Seeking the Past; Dreading the Truth
Chapter Six
Disclaimer: I am LegalanGreenleaf's disclaimer kiwi bird, Bert. She does not own Lord of the Rings or
Legolas… so she thinks… but does own Madrial Brethil, Silme, Elente, and
Billie.
A/n: I am enjoying writing about the past happenings quite a lot, so I will
continue for a few chapters in this style.
AragornLover: Uhm… baka? This has now moved to the past. Thranduil is still alive in these. Same w/Madrial even though I'm bringing her
back…
*****
Silme leaned over the sleeping form of Madrial. They were in the dark servants quarters, and it was slightly
before dawn. "Madrial," she
whispered, tilting the bucket slightly to let some drops fall to the other's
face, "time to wake up, chores. We
have fire and breakfast duty in the Royal Wing, and they rather literally will
whip us if we tarry."
Madrial poked a hand out and yanked Silme's ankle, causing the redhead to
fall. "I'm not moving till
dawn." A bleary eye turned to her,
"Five minutes…"
Sighing, Silme grabbed the blanket and yanked it from the dainty form of her
friend. " Nope, now or face the
consequences." Grumbling, Madrial
grabbed her apron, as she had slept in her dress.
*****
"You take the short hallway before the main chambers," Silme
directed, dragging her breakfast cart down the halls to the Royal Wing. "I don't think you should go anywhere
near the king after yesterday's fiasco.
That would certainly be playing with fire… pardon the pun. All you do is light the fires, set the tray
near it, and do so quietly."
Yawning, Madrial nodded and took the directed pathway. She opened the only door and inaudibly made
her way to the large fireplace. Taking
a small piece of flint from her pocket, she knelt down before the hearth that
would easily fit a full backed chair.
Striking the flint… nothing happened.
Madrial tried again with the same result; no spark of flame emerged.
The figure in the bed stirred slightly, and Madrial started vigorously chipping
at the flint. After fifteen minutes of
no sparks, and a much-dented piece of flint, she started to get desperate. "Tulno' lle ringa runya! (Come on you da** flame!) Me'runya, me' (Light flame, light.)" Getting desperate, she grabbed some of the
tinder and rubbed it together. By this
time, the inhabitant of the room had woken and was rubbing his eyes clear. Whimpering, Madrial rubbed the twigs
together harder.
Spying her, the figure said, "Mani luume' nata? (What time is it?)"
" Sha anoron, Heru en amin, (almost
dawn, my lord)" she replied meekly from her perch near the hearth.
"Mani nai'rashwe? (What is the
problem?)" He asked, shifting
slightly.
She slumped before responding, "I'runya, Heru en amin, ta uummerna'
me'a. (The fire, my lord, it doesn't
want to light.)" He quirked an eyebrow
at her before yawning
"Lle anta amin tu? Qalumamin tanya
waima, saes? (Do you need help? Will
you toss me that robe, please?)" He
queried, pointing to the fireplace and then to a deep green robe draped over a
chair.
"N'uma, Heru en amin, amin uumantai' (no, my lord, I do not need
any.)," Madrial replied, getting up.
Grabbing said robe, she walked toward the bed. As she moved closer, she recognized him as the Prince, and her
face flushed. "Amin hiraetha,
Taren Legolas. Amin uumai' faika, amin
caelilnaikotane neva er en' lle taurn
teema (I'm sorry, prince Legolas. I do not mean any disrespect, I have
never been near one of your high line.)"
**A/n ergh… I hate doing this, but, they
have no word to convey importance and I must use 'common speech'. I am trying my hardest to be accurate in my
usage of Elvish, but due to the lack of resources ((damn you, Tolkien! You should have left better records!)), it
is quite hard to find every word necessary.
**
"My high line?" The prince
inquired, folding his arms across his chest.
"As a noble, with the lineage you have, many would die just to protect
you, whereas none would spare a glance in my direction were I in peril,"
she replied without hesitation, "I'm a simple peasant; you are the Crown
Prince of Mirkwood. It has taken
millennia for me to acquire this position.
You were born into privilege and care not for the problems of the common
population." The robe was clenched in
her fist, forgotten.
Legolas laughed lightly, "Closest to fluent, I'd say you are quite
articulate in the Common Speech. Never
has anyone said anything so… expressive to me before. If you said the same to my father, he would certainly run you out
of the forest!" He looked to the
ceiling, contemplating what she had said.
"If only the princesses Father wished me to marry had that kind of
spunk; every single one of them is dry as toast, and always denied what they
truly felt. Were either of my brothers
still alive, I could choose to live away from the castle, but that is not the
case, and there are no others to give the crown to if my father was to
die," shaking himself from his thoughts, he managed to pry Madrial's grip
from his robe.
She quickly blushed and turned away.
"You read me wrong, by the way.
Now then," he said, tapping her shoulder, "what was the
problem with my fire?"
"The fault lays not in the fire, but in the flint, my Prince. Despite all my attempts to produce a spark,
none comes." Balancing on her toes in
front of the fireplace, she demonstrated how the flint refused to work. Legolas knelt beside her and motioned for
the flint. She handed it to him, and he
struck the other piece against it, rewarded by a spark. Madrial flopped backwards, cracking her head
against the hard stone floor. "No
language has a sufficient adjective to describe the embarrassment I feel right
now," she muttered, blushing, "I'm a failure at anything but
stealing… ow, my head…"
Legolas turned to her, "Where does it hurt?" He asked, helping her lift her head from the hard stone.
Silme chose that moment to enter the room.
"Madr-" her eye flinched when she saw her friend lying prone
and the prince mere inches away, cradling her head in the crook of his arm. "Maybe this isn't a good time…"
Madrial tried to sit up quickly but the room swirled and she merely flopped
back down, only the arm beneath her head stopped her from cracking it again.
" …
Going dark…" with that simple comment, she fainted.
"Milord, shall I go inform the healers?"
Silme asked her eyes filled with concern for her friend.
"Rima ilya i' men manka lle harma lle sama (Run all the way if you
treasure your post.)" With his reply, she rushed off to find a
healer.
Panting, she burst into the healer's quarters, "Antfallaner,
tularauka! (Need a healer, come
swiftly.)" She managed to gasp out
before running full tilt back the way she came, leaving the healer trailing in
her wake. Knocking first, she entered
the Prince's room and gasped out, "Fallaner sinome (healer's here),"
before she collapsed into chair, taking giant gulps of air. As soon as the healer swept into the room,
she ran to Madrial, who was now lying on the bed.
"Mankoi uumron istimtanya ta i''kshataque yelcorset? Manka ron ere' tampmagsen, lye umtampa
caeltalant nessa edainme ilya vanwa i' yamen'! (Why don't they learn it's those
evil contraptions called corsets? If
they got rid of them, we'd stop having fainted young women all over the
place!)" She exclaimed shoving a small
bottle of smelling salts under Madrial's nose.
"Ta ere' i' chir a' i' mahalma turatso', (If only the heir to the
throne would control himself,)" she added with a pointed look at said
prince, who blushed.
"Tampa, tanya ilmani sanyamen'. Re lantten' re tamnhe dol no' i'
talan. Re karnnir 'wanwa me'amin naur
ar' uumtulvanwa, tanya ram. (Stop, that's not what happened. She fell because
she knocked her head on the floor. She
made many attempts to light my fire and did not succeed.)" The Prince slapped a hand to his forehead
and tried to rephrase all he had said.
Madrial awoke with a start right at that moment, and distracted, the healer
forgot about the stuttering Prince behind her.
"Dina, eller, eller…nyaramin iluve tanya sanyamen'. Umro cronlle? (Hush, there, there… tell me everything that happened. Did he harm you?)"
Glancing over at Legolas (who was still hitting his head, though he'd stopped muttering), Madrial replied calmly, "N'uma, Fallaner, sina nailya amin flant. Amin cuivro ed' flant, (No, healer, this is all my fault. *I couldn't find fault or any of it's synonyms, so I got creative…* I awoke him by mistake,)" she pushed herself into a sitting position, so she could see the Prince better, "Amin hithera, heruamin."
Soon after making sure she was all right, and getting the Prince to help move her to a different room (at his insistence, the healer and Silme would have carried her, otherwise…), the healer left, ordering her to a day's bed-rest. As the door slid closed, Madrial sighed, fooling with a corner of her quilt. "If it helps any," the Prince said quietly, from the chair near the bed, "it wouldn't have mattered if the fire was lit or not. I never enjoyed waking up to the heat of a fire burning; it just makes me think of the fires that even now are re-kindling in the Black Land."
Smiling slightly, Madrial replied, "I'll try to remember that…"
*****
A/N And there you are, folks! That wraps up this chapter of StP;DtT! Please, don't give up on me, I will update, I'm just very busy at this moment in time.
LegalanGreenleaf
BTW: You should all thank aragornlover, who poked and prodded me constantly to get this done.
