That morning at breakfast, the twins had been asked to watch their sister for the day, for their mother had business to attend to, as did their father, and the nanny had taken a month’s leave. Elrohir had suggested that they could simply lock her in a closet for the duration of the day so that they did not lose her; Elladan’s idea had not been nearly as nice. They were reminded, as so often they were, that neither was too big for their father to put over his knee if anything should happen to Arwen. Further instruction was then given that they were not allowed to leave the house, just in case they got an idea in their head to leave her in a tree or nudge her into the river.
After suggesting numerous games that Arwen declined interest in and offering to take her to the Hall of Fire to listen to the minstrels practice, the twins began to aimlessly wander about the house with her in tow. Their hope was that she would become tired and want a nap. Instead, they succeeded only in making her cranky.
“Bored, bored, bored, bored, bored, bored, bored, bored, bored, bored- wait!” Arwen stopped abruptly, nearly tumbling down the stairs. “We cannot go down here!”
“Why not?” asked Elladan, pulling a candle from the holder on the wall. “This is part of the house, too.”
Arwen whined and held onto the door with one hand while she wrapped the other around Elrohir’s leg. “Noo-oooo... it is too dark! And there are spiders.”
“And creeps and crawlies, too,” added Elrohir with delight as he, too, took one of the candles. He managed to free himself from Arwen’s grasp as he took a step down into the basement.
“I do not want to go down there!” she shouted as Elladan walked past.
“You had better hurry, then,” called Elladan over his shoulder. “Nana said you had to stay with us, and we are going into the basement.”
“Mmmmmnnnhhhhnnnn... you cannot leave me here!” protested Arwen as Elladan continued to disappear into the dark depths as Elrohir had. “I am so little!”
“Then come on!” yelled Elrohir from the darkness.
Taking a deep breath, Arwen mustered all of her courage and boldly took a few steps forward. The basement door swung shut behind her with a loud bang, and she let out a little scream and raced down the steps until she knocked into Elladan. She clung to his arm as they walked to the bottom of the stairs.
“Fraidycat,” remarked Elrohir as he held out his candle to get a better look around. Arwen grunted and lunged forward to hit him, but Elladan held her back. “Look at all this cool old stuff,” he said, wandering past broken, forgotten furniture and dull shields and armor that were too rusted to be of use. Lining the little rooms that made up the basement were smaller areas divided off into closet-sized compartments. These were constructed using old boards and a few nails, and each of them had a little door that was secured with a latch and a lock. Some of the locks had rusted shut, while some had failed and fallen open. A few looked well cared for, and the trio began to look for the spots where the locks had opened.
“How about this one?” she asked, pointing out another that they came to with a broken lock.
Elladan shook his head. “He died in the last war. I do not think it is right to go in there,” he said. In fact, all of the lockers they had passed had names on them of those long departed to the Halls of Mandos. The twins solemnly walked past the rows of musty cells of long-forgotten and never-claimed items with Arwen right behind them until they came to a break and another set of rooms.
These rooms had been cleaned recently and there was no smell of mildew. All of the little cells looked more uniform and some had planks which had been replaced, not doubt when the originals had cracked or splintered. It was among these that they found one halfway through with Glorfindel’s name on it.
“Too bad it is locked,” said Arwen as Elladan scouted around on the floor.
“Wenny, do you have any pins in your hair?” asked Elrohir sweetly.
“Can’t have ‘em,” she said immediately, covering her head.
Elladan dropped down to her level. “I thought you were bored.”
“Yes,” she nodded, still covering her head.
“If you want to be unbored, then we need one of the pins that Nana put in your hair this morning,” he explained.
With a deep frown, Arwen pulled out one of the shiny metal pieces and was almost disappointed when it did not cause her dark curls to bound out of their places so that she could scold her brothers. Elladan grinned and patted her on the back, then approached the lock and in record time was opening the door to Glorfindel’s locker.
Inside were rows and rows of wooden crates, all of them tall and wide, but very thin. “What do you suppose he is keeping in here?” wondered Elrohir as they three walked inside.
“No way to find out unless we look.” Elladan handed his candle to Arwen with directions for her to be steady with it before pulling the nearest crate forward and unlatching the side. From within, he pulled a finely detailed oil painting. “I wonder if these are all paintings that he acquired. I never knew he had such an eye for art.”
“El, look at the bottom corner.” Elrohir pointed to the signature. “Now I wonder, are these all his?”
“If they are why did he never tell anyone what a great painter he is?” Elladan opened another, removing a painting, again using oils, showing a sunset and a lake. On the shore stood a lone elf, and though the trees, clouds, and fading of the day all reflected in the water, the figure of the elf did not. “He is really good,” decided Elladan as they looked at more and more of the blond warrior’s works. “Not just pretty pictures, either. There is a story hidden in each one.”
“He was a good painter, at least. Look at the dates, El. All before the war.” Elrohir began the task of putting the paintings away that his brother had been taking out of their places, but Elladan stopped him.
Holding up one of the paintings that Arwen had oooed and ahhed about, Elladan said, “Do you know what would be fun today? We should hold an art show and show these to everyone.”
“Uhm, El? Maybe he does not want anyone to see these,” said Elrohir.
Picking up a portrait that had without a doubt been painted of Erestor holding a dove in his hands, Elladan said, “Look at the fine detail of this. Look at the painstaking work that went into this painting. Now, he signed his name on these, and he did not have them destroyed. I think he just never had anyone to really show them to. And how many paintings can someone hang in their suite anyhow?”
“I like this one,” added Arwen, pointing to another with a pair of horses, one black and one speckled with a golden mane nuzzling one another. Elladan tilted his head and waited for Elrohir’s reply.
“Fine. But if he gets mad, I am not to be blamed for this.” Stepping outside of the little room, Elrohir said, “I thought that father told us once that he fancied being a potter.”
“That he did. Why?” asked Elladan, gathering the paintings he deemed the best of the best.
“I was thinking that perhaps he had a storage space like this one and maybe he was keeping some of his pottery in it,” Elrohir explained. The flame of his candle faded out of sight and a few minutes later Elladan and Arwen heard their brother calling from somewhere nearby. “Look what I found,” he said excitedly, holding his candle up to the nameplate.
“This is not father’s area,” said Elladan with a deep frown as Elrohir begged another hairpin from Arwen. “Glorfindel may get angry, that I will admit, but Erestor will likely kill us if we invade his privacy.”
Either Elrohir was ignoring his brother or did not hear due to being deep in concentration while working on the lock. When it sprang open, he grinned and unhooked it, leading his siblings into the tidy but stuffed unit. “So many boxes... I would not even know where to begin.”
“I think we should skip all of the ones that were for his horses,” decided Elladan after further inspection. Most of the crates had the name of a now deceased race horse on a card glued to the wood. The crates were not solid, and within the twins and Arwen could see folded blankets, bridles, and other such items that must have belonged only to that individual equine. “It’s like his own private horse mausoleum,” whispered the eldest to his brother when he found that each of the boxes also contained a decorative, sealed urn.
“What are these?” Arwen pulled a sealed map case off of a shelf where many others were stacked and righted it, finding it taller than herself.
“Let me take a look, Wenny.” Elrohir helped his sister with the case and unwound the cord at the top to open the canister. He carefully removed what he thought was a large scroll, but it turned out to be a roll of paper around a linen cloth that was secured at both ends with a long wooden rod. When they spread it out, they found written upon it was a short poem. It was titled ‘Unforgettable’, and the words themselves were art, written in large characters and lovingly brushed onto the fabric with different colored dyes.
Namarie
The Great Farewell
The Closing of a Door
Namarie
But Who Can Tell
If This Really Means No More
Once I thought that passing away meant one was passing on
Though I wonder through the day if you are really gone
Are you sleeping or awake? Do tears fall from your eyes?
Are you simply drifting free, waiting for your grand reprise?
Will I see you on these shores, or when I sail to Valinor
Will you greet me on that land, will you ever understand
The sacrifice I know you made, for as time passes my hopes fade
To touch your hand, to kiss your brow, a million gestures that seem so small
A million chances gone, lost to fate, a million times I’ve seen you fall
In waking time and dark of night, in dreams that haunt me with such fright
But the worst nightmare of all of them is for me to never see you again
I think of you, hold your memories dear, and wish one day for you to be near
For things to be like they should have been, but for now I wait, and until then
I hope and pray
There will come a day
But for now all I can say is
Namarie
“I don’t get it,” said Arwen as she looked at confusion to her brothers, who were both sniffling and wiping their noses and eyes on their sleeves.
“It is a sad/happy sort of poem... poems can be hard to understand,” Elladan finally said in answer. He began to help his brother roll the scroll.
Arwen pulled away the case before they could put it back. “If we are having an art show, we should have this in it, too.”
“This might be a little too personal,” Elrohir tried to explain, but Arwen was not about to take no for an answer.
“Nana says a picture is worth a thousand words. This poem maybe has two or four hundred, but no more than that.”
Taking the case from Arwen, Elladan sighed. “If we are stepping into it, El, we might as well step in with both feet. We need to keep this safe, though, Wenny,” he explained as he slid the poem back into the case. “I am putting you in charge of carrying it. Now, let us go and find Ada’s stuff.”
Finding their father’s pottery proved to be fairly easy, and after selecting their favorite pieces, the trio of rogues made their way back through the maze of rooms to collect their treasures. They made plans to set up their gallery in the Hall of Fire, and smuggled the items with Lindir’s help to the large, open room. The musicians delighted in the idea and planned music around what would be where. The paintings were leaned against walls or propped up on easels that were brought from the art classroom, while for the first time some tables were set in the hall for the pottery to be displayed upon. The large scroll was rigged at the entryway, so that those coming into the room would need to walk one way or the other around Erestor’s masterpiece to reach the rest of the artwork.
---
“Melpomaen!” The secretary turned on his heel upon hearing his name and waited for his employer to catch up. “I was wondering if you had plans for the evening – I am trying to find a challenger for chess.”
Cocking his head to the side, Melpomaen asked, “I thought you would be going to the gallery showing. That is where I am headed.”
“Oh, I had no idea there was a show tonight,” answered Erestor, for normally some part of the library was used for exhibitions. “Where is it being held?”
“The... Hall of... Fire,” said Melpomaen cautiously. Then he added, “I would have thought you would have known about it, considering your work is in it.”
“My what?” Erestor’s face fell. “What work?”
“Uh, your poem. The ‘Centerpiece of the Event’ was what the poster said,” Melpomaen told Erestor nervously. “Maybe I understood incorrectly,” he apologized. “It must have been some other poet. I hope you find someone for chess,” he added as he hurried off.
Looking quite befuddled, Erestor followed in the same direction toward hall, passing some who were speaking to one another with excitement about going, and others who gave him a sympathetic look. When he arrived, it took a few minutes to actually get into the room, for the crowd at the door was inordinately large.
Once he did enter, it took the dark elf a moment to place the cloth that was displayed near the entrance. Upon realizing what it was, he panicked and looked around the side of the poetry to see if he could spy a certain blond-haired ex-Gondolin elf in the crowd. When he turned back, he easily found him, for Glorfindel had seen Erestor and silently followed him down the hallway and into the room.
Now he was standing before the cloth, slowly reading the words. Erestor doubted that any mistake would be made in identifying the subject of the poem, for twined around the letters of the title were garlands woven of ivy and golden roses. He held his breath as Glorfindel’s eyes flicked suddenly over to him and then back to the poem.
Glorfindel continued to stand at the entryway, rereading the poem. Feeling a little odd about standing in the way of others, Erestor walked into the gallery. Clustered here and there were groups of elves and men complimenting the style and composition of the works. Elrond was discussing something with his children, pointing to things on a piece of what Erestor recognized was the elf-lord’s pottery. The dark elf began to suspect the culprits behind the impromptu art show. How they had come to find that particular poem that hung at the beginning he did not know, but now he perused the rest of the room as he now and again looked nervously back to where Glorfindel was standing.
The pottery was something that Erestor had seen before and was not terribly interesting to him. On the other hand, the paintings were something new. They were also something he did not know even existed. Each was completed over a period of a year or more from what he could tell, and none of them were average, ordinary landscapes or still-lifes.
An eagle, flying against the wind, with its head turned up and looking to the heavens, wings about to break from the strain. Fields that appeared at a distance to be filled with yellow flowers, but closer turned out to be skulls and bones. Some of the images were jarring, while others were insightful. The one that stood out to Erestor was the one of himself.
He felt the other elf approach before he saw him. “Is... is this supposed to be us?” Erestor turned his head to see if his interpretation was correct. Glorfindel, his eyes now red, just nodded. Erestor reached out and stepped closer to close the distance. Taking hold of Glorfindel’s hand, he said, “It... says a lot.” In the painting, the dark elf had his eyes on the bird in his hands, and the dove in turn was watching the elf. Erestor noticed that one of the bird’s wings was injured, but that instead of panicking or trying to flee as many wild animals would, the dove was nestled quietly, his head resting against the elf’s hands.
“I thought a few times about giving this one to you,” admitted Glorfindel. “I thought you would think it stupid, though, or not like it. So I just hid it in the basement with the others.”
“I wish you had not hidden it,” said Erestor. “You may not realize it, but you have a marvelous talent.”
“So do you,” countered Glorfindel. “You have a way with words.”
“I wanted to show that to you when you came back,” admitted the dark elf, “but it never seemed the right time for it.”
Glorfindel smiled and closed the gap between them a little more. “Fate is funny, is it not?”
“When this is over, may we hang some of your paintings in our office?” asked Erestor. He nodded to the one before them. “Including this one?”
“On one condition,” agreed Glorfindel.
Erestor tilted his head. “What is that?”
“Only if there is room for your poem as well,” said Glorfindel.