Love, Verily

Past noon, Celebrían awoke, memories of stargazing all through the previous night preserving a tickly glow on her mind. Not just her mind. She reached up and down, touched a flush cheek to trail across smiling lips, soon pursed to find cold linen where her husband lay not. Which would not do—and so it began.

'Come out, Peredhil, come out wherever you are.'

She asked it against the doorframe after donning a shift of silk and lace, kissing the wood that had fibbed in the past with more wile than forgiveness; but the house did not hide him, as on other days it might, even promised so. They both were lonely for their lord. Celebrían left the house languishing as a tree lacking rainfall to quench a thirst of her own.

'Come out, Peredhil, come out wherever you are.'

She asked it amidst the gardens after soothing neglected feelings for her preference to stargaze beyond the valley plains away from home and sight, and without warning; but the gardens had marked few feet that day, not those of the Master certainly. Her own feet happened upon an abandoned ewer bereft of its contents, which she took along as omen and token.

'Come out, Peredhil, come out wherever you are.'

She asked it of the road only after all else had failed, for few were mapped well in those days, while others laid lost beneath ruins of antiquity; but though Elrond indeed crossed many paths, none knew one end from another, nor direction thereby without start or finish to judge. Ever finding roads confused when she found them at all, Celebrían skipped instead upon grass.

'Come here, Peredhil, come here forever awhile.'

Now she knelt by a blue pool grown fatter all spring from nourishing cascades, and let her ewer drink its fill as she watched a figure moving nonstop below the deeps. She saw he did not swim, no more than a swooping bird ever truly falls; rather the water entertained itself, with him as obliging as a leaf teaching children to twirl through whirlwinds. Celebrían inched away.

'Come here, Peredhil, come here forever awhile.'

Now she arched back upon a flat and mossy rock nearby the rippling waterside. Brimming ewer she took up, first pouring overhead, taking as much within her mouth as runneth over; then she led the spout lower, nipples turning hard at biting chill, until both legs buckled from the cold rushing over their apex. Seeing the runoff trickle home as planned, she smiled.

'Come in, Peredhil, come in whatever you do.'

Kingly and crownless, he emerged from the pool using footholds unseen, sparing nary a glance in any direction save ahead where he marched. A fever within betraying her to shiver without, Celebrían braced herself against the damp stone; still he seized her hips and a more advantageous angle, joining their sexes as it seemed before aught else of their bodies had met.

'As you will, Peredhil, everything you will.'

Celebrían had kept him from his tasks, been an intentional distraction since waking so needy and alone. Hence this, his retaliation: every thrust in response to some plead whispered afar, each kiss to silence more of the same. He well knew what she desired; flesh calmed by firm caresses; unyielding hands keeping her placed—passion, and unrelenting. In the end, he came exactly as she pleased.

'As you were, Peredhil, however you were.'

Before she had wrung out her shift to dry, already he sat looking leagues away. The borders were troubled, he explained when asked, and she knew he would go mending as if a servant of the vale, eventually to return as its Lord. In Lothlórien she jested to have married a riven dell wherein lived Elrond. At home, there was rightly no difference.

'As you are, Peredhil, whoever you are.'