Glorfindel's voice rose menacingly, all thoughts of food and goodwill completely forgotten as his sense of protectiveness surged to the fore. He rounded the table in furious approach, only to find himself physically restrained by Elrond's arms. Ja-zel stood, unafraid, looking at him with understanding eyes.
" Peace, warrior." She said, " I have only finished that which was begun long before my coming to these lands."
" Aye, mellon nin. I have seen the truth of her words. We must listen to what she has to say. Only then, will all be made clear." Elrond placated.
Glorfindel relented, though his eyes still shone with a hard light as he let himself be led back to the table, where Ja-zel joined them.
" The time for my own tale has not yet come." She said, " For I have only the heart to tell it once, and I would wait until your cub is healed enough so that he and his twin may hear it."
She then looked deeply into each pair of elven eyes and prepared to tell what could, at present, be told.
" Before my mate succumbed to the deep sleep of the change," She began, seeing those eyes widen with surprise at the news of their bonding. " he granted me permission to speak. He knew that the time for secrecy has ended. I bid you, hearken to me and hear the tragic tale of Erestor's life."
At those words the three elves leaned closer, for the time for long-sought answers had finally come. And so the Lady Ja-zel began, taking them back in time as candlelight flickered softly all around the room...
The sumptious meal lay untouched and the candles had burned down almost to the halfway mark, by the time Ja-zel paused in the telling of Erestor's story.
Across from her, the elves wore expressions of horror and pity as they sat, stunned. She had stopped at the point of Erestor's awakening on the morning of his majority, and was visibly trying to compose herself in order to go on.
" Ecthelion always said that his speed and reflexes were uncanny..." Glorfindel murmured to himself in absentminded shock.
Melpomaen sat, silently crying tears of compassion for his tutor and mentor.
Elrond's clasped hands were a tight knot of pain, as his heart bled for his longtime friend. So much was becoming clear to him as the stark reality of what Erestor had gone through set in, that he dreaded hearing what more was to come. But he had to know..
" Please, Lady. Continue if you will." He said, in a surprisingly calm voice.
The other two elves looked at her with eyes that were simultaneously dull and expectant. Ja-zel took a deep, calming breath before continuing.
" For three days he was kept locked in that cellar as he battled the feral madness that threatened to overtake him as his body sought both, to complete the change and to repel it. And on the fourth, he finally regained his sanity. Only to find that he had become trapped in an existence between two natures. One of which, he knew nothing about."
As she spoke, Ja-zel sent the images that Erestor had imparted to her through their mental link. Once again, the three elves found themselves transported back in time...
The stone floor of the cellar felt uncomfortably cold against Erestor's cheek. But he had not the will to move and so he lay there, broken.
He was not even roused by the sound of a key, turning the heavy padlocks of his makeshift prison. Only when he heard Lorantol's voice did he move, and then only to turn his face towards the sound of the voice.
" Lord Erestor?..." The faithful servant softly called out.
The nude body continued to lay, unmoving, upon the floor. Lorantol's compassionate eyes took in the myriad of bruises and scratches covering the still form, before widening in horrified pity as they alighted on the young elf's lower back. For there, protruding seamlessly from Erestor's tailbone, was the stunted form of a tail that tapered off to about two hand-spans in length as it drapped slightly over one of his rounded buttocks, the unfinished end looking red and raw in the dim light of the cellar.
" Oh!.. pen-neth..." Lorantol said, sorrowfully.
Erestor ignored the words. His own gaze was glazed and distant, until it alighted on the blow-dart tube held in one of Lorantol's hands. Broken visions of the events in his Naneth's room assailed him and the coldness of the floor was as nothing compared to the coldness in his gut. He screwed his eyes shut, his brow furrowing in pain.
" Naneth... Did I?...did I hurt her?..." He choked out the question.
" Nay, my Lord. You did no harm." Lorantol dropped to one knee beside the young elf.
" You stopped it."
" Aye, my Lord."
" Thank you..." Erestor whispered.
For some moments the two were as statues in the stillness of the room. Then Erestor spoke again.
" What is happening to me?."
The quiet question nearly broke Lorantol's heart.
" I am not sure, my Lord. But I will tell you all I know."
And he did...
He told of how, when their kind lived by the sea in Nevrast and King Turgon ruled from the halls of Vinyamar, Erestor's grandmother had come upon a strange black-haired, black-eyed male washed on the beach of a deserted cove, in the shadow of Mount Taras.
He told of how, moved by compassion for this male who resembled an elf and had an awful injury emcompasing his lower back, she had tried to offer aid. But he had bitten her hand, drawing blood in his mad fear and then had run off, never to be seen again.
He told of how, years later, she had given birth to the beautiful elven child that would become Erestor's Naneth.
Then he told of another birth... This one occuring shortly after Erestor's grandfather had left to fight in the Third War. When his grandmother had labored too long and her frightened daughter had sent for Lorantol, who was well-versed in the healing arts, and who had thus witnessed what was wrought forth.
He told of a twisted form. Elf and beast. Whose cries had rung pitiously, as it's ebony eyes widened in pain while tuffs of blackest hair sprouted wildly through it's wrinkled skin, even as it began to grow in size right before their disbelieving eyes. Until, at the hysterical bidding of Erestor's grandmother, Lorantol had borne the creature down into the cellar and watched with horrified pity as the thing, which should have been the long-awaited son, lost its struggle for life.
He told of how Erestor's grandmother lost her own struggle with grief, fading soon after.
He told of how Erestor's Naneth, then barely past her majority, had sworn him to secrecy. So that when Erestor's grandfather returned, all he knew was that his Lady and the babe had died during the process of childbirth.
He told of how Erestor's grandfather eventually took his household and followed King Turgon to the newly constructed city of Gondolin. Leaving behind the pain of the past for a new begining.
And finally, he told of how Erestor's Naneth met his Ada and became the Lady of the House of Willows. And how, out of her deep love for her Lord, she had put aside her fears to give him a much-desired child. Only to see her son born with the dreaded ebony hair and eyes...
" But you were normal in every other way. And as the days passed, your Naneth dared to hope that the very worst would not occur, though she knew that other trials would be endured."
Erestor fixed dull eyes upon the one who had been witness to his family's tragedies.
" And now?..." He asked, defeated.
" Now, young lord, you must learn to live with it."
TBC...