There was a soft and tentative knock on the door of the gazebo. Erestor looked up from where he was sitting on the floor, obscured from view to anyone who was not standing directly next to the structure and looking down into it. Window seats surrounded the perimeter, and the door was solid except for a single window. He sighed heavily and motioned for his friend to enter.
“I was beginning to worry about you. Missed you at lunch, never saw you come to dinner – have you been out here the whole day?”
Erestor shrugged. “I guess so. I came out to write a letter, and then I just never came back in.” He waved his hand toward the finished piece of correspondence, already folded and just waiting to be sealed with wax.
“Some of us were beginning to worry,” said Glorfindel. When Erestor gave him a scornfully disbelieving look, the blond ruefully smiled and corrected, “I was beginning to worry about you.”
“Nothing to worry about.”
“Yes, I have heard that before.” Glorfindel entered the gazebo and joined Erestor on the floor. It was dark, well past midnight, and Erestor wondered how Glorfindel was finally able to find him – or maybe Glorfindel had always known where he was.
The silence, though not uncomfortable, persisted until Erestor said, “Maybe my trouble with love is trying to hard to find it.”
Instead of agreeing, for he really wanted to – in fact, it was not the first time he would have liked to have slapped some sense into the silly old elf sitting next to him, so close and always so far away – Glorfindel said instead, “I think your trouble, my friend, is that you need to learn to love yourself first.”
“That sounds quite egotistical,” replied Erestor flatly.
“No, you are misinterpreting me,” said Glorfindel. “You beat yourself up over failed relationships. By my calculation, you will now spend the next sixty to eighty years bemoaning the fact that you and Claire did not work out. You will pick apart yourself over it and you will blame every flaw you have on what happened. In reality, the trouble was that it was never going to work in the first place.”
“What did you do, peek in Galadriel’s mirror?”
Glorfindel shuddered. “No, you know I refuse to look at that thing. I overheard her speaking with Celebrian a few days after you brought her here.”
“Oh?” Instead of playfully scolding Glorfindel on the reasons not to eavesdrop, Erestor eagerly listened to what his friend had to say.
“Claire was asking about our marriage customs and about some stories she had heard when she was younger – basically, someone at some point had told her the story of Beren and Luthien. Celebrian answered a lot of her questions, and specifically, when Claire asked if she married you if that would cause you to die, Celebrian told her it probably would. I think Claire had the same feelings for you as you had for her, but she loved you so much that she could not bear to think she would cause you to fade. So she put up a roadblock – Garren – to keep that from happening.”
Erestor was thoughtful now, very quiet, processing everything that Glorfindel had said. “Like Aegnor and Andreth,” he said finally.
“Only, with a lot less rumination and a little more, uhm... you know,” Glorfindel settled upon. “But... and I say this with confidence, there is someone out there for you, Erestor. I know this in my heart. You first need to love yourself... accept and know what it is that you want, and the rest shall fall in place.”
