Archive of Our Own

Erestor loves the library. It's something of a cliché; he's the secretary, the scribe, the advisor, the teacher, all wrapped up into one. If it were only the words, though, the stories and studies and songs, he would read them in the sunshine, where the linguistic rhythms would echo on the breeze and come to life in dancing shadows. If it was knowledge, he would write it down himself, in his rooms by candlelight while the songs echoed in the Hall of Fire and faded into the open valley air.

But the lore and artistry he absorbs are not the reason he returns, day after day; these are by products, sometimes useful and inherently valuable, but no longer his aim. Indeed, he knows many of the scrolls from memory; he carries them within him, as close to his heart as those he loves, and though he copied them over and over and bound them for trade to Lothlórien and for the long journey West, they are preserved for his own selfish desire in an edition he would find it nigh impossible to share.

The library of Rivendell, for Erestor, is a thing entirely separate from that which forms it: each scroll, aging and frail; each book, hand-bound and trapped in tanned leather; the sprawling tapestries and paintings, vivid legends unfolding across the walls; the arches and skirting, even the very walls, partly alive and still with the life of Arda warming them. Erestor loves the smell, even after many hours, when he's grown used to the scents of paper and ink and cloth; he loves how the windows cast Anor's rays over the desks and catch the dust, holding it captive as if to make the air shimmer and glitter, and he loves how even at night, there is still light and warmth from Ithil and the fires deeper within the House. It's never totally silent, but the encroaching noise is never more than a comforting hum, in accompaniment to the lyrical tales constantly unfolding there.

 

In the library, it is always that time when darkness is unfathomable, a thing of the long-buried past and a future that will never come, as if the Valar had deigned to suspend time itself, holding the Last Homely House as a true refuge to last beyond the sailing of the final ship and the sounds of the last battle echo across a breaking world.