milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Maglor was sitting at the bar.

He war drinking Michelob beer from a bottle, and eating his third fishburger. No, really - even human junk food tasted excellent in this place.

There was a small white rat watching him eat, not greedy for food, but on the contrary proud that the elf liked it, and poised to bring him more.

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"Who are, mother?"

He didn't dare hope she might mean his brothers.

Oh, by all the Valar, Russandol! To get Russandol back! And to see Findekano's face when...

No, he shouldn't even think about it.

"Your brothers," she says with eyes glistening with more tears. "Gorlim himself sent Moryo back. When we visit Aman in February, they will walking about, still children -- but, oh, it will be them!"

"They will be..."

Maglor gasped, and found himself unable to say anything any more.

His brothers! His brothers would be back! Russandol!

Her arms go around him.

"We will be together again," she says softly against his shoulder. "Russandol--"

The eldest. The one who had suffered so at the hands of Melkor...

"We will all be together again! Hounds and muddy boots and occasional explosions and raids of the cellar in the middle of the night, and Russo and Findekano laughing in front of the fireplace..."

There were tears of joy on his voice.

"Aye," she laughs, sitting back to look at his face. "I can look forward to mending torn clothing, cleaning and cooking hunting prizes -- oh, the laundry the seven of you can create with just a single day's ride!"

"Oh yes - somebody is going to bring home one stringy hare, so proud that we can't begrudge him to make it everybody's dinner," Maglor laughed, remembering an incident. "You will need maids again, of course."

"And with an eighth arriving soon -- Valar help me, I must be insane," she says with a smile. "Perhaps I can finally wring more grandchildren out of you lot," Nerdanel says with a wicked grin.

Maglor grinned brightly. "If there is any place I might find a woman who would put up with me, it would be here!" he declared.

"You would think with seven children, I would have more than one grandchild," she points out. "I never expected Russandol to have children, but the rest of you?" Nerdanel pokes him in the side. "Get to it!"

"We were busy being cursed and doomed," Maglor defended himself. "Now I can go home, I can think about something steady; I couldn't afford it before."

She kisses his cheek again.

"Yes," she whispers. "You can truly come home without any fear..."

"I never thought I would," Maglor said, in a very small voice.

Nerdanel hugs him as tightly against her as she can, belly preventing a true body embrace.

"But you can. You really can."

"All down to my old friend Gorlim getting at the Lord of Mandos, I supppose," he murmured. "Why else would he have taken Sooty to Aman? Why else would he have thought he'd want your help? Why else, then, would he have done for you what he did?"

"He has tamed the Vala," she whispers. "Changed him. It is both frightening and reassuring."

"So we now have, by inference, our own tame Vala, who will set things right for us that have been wrong for aeons - that is slightly frightening," Maglor admitted. "But I am starting to trust this streak of good luck, and don't expet that any morning will kick me back to that horrid roadside diner, and my vagrant life."

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