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"I used to long very much," Celebrían had told him once, before even the first stone of Imladris's towers was laid down with mortar and song. "For a playmate as near in age as Elros was to you."
Elrond had not answered. He walked beside her, by shores of the Aduin's first strong fountain-streams, and very carefully did not look too plainly upon Lady Celebrían's curved mouth, the yarrow leaf she turned and turned between her fingers.
He needed not to speak. Lady Celebrían, he had learned very quickly, was not one to wait very long to complete her ideas, none of which, she plainly felt, required much counsel or permission at all.
"Amroth was so much the elder, and so much a stranger even to my parents, who loved him as a cousin and as a son. I was lonesome and without companions, and though the joys and secrets of Lórien need not be shared to be true, still I have found them to be the greater when seen by two, and not one alone."
"So it is, in most places I have journeyed to, and not Lórien alone," said Elrond, carefully. It was the early days of their friendship, and already he had learned to be cautious with his mind and words and heart near Lady Galadriel's daughter, grey-eyed Celebrían whose conversations was like the waters of her own lands, leaping, quick and meandering and full of hidden roots to trip upon.
"I suppose, then, you would wish for children, and not one alone. That is good." Celebrían said, as if it were a natural thing to speak of, on the eve of battle, to the king's own herald.
Her eyes shone, too, with a brightness of sun on water, a glimmering laughing attention. Elrond's heart tripped in his chest, slipped from him again and again.
"I said to Elros I would not marry, if I could not present my children to their uncle."
"He must have teased you very badly," Celebrían guessed, looking at him through her lashes rather shamelessly. "I am sorry I shall not meet him; but then he has so very many descendants, some evil and some not, which on the whole may be better. He may not have wished you to know them, but not much can be done on that account; and at least any children of yours shall not lack for kin. How many would you prefer?"
Elrond, more ancient than some of the rivers and mountains of Imladris, wise in languages and laws and magics, stared.
Smiled, too, a little helplessly. He could not ever quite stop turning towards her when she looked at him with all that bare attention, and he never would; and knowing he never would did not much help in delaying love from taking root.
"A maiden," he said. A woman-child, with Elwing's quick hands at the loom, and Celebrian's way of worrying at the corner of her mouth with her thinking - he saw it, that sure alighting of love.
Celebrían nodded. As if it were that simple - as if it were an agreement, a handfasting, a promise.
"It will be good for the boys to have a sister," Celebrían said. "I used to long very much for a playmate near my age, and another a little my elder, to hide mischief from our parents better."
Elrond, old enough to remember when islands rose at the will of the gods, and all the sea-loving birds flew Westwards in a rush, smiled at her, helplessly enchanted.
The days of their early friendship: war ravaged the lands beyond Elrond's hidden valley fortress still. He had not known how to love her. His heart sang, assured from the first, a winged thing certain of its perfect flight - but he had not known her, truly.
He had not meant to be more than a host, her mother's friend - for whatever little that meant. Celebrían was not one to care very much for other people's good intent, when hers was so often an improvement.
For many years they were half-stranger and half-lovers, looking at each other with clear eyes. Over riverbanks and running fountains, desks and dances and the narrow, narrow curving staircases of Imladris, where the brush of a sleeve against a curling palm could be hidden, almost an accident, almost nothing.
To be wed was a thing the Noldor choose only in times of peace, though the Sindar delayed seldom. His parents had not waited, and not their parents either; but he did. He was only himself, and too himself to dare otherwise. Celebrían, he knew, would not have been against a bold flight of passion, not least eloping while her father tarried - would serve him well, she thought.
For Elrond only she delayed. Went patient with her words, and deeds, and the turnings of her mind, as she never had before, or would again.
He thought of it, afterwards, when her ship went where the gulls loved to go, to the place where Elwing's tower rose high, and beyond. All that times spent, that half-time.
There had been a sweetness, too, in the stretching of anticipation, but he could not be certain, afterwards. How they had tasted in his mouth, those kisses ungiven; if his hand had stung to brush her silks, if it had hurt half as much as remembering it would for many centuries.
Twins, they had, on purpose. Celebrían was determined, and determined to wait until Elrond was certain he could stand to want it - two little souls, as near in age as Elros had been to him.
Two were enough, they both agreed. Two sons, alike to each other to the tilt of their noses and the curl of their braids. Celebrían's children, restless and in love with the world.
Elrond's children, too, though it felt marvelous and absurd and terrible, many times, to claim such joy as his own. His children, who held his hands as they crossed the many bridges of Imladris, and brought him small treasures, and shared the same closeness he had once known with his own Elros.
Elrohir liked to run, to sing, to make mischief and pull laughter out of Imladris's people like a spark out of a flint - a brusque little surprise, flaring and vulnerable.
He had Celeborn's mouth, and Celeborn's way with beasts and rooted things, and rarely was he ever alone, pockets full of little lizards and shoulders covered with dark eyed minks, ancient serpents twining around his small, very breakable wrists.
He made friends wherever he went, respectful and cheerful and terribly silly; Glorfindel, once of Gondolin by way of friendship with Turgon and Finrod before him, spoke at times with Celebrían of her uncle.
He never made a comparison, never said the words; but it was perhaps a good thing Elrohir had been born of a people and a time with no need for the raising up of new kingdoms. It was perhaps a sorrow, too, but Elrohir never seemed to feel the lack of greatness very sharply, nor the pulling tides of the past either.
Elladan was not so.
Elladan spent half his childhood trying to escape the valley, and the other half hiding wherever he could, in a dozen secret little places that became veiled even to Elrond's senses far too quickly.
He felt sadness very keenly, his mind open like Elrond's to the many voices of the wind and the water and the earth, yet more like his mother's kin, in how the shadows on the hearts of those near and far struck fear and unease and anger in him.
He wept very often, and afterwards laid on their chests, all exhausted weight and heavy eyelashes. Elrond held him the tightest; Elrond was very determined to do so always.
For comfort, Elladan liked to play with the rings in his father's hands, to follow the trail of Iathrim inkings and hunting scars beneath Celebrían's skin. And then of course his brother came to find him, whenever he was distressed, as Elros had found Elrond in Amon Ereb and Sirion and Mithlond, wherever in dying Beleriand that long terrible war brought them.
"This is very good," Celebrían conceded, pressing her nose against their sons's sweet curls, one after the other.
Celebrían pressed her palm to his, her long marked fingers against his rings, Vylia flaring cold and alive wherever at her touch. Her attention set upon him was no less heady. His breast sang towards it only the most surely, whenever his wife's sly joy pressed against his mind; and for an instant the shadow of what might be was easy on it, nearly easy.
She had always seen him very easily, Celebrían Galadriel's daughter. Braver than he, and less patient, was the Lady of Imladris.
"Very good, and no one left lonesome; but I do recall there is a thing not yet done, that I would like to accomplish, and Elros Peredhel would be sure to tease us both very badly, if we both put it aside, on his account."
She came last, the maiden-child with a worried mouth. Tall and fair and not quick to laughter, eager to learn, his stubborn-minded cupbearer and apprentice and scribe.
Then Elrond was happier still, for many years; he had half-forgotten the old images of foresight. It was a long time before his daughter Arwen took to the loom, sitting intent and silent by her mother's bedside, weaving love into a cloak fashioned for warmth; a traveling garment, spelled against the sting of salt.