nightmares by Fernstrike

nightmares

Legolas had screamed so loudly that Thranduil was certain most of the palace wing had to have woken up. He crouched by the bed, holding Legolas’s hands and brushing the hair back from his round face that was red from crying and shouting.

“Ai! Ai! A balrog, ada! A balrog!” he wept. “It’s under my bed and it wants to eat me!”

“What happened?” Avornel gasped, wrapping a shawl round her shoulders as she breezed through the doorway and came to sit on the bed, bundling their son in her arms.

“He had a nightmare,” Thranduil explained.

“Wasn’t-!” Legolas hiccupped. “It was in the room and it growled at me!”

Thranduil glanced over at the bedside table and stifled a sigh. The scrolls from Legolas’s history lessons on Gondolin lay unfurled on the floor where they had fallen. His candle had burned down, which meant he must have drifted off while reading them, despite Thranduil’s gentle warning while tucking him in earlier that such stories would be better read in the morning light.

“It’s under the bed, you said?” he asked, turning his attention back to Legolas. The elfling nodded with a loud sniff. Avornel raised an eyebrow and Thranduil returned her skepticism with a wink, reaching over to roll the scrolls up into a baton.

Legolas stared at him with wide eyes. “What are you going to do?”

“Kill it, of course. Then no balrogs will bother you ever again.” He peered into the peaceful darkness under the bed, recognising for a moment how ridiculous this would look to anyone except the three of them, and knowing how little he would care if it meant his son felt safe enough again to go back to sleep.

“Ada,” Legolas whispered suddenly.

Thranduil popped his head back over the side of the bed. “What is it, little leaf?”

“You should tie up your hair first.”