Author's Note: This is another stepping stone which I feel are needed because I really want to get on with the story and Elves apparently move like MOLASSES IN JANUARY! I mean, I realize that it's a lot more 'realistic' that they be moving slowly and all that, but no one really wants to read a year's worth of 'Nice morning' and 'would you like to take a walk by the river' LOL (I mean it, that boy is slow LOL) ANYWAY Tinuviel and Legolas have been treading lightly around each other. Tinuviel has been avoiding him whenever possible, Legolas has been trying to work out his feelings. Tinuviel has worked through that song enchantment thing, but she normally doesn't sing around Legolas for general principle. I think that pretty much brings you up to speed ;-D OH! And, as always, my humble thanks to my Beta/Sis LadyArien!

STARS, SNOW, AND SINGING:

Tinuviel lay wrapped in her cloak on the snow covered ground, looking up at the winter stars and wondering if they were the same wherever she called home. The edge of a memory came to her, a ghost of a tune floating on the air. She frowned as she concentrated hard, trying to remember it.

Bring me a star that has fallen from the sky

To lay in my lady's hand.

Stay time in it's flight, keep tomorrow from this night.

But time it does fly, and stars do not fall.

Try as she might, the rest of the song would not come. She wanted to cry, but the tears would have probably frozen on her face. She could feel the cold leaching through the heavy leather and fur wrappings. There were so many things she didn't remember, but one thing she did remember was that she hated being cold. She was just about to rouse herself from the ground and take her frozen body to warm it by the fire when a voice broke into her thoughts. "The stars are not likely to move in the near future."

Gasping, she sat up and looked toward the direction of the voice. "Who is there?" she asked, the lyrical Elvish language beginning to become second nature to her now. The tall, lithe figure came out of the trees, moving silently over the crisp snow.

"I am sorry, Tinuviel, I did not mean to startle you. I heard you singing. It has been long since you have graced us with your voice." Legolas stopped next to her and offered her his hand to help her up. When she did not take it, he pulled his hand back under his cloak, ridiculously thin in comparison to hers in Tinuviel's way of thinking. "Are you not cold sitting there in the snow?"

"A bit," she smiled, self consciously and looked back at the sky. "I was just watching the stars." She looked back at Legolas, an infinitely earnest look on her face. "What are their names?"

He looked at her, his expression a mix of amusement and confusion. "All of them?"

Her eyes turned skyward again, trying to blink back the tears that threatened to spill. "One of them, ten of them, anything." She took a shaking breath. "I cannot remember what the sky over my home looks like, but I know that I loved to look at it." She closed her eyes, trying to remember the placement of the constellations. "I can remember a man with dark hair laying on the beach next to me and telling me the names of the constellations." She blinked at the memory. "But I cannot see the sky."

Without a sound, Legolas drew his cloak tightly around himself and sat cross-legged on the snow next to her. "See there," his long arm reached toward the sky as he pointed to a grouping of stars nearly directly overhead. "The three bright stars in a row? That is the belt of Menelvagor, the Swordsman of the Sky." He looked at her as she watched the sky, her face pale in the moonlight framed by the darkness of her cloak. "If you look above and below that you can make out the shape of a warrior. See the bright red star, that is his shoulder and that star is called Borgil."

She smiled as she easily picked out the constellation, as if she knew it already, there was something so familiar about it. A smile lit her face. "I see it," there was wonder in her face

He liked the smile that lit her face, and his heart warmed and sped in its beating.

"Tell me more," she urged, quietly.

He pointed to the north. "Those seven stars, that is the Valarcirca, the Sickle of Valar. Varda set that in place as a warning to Morgoth, the first Dark Lord." Moving his hand just slightly south, he pointed toward a bright blue star. "And that one is Helliun, it is the brightest of Varda's stars."

"Who was Varda?"

"Varda was the Queen of the Stars, she is the one who set the stars in the sky and taught them to glow. She is also known as Elbereth Gilthoniel."

"Have you any songs for the stars?" Elves, she knew, had at least one song for just about everything in nature.

"The only star song I know is the one of Earendil, and it is more a song of the man than that of the star he became. And, of course, there are the songs of Elbereth herself."

"Will you sing one for me?" she asked in a small, hopeful voice she hardly recognized as her own.

He hesitated for a few moments, and Tinuviel was afraid he might refuse, that she might have offended him in some way. She was glad when he finally answered. "If you wish it. But I am no songmaster." Despite his protests, however, his voice rang clear and true on the crisp winter air. The first part was in a form of Elvish she knew.

Snow-white! Snow-white! O Lady clear!

O Queen beyond the Western Seas!

O Light to us that wander here

Amid the world of woven trees!

Gilthoniel! O Elbereth!

Clear are thy eyes and bright thy breath!

Snow-white! Snow-white! We sing to thee

In a far land beyond the Sea.

O stars that in the Sunless Year

With shining hand by her were sown,

In windy fields now bright and clear

We see your silver blossom blown!

O Elbereth! Gilthoniel!

We still remember, we who dwell

In this far land beneath the trees,

Thy starlight on the Western Seas.

As he was singing, he slipped into a form of Elvish she could not quite understand, but that fact did not make it any less enjoyable to listen to. His voice was beautiful and the Elvish tongue was entrancing.

A Elbereth Gilthoniel,

silivren penna míriel

o menel aglar elenath!

Na-chaered palan-díriel

o galadhremmin ennorath,

Fanuilos, le linnathon

nef aear, si nef aearon!

A Elbereth Gilthoniel!

o menel palan-díriel

le nallon sí di'nguruthos!

A tiro nin, Fanuilos!

A! Elbereth Gilthoniel!

silivren penna míriel

o menel aglar elenath!

We still remember, we who dwell

In this far land beneath the trees,

Thy starlight on the Western Seas.
When he had finished his song, he turned back to Tinuviel and frowned as he saw the glittering tears running down her face and it made his heart ache. "Are you so sad here?" he asked, softly. "If you do not remember your home, could you not make a home here?" He looked out into the distance at a tree swaying in the breeze. "If you wish it, I am certain that Aragorn and Boromir would take you to Gondor, perhaps you would be happier among your own kind," he finished, somewhat sadly.

"I am not unhappy here, far from it, I love Rivendell." She sighed, "I only wish I remembered what my own home was like. Though I admit that the beauty surrounding us here makes me feel very small and insignificant at times and I often feel that I do not truly belong here." She smiled. "I was only crying because the song was so beautiful." *As are you,* she added silently.

Legolas turned slowly back to her, fixing her with his dark gaze. When he spoke, his voice was low, a timbre she had not heard before and it sent a shiver of pleasure down her spine. "You are, by far, the most beautiful thing in this valley, save the light of Earendil itself." He reached out and brushed a tear away with the pad of his thumb, leaving a scorching mark on her skin wherever he touched. "You are freezing," he admonished softly, taking her hands in his to warm them.

Still caught in his gaze, she let him take her hands in his own without protest, her heart racing. Where her skin touched his it felt like touching living fire, only that it did not burn. The skin itself was cool, but it seemed a warmth radiated from within him and It warmed her through to her very bones.

Standing, he pulled her up with him. Once she was standing, he released her hands, pulling her cloak tightly around her. He seemed about to say something, but apparently thought better of it, saying instead, "we should take you in by the fire before you are frozen to the marrow." Turning back toward the main house he fell in step beside Tinuviel, allowing her to set a pace that was comfortable for her.

A/N: The first song - Bring Me A Star - is a filk from Cynthia McQuillin; the second one - O' Elbereth - is from JRR Tolkien himself.