"The dawn is here aew," Legolas shook Eryn's shoulder gently.
She sat up with a start, noted Gimli still snoring on the other side of the fire. She squinted up at Legolas.
"Bring your bow, we have a family to feed."
She followed him over the rock field, past mossy trunks wider than she was tall, to where her dogs lay, patiently guarding her flock of one pony and goat. The two hoofed ones had wandered in the night, the goat browsing on shrubby things in the low inderstory of the forest, the pony finding some grazing among the great roots and rocks. The dogs had stayed with them, keeping away anything with teeth and claws and an empty belly. She took a few moments to milk the goat, and feed Thulesilme's children. And change the dry moss and grasses in the pouch. Their mother would have licked them clean, but for now, a cloth dipped in her last bit of water would do. While she did this, the Elf took the pups in his hands, warming them, singing softly to them of their place in the gladhremmin ennorath.
Eryn finished with the pouch, Legolas handed the pups back, and she tucked them into place. He unwrapped a bit of last night's leftovers and handed it to her, and got some for himself. The rest he left for Gimli.
"I'll have to take the animals down to the stream first, for water." Eryn said to him. She pointed away down the trail.
"There is a closer one. Tolo." Come.
She looped her lead rope onto the pony's halter, called the dogs and followed Legolas into the woods, the goat trotting before the dogs as she had on the way into the forest. She and the pony and dogs had moved through many woods like this one, Eryn, at least, could do it nearly as quietly as the Elf. The goat scrambled behind with an occassional "maaaa" of distress, afraid of the shadows and strange smells and mysterious rustlings in the brush.
The goat made nearly as much noise as a certain Dwarf, Legolas thought.
They came at last on a spring flowing out of a steep rock face. It trickled down among lichen-splotched rocks into a small, clear pool. Legolas saw Eryn leave the animals a few yards away, pace around the pool, searching the ground, before she brought them in to drink. "What did you see?" he asked.
"No tracks." she looked up at him, "Well, you might not leave any, but Gimli would. How did you know about this pool?"
"By the song and dance of the birds and the rumour of the trees."
She frowned, "Explain."
"It does not fit into words."
"Well, then how did you learn it?"
"Following my Cherdir." he gave her a cool, questioning look.
"What?"
"Teachers." his eyebrows dropped, not quite right, "Master, one who shows the way. It is not the same word in your tongue."
"Oh."
He knelt and filled his waterskins, silent.
Eryn filled hers, stood, eyed the Elf, fidgeting. "Well, can you show me anyway?"
He remained silent.
She paced in a circle, readjusted the pups in the pouch, eyed the growing light in the tree branches. Frowned at Legolas. The dogs yawned and flumped onto the ground, tongues hanging. Eryn stood beside them.
Legolas laid his waterskins by his bow and quiver, and folded himself onto a rock by the pool. "Tolo." he touched the space beside him with his fingertips, "Havo-dad."
Eryn came and sat beside him, pups and all.
"First, you must learn to be still." he turned his eyes to the tree in front of him, seeing it but not seeing it, focused on a distant memory, a faraway time when he was smaller than Eryn, and even shorter in years, when the world was a new place full of unexplored wonders. He still knew the songs that had been sung to him then, even though he had not heard them, or sung them in many lifetimes of the tree before him. He sang one of those songs now, soft and low as the trickle of water on the rockface behind them, and in it were the roots of understanding how tree and rock and water and bird connected. He knew many of the words were strange to Eryn, but it mattered not. The song went beyond the understanding of mere words.
He felt, more than saw, Eryn shift on the rock beside him. Scratch an itch. Eye a passing bug. Glance at the dogs. Readjust the pup-pouch.
He kept singing.
Gradually she grew still, studying the bark of the tree before them. Then, for a moment, she saw through it, beyond it...saw the whole circle.
He felt it. Smiled. The song ended, he flowed to his feet, held out a hand.
She opened her mouth, trying to think of words to describe what she'd felt.
"There are no words." Legolas said. He looked into the girl's eyes, the way the Lady Galadriel had once looked into his, though he did not have her depth of vision. Eryn met his gaze levelly, unflinching as a hawk. He saw there the wildness of a rocky river, the restless moon-changes of a young wolf, but strength too, if it could be directed. And (it surprised him) he saw the same look in her eyes that the dark eyes of Gimli Lock Bearer, bore for Galadriel.
Ai, I did not ask for this. But he could no more leave her here, in the woods or with strange folk, than she could leave Thulesilme's children. In her flowed the blood of Avari and Rangers, and through them, the Maiar and Sindar. She was a relative. Even without that, she was kelvar, as he was. Kelvar, the creatures of Middle-earth and olvar, the green things, and all else were related. He picked up his gear, slung it over his back. "Let us go." he said to her, glancing at the slant of the sun through the high branches. The morning was getting old.
Gimli looked up from the stick he was carving; it was as long as his forearm and half as thick and the pattern he was working into it had reached more than halfway to the end. He had heard the crunch of brush and snort of the pony, not the light step of the Elf rolling a deer off his shoulders onto a rock.
"And where is the young lady?"
"Looking for mushrooms and roots." Legolas raised an eyebrow, "Someone taught her well how to use a bow. This deer is hers."
"Hmmmp. Perhaps we should leave her here. It would be easier than trying to change her mind."
"She is nearly as thick-headed as a Dwarf."
"And as incomprehensible as an Elf." Gimli set down his carving and knelt near Legolas, already begining carve up the deer. He eyed the pony, browsing on the edge of the rock field. "Would it not be easier to carry it to Lin whole?"
"It is not for them."
Gimli's eyebrows twitched questioningly. "I thought perhaps Eryn had found a way to pay for the goat. Though with with milk and young, it would take more than one deer..."
"Hu-lin." Legolas nodded toward Thulesilme, and Finlos guarding the pony and the goat. "We have a lot of dogs."
"That should hold them for a few hours." Gimli said wryly.
They worked in silence for awhile, in harmony, each doing what the other wasn't, each where the other wasn't.
"It's getting late." Gimli said at last. "And there is still a long walk back to Lin's. Where my pony is no doubt enjoying a fine meal, and a long rest. A long hard walk back to Lin's, with no pony."
Legolas broke into a smile, "Would that Eomer could hear that. 'I would sooner walk than sit on the back of any beast so great'...is that not what you told him when we were given horses by the Rohirrim?"
"Eh."
"Agorthath rochben." You'll make a rider yet.
Gimli glowered, "It would yet take more than elf-years to make a Rider of me."
Legolas smiled, and carried a large piece of venison to Thulesilme, setting it down just outside his den.
Thulesilme eased out, cautiously, then opened his great jaws and began wolfing down his meal.
"Have you talked sense into her?" Gimli asked.
"You mean, have I convinced her to return the goat and trade a free life in the wild woods for pounding clothes on river rocks? No."
"Ehhhhh, she will have a different song to sing when winter comes."
"She must write the end of her own story."
"Hmmmp. We could return the goat ourselves, and that would be the end of it."
"Then Thulesilme's children would surely die. Give her time to think on it."
"Time? Time! That's all very well and good for Elves, for you, time has no meaning."
"If you approach the blackbird too eagerly it flies away."
"The girl must take responsibility." Gimli grumbled.
"Teachers open the door, but you must enter."
"One more indecipherable Elvish proverb and you're going to wake up with a new haircut tomorrow."
"I seem to remember that the lirien leaves we collected for medicine also make a wonderful brilliant blue dye..."
Gimli eyed him from under bushy red brows.
"...doesn't come off the skin for weeks."
They locked eyes; earth-brown, immoveable as mountains, and storm-grey crackling with lightning. Then the grey shifted to amused silver, and Gimli broke into a laugh, imagining Legolas with the short, straight hair of the farmers, like a shorn sheep, and himself all blue like the wild tribesmen of the North.
Eryn returned when the sun was slanting low and orange through the tree branches, her sacks full of edible roots and herbs and mushrooms. She drew out enough for supper and went to help Gimli, already cooking up the venison. He gave her a deep thoughtful look from under his shaggy eyebrows...it reminded her of her father's father...as if there was something he wished to say. She saw him glance at Legolas. The Elf remained silent.
Eryn began dropping bits of herb and root and chwand into Gimli's small pot.
"Here, here, what is this?" Gimli caught a bit of twiggy grey stuff before it hit his stew.
"Gives it a little spice, trust me. My mother learned it from her father."
"Elvish cooking, all those leaves and twigs and bark and bits just covers up the taste of good red meat."
Eryn caught the twiggy bit from Gimli's hand and dropped it in the stew. "Live dangerously."
Something in the night-murmur of the forest edge shifted. Eryn sat up, a mushroom poised over the pot.
Legolas stopped in the middle of his task and peered out into the twilight.
"I heard it too." Eryn said to him.
"What?" Gimli asked.
"Howling." Eryn said.
"Eh, wolves." the Dwarf grumbled, "Or Thulesilme's relatives."
"No." Legolas rose, eyed the pile of firewood, "We'll need more of that." He readied his bow and moved it closer to hand.