Desmemoria by UnnamedElement

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Felted Acorns

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The Elvenking’s Halls
Northern Mirkwood, T.A. 1752

“Legolas.”

The child kicked his feet where he lay on the rug in the center of the sitting room, painstakingly copying letters from a ledger to a cut of dark cloth laid out before him. He dropped his head into a hand in utter concentration and did not look up. He continued to hum as he worked, and his cheek was streaked with the chalk with which he wrote, for he had not suffered to sit for braiding that morning and had been swiping at the locks of unbound hair that fell occasionally against his nose all afternoon.

Thranduil drummed his fingers on the table and watched him work.

“Emlineg.”

The child shifted and moved his hand to hold the cloth still as he started on the next line. The small chalk handprint on his forehead shone in bright contrast to his tawny skin, all darkened further by the room’s dim light for—outside the window cut into the face of the mountain—a mighty storm raged, and Thranduil had not bothered to light the lamps.

And, again, Legolas did not bother to answer him. Thranduil crossed his legs and tried again.

“Legolas.”

A glance this time, but without picking up his hands from his task. He looked back down and finished the gentle swoop on the last letter, and then finally dropped the chalk and looked up at his father, young eyes wide and dark as winter dawn as he waited. His feet finally stilled on the rug behind him.

“You have been busy today,” Thranduil observed after the child had settled.

“I want to write my name.”

“Which one?”

“Legolas,” the child answered simply.

Thranduil pushed back his chair as his son clambered up from where he lay, pulling up his knees to his chest, and he crouched down beside him, ran a finger lightly down the uneven edge of one of the letters. “You are so close, son.”

“I know!” He beamed, and Thranduil could not help but smile.

“But it is time for supper, so put away your letters, please.”

Legolas moved quickly this time, and he rolled his chalk within his sheet of cotton, glancing at his father and beginning to babble as he folded it away. Thranduil nodded along absentmindedly until his child tugged at his sleeve and repeated a question he had, obviously, missed.

“Why is it called that, Father?”

Thranduil blinked. “Why is what called what, emlineg?”

Legolas lifted the multiply folded and rolled cloth in his hands and waved it as he asked:

“Why are these ones called Feanorian letters?”

Thranduil raised eyebrows in surprise before taking the tools from his son’s small hands and tucking them away behind a stack of books on a sidetable. He pulled his child into his lap and began to stand.

“They are called that because they are not Cirth, Legolas. The script you are learning is called Feanorian, though—here—we generally call it Tengwar.” 

“Oh.”

The child’s fingers had begun a busy but mindless exploration of the embroidery at Thranduil’s collar, and Thranduil made a grab for Legolas’ abandoned sweater while he was occupied, before pulling it none too gently over his head. He threaded loose limbs through sleeves before the child could register what was happening. His youngest was sometimes slightly… feral, and surprise tended to cow his impulsive responses more than anything else.

“Now,” Thranduil said casually as they headed out the door. “ I have a question for you , Legolas.”

Legolas spat disheveled hair out of his mouth. “Yes? What is it?”

His son had hooked a finger in the space behind a button and tugged as he looked up, and Thranduil looked away when he paused to lock the door behind them.

“Where did you hear it called Feanorian, child?” he finally asked, turning the key.

“Oh!” Legolas exclaimed immediately, and his face lit like the sun, seemingly proud of himself for knowing the answer to even a single question his father might ask. Thranduil sometimes forgot how frustrating it must be to be not only the youngest in a family but—very nearly—the youngest in a realm... “Galion!” the child continued. “When he helped me find chalk this morning.”

“Ah,” Thranduil murmured, and he propelled himself into motion, and they walked in silence for a moment.

Legolas kicked his legs against him and watched the lamps on the wall flicker. The silence did not last long, however, for by the time Thranduil was reaching for the door leading out of the family wing into the community halls, Legolas had tugged hard at the button behind which his finger was hooked and asked directly:

“But, Father, what does Feanorian mean?”

Thranduil was tired and hungry and, if he were honest, he was in no way prepared for the request of such a history lesson, but Legolas blithely continued, brows pinched in thought: 

“Is Feanorian… Is it like when Mother calls your Oropherion?”

Thranduil dropped his hold on the door’s and shifted Legolas from his hip to his front so he could look him in the face. “No, child. Fëanor is someone’s name.”

“Oropher is someone’s name!” 

“Yes, but it is a different—” Thranduil cleared his throat and tried very hard not to sigh. His son had too many questions today, and Thranduil had never particularly enjoyed the details of grammar. “Never mind that, emlineg . Fëanor, however, is the name of the person who made the letters you are learning.”

The child’s face lit again, this time with curiosity and excitement. “Fëanor made the whole of the languages? The whole of Sindarin and Woodland?”

“No, no,” Thranduil murmured, and he finally pushed the door open with a shoulder and carried him into the corridor, casting a smile at one of his counselors as she passed them. “He made the script we write them in. Our people made their own languages; we just use his letters to help us record it.”

“Oh.”

Thranduil ducked behind a tapestry into a winding side corridor, unconsciously catching Legolas’ wrists up into a hand before he could grab at the hanging behind them. In the whoosh of wind that followed, the child laughed and commented:

“Fëanor must have been very smart.”

Thranduil nodded and said simply, “He was very smart, child.”

They were out the other end of the side passage and into the bustling front halls now, wide and high, well-carved and bright. Thranduil nodded to his folk with smiles as he passed but kept his head  purposefully inclined toward his youngest to indicate he was occupied.

“Mother says this script—Feanorian, Tengwar— Mother says that it cannot hold all of our sounds. One day, I will maybe make a language of letters that is better for our tongue than Fëanor's.”

“Perhaps you will.”

They were at the main dining hall, and Thranduil peered inside before stepping back to lean against a column, shoulder blades flush with the pillar and hips popped out to balance his son on his abdomen. They would wait for Gwaerain before going in.

Legolas leaned back into the cradle of Thranduil’s arms so his father was, for him, a seat. Thranduil raised an eyebrow wryly, for the child was considering him cautiously.

“I should like to learn about him.” Thranduil tilted his head and opened his mouth to speak, but Legolas continued: “About Fëanor. I think I will ask Galion.”

“You will not,” Thranduil said smoothly. “Besides, child, we do not have books on him in the archives. Fëanor is very old.”

Legolas lifted small hands in frustration and dropped them emphatically onto the patterns of felted acorn sewn onto the chest of his sweater.

“And so are you!” he protested. “So why do we not have them?”

Thranduil did not immediately respond, and he was vaguely aware of streams of elves filing past him into the hall as he considered his son. His grey eyes were wide and imploring, so much like his own mother’s, and there was an intelligence there that had always shown through but was—ever more, every day —becoming more pronounced. There were pieces of the puzzle shifting, now, in his child’s ever-busy mind, and Thranduil did not particularly like that, for this precious child was aging before him and—one day—his own curiosity would propel him out of safety and into the world and its people, its histories…

Thranduil shifted Legolas slightly so he could use one hand to take up his son’s before those fingers started picking at the stitching around the felt.

“Remember how I told you,” he said quietly then, and he watched Legolas’ face carefully as he proceeded, “how your grandfather and grandmother and I ran from Doriath, when I was young?”

Legolas nodded, and his hand stilled immediately within Thranduil’s.

“The books about Fëanor were there,” he said simply. Legolas’ lips parted as his brows scrunched once more. “And in our flight we could not take them.”

“Oh.” There was a subtle nod, then, just enough that one dark-honey curl slipped from the neckline of his sweater to bounce against his nose.

A brown hand cut into Thranduil’s vision, and he looked up with a smile as his wife brushed the lock from Legolas’ face and tucked it behind an ear. The child raised his arms and Thranduil transferred him to Gwaerain, who immediately pressed a gentle kiss upon his brow. Thranduil did not quite meet his wife’s eyes though he felt her heavy gaze, inquiring. He cleared his throat and closed the topic for the evening, dropping a heavy heavy hand on the small of Legolas’ back.

“When you are older, emlineg, there are bards here who can tell you the tale of Fëanor and his folk, far better than I.”

Gwaerain shifted and looked at Thranduil sharply, and Thranduil met her eyes this time with a sad smile.

“When I am older...” Legolas said thoughtfully, trailing off.

“When you are older,” Thranduil repeated.

Thranduil stepped away from mother and son and swept out an arm magnanimously, eyes purposefully teasing as he ushered Gwaerain in before him. As they entered the hall, Legolas’ chin was resting on his mother’s shoulder, and he was watching his father carefully as Thranduil followed. 

Thranduil stepped closer to ruffle his son’s hair and break the spell, but Legolas spoke so suddenly than he nearly froze:

“Because Fëanor was a very smart man. That is why I must wait until I am older. So I can understand him.”

Thranduil could not answer and only brushed a long hand down his son’s cheek as he fell into step beside his wife. Over the low murmur of evening conversations, Thranduil heard Gwaerain speaking for him:

“Yes, child,” she assured their son. “It is something like that.”

Their other children greeted them as they approached their usual table at the front of the hall, and their daughter Felavel swept Legolas from Gwaerain’s arms and spun him about before settling him on her hip dramatically. Her golden hair was braided neatly back, but a cut on her cheek was irritated and red, her uniform torn on one side and unwashed—she had come straight from the woods. Their eldest, Lumornon, bent to kiss his mother’s cheek, and then he had taken Legolas from Felavel and situated him on his customary pillow between the two siblings, so he could reach the table.

Thranduil sat down beside Gwaerain, reaching for the decanter of wine before he had even settled, but his wife pressed a goblet into his hand and met his eyes warmly. She laid a hand on his thigh under the table, and turned her attention quite fixedly to the children, beginning to ask Lumornon about his delegations; Felavel about her schedule; and Legolas about his twice-damned letters...

Thranduil sent a prayer of thanks to whatever Vala was still listening, an ode to the sensitivity of his wife, an ode to her beauty and intelligence, an ode to the grief that had brought him her—his joy—and these children that they shared between them.

Across the table, Legolas was showing Lumornon how to make the first letter of his name—“Both our names!”—using pickled green beans.

Felavel was laughing, and Thranduil smiled over the rim of his wine glass, and let the world move on around him.

.o.

Later that night—long after Legolas had gone to bed—Thranduil lay on the sofa in their sitting room, arm cast across his eyes.

Gwaerain sat close at his hip.

“He cannot find out like Felavel did,” she said kindly.

“That is why our people’s accounts are locked away elsewhere, now,” Thranduil answered tiredly. “Instead of on the shelves… Not that it went particularly well before when we explained it to Lumornon ourselves, either,”

Gwaerain grimaced. “We have made mistakes.” Thranduil did not reply, so she pushed ahead: “You know he will ask Galion, Thranduil. Our child might be a whirlwind—a rambling vine of wild honeysuckle, as you call him—but he is exceptionally aware of himself and the people around him... He will immediately target those he thinks most likely to satisfy his curiosity while providing the least resistance.”

Thranduil sighed and kneaded his forehead. “Galion will not answer him if even he asks. I have told him not to.”

Thranduil opened his eyes to see Gwaerain shrugging casually. “Then he will ask Thelion, Thranduil. He knows your confidantes.”

“Gwaerain…”

“ Oropherion …” she immediately countered, and Thranduil huffed a laugh.

She took his hands in hers and tugged him until he sat straight and tall beside her.

“I have told you how, last month at the Long Lake,” she said gently, “Legolas asked me why he looks different from his friends, why the elves of his home are more varied than the groups of Men he sees in the settlements around us. He is thinking big thoughts, Thranduil, and we must be prepared for his difficult questions.”

“He does not look different from his friends,” Thranduil muttered under breath.

“Forest-brown, like my kin, and gold as sunshine, like yours?” she asked incredulously, and she swallowed a laugh at Thranduil’s immediate look of chagrin. “The only one in this entire forest that looks like him is his sister.”

“Aye, yes.”

“Ignorance does not suit you, my star.”

Thranduil sat in silence beside her, let himself think as she twisted a lock of his hair about a finger before tucking it out of the way. Finally, she leaned into the couch beside him.

“You must find a way to tell him. Otherwise, he will hear it from someone else.”

Thranduil did not answer and Gwaerain sighed.

“Thranduil, please—”

His face flushed and he lowered his eyes, raised one hand to silence her. She did not usually heed such motions, but tonight…

Several moments of pregnant quiet expanded between them before Thranduil broke the tension.

“Our son is not old enough, Gwaerain,” he managed between clenched teeth, “to know his father is also a kinslayer—”

His voice rose without meaning to, and he closed his eyes against the sound.

“—and I will not suffer my hand being forced in this—”

(His heart was full of sorrow, his son, the last child to hold him in unmarred esteem—)

“Legolas is a child!” he finished roughly.

He ached.

There was silence for less than a moment before Gwaerain grabbed his hands with an unrestrained violence and shook him hard, forced his eyes to hers as she hissed, “And little more than that were you!”

“I was not a—”

“Quiet,” she said cuttingly. “Quiet.”

Thranduil fell silent and let her hold his hands tightly.

“You were a child compared to what you are now. You were a child compared to even Lumornon. No one holds it against you. Kill or be killed—I am not so wholly ignorant of those vaunted histories.”

Thranduil met her dark hazel gaze steadily and swallowed down the overused words.

There was a full minute of silence between them this time. Both sat stiffly, leaning in toward one another without the need for spoken word. Finally, Thranduil inclined his head to her in acquiescence and—a moment later— he laced their fingers together and deflated.

He leaned back into the sofa so he pressed up against her.

“I would be a fool to accuse you of ignorance,” he finally said lightly.

Gwaerain’s responding laughter was shafts of summer light on the shadows of his soul.