50 Prompts: AU Silmarillion by Urloth

Prompt: Contradiction (Glorfindel, Legolas)

Summary: To assume makes an Ass out of U and Me.

“Lord Glorfindel this is Prince Legolas of Greenwood,” Erestor gestured.

Glorfindel, who had expected to look down when he met the Greenwood Ambassador, instead looked up.

“You know,” the prince smiled warmly, quicksilver eyes glowing in a friendly manner, “and I’m sure you hear this all of the time Lord Glorfindel, but when I heard your name I expected… well… “

“Someone golden haired?” Glorfindel asked with a slight laugh.

The prince reached out, a long, spidery finger curling in one of Glorfindel’s decidedly un-golden knee length curls and unwinding it, turning the hair back and forth. The blackness of Glorfindel’s hair was so deep and so pure that it shone blue in the right light.

“I was a lesson to any Vanyar with even the slightest drop of Noldor in their family,” Glorfindel endured the closeness and touch with good humour, this was not the first Silvan he had met and he knew them to be quite handsy and with a different interpretation of personal space.

“My father’s great grandmother was Noldor, but both my parents looked as Vanyar as could be and expected me to be likewise.”

“Indeed! You are just as contradictory to expectations as I am,” Legolas agreed.

“I will drink to that,” Glorfindel laughed, still looking up. It had been an age, literally, and more since he had, had to look up to meet someone’s eyes, and it sent a bitter pang through his heart. They clinked glasses and drank.

“As for you, your highness –“

“Please call me Legolas,” the prince interrupted.

“Only if you call me Glorfindel.”

“Agreed.”

“As I was saying; you are certainly not what one thinks of when they think of a Sindar with more than a touch of Silvan to his blood.”

“No I am not,” they had migrated across the room and found seats in one of the small alcoves made for conversation. Legolas stretched out his legs a great distance with a small sigh, the chair a little too short to keep his knees bent without looking awkward.

“People tend to forget that counted amongst the so called ‘avari’ was a full half of the Tatyar; the other half becoming those you call the  Noldor,” the prince mused into his wine.

“Well that more than explains it,” agreed Glorfindel, topping up his own glass when a servant offered.

“Is it those Tatyar descended Avari that are your mother’s kin?” he asked, perhaps too quickly because Legolas looked towards him sharply.

“I mean no harm, but your mother has never left the Greenwood,” he held up his hands in a peace offering.

“No she is shy,” Legolas agreed, “and rather self-conscious of her height. She believes she would be an embarrassment to my father but she could never be that.”

“Tall is she?” Glorfindel glanced at where Lady Galadriel was holding forth; now there was a woman who’d never been concerned with her height, not even in Aman.

“The tallest in Greenwood. Sadly all of my aunts inherited their father’s height and my grandmother, while tall, is shorter than her.”

He sipped his wine and observed the prince, finding in Legolas’ face a likeness he’d not expected to find on these western shores. Between his death in Gondolin and his return from Mandos the House of Fëanor had died a spectacular death.

Yet here before him was, thought subtly different, one who could have come from that font of princes.

“A toast, Glorfindel,” Legolas proposed, startling him from his musings, “to being contradictory to expectations.”

“Indeed,” Glorfindel agreed, pleased and warmed with good humour thought that might have been the wine, “to being contradictions.”

They drank and he observed the prince some more.

“I am surprise Lord Elrond did not embrace  you when he first saw you” he blurted suddenly.

“Certainly it was not my face he saw when he greeted me,” Legolas glanced over at Elrond with a thoughtful expression.

“My great grandmother told me once that one of her great uncles was a man called Mahtan, and one of her second cousins a woman named Míriel. I cannot remember how this relates to the Noldor but apparently I resemble that branch of the family greatly.”

“Oh you most definitely do” Glorfindel agreed, watching Legolas push back an errant lock of ruddy copper hair with his right hand.