16. small birds, dry grass

Eärendil sprang up from the rim of the silent sea, and hung in the evening that poured into the west. Above him the golden smudge of the waning gibbous moon was floating down on the sunset’s fiery dying breath. Below, the ocean’s cup caught the sky in a mirror.

“Tilion is chasing Papa again,” Elrond murmured from Elros’s side.

“Mm. He has sunk closer in my lifetime, and still not caught him,” said Elros. They’d had this conversation at least two dozen times before, but Elrond sounded just as wondering every time, and so Elros was glad to have it again.

They had lain on their backs lazy with heat all afternoon, smoking, with their arms folded behind their heads, in the parched grass and dusty summer heather of the highlands above the blue bay of Andúnië. Now the cool salt air came up from the sea, bringing wakefulness. In over four hundred years, Elros still had not become used to the blazing sun over Númenor.

The air was still bright, and lit the wings of the white seabirds as they streamed homewards into the uttermost west, crying strange and mournful above the sighing waves.

“They fly to the quays of Avallónë,” said Elros, “Gulls’ cries! Do they call for you to sail after?”

“Aye, one day,” said Elrond sleepily. “Time will come. Do you wish it too?”

“Aye, but I think the longing for things forever unknown is sweet when unfulfilled. Don’t you?”

Elrond laughed softly. “Thanks to you, yes, I have learned it is so.”

Elros reached out for the pipe. “My eyes cannot follow the birds to Eressëa any longer. Only in dreams.”

“I am sorry. Or, is it better in dreams?”

“Perhaps it is better in dreams. In waking, all the birds are too small.”

He stopped and frowned. He had not meant to say that, but his pipe was good, the evening was sweet, and his company was as old as he.

Elrond opened one eye and gave him a keen look before softening. “I know.”

There was companionable silence, upon wayward paths of thought.

“Elros!” Elrond poked him between the ribs. “Elros!”

“Yes?”

“Say, you could probably get a better look at the seabirds — or they could get a better look at you, without setting their feet on mortal lands — from the sky.”

This time Elros opened one eye, suspiciously.

“What.”

“Remember?” Elrond rolled over on his side and rested his chin on one hand, eyes lit with dreams, an aggravating recollection of a reflection — all unlined eyes and smooth rosy cheeks and thick silken black hair. “If you took the old hang-glider over Forostar like we and Urwendë and the children used to, who knows what you might yet meet?”

“You brainless little scallop.” Elros levered himself up on one elbow. “I am four hundred and ninety-six years old. My fingers—” he flexed them, “can no longer grip, and my joints —” he puffed pointedly on the pipe, “—are seized with rheumatism. I am too old to go hang-gliding. Or for that matter, pearl-hunting, or spark-diving, or isle-rafting, or whatever silly elf thing you were going to bring up next. If I wanted to die immediately, Eru willing, I would be sure to take your advice.”

“Ah, I see!” said Elrond, raising an eyebrow though his voice was strangled with laughter. “Do you not think drowning in the bay while chasing birds and stars is a fitting way to go out? You could declare it another tradition, for all the Kings of Westernesse hereafter. Like what you said about the—”

“I said a lot of things when I was young.” Elros stretched, handed Elrond the pipe, and settled himself in the grass. “Now I pray to die right here, and I should like to reach five hundred before I do. And—I have not been hang-gliding in nearly three hundred years, for I only went with Urwendë.”

And at that, Elrond simply nodded, and lay back again.

“Very well,” he said, only a little too gently.

The lighthouse of the haven came alight, and began to spin slowly, a clear flame throbbing on the sea’s edge. Elros thought back, far back, before wives and kingdoms, where it was dim.

“Elrond!” He whispered. “Elrond!”

“Yes?”

“Can you remember for me? In Sirion, the night Before, I promised Mama I would do something for her the next day. But I cannot recall what.”

“I remember,” said Elrond, gravely now. “You promised her you would show her the shell city you had built in the cove. But it was not for the next day. You said you would show her some time, whenever you were finished.”

Elros stared up into the sky, and felt a pang.

“Oh. Some time. Some time!”

The birds’ cries echoed fainter, Eärendil’s star burned deeper, the moonlight dissolved in the water at the edge of the world, where the doors of night were opening. The spark of white Avallónë flickered a moment, beyond the sea.

“If you wish, brother,” Elrond said finally. “We could go up in a balloon.”

It took a moment for the words to sink in. Then Elros sat bolt upright with a start.

“What!” he said, rubbing his back and wincing. “You have a hot air balloon?”

“Come, would I have offered what I do not have?”

“A balloon! Here! What if I died while you were waiting to tell me! Tyelpe finally got them to work? Do they go very high? What did—”

“Indeed he did, after all these centuries!” This time, Elrond looked as old as he really was, sitting up cross-legged and grinning around the pipe in glee. “A gift, of the silence of the skies, from the hither lands to Elenna that lies starwards — he had one sent to the lighthouse, with his regards, if you want it.”

“Want it! I can’t believe I spent decades doing the cartography of this island on the ground, only to get this now when I am past due to sail out from harbor. The trials of mortality! Ask him to send more for the children, will you?”

“I promise I shall. And Elros, I do not know how high or far it can go. Shall we be the ones to try it? That is,” Elrond added thoughtfully, a gleam leaping to his eye, “if your old bones are up for it. You know, the sun gets terrible hot and the winds can knock the basket about a—”

“Oh shut up, shut up old man, of course we shall be the ones to try it,” grumbled Elros, holding out his hand and waiting to be pulled to his feet — Elrond was already standing, hand out, vital as memory. “If we hurry, we might lift off in time to meet the seabirds flying back when Papa sets in the dawn.”