The gardens of Imladris are bright and fragrant in the new autumn morning, for here the cold touches lightly, only nipping the air at the end of each breath. She can sense, a little, the power of a Ring she has only seen once before. Spray from a nearby offshoot of the Bruinen, trickling over an artfully designed waterfall and through the garden, dampens the world around. Truly, Imladris has changed little.
She sits, tucked away between a pair of hydrangeas, back held as straight as ever even as her mind wanders erratically, revelling in its new freedom of motion after the endless circles of dreams. She sits, and she thinks, for there is little else to be done here.
Elrond has told her, at her own asking, the tales of all she had known.
Gil-galad, face bright with determination and the starlight glinting off Aeglos as it did her own spear. His grave, she has been told, is millenia old.
Celebrían, whom she had only just been getting to know, grown up at last, married and moved, and a mother thrice over and gone now, lost to a land long-forgotten. Where had the bright-eyed girl of Lindon gone?
Elrond's tale she knows, and grief had been graven into it long before Dagorlad and the long siege, but yet more has come and gone as she had lain sleeping. His gaze is grave and ancient now, and as compassionate as only a parent's can be. Where had the smiling young Elf she had known gone?
These gardens that bloom so bright about her are the same they two had walked among no more than four years before, speaking first of the war and then of more personal matters. She had teased him endlessly for his love for the beautiful Celebrían, and how he had stammered and faltered before that lady as he never did in battle.
Imladris is, as promised, as she remembers it, but its inhabitants are not.
A light step around the path comes to her ears, belatedly for she had been lost in thought. She remains seated, and cares not, for most of the Elves she has seen are young and unknown to her, and would not disturb her.
Her gaze furrowed into a warning glare for whatever the creature coming round the path, she is greatly startled at the sight of brilliant gold hair and a bright gaze--- as familiar as a breath of song.
"Eithruin!" Glorfindel's grin is wide and happy, and every bit as astonishing as his completely unexpected arrival.
She rises with a garbled start, completely thrown off balance, but Glorfindel is laughing and embracing her before she can even think of doing anything, and though his clothes are worn and travel-stained and stinking of the road, she hugs him back with all the meager strength that remains to her. He looks, some dim corner of her mind notes, exactly the same.
"You do not know how good it is to see you awake!" Glorfindel laughs still, pulling back slightly and grinning still wider--- if possible--- as he studies her face. "Elrond had warned me you were close to waking, but no one thought to see you up and about so soon!"
"---Aye, I rose three days ago." Eithruin stammers and stares, still standing on the soft loam between the hydrangeas. "But how---"
She does not know what she had meant to say, for Glorfindel's eyes are lit with the transparent joy he always wore on his sleeve whenever he had cause, and his hair is still braided neatly rather than flamboyantly, small flyaways glinting about his face when he spoke. Grief and joy have risen and fallen with kingdoms in the long years of her dream, but Glorfindel is seemingly untouched by it all, and somehow she knows that he still will grin and call out at the sight of some fluttering song-bird through the branches, however common the kind.
"How are you here?" She demands at length, and however nonsensical her words she still scrambles to explain them. "Elrond said you were departed on some errand, and not expected back for some time!"
Glorfindel's bright grin falters, and his merry face, though shining still, gravens a little. "Has Elrond not told you?"
Eithruin knows, and has known these three endless days that Elrond has told her far from everything, but her friend's face speaks of a far more present danger than those long-gone and grieved. Spun by two turns in less than forty seconds, her still-healing mind flips and turns and steadies with the forward focus of battle. She steps back with lithe strength she had not known she still bore, though still gripping Glorfindel's forearm.
"What is it?" She asks, and if Glorfindel's joy is familiar, than his sober determination is as well. His step, turn, and gesture up the garden path to the House, every movement she knows. "Come," he says, "There is much you should know."
