Author note: Well hello!

New readers, hi, welcome to my writing and my head. When I introduce a new story I waffle a lot in author notes before it actually starts!

People that have followed me for a bit, well it's been... some time hasn't it, sorry. For... reasons... Mainly me having total writer's block. But now I've started it's like the juices are flowing again haha. As well as this piece, the new LOTR story that has nothing to do with anyone called Keren has also started going well. I don't feel I can start publishing it yet or I'll mess up on a plot hole or something. I can promise though that Faramir and a new OC are the 'leads' of that story, and like in A Face in the Crowd he is book-verse not movie-verse. The plot will be tense and there will be dramatic/emotional moments, hopefully, but the writing is mostly light-hearted adventure style stuff.

But anyway, THIS story, the one you've clicked on, what is this? This is very much in the world of my trilogy 'A Face in the Crowd' (FITC) and it's much shorter prequel, 'The Wren'. Full descriptions of each are on my profile. This is a SEQUEL to The Wren and a PREQUEL to FITC. If you've read none of my stories I suggest reading FITC first :)

All of my stories in the FITC version of Middle-earth have sadness within them, but there's lots of hope too. This one is categorically not as sad as the Wren for those of you who have read that. That being said, there will be some angst along the way. I don't know how long this will be - at the moment I know what story I want to tell and the events I wish to cover, but I will just write and edit until it feels right, rather than stick to a planned number of chapters like I did with FITC and Wren. It will mostly be told in flashback.

For those of you who have read FITC, you see Keren and Palen as kids in this story, which has just given me all the warm feels and made me a bit emosh, because they were the first two OCs I ever created, back in 2011 long before a story existed for them to go in. I've since got them all the way through a trilogy, and now they're back being little tiny children who have no idea of all that they'll go on to accomplish (in my mind).

Anyway, sorry for the info-dump. I hope you are all safe and well xx

P.S. Quick note to say next week marks the first anniversary of FITC being completed! Thank you everyone who read it that might also be reading this - you helped it get to 120,000 views and counting, and on the fav/follow list of over 600 people and counting, whaaaat?!

Chapter One - The Golden Wood

My first memory is of the sun.

I remember it shining down on my face, warm beams pouring through the golden boughs of the trees.

I knew then that I loved the sun, and I loved my home - that magical place where golden trees grow tall.

In that memory I am standing very still, letting the breeze blow through my hair, feeling the pollen tickle at my nose, hearing the grass in the glade rustle gently. My feet are bare, as they always were until I came here, and my eyes are closed, the better to hear, and feel.

From my earliest days I had been raised to feel a part of that land, to feel that I belonged there in the Golden Wood. I was no elf, but I was well into my childhood before I realised, for a child does not judge that a rounded ear rather than a pointed means they are somehow other, that their red hair sets them apart from the golden or silver strands that the folk of Lothlórien all have. Nor did the elves treat me any differently. It was only when I came here, to this world of stone and carts and ale and armour, that I truly knew I was not, could not ever be, one of them.

My second memory is of Haldir. We are walking to the stream in early spring, when the water was cold and fresh from the melting snow on the mountains. I must have only been three or four. I would try and follow him everywhere.

He was not as a father to me, for I was told very early that all my family were dead, and even in my youngest years I never wished to replace them. My father even now I know nothing of, and my mother left the world as I entered it. She never held me. The first person to hold me was Cileth, who had nursed mother in her last minutes of life, who had pulled me into being. And the second person was Haldir. I screamed and screamed, I was told, when he held me. And he had laughed at me through his tears - tears he shed for the young woman he had not saved in time.

But it was not his fault - I told him many times over the years. However fast he ran, he and his brothers, they would not have saved her, for she was weak and injured. It was a miracle I was born at all.

I talk as if Haldir is dead. He is not. He is just far, far away, and I doubt I shall ever see him again, though every day I walk to the walls, to an old deserted balcony that faces due north, and look for his coming, just in case. My little daughters come with me to my balcony sometimes - clever, shy Palen and funny, inquisitive Keren, named for the grandmother she will never meet. But they know not what or who they look for. Perhaps one day I shall tell them.

For now I just tell them famous stories of the elves, and I see their faces open with wonder and excitement. Sometimes they are so full of joy it is painful to me, to see the love they already have for my adopted people. Keren especially - sometimes there is a look in her eyes that makes me want to tell her everything, that makes me think she would understand.

One day I shall tell her. One day I will do what I've been ordered to do. But not yet - she is too little, too innocent. I will not spoil her happiness. I will not spoil what is left of mine.

"Borneth?"

Another memory.

"Borneth!"

I am running through the trees, running away from someone - but not in fear, in play. There are no other children here, not anymore, and I'm quite the novelty. I suppose I'm six or seven, and the elves of Lothlórien are not used to such an age. The female voice that calls after me is light and amused, but just starting to get a little anxious I think, for I evade even her elven eyes. I climb a tree, a birch, and hover on a low branch just out of sight.

I watch her as she comes near. She is tall and fair, of course, with golden hair in heavy braids. Her eyes are the grey of all her kin - cold steel or gentle mist depending on her moods.

She is Cileth.

"Borneth!" She calls again. "Ai, where are you? It is almost time for your supper!"

That did tempt me, and she was right, for the sun had just set. I only had a few minutes more to hide, for I was a little scared of the woods at night. Once the sun was gone the Golden Wood became instead a forest of shadows, its magic changed.

But still I giggled with glee, and I knew she would hear me, and spy me sitting on the branch, and ask how I managed to get up there. And so I would be back in time to eat, before it got dark, and all would be well.

She came right to the foot of the tree where I was hiding, and then the strange thing - the thing that, I suppose, set my life on the course it has taken - happened.

She looked at me, looked right at me, frowned in confusion, and turned away, still calling my name. I laughed, thinking she was playing a game, but she did not turn around, so then I felt a little afraid, and I called after her.

"Cileth!" My small voice rang out sharp and shrill amongst the trees. "Cileth, I'm here!"

But she did not hear me. And then I knew it wasn't a game, for she was frightened too. She looked all about her, and called my name again and again. And a terrifying thought struck my very young mind - what if I wasn't in the woods after all, what if all this was pretend, and I was lost somewhere else entirely, out of the forest, out of the world, where no-one could hear me or see me, where no-one would ever find me? Where even Haldir couldn't find me.

With that thought I became desperately afraid, and shouted for him, starting to climb down the tree.

"Haldiiiiiir!" It was a cry of abject terror.

When I reached the bottom Cileth had gone, run off further into the trees to look for me. I had never truly felt alone before. I had always had someone with me, whether out of my sight or not. Now I had no-one, and it was just me and the growing shadows.

I could not scream now, or cry - I was beyond showing fear, for it had taken over me entirely. Something was not right, something had changed in the fabric of the world. Either I had slipped out of it, or something had slipped in. I was in the Golden Wood, but it was not my Golden Wood - it was many, many years in the past, or in the future. It was any time but the time I knew. I felt the greatest fear I have ever felt in my life.

And then someone came towards me, out of the timeless trees.

At first I thought it was the Lady Galadriel, whom I had seldom met but was very frightened of. But it was not her, it was another elf that looked much like her, solemn and very, very tall, with cat-like grey eyes and hair surely spun from real gold. She moved with silent stalking steps towards me, and she was telling me not to be afraid, telling me that I was safe, and protected.

I was still clutching at the trunk of the tree I had climbed, and I felt its branches sway in a wind that was not of Middle-earth. Still she came closer, and as she came she seemed to change, and grow - her skin grew dark and her raiment turned from white to all the colours of the night sky, and she towered up, up, up to the tops of the trees. But still she smiled, and when she smiled her eyes shone silver-white like the stars. I found it terrifying.

Suddenly I could scream - a great release, a huge piercing cry - and then I don't remember any more. I woke curled in a ball at the bottom of another tree close to our talan. Had I run, or had the giant woman carried me?

Haldir found me, and chided me for worrying them all. I couldn't cry, nor could I speak. I didn't speak at all for six days, and it was many years before I could tell of what I had seen to any living soul.

Next I am ten, and I no longer find Galadriel so terrifying. Shortly after the incident with the woman that turned into the night sky, the Lady of the Golden Wood seemed to take me under her wing. She took over some of my lessons, for I was well taught in many things - in languages, in nature, in music and song and dance, in history, in healing - anything I asked to be taught.

I was truly fortunate, and had no idea - until I came here and saw how most young women are taught nothing other than how to be drudges and wives. It will not be so for my girls. Already they have their numbers and letters, already they write their own stories, already they can prepare a poultice for a bruise.

But that autumn, when Galadriel had been teaching me for almost four years, I did not know just how lucky I was, nor did I know that one day I would have daughters, and that I would live out my life with them so very far away from my home.

"For in Númenór would the race of men and the race of elves forever be united in blood. But it was…"

Borneth.

My head snapped up.

The Lady was looking at me sternly.

"Sorry," I said quickly.

I had long had a skill of appearing as if I was listening intently, but was actually many miles away somewhere else in my head. Galadriel, however, could always see through it. Sometimes, like now, she would speak firmly inside my head rather than out loud, and that would bring me to my senses with a jolt. The first time she did it I shook from head to toe, and she could not help but laugh. It took me a year or more to fully understand all her whims, sternness then mirth, gravitas then innocent joy.

"You usually like tales from the past."

"I don't like tales of Númenór," I said, a little reluctantly. "It all goes wrong from there."

She looked at me strangely.

"Much went wrong long before then," she said. "Remember the Helcaraxë, remember Alqualondë."

"Yes, lady," I said, barely a whisper, for her face always grew sad, and sick somehow, when she spoke of those days, days I could not truly picture. So far in the past were they, and yet I knew she would have barely changed. I was just beginning to understand that she was immortal, and I was not.

"It is important, for all of us, to learn the dark side of our past, as well as the light," she went on. "We must learn where we have failed or fallen prey to weakness, for only that knowledge makes us strong when we are faced with such choices again."

"Yes, lady," I said again, thinking not at all that this kind of talk was far too serious for a ten year old. I had never known any different - I had always been treated as though I had the mind of an adult when it came to learning and conversation. Perhaps that was why I am the way I am - I had very little time to be a child, not truly. As soon as the giant lady came along everything changed, and I wasn't a child anymore. I realise that now.

I look up into the face of the grey stone carving that claims to be my mother. I am fifteen.

Her body lies beneath my feet, I know that, but I never find myself associating her with what was now safe and hidden beneath the earth.

"But what was she like?"

It was a question I had asked Haldir many times over the years, and always he would say that he barely knew her, but she had seemed brave and kind. It was never enough for me, but I knew he would not lie or make up a story to satisfy my curiosity. Still I would ask, every now and then, and hope he would remember some little glint of information that he had previously forgotten. Even though, by then, I knew that elves seldom forgot anything.

Now he looked up at the statue with me - at its beautifully cold, perfect replica of my mother's face, her hand cradling her belly where perhaps a little stone version of me nestled inside, ready to be born.

"Her voice would seem strange to your ears," he said, and it mattered not to me that I had heard that before. "Her accent and intonation were nothing like our speech. She said she came from the north, from Bree. I have never ventured there, nor do I know where it lies. Perhaps one day we could journey there, if you wish."

He looked at me with hope in his eyes. I knew he loved this land, but I also knew that he was a wanderer at heart - as long as he had a home to return to.

"Perhaps," I said, noncommittally. I only knew what lay beyond the Golden Wood from studying maps. I had no wish to travel yet, if at all, for I was wildly content beneath the trees, living in the magical time of my home, which I had been told was not the same as the mortal lands. I loved climbing high up in the trees, and to the tops of the hills, and looking out at the mountains and the rivers and the expansive sky, but never yet wondering what it would be like to go beyond our borders.

"But you could understand her?" I asked, going back to his memories.

"Yes, for it was Westron she spoke." He named my second tongue, Sindarin being my first.

"And did you…" I gathered myself for a question I had never asked before, for now I was older I felt ready to know. "Did you go back, and find their bodies, the others? Where are they buried?"

Haldir's face showed a kind of gentle panic at the thought of having to answer, but he did answer, all the while looking at my mother's face.

"We went back, Rúmil and Orophin and I, under cover of darkness, though we did not use such speed as when we brought your mother here. We did not expect to find them there, for orcs are scavengers, and for the ones we killed we knew there would be many more hidden inside the mountain."

"And did you find them?" I pressed.

"Alas, they were gone," he replied, and I felt the strangest feeling of hope rise in my heart.

"Then maybe at least some of them survived."

I could see him struggling to know how to answer me without breaking a small part of me. For he always told the truth.

"Nay, Borneth," he said gently. "They had all perished before we had even left the pass with your mother. Elves cannot mistake sleep for death. The orcs would have taken their bodies, for their clothes and trinkets."

And for food, I thought, but could not bring myself to say aloud.

I heard myself sniff. I did not weep overmuch for my family. I never had, even for my mother, for I had never known her, never known any of them. But as I swiftly approached adulthood I was becoming more aware of what I had lost, and the pain they had endured just to try to find somewhere safe for me to be born.

"Sometimes I wonder…" I tried to say something, but did not know where my thoughts or words were leading.

He put a hand on my shoulder, not needing to say anything. So many times, with him, he never had to say anything - he would just be a still and silent comfort, and that was all I needed. It is all I need now, but that can never be. Not anymore.

You are wondering if Haldir and I were lovers, later when I was grown.

We were not, at least not in the way that most people think matters. Nor were we bonded beyond all choice, like many before us have been. It is true that we each sought affection and comfort from the other, but I suppose it was a love born mostly of loneliness and loss. We loved, as two entwined trees love only because without their being entwined neither would still stand, and sought comfort from each other as naturally as the fresh mountain spring already seeks the sea with desperation, even as it bubbles from the ground.

I still love, still seek, though I know it cannot be, for he would, and will never, give me what I desire. He is right not to. For my task - I am all too aware of it - was to birth the child that now lies sleeping on her little bed in the corner of the room. I sit here now as I write, and watch her. Keren. Haldir's child would not have been Keren.

But ever since she was born I have asked myself… what am I supposed to do now?

Author note: Please let me know what you think :)