50 Prompts: AU Silmarillion by Urloth

Prompt: Curiosity (Legolas, Maglor)

Summary: Listen to your mother

He should not have gone looking. She had told him that some things in life were precious and private, even between mother and son. She said some things were of a woman’s world and not his own. Yet that great chest of foreign wood that whispered to him in a familiar language he did not know had fascinated him since childhood.

One rainy day, left to himself, he went to her jewellery box, found the key and unlocked his mother’s hope-chest. At first he had only found rich cloth, heavily embroidered. The styles differed enough that even as a complete-novice as he could tell they were by different women; seven in total.

Deeper he had investigated, mouth opening in awe at the box of black and white pearls, the stunning amber necklace and the gold circlet set with thousands of diamond stars.
But then, at the bottom, wrapped in a cloth, so heavily embroidered he could barely see the crimson silk for the gold, he found an object of some incredible weight and drew it forth.

He had unwrapped it eagerly but now he wished he’d never entered his mother’s room; never let his curiosity get the better of him.

“Oh no…” his mother sighed softly from the door. There was a rustle of rich, thick cloth and her scarred hands closed around his. He knew them like his own, the strange faceted design on the left hand; each raised bump of flesh, the thousands of marks that made her hands completely different from the elegant, pale hands of the court-ladies.
He was drawn back against her, into the blue brocaded cloth of her dress, the folds of it enveloping him.

“Oh my darling,” his mother breathed into his hair, cuddling him as he began to shake, “why did you look when I told you not to.”

“Nana I don’t understand,” he whispered, staring at the sword, the eight pointed star blazing in undiminished glory; blue diamonds in the hilt not faded by time.

“Is it a war trophy?” he asked desperately, but why would such a thing be in his mother’s hope-chest?

“No Legolas nin. It was mine, a long time ago before you, or even your father, were born,” her hair fell over his shoulder. He stroked it, the fine fur softness that it had, and the raven colour of the strands that fell through his fingers seemed suddenly insidious.

The Queen of Mirkwood, once Makalaurë Fëanáriel, stared at her son’s shaking shoulders and closed her eyes in despair.