In Dreams Chapter 6
Rose G
Legolas, feeling uneasy at the strangeness of the snow covered mountain range where he and his companions lay, was unwilling to allow himself to sleep. Thousands of years of life can impart horrors in the mind of any being, let alone one who has served as a warrior. But elven dreams do not come only in the realm of Lorien.
Mirkwood was under siege. But to Legolas, it was still Greenwood the Great of his earliest childhood, Greenwood's soaring trees that were wreathed in smoke and darkness that was beyond the gloom of the worst winter day he had ever known.
Legolas could 'see' both pictures at once – the orcs around his home and the fast becoming dear faces of his sleeping companions around their campfire. He knew that he was dreaming, yet it did not lessen the horror for him.
Thranduil his father called for aid from the Woodland Halls. The joint army of orcs – The Enemy's and the White Wizard's – encircled the places where he had played as a child, the long pathways that he had walked in more recent years. On the outskirts of that, the giant spiders Wargs and the carrion birds that he had loathed since his earliest conscious days, prowled. The mournful howling of the wolves howling to Rana in his dream became one with the howls from the lower slopes of the mountain where he lay.
In his mind, he saw the Elven archers of Lothlorien coming to their aid – Haldir, laughing, the grim face of Celeborn their Lord and hovering in their memory, the radiant beauty of their Queen. They marched, light footed and smiling to their deaths. And then came the Elves of Rivendell, led by Glorfindel Captain of Gondolin, and Elrond son of Earendil, whose twin sons walked beside him. They too marched to their deaths, all the Elven realms east of Valinor falling together, managing what Melkor had never attempted.
Legolas watched his childhood home, his kingdom burn, his friends and father die like a foreshadowing of the ruin that he knew must come to the Fellowship. He tried to hold in his heart the pure anguish he felt at Thranduil's death, aware nothing would ever hurt worse than that, but he could not. The knowledge that he and the other watchers had allowed Gollum to escape and cause this was agony more than he could bear.
With a desperate effort of will, he forced away the last vestiges of his dream and sat up. The Wargs still howled, the carrion birds still swooped overhead but they were here and not in his home. Staring at the stars, he tried to remind himself that Gollum's escape was not solely his fault, yet he knew the creature was following them because he had allowed Gollum that taste of freedom.
Gandalf shut his eyes so that he would not have to see the silent tears of the young Elf.