Chapter 11

Legolas looked at his siblings, finally cleansed of twenty years of dirt and grime, so that the true golden color of their hair now showed. But the absence of Mordor filth showed him other things. The lack of sun in Mordor had made them all look very pale, as well as there were dark circles under the eyes of all of them, and healing wounds on each of their bodies.
But that was not what startled Legolas the most. Most of all he was shocked to see how young they looked. How young they were.

"What are you looking at?" Lanthir whispered.
"You. You are all so young," Legolas answered faintly.
Lanthir shot him a glare. "I'm not young."
"Yes, you are."
"No, I'm not."
"Valar! If you still start discussions like this then you must be an infant! Just look at Lainfea then, if you don't believe me."
"Don't you mean 'Melian'?"
"Fine, Look at Melian. If you see her lying like that, can you believe she killed an orc? She earned warrior-braids. Can you believe it?"

Lanthir looked at Lainfea, lying on one of the beds, her thumb stuck in her mouth, and her eyes half-lidded in the sleep of the elves. He could see what Legolas meant now.
"You're right. If I hadn't seen it myself, I would never have believed her killing orcs and corsairs…"
"Excuse me?" Legolas interrupted.
"What?"
"Did you say: corsairs?"
"Yes."
"When did Lainfea - ehmm - Melian, kill corsairs?"
"Oh... um... just the other day when you were captured. She… eh, had to... because we... ehmm, sort of forgot about something... Tiny little fact. "

Legolas looked at his brother sternly. "That's it, Lanth... Finrod.
You will tell me everything that happened while I was with those corsairs. No, even better, you will start by telling what happend when you fell on the ground during the fight. I want to know everything."

"Tell you everything… well… during the fight I suddenly stumbled on a corsair, and as I tried to recover myself, two other corsairs closed in on me. I felt one of their blades stab me in the back, and the pain just made me fall on the ground."
"I saw that."
"I know."
"I almost faded at the spot."
"I know."
"I thought you were dead."
"I know."
" But you weren't."
" I know," Lanthir said, and he smiled sadly as he continued.
"But I didn't know it at that time. I thought I was dead for sure. The pain in my back was killing me and knew I couldn't get up. All I could think of was how I failed you. How I didn't keep fighting until the end. How impossible the odds were for you now. And then I remembered Lim and Lain and I realized something. If you didn't make it, there would be no hope for them. No one would get them out of that stupid crack. Just me, if the corsairs didn't take me, and I stayed alive long enough. And the only slave that corsairs do not take with, is a dead slave. So I closed my eyes, pretented to be dead, and tried to stay alive in the meantime. It was very hard."

"It must have been,"Legolas said as he remembered something. "I believe a corsair stepped on you once or twice."

"They stepped on me seven times and kicked me trice. But that was not the hardest part, brother. The hardest part was when I could hear you fall to the earth. When I could hear you being tortured and when I knew our only hope lay in me not moving. I wanted to get up so badly, and rid those monsters of their heads, but I thought about Limloeth and Lainfea and stayed quiet. The only reason I didn't move and scream, was because you didn't. The only reason I was strong because you were. I had to be strong like you."

Legolas swallowed. With a hoarse voice he said: "I wasn't strong. I told those corsairs where the girls were. I betrayed them. The corsairs just didn't turn back."
Lanthir nodded slowly and placed his hand on Legolas'arm. "I understand why you did it. You didn't know I was alive. You didn't know there was hope still. No one can blame you for trying to keep your sisters alive in the only way you could."
"I can," Legolas said, his voice sinking to a whisper.
"But you won't," Lanthir answered. "Because blaming yourself is stupid and it gets you nowhere."
"Limloeth and Lainfea might blame me, if they knew."
"Limloeth blame someone? Are we talking about our oldest sister here? She didn't even blame the orcs for abusing us! And Lainfea? Lainfea doesn't linger in the past. She accepts it and moves on. It is as I told you, brother. No one will blame you. "

"So what happend next? You were lying on the ground pretending to be dead?"
Lanthir paused, gathering his story, before answering. "When the corsairs sailed away, following the river Poros, I stayed down until I was sure no one would see me. Then, I slowly drug myself to my feet. The wound in my back was still bleeding heavily, and it took me all my strength to get up from the
ground. I had to stop recover for about five minutes once I was on my feet just because of the pain of my injury, but somehow I managed to move that rock away from Limloeth and Lainfea's hiding place.
It was as if I suddenly had more strength than I had ever had before.

As soon as there was enough room to get Limloeth out, the hidden reserve of strength was gone.
I must have passed out afterwards, because there's a blank spot in my memory… Limloeth will have to fill that one for you. All I know that I felt Limloeth's hand upon me and that my wound was healed when I woke up.
Limloeth is still saying she just put herbs on it and eased the pain, but that is not what happened. The wound was not better, Legolas, it was healed.
Limoeth healed it with her hands, no matter what she said.

Anyway... that's how I survived and how I got the girls out of the crack. How we got you away from the corsairs, is an entirely different story, and it'll have to wait until tomorow, when Limloeth is awake to tell you."

"You mean Galadriel," Legolas corrected him.
Lanthir laughed. "You might just have told Biddy our real names. There is no way I'll remember what to call you all."
"The orcs captured us because they knew our real names. They tortured us, spit on us, and used us as slaves for twenty years because they realized we were the chidren of the elven king. That will not happen again, Finrod."
"I know that, Celeborn. But I'm not the only one who forgot during this conversation, and I'm only saying that Galadriel, and most of all Melian will have difficulty remembering also. After all... the little one is only twenty years old."

Legolas sighed.
"I know, Fin, but we'll just have to try. Just because Biddy is nice, doesn't mean she can be trusted."

TBC

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Liek