Chapter 4: Letters
Florien blinked a few times and looked around.
No Ada.
"Ada? Where are you? Did you leave? Ada..." Florien asked, dazed. Yáviel had heard her son's quiet voice calling for his father and had entered his room (which was also used as a storage room for food) to see how he was.
"Florien, what's wrong?" Yáviel asked, coming closer to his bed and putting a hand on Florien's little body that was curled up beneath the blankets.
"Where did ada go?" Florien asked quietly, looking up at his mother with confused and tired eyes.
"Ada had to leave, he said he would try to come back soon." Yáviel said softly, seeing how sad the expression on Florien's face became when she said those words.
"No love me." Florien assumed quietly.
"What do you mean?" Yáviel asked, sitting down at the edge of Florien's bed. Florien crawled up to his mother and stayed close to her.
"Ada stays away because he doesn't like me." Florien sniffled.
"Florien, your father loves you more than anything, you are his only child and the greatest of all gifts to him. But, it is a very confusing reason why ada does not come home much, but right now he wont be coming here as much because his nana died."
"His nana died?" Florien's eyes grew big and watery.
"Yes, she did." Yáviel said, noticing the tears in her son's eyes. "What's the matter little one?"
"I don't want you to die. You have to stay with me." Florien sobbed.
"No, no, Florien, I am not leaving you. I will always be here for you, sweetheart." Yáviel pulled little Florien into a tight and warming embrace.
"I love you nana." Florien sniffed.
"I love you too, little one."
Florien looked over his mother's shoulder and noticed something different in his room.
"Nana... What's that?" Florien jumped out of his mother's arms and went over to an old wooden rocking chair his mother and father would rock him to sleep in when he was an infant. On the wooden chair was a bran new, silky orange teddy bear.
"I don't know what that is, or how it got there." Yáviel approached the bear, which Florien was about to take hold of.
"No, don't touch it! We don't know who put it there, someone may have snuck into the house and that could be dangerous... Let me see it first." Yáviel picked up the bear and inspected it, then noticed a paper was pinned to the bear.
"A note nana! Read it!" Florien said eagerly. Yáviel sat on the rocking chair and pulled her son onto her lap as she read the letter out loud with a smile on her face.
"Dearest Florien, this bear is for you. I apologize for not coming to see you or nana in the past week, and I apologize if I do not come in a while, but things have happened at my home and it may make me much more busy. I love you more than anything Florien, remember that. I hope that by giving you this new silky bear I have just bought for you will let you forgive me for being so busy. With much love, Ada." Yáviel said, and by the time she had finished reading, Florien had already grabbed the bear and began to squeeze it tightly.
"See, your father still loves you very much." Yáviel said, smiling as she watched Florien start to play with the orange bear.
"Why don't you come upstairs? You can play in the living room with your new toy and I will light a fire to keep us warm." Yáviel suggested. Florien nodded, took his new toy plus his other favorite toys and ran upstairs with his mother.
Yáviel watched her son play for a few minutes before finding a sheet of parchment. She took the paper to the kitchen table, found a quill and ink and began to write a letter.
"Who's the letter for nana?" Florien asked curiously.
"I am just sending a message to your father." Yaviel smiled.
"Can you put something in from me?"
"What?"
"This." Florien handed his mother a piece of parchment that he had drew the orange bear on and written 'Thank-you' at the top, 'By Florien' at the bottom.
"He will love this, of course I can send this with my letter."
"Thank-you nana." Florien smiled and left to go play a game in the living room (which seemed very much like the game known as 'When Giant orange polar bears kill thousands of poorly painted wooden soldiers').
Yáviel read her letter over carefully, and was satisfied with what it said:
My love,
Florien and I have just discovered the orange bear in the basement. I am surprised that I did not see you put it there! But it is so soft; it must have cost a fortune! Tonus, please don't tell me you stole the money from your father to buy the bear, you know how angry your father will be with you if he finds out like the last time. Florien is so excited though, to have a new toy, and I am glad that you made him so pleased. He sends you a drawing he made as a thank-you, it is rolled up with this letter.
I hope things are well at the palace, or at least, as well as they shall be getting after such a tragedy. Please come here as soon as you feel better, or whenever you need someone to be comforted by, for I will always be willing to make you feel better, and Florien wants you happy just as much as I do.
Your adoring partner,
YávielYáviel rolled her letter and Florien's drawing up and tied it with string, then sent it to the palace with a bird she had that Tonus had given her. It was a little white bird that Tonus had trained himself to make sure that the bird always left the letters Yáviel where to send on Tonus' windowsill to prevent anyone from reading them.
Yáviel watched the bird fly away.
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Tonus lay on his bed, playing with his circlet when he heard a scratching sound coming from his windowsill.
"What the- oh! Snow, it's just you. What's that you have, a letter from Yáviel?" Tonus stood up and pulled the bird into his room. Tonus read the letter carefully and smiled at the drawing his son had made, the first time he had smiled since his mother's death. Grabbing his own quill, ink and parchment he began to write a letter to his wife and child.
Yáviel,
Tell our little elfling that I say that this drawing is wonderful; tell him it made me smile for the first time this week.
Yes Yáviel, it was expensive, and yes Yáviel; I did steal the money to get Florien this toy. Please don't let Florien know this; he would be heartbroken to know that I cannot even afford to buy him a simple toy. He would not understand, either.
I should be getting down to the throne room; my father will probably be waiting for me, as soon is the funeral. I am already missing you, beloved, I need you to comfort me, but I cannot go, not now, nor after the funeral. I will wait until tomorrow, after breakfast. Oh I pray that something will distract the twins else they may try to follow me.
I love you more than any she-elf in middle-earth - and don't tell my sister I told you that. And make sure Florien knows that I love him even though I am not with him right now.
With all my heart,
Tonus Thranduilion"Now take this back, Snow, to my wife. Make sure no one catches you with it but her, my father is in so much grief that to learn of this will just... I do not know what it will do to him, for all I know it will make my father began to fade and with little Legolas in his care that cannot happen." Tonus watched as Snow the carrier bird flew away with his letter. Tonus walked to his bed and held the drawing his son had made him.
Tonus sat on his bed and held it tightly, feeling tears on his face as he did so. His mother was gone and he was a horrible father.
To be continued...
Yes, it is a little short. But it's sad too! As you already know Florien speaks only elvish unlike his father (who had to be taught to speak other languages, since he is heir and if he where to inherit Thranduil's throne he would have a lot of trouble trying to form alliances with men, hobbits or dwarves speaking only elvish) so you will not be seeing what Florien says in italics anymore.
Farflung: If we don't have angst or lousy parenting, then what would the point of 50 of the fan fictions based on the life of Thranduil be?
Miss Telcontar: I am really not used to people saying that! It's usually something like 'this is so cute'! But yes, when you have been writing fictions ONLY... ABOUT... ELFLINGS... FOR... A... WHOLE... FREAKING... YEAR... you get, tired, I suppose, and need to break all the elfling-like tension with a sad story that will force your readers to buy tissue! Well, maybe it's not that sad, I have not started to cry as I write so I doubt it can be so sad you need heavy-duty Kleenex tissue.
Here comes the hockey puck: Big smarties, yummy.
Aranna Undomiel: Poor Legolas will be tormented with memories of being crushed by his mother for his whole life, eep! Yea, Legolas and Illiendal where twins when I had started writing (rather bad) fictions for this website (I was like, ten). I got a lot of mean reviews because of that, and it also made her percentage of a Mary-sue a whole 50 out of a possible 200 on my Mary-Sue quiz, very bad! Besides, if Illiendal was twin of Legolas, then... I doubt very much Legolas would have let his twin marry his former babysitter... I did not say ANYTHING...
Lombadia Greenleaf: Yea that was a cute line wasn't it? So how is Badiddledoo doing? That was his name, right? And Cory! Star Wars Monkey and Darth Monkey are very happy right now. They have pie.
Mistopurr: Yes you British folk are lucky! You guys get an accent that is so cool, I like accents, they are fun, and you get to make big booms in your own backyard. Yes, not fun to be scared of things that make boom. Sauron makes boom. Ring makes big boom. Mistopurr made boom when she fell over on Bonfire night. I like the word boom. I also like the word Bink... Do you remember the Binks? Oh and don't forget, you folks have a queen. We have some old guy called the Prime Minister. But at least neither of us have a bush for president...
Haldir's Heart and Soul: Yep, Tonus did have a family before his mother died but... Come to think about it, he had his family a short time after Oropher's death... Hum... Very interesting... I'll have to go see what Tonus thinks of this. This is what Tonus thinks:
Tonus says: You are all very crazy. Do you realize that I do not exist and that this crazy person thinks I am in the chair beside her?
Jedi Gollum Says: Shut up and make people happy.
Tonus says: Nothing. He now has tape over his mouth. Wonder how that got there...
Surf all day and do the hula: Snails will one day rule the world, I'm telling you! I am afraid of snails though...