Mockingbird

~*~
Legolas Greenleaf long under tree
In joy thou hast lived. Beware of the sea!
If thou hearest the cry of the gull on the shore,
Thy heart shall then rest in the forest no more.
~*~

In the wake of Mithrandir's death, Legolas hears the jaeger.

Grieving runs long and ravine-deep through an Elf; a seventh sense that tastes like salt and rushes like a river undammed. He herds the Hobbits along and feels the mourning in his chest echo with the weight of his father's stare: do not love too deeply the mortals. He looks over the curl-topped heads of his charges – so short, are the Hobbits, like bonsai trimmed and compacted – and sees the Dwarf ahead, and the Men, and where before he was learning to see the Fellowship, now he sees only the Hobbits, and the Dwarf, and the Men. The Maia is dead. The Maia, perhaps, would have best understood.

Rock and grassland stretch long under their feet. The sun shines through a haze, and in the far-off distance the first shimmers of Lothlórien ghost his senses. The forest beckons in shades of gold and the shadow-dappled haven of the canopy; he barely feels it. Immortality cleaves, thick and choking.

He is one-thousand and eight years young, and he has seen three-thousand, six-hundred and ninety-two deaths.

Do not love too deeply the mortals!

Whom does he mourn – the Maia for his death, or the mortals for their ability to die?

"Say, look at that!" The youngest Hobbit points to the sky, voice ringing clearer with delight than it has in the days since their departure from the caves.

"Eh, where now-"

"There!" In his his excitement, he cuts off his friend and waves a wild hand to the sky. A dark speck tilts and careens on the chill air; Legolas watches it as if from across a gulf.

"A bird! And 'ere I was beginning to doubt we'd ever see another living thing this side of the mountain-" the Hobbit stops abruptly, grief remembered, and like wilting shoots he and his fellows forget the sky, and the bird, and look to the ground in silence.

But Legolas does not.

Movements slow with burgeoning suspicion, he takes arrow to string.

The Dwarf, pained and squinting in the harsh daylight but yet keensighted, catches the movement. "Elf?" He must look rather serious, for the Dwarf refrains, for once, from pointed comments on Elven flightiness and unreliability of character. His pause causes the halt of the rest, and now the Men, too, look to the sky. But they will not be able to see, as he can, the white underbelly beneath each smooth wingbeat, nor the black cap-like patch of the head, nor the thin, delicate tail streaming behind it as a steadfast guiding pennant.

Shoot it!

But he doesn't.

"Worry not," in soft distraction he tells the Dwarf, voice like a hum. His breath is no more than the stir of a petal's fall in the brittle air. He watches.

Perhaps mourning casts a greater shroud over his spirit than he realizes, because even as he recognizes it from tales – he, sharpest of eye and quickest of motion – does not shoot down that which would pull him from his quest, that would call him away from his forests – this harbinger of the Sea.

It wheels closer. The company watches him, or the sky, or both, as to their nature. Silent and willow-supple, he draws the arrow back fully and sights along its path. The bird enters firing range. He can let go, right now, and strike it down – or he can let it cry out, just once, just let himself hear it only once –

Shoot it!

"Shoot it!" The ranger cries, nocking a sudden arrow of his own with movements hastened in alarm; seeing and fearing, perhaps, this very possibility in the Elf's stillness – but Legolas lets his arrow fly before the ranger's notch meets string. The bolt snaps through the air with nary a whistle –

The jaegar cries, once.

The arrow drives through its side – its call twists into a shriek and then silence. It plummets –

– as Legolas drops to his knees, something curled womb-deep unfurling to life, a tender devastation shattering his soul like spiderwebs and fractured glass, the crack of an arrowless bowstring loosed.

His bow thumps gently to the earth, the beat of a wave against rock; voices reverberate bearing his name, the siren call of a thousand gulls; and he claps his hands to his pale-curved-shell ears against the echo echo echo crashing waves of sea-breeze sweetness salt taste wind rippling over skin reflections blue–

I want the Sea.

A longing as endless as creation. He whispers in the Old Language,

"I want the Sea."

– and is forever changed.

When the Elf crumples, Gimli sees for the first time the Forest in the Elf; for if this is not the image of a tree felled, Gimli knows not what is.

His cry of "Elf!" is, thankfully, lost among the other such exclamations; for he shouted with concern, and it would not do to show too much of that. For the little Hobbits, maybe – but not towards the Elf.

Those Hobbits are the first to cluster 'round the vain creature, whose skin has gone the pearly color of the moon and who clutches his ears by the pointed tip, flattening his palms to them as if to block out – what? What is there to block out? He glances at Boromir, and the Man, sensing his gaze, returns it; then both of them turn to the vast expanse of field, somewhere in which the dead bird lies, concealed among the olive waves of grass.

Surely a bird is not the cause of this-?

"Mr. Legolas." Sam touches the Elf, concern sketched over the comely face in a series of crevices and lines; the Elf's face is masked in the violet shadow of his flaxen hair. "Mr. Legolas," he repeats with worry. "What is it? What's wrong?"

Statue-still, the Elf does not respond.

Gimli frowns. With a heavy sigh and the intention, however reluctant, to give aid, he approaches the son of the Elf who once imprisoned his father.

He is not the only one. "Aragorn?" Frodo's voice is tired with grief and the weight of the Ring as he turns to meet the ranger's approach. The Elf's strangeness merely serves to add a new note of fatigue to the Hobbit's already-burdened shoulders, and for a moment, Gimli strongly resents the Elf his selfish behavior. This is no time for any of them to flag, not with the great Wizard Gandalf lost from their midst. This is a time for strength, and if the Elf cannot bear it, then perhaps he is not worth the Fellowship after all –

"What's wrong with him?"

Merry, Pippin, and Sam turn to the ranger, degrees of fright drawing their faces tight. With a careful watch on the Elf, Gimli glances out the corner of his eye at the Man, and resents the Elf a little more, however unwarranted the feeling may be, for adding to Aragorn's worry when already the cloak of leadership sits uncomfortably new upon his form.

Then the Elf lets out the smallest of wails, and he finds himself covering the sound with a cough of his own, because once the silly, prideful creature rights himself he'll surely not have wanted that to be heard by their fellows.

"He should have shot it as soon he saw it," the Man answers instead, as if to himself, tone quiet and disquieted. "Why didn't he shoot it?"

The note of apprehension is not reassuring – surely this Man who grew up among Elves, and who knows of Elves and who knows this Elf in particular, surely he must know:

"Come now, Aragorn, we none of us are weak of fortitude – tell us, what ails the Elf?"

Aragorn shakes his head, closing his eyes briefly. Then he reaches out to the Elf, opposite where Sam's hand still rests in stalwart support, and he murmurs, gravely, "He has heard the Sea–"

Legolas blinks, a rapid flutter like insect's wings, and unfolds to his feet ere the ranger can touch.

"Ah. Estel." His voice carries a certain breathy quality that he is quick to loathe. He bows, shortly, to cover the lapse and recover the deep blue feel of an ocean himself. "My apologies. Let us continue; I shall collect the jaeger as we approach, and it shall make a fine evening meal for those who wish it."

"Legolas," the Man says, downward-falling tone carrying a thousand meanings – the saddened chastisement of a dear friend pushed aside who will not be content to be so pushed; the coaxing quality of a healer who would soothe what he knows, in his deepest heart, is unable to be soothed; the helplessness of a Man faced with a sudden reminder that his companion is inexorably and unapologetically Elf, and is at once more alien than familiar; the unhappy practicality of a leader and a king forced to cast doubt upon the heretofore shiningly competent and ask, for the sake of the many, for the sake of the quest, if he shall remain so capable.

"No?" Legolas raises an eyebrow as if the ranger's naming him were a reply. "Then I head forth now," he dips to retrieve his bow, "and prevent the sun's damage. The meat will rot should it linger."

He moves to leave, but the Man raises an arm, again to touch his shoulder – again, Legolas sidesteps delicately. And – precisely because he knows that, should he attempt to take his leave a second time, the Man will not a second time ask it of him to halt – this is why he relents, and pauses, and waits.

"Legolas," the Man repeats, eyes blue as the Sea grave and caring, and in Sindarin continues, "I will not make platitudes and say I can fathom that which you feel. I have never known an Elf with the Sea-longing, but I have heard well of it, aye, and I know this must be hurting you, truly and deeply. A Fellowship does not earn its name if it does not have a care towards its members; and so I ask, how can we help you in this?" The deep furrow of his brow is gruff against the lilt of Elvish; for a moment, all Legolas can see is the craggy black-brown face of an ocean-smoothed cliffside that he has never seen.

He blinks, and the sight clears.

"You cannot." His reply is clear, his own Sindarin musical by nature. When the Man's features twist in dismay and protests of denial form upon his lips, Legolas softens the truth with a kind smile; and the Man falls silent.

So Legolas whispers, "Thank you."

The Man whispers back, "I will not stand idly by and see you suffer."

Legolas's laughter is the tinkle of windchimes in a salty breeze. "It is not so onerous. Were it truly suffering, we should not long for it so!"

"Nay," the Man replies, seriousness doubled in response to Elven levity, "It is because the Sea is beautiful that you suffer; for it is difficult to long for something in which you cannot find fault."

Legolas opens his mouth – and closes it, the softest exhalation leaving his nostrils in an almost-sigh, but possessed of too much raw wanting to be a mere expression of weariness. He turns away from the ranger's kindness, but the sight of the waves of the Sea of the grass rippling like waves like the water's moonlit tide is too much for a sense so newly-awakened and uncontrolled as what shimmers through his skin.

I must temper this.

So he looks instead at the rest of the traveling party, watching him, and finds, perhaps not so oddly, that it is the Dwarf upon whom his focus rests most easily. There is the Sea; and then there is Dwarf, all things earthen and steady and rooted firm as the deepest of rock. Normally abhorrent to an Elf raised in woodland and treetop, but now –

Even now, the Dwarf meets his gaze solidly, as if to say, Aye, I am here, Elf, as are you.

Then Legolas smiles, and the Dwarf is all surly surprise and raised bushy brows and bluster, and Legolas laughs.

I must temper this...and in the interlude, perhaps moments like these shall be enough.

It is most difficult when the mortals sleep.

Like so many little Elflings, they curl into various shapes of dreams and repose; the Hobbits, all in a bunch, clustered in sleep as they are in waking; the Men, at either end of the Hobbits, guardians ever; and the Dwarf, one large boulder-like lump, a great solid shadow in the night. And so he watches them adopt these poses, night after night, and each night it is as a new revelation: they are but children.

He knows, of course, they aren't – not to themselves, and not to their respective kindred. But to an Elf! – ah, to an Elf, they are newborn babes, to be cared for and watched over and cherished and –

– not cherished too much, for they are mortals.

Crouching upon the highest perch he has can find in this vast plain – a pile of rocks no taller than half the height of a Hobbit – he watches over them as a gull the waves hawk its nest, and hears the rolling of far-off waters, and tastes the tang of salt. The Ring-bearer shifts and murmurs in his sleep; the Dwarf snuffles and snores, twice, before subsiding into quiet again. Legolas's skin glows pale gold in the darkness; his eyes glimmer a sharp blue while he skims the minor disturbances of his companions; then returns his gaze to the plains with a quiet shuddering breath. Sometimes he feels so very protective of them –

But the deep fright of such attachments is often overlain, anymore, with the Sea.

Scarcely is he unaware, at some level, of its presence in his heart. Were he of stronger mind, perhaps he could spite it its tendency to overwhelm even his grief at the Maia's death – but at most, all he can dredge up is a sullen, sad begrudging that he cannot even mourn properly one who deserves such honor.

I do mourn Mithrandir!

But not enough!

I do what I am able!

Legolas pulls out a bone-knife and whittles at a fallen branch – anything to make sound. Anything to cover the green-blue smooth wet wild call.

Later, the Hobbit Sam blunders into wakefulness, bleary-eyed and not entirely conscious, rubbing his eyes and squinting about.

"Peace, friend," Legolas calls softly. He does not look up from his whittling. "Return to sleep."

There's a shifting of blankets and a groggy, "Mr. Legolas?"

"Aye," he whispers soothingly. The knife scratches a steady rhythm. "Sleep, child."

A stretch of silence; the mortification hits Legolas a moment later. "Ah-" he begins hesitantly, knife-hand faltering, and turns to the Hobbit; but finds that, with much sleepy blinking and squirming about, the Hobbit is doing just as he said: returning to sleep.

Legolas lets out a long, slow, breath, and watches the Hobbit drift off.

When the Dwarf reaches his three-hundred and fortieth breath, he leaps, cat-like, from his pile of stones to wake the ranger for last watch.

"You have not taken more than your share again, have you?" the Man asks with a yawn, the hint of a teasing smile overlaying the very real inquiry. It seems simpler, of late, to merely watch the whole night rather than wake those who need the rest more than he does. And why should he not? It does not harm him to go without – he has been accused, more than once and, in truth, with more accuracy than the accuser realizes, of subsisting on little more than sunshine and air – and it is better all around for the company.

The Man does not agree.

"You must rest, Legolas," he'll say, and the Elf responds always, "I do not need it, Estel. You know this." And the ranger will press his lips just a fraction tighter, and sometimes they'll argue more, but more often they won't. The ranger never says it aloud, but on these occasions, Legolas knows the Man feels the Sea hanging over both their heads. And in his eyes the caring accusation You used to rest more, before. And:

Why didn't you shoot it?

"Do not worry," Legolas responds evenly this night, "I have counted the Dwarf's breaths accurately."

The Man gives him a strange look, then shakes his head, amused.

"Estel?"

"You are quite the Elf, Legolas. Sometimes, I forget."

Legolas raises a single, elegant brow, and the ranger laughs. "There," he chuckles, "That's exactly it."

The ranger grins, reaching out to pat his shoulder as he moves to take watch; Legolas almost sidesteps, not sure why it's hard to bear the touch of a friend anymore – but knowing it hurts them both when he gives in to the urge, he stays his ground, and even smiles a little at the warm look in the ranger's eyes.

Still – once he's settled into a pose of feigned open-eyed repose, back to the Man and Sea-breeze ghosting through his hair – still, it takes Legolas a moment to realize the source of his friend's amusement: the counting.

But how else, when the night passes so quickly to one used to the passing of days like blinks of an eye, shall he keep track of the passing of mortal hours, than by the counting of mortal breaths?

Sixteen Dwarf-breaths later, Legolas gives up pretenses of sleep, picks up his stick, and begins to whittle. The ranger glances at him, once, and frowns, faintly; but all Legolas can see is a moonlit tide over eggshell-pale sand, cresting and receding, cresting and receding, and rising and cresting and never, never receding.