Bree was, by all accounts, a moderately sized town. Larger than Combe and Straddle combined, but not a great city. It was still the largest town Morliniel had ever been in and she was perfectly fine considering it a city. She’d spent weeks, off and on, exploring the streets, shops, and getting to know a few of the locals. There were tucked away gardens, and little places to sit away from the main bustle of the thoroughfare. It was easy to get lost between the buildings, even for a girl well versed in tracking her path. Cities and towns were very different from open and and thick forests.
Excitement tugged at the young woman’s feet, urging her to break into a run, dragging Caranril behind her. She forced her steps to be even and at a respectable pace. He hadn’t seen Bree yet, but he was from a small fishing village in Anfalas, so he didn’t know big cities any more than she did. They’d traveled together, finding adventures where they could, certainly, but Lin had moved further afield than he had, too eager and impatient in some ways. But, too, to sell the skins she’d cleaned and cured or to send messages back home to check on her father. It was important that she send word, no matter how poorly she wrote. It was important.
“Is it safe?” Caranril asked uncertain but following Lin while taking in the buildings as she all but pulled him past.
Lin grinned over at her friend, “Of course!” It was just ahead, and she couldn’t not break into a short jog too excited to show him the masterwork fountain. Three boars, each appearing to spit water from open maws. The stonework around the small pool, staggered tiers of the pedestals, and the metal work boars were striking.
It was a perfect night for it; the moon was both bright and full, the lanterns through Market Square were lit, and the skies remained clear. The fountain bubbled as water poured into the full basin, and the two friends stood side by side taking it in. Lin’s arm linked around Caranril’s and she bumped his hip with hers. “See?” But something else caught her eye as he answered. A figure sat astride a gorgeously tacked horse, but it was the figure that pulled Lin’s eye.
He was too beautiful to be Man, and the way his face was tilted star-ward showed a jawline so smooth and elegant it could only belong to one of the other Peoples of Middle-Earth. The breath caught in her throat and Lin nudged her friend, hard. “Look,” she hissed through her teeth, trying to keep her voice low eyes still locked on the Elf while a finger lifted to point. Not the most surreptitious of actions, but earlier she had been trying to explain to her friend that Elves were prettier than anything. There, just across the fountain, was her proof.
She could feel him turning, Caranril’s head craned around, “What am I looking a-- oh.” His voice dropped and Lin could feel the change in his posture as she nodded.
“Told you.”
As low as their whispered exchange was, the Elf lowered his gaze and turned it onto them. Morliniel took an automatic step back and behind Caranril as the beautiful creature moved his horse around and closer to them. There was a buzzing in her ears as she watched his lips move, barely registering his words. She understood him to have said something about the fountain and the night, but the buzzing happened whenever she was faced with someone so beautiful and graceful.
Lin knew what she was, a simple girl raised at her Pa’s back in the wooded areas of Anfalas in Gondor. She didn’t have the prettiest speech, could only write if she concentrated wholly on the project and even then it didn’t swoop neatly like a practiced hand. But she could hunt. She could trap, kill, clean, and prepare any number of beasts. But she often had dirt smudged across her face, her clothes often had a worn smell to them, and her boots were more caked mud than leather. She wasn’t fancy, and they were. Nobles and Elves.
Her words would trip over her tongue, causing a stutter varying in severity. Even with the Elves she knew by sight and name, she stuttered while feeling clumsy and awkward.
When he spoke it was impossible not to notice the Elf’s voice was like music as he introduced himself as Celodhrad, and Lin tried, and failed, to recreate his name. Their introductions were offered by Caranril, as Lin was too lost in the rise rise and fall in tone, if not volume of Celodhrad’s voice and she found herself listening to the sound of it, though not the words. When she did happen to catch something here or there, he was speaking in riddles. No, not in them, about them. Something about searching for a Flame and a Tear whose beauty rivaled that of Galadriel herself. Which was absolute nonsense, of course. Even she had heard stories about Galadriel and her beauty. She must have said something, then, but Lin couldn’t remember forming the words at all, but the Elf smiled at her.
Though the smile could have been at Caranril, or someone behind them she couldn’t be sure, but suddenly her knees felt soft and not at all supportive. She heard Caranril mutter, “Stop standing behind me. I don’t deflect smiles.” For which he earned a hard pinch.
Lin, still too dazzled by the Elf, was still unable to hear anything beyond the sound of his voice when he spoke, but she heard Caranril answer that the only flame he knew of in Bree was himself, because of his name. With a groan, Lin dropped her forehead onto his shoulder, too embarrassed for words. The pun in and of itself was harmless, and often enough she had teased him about him having to start all their fires. But in front of an Elf. An Elf who smiled at them, and was looking for something important!
Embarrassed as she was, Lin couldn’t not look at the beautiful creature that was before them. He was asking about her. What of her life, and if she would be so kind as to tell a beggar like him. How he could think himself a beggar? This creature whose beauty shamed the sun. Whose voice song birds wept to hear. She managed, stammering, to tell him that she too was from Anfalas, though further inland than her friend. As she tried to give her tale, Caranril, the traitor, shifted away exposing her fully to the Elf.
Instinctively she grabbed for him, fingers missing even his warm winter cloak to no avail. Hissing at him to get back there, Lin realized that she was fully in the Elf’s view now, exposed and behaving like a child who needed to hide behind her mother’s skirts. In many ways that was exactly how she felt. And though it shamed her, she couldn’t quite change it. Nervously, she dropped her hand, fingers still twitching for Caranril to move back as though she could magic him once again to her side and not three paces away. When as much of her focus was on Celodhradd it was impossible not to notice that his expression had changed from friendly to puzzled and was edging towards startled.
He slid gracefully from his saddle. More gracefully than she’d seen even Credoa move from the back of a horse. Swallowing hard, Lin took the necessary steps towards Caranril because whatever was coming, she knew she’d need the support of her friend. The way the Elf looked at them, as though the answer to his question was standing right behind them. No, not behind them.
It happened so quickly then. The Elf was on one knee before them, explaining, as best as Lin could make out behind the roaring in her ears, that they were the answer to his riddle. Caranril the Flame of Anfalas, and Lin the Tear of the Woods. He was wrong, she insisted, certain she had managed to get at least those words out. Wrong! He had to be. He’d said earlier that the answer to his riddle would rival the beauty of Galadriel. Caranril had been teasing when he said the only flame he knew was himself, and she certainly wasn’t any tear of the forest! But it was done, the Elf had clearly made up his mind and gone and offered his services.
The two friends exchanged looks. He was offering to travel with them, or perform services. No manner of protest from Lin seemed to help or hedge him off, and the two friends had been talking about getting word back from home faster. She made the suggestion, Caranril argued that it was likely beneath the Celodhrad, who then interjected that travel was a little thing for Elves. Passing another look between them they asked if he would mind. Though it would be more accurate to say Caranril asked while Lin once again hid herself behind him.
Celodhrad rose to his feet again, summoning his horse from wherever it had wandered and mounted as gracefully as he had dismounted. Lin felt her legs go tingly when he smiled again before heading off to Anfalas to check the state of their respective families for them and bring back word. The two friend watched him ride until the buildings of Bree and the curve of the roads blocked their view.
The night felt darker for the loss of the Elf’s beauty, but when Caranril turned his face said as much about his encounter as Lin’s knees did. Both took a staggering breath and let it out in unison.
“I owe you a drink,” Caranril said, awe coloring his tone.
