Disclaimer: I own nothing recognisable.
Only the Beginning of the Adventure
The Company rode for Imladris, hard, as they fled the Misty Mountains the next night. The descent of the pass had been uneventful until a goblin scout had discovered them, an hour after nightfall. Thranduil had ordered them to ride, hard, and not look back.
As Legolas rode beside Tathar down the slope, he looked around to count the company. Eighteen, good. Satisfied that none were left behind, the young ellon returned his attention to riding, and the group didn't slow down until they found the hidden entrance to Imladris.
Thranduil breathed a sigh of relief when they all achieved the safety of the cleft, and without hesitation led them towards the Last Homely House.
"Welcome to Imladris," Thranduil announced to his companions as they emerged from the rock face to view the valley of Imladris. For some, it was the first time they had seen the Elven haven.
Legolas' breath was taken away. The land was delicately beautiful, and the many waterfalls captured Legolas' affection in a way he didn't fully understand. Soon, Thranduil resumed the journey down the cliff face and across the bridge to the entrance of Rivendell itself.
Lord Elrond, whom Legolas had met previously at another Council of the Eldar, welcomed the party to Imladris and had the weary travellers taken to rooms.
Legolas fell asleep as soon as his guide showed him his bed, and the amused guide left the exhausted ellon, chuckling to herself.
The next morning, Thranduil's company were sufficiently rested to show themselves at breakfast, with a little help from the ever-bright-eyed Sílívren, who cheerfully went about the house to wake each member of the Eryn Galen party.
Legolas entered the dining hall with Tathar and Brethilríl, with whom he shared his room, and they sat down with Brethildíl and Aldanna, who had saved them seats.
"Look," Tathar suddenly whispered to his friends, gazing over Aldanna's shoulder. "Elves from Lorien, it must be," he continued, and Legolas realised what had made his best friend so surprised.
A group of Elves entered the Hall and took a table for themselves, and every single one of them had silver coloured hair.
"So it's true," Brethildíl whispered to her friends. "Lorien Elves really are as pale as our Royal family. How could they ever hide in the trees?"
Legolas humphed, and reminded his friends that the trees in Lorien were strange, and silver-gold coloured, so the Elves would no doubt blend in seamlessly.
Legolas noticed, as he watched the group more carefully, that the majority of the Lorien Elves were actually wood-elves, of a variety uncommon in Mirkwood. Their eyes, he noted, were grey, and most of them had silver hair. This colourless palette was hauntingly beautiful on these strange Elves, in Legolas' opinion, and he thought he rather liked the colourful populace of Mirkwood, where the people had eyes in green, grey, blue and brown, and hair came in every shade between silver, yellow, brown and black, and even a few with tresses of red.
Suddenly Lord Elrond entered, and stood at a dais. "Welcome!" he declared, "To our visitors from Lothlorien, who arrived yesterday afternoon, and to our kin from Eryn Galen, who crossed our borders during the night. King Thranduil, Queen Aldariel, Lady Galadriel, Lord Celeborn," Elrond raised a glass, though it was filled with juice rather than the traditional wine in light of the time of day, "May this Council be uneventful, and these Trials be glorious!"
With cries of "Hear, hear," the gathered Elves toasted with their juice cups, and Legolas exchanged a smirk with Tathar at the ridiculousness of it all. Finally, here they were, only days away from being legally considered adults, and they were toasting with juice.
Breakfast began, and Legolas tucked in with gusto, as did his friends. They were distracted enough to not realise that they had been joined at the table until a humorous voice caused them to freeze, food halfway to five mouths.
"I thought I raised you to be Elves, not animals."
Brethildíl and Brethilríl immediately picked up knives and forks, blushing bright red, as their mother's laughing gaze rested on them. Lothellon merely placed a rather large stack of handkerchiefs in the centre of the table, and Legolas realised that not only the Brethils' parents had joined them, but also his parents, Tathar's father, and Aldanna's mother.
Neldororn handed his son a fork, gently chiding him for his lack of table manners.
Tathar swallowed, and wiped his juice-covered fingers on a handkerchief, staining it with the berry juice on his fingers. "I was hungry," he tried to excuse his behaviour, weakly.
Thranduil just shook his head. "Remember, you are not just Elves here. You are representing your families, and your Kingdom. We would not want to be known as the 'less wise, more dangerous, ill-mannered' Elves.
A snort of laughter met this, and Lothellon covered his mouth, sharply cutting off the sound. It was true, though - the Elves of Greenwood were widely known as being less wise and more dangerous than the Elves of Rivendell, and before Ladlaurë had lightly smacked her husband upside the head for his own ill manners, the whole table was laughing.
Breakfast only finished when the food ran out, and the Greenwood Elves separated to do as they would for the day.
There was almost a week until the start of the Trials, for the Council traditionally took place first. That meant that Legolas, Tathar, the Brethils and Aldanna were free to do as they would for seven days, and they fully intended to make use of the rare free time.
Aldanna convinced the group to spend some time training, for they had been travelling for a considerable time, and as such had no opportunity to keep their skills sharp. "We have to beat the stuffy Imladris trainees!" she argued.
Half an hour later, they had found their way to the training fields, with only a few arguments between the Brethils, only to find that the Lothlorien Trainees had the same idea.
On the grass, two young Elves were sparring. They were evenly matched, and appeared to almost dance as they battled. Silver hair flicked and flashed in the sunlight, and the rhythmic clanging of their blades was constant.
The beat did not falter, and Legolas turned to Brethildíl, mockingly offering her a bow and a hand. Grinning cheekily, the elleth curtseyed, and took Legolas' hand. They fell into the beat provided by the sparring Lorien Elves, dancing a silly, energetic dance of the wood-elves, one that would normally be accompanied by a wooden drum-like instrument's rhythm. Aldanna and Tathar soon joined the dance, and Brethilríl, laughing mischievously, danced a solo, jumping and squatting, clapping and shouting as he twisted and leaped in the middle of the group.
The sound of the blades soon changed as some other Elves took up the beat, and the sparring partners split up, joining the dance.
Laughing and shouting, the group danced, and when they stopped, all were grinning brightly.
Farther away, in a courtyard overlooking the field, one mighty Elf-Lord whispered to another, "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
"Isn't that how we met?" Thranduil returned, and he and Celeborn laughed gaily, for their own introduction had indeed been rather similar, millennia ago, when they had been pulled into keeping the beat for a group of merry travelling wood-elves. That had also been when they were introduced to Aldariel, who had been dancing the solo.
Turning, the dancers beheld the percussionists, who seemed to be around their own age.
The trainees, chests heaving from their exertions, introduced themselves to each other, using only their first names and their countries, as per the custom of Elvish children. And so it was, that Legolas, Tathar, Brethilríl, Brethildíl and Aldanna met Rumil, Orophin, Alassë, Lindir, and Ithilran, never knowing that they had not one set of rare Elvish siblings in their midst, but two.
"There will be much time later for us to compete against each other," Ithilran announced as he returned to the group with a number of water skins, which were quickly shared and drained. "What do you say to some practice?"
Tathar chuckled. "We did come here to practice, after all, not to dance."
The groups of young Elves accepted each other without a hitch, and soon they were sharing tips and tricks to improve each other's performance. The five Greenwood Elves were intrigued by the Imladris Elves' habit of practicing with orc-shaped targets, where they aimed for the jugular rather than the forehead, as the Greenwood Elves had been taught. Lindir insisted that this was because the orcs wore no armour over their necks, but Rumil commented that perhaps they needed to aim for the fleshy target because their arrows lacked the force to punch through skulls.
This, of course, led to an argument about how much force each could put behind an arrow, and so they set up targets covered in old armour of various thicknesses.
Each used his own bow and arrows, and would start at the top, where the lightest armour was placed, moving downwards through each piece of metal until the arrow fell away without piercing the metal. They only could find limited amounts of old armour, enough for only three shots, side-by-side, so Legolas, Rumil and Lindir were nominated as the test subjects.
Rumil, having instigated this while episode with his insult, was the first to shoot. He flawlessly punched through the centres of the first four pieces of armour but on the fifth, the bottom, his arrow bounced back, badly blunted. Rumil growled, and wasted another arrow on the same shot, to his displeasure.
Legolas, being involved merely so that one from each Realm was competing, punched his arrows cheerfully through each piece of armour, and even managed to lodge his last shot in the thick armour, though on closer inspection it had not gone through enough to be a worry to anyone wearing the armour. The line of arrow holes ran neatly down the pieces of armour, beside Rumil's marks.
Lindir, being the injured party, was last to shoot. He took the unmarred right hand side of the pieces of armour, punching arrows through the first two. On the third, the arrow fell away harmlessly. A second attempt succeeded, but the next target resulted in only another arrow clattering to the grass, blunted beyond use.
The rest of the group cheerfully congratulated Legolas on his victory, while Rumil muttered that he was physically smaller than the half Sindarin elf, and Lindir sulked over his defeat.
Soon, though, all was forgiven as challenges were enthusiastically shouted to spar.
Legolas fought against Ithilran, and as the pair spun, their braided hair flashed in the sunlight. Knives were everywhere as Legolas fought his way past Ithilran's defence, and the big sword swore Ithilran used was barely fast enough to keep the biting blades away, let alone mount an attack.
Brethildíl and Alassë both fought with deceptively delicate blades. They were well-matched, as both ellyth were armed with only a single light sword, curved like a leaf, and both wood-elves were incredibly quick. The blades flashed like lightning, and the clear ringing as they came into contact was musical as the blades resonated.
Lindir fought against Brethilríl, and the two dark-haired Elves both were armed with leaf shaped longswords. Lindir's paler skin was soon flushed with exertion, and the clashing and clanging of the blades slowed as the ellyn became exhausted.
Tathar and Rumil were head to head, and the short sword favoured by Rumil had been dropped, along with Tathar's large sword. The elves grappled and wrestled, neither accepting defeat, as they reached for weapons to gain the upper hand.
Aldanna and Orophin each bore two knives, and they seemed to be encased in a net of glittering silver as the blades moved too quickly for the eye to follow. Ithilran and Rumil cheered for the competitors, and the fights abruptly stopped when a furious voice ripped through the air.
"What do you think you are doing?"
Lord Glorfindel had entered the range, and he was not happy.
Ithilrin and Lindir immediately swarmed the Elf-Lord, babbling about how amazing their new friends were, and Glorfindel's harsh countenance finally smoothed as he was satisfied that no-one had been hurt.
"No more duels. If you want to fight each other, you can do it in the Trials," the golden-haired Lord declared.
A great sigh rose from the gathered youths, but Glorfindel stood firm. "I will not have any injuries a week before the Trials. You have not come into your own yet, so there are some among you who could easily be ordered to attend the Council."
Legolas paled immediately at this threat. He had no wish to attend the boring meetings, and his friends laughed at his misfortune. But Glorfindel was not done with his threats. "There are also some here who might be asked to join their parents in the trade negotiations," at this, the rest of them shut up, before Glorfindel delivered his last threat, so that each and every youth had a reason to worry about losing their freedom.
"Or, you could join your parents in the Guard." With a final glare, and satisfied that the younglings would not dare to do anything to land themselves in the utterly boring positions of tailing their parents at work, Glorfindel turned away.
The rest of the day was spent exploring Imladris, in groups led by Lindir and Ithilran.