Lost to the Sea: a Prince's Tale

Legolas speaks:

Would you think me a madman, if I told you that my life began – truly began – not on the day of my birth amidst the soft and secret shades of Greenwood the Great, but on a cool, sad winter's morn some thirty years later? For so it was. Even now, at times, the memory of it is wont to rise pale and ghastly before my eyes, like a tall and haggard phantom, haunting the innermost paths of my mind. Indeed, there are some memories over which the erosive flow of Time may claim no sovereignty, for good or ill. We Elves are victims of memory, in so many ways.

I cast back in my mind to my earliest years, to my origin, and I remember so little. The images are blurred, steeped in a strange twilight haze. I knew nothing but contentment; nothing but the warm, earthy scent of my mother, and the milky glow of dawn through the soft summer leaves of my chamber. For much of my life I furiously lamented the swift and cruel termination of my childhood slumber of serenity, and it took me almost an Age of this world to truly understand that lamentation is an empty exercise, particularly when fused with rage.

The memory I now recall holds little but pain for me; all the more acute for being a pain which has shadowed the long years of my life, a pain which has crept into my blood, my bones, my very breath. And yet, I believe that I finally possess the strength to say, with the utmost honesty, that I regret nothing, nothing at all. The old, familiar sorrows of my past, which I have known more intimately than the closest of lovers, have so greatly altered the course of my life that I could neither recognise nor imagine myself without them. And more than this, they caused my soul to stir and unfurl within me, where it once lay silent as the grave. They forced my eyes open to the world in all its glory and its cruelty, its heights and its abysses, where I had once been so blind…

Part One - The Awakening

It was early winter of the year 3426, of the Second Age of Middle-Earth. Greenwood the Great lay silent beneath a cloud-clotted sky bruised dark by the first rumour of thunder. The high and vaulted halls of King Oropher, lord and ruler of the woodland realm, were still and echoless as the tomb. The Kingdom was plunged into silence following the grievous news that had reached them from the far realm of Imladris, which is named Rivendell in the tongues of men. The lady Líriel, wife of the Crown Prince Thranduil, had been set upon by a band of Orcs as she journeyed to visit her sister in Imladris. Her escort had barely sufficed to combat the assault, and only three of the company had escaped death or mortal injury. The lady herself had been sorely wounded, and her remaining guards had borne her with haste to Imladris. However, the journey had taken nigh on a week, and by the time Líriel reached the fair House of Elrond where she would at last receive the aid she required, the final delicate traces of breath and spirit had all but fled her broken body. She died within the hour.

The silence was vast, heavy, and immaculate. Even the breeze was bereft of voice and touch, while the branches of the ancient forest hung unruffled in their dignified, time-honoured repose. Into this cold and stricken world he ran; a small, dark, silent shape slipping like a shade between the trees. He wept as he ran, tears scarring his cheeks like ribbons of scalding glass, his long black hair streaming in a torrent of silken shadow in his wake as he flung his slender body headlong towards some blind and unknown destination. It was some hours before he collapsed, broken at last; hot, violent breaths rattling his lungs as he observed his surroundings with wide and startled eyes. He lay now in a clearing of the forest in which stood one single tree. The floor of the glade was thickly knotted with weeds and brambles; clustered red berries and strange blue and white winter flowers haunted the thickets in splashes and whorls of vivid colour.

Had Legolas stumbled blindly through the duration of his infancy and childhood in the clutches of a waking dream? Had his vision truly been so muted, so saturated in the gloaming of hazy tranquillity? The world had never before seemed so dazzling; its colours and shapes had never thrummed and coruscated with such virulent, crushing intensity. Something within him had shattered. A veil before his eyes had been torn aside, and the world towered huge and menacing before him, fizzing and frothing with fevered sensation, pulsing with a hot red madness.

Legolas hauled himself to his feet, still breathing heavily. The brambles had torn his hands and wrists, but he paid no heed to his raw and throbbing nerves. He gazed up at the vast old tree before him, and without hesitation seized the lowest-hanging branch with both hands and began to climb. It occurred to him only now that regardless of how far he ran, or how high he climbed, he could never hope to escape the excruciating grief of his mother's death. How could he expect to flee from a thing which had taken root in his very bones? He winced as this realisation hit him, his heart sagging under the pressure of so much leaden anguish. And still, he continued to climb.

He gazed out at last over the forest, clinging fiercely to a branch, having climbed a little higher than was safe – far higher than his guardians would have allowed, in any case. He dimly remembered having once watched his older sister Lilithen scale a tree twice this size almost to its tip and refuse to come down for three full days. She had misbehaved in some way and sought to avoid the chastisement of their father, Thranduil. Each time any attempt was made to extract her from her perch she had threatened to jump, and given that Lilithen was often obstinate to the point of absurdity, her claims had been given some credence. The scene had caused Legolas and his other siblings a great deal of amusement at the time – their sister roosting stubbornly in the branches, and their father stood quite livid at the base of the tree, threatening and wheedling by turns. Even when she at last came down, she insisted that it had nothing to do with her father's persuasion, and was due entirely to the fact that she was hungry.

Legolas sighed, recognising that such days belonged to a world other than this one; a world lost to him forever. The heavens hung heavy with cloud, black and swollen with rain, while the forest glowered darkly up at the impending storm. A chasm sighed open in his chest, wide and forlorn as the depths of the sad blue horizon, and he wept. His sharp ears could discern voices in the forest, calling his name. He shivered, huddling up against the hard sinews of the tree as the first drops of rain began to fall. His senses heightened to a new and terrifying pitch, buffeted by the sudden angry surge of sound and vision and sensation, he scrunched his eyes closed against the growing storm, and curled up as small as he was able.

It was some hours before he began to climb slowly down, feeling as blank and defeated as Lilithen must have done, those years before. His limbs were weak with fatigue, and began to slide on the wet branches. It occurred to him, in a detached kind of way, that he was falling – dropping through the air like a stone for what seemed like a disproportionately long time, and then crashing to the ground with a brutal jolt. A white-hot bolt of agony flashed up his leg, thrusting an involuntary cry from his lungs. He didn't care; the pain robbed him of all other sensation, and was almost a welcome respite. He could feel his consciousness fading, and he closed his eyes, ushering the darkness into his mind, and letting it spill silently into the depths of his heart and soul.

A/N – this fic is book-based, not movie-based. So it's strictly about Legolas rather than Orlando Bloom (nothing against Orlando whatsoever, I think he makes a great Legolas, but there's a thousand other stories out there catering to people's Orli-lust and I just hoped to take this in a slightly different direction)

Please R & R; it'll make my day!!!