He gamboled along behind the twins and their Silvan friend, his short legs barely able to keep up with their long legs' strides, until they were inside the Last Homely House and the three Elves paused. Elrohir was telling the Wood-Elf Prince, "Ada would have come to greet you, as well, but said that he expects you for the evening meal, in his study, on the terrace, as usual. He has some pressing meeting with Erestor and his other advisors right now, a meeting that we are supposed to be part of, in truth."
"Elrohir and I are shirking the meeting, as we speak, so we had best catch the end of it, if we can," the older of the twin Noldorin lords told the Prince. "Meanwhile, I know just what you wish to do," Elladan told Legolas, shoving his arm slightly in playful scorn, "and we've already had the servants on standby to bring water to your rooms for a bath."
Estel watched the Wood-Elf laugh, thinking that he had never seen anyone as jolly as Legolas. "You know me too well, it seems. I was hoping to have a bath as soon as possible. I smell of horse."
"You do, indeed. We could smell you before the border guard ever sent word that you were approaching," Elladan teased, causing all three Elves to laugh and Estel to wonder at the change in his brothers, for he had rarely seen them so exultant.
"The servants are carting buckets of water to your room as we speak," Elrohir said with a grin. He took his twin's arm and pulled him along with him towards the hall of fire, where the council's palaver was taking place, but said over his shoulder, "Stay out of trouble, Estel. And we will come find you for dinner, Greenleaf!"
Legolas waved them on with another cheerful laugh and then shook his head. As nervous as Estel was to be cut to bits by the Wood-Elf and then used for magic, the thought had occurred to him that perhaps being the Silvan's friend might keep him from such a fate. If he could be of help to the Wood-Elf, he might be able to befriend him. "Do you remember where your room is?" the young Adan asked the Prince.
At hearing the human's voice, Legolas looked behind him and then down to Estel's short level. It seemed that the Prince had nearly forgotten that Estel was there, but of course, the Adan had been trying to go unnoticed, so he was actually pleased that he had been able to be so quiet that he'd been overlooked. It might serve him well should he become the focus of Legolas' magical incantations. "I think I can remember where my room is, yes, Master Human, but perhaps you can walk with me, just in case I've forgotten?"
Estel had the feeling that the Prince was teasing him, just as his Elven brothers often did. He didn't let it bother him, though, as he was quite used to it, and so he only grinned shyly at the Silvan and told him, "I have lived here for years but I still get lost."
At this, the Wood-Elf threw his head back and laughed with utmost merriment. The Elves in Rivendell were a joyous folk but reserved in many ways. Estel had never seen any of them laugh as much as the Prince of Mirkwood, save for his brothers, perhaps. If Legolas was any indication of the temperament of the Wood-Elves in Mirkwood, then Estel determined, The Silvan must laugh and dance and feast all the time!
"You have lived here for years, you say?" the Prince asked in hilarity. He held his hand out to gesture Estel to lead the way. "Then perchance we won't get lost."
Being from Mirkwood, where his father's underground palace and much of the populous were dependent upon the human settlement of Lake-town for wine and other foodstuffs, Legolas was accustomed to humans. However, he couldn't recall the last time that he had actually spoken for any length of time to an Adan so young. This was no normal human, however, for despite that he was clearly not an Elf, the Adan spoke and moved like the Elves with whom he lived, though perhaps not with the same fluency and grace. He had the mannerisms of his foster brothers, as if he had made a point of studying the twins.
Perhaps he has, Legolas thought, watching the Adan as the gangly child leapt up the stairs two at a time, just as Elladan and Elrohir would do. If he patterns himself after Elladan and Elrohir, I worry what may come of him, the Prince jested to himself. Truly, though, he loved the Noldorin twins as he would have his own siblings, had he any to love. If there were any two Elves whom he wished were his brothers, it would be Elladan and Elrohir, so if Estel had to be reared by the Elves, as it seemed he did, then Legolas could not have imagined a finer family for him than Elrond and his sons.
The Adan was entertaining Legolas with a tale about the waterfall of the Bruinen, which the Prince was patiently trying to follow the telling of, such that it took Legolas a moment to notice that Estel was taking him by an oddly circuitous route, as if he weren't actually very sure how to get to the family hall of rooms. However, Legolas imagined that since the Adan was being fostered in Elrond's house he had been placed in the same hall as the rest of the family.
It took longer than it would have taken Legolas on his own, but finally, they came to the Prince's chambers, where the Adan stopped to ask him, "This is your room, is it not?"
"It is. We have finally found it," he replied to Estel. As he opened the door to his chambers – the same set of rooms in which he stayed every time he came to Imladris, rooms that he had used since first coming to the valley with his Naneth and ones that were kept for him and him alone – he asked the Adan, "Where is your room, Estel?"
The child took a few steps across the hall and flung open the door to his own chamber, which happened to lay right across the hall from Legolas' chambers. The Prince knew the room, for it had once been where the Prince and the Noldorin twins had built their forts and played stones when they were Elflings. It had been a playroom, of sorts, filled with the kinds of toys and games that young Elflings are fond of, though now it held a bed and dresser for Estel. It also held a variety of the very same toys that Elladan, Elrohir, and Legolas had played with millennia ago when they were children as the Adan was now.
"I was given this room when I was young," Estel told him, pulling closed the door to his messy chamber. "Ada said I couldn't stay in a room with a balcony because I was always climbing and falling."
Legolas chuckled. In fact, he could not seem to stop laughing at the precocious human. "When you were younger? How old are you, if you do not mind my asking?"
"I will be eleven years fairly soon," the Adan said smugly, as if this was an accomplishment of which he was very proud. With his curly mop of hair bouncing around on top of his head, Estel grinned up at Legolas, telling him, "When I am fifteen, Ada says that I can go beyond the valley to hunt with Elrohir and Elladan."
He has spent fewer years alive than I've spent years since last visiting Rivendell!
He did not say this aloud, however, for he didn't want to insult the young human. Instead, the Prince placed his bag upon the bed with the intention of following the trail of water drops on the floor to see if his bath was full, but a glint of metal stole his attention. Legolas bent down to see better the object lying under the edge of the bed.
Retrieving the source of said glint, which as it turned out was a horse fashioned from pewter, the Wood-Elf said aloud, "Why, it appears as if a horse has found its way under my bed."
The Prince smiled though he tried not to laugh at the Adan child when Estel's eyes grew wide and his face became as rubicund as a ripe raspberry. For some reason, he acts as if he is both fascinated and frightened of me.
"I'm sorry," Estel told the Prince. "I promise that I don't touch any of your belongings," the Adan apologized. To Legolas, the human seemed afraid that the Wood-Elf might thrash him. "It's just your room has a balcony, so sometimes I sneak in here to play."
Entirely unaware of the teasing lie that Elladan and Elrohir had told Estel, Legolas thought to put the child at ease by saying, "I do not care if you play in here, Estel," but thinking of the daggers and other weapons he might chance to store in the room while here and while away, he warned the Adan, "Just so long as you stay out of this trunk." Kicking said trunk with his booted foot – the trunk he kept at the end of his bed for his clothes and other items that he left in the valley between stays – Legolas told the child, "There are dangerous items in here that young boy's should not touch, lest you get hurt." When he saw that the human seemed indignant from being chastised, he added jokingly, "Or lest you be turned into a spiderling!"
Again, Estel's eyes grew until his grey irises seemed to lighten the wider they became. Without warning, the Adan fled the room, across the hall, and into his own room. With a definitive thud, his door slammed shut.
What did I say? the Prince asked himself, but then laughed and went about taking his bath. He would be here for months and so had plenty of time to make friends with his Noldorin brothers' new human brother.
Estel peeped out through the crack in his slightly ajar door in wait for the Prince to leave his rooms. It was not yet dinnertime, although his stomach already rumbled in anticipation for it. Estel could hear the Wood-Elf singing. The Noldor often sang. In fact, they sang so much that sometimes the Adan wished that he could plug his ears full of cotton so that he could get some sleep, for being Elves, the Noldor loved above all else to sing at night, when young human children are most likely to be sleeping. Right now, the Wood-Elf was singing a song that Estel had never heard before. It was a song of battle and blood and Orcs and spiders, of arrows flying through the air and swords clashing against armor. It was a most violent song; Estel loved it.
Even with the Prince's door shut, the lilting timbre of Legolas' voice was mesmerizing, what with the disparity between the berceuse-like way in which he sang and the content of the song being so full of death and ferocity. Eventually, before the song was over, he saw his Elven brothers come down the hall. Quickly, Estel pulled his door shut so that they would not see him spying. They always seemed to catch him doing things that he ought not to be doing, but this time, at least, they had not noticed.
Elladan knocked on his door, saying, "Come, Estel. Dinnertime!"
The Adan only then realized that he hadn't washed up for dinner as was expected of him. His Elven foster father was adamant that his human son wash his face and hands before coming to the dinner table. He made few demands of the Adan but this was one that would earn Estel a lecture should he not do it.
Quickly, he ran to the washbasin, threw water on his face, and grabbed a towel to pat his hands and face dry, hearing Elladan ask outside again, "Estel?"
In the process of hastening through his washing up, the Adan sloshed water all down the front of his tunic, onto the table, and across the floor.
"I am coming!" he called back, hurrying so that he would not miss out on walking with the Prince and his two brothers to dinner; however, his foot slid in the water he'd spilled and the Adan slipped.
With a soft cry of surprise, Estel fell onto the floor and landed on his knees. His foot struck the leg of the table and unbalanced it, which sent the washbasin, the pitcher, and the stack of towels on the table to the floor in a crash of porcelain and water. At once, his door was flung open and his twin brothers came through, where they began worrying over him. Estel sat on his rear on the floor, rubbing his aching knees; Elladan and Elrohir began their lecture in tandem, one picking up where the other left off, while they mopped up the water with the already soaked towels.
"You never take care!" Elladan admonished as he threw one soaked towel into the basket beside the table where dirty towels were stored until a servant bore them away for washing. Elrohir went on to rebuke, "Always you are breaking things and knocking things over." As the younger twin tossed his soaked towel into the basket, the elder started again, chiding, "You are lucky that you didn't break a leg, Estel."
In their worry, the twins were lecturing the Adan instead of comforting him. Although ten years old – nearly eleven years, as he was eager to remind everyone – Estel was a child still, and having just hurt himself and now having his brothers fussing at him for making a mess was injurious to his pride. The Adan could feel the threat of tears forming in his eyes and his breathing hitched a time or two. Even though he knew that Elladan and Elrohir were fretting because they were always worried for his well-being, it did not make it hurt any less that they lectured before they had even asked if he was all right.
"Do you know what I think, Estel?" the Prince asked the human, for he had come into the room with the twins although he had stood at the doorway until now.
Suddenly aware that he was on the verge of tears with Legolas watching, Estel sniffled a time or two and tried to blink the liquid from his eyes. He already felt silly for running away from the Prince earlier, for he had decided since then that Legolas had only been teasing about turning him into a spiderling – or so he hoped.
"What do you think?" he queried in return. Legolas pushed between Elladan and Elrohir to help the human into standing and then helped Estel into sitting on the edge of his bed, careful to keep him away from the shards of porcelain and from slipping again in the water.
"I think if you wanted to go swimming, you should have just said so." Legolas stepped back, winked at the Adan, and then stomped his foot in the puddle of water that the human had made in the floor, sending the liquid flying through the air in a spray that hit both Elladan and Elrohir as they tried to pick up the broken shards of the pitcher.
Estel forgot his tears when the twins were splattered with water, for they good-naturedly cried out with nonsensical curses. "And if we'd wanted to go swimming," Elladan began to complain to Legolas with Elrohir finishing, "we would have just said so."
This time, when Legolas cheerfully laughed, Estel found himself giggling right along with him.
"Let's go, Estel, and leave the cleaning up to your brothers," the Wood-Elf said blithely, holding his hand out to the Adan. "We can't keep Lord Elrond waiting. And, since I'm afraid I might not remember how to find your Ada's study without help, I think I need an escort."
The twins were glaring in mock anger at the Wood-Elf, although their smiles showed their own mirth. Estel could not have known it, but the twins were pleased to see that Legolas was willing to befriend the Adan. As he slid his much smaller and smoother hand into the Silvan's stronger, larger, and callused hand, Estel decided, Surely a Wood-Elf wouldn't be so nice to any human that he planned to use for his magic!
The Wood-Elf was still laughing as they walked from the room. He had never seen anyone get the better of his twin brothers. The Imladrian Elves were respectful of Elladan and Elrohir because they were the sons of the Lord of the house but Estel had never seen anyone treat his foster brothers so insolently, even if it was done playfully – well, other than Elrond, but he did not pull pranks as did the twins. He often teased them and Estel but not like this.
More importantly, Estel had never had anyone take his side against the twins. In fact, this was the very first time that Estel could remember when anyone took his side at all. Elrond always sided with Elladan and Elrohir when it came to decisions made about what Estel should be doing, learning, and playing; when he had done something wrong, the three always seemed to have the same lecture for him. Certainly, it was a simple matter, but to the young human, who had always felt to be the lesser amongst the Elves in his foster family, having Legolas stand up for him against the twins' lecture was a novelty – and a welcome one, at that.
As he pulled Legolas along the hallway, Estel forgot the sting of his bruised knee and the cold water that drenched his leggings. He forgot about the lecture he had almost received. And for the moment, he quite forgot about the twins having warned him that Legolas was a dangerous Wood-Elf to be feared by Edain children. For the first time in his short life, Estel had met someone who had chosen to spend time with him over his Elven brothers; he found himself hoping that perhaps he and the Wood-Elf could be friends, after all.