An: Again, sorry about this update taking so blasted long. I really keep trying to update sooner but it seems the world has something against me right now. Lately, it's been my sister not leaving me alone long enough to do just about anything. Apparently, it's more important for me to type all her conversations with her little friends instead of getting my own work done. I know more about her gossip then she does, I think. That can never, ever be a good thing! Anywho, I'm glad you wonderful people are putting up with my tardy updates and not flaming me for them. I'm trying! Really I am! To my ever wonderful reviewers, you all are the best!

Kerla: Sorry this wasn't updated sooner! Here's the next part, as quickly as I could get it posted up! Hope you like it!

LalaithoftheBruinen: You shall see fairly soon who the mystery rider is. Perhaps it is his mother or someone else. I'm glad you like it and I'm sorry for making you wait for the update. I do hope waiting didn't cause you any irreparable harm.

Horsiegurl: All your answers will come in time, especially those that have to do with Legolas and his mother. Sooner then you think, actually. Hopefully, you'll like the answers you receive.

Elven Script: Well, I'm glad to hear you had fun in the good old United States! Where did you go in the USA? I'd like to visit England someday, as well as a few other parts of Europe. Anywho, I'm glad you liked the chapter and here's the next part!

Disclaimer: I own nothing except for a handful of made up characters. Tolkien thought up the concept and, as such, it belongs to him. I'm just playing in his world. I'm broke and in college. All I own are Pointe Shoes.

All Legolas could do was stare. That was it. The elven prince who had faced many dangers as one of the members of the Fellowship of the Ring and had fought in the decisive battles that helped to free Middle Earth from the shadows of evil and the horror that would have been rule under Sauron was only able to gawk at the figure before him in opened mouth, abject shock.

He tried to form words, to say anything to make himself look a little less foolish but no words came. His mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water a few times before he decided to shut it all together. No sense in adding that sort of foolishness to everything else that seemed to be taking place at the moment.

The other rider- Her hood now resting neatly on her shoulders- looked at him with a strangely amused expression on her elven featured face. Her features were quite similar to Legolas' but there were certain very subtle differences between the pair. Hair and eye coloration was shared between the two, though, oddly enough, the colors nearly matched Emma's as well.

She placed her hands on her hips, taking in Legolas' total and utter shock. Wasn't this the reaction she was expecting, though? If it wasn't shock she was expecting then it was fear or hatred or something along those negative lines. After all, what was one to expect after the history between them.

Not just between the Elven Prince and the female standing before him but the history she had with Thranduil and the rest of the Kingdom of Mirkwood. Those were reactions she would worry about later. For now, though, the rider was content to watch Legolas' features run through the stages of confusion and shock.

She'd missed him something terrible during the time the pair was parted. He was one of the few things she missed about the dark, dank woods she use to call home. Maybe she missed Thranduil but, given what had transpired between the pair before she was separated from him, the rider wasn't really sure. That was one meeting, though; she wasn't looking forward to having. An active attempt would be made to keep that event from taking place for however long possible.

Almost eye to eye they stood- Legolas had grown tall enough that she had to look up ever so slightly to do so. - almost measuring each other up for some unknown reason. They were not enemies sizing each other up for battle or anything of the sort. Battle, combat, any kind of violence, was the last thing on either of their minds.

Legolas was dumbfounded by the sight that stood before his very eyes. For a long moment, he'd thought this was some kind of perverse joke by Niphredil to earn her some strange type of credibility with her jokester uncles. The longer he stood, though, the less like a joke it seemed.

There was no way it could be.

No one, lest of all Galadriel, would be cruel enough to allow her great granddaughter turn something so painful into part of a twisted joke. Not even for the amusement of her twin grandsons. Niphredil, herself, was not a cruel person and he knew she would get no real amusement out of exploiting something like that. Besides, there was no way- he assumed- for her to find information about that part of his past.

"Is the queen" the rider asked, in an almost mocking tone, "not allowed to come back into her own kingdom? Has her own son- her own flesh and blood- forgotten about her? Does he not recognize someone who had once been so close to his heart?"

Though he heard the elven female's words, Legolas paid them no heed. He hadn't a clue how Niphredil had done this, managed such a feat on her own. True, she was in Lothlorien with one of the most ancient beings known to elven kind but this kind of thing seemed even above Galadriel's skill. He had never heard of any elf who could raise the dead.

Wasn't necromancy something only the most evil, vilest of wizards practiced?

Niphredil was no child of the dark, not that Legolas could see. Her parents were good people and, though she'd been roughly raised by cruel people, Niphredil, herself, wasn't inherently cruel. True, she liked to fight and was skilled in the use of many weapons but she had honor. Honor that governed how she used her skills from the Muggle World. He could not fathom her practicing something wicked, even if its results were of the best, most shocking kind.

Though his thoughts were surprisingly streamlined and even, making sense to him, Legolas was only able to stammer, "Mother? How?"