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-What is he doing?- inquired one of the men softly, leaning tiredly against the trunk of a young birch tree, favoring his left side. Arvegil, Elrohir remembered with the slightest delay.
Everything was always slightly out-of-sync when Glorfindel Sung like that, and Elladan nursing a minor concussion didn’t help, everything in Elrohir’s mind sliding and tipping sideways as if drunk.
Elrohir opened his mouth, took a breath. The elusive, sweet scent of something long gone coated the back of his throat, making the tears beading in his eyes already drip down the sides of his face. – He is, - he swallowed, grief roaring in his chest, for the dead friend on the ground and for all the things he had never seen. – He is leading him to the Halls.-
- He is glowing.- Arvegil hissed between his teeth, three day stubble splattered with orc blood, voice trembling with soft awe and fear, of the kind mortals, even of elf blood, always felt when an echo of spirits brushed around them.
Elrohir could only try to smile behind his tears, breathe through the crushing homesickness Glorfindel’s soft, but eerily echoing lullaby brought upon his heart. He swallowed. He would grieve Rosslinn later, when they were properly safe. And for now... – He saw the Noontide of Valinor, Arvegil. All elves glow, but those who remember...- he gestured at Glorfindel, whose form was barely recognizable as an elf as he knelt, shrouded in gold-white brilliance, cradling the corpse of Rosslinn in his lap, so very gentle as he Sang and brushed his hair back one could think this wasn’t a bloody battlefield funeral but a father lulling a child to sleep.
They didn’t have much time, in truth. The orc band had merely fled, not been decimated. They could return any moment.
But everybody was tired, bloody and achy, and after the healer-trained had seen to the injured, they could take the moment to rest, and help the dead do so too.
Those were cursed lands, this far up north. No guarantee they could hear Namo’s call here, even with Gil-Estel shining overhead.
Glorfindel knew the way, having walked it both ways already. He would escort Rosslinn as far as he could, and tell him the way from there. And if this last, and only kindness they could do for Rosslinn made Elrohir’s heart ache and mind attempt to twist sideways, then Elrohir would not look directly nor listen consciously, and focus on the living for now.
Come, come, I will show you how to get home, come, you are well, you won’t be in pain anymore, we shall see you again, come, come, we are going home. The lullaby beckoned, kept from drawing them in only by the single-minded focus and control of the Singer, and Elrohir still wished for nothing more than to lie down and breathe in that smell of leaves and flowers and sap that would never flow again but still thrummed with power, so, so incredibly homesick for a place he had never been to.
- It feels… warm. And… and it wakes such an ache in my heart.- Arvegil whispered, staring at the scene. – Why…? How…?-
- He is calling him home.- Elrohir said, soft, wiping away the tears that unhelpfully slid down his nose, voice stolen by the lump in his throat. – And we also can hear it.-
- Oh.- Arvegil fell silent, throat working, silver eyes boring into Glorfindel’s fuzzy, mind-bending silhouette.