Never opened myself this way 7
# For many years I have travelled through Arda, the reasons for my journeys were as different as they could possibly be: greed, fear, despair and even the simple joy to be alive.
The first of my journeys began in an attempt to forget - forget not only the death of my foster parents, the old fisher and his wife who had taken me in and raised me, never knowing who I really was. They had given me the love and care they would have given their own child if they would have been blessed with one and thought me everything they knew about their own race as well as mine. It was a shock for me, an immortal, when my father died of old age for even though my first impression in my life had been my mothers and my own death, death was - and still is - a concept I am not able to fully understand.
I know that Eru gifted the edain and every other race except my own with the gift of a final death, a death with which everything would end for them, a gift which I envy them greatly. How often have I wished that my own life had just ended the moment my father had killed me, that I would have just faded out of existence never to return to any plane of existence. Or that Namos had simply kept me in his halls - everything than sending me back to a place that had so far only brought me pain.
My mother, my foster mother, followed my father not even a whole year later, not being able to live without her beloved husband with whom she had spend most of her life and whom she had known since her earliest childhood. Even though it was lonely and full of memories in their home after they had both found their peace I stayed there for five more years, to young to seek something new.
My race, the race of the Eldar count their children as adults when they have concluded their fiftieth year - I had to the time my father died just finished my twentieth year. In the eyes of the edain I had reached early adulthood but in the eyes of my own people I was still a child who was not yet allowed to even use training weapons.
When I finally left my home I had barely any idea of the geography of Arda, knowing only that a settlement of Eldar was in the north and an other south west. Gondor, the Great kingdom of men should lay far in the south and Mordor, the Dark Land, south east. This directions were it that let me travel to the seemingly only safe place, the east.
After two weeks of continuously marching I reached the sea of Rhûn, a place where I hoped to be able to spend many years in peace, undisturbed by any edain or Eldar. I remembered the tales my real mother had told me, tales that spoke of the creation of Arda and our race and that we had come from the far east. The first years in Rhûn I spend searching for any remains of the first Eldar who still called themselves the Quendi, those who talked. Not finding anything that indicated that they had ever walked those fields I finally settled down in a small forest at the sea. For many years the hut that I built myself in the tallest tree was my sanctuary and I would have stayed there for many more years, I might still be staying there, had the forest not been invaded by Orcs.
To my young impressionable mind these Orcs appeared to be the foulest creatures that ever walked Arda - today I know that there are by far fouler creatures, creatures that appear gentle and understanding at first just to reveal their true face when they have gained your trust.
I feared those Orcs and saw as my only reasonable action to flee this forest which had become my sanctuary, my friend who guarded me and told me stories of times long past like my mothers, both of them, had used to do. Yet my fear to meet someone of my own race drove me farther into the east, on the vast plains of Rhûn I encountered a group of edain but different then my foster parents they were not friendly people but harboured a hate for my race as they were servants of Sauron. Again I fled east just to turn after a few weeks of travel as I had seen afar several large band of Orcs, Wargs and other foul creatures of Mordor.
In the hope to reach Gondor, a land that appeared me as the only possible sanctuary, I turned to the south west. It was my fate which let me encounter Gil-Galads army near the Black Gate, had I passed that place a few days earlier I would have been already to far south to meet them and would have met Elendils, Gondors, army... had I reached it a few days later I would have met Greenwoods, my grandfathers, army.
Without many questions I joined the army of the High King of the Noldo after they had given me a sword and bow and arrow - I didn't possess any weapons than a fighting knife and an old hunting bow. It was in the first night in Mordor when I had once again woken up from the dream, the memory that plagued me since I had returned to life, and tried to find peace away from all the other warriors, never before in the barely hundred years of my life had I encountered so many people let alone so many of my own race: since my father had killed me this were the first of the Eldar I had met.
I will never know what led me into the direction of the camp of my family but it was on its outskirts that someone called me by my name, the name my real mother had given me as soon as she was sure that she was expecting a son. The few seconds that I hesitated to run or even just walk away allowed the one who had called me to confirm his suspicions and reach my side. Anger and hate filled my heart as I saw a face that reminded me so much of the face of my own father, hate also directed my voice as he asked me where I had been all those years - and how it came that I was alive.
Only the joy and hope I saw in his eyes allowed me to answer him more calmly, my hate once again directed at the one who deserved it, my father and not my grandfather. Even before I showed him the prove that I really was his grandson Legolas, my grandfather closed me into his arms, shedding tears of pure happiness. As I finally showed him the prove, the royal birth-marks at the small of my back he softly trailed his fingers over the leaves and started to turn me once again around to face him when he noticed the scars on the back of my neck, five small half-moon shaped scars that seemed to leak fresh blood.
In seconds the joy in his eyes turned to shock and anger as he asked me who had given me those scars, who had dared to touch his grandson. Overwhelmed by the love he felt for me and the anger he felt on my behalf I answered him truthfully - but also my hate for my father had grown even stronger when I saw and felt for the first time since my birth of what he had bereft me.
It was only the impending battle that stopped my grandfather from calling my father on his horrible deed. As the time neared that the sun should have risen my grandfather once again closed his arms around me before he took his seal from his ring-finger, a heavy gold-band, decorated with precious stones, the seal of his house and his position engraved in its centre. He told me that this was the ring his heir would be wearing as soon as he had faded and that he wished for me to be this heir. Giving me this ring he gave me the right to his throne, a right that had belonged to my father and then my oldest brother. Having explained this to me who knew almost nothing about my own people except what my mothers had told me, he withdrew a delicate necklace from within his tunic, a necklace he had worn around his own neck since the day of my birth - and my death - a necklace he had ordered to be made for me. Once again the jewel carried the seal of his house but around it were entwined three delicate green leaves, the third bigger and even more delicate than the other two. The last time I saw my grandfather was during the battle when he sank to his knees not far from the place where I was fighting, felled by the scmitar of an Orc.
When the battle was over I fled the remains of Gil-Galads army and followed the army of Gondor back to their homeland, not once seeing my father. The battle had brought great losses to all three armies but the most to the army of my homeland: two thirds of the warriors from Greenwood found together with their king their death. My grandfather knew when he gifted me his seal that I would make no use of it at least not immediately, still he told his only son that one day a Eldar would come who bore his seal and whom he should accept and honour as his rightful king. He did not tell my father who this person would be, knowing very well that I did not want my father to know that I was still - or again - alive.
With Elendils, now Isildurs army did I reach Gondor and settled down in Osgiliath, a rather small city compared to Minas Tirith, Minas Ithilien and even Dol Amroth but none the less beautiful. So far in my years I had learned nothing that granted me a regular income, forcing me to seek out someone who was willing to teach me. Only a blacksmith was willing to take the risk of allowing a complete stranger, a stranger who was overly tall and graceful and had on top of everything else an unusual hair- and eye-colour and wore a cloth that covered his ears and his brow. After only two years I was able to move on to a gold-smith who had noticed that I liked to decorate everything I worked on with delicate ornaments.
Fifteen years he thought me his trade before he died and his smithy was inherited by his oldest son, a man who accused me of trying to take over his position. The younger son of the old master had learned by a friend of his late father, a weapon-smith who, himself being childless, sold the young man his smithy. With this younger of the brothers I spend the next four and a half years till a group of customers changed my life. On an early winter afternoon twelve dwarfs entered the smithy and ordered a single sword to be made out of the metal they carried with them. Was it fate or simply luck that I was alone in the smithy on that afternoon?
At first it was not easy to persuade the dwarfs to sell me most of the Mithril, even more so because I had nearly nothing of worth to pay for, I had no intention to part with the two gifts my grandfather had given me in the last night he ever saw. But the thoughts of my grandfather reminded me of something else of worth that I owned: the elven sword I had been given in Mordor. Seeing the sword nearly a half of the dwarfs wanted to leave immediately till the oldest of them pointed out to the others that I was apparently an elf and as such able to forge elven swords for them - or at least swords that had the ability to glow in the presence of Orcs, elven -magic he called it. For five swords and two axes they promised to give me all of the Mithril they carried with them. As stray Orcs were still roaming the lands there would be enough possibility for them to control if I had held up my end of the bargain.
Those sword and axes were the last weapons I forged in the smithy of my master. Together with the dwarfs I left weeks later Osgiliath. The oldest of the dwarfs was the one who was the friendliest of the twelve, it was on his order that I was given a small part of the Mithril after I had finished the first two swords... fascinated by it I worked after hours on a small ring and a delicate necklace, a necklace I later traded in Harad for the ivory I used for my sword and knives. The ring I made, a small band decorated with a water-lily I gave my master as a thanks as I left with the dwarfs.
While the twelve dwarfs were on their way to Minas Tirith I continued alone to Harad, a country I have no intention to ever see again. While the air is warm - I expect that the edain would call it depending on their endurance unbearable hot or simply hot - the land is dry, offering no water for trees or other larger vegetation to grow, only here and there small Oases of Palm-trees can be found. During the weeks I spend there I wished for nothing more than trees, a small forest or even just a single tree. As a Woodelf, I found it nearly unbearable not to be able to speak with my beloved trees, even in Osgiliath I had been able to steal away at night to speak with the trees of the city and find comfort in them.
Even though I was never actively thought the language and runes of my people I was able to remember them from what I had learned from my family before my birth, I remembered how my mother used to read for many hours, how she spoke to the trees - and to me. She choose my name because a small green leave had opened before its time while she was telling the tree that her third child would also be a son and that she knew that I would make a difference in the world. A tree choose my name, a name my mother accepted. I don't know if the grade of the connection I have with nature and trees especially is natural for the first born or if I have acquired it after my return to life - or even before my birth - but I have always been able to talk to the trees as to every of the edain, Eldar or even dwarfs. Everything that has a connection to nature is speaking in a language that I am able to understand, no matter which tongue they use.
Therefor I felt lost in Harad, the few people I met were friendly and willing to help me but I still missed the - sometimes silent - comfort the trees lend me. During the long nights I spend awake, either afraid to rest my mind or awoken from the face of my father, the trees always comforted me, telling me what they had seen during the day or what they remembered of times long past... sometimes they even told me stories the wind had carried to them. I learned through a tree on the outskirts of Osgiliath of the birth of a pair of twins in an elven realm in the west... was this the way of the Valar to warn me who would in years yet to come change my life in a way I would have never expected? This twins, of whose birth a tree had informed me have brought me almost three millennia later to their home Imladris, where I learned that their mother is my cousin, where I finally found a part of my family, a part I have not to fear.#
A wistful smile played around Legolas lips as he remembered the confusion and longing he had felt when the old oak, one of the oldest trees in Osgiliath had nearly shouted at him the news of the birth of twins to the ruling house of an elven-realm. Why did the oak tell him of this birth? Never before had any of the trees told him something of the elven-realms, never had they spoken to him of his people, sensing the pain any news of them brought him - so why did she tell him of this twins, twins he would most likely never meet? Thinking back he knew that it was the way of the Valar to tell their child that this new-born twins would change his life.
The moment he had seen Elladan and Elrohir in the tavern in Minas Tirith he had known that he would go with them to their home, even though he knew that it meant that he would most likely be discovered by someone, maybe even his father, something he feared more than anything else. He had been discovered but this discovery had changed his life for the better, he had not only gained friends but had also found family - something he longed for since the moment the Valar had granted him a second life.
