New Chapter to add:
This is the same day of the dinner from chapter 1
The King had heard tell from the healers that she had left the ward. That her cousin and friends had dragged her from the bed, and set her under the trees, with a brush in her hand and a blank canvas before her. And he had heard whispers from those same tree's that her heard was heavy and her fea quiet and stricken with grief. It was those same tree's that prodded him from the palace that day, and down into the gardens where she sat on a bench. The same bench, he recalled, that she had pleaded her service on.
He took a quiet seat by her and listened to the trees again, they whispered kind words and tickled her neck with their branches. She scowled and tried to hide the smile on the edge of her lips. Then he saw it, for the first time in nearly a century. She ran her fingers over the smooth amber and when the sun caught it the light lit her up with fractures of a golden glow.
Finally, the King, impatient to begin their conversation, cleared his throat.
"I never would have…you know, if I had known, I never would have accepted it." She offered him the jewel. "Did you…did you know? That he gave it to me?"
"I heard whisperings of whose neck it graced after it disappeared from the treasury. But I had no certainty."
She nodded and turned the jewel over in her hand, and seemed to disappear again into a meditative thought. But, after a time Thranduil saw clarity come to her eyes and she looked to him and shook away the falls of golden hair from about her face.
"You know, I am not afraid of it." She said pursing her lips into a thin line.
"The title?" he said.
"His title." The King knew she meant to Prince, her own titles were another story entirely.
"But you are worried, for there is weight and duty bound to his crown?"
"Perhaps I do not have the strength." She muttered.
"Perhaps, your bitterness leads you to think I would overburden you."
"Aye, bitterness." The King held back a chuckle and instead took her hand gently into his.
"I remember how I have already bent under the burden of a crown, and I hesitate to carry another. I am angry at myself, I am weak."
"You were young, you are not the same elleth you were the day you came here. Galadriel only deigned to protect you, only wished to meld you into the leader she thought her people needed." The King whispered.
"Yes, and I eschewed their protection. They just wanted to keep me hidden, until I was melded into the pawn she desired me to be. I hate it, I hate feeling so powerless." She shook her head. "When I was younger I thought I left the Noldor under the protection of the Vice-Reagent, as Gil-Galad instructed. That I had done my duty. But now that I am older I see that I was wrong, and I wonder if they would even have me as their Queen after all the mistakes I made. For even Gondor chooses a steward over their rightful heir, why would the Noldor be any different? Now Elrond wants my throne, and I let him sit next to it without protest. I've been running, running away from all of this duty out of spite, hoping it was all a dream that I would wake up from. Pretending I did not feel the guilt that I carried all these years. That is what I feel, guilty. As though there is a canyon so deep between my people and I that I cannot even hear the echo of their call across it. As though the rifts and strife is all my fault."
She was quiet again, quiet until the King spoke gentle words to her, old words that she had heard before. "Child, this silvan blood is equal to you as the blood of Finwe. You did nothing wrong, you fought for your people, and you made sure the others were protected, even when I deigned to desire division. You play only a small part in that canyon, for our forefathers were the river that eroded its boundaries. I am the King that did not offer to build a bridge and cross such a gap. Even when you tried to offer the first ropes."
"You know about the letter I sent Galadriel then, after she took Lothlorien?" she asked, remembering the treaty she had begged for.
"I know my fastest bird was used before my messenger was sent." She blushed at his words.
"Nothing escapes you your Majesty…. those who steal the daughters of the Noldor and wed them without gift or leave, do not gain kinship with their kin." She muttered. "Lord Elrond is angry with me, but he would not steal the throne, he would not risk drawing Sauron's eye."
"And you?" He asked gently, raising an eyebrow.
"I already fear my presence drew him do Dol Guldur."
"No, there were evil whisperings there even before your arrival." She nodded at his words.
"Regardless, the title holds power, and he would come for me." Unede said firmly.
"You have not been sulking, have you?" The King let out a chuckle.
"No, I have been scheming." She sneered. "This is only the beginning, a great war is brewing, I know it in my bones. There will come a time when my title is needed, when his eye needs to be drawn, when his destruction will require a distraction. When Galadriel, and the Wandering Companies will have to answer my call, and our southern kin will have to aide their rightful King. That letter made it known that her leadership of The Golden Wood is conditional."
"And in the meantime?" He asked raising an eye brow.
"I don't know…I feel as though I have been in a fever dream for a thousand years. Like the whole world was rippled with the heat of my great quest for vengeance, and the air was so thick with the dust of my own desires that it has kept us apart, and I have been living away. Away in my own palace of revenge and death and doom, when there was love all around me…All these years and I did not hear him when he called to me, because I did not want to…and because guilt kept me from him." She shook her head and wiped away a hot tear, and Thranduil knew she was not speaking of Sauron or Elrond, but of his son. Of Legolas.
"All I have done is bake bread and danced in a plume of pretend. And now, now all the breath has been taken from me, and I find myself lonely, and lost. The dust has settled and I am alone. How can I get to him, when I have been missing for so long? There is a valley in between us and I can hear only whisper's of the waters that should fill it."
The King took her hand gently and pressed a kiss to her forehead. "Oh my child." he whispered. "There is nothing I can say to still you." Then he smiled and his eyes filled with a gentle light, and she was reminded of the spring sun and the warmth of the rays on her skin. "Your fire, my child, did not burn you out, this dust is not your ashes. No, you are neither Aegnor, nor Feanor. You, fire is not terrible, but enlivening. From the ashes of a forest fire the tree's grow and become mightier. Our forest needed your flames, we needed your fire, you nurture us."
"Would the silvan folk….Would they even consider…" She paused but the King smiled at her and gave a gentle nod.
"They would be glad to have you as their Princess child."
She gave a shy smile and a soft nod and then whispered. "I fear I will be late for dinner." She curtsied low, and the wind swept her off down the path, and this time the trees laughed a little lighter.