Set the night before Legolas of Mirkwood departs his home to attend the Council of Elrond, where he will join the Fellowship and witness Middle-earth in the depths of brewing war. This is my last work on Eroth and Legolas' story. The first and only chapter is named after lyrics from Sleepsong - Secret Garden: "I'll sing you to sleep, and I'll sing you tomorrow. Bless you with love for the road that you go."

PS: merry Christmas!

Sing You to Sleep

They had come down the path where the tree-shadows and the silver rain strayed. One winter years ago a black frost came and the crickets became songless, and so the night was hushed. Some days Legolas could hear the old trees creaking from the weight of the silence, and those times they would listen long, reaching for each other as if afraid their own bones would fall apart with it.

Now Eroth was shaking the night wind from her hood, shaping eclipses over the candle with flashes of fabric. She let it fall from her hands and dip over a stool, and came to him upon the bed. Legolas watched as she lifted the bright weight of her braid and allowed her hair to come loose between her fingers. Rising to his knees, he leaned towards her and touched her ear, once, like a breath.

"Perhaps I fear."

She caught his hand, "Thranduilion, only the river has no fear."

"Then I shall be like the river."

"I was told, centuries ago, that you had the grace of one." Eroth tilted her head and kissed the skin over his knuckles, and he tried not to read each as a farewell. "'Twas a mortal woman in some distant town. I would that I could recall her face."

The room was dark and still and Legolas traced the outline of her shoulders with his eyes. Eroth.

Just her name, rising between them like a wind.

Eroth's lashes slanted downwards and the candlelight tipped them with stars. He wished to speak again but his throat was filled with too much of the past and the crevices within, and so he took heed of the whisperings of the trees and was quiet, touching his mouth to her shoulder as if the ink of her skin told of what words could not. They were parting.

"Legolas." She tilted up to him, like unravelling petals, her dark eyes scattering echoes within him. "I wish that we could go away."

Back to the days of our childhood. When we knew everything and nothing about love.

Remember the riddles we sowed in the night? Remember the wild river and the white plains? Remember Lake Town, and the friends we left there? They sleep now.

But he said, "sing to me ere morning."

"What's the use?" Fingers twisted into his collar, cold and quick and tender. "I shall sing to you when you return."

Abruptly, urgently, she turned his face towards her and scathed him with her glance. Like fire her breath was upon his skin and her hands tight in his braids, and so they remained, tearless and in wonder, until she knelt over him and pushed him back upon the bed.

The rain would have fallen into fog in the night. Their horses' hooves would sink in the earth, and the river would be hurtling upon the rocks like a song. A forest's farewell.

It was so on the day he rode out with the guard for the first time with something fiery and trembling in his stomach. Eroth had been with him the night before, as she was now; had flung herself into a chair beside his bed, complained of the frost in her shoes, said to him that there's nothing an arachnid can do to harm you which I cannot.

A flood was closing upon the river. As their breaths crackled Eroth kissed the tips of his ears, his eyelids, the corner of his mouth. With each joining something shimmered between them and fell away.

"Be the river, then, Thranduilion," Eroth said. "I'll wait for you, but I shan't be idle. When the world is green and good again our lights will guide you home."

Suddenly he saw them, with the lantern-light upon their shoulders, walking down a path among the healed trees. Coming towards him as he came towards home. The grey fountain they lay beside would be there also, its stone unchanged and the waters frozen in patience for them. They had half-drowned each other there on spring evenings, then moulded wet braids from the other's hair, unheeding of time, which they thought would always be theirs.

Her eyes washed over him, and he ceased to think of the days ahead. They preyed on each other, him finding the hollow of her collarbone. Don't forget me, Dree. An eddy could be traced there, if one traced carefully, and overstepped the moss-ridden rocks. We will meet again.

Somewhere, sometime.

And as the silver stars wheeled beyond Eroth bent close and murmured into his ear, as he had once done one grey autumn morn, broken and proud, I will love you for an eternity.