AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY
By : mirkwood-elf-2931 & Thala


CHAPTER 17


Sitting, waiting, wondering, contemplating, seeing.

Thalawen allowed herself this time, to open herself in the place she most loathed; darkness. The one object that Thalawen felt has as much a soul as she herself. In this cubbyhole of a room she let her mind wander, let it light upon things that needed to be known; questions that needed answers.

Would there be more trouble from Mordor? Even though the Ring had been destroyed, Sauron's minions were still at large, roaming Middle-earth; entities with no masters. Would they strive to complete their dead and defeated master's wishes? Or would they simply fade back into the darkness; back into the pits from which they were born? There were answers, right before her, if she could only control her power of foresight.

Images wandered deftly through her mind, a swirling black pit of seething evil. She was within the enemy's gates, but which way to turn, where to go?

A sudden face, features blurred, came to her. Black mass of hair, pale pale skin, as white as the caps of the mountains. Then, blood red, gushing as a river would flow through rapids. Spattered blood, smeared blood of a being washing away, leaving the owner cold as stone and just as lifeless.

Thalawen screamed into her hand, tremors ran rampant throughout her body, uncontrolled. Weeping, she cleansed herself of the image at hand, but it would never fully leave her, always stored at the back of her thoughts. She fell to the floor as if the falling-sickness were upon her. Crying, her tears unabashed hidden in the darkness of the solitary room.

The tears soaked into the rug upon the floor, possibly traveling deep into the wood beneath. She buried her face in her palms and tried to calm, to soothe her own fears, much in the same way her mother and grandmother, even as Arwen had often done.

Regulating her breathing, she sat up once more. She had not found the answer she had been looking for. At least not the ones she was expecting.

A soft knock on the door made her jump, taking her breath away once more. "Yes?" She asked, but obviously not loud enough, she realized she'd been whispering.

"Thala? Are you in there?"

"Yes. Who is it?" Her voice seemed foreign to her, as if it were not coming from her, but as if someone were standing right behind her, using her as the puppet in a ventriloquist's show.

When the door opened she had not in the least expected it to be Legolas. "Are you alright, Thala?"

A small sigh escaped her constricted chest, but it loosened more quickly at the sight of him. "I am now," She spoke true. "What are you doing here?" She inquired.

"I heard something from this room." He was still half through the doorway. "May I come in?"

"Yes, yes of course," She felt foolish for not inviting him in, but it soon passed. Thalawen picked herself up off the floor and went to light some candles.

Full darkness had finally fallen while in the midst of her trance.

"Thalawen, are you sure you're all right? What were you doing in the dark?" He was puzzled by coming into her room; seeing her on the floor, surrounded by the shadows she loathed.

Hearing her full name come from his lips warmed a part of her heart that only belonged to him. Having her back to him was convenient, he could not read the emotions on her face, but she no longer wished to hide. Hiding made her a coward, and she was a warrior, but above all else, she was a woman; a woman still in love with a man she could never have. "Did you know that I still love you, Legolas?" She turned around, finally confronting what she tried so hard to forget.

The question caught him unawares and he was confused, but only for a moment. Then sadness for what could never be clouded his eyes. "No, I thought you loved me no more."

"That is what I wanted you to think, so I could protect myself from being hurt by you, even though you did it unintentionally."

Neither noticed they were speaking in whispers, nor that they had changed to Elvish.

Legolas stepped forward, toward the maiden before him. Landailyn had been right, Thalawen loved him still, but it did not change how he felt about either of them. In being with them both, talking with them and just being around the two again, he knew now for sure of what he had questioned to his own heart only five months before. "I am sorry I do not feel the same." And this, one could tell, was truly meant. "Anything would I give to make you happy, Thalawen, but I cannot make it so."

A silent tear trickled toward her chin. "This much is true. This much I have known," Her voice shook with the effort of speech.

Legolas wiped her tear away with his thumb. "For what do you lament? That we can't be together, or for something that is unknown to me?"

She eluded his questions and tried to block the haunting images in her vision that no one should ever have to see, but soon, many would witness the vision come to life and before that time she wanted to make this known to him alone.

"It seems I have loved you my whole life, ere even I met you, which is true, but I just wanted to say..." She faltered, her voice failed her in this critical time of their relationship. She swallowed the lump in her throat and pushed out the words she longed to say. "I love you, Legolas, and I always will. Nothing will change my heart and I know I will forever be alone because of this." Looking deeply into his eyes she said it once more, to free her spirit of this trapped emotion. "I love you."

And with each word more pain grew in his light blue eyes, until he could no longer look at her face, but stare at the floor below.

"There is more fighting yet to come," This made his gaze snap back to hers. "And in that battle terrible things will be done, deeds which will have everlasting effects."

With a slight start, Legolas realized the importance in these statements. "Did you see this? Is that what you were doing in here?" His questions whipping out as much as a general's.

She shook her head to shew away what she considered unimportant queries. "I just wanted you to know that in this fight to come, I will protect you."

He felt he would have laughed at this if she had not looked so serious. "What about you?"

"That doesn't matter now. Just know that you are safe. I will forever be watching you." With that said, she went out of her room to go in search of Arwen, leaving Legolas behind, dumbfounded and utterly confused.


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"I watch them sail for Valinor and know I'll see them never-more. I stay behind with the light of a thousand torches; it is my body that fire scorches. Can I find my way home, or will I forever be alone, here..." Thalawen silently mumbled this song of old in the Elvish tongue in which it was taught to her by her grandmother.

Interrupting, a knock echoed loudly off the walls in the large open space of her room.

Thalawen sat cross-legged on the edge of her bed and looked wearily over at the door, hoping it was not the prince filled with another twenty questions she did not want to answer. "Come in."

Hesitantly, Landailyn walked through. "How are you doing?" She asked right away, the door creaking behind her as it was being shut.

The Noldor Elf gave a small one shouldered shrug. "I'm fine..."

Landailyn barely nodded, her attention suddenly lost in her thoughts. Snapping her eyes upward only when Thalawen's voice was drowning them out.

"By the way, that was some good timing you had on that ship. I knew not how long those men would have kept away from Arwen. Good plan too."

"Thanks. I'm certainly glad you came when you did as well, I would not have been able to hang onto that cliff edge...Faeroth would have made sure of that. And Thala, you cannot prevent every minor or major thing that happens to Arwen." She glanced down at her hands, lowering her voice. "I know; I've tried." Landailyn remembered the time of taking Thalawen's place during their conflict with Saruman.

Thalawen remained voiceless to this statement, rising and venturing out onto her stone carved balcony into the darkening atmosphere of the day. She knew that Landailyn was right, but she was not ready to face this truth and it was more than hard to admit it to herself, let alone other people. "Something doesn't feel right, Landailyn." She glanced over at the blonde Elf that had followed her. "Can you not sense it? The air is heavy when it should be transparent; however, it hangs on me like the weighty water of morning dew upon fragile leaves." This was uttered under Thalawen's breath as she leaned over the balustrade of the small balcony.

Looking Thalawen up and down, studying her as if she would study a bug under glass, Landailyn finally spoke what was on her mind. "Maybe you are just nervous because of all the things that have happened to us in the past. Do not go places expecting trouble to follow you, Thala. You cannot live like that," She criticized, wanting the Elf not to look out so much for others, but to take care of herself once in a while. She had become tired of the way Thalawen was constantly on guard, always looking after she and Arwen, always looking over her shoulder like she expected an Orc to jump out at her at any moment. Her never-ending vigilance was the source of Landailyn's annoyance.

Even if at times she did the same things, it was not constant, or so she believed.

"Can you not relax, just this once, and enjoy what is going on around us?" she asked angrily. "Aragorn and Arwen are so happy together and instead of celebrating their plans to soon be wed, you pretend to be happy and spend your time watching the grounds. I have not seen you in three days!" With that said she started toward the door. "When you want to socialize again, Thala, you know where to find your friends!" And she slammed the hinged slab of wood behind her.

Thalawen could hear her boots padding down the hallway away from her room, as the Elf stalked off, not bothering to hide her anger and annoyance from others.

It was true, she had barely come out of her room since she had developed that 'headache' in the market three days before.

Silently, she put her head in her hands and covered her face to block the memory of Landailyn's angry face; her angry words. What had caused her mood to change so abruptly? Before she had seemed fine with Thalawen's protectiveness.

Suddenly, distant crying and shouting alerted her sharp hearing. Horns sounded from somewhere on the House, above the level she was on.

Thalawen looked up and surveyed the land that stretched far and wide before her, dread knotting and twisting in the pit of her stomach.

It had begun. Three days later, her vision had finally shown itself.

"Please not today..." She whispered, but she knew her prayers were for naught, as soon as she saw the distant sight of a dark thirty-foot wide army.


TBC ...

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mirkwood-elf-2931 :
Oh no! You were almost right, Sarah! It wasn't a cat fight, but Landy did just yell at Thalawen! Hope no one thinks too ill of her for that! LOL She's just not having a good day again! ;)

Thala :
When 'falling-sickness' is mentioned in this chapter, it refers to Epilepsy and the seizures that come with this disease. As I have no idea as to whether they had this disease, being men I'm pretty sure they did as its present in every civilization, but I've never read or heard about it. So, I'm going to stick with what the Romans called Julius Caesar's Epileptic seizures: 'falling-sickness'.