Chapter Ten: Of Lembas and Unheard Music

As moths gathered and wind shivered through the leaves outside his window, Legolas sat curled up in his chair, scribbling another letter. Damp tendrils of hair gleamed dully in the candlelight, dripping bathwater in a careful border around around his parchment. Eye twitching, Elrohir watched as another drop narrowly missed the character Legolas was in the middle of writing.

"You'll catch a cold," Elrohir said, unconsciously channeling the full force of Gilraen's motherly disapproval.

"Funny, that," Legolas said absently, silver gaze sweeping from one set of notes to another. "Could have sworn I was an elf."

He tilted his head just in time to wobble a drop of water into his inkwell, and with a vehement curse, Elrohir leapt off the windowsill and snatched up a towel. He swabbed fiercely at Legolas' hair, doing his best not to addle more of the elfling's already addled brains.

"If that chunk of lembas isn't gone by the time you finish that letter," he said, in what was probably meant to be a soothing tone, "I will charbroil a giant spider leg and stuff it down your throat."

Rubbing an eye, Legolas snuck a look at the innocuous wafer perched by his inkwell. Even a good six months old, it still filled the air with the faint smell of honeyed spices and rich fruit. He was also fairly certain that if he took a bite, he would vomit up a rather sizable portion of intestine.

He surveyed the way-bread that writers sprinkled across the Ages had written gushing odes to, and declared solemnly, "Lembas makes my blood curdle."

"I don't know a single soldier who disagrees," Elrohir said, glaring down at him with that particularly endearing blend of murderous rage and undisguised worry. "It may come as a surprise to you, but food is generally necessary for good bodily function. You need to eat."

"I have."

"Yesterday doesn't count, Legolas," Elrohir's glower had grown so scorching that Legolas began to fear for the flammability of his papers. "Eat. Now."

"How about after I finish going through all these letters?" Legolas coaxed.

"You mean next year?" Elrohir didn't bat an eye. "You'll starve to death first."

With a sigh, Legolas jotted down a stop to a sentence. "Is there any hot water left?"

Clumsily, Elrohir wound the towel around Legolas' head, so that tufts of hair poked out like the feathers lining a sparrow's nest. "I'll boil more."

As the kettle bubbled away merrily, Elrohir returned to his perch on the windowsill. Crossing his arms, he stared at the opposite wall and tried to pretend he was thinking about important things, like the organization of the Ñoldorin army he had left behind at Emyn-nu-Fuin and how best to empty those hills of any remaining spiders. All the while, he studied Legolas out of the corner of his eye and worried at his lip.

Fragility had never suited the children of the forest, and so while no elf would claim that Legolas was particularly tall or broad, there had always been lean, corded muscle underlying his slight frame. His was the sleek, lithe grace of a wildcat. On more than one occasion, next to him, Elrohir had felt oddly oversized.

But if Legolas had merely been a tad too thin that day he had stepped into Imladris a winter ago, he now more accurately resembled a walking bag of bones. There was a sallow tint to his skin that others might ascribe to his recent misadventures with Silvan law—undoubtedly one of the dozen reasons Legolas could give for his recent foray into melodrama—but for an elfling whose favorite pastimes had included trying to outrun eagles, he was too quiet and too still, as if he begrudged having to expend any more energy than was strictly necessary.

Against the cool sharpness of his features, the little dab of cinnabar-red at the center of his brow, winking almost seductively in the flickering candlelight, looked curiously out of place.

"So will you tell me?" Elrohir said. The words were unintentionally hesitant, because he hadn't quite decided how badly he wanted to hear the answer. "How you came home?"

The scratching quill paused briefly; from beneath the sweep of lowered lashes, Legolas' grey eyes met his own.

"No, Elrohir," he said softly. "I will not."

For a moment, Elrohir was stunned into silence by the sheer novelty of a straight answer, and then a weight settled low in his chest with the throbbing, searing heat of a burning coal.

"Really, Legolas," he said, his attempt to keep his voice light completely undermined by the unevenness of his tone, "You didn't even try to lie."

"Unfortunately not," Legolas agreed, reaching out for another scroll. A small half-smile tugged at his lips. "I don't have the energy, or the time."

Elrohir had been expecting it. He had spent days on the eastward journey reminding himself that he might have seen his fair share of what the Secondborn deem magical, even miraculous, but in all his three thousand years, if there was anything he had come to learn about this world, it was that such things were often inconveniently scarce whenever he needed them the most.

"Nine hundred years," he managed to say at last. The moonlight was too bright. "And this is when you suddenly choose to start telling truths?"

He should have heard Legolas' footsteps above the ringing in his ears, but when a cold hand gently cupped his cheek, he startled all the same.

"Elrohir," Legolas's gaze was the warm pellucidity of summer rains. "We cannot expect our people to give their lives for these lands, if we refuse to allow the possibility that those we love might have to do the same."

"You should have sailed," Elrohir muttered, staring hard at the moths that had trailed Legolas away from the candles and were currently capering in the shadows above his head.

"Even you don't believe that," Legolas pointed out calmly.

"Better than this," Elrohir growled, his voice growing tight. "Legolas Thranduilion, are you aware that you do not owe anyone this much of yourself?"

Lowering his hand, Legolas frowned at him, faintly puzzled. Then, with a slow blink, he tipped his head to the side, eyes big and dark with an expression that would not have looked out of place on a toddling kitten.

"Oh, Elrohir, do you really think I am some martyr," Legolas' voice was amused, "come to beg for my people's forgiveness?"

"No, well—" Abandoning the moths, Elrohir directed the full strength of his scowl at Legolas' smiling face. "Yes? I don't know, Legolas! Whether you're here, whether you subjected yourself to that trial because of a misplaced sense of guilt, whether you think this is all worth it, even—"

"I am not among the Wise," Legolas' mellow voice gently arrested the rapidly crumbling spiral of Elrohir's thoughts. "I am rash and often too proud. It is likely true that in the scheme of things, many lives lie on my hands, but I really am… too tired to count them all."

He shooed away a moth that was flitting about his eyelashes, and continued. Though his voice was no louder, it carried an undercurrent of steel, "None can say, I think, that to Greenwood the Great I haven't given the best years of my life. I pled guilty for many reasons, Elrohir, but chief amongst them was the desire not to lead elves who hunger for my blood. Am I foolish enough to think ten lashes will win back their loyalty? Certainly not, though I can hope it will take the edge from their anger. Perhaps, at the end of all of this, I am truly at fault, but that is for the Valar to say—not myself, not Calemír, or even my father."

Elrohir was staring openly at him now, face pale enough to rival his own, dark eyes unreadable. Endeavoring to keep his breathing steady, Legolas gave in at last, bracing a hand against Elrohir's shoulder as a swell of nausea lapped at his throat.

Elrohir's long fingers closed over his, his hand burning hot against Legolas' own.

"Madman," Elrohir whispered.

"I should hope so," Legolas sighed, and pulled away. His arms were shaking. "After all this, it would be terribly boring to be remembered otherwise."

It was at this point that the kettle chose to shriek, shattering the tension with a loud whistle that made both of them jump.

"Shall we discuss Emyn-nu-Fuin now?" Elrohir said, as he poured out a stream of steaming water into a waiting cup. It splashed, and he set down the kettle briefly, rested his hands on his knees, and tried again.

Legolas paused, setting down the little spoon of melted wax he had been holding over the candle flame. "Elrohir Elrondion."

"I am a soldier, Legolas, I am not that weak," Elrohir said, more harshly than was strictly necessary. "This, I can bear."

Even to his own ears, he sounded unconvincing.

A moment's pause, and when Legolas spoke again, it was in the calm, lukewarm voice of a regent, addressing the commander of an allied army. "Can you?"

Elrohir stilled. "If I were in your place, and you in mine," he said, turning to face Legolas. "Would you be able carry on, knowing what you now know?"

Legolas' eyes were clear and cold as spring-melt. "Yes."

Yes—and Elrohir believed him too. Thranduil had spent the better half of the last Age sowing his reputation for frightful wrath across Arda. It was a good thing his son had taken after the Queen, elves said—how lovely and warm-spirited she must have been!—but Elrohir knew better. Legolas Thranduilion had proud bones, and beneath that mellow demeanor was a cold clarity of mind far more terrifying that the old King's scorching temper. They lived harshly in these northern forests, giving all of themselves to the lands that had nurtured them and holding nothing back, protected by no elven ring, but by mere strength of spirit. It was the Silvan way.

Legolas did take after his mother.

"Yes," Elrohir echoed, and this time his voice was completely steady. "Because I am a soldier too, Legolas, and I do what needs to be done."

By virtue of his own indomitable nature, and the family line that had managed to brush shoulders with all the great Houses of the First Age, Elrohir could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be called an ordinary elf. Yet even he could not accomplish a task as immense as gathering, fielding, and herding an army first across the Misty Mountains, then south through Greenwood the Great, at such a pace so as to arrive on the heels of her prince, who had left with considerably fewer soldiers to worry about.

So he hadn't. As the bulk of his elves followed at a more reasonable pace, Elrohir took a few trusted guards and rode ahead. His captains had made for Emyn-nu-Fuin, while Elrohir trampled past it entirely, fueled by first concern, and then an increasingly bloodthirsty desire to take up the fine art of arranging heads on spikes.

"My soldiers are raising camp in the foothills," Elrohir said, leaning over Legolas' shoulder to tap at a battered map. "On the northern flank and east, by the Lissë and those new palisades you raised."

"Any trouble with spiders?"

"Not much. Riros was very thorough. Still, I have ordered my warriors to sweep westwards to eradicate any survivors—they will make safe the way for our retreat. The routes you gave me in your letters, they are the only way through those mountains?"

"The Vale of Bright Clouds, Greycloak's Pass, the Path of a Hundred Alfirin, Raven's Needle," Legolas said, rubbing at his temples. "These are the most navigable—the other hundred and thirty-nine trails are either partially-blocked or too narrow. If the orcish foot-soldiers wish to cross before summer, they will take those five paths. The trouble with footing such a large army."

Elrohir peered closely at him, his voice gentle. "Four, Legolas. You named four paths."

"I did, didn't I," Legolas said, pressing the palms of his hands against his eyes. "What unnecessarily long names. Should have called them One, Two, Three, and Four."

"Are you sure you don't want to continue this tomorrow?"

"There are other things to do tomorrow," Legolas murmured into his hands. "I will manage."

"That confirms it. You're bordering on delirium," Elrohir pushed the cup at him. "You asked for hot water, now you have it. Eat."

From between his fingers, Legolas peeked at the waiting lump of lembas. It looked plenty menacing. "I'd rather not."

"Eat, or I'll call for a healer," Elrohir warned. "I'll call for Calemír."

Gritting his teeth, Legolas picked up the piece of way-bread, glared at it, and promptly stuffed it into his cup of hot water.

"Or," Elrohir said, staring. "I could ask for a roasted rabbit?"

Not trusting himself to speak, Legolas waved the suggestion away. Under Elrohir's uncomprehending gaze, he prodded at the way-bread until it was suitably soft. Swallowing the sourness on his tongue, he lifted the cup to his lips, took a deep breath, and gulped it down.

The lembas was slimy and cloying and insisted on stubbornly sticking to the roof of his mouth, sickly sweet. For a few heartbeats he was successful in keeping it down, and then again the nausea reared its head, and he doubled over, retching. The sour-sweet taste of stomach juices and lembas filled his mouth and his nose and mingled with something metallic. As the world tilted, he pitched sideways with it, too exhausted to hold himself up.

"Legolas, Legolas," Elrohir's face swam past in a pale blur, and he was distantly aware that there were steady hands gripping his shoulders, anchoring him upright. "Breathe, little one. I am here."

He drew in one deep breath after another. The dizziness that clouded his head hovered like dark clouds around the moon, and when it finally passed and the room grew steady once more, Elrohir was still holding him, running a gentle hand down his back in a vain attempt to soothe his breathing.

"Not lembas then," Elrohir said, sounding like he had aged five centuries. "How about… porridge?"

When Legolas turned green, Elrohir carefully backed away, extricated the upturned cup that had triggered this most recent disaster, and escaped to the kettle. When he was sure he could look at Legolas with some modicum of calm, he padded back, pressing a cup of fresh water into Legolas' hands.

"Soup?" he said hopefully.

Legolas' answering half-shrug was small and apologetic.

"Can you keep any food down?" Elrohir asked, and Legolas knew he was fighting to keep his voice even, despite the rising glint of panic in his eyes.

"Liquids, mostly," Legolas admitted, his voice hoarse with bile.

"You—" Elrohir struggled to keep hold of his sanity. "But just now, you didn't look… well, this bad! Now—I've seen corpses with better complexion!"

"Yes," Legolas said thickly, swallowing the last of his water. Straightening, he winced, in part because of his now full-sized headache, in part at the crumpled papers strewn across his desk. "But you were saying? About the paths through Emyn-nu-Fuin?"

Possibly Legolas Thranduilion's greatest talent, aside from his being a passable archer, was his ability to invariably give Elrohir stomach ulcers. The elfling looked like he been run over by a herd of stampeding mûmakil, and somehow he had the gall to ask him about the paths through Emyn-nu-Fuin.

"You are going to go to sleep," Elrohir said decisively.

Legolas peered up at him, looking impossibly woebegone. "And the goblin-tunnels beneath the mountains?"

"Legolas!" Elrohir hissed, aghast. "When will you stop burning the candle at both ends?"

"When there isn't any candle left to burn," Legolas said stubbornly.

"This may be news to you," Elrohir growled, his temper leaping in all directions like a firecracker. "But after your most recent demonstration, if you're able to do so much as stand on your own two feet, tomorrow morning, I think we can safely classify it a miracle."

"You must have a very low threshold for miracles," Legolas said, eyes flashing in a dangerous approximation of his illustrious sire. His voice was still a little rough, but already it was acquiring that familiar reassuring collectedness that had always ground away at Elrohir's nerves, especially since he'd discovered that Legolas was a big lying liar who had exactly zero basis for any sort of calm.

"If I leave now," Elrohir said, striving to control his blood pressure, "will you stay up all night writing those stupid letters?"

"Certainly," Legolas said unabashedly. "The dam I asked Lord Glorfindel to build seems to have sprung a leak, you see."

Speechless, Elrohir squinted at him, unwilling to believe that the crown prince of Greenwood the Great was essentially no better than the common swindler. For his part, Legolas glared back, his scowl so heated it was little wonder moths kept flying into his face. He was doing a terrific job of communicating his displeasure, considering the towel-nest that still swathed most of his head.

"I have sent orders to seal the smaller mountain roads," Elrohir snapped, speaking as fast as he could without slurring his words. "My warriors are hunting through and blocking off the goblin-tunnels as we speak."

Legolas opened his mouth to speak, and Elrohir rolled right over him.

"Yes, you're worried we'll miss a tunnel or two, and then we'll end up trying to cup water while orcish soldiers pour through those gaps. I'll have them take a few prisoners alive so you can question them later if you like, or if you eventually come up with some kind of plan so that we can be sure we've mapped them all. You don't have a plan, do you?"

Silently, Legolas closed his mouth, giving his head a light shake.

"As far as natural barriers go, you're right. Emyn-nu-Fuin is a good choice. It cuts straight across the Greenwood, running parallel to the Grey Mountains, and the Lissë guards our eastern flank. A good place to stand our ground. If we manage to secure all the tunnels, and seal just enough paths to funnel the orcs into ravines and valleys and ambushes, there is no reason not to be hopeful. Granted, that hope is contingent on a rather difficult task. You need to decide what to do about those four miles of forest to the west of the hills."

Those four miles were old forest, guardians of beech and oak who had watched over the forest for millennia on end, speaking in the quiet creaks of wood and rain and sunlight. Beneath their boughs nested generations of forest creatures, all living and dying under the same few square miles of sky. But if the armies of Dol Guldur found Emyn-nu-Fuin brimming with teeth, they might choose to go around the mountains instead—and those four miles would instantly become four miles worth of breaches.

"I have been thinking about it," Legolas nodded.

Not for nothing was Elrohir his father's son. He eyed Legolas, his gaze sharp and penetrating. "You haven't made a decision yet. That's fine. Go to sleep."

When Legolas hesitated, a shadow of uncertainty passing over his face, Elrohir sighed. Fed up at last, he reached over and plucked Legolas bodily out of his chair.

"Elrohir Elrondion," Legolas yelped, for the first time in a long time sounding very much like the elfling Elrohir used to cajole into stealing pies from the kitchens of Imladris. "Those letters need to be sent out!"

"Apologies, Your Highness," Elrohir said unapologetically. For a moment, he fully considered dumping Legolas down on top of his sleeping pallet, and then he set him down carefully, light as a falling leaf. "I'll pass the sealed ones to Cidin and Lithui, and you can finish the rest on the morrow. Frankly, I'd feel better if you weren't writing them with a concussed brain."

Disheveled and bewildered, Legolas clutched the little straw fox to him as if he could ward off whatever particular species of evil Elrohir happened to be.

"I have to wash my nibs," he managed. "They'll rust."

"I'll do it," Elrohir said, without missing a beat. "The last time I saw you this tired you nearly scared my heart into a premature stop. Go to sleep, tithen las. The world will still be standing by the time you wake up."

"I have to speak to Calemír," Legolas said weakly.

"He doesn't want to speak to you, it's the dead of night. I'll send along a message and have him meet you at dawn."

Legolas' eyes were bright under his nest of messy golden hair. "Perhaps… earlier?"

"Dawn," Elrohir said, sweeping letters into his arms and collecting quills with the brazen energy of a miniaturized typhoon.

"But—"

"Dawn," Elrohir said, in a low, rumbling voice full of treacherous promise. Legolas, who had lately become intimately acquainted with the concept of a lost cause, promptly gave up and slipped beneath his blankets.

In a last act of pettiness, Elrohir took every last one of Legolas' candles before ducking out into the crisp night wind. For a time, he stood there, staring blankly out at the sea of trees, his brow deeply furrowed.

"Sleep well."

Legolas did not sleep well. He slipped into that light haze between wakefulness and true rest, where one's thoughts grow misshapen and bulbous and it becomes perfectly reasonable to believe that it was possible to defeat the darkness that lingered over this land by hugging three wood pigeons and staring directly into the sunrise.

Not three hours after Elrohir had vanished into the night, Legolas awoke to find himself sprawled across his bright yellow carpet, feeling distinctly cheated.

What was the point of sleep, if he was going to feel as though he had been awake all along?

Grumbling, Legolas made to roll to his feet, but the fluid confidence of the Eldar, a people who took gravity as a mere suggestion and saw weight as an abstract concept, betrayed him without compunction. His arm buckled as he set all ten stripes across his back aflame, and almost immediately, Legolas folded like a paper lantern, crumpling back to the ground again.

Over the course of his nap, he had managed to stiffen his back into an ironing board. His arm, he was less certain of, considering that he wasn't entirely sure it was still joined to his body.

Lying flat on his stomach, he sighed into a mouthful of carpet.

"I am alright," he said, still facedown. "You may return to your posts."

An uncomfortable rustle came from the window, and then Cidin and Lithui were gone.

By the time he had propped himself upright, after spending a great deal of effort on rubbing the circulation back into his arm, stretching slowly until his back acquiesced to bend, he was far too tired and far too afraid to fall back to sleep.

Clasping a cloak closed with one gaunt hand, Legolas stared blankly into the embers of the waning fire.

Briefly, he contemplated returning to his papers, but by now the very thought of the resiny smell of ink made his head hurt. He had not yet finished drawing up troop movements to coordinate their imminent retreat, he needed to send elves to fix that damnable leak, and Thalon, his old weapon's master, who had been General of the Army before Calemír, had still not been found.

There were too many problems at hand, and too little time to see to them all, so he rubbed his temples and decided to take a walk, Elrohir be damned.

There were no fireflies here, this far south, and most nocturnal creatures had fled long ago. There was no comforting burr of crickets or the soft hooting of owls to fill the empty spaces of the night, only the sparse flickers of torches and the occasional angry bullfrog. So silently did elves move, that here, where patrols departed regularly and battalions still trained by moonlight, not even the steady tramp of booted feet kept him company.

High above, stars peeped through gaps in winter-bare branches, gazing down impassively at Legolas as he hobbled along, keeping to the shadows that cloaked the evergreens and doing his best to smoothen his gait, refusing to admit that Elrohir might have been right. Nine hundred years old, and already he moved like an old Man.

Leaping upwards sounded like an impossible business, so he stepped down, down, down through the ring of trees. At last, when he paused by one of the lower boughs to admire a patch of lichen, marbled green and white, it was the singing of an arrow that broke the silence.

Even before Ninael's horrified squeak of "Watch out, Your Highness!" reached his ears, Legolas was already stepping back.

The arrow hissed by his cheek with a whisper he had known all his long life, and told him where it was going by the hum of its spinning shaft and the way the wind brushed at his fingertips. He could remember the whorls in the wood of his first bow, the way yew leaves had tickled his cheek as he dangled over pheasant nests to steal his first fletching, though for the life of him, he could not now recall his mother's voice.

How queer. If he had been born to a different time and place, would he have taken up the bow at all?

Ninael flew down the trees with a swiftness fueled by equal parts desperation and terror. Was this treason? He was no wood-elf, and technically Legolas Thranduilion was not his sovereign, but surely two attempts at regicide in the space of a single night was grounds enough for him to be hauled off to the dungeons of the Woodland King for the rest of time? No, at the very least, once Lord Elrohir caught wind of this, he was going to be returned to Imladris in a narrow wooden box.

"Were you aiming for me?" A mellow voice spoke, and Ninael skidded into a halt, sending up a shower of mulch. "Three-quarters of inch off, I am afraid. Better luck next time."

He wasn't sure whether the clouds shifted or the boughs parted of their own accord, but one blink and suddenly Legolas Thranduilion was standing in the previously unoccupied branches ahead.

Coming off the tail of winter, it was not very cold. Not cold at all, by their standards, but still the prince wore a heavy, rough-spun cloak, his face far too pale—even by their standards. He was not very old, but with a horrible start, Ninael realized that he could already see the beginnings of fine lines at the corners of his eyes.

"I believe this is yours," he said, holding out Ninael's wayward arrow.

"Yes," Ninael said, fighting to keep some dignity in his voice as he took it carefully in both hands. "I—I apologize, Your Highness, but you startled me—this is the archery range—"

He only meant to say that he hadn't been careless, but it came out like he was thirteen again and trying to explain away broken crockery to his harried sister.

The prince was silent just long enough for Ninael to examine every single word he had just spoken from three angles and slowly drown in mounting agony.

"I suppose it is," Legolas Thranduilion said quietly. "I was careless. My apologies, Ninael."

It was then that Ninael discovered that being apologized to by Legolas Thranduilion was far more terrifying than simply being berated. He was opening his mouth to say words his mind hadn't yet fully formed, when he suddenly froze, feeling as though he had been walloped by a fire-drake.

Ninael readily admitted that of the wisdom of the High Elves he had received not a wit. But in that heartbeat, his vision cleared, and suddenly he could see the long arc of time trailing out before him, the years toppling over each other like a line of cards. Ninael would stammer and bumble and the prince would smile that warm but entirely blank smile, and then he would evaporate away to do whatever important things he had to do, while Ninael shot a few aimless arrows into the darkness and straggled back to the talan and yelled at Alachon and got yelled at by Tasser and ultimately plodded back to Imladris, to his sister and to a life where beeches didn't whisper the old stories and the currency of duty wasn't always blood.

"Will you teach me archery?" Ninael blurted out instead, before he could rediscover his common sense.

Tilting his head, the elf-prince regarded him in silence. A moth twirled lazily through the fluttering strands of his golden hair.

In truth, this was unwelcome news to Legolas, who was already thinking about how many hours of respite he could jam in—maybe if he asked Teleglos to hit him over the head?—before the sun rose. But he was also Thranduil's son, and court-trained, and so even now, bordering on murderous, to his credit, he only looked mildly thoughtful.

"It does not seem as though you have much to learn, Ninael," Legolas said, attempting to keep the daggers out of his gaze.

"That isn't true," Ninael said, his voice remarkably steady. For the first time, he met Legolas' eyes directly. "In stronger wind, my arrows always skew ever so slightly to the left, and my anchor tends to drift."

"Why archery, Ninael?" Legolas said. Out of patience, even he could not manage to keep the usual tepid warmth in his voice. "The Ñoldorin do not favor the bow and arrow."

"Because I'm good at it," Ninael felt his cheeks flush. "And I can use it to protect those I want to protect. So does it really matter what my people favor?"

There was no doubt that he had miscalculated—the longer he held Legolas Thranduilion's gaze the more his eyes began to water. But before Ninael's burning eyes could bring about the complete collapse of his courage, the prince sighed. Wincing faintly, he stepped up onto a higher branch, then another, and took a seat. Tucking his hands into his long sleeves, he gazed down.

"Show me," Legolas Thranduilion said, in a voice that wasn't exactly patient, but wasn't unkind either.

Belatedly, Ninael grasped the utter impertinence of his request. Here he was, neither a subject nor a friend, asking the clearly exhausted regent of a realm to tutor him in archery—but on the other hand, he also felt like he had opened a jar and let loose a hurricane. There was no way it would fit back inside. With a deep breath, Ninael drew the bowstring to his cheek.

The arrow's flight was swift and straight, slicing through the night with a thrum full of deadly promise. Had any Captain of the White Company been there to see him draw, they would have immediately started jotting down notes.

"You hold the bow too tightly, Ninael," the prince said. "It should be on the verge of slipping from your fingers after you make a shot, and so your precision suffers—"

He indicated the target, a painted circle more than fifty paces away, no bigger than a particularly fat apple. At its center, an arrow quivered.

"—you will not be able to hit that twelve times in a row. Again."

He was right. Thrice Ninael managed to split that first arrow, and then his arrows settled in a tight cluster around the target's middle.

Some elves spoke in a silvery Sindarin sing-song—Legolas Thranduilion did not. Not once did he raise his voice, but all the same his words sank into Ninael's ears above the wind, like a pebble through clear waters, steady and unembellished. Still, in the space of ten minutes, it managed to acquire a particularly grating quality.

If he held the bow in a grip any firmer than was enough to quash a fly, the prince would motion for him to loosen his hold. If he pulled the bowstring back even a hair's breadth too high, Legolas Thranduilion would ask him to stop and try again, until his arms shook and sweat wobbled from every strand of hair and each anchor point was identical to the last.

Then, the wind began to rise, and reliably, Ninael's arrows began sliding an eighth of an inch to the left.

Legolas watched Ninael blink sweat out of his eyes and struggle to keep his aim true.

"Do you hear them, the currents of air?"

"Yes, Your Highness," Ninael said, because it was quite a task to misplace their increasingly loud bellows.

"No," Legolas Thranduilion said calmly. "Can you hear the way they writhe and dance and curl through empty space? Listen, Ninael—no, not to that, that is Cidin's yawn—follow the roar of the wind to what lies behind."

"There are so many sounds—"

"I suppose it is fortunate, then, that the owls and the badgers and the foxes are gone."

Ninael shut up and screwed his eyes shut.

It wasn't that he couldn't hear anything at all—he did hear something, faintly—a soughing as tendrils of wind twined together like serpents, twisting and untwisting and contorting themselves into new shapes. The trouble was that it was a melody buried beneath countless others, and every time he so much as breathed they collapsed into themselves, only to reappear as new chords in different places.

"But they are always changing, Your Highness—I'm not sure how much help this can be when every tenth of a heartbeat they twitch and are somewhere else."

"Yes," Legolas Thranduilion agreed. "And do they not tell you where they wish to go?"

"Is this…," Ninael faltered, and suddenly he was in Imladris again, in an earlier year, leaning against a divan and teasing a grasshopper.

Hooded green and flanked by the sons of Elrond, the woodland prince passed underneath a courtyard window. Immediately, the other young Ñoldor under the sweeping eaves of the pavilion clustered around and began to whisper excitedly.

They say even the trees move for him!

"My prince, do we speak of the music of the Ainur?"

"Ainulindalë," the prince murmured, lifting a hand to the wind. He plucked a piece of dandelion fluff out of the current. "In it, it is possible to read the story of all creatures of Middle-earth, even those that lie unfinished."

"But that… my prince, that is the privilege of the Wise."

"Oh?" Legolas Thranduilion looked up. The glint of amusement in his grey eyes was sharper than any blade. "To be perceptive is merely to know the song better than most other elves, and to be wise is to know it well enough to glimpse what lies ahead. The music in its fullness, I expect, is known only to Eru Ilúvatar. Do not diminish yourself, Ninael, when you hear it too."

"I'm not sure I understand," Ninael said, after a moment's hesitation. "I am to let Eru himself guide my arrows?"

The elf-prince held up his hand, palm up. Eagerly, the wind reclaimed its little bit of fluff.

Legolas Thranduilion looked up at the vast expanse of firmament, and raised one brow. "Why not?"

Bobbing merrily, the dandelion fluff spun in a wide, dithering circle over their heads. Sinking lower, it brushed lightly against Ninael's nose, once, twice, before being snatched away by an impish twist of wind.

Lost for words, Ninael watched it swirl into the shadows.

Pale purple lightened the underbelly of the sky.

"I have an appointment to keep," the prince said, climbing gingerly to his feet. "I beg your pardon, Ninael."

"Of course, no, of course," Ninael spluttered, straightening abruptly, unsure of whether or not he should be bowing. "I—I thank you, Your Highness."

"A few more decades," the prince said, smiling faintly. Suddenly, desperately, Ninael wanted to believe his eyes were smiling too. "You are a most promising archer, Ninael."

"I am older than you are, Your Highness," Ninael mumbled, and the words were oddly shameful.

At the edge of the branch, Legolas Thranduilion paused. He shrugged.

"Then for having listened to more of Ilúvatar's song, you are already wiser than I."

Author's Note:

As a current member of the club of sleep-deprived people, this chapter just did not want to come out right and as a result was rewritten possibly five times. On the bright side, I now have ten thousand words worth of disjointed snippets for the next few chapters, so ha! Guess I'm still sleep-deprived.

As always, thank you all for your reviews and follows, and now I am going back to sleep.

Hoping that all of you are safe and well.

Translations:

Ainulindalë: The Great Music, Ilúvatar's song of creation. In it is woven the story of all beings of Arda, and of the land itself.

* which struck me as greatly resembling Leibniz's conception of the nature of reality. I include here a passage from his Discourse on Metaphysics:

"Thus when we consider carefully the connection of things, we can say that from all time in Alexander's soul there are vestiges of everything that has happened to him and marks of everything that will happen to him and even traces of everything that happens in the universe, even though God alone could recognize them all."