"Ada," Legolas began while staring out the windows over his father's shoulders as he was carried towards their bedroom, "How come the moon is so bright compared to the stars?"

His father's hand didn't still as it continued to rub soothingly up and down his back, spreading warmth with every touch, "Well my little leaf, it is because the stars store all of the wishes, love, and memory that they cannot keep within them in the moon for safekeeping. So it glows brighter."

Legolas looked between the moon and the backdrop of stars behind it, "Oh wow. That's a lot of wishes and memories."

"A lot has happened since the moon was created, there is much to remember."

He laid his head on his father's shoulder and tried not to let the rhythmic steps and the soothing hand lull him to sleep, "But you have more to remember, right Ada? Because you were here before the moon?"

Legolas felt the rumble in his chest more than heard his father laugh, "Although sometimes it does feel like it, I do not think I know more than the moon."

"Do you think anybody does?"

"I can think of a few people who think that they do." His father answered in a tone that Legolas had come to know meant there was some hidden meaning under the words he did not yet understand. Not yet.

"What's the first thing that you remember, Ada?"

Again, he felt more than hears his father hum in thought as they turned down the final hallways to their room. "My Adar singing to me, I think. We were outside somewhere, and he was pacing up and down under the stars."

"Did your Ada have a nice voice?"

Legolas waited patiently as his father exchanged pleasant greetings and goodnights with the guards that stood outside their doors, "Yes, one of the best I would say."

"Even better than Uncle Ferdan?" Legolas asked with disbelief, he had yet to hear any voice that could match his uncles. There was no other music he could ever want to listen to than his uncle. Never.

"If not to my ears, then to my heart," Thranduil answered, and Legolas snuggled closer feeling that familiar coldness creeping into his father's Fae. "It has been such a long time since I have heard my Adar sing, especially to me. How my heart would rejoice to hear it again in anything but my memories."

He wound his arms around his father's neck for good measure as they entered Legolas' bedroom to get him changed for sleeping, "He seemed to all but stop singing after we lost Menegroth, the habit only returned as a shadow when we settled in Greenwood."

The solution seemed obvious to Legolas because it is what he would have done, "Why did you simply not ask him to sing to you? If you wanted him to?"

Thranduil sighed as he gently pried Legolas off of him so that he could set him on top of the bed while he grabbed a pair of pajamas and brought them back, "Because my Adar and I did not have that sort of relationship. We were trying to, we were starting to right before the battle at Mordor. I almost asked him to sing to me on that last night, before the battle started, but I didn't."

With a yawn, Legolas crawled under the covers while his father went to sit at the desk in his room and finish whatever it was that his father did at night. Laying on his back he looked back up into the night sky and wished to every single star that was in it, that they would ask the moon to share the memory of his grandfathers singing with his father while he slept. Periodically, if possible.

Then he fell asleep.

..

Ferdan stopped in his task on his way past Thranduil one of the many corridors, likewise, Thranduil stopped as well. They both turned back to each other, both looking equally quizzical although Ferdan more shocked.

"What?" Thranduil demanded somewhat offensively, unsure why he had suddenly gained his friend's rapt attention.

"Why were you humming that?" Ferdan asked near rapid fire.

"Humming what?" Thranduil shot back just as fast.

"What you were humming!"

"I don't know what I was humming!"

"How can you not know that you were humming?"

Thranduil scoffed, and it was the first pause of their conversation, "You're an idiot all of the time and you never seem to know or notice."

"Oh please," Ferdan rolled his eyes and hummed a few rushed bars of the songs that Thranduil had been absently humming, "I don't remember the words, but I know its from Menegroth. I think I used to sing it to my sister."

With a frown, Thranduil hummed the bars over again, and again, and again before his face lit up with triumph and he sang the words to the tune:

"Through meadows and the streams it rolls,

Through darkness and the light unfolds,

Through hill and dale, through dust and trail,

Until my love, I find you whole."

With a laugh on the tips of their tongues, they both sang it again, basking in the warmth of a pure moment from their past. Then Ferdan asked, "But what made you think of it?"

Thranduil frowned in thoughts, "A dream, I think. I had a dream about my Ada singing it to me."

With a smile on both of their lips, they continued on their ways towards their duties. This time both whistling the same tune, each stepped with different memories.