Morning Hath Broken by Kaylee Arafinwiel

In Harlindon

This story will have (at least) three chapters, I think. This one is set in Harlindon, during the Second Age, when Emma and I have Thranduil born for our purposes. I realize that's a lot later than most Thranduil writers seem to do but I've never seen canon go one way or the other, so hope this is okay :)

Read In Harlindon

“Ada?” The golden-haired child propped himself up on his elbows, stretched out on his father’s hearthrug in Harlindon, studying the dark-haired Elven-lord intently.

“Yes, my son,” Oropher replied with infinite patience – his heir was wont to ply him with questions all day, and he would never get his missives to Gil-galad finished at this rate. He gave Thranduil a wan smile. “What is it you want to know, laes-nin?”

 

“Helvui wants to know.” Thranduil – not yet ten cyrnanor old – picked up his stuffed brown rabbit and held him out. “Helvui and I were watching Anor wake up this morning,” he explained.

“Ah. And what would you like to know about Anor, Master Helvui?” Oropher addressed the rabbit gravely, though his eyes glinted with humour. (Helvui didn’t see anything particularly funny about being spoken to like that.)

“Helvui wants to know,” Thranduil continued, “do you like to watch Anor rise every day? She came out of the east and coloured the sky like carrots. Helvui was so excited.”

“I’m sure Helvui was, laes-nin,” Oropher nodded. He looked thoughtful. “I do like to watch her rising. In fact, I remember Anor’s first rising, and she rose in the west.”

Eyes wide with shock, Thranduil scrambled to sit up properly. “Really, Ada? Why? Will you tell me?”

 

“Ah, well, as to that…” Oropher sank back into the mists of memory as he spun his tale.

 

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Chapter End Notes

All words/phrases are Sindarin.

Ada - Papa/Daddy

Anor - the sun

Cyrnanor - Years, literally "sun-rounds". At ten years old, Thranduil is approximately four in human terms.

Helvui - "Fluffy". Thranduil's rabbit, made for him by his mother.

Laes-nin - "my baby"

 

In Doriath

Emma and I place Oropher’s birth during YT 1499, at what would be 14,364 solar years – six “years” and less than one Valian year before the rising of the Moon and Sun. This would make him a little more than two and a half in human maturity.

Celepharn (mentioned in Oropher's patronymic) is our OC, the father of Oropher and the first cousin of Celeborn.

Read In Doriath

Oropher Celepharnion had been very young when he first saw them – not even a year of the Belain, as Elu and Melian accounted it. In fact, he had been younger than his son was now, he realised – six, in years of the Sun, he supposed.

Ithil and Anor. These had not been things he had been equipped to understand at such a tender age. He was only just beginning to learn the names of this star or that one as his mother, Neldiel Brandiriel, or his nurse Ivoniel sang them to him. He had learned already to mark the hours by the Edegil as the great Sickle of the Belain swung round the Over-heaven. But young as he was, he had not begun formal lessons with his daeradar yet.

So it was when he was outside with Ivoniel, wrapped up against the chill, that he had first seen it. A glow, far off on the horizon, like a hundred thousand torches – he had not known what to think of it.

The orb had risen slowly in the western sky, pale white against the blackness of the heavens, and washed the world in silver light.

“W-what is it, Ivy?” he had whispered to her, frozen in fear…

***

“It was Ithil, Ada?” Thranduil interrupted the flow of his father’s story as Oropher recalled the memory to life.

“Yes, Ithil,” Oropher confirmed. “Though we did not call him so at first. My daeradar, Lord Brandir, suggested Elfaron, that is Star-hunter, for indeed he seemed to blot out the stars in his path.”

“Helvui says that’s very sad,” Thranduil reflected. “He doesn’t want Ithil to hunt the stars. That’s mean.”

“Ithil only plays hide-and-find with the stars, laes-nin,” Oropher comforted his elfling – and the evidently very concerned rabbit. “He does not hurt them. I promise. Now, would you like me to continue, Master Helvui?” he asked.

Helvui still didn’t think that was very funny. Still, a story was a story.

“Helvui says yes, please,” Thranduil said. Oropher took a breath and let it out slowly.

“Very well. Now, where was I…”