Scenes From A Childhood In Doriath by Fernstrike

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Night Whispers

It felt prudent to mention that in this chronology, I've set Thranduil's birth year as 306 of the First Age, in the spring. Thus, this fic took place in FA 340. 

 

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Thranduil feels ashamed.

He doesn't know what causes him to feel it so keenly - why he feels as if he's been caught in a shameful act, or broken a law. Perhaps it is the look in his father's eyes - veiled as always, subtle in their expression, but with a cool stillness that smacks of quiet judgment. It weighs heavy on him as he rises, bows neatly to Galion, and wordlessly approaches his father, who stands stern and straight in the middle of the pathway leading to the training fields. 

His face is not grim, but his manner is cold, as he takes Thranduil's hand in his and leads the both of them back down the path, towards Menegroth, leaving the march-warden behind, dumbstruck and dismayed. Thranduil wants to call back an assurance but he is silenced by his father's presence, and walks humbled beside him. Oropher towers over him, still dressed in the simple yet regal green robes of his council session. Thranduil subtly attempts to adjust his unkempt braid, his eyes ever on the straight sheet of blonde hair that falls down his father's back, slicked back from his face, adorned by a plain bronze circlet.

Tension fizzes through the air, but Thranduil cannot identify its root - is his father angry, or disappointed? Bemused, or incensed? Upset, or resigned? He cannot read him, and his young mind does not know him well enough to guess.

"Are you angry that I'm spending time with the march-wardens?" asks Thranduil quietly, for anger this surely could be.

Oropher's stern face softens a mite. "No. But it displeases me to learn that yet again you're shirking your duties. You had a lesson with Daeron this afternoon."

Thranduil says nothing.

"Not every elfling is so privileged as to have such a learned tutor,” Oropher insists. "You must make the most of your opportunities."

"But…" Thranduil hesitates. His last thought at this moment is to displease his father any further - but ever has his tongue found issue with restraint when he is in disagreement with someone else. "But Daeron is so sentimental," he says quickly.

Oropher looks down at him, eyebrows raised, eyes yet unreadable. "He is a minstrel," he says, with an air of the obvious. "Sentiment is their province. I admit I would have thought you more likely to complain of boredom. What does he speak of?" 

His tone is hardly disapproving, and Thranduil can't discern the look in his father's eyes. Thus, his voice is clearer and steadier when he replies, "Of the beauty of Lady Luthien."

"Many people speak of it," says Oropher, turning away. "Beauty is a common muse for the artist." 

"But you don't see him," insists Thranduil, because he does. Daeron doesn't school his emotions like the ellyn of the court. They are set down in his face as clear as the letters and melodies wrought by him daily. It is not reverence in the ellon's voice, but adoration. "I truly believe he loves her ada." 

Thranduil falls silent. Ada. The word comes naturally, but somehow doesn't roll off his tongue with the same ease as nana. 

They walk in silence for a time, and Thranduil's hand feels hot in his father's. He has an urge to sprint from his grasp and run to his room and lie beneath the covers, reading some lay of bold deeds and exotic climes to forget about this unsolvable riddle walking next to him.

"Such things are beyond the realm of your concern," says Oropher at last. "Think not of it. We cannot readily make others cease actions we dislike, but we can overcome them to an extent." 

"How?"

"Simply assert your position."

"What does assert mean?"

"Present your view with conviction. Tell him firmly that you'd rather speak of letters than fair Luthien." 

"But I wouldn't rather speak of letters, really." That comes out too hastily, and Thranduil swiftly averts his eyes. 

His father fixes him with a firm look that causes Thranduil's breath to hitch in his throat. "What would you rather speak of?" he asks.

He doesn't wish to answer, but his father's glare compels him to. “There are many beautiful things in the forest," he mumbles, with distinct reticence. "The deer; the earth. But there’s darkness beyond it. I know that. So I want to know how to keep the beautiful things. How to rid the forests of evil. How the great kings won their battles. How the wardens mark the borders." 

His father sighs, and Thranduil is certain he's overstepped a bound here, beyond what he has already done. And what has he done? What has he done that feels so criminal? A quiet anger sits latent in his gut. 

"You want to preserve goodness," observes his father, almost wearily. "I will not say that is naive - perhaps simply innocent." Thranduil does not understand what he means - his father almost seems to be speaking to himself - but he doesn't press.  

“The wars of kings are necessary in its preservation, Thranduil," continues Oropher. “They are not the only way, however. You must know that. What you learn in your lessons - what I have been trying to teach you - is that you need your swords in equal measure to skills of a decidedly less confrontational manner." 

And Thranduil knows then - or has the inkling of knowing - that his father will never cease condemning his constant forays into the lifestyle of the march-wardens. 

"I can already read and write," he says in defiant response. "What more do I need to know? 

"Composition. The structuring of words in pleasing phrases. Presence. Command of voice." Oropher speaks simply but with great power in his speech. Each word feels like a blow against Thranduil's ears, his heart rate keeping pace with them. 

His mouth is dry, but he swallows, and hits back once more. "To what end?" he mumbles. 

Oropher is silent for a moment. "I simply wish you to succeed in any field," he says at last - measured and veiled to the end. 

And Thranduil knows it then, without a doubt, that the uncertainty in his gut matches the truth of Galion's words - there will be no support from here to go into the forest, as he wishes. Oropher wants to school his son in mental tact and wisdom rather than swordsmanship, in the ways of the court rather than the ways of the woods. That in drawing him away from the fields to the studies, his father places a future with the march-wardens lower than second place. And that goes irreconcilably against the grain of Thranduil’s heart. 

"Why does this trouble you so?" asks Oropher, obviously sensing his son's disquiet. 

"It doesn’t,” he asserts, holding his father’s eyes. At last the veil over them cracks, just a tad, and disapproval slips through.

"You've yet to school yourself in the art of lying through your teeth," he hisses instead.

The words bite Thranduil, and he feels sickly cold. He keeps his mouth tight shut, angry and dismayed, as they re-enter Menegroth. Oropher passes the two guards without any sign of acknowledgment. 

"I will bring you for what remains of your lesson," says Oropher, his voice stiff. "You may try and enjoy what you can, and attempt to remedy that which you do not. I will neither do nor advise any more." 

"Yes, father," says Thranduil. He doesn't ask his father how the council meeting passed. He doesn't tell him stories of watching Galion hit the centre of the target. He doesn't mention the necklace Caladwen is wearing today. Rather, he kicks himself internally for laying down in the face of Oropher's detached and unflinching authority. What sort of would-be march-warden succumbs to fear? 

Yes, would-be march-warden. He would not deny his heart from that hope. If he could not be certain of himself, he would at least allow certainty to be the guise that others understood. 

---

That evening, he lies ensconced in his silken bedsheets, staring at the ceiling. A thousand angry, upset thoughts swarm his mind, rendering him still where he lies. Sleep has eluded him since he'd lain down, and shows no signs of coming any moment soon. His room is darkened, the candles doused by Caladwen’s gentle hand an hour ago. His door remains unlocked and ajar, an old habit from when he was younger. Oropher had tried to phase it out; Caladwen had never acquiesced.  

A shadow cuts the dim candlelight in the hall for a moment, and Thranduil sits up. He slips carefully out from between his sheets. The stone floor is cool beneath his feet, but he doesn’t bother to don his indoor boots, even though he knows Caladwen would fuss over his cold toes. He moves soundlessly to the door, and with one delicate finger, widens the gap and peers out.  

His room is near the end of the corridor, which opens out to the sitting room of their family’s private quarters. Only half the room is visible, but within he can see his mother's silhouette, framed by the golden glow of the fire, her hair cast in shadow hues of purple. Her head is turned to the side, and she is speaking.  

"I appreciate that we need to discipline him. But don't tear him so harshly away from what he loves, Oropher." 

Thranduil quails back as his father's shape passes across the hall from the room's other side. He sighs heavily, a goblet in his hand, and sits down beside Caladwen.  

She places a gentle hand on his bowed head. “What has become of you, meleth?”  

“Doriath is sick,” he says, his voice hollow and more despairing than Thranduil has ever heard it. “King Thingol is good, but I fear he is mistaking complacency for pragmatism. If darkness should rise again, we will not be ready for it. He believes that by shutting out the world, he is doing us a service.” 

“He’s doing what works best for our lands right now,” Caladwen placates. “The isolation has not harmed us. We have been able to raise a son. Can you imagine if he’d been born just a few hundred years ago?” 

“He wasn’t. We decided not to for the exact reason-” 

“Can you imagine?”    

Silence. “He would have died on the front.” 

A chill slides down Thranduil’s spine, and he for a moment he steps back from the door. Death - he has never known this elusive thing. He’s heard it mentioned of the Edain, those mortals with barely long enough to see the world. But he has never seen it. He does not know what this ‘death’ is. To hear his father say such a thing - that it could have happened to him - to lie still in the earth like an aged Edain - that an elf could succumb to the darkness and depart this world for Mandos - could such a thing have ever been? Could the world have ever been so dark, that the light of the Eldar could be so easily snuffed out? 

He steps close again to the light as his mother speaks again. 

“Exactly.” Her eyes soften in the firelight. "If our world changes, then it will be your duty, and the duty of the other councillors, to work with him, advise him, and find a solution. ’Til then, why do you let yourself by eaten away by worry? The Girdle -” 

“-is not infallible,” Oropher says. “It will not last forever, and neither will the peace.” 

“Then you cross that bridge when you come to it. You are not the king, Oropher,” she says firmly. “I wish you would stop taking on all these burdens.” 

“Somebody has to,” Oropher insists. “Even with the wisdom of Melian by his side, he has made mistakes. He cannot be alone in spending every hour thinking of how to protect a kingdom built on a fragile peace.”  

He turns his head, and Thranduil can see his eyes at last, bright in the firelight. “That’s why I want him away from the borders, you know,” he whispers.

Caladwen shakes her head and drops her eyes. “Meleth-nîn…” 

“When it happens - and it will happen - I want him to be here, using his intelligence to counsel how to defend the city, rather than out there, to face the swords and spears and arrows.”  

“And how would he feel?” she says. “You think you’d be sparing him. But you know as well as I, that even if he somehow agreed to be active in the court, the moment any war started, he would find a sword and sneak out.” 

Oropher is silent, not denying it. A bittersweet feeling wraps round Thranduil’s heart. That his mother knows him so well. That his father - all his coldness, his anger, his dismay - it was fear. Thranduil didn’t have to like it - but now, somehow, in some small way, he understands his father, just a little bit.  

Oropher lays against Caladwen’s shoulder, looking more tired than he ever has. She kisses the top of his head, the fire flickering in her eyes, setting light to the worry and sorrow in them. 

Suddenly, Oropher stirs. “You’re wearing the necklace.” 

“Yes,” says Caladwen, looking down at him with a love that makes Thranduil’s own heart clench. 

“I’d forgotten how beautiful you look with it." 

They fall silent, the sadness banished, for the moment, from Caladwen’s eyes. 

Thranduil backs away from the door, and silent as a mouse, crawls back under the covers, burying his head in his pillow, shutting his eyes, and pulling the sheets over him despite the stuffiness.

Some hours later, however many hours later, he senses his door opening. He keeps his eyes tight shut, his eyelids lit by the faint light from the hall. A delicate hand, rough from pinpricks, ghosts over his cheek, then pulls the sheets down, letting the cool air touch his face. Suddenly, the hand on his cheek is smooth - the hand of a scholar, a councilman. He feels the lightest, gentlest kiss on his temple. Then, the quietest footsteps depart from his bedside. He opens his eyes just a crack, in time to see Oropher leaving the door slightly ajar, enough for the light to come through.