Blizzard

Erestor ran.

Snow lay thick underfoot. Dawn dreamt an hour into the future and it was still snowing, flakes tumbling crazily everywhere through a maze of winter-stripped branches glittering ice-white against the greying dark. His passing left no traces. The wind whipped snow through his eyes and burned on the edge of his breath.

He recalled saying: no need to worry yet. No one's going anywhere till spring.

Now this. Attacked in a midwinter blizzard. What did wolves care for weather?

The bridge lay ahead, treacherous. Snowdrifts piled up against Menegroth's black gates. He sprinted on through the blurring night.

Dusk

Blizzard

The snow ceased to fall with the fading of what little daylight had lent its pallor to the dissipating banks of cloud. It lessened imperceptibly, the wind trailing away and the tumbling flakes dwindling into a gradual, drawn-out nothingness that left the evening clear and cold and sharp as glass.

As a shattered lantern. Erestor stared into the fire and saw burning tapestries. Smoke everywhere. Blood spurting hot across his face.

The blades in his hands. The madness, wolf-like. The deaths.

So easy. Elves died so easily.

He leaned forwards abruptly. Snow glistened against his fingers. It did not melt.

Against the Tide

Torrent

Fleeing Doriath's midwinter ruin, the Sirion was a torrent: snow-swollen, choked with the dead. Southwards it bore the bleeding survivors to the sea. Amid the foaming mouths their camp was made, a scattering of Thingol's people and those who had followed Dior. And there they remained.

It was autumn and the Sirion was torrential again when a flood of refugees came south down the river's bronze-edged bank. Beneath Nan-Tathren's willows they had shed their grief; now they sang the glories of shattered Gondolin.

The Gondolindrim planned to settle there. Wandering the torrent's shore, Erestor stared northwards, dreaming of ruins abandoned.

Nan-tathren Nights

Lightning

Lying on the riverbank beneath a willow's weeping cave. Beyond a curtain of green branches, restlessly stirring the water, the Valar tore apart the night. Darkness shattered into fragments, brilliantly outlined. Erestor traced the heavens parting at the seams.

He glanced sideways. Melinna's hair fanned dark over the damp grass.

"Maybe lightning shows up the cracks in the sky," he said. "Maybe that's behind everything. Fire and light..."

Her gaze was lost in the interlaced shadows of their shelter. She did not turn her head.

"Maybe the sky will fall," she said, "as Doriath fell, in a storm of fire."

Tol-in-Gaurhoth Unloosed

Tempest

Grass speared up between scattered rubble mounds. Clambering up the slope to reach the barrow was dangerous, Tol Sirion's natural contours distorted by massive blocks of far-flung stone and ivy-netted pits, leaves fluttering over bottomless rainwater wells. Everywhere shone sunlight, clear and serene, a golden glimmer brightening every jagged, broken slab or white edge still pristine, sculpted by Elven hands when Finrod Felagund had raised this shattered tower in bygone days.

A tempest had scoured away the shadow of Tol-in-Gaurhoth. Erestor recalled Lúthien taking up the Nauglamír, more brilliant than the Silmaril set blazing amid an array of lesser jewels.

There Was a Time in Ered Luin...

Thunder

The cave was larger than the cleft in the cliffs had suggested, a sandy-floored cavern concealed behind creeping ivy. Leaves fluttered as the storm broke with a vengeance, roaring its displeasure in the thunder. All around pooled shadows, liquid-dark, as black as ink.

"Good timing," said Melinna, blinking away the aftereffects of lightning. "Cosy, too. Good place to spend the winter."

"Mm," came floating vaguely from the gloom. "Maybe."

She waited, amused, and heard his pleased intake of breath. "What's there?"

"More caves."

"Oh, not after last time –"

"We ought to check," said Erestor reasonably, already disappearing into the dark.

Tell Us a Story!

Gale

"It was a dark and stormy night –"

"Oh, not that one!" came the protesting chorus. "We've heard it a thousand times!"

Erestor raised his eyebrows at his audience. Sprawled out on the carpet, Elrond's twins blinked up with those clear grey eyes that always called to mind starlight and nightingale feathers. Arwen perched hopefully on Melinna's weaving stool, her skirt spilling blue silk over her bare feet.

Rain hammered at the window. The gale had chased them all the way to Imladris, catching at their cloaks.

"Really?" he said. "Then I needn't tell you what happened to the dragon cub..."

Dust and Dragon Cubs

Dust Storm

Fingertips brushed against her sleeve. "Melinna," said Elrond's daughter, light as a bird on her bare white feet. Her eyes shone. "Melinna, is Bree really so dusty in the summer that a dragon could run through the streets without being noticed?"

"A dragon?" Melinna turned away from Celebrían's half-finished tapestry with a blink. "You couldn't even squeeze one through the gates. Why?"

"A dragon cub, of course!" said Arwen impatiently. "Erestor was saying..."

Naturally. Melinna almost smiled.

"That's different," she said solemnly. "Odd people appear in a Bree dust storm. We met an urchin once – maybe Erestor already told you..."

Adventures of a Most Lurid Kind

Dust Storm

Elrond sat bewildered beneath a storm of words. Dragon cubs and urchins tumbled through Bree's summer dust – and Dwarves were everywhere hunting mithril – but was it true, about the collapsing mountain? A distressed damsel had been rescued and at least one Vala was involved somehow. And had Melinna's hair really once been –

He stared at his children. "Pink?"

In the distance, a harp trilled silver. Elrond tracked the song to its source.

"Inez?" he said. "What sort of a villain's name is that?"

"The first that came to mind," said Erestor cheerfully. "But wasn't the dust storm a good touch?"

Side-Plots Involving Mutual Respect

Whirlwind

"– and so the dust blew away and all the Men saw the dragon cub!" finished Arwen. "That's what Erestor said, anyway. And they would have torn it apart, Melinna told me, if not for the urchin – but is it true?"

"Is what true, dear?" said Celebrían, adrift in the heavens stretching blue beneath her fingers.

Her daughter pouted. "You aren't even listening. About what happened!"

"My dear, how should I know? I wasn't there."

As Arwen stalked huffily away, Celebrían shook her head fondly and reached for a skein of cloud-white wool. What an utterly absurd tale. Whirlwinds in Bree!