A/N: This work is related to another story I wrote called 'Of the Beginning of Days', which is about Mairen's parents. You certainly don't need to have read that to read this (but if you are planning to read it, be aware that this story has a few spoilers).
I hope you like it!
There is a very beautiful part of the world in the north of Middle-earth, where nearly no one goes anymore.
In the fork of two rivers sits the ruins of Framsburg, an old stone castle left over from the days when the ancestors of the Rohirrim roamed the wild north. The rivers are cold through the year, and in winter their edges are frosted by frills of ice. In winter, snow blows down from the mountains and blankets the green with hushed white. Rabbits and foxes leave their footprints; there are no people left at Framsburg to disturb their peace.
It was once a great fortress, but now Framsburg is little more than a foundation and an overgrown pile of mossy rubble, half-hidden in mist. It has not been torn apart, but gradually dismantled by the gentle hands of time. Birds make their nests among its stones, which shield them from the wind.
North of Framsburg, near the western bank of the Greylin River, there is a little cottage in a grove of pine trees. Its walls are wooden, and two steps lead up to its door, framed by colourful, overgrown wildflowers. There is a chimney made of the same stones that can be found at the ruins at Framsburg. Behind the house there is a pen for cattle, and a coop where the chickens and ducks scratch at the dirt; there is a little field for planting wheat too, and a garden where vegetables grow in rows.
The house is called Haiyamar, a Quenya name, chosen by the two people who built it. They are Glorfindel of Gondolin, a tall, silent elf who doesn't like strangers, and his wife Lalwendë, princess of the Noldor, who used to love dancing but now prefers quiet. There are very few Noldor left in Middle-earth, and none of them ever come to Haiyamar. It is a long way to travel.
They have a daughter who was wanted but unexpected. She is named Mairen, and she has black hair like her mother and dark eyes like her father, but a temperament all of her own.
Mairen loves Haiyamar. It is her home, after all, and a place where she has been loved and safe. The faces of the mountains, blue in summer and white in winter, are as familiar to her as the faces of her parents. She knows the favourite nesting places of the birds in at Framsburg, the trees that seem made for climbing, the rocks where the rabbits like to dig their burrows, the best rapids to ride in the Greylin, the place to stand that gives the clearest echo when she shouts.
Her parents never want to leave, but the world beyond Framsburg is all Mairen dreams of. She never says as much, though, and while she is young, she decides to content herself with the stories told by their visitors.
Visitors from Mirkwood are the most frequent. They come by boat up the Forest River, bringing supplies and news of the world. They bring wine, seeds, tools, candles, sometimes honey from the Beornings. Sometimes they bring finely wrought gifts from Lalwendë's friends in the Lonely Mountain, far away. The messengers stay the night and are gone the next morning, but they sing songs to Mairen, show her their bows and knives, tell her stories of the Greenwood while they have the time.
Her favourite visitor, though, is Legolas. He is the prince of the Greenwood, but he lives far away in Ithilien. The first time Mairen met him, she was too young to remember him, but when she was three years old, he sent her a present.
It was a tiny bow and an accompanying quiver of little arrows. Mairen's father didn't let her touch it; he insisted that she would learn with the sword and shield before she started with a bow. She was the daughter of a Noldor princess, after all, and even in this secret corner of the world there were customs to be respected. Lalwendë had turned and abruptly left the cottage at his words, and little Mairen had stared after her with worry.
'She is tired of war,' her father had said gently. 'But I will not leave you unable to defend yourself, Mairen.'
'I can have the bow from Legolas?' she'd asked, her hopes reignited, but he'd shut it in its box and shoved it under the bed. Mairen took it out sometimes to admire it when his parents were working outside.
Legolas comes back when she is six years old. He brings Gimli, an old dwarf with a braided beard of red and grey. Mairen warms to him quickly when he shows her the presents he's brought her. Legolas greets her parents, and then crouches to speak to her.
'My little Mairen!' he says. His hair is white-gold, and his eyes blue and warm in the sunlight. They are eyes filled with less pain and suffering than those of her parents. 'How I have longed to see you again!'
She is shy, because she doesn't remember him, and she knows him only from the stories her mother has told her of their travels together. And besides, he is speaking Sindarin, a language which feels ill-fitting and inelegant to her Quenya mind.
'Hello,' she whispers.
'You have grown very big and strong while I've been away,' he says. 'Have you tried the bow I sent you?'
At that, Mairen lights up. She turns to her father, who is watching her with his unreadable expression. 'Can I take it out, tatanya?'
'What, you haven't let her have it yet?' Legolas says to her parents with amusement, getting to his feet.
'Glorfindel has been showing her the ways of the sword,' says Mairen's mother with a faint smile. 'We haven't yet touched on archery. There is little need out here.'
'Except for the joy of it,' Legolas says.
'You can get it out,' Mairen's father acquiesces, and she runs inside, draws out the box, and reverently pulls out the bow. She slings the quiver over her shoulder and goes back outside. Legolas agrees to show her how to shoot.
He spends the afternoon talking to her about footwork, and it is only after two hours of desperate effort to listen patiently that she begs him to let her shoot an arrow. He laughs and shows her how. It flies fifteen yards before burying itself nose-first in the dirt. Mairen couldn't be happier; she feels exhilaration tickling her fingertips.
'You have a knack,' Legolas says. 'You could shoot straighter than the soldiers of Greenwood one day.'
Mairen stares at him. She feels as though the world is opening up before her. This bow is a key to her future. 'Do you really think so?' she whispers.
'With an enormous amount of practice. Yes.'
'I will start now,' she says with determination, but Legolas smiles and pats her shoulder.
'You'll wear your hands raw,' he says. 'We'll practise more tomorrow.'
He is true to his word, and Mairen spends every day with him. On the tenth day, she hits the tree trunk she was aiming for three times. In between practising, she begs him for stories.
'My amya told me about the dragon that destroyed Esgaroth,' she says. 'Were you there?'
'I was in the town with your father,' says Legolas. 'I tried to shoot the dragon down myself, but none of my arrows could pierce his hide.'
'Why not? Are dragons immune to arrows?'
'Not always. This one had coated his underbelly in gold and gemstones from the dwarf-hoard in Erebor, so every time I shot at him, the arrow would just glance off.'
'So how did you kill him?'
'I didn't kill him. A man called Bard the Bowman shot the dragon with a great black arrow. He saw a chink in Smaug's armour that I didn't see.' Legolas is still speaking lightly, but there is a sharp glint in his eyes that Mairen will come to recognise one day. Legolas doesn't like to fail.
'I've never met a man,' she says.
'Perhaps you will one day,' Legolas replies. 'There are many more men in the world these days than elves.'
He tells her about the wicked spiders of Mirkwood, about the great mumakîl of the south, about the darkness of Fangorn Forest and the glittering caves of Helm's Deep. Mairen cannot tear herself from his side, and at night, she hears his voice in her dreams. He is unlike anyone she has ever met. He is wise and brave and wonderful. He has seen more of the world than she even knew existed. She wants to be exactly like him, to speak like him, to do everything that he has done. She cannot fathom waiting until she is older.
Legolas and Gimli leave early one morning, heading south for more adventures. Mairen is so close to tears that she feels sick. She can see Legolas holding in a smile when he kneels before her, and he touches her shoulder gently.
'What will I do without you, Mairen?' he asks. She bites back a request for him to take her with him. Her mother and father would be upset if she left. They would be lonely.
'Will you come back?' she asks past the lump in her throat.
'Of course I will,' Legolas says. 'Of course.'
'When?'
He laughs. 'Well, you are six years old now. What about when you're twelve?'
'Alright,' she agrees, though that seems far too long to wait.
'You'll need a bigger bow before long,' he says, standing. 'Keep practising.'
'Every day,' she promises.
She watches the two figures ride south towards Framsburg, until they disappear into the morning mist. Mairen's mother puts her hands on Mairen's shoulders.
'Are you alright, melda?' she asks with a gentleness that makes tears spring into Mairen's eyes.
'Of course,' says Mairen, and she runs around to the back of the cottage to sit with the chickens.
Her mother sings to her that night, and kisses her several times before blowing out the candle and closing the door. Then Mairen starts to cry. She cries for her friend who is gone, for the promise of adventure that had disappeared with him into the mist. She tries her best to be quiet, so her mother and father don't hear her in the other room.
Months pass, but Mairen can't forget about Legolas. She thinks of his stories in the quiet hours of the night. She imagines that it's arrows from her own bow that glance of the dragon's glinting armour, her own knife that she flings at the advancing Mirkwood spiders, her own eyes that widen at the wonder of the caves at Helm's Deep.
The beauty of Haiyamar fades before her eyes. The air doesn't taste as sharp, the mountains seem tame instead of unpassable. The winter snows feel quiet and inevitable, like the rest of her life in the north. Mairen longs for adventure, aches for it. Her parents, though… they are content, here, with her and with each other.
Her father worships her mother. Mairen can see it in his eyes when he looks at her; he looks at her like she is a goddess. Like she is water, and he a man lost in the desert. She is silence, and he a man beset by noise. He touches her, takes her hand, like he can't believe she's really there. Mairen's mother is not a goddess, she is a woman, but he doesn't know that. He is blinded to it.
Mairen sees it, though. She grows old enough to realise her mother is a person, no longer just the benevolent arbitrator of life at Haiyamar that she was in Mairen's childhood. She is a woman beaten down by the ravages of life and loss. She has been tortured and betrayed. She has been dragged along and left behind. She has loved and hated to the point of exhaustion.
The visitors at Haiyamar know her by her quick smile and her easy laughter, but Mairen has seen her on nights where she stares into the fire with troubled eyes, hearing nothing but the voices of people who are long dead. Mairen has seen her collapse to her knees in the field, struggling to breathe, remembering some long-gone terror. Mairen has seen her crying when there is nothing to cry for.
Still, she is more serene than Mairen's father. He has lived longer than his wife, and Mairen's mother says that the world has been hard on him. She says that when she met him in Valinor, he was shy and sweet; he hated dancing, but he danced with her anyway, because he didn't want to hurt her feelings. Mairen can't imagine him like that. Now, he is only fierce.
He loves Mairen fiercely, though he rarely says as much. She can see it in the intense way he watches her, the way always wants to know where she is or where she is going. He doesn't worship her like he does her mother, but he obsesses over her. Mairen's mother once told her that Glorfindel does things all the way, extremely, completely, or not at all.
He too has been tortured. His hands shake, sometimes so badly that he has to put down whatever he's holding. He barely sleeps, and he spends many nights out under the stars, walking and gazing absently upwards. He likes seeing the world by starlight. He is abrupt, sometimes, and sometimes he becomes so angry that he radiates fury, and his fists curl, and he shouts. But the shouting isn't as bad as when he is angry and silent.
Mairen's father doesn't like to talk at the best of times, which was something she never noticed until she saw him with one of the messengers from Mirkwood. He was silent, surly. He didn't speak a word until the boat had disappeared back down the river.
Perhaps he doesn't think the outsiders worth his time, Mairen thinks sometimes. But she thinks it more likely that he is simply still shy. He has been friends with Legolas for a few centuries now, and he spoke to him when he and Gimli came to stay. He didn't say much, not as much as he does to Mairen or her mother, but Legolas never seemed to mind.
Legolas does not come back when she turns twelve. Instead, he sends her a present via the messenger from Mirkwood. He sends her a bow of dark wood, and a quiver of new arrows. Mairen takes them reverently, and reads the note that comes too.
My little Mairen,
I promised you a visit this year, but I have no choice but to break it. I hope you will forgive me. If, by some stroke of luck, you have kept practising your archery, my gift will be useful. You will grow into it.
I hope you will not forget me before I visit again.
Legolas
She helps her mother with the animals and her father in the field before she allows herself to string the bow with hands so excited that they tremble. She walks into the woods and makes a shot.
It hits dead centre.
She rides to Framsburg nearly every day, pushing her horse to a gallop and letting her hair loose in the wind. She winds through the ruins with bare feet and sings, the wind picking up her voice and carrying it away. She practices swordplay with her father, but her heart belongs to the bow. She spends hours with it, and she becomes deadly. Some nights she sits on the roof of the chicken coop and shoots the foxes who venture too close in search of their dinner. She thinks of Legolas, even as the years pass.
He returns unlooked for when she is twenty-four. She is shocked when she sees him, and then suddenly embarrassed. She is covered in dust from harvesting the wheat, her hair loose and frizzy and her feet bare. Her mother embraces Legolas, and her father nods at him, before he turns to her. He looks her up and down, with a smile as warm as she remembers.
'I don't believe it,' he says. 'My little Mairen. I have been gone too long.'
Her shyness fizzles away in the glow of his friendliness, and she smiles back. 'I am all grown,' she says. 'I have so much to tell you!'
'Gimli would have liked to see you again,' he says, 'but he is getting less fond of travel these days. I will have to tell him you're getting too old for toys.'
'She still plays with your bow,' Mairen's mother says, raising an eyebrow at Legolas, and he laughs.
'Oh, I know, how very Sindar of me,' he says. 'But if she likes it, I can see no harm.'
'I love it,' Mairen assures him. 'I do. I want to show you how I've improved!'
She takes him into the woods, and he laughs when she is as accurate as she had claimed.
'You've outgrown your bow again,' he says. 'You'll need another.'
'You could show me how to make one,' she says hopefully, but he just looks at her thoughtfully.
'You should try shooting from horseback,' he advises. 'Trotting first, then at a gallop.'
'At a gallop?'
'Yes. You should be able to shoot upside down with your eyes closed,' he says, and she laughs.
'You might need to give me another eighteen years to master that.'
His face turns solemn. 'I am sorry I didn't come back sooner,' he says. 'I really am.'
His eyes are so earnest that for a moment Mairen can believe he's missed her as much as she did him.
'I'm glad you're back,' she says. 'That's all.'
The next day they go riding up into the mountains with Mairen's father. The Misty Mountains are sheer and treacherous, but with Legolas there, Mairen can suddenly see their beauty through fresh eyes. They light a fire when darkness falls, and Glorfindel tells them about the time Thorin and the dwarves escaped from the Misty Mountains, goblins at their backs. It is a story Mairen has heard before, but she listens attentively.
If she just follows the mountains south she'd be there, she thinks. She could find the Redhorn Pass where the Fellowship tried to cross Caradhras, or the entrance to Moria, where Gandalf the Grey had been killed in the same way her father had in the First Age. Adventure is so near that she can taste it.
She takes Legolas to Framsburg to show him her favourite places, and he tells her about his colony in Ithilien with quiet pride.
'I'd like to see it,' she says, trying not to sound as desperate as she feels. Ithilien would mean seeing Gondor, Rohan, Fangorn, perhaps even Mordor, places she'd only ever heard about. But Legolas seems to see through her nonchalance.
'You aren't trapped here, you know,' he says gently. There is a daisy growing in the crack between two stones, and she traces its petals with a finger.
'It isn't so simple,' she says. 'My parents wouldn't leave Haiyamar.'
'But are you bound to stay here with them?'
'What would I do?' she asks hopelessly. It is something she's thought of a hundred times. 'Go travelling alone? They would never allow it. I have no friends but you, and I will not burden you to show me the world. Nor would it be proper.'
'It wouldn't be a burden,' Legolas says quietly, and Mairen looks down.
'Even so.'
'I know how you feel.'
'Oh?'
'I used to resent my father for keeping me in the Woodland Realm. That's one of the reasons I volunteered to join the Fellowship so willingly.'
'What were the others?'
'A horrible, pervading guilt that I had been the one to let Smeagol escape. A sense of growing doom. Duty.'
She laughs. 'You know, for weeks after you last visited, I used to lie in my bed and wish that a dragon would set fire to our house, so that I could try to shoot it like you had in Laketown.'
He laughs too. 'Adventure will come,' he promises. 'Just not like that, I hope.'
'I will never have the courage to tell my parents I want to go,' Mairen confesses. 'Leaving Haiyamar, leaving Framsburg… I don't think that's something they can understand.'
'They might understand it better than you'd expect,' Legolas says. 'They have built their home from the ground up, through horror and great hardship. But in their youths, I think they searched for adventure too.'
'How could you know that? They were old before you were born.'
'Because everyone who followed Fëanor east from Valinor must have had two things,' Legolas says: 'courage, and a longing to see what hasn't yet been seen.'
He teaches her songs that are sung in Greenwood and in the colony in Ithilien. He makes her second-guess what she thinks she knows. Mairen finds herself telling him everything, every ambition she's harboured, every longing for freedom that she never told her parents. He tells her about his youth, about the secrets he kept from his father as a child, about his memories of his mother, about his friendship with Gimli and Aragorn, the king in the south.
He reflects her exuberance and passion in a way she's never experienced in the tranquillity of life at Haiyamar. He infects her. He makes her laugh, and to Mairen's delight, she does the same for him. She goes to bed after he says good night to her feeling like she is glowing.
The longer he stays, the more afraid she grows of the day that he will leave. He never mentions leaving during their long days together, but she thinks of his absence when he adjusts her grip on her bow, when he laughs at her for refusing his help to get down from her horse, when she watches him gaze out solemnly at the sun setting over the Misty Mountains, his face painted golden by the dusky light.
They go fishing in the Greylin one day, and she screws up the courage to break the silence and ask.
'When are you leaving?'
He looks up at her, a curious light in his eyes. 'I don't know. Soon.'
'If you don't know, then it might as well be later,' she says jauntily, and he laughs.
'I can't stay away from Ithilien forever. Nor can I intrude on your family for too long.'
'They don't mind.'
'Don't lie to me. Your father doesn't like anyone except you and your mother.'
She doesn't laugh, and recasts her line silently. She can feel his eyes on her, but she doesn't look up.
'I promise I'll be back,' he says, and she smiles hollowly.
'When I'm twelve?' He looks down, his brow furrowed, and she regrets the comment. 'I'm sorry, Legolas,' she apologises. 'Really. I say the first thing that comes into my head.'
His eyes meet hers, and his gaze is piercing. 'Maybe I shouldn't come back,' he says with forced lightness. 'I might be in danger of never being able to leave again.'
The breath leaves Mairen's lungs, and when she speaks it is little more than a whisper.
'I don't think that would be so bad.'
He embraces her mother and father on the morning that he leaves, and then he hesitates in front of Mairen before kissing her hand.
'Goodbye, my little Mairen,' he says, half-jokingly. Then he is gone, and the colour leeches out of springtime at Haiyamar and follows him south. Her hand burns like she has been branded.
That night, Mairen's mother follows her into her room.
'What is it, amya?' Mairen asks with more cheer than she feels.
'I am just remembering how you cried the last time Legolas left Haiyamar,' her mother says with a smile. 'I was wondering whether I should sing you a lullaby this time too.'
'Of course I will miss him,' Mairen says lightly. 'I will be lonely for the next few days without him. But life will go on. I don't think there will be tears this time.'
Lalwendë watches her daughter with all-seeing eyes, and Mairen feels a powerful urge to crawl into her mother's arms and tell her everything –
But Legolas is her mother's friend. And this fixation is all doubtlessly a fleeting, childish fancy. She will not cry tonight.
'So, no lullaby, then?' Mairen's mother asks. Mairen smiles.
'Yes to the lullaby. But I promise you I am happy, amya.'
'Then so am I,' says her mother.
'Amya?'
'Yes?'
'Why did you leave Valinor in the First Age?'
Her mother hesitates. 'Because my brother Fëanor promised us adventure. He promised us a land to discover, where we could prove our valour, conquer evil, take back what had been stolen from us, find the new and the dangerous. It was too exciting to turn down.'
Mairen stares at her in wonder. 'Then…'
'You want to know why I'm not like that anymore.' Mairen nods, and her mother sighs. 'The adventure came at too great a price. You've heard my stories. You know what happened. It broke the person that I used to be, and now I am what is left.'
'You aren't broken, amya,' Mairen whispers. 'And the world has changed since then.'
'I have had enough of adventure,' her mother says firmly. 'After everything, I can suddenly see what I failed to appreciate in Aman when I decided to leave. If I had been the same person then that I am now… I would have stayed.'
Mairen cannot kill the longing inside her, though. It lives in her bones now; she wants to leave, to discover, to breathe the hot air of the south and comb the woodlands in the east. She might live in the most beautiful place in the world, but she wanted to see the ugly too, the strange and the unexpected.
'I always thought you hadn't heard me crying that night,' she says quietly.
'Ah. Mothers tend to hear that kind of thing.'
'I'm fine, amya. I promise.'
Mairen doesn't cry, and she resolves to put Legolas out of her mind. Ithilien is far away, and he is gone. Her resolution dissolves quickly.
It is strange that she could miss someone she's spent so little time with, but he is all she thinks of. She learns to shoot on horseback, and she fishes at the spot she'd brought him to. She gallops to Framsburg, the thought of how easy it would be to keep riding further and further south constantly in the back of her mind. She sings just a little louder than usual at Haiyamar, laughs a little longer, smiles just a little wider, in an effort to allay any suspicions nursed by her parents.
Months pass and she becomes resigned to life as usual resuming at Haiyamar. Mairen watches the sun sink behind the mountains in the evenings and thinks about how strange it is that her life is just beginning while the time of elves in Middle-earth comes to a slow, tired end. She is young and vibrant and hot-blooded, but all the other elves are weary. She is in love with the Hither Shores, and they want to leave it behind and go home. It is a strange time to be young.
A year has passed, and he is suddenly there in front of her. The world is full of colour again.
She is in the ruins of Framsburg early in the morning, when he gradually appears out of the thick, grey fog. She is silent for a long moment, because she is half-convinced that he is a figment of her imagination, a ghostly wraith that her memory has conjured. But then he smiles, and she gets to her feet and runs to him.
She throws her arms around him and he does the same to her, and it occurs to her dimly that this is the first time they have embraced. He is solid and warm, and his arms press her to his torso, and her face is in his hair, and the smell of him is more potent than it has ever been before. He is intoxicating, and he is here.
She is the one who pulls away, embarrassed, and she notices the way his hands trail after her before dropping to his sides.
'How have you returned so quickly?' she asks, and his smile fills her with warmth. He is still standing close enough that she can smell him.
'I made a promise to you,' he said. 'I didn't want to break it this time.'
'My parents will be so glad to see you,' she says.
'And you? Are you glad?' he asks, and then regrets it immediately. She can see it in his face.
'Yes,' she says firmly. 'Yes.'
They speak very little on the familiar way back. Legolas seems lost in thought, and she is too nervous of saying the wrong thing. Her father is sitting outside the cottage, and he watches them ride together across the meadow from afar.
'We didn't expect you back so soon,' he says to Legolas when they finally arrive.
'I hope you won't resent me for it,' Legolas says with a wide smile. 'The south was quiet.'
'Come inside,' says Glorfindel. 'Lalwen will be happy you're here.'
Legolas brings them all gifts, and the one he presents to Mairen takes her breath away. It is a bow, full-sized and perhaps a little big for her. It is plain, but more finely wrought than any she's owned before. It looks worn in places; it has been owned before. She looks up at Legolas, disbelieving.
'You're too generous,' she says honestly. 'You always bring me the most beautiful things, and I have nothing to give you in return.'
'Seeing you use it will be gift enough,' he says earnestly. 'It's a good weapon. It's trustworthy.'
'It used to be yours,' she realises, and he nods. Mairen's hand closes around the smooth wood.
They go shooting, and he compliments her on her progress. He seems quieter than she remembers him, and she looks back at him several times. He is watching her, but his expression is faraway and thoughtful.
It starts to rain, and Mairen suddenly turns to face him. She is no coward, and she can see no better way forward than simply saying what she means.
'I missed you,' she says breathlessly. 'I wish you had stayed.'
Legolas stares at her, his mouth slightly ajar, and then he swallows. 'Perhaps we should go back to the house,' he says as thunder rumbles overhead. Mairen frowns.
'Should I not have said anything?'
He turns around and starts walking, answering her over his shoulder. 'I don't know, Mairen.'
She strides after him, her heart thundering in her ears. She'd found the courage to say what she felt, but Legolas was pushing her aside.
'If you didn't want to address whatever is between us, why did you come back?' she asks hotly. Legolas stops.
'Because –' he pauses and makes a frustrated sound. 'Because I like being around you. I like being near you. You are my friend.'
Mairen straightened. 'So you… you want to spend your time with me, without admitting what you feel for me.'
Legolas looks down. 'I don't like the sound of it when you say it that way.'
'So you do feel something for me?'
'This isn't right, Mairen,' he says with exasperation. 'I knew you when you were a baby. I held you, played with you, listened to you cry. I come here to visit Glorfindel and Lalwendë, because they are my closest friends. There was never any plan for me to feel like this about you. It isn't right.'
In an odd way, he makes sense to her now. Of course he is concerned by what is right; he is a prince, the son of a father whose first expectation of Legolas is duty. He has spent his life teaching himself to do what is right, what is expected. When Gollum escaped from him in Mirkwood, he sent himself on a suicidal quest as penance. When the dwarves escaped the dungeons of the Woodland Realm, it was Legolas himself who went after them.
He does things the right way, and he does them properly. He has loyalty to Mairen's parents, and falling in love with her would break that loyalty.
'If that's how you feel,' she says, and she brushes past him and makes for the house. He follows her silently.
That night, she can't sleep. She gets out of her bed and tiptoes across the wooden floor, opening her door silently and glancing at her parents' room beside hers. Their door is closed, and it is silent within.
Legolas is on a straw mattress by the embers of the fire in the main room, his eyes closed. He opens them as she approaches to kneel by the fireplace.
'What are you doing?' he mumbles, shifting.
'I didn't want to sleep,' she whispers.
'I do. I had a long journey.'
'You shouldn't have come back.'
He props himself up on an elbow. 'What?' he whispers.
'You shouldn't have come back. If you are resolved to pretend that you feel nothing for me, then you are only going to cause us both more pain by being at Haiyamar. Or at least, you'll cause me pain.'
He stares at her. His eyes are inky in the darkness, and she feels warm while he watches her. She wants to touch him again. 'I'm sorry, Mairen,' he whispers. 'My little Mairen. You're right.'
'Don't call me your little Mairen if there is to be nothing between us.'
'I'm sorry.'
'I feel…'
She stops. What she feels is complicated. She wants to talk to him, to tell him everything, all her secrets and all her mundanities. She wants to hold his hand. She thinks that if he agreed to be hers, she wouldn't mind staying at Haiyamar and Framsburg for the rest of her life. Her world would be big enough, if only he were in it. She wants to hear his voice, endlessly. She wants to watch him laugh, watch him watch her with his intent eyes, like he's drinking her in. She wants him to tell her everything, all the best and worse things he's ever done.
'I can leave tomorrow,' he murmurs. 'I can leave you in peace.'
'Wait,' she says quickly. 'I don't know if I meant it.'
He smothers a smile. 'Oh?'
'Maybe I'd rather have some of you than have nothing at all of you.'
His fond amusement fades, and he looks at her like she's breaking his heart. 'I'm sorry, my – Mairen.'
'I understand.'
He stays another week, and it is exquisitely painful. They spend their days together and their nights with her parents, just like usual, but suddenly they seem unable to talk to each other. The ease that had once lived between them is gone, drowned by the shadow of what they are not saying. Mairen notices his restlessness too, something she hadn't seen before, and she asks him about it when they are sitting together in the grass, the sun on their faces.
'It's the sea,' he replies. 'I'm drawn to it. Obsessed with it.'
'The sea?' she says, surprised.
'I long for it,' he says quietly. 'Ever since I was at Pelargir with Aragorn and Gimli during the war, the sea has been calling me west.'
'To Valinor,' she realises. 'You want to sail to Aman.'
'One day.'
'Why haven't you gone?'
'For many reasons,' he says in a way that makes her wonder whether she is one.
'What is it like to live with the sea longing?' she asks.
'Agony,' he replies simply, and she feels a stab of compassion. He is sitting so close to her; she could reach out to take his hand, comfort him. She doesn't. 'But it comes and it goes.'
'It comes and it goes,' she repeats quietly, and he smiles.
'I like your accent.'
'Hm?'
'You have an accent when you speak Sindarin, a strange one.'
'It isn't my first language,' she says with a shrug. 'It will get better with time.'
'It's pretty,' he insists, and he glances over at her. Their eyes hold each other for a beat too long before Mairen closes hers. Why must he refuse her? Why must he make everything so difficult?
She rides with him to Framsburg on the day that he leaves, and they stand in the ruins together, facing each other. It is raining again, heavily enough to be uncomfortable, but Mairen doesn't mind.
'Will you come back?' she asks.
'If I can find the courage to.'
'Find the courage.'
Legolas smiles. 'I need some of yours.'
'I think I love you, Legolas,' she says, and the smile slips from his face like the rain has washed it away. He takes two steps closer, his eyes fixed on hers, and suddenly he is so close that he's nearly touching her. His hair is dark from the rain, and it's sticking to his face. She stares up at him, her heart in her throat.
He gives her every opportunity to pull away, but she doesn't. He places a hand on her cheek, then another on her waist, and then he tilts his head slowly towards hers. She stays motionless, waiting for him, and finally, his lips touch hers. He is gentle and earnest and warm, and her eyes close. Her heart thunders inside her chest. She wraps her arms around him too, but it is only another moment before he pulls back. He drags a thumb lightly over her lips, still close enough that his features blur a little.
'Goodbye, my little Mairen,' he murmurs.
She watches him ride away, standing alone in the mossy ruins of the citadel. It suddenly feels a little harder to breathe.
Her mother and father mention nothing when she gets back, and neither does she. She forces herself through the motions of everyday life. She fills her days with activity, eats and sleeps like she normally would. She wants to scream, but she doesn't.
She rides instead, galloping as far as her horse will go. She shoots with Legolas' beautiful bow; it feels like a piece of him, and she treats it as such. It leans against the wall by her bed, and its smooth wood has become familiar to her.
'Tatanya,' she calls around the back of the house. 'Can we fight?'
'I'm busy,' he calls back, and she comes around to see him checking the shoes on the horses.
'Please?'
He straightens and glances back at her, and then nods, seeing something in her face that he can't refuse. She runs back into the house and finds their swords. Her mother had made Mairen's herself in the forges of Mirkwood; her father Finwë had showed her how, long ago.
She hands her father his own, and he whirls it with thoughtless ease. Mairen's father is stronger, faster, and more powerful than anyone she knows, and though she doesn't know many people, her mother has confirmed her observations. The Valar gave her father great power, and though he was released from their service before she was born, his strength stayed.
He doesn't really like sparring, but it was important to him that she learn. She only ever beats him when he lets her. It is frustrating, belittling even, but it is better than not fighting at all. She will learn, he always assures her. She has time.
'Ready stance,' he reminds her. She adjusts. 'Am I attacking, or are you?'
'I want to attack,' she says, and he nods. She moves.
He parries her every swipe as though she had explained her plan to him in detail before beginning. It irritates her, makes her angry. She can change tactic, but she knows nothing she does will change the outcome. So instead, she throws herself at him with all the brute force she can muster, until sweat coats her face and her body trembles with fatigue. Her father goes on the attack without warning, disarming her with two movements and pointing his sword at her neck. She straightens and holds up her hands.
'Yield,' she says, and he steps back. She bends to pick up her sword, but her father taps her chin with his blade before she can.
'What's wrong, Mairen?'
She wipes the sweat from her brow. 'Nothing. Why?'
'You've been different,' he says quietly. 'I worry for you.'
She sighs. 'It's nothing, tatanya.' He stares at her with eyes that are exact replicas of her own, and she smiles. 'Do you know how frustrating it is to spar with you?'
'I don't mind if you'd rather not,' he says drily.
'Well. You're my only option.'
He touches her cheek gently. 'Haiyamar is safe,' he says. 'It's peaceful.'
'Is that all there is to life?'
Glorfindel drops his hand and twists the point of his sword into the ground, making a small hole in the dirt.
'Did Legolas ever show you any sword technique?' he asks, changing the subject.
She shakes her head. 'Only archery,' she says evenly. 'Why?'
'You have something of Mirkwood in your fighting style. You move a little like him, a little like Tauriel too.'
Tauriel. It is a name she'd heard from her parents' stories of the quest for Erebor. A Mirkwood elf, a warrior, who had been in love with Kíli, her mother's friend –
But Legolas had been in love with her. Legolas had loved Tauriel.
It all clicks into place, and suddenly Mairen hurts. He doesn't love her. Perhaps that was what he'd been trying to tell her all along. Elves only love once, and Legolas had loved Tauriel. She is trapped in a chain of unrequited love; she loves Legolas, who loves Tauriel, who loves Kíli, who is dead. What cruel trick is this?
She had been such a fool. Legolas must have felt sorry for her when she'd told him what she felt. And when he'd kissed her – she shudders. He must have thought her so pitiful. She wants to throw up.
'Mairen,' her father says with concern, and she smiles at him.
'Let's go again,' she says. 'This time, you attack.'
Time will heal the wound, she tells herself as the months pass. It is a wet year, and when it turns to winter, the snows are heavy. Some sleepless nights, she goes outside to gaze up at the stars. Some nights, her father is out there too. He says nothing to her, to her relief, but he stands by her, and they watch the starlit world together. He wraps his cloak around her to keep her warm.
She needs a change; Legolas has ruined Haiyamar for her. She will leave, she thinks. She'll finally betray the hopes of her parents and go. She won't go to Mirkwood, for fear that he will be there; nor will she go to Gondor, because he could be in Ithilien with his colony. Perhaps she will go west over the mountains, see if Elladan and Elrohir are still in Rivendell. She could visit the Shire, see the cave where her mother had been buried for thousands of years. She needs a change, or oblivion.
In the dead of night, she considers finding the Grey Havens and asking the Shipwright to send her into the West. But then she remembers that one day, Legolas will be there too. She can never face him again; she knows that much.
But on the first day of summer, he comes back. Mairen's mother embraces him, and her father clasps his hand. She stares at him, humiliation flooding her. But he smiles sincerely and touches her shoulder.
'Mairen,' he says simply.
She does not ask him to go riding, or fishing, or walking. She leaves the next morning before he has woken, and rides to Framsburg with the dawn. He finds her there, of course, and she still has enough of her dignity remaining that she resolves to stay and face him.
'I shouldn't have kissed you,' is the first thing he says. She shakes her head.
'I'm so sorry,' she says, and he frowns.
'I can't blame you for avoiding me after the way I was last time –'
'I should have known you were in love with someone else,' she interrupts. Her heart is tearing itself in two. Legolas blanches.
'What?'
'With Tauriel. I heard stories about you and her, I'd just forgotten them. I'm so sorry.'
He turns paler still. 'You mother told you about that?'
'What I'm trying to say is that I understand,' Mairen said, unable to keep the bitterness from her voice. 'I know how it feels, obviously. You don't owe me anything, and… and that's all. I understand.'
'You're jealous of her,' Legolas says, and Mairen nearly laughs.
'Of course I am. I am in love with you.'
He closes his eyes briefly. 'Whatever I felt for Tauriel isn't the same as what I feel for you,' he says, and Mairen flinches.
'I know. I understand.'
'No, Mairen. No. I'm trying to tell you that I'm in love with you too.'
Mairen doesn't believe him, and she narrows her eyes at him as the sun rises over his shoulder. Elves love but once in their lives. Is he saying he didn't love Tauriel?
'How can you know?' she asks, and he shrugs and smiles.
'Well, how do you know?'
'Because you're a part of me now,' she says. 'You've become a piece of who I am, and every day I suffer because that piece is too far away.'
'Would you believe me if I told you that you're a piece of me, too?' he asks, drawing near.
'No,' she whispers, and he kisses her. He is intense and heated and desperate. She is dazzled by the sun rising behind him, and she closes her eyes and lets him wrap her up. Her pieces come back together. She is whole again.
They leave Framsburg and return to Haiyamar. They spend their days together and their nights with Mairen's parents, as they have always done. Mairen is happy. This is what there is to life, she thinks.
Legolas promises to marry her. He will ask her parents' blessing, he says, and his own father's. Maybe not just yet. Mairen doesn't see any point in putting it off; they will still need to be told, and Legolas will still need to face them. If they disapprove now, waiting will do little to change that.
But she lets him wait. She knows he is still making his peace with what he thinks is right, still justifying what they have done. He is coming to terms with what he needs to sacrifice in order to have her. She gives him the time he wants.
He leaves after two more weeks, and Mairen feels as though she has lost a limb. She dreams of him, and wakes up missing him. But this time, his absence is easier to bear. This time, she knows that he is missing her too.
An envelope comes with the messenger from Mirkwood, addressed to her. Her mother gives it to her, and she opens it while her mother watches, because it would be strange not to. But Legolas has thought of that: inside are two notes.
Dear Mairen, the first one reads.
I am sending you my well-wishes from the Woodland Realm. I want to know how you have progressed with the moving targets. Is the bow I gave you still sufficient? I am happy to think of it in the capable hands of someone like you, rather than sitting idle on my wall.
Remember me kindly to your mother and father.
Legolas
She shows the note to her mother, who is delighted by his message. Mairen waits until she is alone in her room with the door closed behind her before unfolding the other piece of parchment. It is written in Quenya, her mother tongue.
My little Mairen,
I love you and I miss you, like I do every time I leave Haiyamar. I had intended to tell my father that I plan to marry you while I am here but – I think you understand. I don't like keeping secrets, and every minute that I am not with you chafes, but I cannot bring myself to tell him or to face his inevitable displeasure. Not yet. Send me some of your courage back with the boat.
I will come back to stay with you in the winter. If the weather is bad, maybe I can justify staying longer – though your mother is a very wise woman, and I imagine she already has her suspicions. Valar help me, Mairen, I am going to make you a promise: when I am next at Haiyamar, I will ask your father and mother for your hand in marriage.
If you can no longer stomach being engaged to such a coward, you must return my letter and tell me. In the meantime, I will continue to love you, and love you, and love you.
Until the winter.
She folds it into a small square and puts it under her mattress. Then she finds a piece of parchment, a pen, and a bottle of ink.
Dear Legolas,
I have a stomach of iron, and thus will be breaking off nothing we have previously agreed upon. My mother sends her love, and so do I. In other news, I have made no progress at all with shooting moving targets. Please do return soon, as I am in need of advice.
Yours,
Mairen
She gives it to the messenger, who puts it in his pocket with instructions to give it to the prince. The snows come down from the mountains a few months later, and Legolas comes with them.
The weather is bad, as he predicted, but when dawn comes they go riding together through the snow. They go to Framsburg and sit together with their backs against a wall that is mostly still standing. It protects them from the deluge, and Legolas winds her arm through his and kisses her hair.
'I talked to my father,' he says, and Mairen starts.
'And?'
'He gave me his blessing. He doesn't like your father, but he respects your mother. And you are of noble blood.'
'Legolas.'
'I know, it's ridiculous. It's just my father.'
'I am going to marry you,' she says, marvelling in the words. He threads his fingers through hers and kisses her hand.
'I was thinking we should travel the world,' he says, and she nearly leaps into the air. He laughs.
'You – are you sure?' she gasps, her breath making clouds in the frigid air.
'I want to show you Ithilien, and the Woodland Realm, of course. And we could see Fangorn too, and Helm's Deep in Rohan, and the Lonely Mountain, and Minas Tirith –'
He stops talking, because she is crying so hard that she curls into his side. He wraps his arms around her and laughs. They return to Haiyamar when the sun is getting low behind the clouds.
Legolas speaks to her parents. Mairen's mother kisses her repeatedly, a wide, immovable smile on her face.
'I am so happy, melda,' she says. 'He is a good man, and I can see how much he loves you.'
'He says we will travel the world,' Mairen says, taking her mother's hands in hers. Her mother laughs.
'I knew that you weren't crying over nothing when you were six.'
Mairen flushes red. 'Amya, please!'
Her father comes to find her outside in the snow, the night that Legolas asks for his blessing. He stands silently beside Mairen and they look up at the stars together. He is agitated, she can feel it in the way he is holding himself. She glances over at him.
'I am happy, tatanya,' she says. 'I promise you that.'
'I can see it,' he replies quietly. 'You really want to marry him?'
'I really, really do.'
He nods once and turns back to the stars. 'Then you have my blessing. Of course you have my blessing.'
'You approve of him?' she asks with a faint smile, and her father sighs heavily.
'I am glad it's him over… anyone else. I know him well enough. But he's still going to take you away from me, Mairen.'
She steps closer to her father and takes his hand in his. They watch the stars wheel over the mountains until the sun rises behind them.
She and Legolas take advantage of the good weather and ride to Framsburg together. Now, with the knowledge that she will soon be leaving her home, the landscape around Mairen steals her breath with its beauty. Flashes of sunlight wink at her through icicles weighing down the boughs of trees. Little purple flowers raise their heads from patches of green peeking through the snow. Towering mountains frame them in, hazy from the distance, and the forked rivers murmur quietly.
There is a faint breeze wafting the morning mist away, and Mairen closes her eyes and inhales. The air is sharp and clean. It is home.
'We can stay,' Legolas murmurs behind her. 'Wherever you go, I'll go.'
She shakes her head. 'We'll go everywhere,' she whispers. 'There's an adventure waiting for us out there. I've heard everyone else's stories, but mine is just beginning.'
The Greylin River flows south past Haiyamar and joins the River Langwell at Framsburg. The current grows faster and the river wider, and it becomes the Anduin. It flows around the Carrock, where Beorn used to climb to watch the moon. It gathers speed as it flows past Mirkwood and the Old Forest Road.
The Anduin skims the edge of Lothlórien, but these days no Lórien elves set their white boats upon its waters. It curves through the empty Brown Lands and between the Gates of Argonath, into Gondor. It crashes down at the Falls of Rauros, where the Fellowship sent Boromir's body. It spreads at the marshes of Nindalf, and then passes Osgiliath and Minas Tirith.
It winds through Lossarnach and past Lebennin until it empties into the Bay of Belfalas. It is there that Mairen and Legolas will stand together one day, looking out over the sea and into the West. Then Mairen will turn to her husband, smile, and ask him:
'Where next?'