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"At least Ruran won't be there," Shael smiled. "So you'll have more time to prepare yourselves. Celebor and Niyana would be able to tell you more about him, too."

"I have to admit, I'm looking forward to seeing Celebor again," Earendil grinned. "He trained with me for a year, a long time ago, and we got to be fairly close."

Earendil grinned. "Yes. He had changed then, grown up ... but I liked the man he had become. And he had Aras with him then, she was cute. I'd like to see her again too, especially. See how she's changed, if she's still as energetic as she was then."

Actually, she had reminded him of Celebor himself. He wondered how she had developed over the years.

Vergil was still looking up at Cindy and waiting for her to pick him up, and so he wasn't paying attention to the babies, and he had no idea that they were heading straight for him. If he had, he might have panicked: babies though they were, they were all bigger than him, and probably heavier.

"Ah, I met them this morning," Earendil grinned. "Corrah seemed a bit nervous, but Armus ... well, she was nice, but she had a bit of attitude, as if she thought that because she's human I wouldn't approve of her being here or something ..."

Vergil settled into Cindy's lap and made himself comfortable, then used his fingers to slick his hair back, the way he liked it.

"What is Corrah normally like?" Earendil asked Lin curiously. "Maybe I'm not reading this correctly, but it seemed as though he really didn't want to talk to you. Did something happen?"

Though the incident had been in the past, Earendil's eyes filled with worry. "Lin," he said softly, his brow furrowing anxiously, "why didn't you tell me what had happened?"

Shael stared at him. "What would you have done about it?" she pointed out. "It's not as if you could go to the world where it had happened and spoken to Corrah, or anything like that."

Earendil's face flushed. He knew that, he knew he wouldn't have been able to do anything ... still, the idea that Lin could get so badly hurt and he not know about it for years afterwards, the idea was startling to him.

Vergil lay across Cindy's lap and reached down to the twins, grinning. "Get my hands," he taunted them, waving his hands slowly and ever so slightly out of their reach.

Earendil fidgeted uncomfortably. That was true, and he knew it, but it was the only one he knew of where she had been hurt enough worth mentioning. And really, like Shael had said, it wasn't as if he could do anything about it. Besides, it wasn't as if he had told her about any of his injuries ...

Vergil looked over at Kara, his face crestfallen. "Why not?" he asked, growing frustrated again. "I just wanted to play with them!"

Was that so wrong? It was the first time there had been someone his size around, and it wasn't as if there were any other children even his mental age for him to play with. There hadn't been any children around for a very long time, not since the skirmish with the dwarfs!

Vergil stared at Kara. "Mother would catch me!" he protested. "And even if she didn't, it's not far to the floor, it wouldn't hurt very much."

He grinned at Hope as she grasped his fingers, and he wiggled his hand, trying to get free of her. He really wasn't worried about falling, if that was the furthest he fell today it would be a lot smaller of a fall than he had fallen before. The highest floor of his bedroom - his castle, as he liked to call it, since Ulrich had done so much with it - was just about to the ceiling, and he had fallen from there before and not been badly hurt.

Landing on the bed that was kept in there in case he ever grew might have had something to do with it, but still. That had been a long fall.

Earendil cleared his throat and tried to stop his face from turning red. But what could he say? It had really taken him by surprise that something could happen to her and him not know about it. Sure, if he thought about it, it could be expected, really, but that didn't mean he had to like it. Not that he could say anything about it here and now.

"It just took me by surprise, I guess," he mumbled, running his finger through his hair in a nervous gesture.