightly when the sea finally called.

They worked mostly in silence. Elladan took the measurements, neat and absolute; Thavron and Julia steadied the plank as Elrohir eased it into place, guiding it home against the curve of the hull. Meren kept the steam steady over the kettle, feeding it with wet cloths, while Elfaron crouched by the bilge line, murmuring figures under his breath like a prayer. It was the last of them: the whisky plank, the one that finished the shape and sealed the work.

The mallet blows echoed like a heartbeat: once, twice, and then the clean note of wood settling true.

For a long moment no one spoke. Then Thavron straightened, rubbing his shoulder. “There she is,” he said softly. “Whole.”

Tirwen rummaged in her bag and produced a small flask and a handful of battered tin cups, barely large enough for two swallows each. “Tradition,” she declared, filling them a finger deep. “We spill one drop for the sea and one for luck.”

Elladan accepted his with a nod that passed for warmth. “To precision,” he said, holding the cup as if leading a company. “And to keeping it afloat.”

Tirwen’s mouth twitched. “To people,” she countered. “Without whom precision would be dreadfully boring.”

Meren lifted her cup next, her voice calm and sea-worn. “To tides that give back what they take.”

Elfaron added, eyes still on the hull, “To stars that remember the way home.”

Thavron raised his in turn. “To the stubbornness of mortals and fools.”

Julia laughed under her breath, clinking her cup against his. “And to both categories being well represented.”

Elrohir glanced down the line of faces: his brother’s composure, Tirwen’s grin, Thavron’s quiet pride, Julia’s steady focus, and felt something rare: ease. “To the work,” he said simply. “And to what comes after.”

They drank. The whisky bit at first and then bloomed into warmth, smoke and oak and the faint sweetness of barley.

Václav was last to lift his cup. He studied the amber liquid as if it might reveal a flaw in the grain, then sniffed it delicately and took a measured sip. “Acceptable,” he pronounced. “Though I once tasted a Lórien distillate aged in mallorn wood that…”

“…would have cost more than this entire harbour,” Tirwen cut in, tipping her remaining drop into the water at her feet. “Don’t test me, darling, I’ll find you a kettle and we’ll start a lecture.”

Elladan smothered a smile. Even Václav’s mouth twitched, just enough to count as grace.

The rest of the day passed in slow, quiet satisfaction, caulking seams, sanding edges, clearing tools. Resin clung under their fingernails; sawdust shimmered in the slanted light. By dusk, the harbour lamps had come on, their reflections trembling in the tide like small, golden stars.

A few days later, they gathered again - Solstice night- under a sky so clear it looked carved from ice. The yard lay hushed, the tarps drawn tight over the hull, every line silvered by frost. Beyond the breakwater, the tide moved slow and dark, breathing against the stones.

Julia stood near the bow, gloved hands cupped around her breath. The others formed a half-circle behind her: Elladan already in conductor mode, Tirwen bouncing slightly on her heels, Thavron solemn and still, Václav immaculate even in the cold, collar turned just so.

“Third test,” Elladan said at last. His voice was crisp, professional, and entirely betrayed by the tightness in his shoulders. “Same sequence as before. We begin on A.”

They nodded. The sound that followed was cautious at first: Elladan taking the anchor note, precise and unwavering; Tirwen layering hers above, light as spun glass; Thavron grounding them both with a tone so low it seemed to live in the wood beneath their feet. The chords rose, stretched thin, and dissolved into the salt air. Nothing.

Václav stepped forward with an expression halfway between irritation and duty. “Allow me.” His pitch was perfect: razor-clean, detached, faultless, and yet when the final vibration faded, the air remained stubbornly still.

Silence. A gull cried somewhere out on the water and was swallowed by distance.

Julia hesitated, aware of their eyes. “You said you needed a rest pitch,” she murmured. “I can hold it.”

Elrohir watched her draw one long, deliberate breath. The note began soft as mist, low enough to be almost imagined, then steadied, gained colour. It wasn’t loud, but it carried: pure, human, and utterly unadorned. And something in the night shifted.

A faint ripple passed across the harbour: not wind, not current, but a shimmer that broke the reflections of the lamps into trembling shards. The tide lifted once, a deep slow pulse against the pilings. The sound seemed to breathe back toward them, as if the sea itself had exhaled.

Julia’s voice faltered on surprise. “Did you…”

“We heard,” Tirwen whispered. Her eyes were bright as frost.

No one moved. Elladan’s face had gone carefully neutral, the expression of a man taking notes while the world rearranged itself. Elrohir stood frozen, the taste of salt sharp in his throat. Even Václav looked momentarily undone, his practiced composure thrown by what could not be explained.

He recovered first. “An echo,” he said too quickly. “The cliffs, perhaps. Nothing more.”

“An answer,” Thavron said quietly. “At last.”

They stood a long while in the cold, breath mingling like smoke, until the stillness felt almost sacred. The sea had listened, and chosen its voice.

When at last they drifted back toward the bungalow, Elladan lingered by the slip, eyes on the dark water. Tirwen looped her arm through his. “Don’t pretend you’re not glad,” she said softly.

“I’m cautious,” he replied. “There’s a difference.”

“Of course there is.” Her grin flashed in the dim light. “But it won’t save you.”

Elrohir turned the key in the shed lock and glanced across the yard. Julia stood by the bow, pale in the moonlight, still holding the breath that had carried the note. He wanted to speak - something simple, like you did it - but the words wouldn’t come.

From the shadowed stairs came the faint clink of glass: Václav again, a small silver flask catching the light as he tilted it toward the sea. The gesture looked half like a toast, half like defiance. The tide murmured back once, then stilled.

By morning, the table in the workroom was already colonised by sketches, maps and measurements. Elladan had drawn up a schedule: columns marked breath, resonance, harmonic testing - each neatly annotated as though the universe might be convinced by tidy handwriting.

Julia stood beside him, mug of tea warming her hands. “You’ve turned it into algebra.”

“It’s structure,” he replied, not looking up. “If we rely on chance, we fail.”

“Maybe,” she said, taking a sip. “But if we kill the chance, we fail faster.”

Tirwen appeared behind them, hair still unbrushed, peering over his shoulder. “Let her finish the tea first, Commander. Equations after caffeine.”

Elladan made a sound that might have been a sigh or a growl.

Václav came in last, collar open, eyes a little too bright. “Are we rehearsing, or holding court?”

“Working,” Elladan said evenly.

“Good.” He poured himself coffee, then, with a flick of his wrist, added a careful dash of whisky from his coat pocket. No one commented, though Tirwen’s eyebrow performed a silent aria.

Near noon, Elrohir found Julia outside, sanding an offcut to keep her hands busy. The frost was lifting; the air smelled of salt and resin.

“You should rest,” he said quietly.

“I’m fine.” She brushed sawdust from her sleeve.

He hesitated, gaze fixed on the water. “It answered you.”

“It answered the song.”

“You were the song,” he said.

She shook her head. “Just the first breath of it.”

The wind came sharp off the headland, bringing the smell of pitch and seaweed.

“You realise what that means,” he said after a moment. “Elladan will want you to try again, push further. And if the road opens…”

“Then we’ll see what waits.” Her tone was calm, unflinching. “But first, we finish the boat.”

Something in that quiet strength made him exhale - relief and fear knotted together.

The days that followed blurred into rhythm: wood, pitch, frost, breath. By Christmas the hull gleamed beneath its canvas shroud, a sleeping creature of wood and tar.

Chapter Text

Whitehaven, December/January 2025/2026

By New Year’s week the harbour had settled into ice-grey stillness.
Most of the work had moved indoors: polishing fittings, checking fastenings, arguing about ballast as if it were a philosophical question. Tirwen buried the kitchen table under scrolls and drafts, declaring that “proper record-keeping prevents mutiny.” Elladan, of course, produced a ledger already ruled and indexed.

Thavron and Václav were halfway through a spirited dispute about the grain of two mast timbers when Julia set both samples down in front of them.

“You’ll get one mast,” she said. “Pick a wood that deserves it. And after that… we need a name.”

That shut them up long enough for the moment to breathe.
A name. A vow. Something that would last longer than the diagrams.

Outside, gulls wheeled pale arcs across the dusk. The year was turning, and the boat waited - whole, silent, and expectant.

The Bungalow on New Year’s Eve was far too loud for a household that claimed to prefer silence.
Footsteps hammered across the boards. Someone was abusing a fiddle. Václav’s voice rose in theatrical despair: “It’s acoustical calibration, Tirwen, please respect the arts…”

“Stop mangling it or I’m feeding it to the dog!”

Elrohir didn’t wait for Act Two.

He slipped out into the night, coat half-buttoned, the cold slicing straight through it. The harbour smelled of salt, iron, and woodsmoke from neighbouring chimneys. Steam unwound from the water in pale ribbons. Down on the slip, the ship stood in the half-light like an animal at rest - ribs sealed, hull gleaming with oil and frost.

He stepped onto the cradle. Out here, every sound softened.
Older. Truer.

His hand found the curve of the whiskey plank without thought, palm settling as if it might answer him. It didn’t - but something beneath it shifted, a memory more than a response.

One year ago tomorrow.

The thought landed like a hollowing.

No ship.
No Julia.
Just a dim room in the Bungalow, a cold screen in his hands, and a single line from a story he’d believed lost.

Beriel’s voice - resurrected not by accident, but through Julia: the phrasing, the persistence, the stubborn refusal to let it fade.

He’d stared until the screen dimmed; touched it; watched it flare back to life. Her words had felt like fingers closing around his wrist - unexpected, impossible, unmistakable.

The wind turned sharp. He closed his eyes.

And the pressure came back with it - not sound, never sound - Mandos’ verdict lingering like a bruise in the cold:

Your road ends in choice, not in the sea.

The line didn’t visit often anymore. When it did, it was never gentle.

It pulled him toward that hollow between worlds - not Middle-earth, not Gondor, but the place where he had thinned to almost nothing. Breath fraying. Ylva gone. His children grown old. Elladan out of reach. And he had refused, stubbornly and stupidly, to choose: not life, not death, not the Straight Road, not the fading. He had walked between paths until the world itself had let him go.

He could still feel the moment he surrendered to it - wind warm on his face, ground falling away like the start of sleep.

Then the Hall.

Not a hall at all; just silence shaped into space, presence without form. Mandos didn’t look. Mandos simply knew.

You have come to your ending. But there are two, and only one is yours to walk.

Cruel or merciful - it hadn’t mattered. Even dead, he’d been forced to choose.

Rest: the West.
His parents.
Arwen’s laughter.
A peace he had earned and not taken.

Or return: a world unrecognisable, centuries of solitude, the task he had never asked for - finding the Lost Ones, the shadows at the edges of history.

Bring them home, Mandos had said. Or give them reason to remain.

He’d chosen the second path. Not out of wisdom - simply because leaving had felt like giving up.

And now -

Now he stood on a cold harbour in a world of electricity and glass, hand on a ship that should have been impossible, tethered to a woman who had once been a stranger and was now… not. The ship answered her. The path depended on her. And she wasn’t stepping back.

He opened his eyes.

Fireworks smudged the sky above Whitehaven. Their reflections streaked the water - faint, brief, nothing like stars. The Valar would have pretended not to find the humour in it.

He had chosen to return so he would not be separated again.

And now a sharper choice loomed:

If he found the Straight Road… would he walk it?
Would he leave Julia behind?
Would she let him?
Would she follow?

A new wind came off the sea, clean and slicing. And somewhere inside - the part of him that had always turned west - a quieter question surfaced:

What if the choice isn’t the Road at all?
What if the choice is the sea?

He heard her footsteps and he felt the air shift - a thread of warmth cutting through the cold.

Julia stepped up beside him, wrapped in that ridiculous red coat that made her look like she’d robbed a Christmas elf on her way out the door. A puff of breath clouded in front of her as she held out a thermos.

“Tirwen said you’d come out here to have feelings again,” she said quietly. “So I brought reinforcements.”

He huffed. “She speaks too freely.”

“She always does. That’s half the charm.”
She pressed a cup into his hands. “Drink. It’s punch.”

He took a sip. “That is… generous.”

“Thank you. I added cinnamon to disguise the existential dread.”

She leaned against the tool bench beside the hull, looking out over the harbour. Fireworks smeared faint gold into the mist.

“A year,” she murmured. “Since you found me.”

He almost corrected her - No. Since you found me.
But he let the punch sit warm on his tongue instead.

“Does it feel like a year?” she asked.

“No.”

Longer. Stranger. As if something had opened the moment she stepped into his life.

“But it feels… changed.”

“Good changed?” she asked.

He hesitated. “Different.”

She nodded, unsurprised. “Different is fine. Better than stuck.”

He didn’t answer.

She nudged his shoulder lightly. “Look, you can stand here prophesying doom all night, but we are actually making progress. The ship is real. The Song is real. The elves keep turning up like badly-behaved migratory birds. Something’s working.”

He looked at her. “You believe it will succeed.”

“I think…” She considered her words. “I think trying matters. In the stories, nothing shifts until someone decides to move. Even when it scares them. Especially when it scares them.”

“That sounds like one of Mithrandir’s lectures.”

She snorted. “Probably. Filtered through me. With fewer pipe metaphors.”

He let out a slow breath, watching the mist curl away. “Moving feels… dangerous.”

“Doing nothing is dangerous too,” she said. “It just hides it better.”

The punch warmed his hands; the cold framed them both.

“To the New Year?” she said softly. “Whatever it brings?”

He looked at her - the red coat, the steady gaze, the courage she didn’t seem to notice she had - and lifted the thermos slightly.

“To whatever it brings.”

Their knuckles brushed when she took a sip after him. A small contact. Barely a moment. Somehow enough to rearrange something in him.

After a while, she spoke again, voice low.

“When things get dark in the stories, there’s always someone who says there’s still a chance. Especially when the path looks impossible.”

He turned toward her. “You mean Valinor.”

“I mean hope.”

He swallowed. The word landed harder than it should have.

“You’re not doing this alone anymore,” Julia said - no push, no pressure. Just truth.

And something in him shifted - quiet, deep, unmistakably dangerous.

She didn’t say more. She let the moment settle between them, clear as the cold.

A gust of wind swept across the harbour, carrying a scatter of snow that caught in his hair and stung his cheek. Julia tucked the thermos under her arm as they turned back toward the Bungalow, pulling her coat closer to her body.

“We should go inside soon,” she said. “Before your brother accuses me of corrupting your moral fibre.”

“He accused you of that already.”

“Then let’s give him something to worry about,” she said, perfectly solemn - which was somehow worse.

A burst of shouting spilled down the slope from the Bungalow: Václav wailing about “authentic dissonance,” followed by the heavy, resigned thump that could only be Thavron removing the fiddle by force.

Julia let out a breath of laughter. “We are absolutely not rescuing them.”

“No,” he agreed. “We are not.”

He realised, in that moment, that neither of them had any intention of walking through that door. Not tonight.

The wind sharpened, slicing straight through coat and shirt. Before he adjusted his stride, he felt her fingers close on his sleeve - light, brief, certain.

“You’re freezing,” she said.

“So are you.”

“Then let’s not be heroic about it. Let's escape quickly.”

Before he could respond, her hand slid down to his wrist - deliberate only in the sense that she didn’t hesitate - and she tugged him away from the ship, toward the steps that climbed the hill. Sandwith lay somewhere beyond the dark, quiet and warm.

He let her lead him.

Frost crackled beneath their boots. Streetlamps blurred halos into the mist. Her shoulder brushed his now and then - not rhythmic, not calculated, simply the way she moved beside him.

Halfway up the hill, her voice reached him through the quiet.

“You looked… far away back there.”

“I was thinking.”

“That’s usually when you’re most dangerous.”

A startled breath - almost a laugh - escaped him. “Dangerous?”

She glanced up, her face briefly caught by the weak light above them. “You start thinking about choices. Destinies. Valinor. The kind of things I can’t compete with.”

He stopped walking. Snow drifted around them - slow, soft, unhurried.

“You are not competing with anything,” he said. “And you never were.”

Something in her expression shifted - subtle, but unmistakable to him. The wind tugged a strand of hair across her cheek. She didn’t speak.

Then she reached for him.

There was nothing bold in it, nothing staged - just a small, certain movement that met something he’d been holding tight for too long.