He had chosen the gardens carefully.

Not the open courtyards where voices echoed and servants wandered, but a quiet corner nestled between ancient stone and curtain-like trees, where the air hung heavy with the perfume of wisteria and roses. It was a place rarely disturbed—more sacred grove than garden—and one that offered a certain closeness the halls could not.

He stood beside her.

There was something oddly humbling about her presence, something that unsettled even now. She wore the light like a second skin, foreign in origin but not in soul, and despite the long days they’d spent in company, he still hadn’t spoken the words that grew heavier on his tongue with each meeting.

And he was not one to hesitate.

He, Lord Elrond of Imladris—he who had stood at the edge of the world and watched it fall and rise again—now found himself silenced by the presence of a mortal woman who did not yet know what she had done to him.

The glances. The gifts. The long pauses in conversation where he looked but did not speak. She had not seen them for what they were.

Perhaps it was her innocence. Perhaps her strangeness to their world. Perhaps she simply thought him courteous.

But he was no longer content to be misread.

He turned toward her, hands clasped at his back, as the wind stirred the low-hanging blossoms above them. His voice dropped into something softer, closer to breath than speech.

“There is something I must share,” he said, not using her name—not yet. That felt too final, too anchoring. “A truth I have carried quietly, yet it grows… steadily.”

The confession should have followed. It was there, right on the cusp of form.

But before he could gather the words, her hand moved.

Gentle. Absentminded. Tender in the way only someone completely unaware of elven senses could be. She reached up and tucked a strand of his dark hair behind his ear.

And touched it.

His breath caught—sharp and instant. A soft, near-silent sound slipped from his lips before he could stop it. Half gasp, half sigh, as though the earth had shifted beneath his boots and dared him not to fall.

He turned away at once, his composure in tatters. One hand rose reflexively to shield the ear she'd touched, as though that small act could restore some measure of control.

The reaction shamed him—no, humbled him.

He had seen ages pass like riverwater, spoken with kings and Maia, crossed the thresholds of grief and joy alike. And yet one touch—unguarded, unintended—had unraveled something private and aching inside him.

His voice, when it returned, was low and restrained, colored faintly by embarrassment.

“…Forgive me,” he said quietly, not quite meeting your gaze. “You could not have known... my ears are sensitive. Uncommonly so.”

He drew in a breath, steadying himself with effort only the observant might notice, then gave a soft, rueful exhale.

“That touch—it was not unpleasant,” he admitted, voice colored with something both honest and unsure. “Only... unexpected.”