Chapter 9 – The gift and its giver

Her feet were framed by a smudge of midsummer sky. Dress hitched up over her knees and ankles dangling from the windowsill, Eroth turned the object over between her hands. The hair clasp was crafted from a rare type of dark wood, its smooth surface disturbed only by a small, blue stone imbedded in the centre. She narrowed her eyes and held her palms up. The morning light glinted upon it.

There came a patter of footsteps beyond the window. Eroth shot up from the bed, tossing the clasp to the side and trailed slippered feet towards the mirror. Her head of braids had been smudged by the pillow.

"It seems our lady has awoken, Legolas."

"Ay, and 'tis fortunate too. Feredir, I worried she'd never emerge."

In the mirror her reflection quirked an eyebrow. Eroth clambered over the bed and hooked a finger through the string by the window. "I thought you knew better than to disturb a maiden in her bedchamber, Thranduilion."

She drew the shutter down. The braids she would have to leave; there was one matter she ought to hide from prying eyes. Knees tipping into the blankets she hunted among her belongings for the sought artifice. With the shutters drawn the room was purple and shadowed, and her friends' muffled retorts outside did not ease the business. Her ankle caught on something curved and the hair clasp clattered to the ground.

Eroth stilled, contemplating. Then, retrieving it carefully from the floorboards, she placed it within a nearby drawer where it rested upon a folded piece of parchment.

A sliver of pale light appeared along the wall.

Eroth turned sharply, and two pairs of eyes ducked down beneath the sill. "Oh Elbereth, please step inside."

The shutter creaked open. As her friends entered, ducking through the window, she pressed her back against the sharp corner of the cabinet. "Did you sate your curiosity?"

Legolas, upon exchanging a glance with Feredir, settled back against a wall. His lids had fell down, and through lowered lashes he looked at her, a picture of innocence. The other elf shifted from the edge of a chair.

"So it is indeed a gift?"

"Which belonging of mine," Eroth tilted her head, "are you referring to?"

Feredir smiled. "The most recent one."

He started for the drawer. She bent an elbow over the cabinet's surface and blocked its opening, then leant her chin upon her palm. The ellon moved to the side, and she did also. With nonchalance she pushed herself back onto the chest of drawers, kicked her ankles against the front, and Feredir stilled. A smile of smugness passed over her features.

"Who is it?"

Her friends evidently had not developed a concept of personal space. Eroth's lip turned down. The stains of sunlight swam across the opposite wall.

"No elf you would approve of, but 'tis none of your business." She turned hard eyes to Legolas. "And none of yours."

"Ai, I did not say it was," Legolas said.

But the elleth glanced at him, a hint of bewilderment surfacing, and twisted her face away. "If you must know, it's but a hair clasp. A token of affection."

He hummed in acknowledgment. Feredir said, "who may we not approve – "

"Antolle ulua sulrim Idhrenion." (much wind pours from your mouth)

She dropped from the cabinet with a frown, and Feredir stared after her in wonder. "Dree – "

"'Tis woodcraft. With a gem – the precious kind. Thranduilion, let me pass."

Legolas stepped to the side. She strode past him but he clasped her arm, brows furrowing. "Mellon nin, what troubles you? We shall leave."

"I dare say I know," Feredir smirked. "But come, the morning wears on. Let us not waste it on such petty things."

Eroth shook her arm away. It was pleasant to be sought for; she would not let them ruin her gift. Legolas' palm hovered at her shoulder, his lips parted as if for speech. His gaze remained clear and bright. She hated that she had to tilt her head up to meet it. The elleth lifted her chin.

"To the festival, then."

At the cabinet she jerked open a drawer, turned the clasp between her fingers and pinned it slowly, deliberately to her hair. It was carved with precision; Eroth smiled. "It appears, mellon," she drawled sweetly, "that I have an admirer."


The vast grounds of the Palace were never cultivated. In the humid air slept a beauty untamed by elven hands. Small openings, their perimeter not exceeding that of the rim of a goblet, had formed naturally in the cave-like ceiling, illuminating with brilliance the Woodland Realm beneath ground. Pale stone pillars rose from the soil and rock, like age-old trees, and rivers cut through the horizon to tumble fiercely into barren darkness. Over their clear currents arched elegant bridges; bridges which faded into a myriad of paths and spiralled into all directions, and which were some of them chiselled roughly into vertical surfaces so dangerously that it was almost impossible for any mortal to tread.

The Wood-Elves feared no risk in using those paths. Having lived for long among this precarious landscape, they passed nimbly through the Palace's land. Oropher, the former King, had opened the large areas of the underground realm to all Elves under his reign – Sindarin and Silvan alike. Thus, it was beneath the ground that the majority of Greenwood's elven settlement lay – the marketplace, the baths, and a vast array of stores.

Transformed, however, was the palace now. The beginning of the midsummer festivals bode a full half-dozen days of celebrations. Radiant banners were strung between the pillars, dipping like reflections into the bright hues of the stalls and tents below. A soft melody weaved itself between the mirthful din of elven discourse, one of which was taking on a very interesting topic.

"Is that Arphen?" Eroth whispered to a dark-haired ellon, voice low with incredulity.

Feredir propelled the elleth to the side, gaining a brief view of a rather intimate moment between two elves locked in an embrace by the apple store. "By the stars, so it is her," he exclaimed, and bothered not to take the same precautions in being discrete.

"And who is on the other end of this connecting of lips?" interjected Legolas.

The elleth launched an attempt to circumvent a group of passing ellyth, but with no avail. "I cannot see. Feredir?"

"I cannot tell," Feredir replied.

The friends were overwhelmed by the flow of the crowds, and the subject of their attention was obscured by a wave of hair and silk. Eroth found herself grasped by the wrist, by whom she could not tell, and pulled through the masses until they reached a relaxing in the flow of festivities. She followed her friends into the shadow cast by a large pillar, smoothing down the silk of her dress.

"Do you think it had been the wine?" Eroth said.

"If you mean the personal moment which we had witnessed," her friend muttered, "at least one of them were intoxicated."

"This much is apparent from all that unnecessary passion," Feredir added darkly.

The elleth wrinkled her nose. "With that grip, she looked about to tug his hair out."

Feredir smirked, an ominous look entering his eyes. "I know," he said slyly, looking pointedly at the ornament in Eroth's plait, "that a certain elf may want to kiss you."

"Idhrenion," she exclaimed in outrage, "you are too old to talk nonsense."

Legolas sniggered beside her. "Would you rather he was in earnest?"

"I'd prefer it if both of you kept your mouths shut, in earnest or not."

Nonetheless the elleth did not payed no heed to Legolas' arm slung around her shoulders, and none of the friends cared to refrain from talking as they forsook the shade and wandered on through the booths.


Such defiant, mirthful eyes. Each time she glanced his way the ellon was mesmerized by that rich gaze, knowing with dread that the longer he stared, the deeper he would fall into a dizzying abyss. She challenged him, taunted him to a dance of no music, laughed in delight at the thrill of the chase. But, then, the ellon had caught her. The brush of his lips against her hands was eternal; in that moment he knew that she was his. He thought she would always be his.

The King started, fumbling in blind haste for his wine. His fingers closed tightly around the gold of a goblet, and he drained its dregs in one gasp. Thranduil did not know how he had let those memories slip from control – they had not plagued him so ruthlessly for many years. And now they had shattered against his skull.

He leapt from his seat and began to pace the room, hoping that his feverish tread could drown out, if but a little, the notes of her laughter.

Abruptly, the King stilled. The flames from the fireplace danced in his eyes, curling upon themselves like ghostly limbs. Why, by the Valar, did he feel so ruinously alone? After all, he had his kin, and among them his only son.

Legolas. Thranduil wanted, desperately, for his son to be able to feel for an elleth as he had felt for his Queen. It grieved him to imagine that Legolas would never taste the elixir of love. Upon many lonely evenings had Thranduil been tempted to relieve his son of his duty in marriage, but every time he had caught himself with an iron grip. Love was an elixir and a poison. An inchoate idea had long since been dwelling in his thoughts, and the events of the recent days meant that it was not time for him to play the father. Hissing, the King stalked towards the table for another bottle of wine.

May the Valar help him.


His two friends exchanged a wary glance as Feredir paused outside a stall promising a rare array of medicinal plants. They were aware of his fascination in the field and was familiar with Feredir's healers' tent during his working hours, yet they could both freely confess that they had little interest in the art of healing.

Upon a disapproving look from the store owner, Eroth withdrew her hand from a small brown root she had been toying with in idleness. Tapping Feredir lightly, she indicated that she was to leave, unwilling to disturb his academic rapture.

It was evening, and the diminishing light shed desperate shadows across the ground, weakly illuminating the way for the few who still lingered in the Palace's grounds. Down those paths the elleth started, past the jewellers and the spice-dealers closing their stalls, whereupon she lingered to inhale the rich fragrances.

It was at this time, that a shadow which had followed furtively behind proved to be corporeal, for Eroth had felt a light touch on her arm.

The scents in the air vanished like a candle snuffed in the dark. With a sense of dread the elleth turned and offered a faint smile to the ellon who had approached her. She traced out a familiar face in the dimness. "Istuon," Eroth greeted quietly.

Istuon took her hand and kissed it chastely, "my lady."

"You may call me Eroth," said lady replied uneasily.

Istuon bowed his head briefly. "I thought-Eroth-that…"

His tone became halting. The elleth tilted her head, slightly bewildered by the strain in his movements. "What is it, Istuon? Is something wrong?"

He seemed on the cusp of speech, but his gaze caught at something in Eroth's hair. His lips curved upwards. His gift; he had seen it. She wanted to tell him that he'd misunderstood, that she had never intended – but she had, had she not? She'd fitted the wooden clasp to her braid to prove something.

Eroth almost started when she felt her hand being grasped in the settling darkness, pushed down an urge to throw her arm back, let warm fingers lace between hers. She was tugged forward, and was aware of Istuon's voice beside her ear, "my lady, I would like to talk to you."

"Of course," she said, flustered and somewhat overwhelmed. Istuon smiled appreciatively at her, and Eroth sensed herself being led away in the direction of a clutter of trees in the distance.

So, she realized with distant trepidation, he intends to speak with me alone.