A.N. Please be aware that over the course of this story, there will be many references to my other fics, Trial By Separation, and to Fragments of a Forgotten Truth. It is recommended that you read Trial By Separation before this one, but this story can stand alone from Fragments if necessary. Thank you, and enjoy Trial By Patience!
There was a beauty and a timelessness to Lothlórien that could not be denied. The towering silver trunks of the mallorn trees and the way the sunlight filtered down between the golden leaves, even the scattering of white and golden flowers that had enamoured Master Samwise - no, only a fool could say that Lothlórien was not beautiful. It had none of the yawning emptiness of Khazad-dûm, nor the heavy groaning weight of the Shadow that lay over Mirkwood. It was an Elven land, almost perfectly tailored to their every possible whim.
But there was something distinctly odd about Lothlórien, something that was out of place, even for a forest of the Elves. Something that I could not quite put my finger on in our first few days, but became glaringly more apparent as the days dragged by. Then it became, frankly, quite unsettling. The sun rose, rolled across the sky in the proper manner, and then set, the moon and stars glittered in the night sky to the delight of the Elves below, but it felt more like they were simply going through the motions, rather than keeping time in any sort of orderly fashion.
Living beneath the mountains as I have all my life, one quickly learns to keep track of the passing of days without the need of the sun's passage, but in Lothlórien, even with the sun blazing cheerfully overhead, time felt out of sorts. Aragorn had merely shrugged when I asked him about it, commenting only that this was simply the power of the Lady of Lórien, and we would all get used to it. This, in turn, had raised a few eyebrows among our Elvish guides (the ones that knew the Common Tongue that is), who had informed me in no uncertain terms that the Elves of Lothlórien felt there was absolutely nothing amiss with time in Lothlórien, thank you very much. They'd lived their entire lives here after all. If our Company's own Elf had noticed anything out of the ordinary, he was keeping it very much to himself, much as he often did.
It was of no surprise to me to learn that my theory had been right all along: Elves of any kind might be strange, but wood-elves were the strangest of all.
Between this unsettling timelessness feeling and the fact that the Lothlórien elves for the most part did not speak any tongue but their own, - who in this day and age could not speak the Common Tongue? Only the Elves. - it left our Company mostly to our own devices and rather bereft of recreation. And as we were not all Elves, easily amused by the flights of birds or the swaying of leaves, boredom quickly set in with a vengeance. In our defence, none of us had packed with the idea of an extended stay anywhere in mind - indeed, we had packed only the essentials for the long gruelling road ahead, always aware that our packs might need to be abandoned at the least provocation should we need to flee from a fight we could not win. Frodo's safety was the priority after all, we could not afford to be getting in too many fights, especially when half our Company were untrained in the ways of war.
So when stories faltered and the memory of Gandalf grew too heavy between us and the emptiness of Moria tugged at my heart, when the silences began to stretch uncomfortably long, a pack of cards had appeared. Among my people, boredom is all but unheard-of, for we Dwarves are patient and tireless with a task to hand, and we are rarely without a task. But in Lothlórien, where the days stretched too long, I will readily admit that I was thoroughly and most heartily bored. We fell upon the lure of entertainment like ravenous wolves, never questioning where the cards might have come from.
It quickly became the highlight of the day, in those long hours of the afternoon, when Aragorn was so often busy debating the path ahead with Frodo (who, as always, was accompanied by Samwise, bless him.), the cards were shuffled and games began in earnest between myself, Boromir, Merry and Pippin. We thought little of what was happening around us, of how loud and boisterous we might become as the stakes of the games were driven higher. Not that we had much for wagering, mind, but we could bet secrets, dares and future claims. We argued over rules, over regional variances and illegal plays, and we taught each other games we'd never heard of - Boromir had one rather peculiar game that, for the life of him, he could never properly explain. Ultimately, it seemed to boil down to the idea that after a certain amount of turns where cards passed back and forth between the players and the discard pile, whoever was left at the end of the set holding a certain card was out. But he could not explain to us precisely why this particular Queen card had been chosen, whom she might represent in Gondorian history, or even what she might have done to earn the scathing epithet of the "Scabby Queen." Men. Almost as bad as Elves in their peculiarities.
One afternoon, during a particularly vicious game of Six Kings (Merry was up five games on all of us, and I was quite determined to make him pay for it), a voice spoke from above, politely curious:
"Might I play?"
I tipped my head back, straining to see into the branches that mazed above our heads; there, reflecting in the gloom, I saw Legolas' bright blue eyes reflecting cat-like at us as he sprawled across a branch. He reminded me sharply of the large mountain cats that prowled near Ered Luin, all wild predator grace, prone as they were for lounging in the sparse mountain trees.
"If you wish," Boromir replied, beckoning him down, without so much as a hint of hesitation. "Have you played Six Kings before?"
The Elf dropped down to the earth with a soft thud, shaking his head. "I have not. But I have been watching you all for the last few games. I am certain I will manage."
"Then we shan't go easy on you." Merry's grin was fairly wicked as Legolas settled down between Boromir and himself. I found myself chuckling; the young Hobbit had already proven himself to be a fairly uncompromising player. He took great risks, gambling where a more sedate player would hedge, and he had no compunctions about taking advantage of a misplaced card, even against Pippin. The only way to slow him down was to play a game he was more unfamiliar with, and even then, he gambled high and won often.
It was bad manners to take advantage of a player that was unfamiliar of the rules of a game, and even worse to take advantage of one who had never played before, but that afternoon, I was not feeling particularly charitable towards the Elf. Boromir was more kind, nudging him politely whenever his attention wandered too far away from the matter at hand, especially since his turn followed Legolas'. I would have taken my turn anyway, if only to have the chance to beat Merry for a change. I was so close to a full court, so close to wiping the smug smirk from the young Hobbit's face. I just had to be patient and wait for that Queen card to appear. I could hedge my bets and break up my hand into two smaller runs, but a full court of seven cards would definitely win me the game.
"Legolas, it is your turn," came the familiar refrain. I snorted in disgust, for Legolas' attention was nowhere near the card game, instead, he was staring off into the trees on the other side of the clearing. I swear, if he was holding the card I needed...
"Is something the matter?" Pippin asked, craning his neck to try and spot whatever had caught Legolas' flighty attention.
Instead of responding, the Elf gently set his cards down - facedown, regrettably- and got to his feet. I watched him, unwilling to admit my curiosity as his face grew hard and his eyes flinty. Nearby, Aragorn had also gotten to his feet, his eyes flitting between Legolas and the trees. As I watched, Aragorn's hand crept towards his sword hilt. Were we to be attacked, here in the heart of an Elven city? Surely not. Surely the Lady Galadriel would never allow it. Perhaps the Elf was only imagining things, Mahal knows, his mind wandered often enough.
"Gi suilanthon," Legolas called out, to no reply. "Tolo, govano ven." And again no reply came. The Elf seemed to bristle a little and barked out several more Elvish sentences so rapidly I could not even hope to follow, even if I could speak the overly complicated language. The trees rustled once and then were still. Not Legolas' imagination after all. I huffed.
And almost immediately, all annoyance faded from Legolas' face as he sat back down and lifted his cards again. Aragorn chuckled heartily as he too, sat back down to his conversation with Frodo.
"What was all that about?" I demanded, despite my earlier insistence that I was not curious at all.
Legolas gave an infuriatingly casual shrug. "There were Galadhrim, there," he pointed unnecessarily. "Watching us. They were not, it seems, inclined to join us, but instead preferred to hide in the trees and make impolite comments. So I asked them to leave." He picked up his cards again and blinked owlishly at them, as if he'd expected them to have changed while his attention was elsewhere - he was right to do so, unfortunately, for Merry would have switched something out, had his attention not also been consumed by the small drama that had just unfolded.
"Oh. Yes. I believe now is when I say 'Full court'?" Legolas remarked nonchalantly, laying out his cards as if he had not just won the game. Merry's cry of shock was laced with annoyance; he hadn't seen it coming, and I'd guessed a few turns ago that he'd been playing for a String of Kings, only to be foiled now at the last moment by the now-smug Elf. I could not help but laugh as he inspected Legolas' cards thoroughly, looking for some small flaw he could use to invalidate the win.
When he did not find one, he groaned, tossing his own cards aside in dramatised despair. Pippin laughed and clapped his cousin on the back. "Cheer up, Merry. You won the last five games. It was time someone bested you."
Merry's slowly gathering glower dissipated immediately at the subtle reproof. "You're quite right, Pip." He grinned at Legolas, half-apologetic. "I thought you said you'd never played before!"
"Ah." Now it was Legolas' turn to be apologetic. "I have not played Six Kings before, no. But I have played Hart's Folly many times, and it is very similar it seems. There were some differences in the rules, I noticed, but not so many. I was more worried that I would not remember how to play, it has been a long time since I played with my lumornoss."
"What is a...lumornoss?" Pippin piped up, mangling the Elvish word, even to my ears. The youngest Hobbit was many things, but talented with languages was not one of the them. Legolas, to his credit, did not wince.
"Lumornoss is..." The Elf's face scrunched in confusion as he grasped for an explanation. He looked to Aragorn for assistance, but he was too deep in conversation with Frodo to notice. "It is...family? But not necessarily those related to you?" He shook his head, grumbling to himself in Elvish. "I will start again. There is you, the individual. And there is your iârnoss, your family that is blood. Your mother, father, brothers and sisters. You follow?"
Heads nodded all round and the Elf gave a relieved sigh. "Good. But in Silvan, there is more, you, your iârnoss, you are part of a lumornoss, you would say...family shaded by trees? It does not translate well." He shook his head. "Many living together, as one unit. Perhaps...thirty? Sometimes more together in a lumornoss, not always blood-related. We protect and care for each other, laugh together, raise children together." Legolas looked around at the group, hoping to see understanding in our faces, I guessed.
"But...I thought you were Sindar?" Boromir asked, almost hesitantly. Legolas had once tried to explain the differences between the different kinds of Elves to him, but the explanation had gotten somewhat lost in translation. I freely admit that I had not followed the conversation one whit that day, and I suspect Boromir had not either. There were Elves like Lord Elrond, and then there were wood-elves like Legolas - that was as far as I understood and as far as I cared to, in all honesty.
Legolas grinned, but the smile never reached his eyes. "I am both. My adar is Sindar, my naneth was Silvan. For a time, I was raised in her lumornoss, among my mother's family, under the trees. I did not set foot in my father's palace for many years, unlike my brothers, who were raised there."
"You have brothers?" Boromir asked, his expression brightening. He had a younger brother himself, I knew and delighted in talking about him whenever the conversation turned that way. I watched Legolas out the corner of my eye, waiting to see if the Elf would react true to form. Immediately, Legolas' expression shifted, closing down and withdrawing from the conversation. He did not like discussing himself. Every time the conversation turned personal, he became completely silent, almost to the point of not participating the conversation at all. It was extremely irritating; how were we supposed to trust someone that we knew almost nothing about?
In one swift, fluid motion, Legolas got to his feet again. "I... had brothers," he muttered. "Please excuse me. Thank you for the game."
And then, before any of us could respond, he was gone - slipping past us into the trees, where he was quickly swallowed by the shadows.
