A Web of Stars by Idrils Scribe

"The Silvan Elves were hardy and valiant, but ill-equipped with armour or weapons in comparison with the Eldar of the West; also they were independent, and not disposed to place themselves under the supreme command of Gil-galad. Their losses were thus more grievous than they need have been, even in that terrible war... Oropher was slain in the first assault upon Mordor, rushing forward at the head of his most doughty warriors before Gil-galad had given the signal to advance. Thranduil his son survived, but when the war ended and Sauron was slain (as it seemed) he led back home barely a third of the army that had marched to war."

Unfinished Tales, History of Galadriel and Celeborn

Amon Lanc, the year 109 of the Third Age.

Haldir loosed a sharp hiss of annoyance as he wrenched a finger beneath his collar. His livery was so new that the starched velvet still chafed his throat as he paced the royal antechamber. The stuffed head of a great warg snarled down at him from the wall.

A lock’s subtle click was his only warning, and he had barely straightened his clothes before the doors of Amon Lanc’s great hall were thrown open.

A black-clad herald smote his silver-shod rod of office against the tiles. “Haldir son of Ardil, envoy of Lord Celeborn of Lórien!”

After the twilit antechamber, the hall’s brightness was dazzling. High windows bathed the vaulted space in light. Beneath Haldir’s feet water sang in a rill amidst tiles shaped like many-coloured flowers. High up in the white arches of the ceiling, living birds twittered from branches carved of stone. 

Amidst such lavish beauty, Thranduil Oropherion stuck out like an inkstain. His robes were fine silk from Khand, but they were of deepest obsidian and wholly unadorned. Thranduil’s pale face and the spun gold of his hair looked strangely out of place against the sombre raiment. Even his crown was austere, a circlet of braided leafless boughs.

Haldir wavered; he had not expected to find Greenwood's court still in mourning. Their losses at the Last Alliance had been great and grievous, but that slaughter was a long-year past — surely the grief had somewhat faded?

But no. In Thranduil’s eyes stood that same desperate sorrow Haldir witnessed just after Oropher’s death. The king was all spikes and edges, hard and sharp. Fury shone from him like light glinting off a blade.

There was nothing for it but a bow, formal with a studied flourish, his heart leaping in his chest as he struggled to master his voice. “Greetings, sire! I bear a message from Lord Celeborn.” 

“Then read it.” Thranduil’s voice was flat, but his eyes burned. About him the knot of black-garbed courtiers withdrew and coalesced until they formed a near-circle, as if watching a duel.

Somewhere above Haldir’s head, a nightingale flapped from her perch with a wild rustle of wings. He found his fingers suddenly stiff, struggling with the scroll’s silk ties. Gilded runes danced before his eyes, and it was all he could do to recall the address he had so carefully learned by heart. 

“To his highness Thranduil Oropherion, King of the Greenwood, salutations!”

Thranduil’s face betrayed nothing. 

Haldir cleared his throat, then read on. “The Lord Celeborn son of Galadhon and Lady Galadriel daughter of Finarfin ...” 

Thranduil’s mouth twisted, as if something repulsive had crawled before his feet. 

“... have the honour and pleasure of inviting you to the wedding of their daughter Celebrían to Elrond son of Elwing. The feast shall be held at … ”

“Silence!” Thranduil stood, his eyes wild. “This … this Half-Golodh stood by as our people were slaughtered. Is Celeborn so quick to forgive, that he whores out his daughter to a kinslayer?!”

Haldir opened and closed his mouth, torn between his diplomatic mission and the Lady Celebrían’s honour. If any reply existed that might salvage both, he could not think of it.

Quick as a striking hawk, Thranduil leapt to snatch the scroll from Haldir’s hand. He balled the precious vellum with twisting motions, as were he strangling some small creature. The gilding flickered madly in the hall’s bright light. A sharp flick of his wrist and the clump landed in one of the braziers lining the hall. 

Black smoke curled up, and soon the stench of burning skin stood thick in the air.

Haldir would have leapt to rescue the precious document, but Galion’s hand landed heavily on his shoulder. “Do not vex him further, lad,” he breathed into Haldir’s ear.  

Thranduil paid them no heed. “Let Celebrían wed the usurper, if she must! I have not the stomach to go and watch.”

Galion stretched forth his hands, palms up in a pleading gesture, but then thought the better of it and stopped short of actually touching his king. “Sire, surely you wish to extend some—”

“This is the whole of my reply,” Thranduil cut off his castellan. He breathed deeply, and his sudden calm as he addressed Haldir was unnerving. “See that you pass it on.”

Forest Mountains, the year 1000 of the Third Age.

Even in high summer, morning mists swirled between the dark boles of fir and spruce on the slopes of the Forest Mountains. Dawn was not long past, and beams of slanted sunlight cut the hazy forest into long slices of gold and palest pink. 

Arwen’s mare shook her head in annoyance as dew pearled in the strands of her mane. The steep climb had the horse sweating under her cloth-of-silver caparison, and her discomfort only served to deepen her rider’s unease. 

Arwen turned in her saddle to look back the way they had come. Their company had now climbed high enough that she could discern the white-capped peaks of the Misty Mountains in hazy blue distance beyond the Great River. Nestled at their feet sparkled a hint of gold that could only be Lórien’s mallorn trees in bloom. 

Ahead, the Greenwood’s dense canopy pressed upon the land, a blanket of tightly woven branches broken only by the height of Amon Lanc to the south. The forest appeared as stern and unwelcoming as its people. Even more so up here in the Forest Mountains, where gnarled pines and spruce clung to craggy rocks instead of the merry stands of oak and beech of the lower elevations.

Arwen turned to face forward, and up. A great riding filled the steep road that heaved its winding way to Thranduil’s mountain halls. Before her eyes, the column unrolled in an orderly arrangement, coloured blocks of riders moving uphill in rows straight as spears. The vanguard was Celeborn’s personal guard, garbed in grey and riding under the ancient winged moon banner of Doriath. In their tracks followed Arwen’s own people, in the silver and midnight of the House of Eärendil. They flew Elrond’s banner, but also that of Lúthien, bright yellow elanor upon a field of cornflower blue. 

The company blazed in the morning sunlight: Celeborn had not been aiming for subtlety when he outfitted his honour guard for this embassy to the Greenwood. The Lord of Lórien had set the bar high, and the craftspeople of Imladris had ensured that Elrond’s daughter raised it just enough to remind the Silvans who had the better jewellers and armour-smiths. 

Celeborn and Arwen had set out from Lórien seven days before in the company of King Amroth, but the King and his retainers had remained behind at the crossing of Anduin. This last one in a string of ill-fated attempts to reestablish diplomatic relations between Thranduil and the High Elves — so utterly destroyed by Oropher’s tragic death in the Last Alliance — was entirely Celeborn’s endeavour. 

Thus far, the signs were ill. No delegation had awaited them at the forest’s edge, nor was there any trace of the Greenwood’s inhabitants. Their path had crossed the ancestral lands of several Silvan tribes, but eerie silence blanketed every glade and dell. It was abundantly clear that none of Thranduil’s subjects desired to greet their king's visitors. 

Arwen’s mithril coat of mail sat heavily on her shoulders when she turned towards her grandfather. “Perhaps the Wood-elves take offence at us sparkling like a magpie’s hoard?” 

Celeborn shook his head before she had even finished speaking. “The king of Greenwood is no Wood-elf,” he lectured, for what had to be the tenth time. 

Arwen’s knuckles clenched white about her pommel as she pressed down her irritation — when would he stop seeing her as a child to be instructed?  

“Thranduil was raised at Elu Thingol’s court,” Celeborn continued, blissfully unaware of his granddaughter’s annoyance. “He has an eye for finery, and he is easily offended. If you arrived looking drab, Thranduil would complain that Elrond thinks so little of his court that he did not bother to turn his daughter out in state.” 

Celeborn reached over to straighten a wrinkle in the blue silk of Arwen’s surcoat so the drape fell in shimmering perfection around her shoulders. His face grew soft, and for a moment he seemed lost in memories of some other dark-haired princess. This, too, happened annoyingly often. Arwen was not Lúthien, whatever her grandfather might believe. 

Celeborn failed to sense the thought. “I agree that it is a fine line,” he rambled. “Too many geometric designs would bring your Noldorin side to mind. The king would throw you out on sight — remember his wedding invitation!” 

Arwen managed not to sigh. Here was a tale that had been told, retold and embellished to near-mythical proportions in Lórien and Imladris. Ancient histories, ever repeated. She smiled at her grandfather’s searching look, but it was a thin veneer. 

“Take ease, child,” Celeborn said in a soothing tone. “We struck the balance just right with your armour. You look like a princess of the Elder Days — but from Doriath, not Tirion.”

“Speaking of princes …” Appeasing Thranduil was but half Arwen’s appointed task, and she was rather looking forward to the second part. 

“Few outsiders have laid eyes on Prince Legolas,” mused Celeborn, “and even fewer have exchanged words of any substance with him. Thranduil seems determined to cloister his son among their Silvan folk.”

“Perhaps I will not meet him at all,” Arwen replied, suddenly doubtful.

Celeborn shook his head. “A recluse makes a poor king, as will a man whose Sindarin is so rarely used it bears a Silvan accent. Thranduil needs his heir to gain experience in diplomacy with the High-elves. You will present the perfect opportunity.”  

“And meanwhile I am to befriend this hermit prince.” Much remained unsaid, and yet the thought hung heavy in the air. The choice was hers, of course, but a marriage would be … opportune.

“You may find Legolas quite enthusiastic,” said Celeborn. “Thranduil keeps a formal court. Amon Lanc resembles Doriath of old more than Imladris, or even Lórien.”

Arwen raised her eyebrows. “Our princeling is sorely mistaken, if he expects a curtsy from me.” 

Celeborn chuckled. “You are your father’s image when you do that!” 

At her look of exasperation he grew serious once more. “Fear not. The exact order of protocollary precedence is debatable, given that Oropher chose to style himself a king while your father forsook that title. Nonetheless you are of Elu Thingol’s line, where their House is not. One can be said to cancel out the other.” Celeborn gave her a canny look. “You are likely the first equal Legolas has ever met.”

Nerves leapt in Arwen’s stomach, and suddenly she was glad of her grandfather's familiar presence. This place was nothing like home, and her old certainties meant little here.  

Now Celeborn did notice. “Thranduil is a grieving son,” he comforted, “not a fire-breathing dragon. In Lórien and Imladris we say Oropher’s wilfulness was to blame for his death, but perhaps that is but the comfortable half of the truth.” 

He once more laid his hand on Arwen’s shoulder. “Young hands are needed, to mend the rifts torn by the old.”   

“Thranduil’s march-wardens are good. I feel their eyes, but none are showing ...” Arwen abruptly fell silent to master her horse. The mare snorted and skitted beneath her, wild eyes showing white in the half-light beneath the trees. This forest was too strange for both their comfort. 

Celeborn’s stallion strode on, perfectly poised. “Practice makes perfect, child.” He pointed ahead, at their armed escort. “Follow Haldir’s gaze. He has been staring them down since we started the climb.”

The path turned sharply, and Arwen breathed the cool, humid air at the bottom of a cleft. Craggy walls draped in moss and little ferns rose high and steep, plunging the gorge in eternal twilight. A clear brook murmured downhill in a stony bed beside the path. On the banks grew dark pines with boughs reaching overhead, so the company rode as in a tunnel of green. 

The place had a watchful air, but none of Thranduil's invisible sentinels deigned to hail the Lord of Lórien or his granddaughter.   

Arwen scoffed. “Surely even Wood-elves think it boorish to …” She was cut off by a horn blast from above.

“Greetings, in the name of the king!” called a woman's voice. The hidden watcher spoke Sindarin, but with a heavy Silvan accent.

Celeborn knew her regardless. “Greetings, Captain Tauriel! Will the king not receive us?” he called out to the whispering roof of needles, clearly taken aback at being casually hailed like a Dwarvish toy-peddler.

In an eyeblink, what Arwen had thought a gnarled bough transformed into a russet head. A tall shape unfolded, and then a Silvan woman stood lightly on a branch overhead. Now Arwen spotted Tauriel’s company in the trees all along the path. 

For a welcome party, these Wood-elves were exceedingly well-armed. Tauriel and her warriors carried short, sinuous bows of wood and horn, quivers of birchwood arrows, and a pair of bone-handled long knives in sheaths on their backs. Their tunics and breeches were buckskin. 

Arwen thought of her brothers’ expertly forged mail, steel swords glittering at their side. Ai Valar! They have not a ringlet of mail between them. Small wonder they were slain in their thousands!

As if she could see Arwen’s mind - and had these people mastered that art? -  Tauriel looked straight at her. Her eyes were as green as the forest, and her face gave nothing away. She merely stood, perched at perfect ease, contemplating the High-elves below. Arwen stared back, in equal parts indignant and intrigued.

A trickle of fear ran down her spine: these Silvans were no true Avari, but nonetheless as wild as Eldar might get. How would they deal with unwelcome intruders, without the Laws of the Valar to temper their fey moods? 

“You are expected, Master Celeborn,” Tauriel spoke at last, holding Arwen’s gaze. “Follow me. The king awaits in his hall.”  

----

Thranduil’s herald smote the rod of his office against the many-coloured floor of the throne room. The silver-shod foot sent up a ringing note, high and sharp as a distressed bird. 

"Lord Celeborn of Lórien, kinsman of King Elu Thingol, Prince of Doriath!"

Celeborn stepped forward into the hall. Arwen waited, and willed herself not to raise a hand to smoothen the fall of her hair. The court of Eryn Galen was watching, and if Arwen’s heart was pounding and her throat choked with nerves, she would not have them notice. Elrond’s daughter, the Evenstar of Imladris, would not grant these provincials the pleasure.  

“Lady Arwen of Imladris, of the House of Elu Thingol!” 

Arwen straightened her shoulders, raised her chin and drew a lungful of air, heavy with pine-scent and perfume, and stepped forward. 

A strangely mixed crowd filled the hall. The Silvan courtiers wore dull greens and browns, the muted colours of buckskin dyed with pine needles and foxglove. One Silvan — a chieftainess, perhaps — wore a cloak of iridescent magpie feathers, a shimmer of richness amidst the drab, and Arwen held her pace to look. Then the woman turned to face her. Arwen would have recoiled if not for long years of courtly protocol. Her face bore strange swirls of tattoos. 

The Sindar were less alien, restrained in their classical Iathrin elegance: robes of that soft grey-blue of nightfall in winter, a lining of silver shimmering inside a robe of fine damask.  

Celeborn had waited for her, all poise and courtliness, and offered her his arm. Once side by side they picked up their pace. Before them the crowd parted, clearing a path to the throne. Heads turned to stare, both Sindar-silver and Silvan-brown. Together they advanced like a pair of warriors guarding each other’s flanks. 

Arwen did not dare look aside at the hard, closed faces lining the aisle. As they walked, a chill washed along the hall like a gust of cold wind bending the trees.

Thranduil’s throne room was truly vast. From the gilded doors to the dais at its end was a hundred paces at the least, and the distance seemed to lengthen with every step. When she reached out, Celeborn’s mind beside her was in turmoil. Then she understood, and felt her cheeks flush with the humiliation: Thranduil made them approach him like petitioners. 

Long ago, Celeborn had been the prince of vanished Doriath. He once sat in state on the dais in Menegroth’s great hall, but a single step below Thingol, Melian and Lúthien. Oropher was a mere courtier in those days, one of many, and Thranduil himself an untried youngling relegated to the galleries at the back. 

How satisfying it must be for Thranduil to have Prince Celeborn, wearing the very same circlet, now reduced to standing at his feet. A hot, throbbing anger on her grandfather’s account settled in the hollow beneath Arwen’s breastbone. 

The court watched Celeborn’s abasement in heavy silence. How many of these onlookers had once bowed before him, or taken his commands on the battlefield? Arwen did not look aside at her grandfather’s expression as they passed between the silent lines. 

She would not take her eyes from the king enthroned in state at the end of the hall. It seemed Thranduil was not unlike a bird of prey: one had to return his gaze without fear, or be bitten. 

An eternity of step after step, head held high, shoulders squared and eyes forward until she believed she had permanently frozen into the stiff posture. But then, at last, they stood before the dais. 

Thranduil’s cool stare lay heavy upon them. Crownless he was, his wheat-blonde hair bearing naught but a braided garland of bluebells and catkins. It seemed uncharacteristically modest. 

This king was no pauper, though. A carcanet of white jewels shone about his throat. The long drape of his mantle was that deep, wine-dark Númenórean purple imported from Far Harad, and it was trimmed with ermine. If Galadriel was the spring and Elrond summer, this king was autumn: rich perhaps, but cool and demanding like a reckoning come at feast’s end. 

There was no queen, nor even a throne where one might sit, but Thranduil was not alone. On the lower step of the dais stood a high-backed chair, where a prince clad in samite robes of state leant forward in his seat. One pale hand curled itself about the chair’s armrest, the other rose from where it had rested idly on the head of a slender hunting dog that lay curled beneath his chair.   

So this was the elusive Prince Legolas. Arwen knew she must not stare, but by Vána, he was handsome. A fine-boned face showing Sindar blood, broad archer's shoulders, his wheaten hair loose and unbraided, held back only by a circlet. And yet he looked so young beside his formidable father. 

Arwen tried to capture Legolas’ gaze, and he willingly obliged. First he looked startled, then he smiled, tentatively, but when Thranduil’s head turned to him he quickly looked away as if caught at some mischief. He looked quite sweet with colour rising in his cheeks.

“Hail, Thranduil Oropherion, King of the Woodland Realm!” Celeborn sounded calm, as were he addressing his dear friend Amroth. “I am honoured to find hospitality in your halls once more.” On his lips played a satisfied little smile, as if a long-held expectation of his had finally been fulfilled. Whatever this was, he had it planned. “I present to you my granddaughter Arwen, daughter of Celebrían and Elrond son of Elwing.”

Celeborn needed not speak the inevitable conclusion: heir of Díor, of Lúthien, of the House of Elu Thingol. 

Arwen took a deep breath, consciously drawing out her moment. Then, with all the court hanging on her every move, she bowed.  

That very bow, in the traditional style of Doriath, had been analysed and practised at least a hundred times, before Celeborn and his Doriathrim advisors, before Galadriel, Elrond and Celebrìan. Celeborn had requested even Erestor the Kinslayer’s opinion on precisely how deep one of the Children of Lúthien might curtsy before her father’s former retainer to avoid outright offence, while still reminding the upstart of who stood before him. 

She now bent her knee a hair’s breadth less deep, and shortened the elegant sweep of her arm. Let Thranduil glower. Arwen could face him.  

And indeed Celeborn’s scheming would have come to naught if not for Arwen’s face. Her hair had been braided back to expose it to best advantage from all angles. Every eye in the hall had come to rest on it, and a buzz like a hive disturbed rose from the crowd.

Younger Elves had called Elrond’s children beautiful, with sea-grey eyes and dark hair contrasting the smoothness of their fair skin. Those who once walked the halls of Menegroth would invariably gasp in shock at the uncanny resemblance to Lúthien Tinúviel. 

Behind Arwen's head the fall of her dark tresses draped her like a cloak. Few in this hall could look upon those strands of midnight without seeing that other princess, dancing in a starlit glade.  

Thranduil’s council now clustered around the dais, a tight knot of unreadable faces in richly dyed silks. And yet Arwen could tell exactly who among them was from Doriath and who was Silvan, or merely too young to have met Lúthien: the Iathrim all stood transfixed by memory.  

Beside the throne a venerable Sinda leaned over, her face half obscured by a waterfall of silver hair, to hiss into her neighbour’s ear. The man startled, then quickly prodded a third who stood frozen, caught in memory’s webs. On the dais, Legolas’ eyes widened as his father’s senior advisers broke protocol. 

For a mere heartbeat, Arwen stood transfixed beneath the weight of their gazes, their memories. She had been called Lúthien reborn before she was old enough to understand the terrible weight of her heritage: Lúthien Tinúviel, daughter of Melian the Maia; Lúthien, fairest of all the Children of Illúvatar; Lúthien, the greatest Singer among all the Sindar, who brought down the Morgoth in his own halls, and Sang Mandos into pity; Lúthien who alone among all the Eldar had passed beyond the world. It seemed too much for any living woman to live up to.

Thranduil’s face remained closed as a fortress besieged, but his fist closed tight and white about his oaken staff. 

Celeborn smiled like a contented cat and bowed, shallow and brief. He had outwitted Thranduil. Thranduil could not humiliate the Lord of Lórien with a living reminder of Thranduil’s oldest allegiance — and the ultimate source of his authority — standing within his very hall. 

Whispers swirled and seethed, sounds of wonder rising to the sculpted rafters.

Thranduil’s lips had gone white, so tightly did he press them together. He breathed in through his nose and let the breath out silently through a half opened mouth. Then the king caught himself and rose to greet his guests, his gaze fixed not on Celeborn but on Arwen. 

“Welcome to the Greenwood, daughter of Elrond. We look forward to making your acquaintance.”

In a great hall with pillars hewn out of the living stone sat the Elvenking on a chair of carven wood. On his head was a crown of berries and red leaves, for the autumn was come again. In the spring he wore a crown of woodland flowers. In his hand he held a carven staff of oak.

Chapter IX, Barrels out of Bond, The Hobbit

Chapter End Notes

Hello friends, and welcome to A Web of Stars!

This tale has been long in the making, and I'm very happy to finally share it with you. Arwen is definitely enjoying herself, but Celeborn's diplomatic mission seems off to a rocky start...
I'm usually more of a book fan, but I'll be sprinkling in a few elements from the Hobbit movies here and there. Tauriel is among them, but also Lee Pace's majestic interpretation of Thranduil. This scene was definitely written with that performance in mind. 

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the royal reception and the characters. A comment would make me a very happy scribe, and recs are very much appreciated.

See you next week!
Idrils Scribe.

"...at the head of a long line of feasters sat a woodland king with a crown of leaves on his golden hair."

Ch VIII, Flies and Spiders, The Hobbit.

 

Thranduil had prepared them the most splendid reception room of all. Great beeches spread their boughs like the arches of a vast hall, roofed in silver-green and carpeted with tiny white stars of thimbleweed. Sunlight filtered between the branches, painting the clearing gold and silver: a leaf-dappled lace of shade and leaping light. 

Arwen had arrived with her head held high and shoulders squared: the proud daughter of Imladris would show this arrogant Wood-elf no admiration. Before these beeches she nonetheless craned her neck and fell into silent awe. Greenwood was a place of ancient souls: not even the mellyrn of Lórien matched these trees’ untold age. She felt small, transient as a mayfly beneath their boughs.

Thranduil’s chair was set beneath the living canopy of a green branch. The king wore green for the feast, silver embroideries shimmering as he rose to greet his guests. By his side, at last, stood the missing Queen of the Greenwood. Arwen would have slowed to stare, and only Celeborn’s hand on the small of her back kept her moving. 

Queen Síloril’s beauty was that of her native forest: all shadows twined about glimpses of light, a suggestion of radiance never grasped. Her face was slender and sharp, with a leaf-shaped tattoo marking her for a loremistress. Her fall of chestnut hair had been braided with a myriad of small white orchids like strewn stars. She, too, wore a feather cloak, but unlike the sober ones Arwen had seen at court this was a feast of colour to dazzle the eye, a cloud of kingfisher-blue and robin-red veiling the queen in radiance. A thousand peacock-eyes flashed green as she moved.

“Welcome, daughter of Celebrían,” Síloril’s eyes were deep brown, but they pierced like Galadriel’s. Arwen wondered what the queen saw of her, and how old she was to be this skilled in ósanwe. 

Only then Arwen realised that none of her tutors taught her how one should bow to a Silvan Queen. 

“I am honoured, Your Highness,” she improvised, and turned to a simple curtsy. Síloril’s smile was enigmatic as ever. 

A wild boldness grasped her, and Arwen could not keep her curiosity in check. “Do you never sit beside your husband in his hall?”

It was a complete and utter breach of protocol. Celeborn’s look could have withered fresh flowers, but Síloril chuckled. “My people do not care for thrones and halls of stone. Those are for the benefit of our Sindarin visitors. Today you shall be received the Silvan way.” 

“Greetings, lady,” said a voice beside Arwen. She had been so absorbed in Síloril’s gaze that she was startled. 

Legolas, too, had donned a Silvan cloak for the feast, his hair braided with a crown of summer leaves. He looked tender beside his proud father in his kingly regalia. Only now did Arwen mark his mother’s Silvan blood in him — that softer line of the cheek, a trace of the Wood-elves’ quick, bird-like movements as he stepped swiftly to her side. Not exactly delicate, Arwen thought, strangely pleased, but elegant as a well-made sword. 

Síloril smiled. “Perhaps my son can properly introduce you to our people of the Greenwood.” 

A meaningful look passed between Thranduil and his queen. Clearly the Silvans had opinions about their king’s fondness of Sindarin court protocol. 

Celeborn chose that moment to step to the fore and greet their hosts. Arwen watched him advance, an image of Doriath’s ancient splendour. His tunic glimmered snow-white beneath a mantle of grey silk, a mithril torc at his neck. On his forehead shone an ancient gem carried from Menegroth. For a moment, his hand strayed to the winged-moon brooch at his throat, as if seeking support from the insignia of his long-dead king.

Away from his throne and seen from a level height Thranduil seemed more human, and where she had expected strangeness she found instead a shocking resemblance. Thranduil and Celeborn shared that sharp, fine-boned delicacy of their Doriathrin blood. 

Then she saw it. Thranduil, too, wore a winged moon on his breast. This was why Celeborn so desperately wished to have this man for a friend. Whatever their differences, these two were bound by their terrible loss. Thranduil met her eyes and for the first time since entering the wood she felt welcome. 

I did not know that he resembled you so, she thought at her grandfather.

In appearance only, Celeborn replied. Can you not tell how Silvan he has become? Look at his son!

Ah , the mysterious prince. Arwen smiled again and felt the knot of nerves in her stomach ease a little.

Celeborn stepped forward towards Thranduil and Síloril to begin his gracious speech of kinship and alliance. Arwen had listened to him rehearsing and refining it with his advisors for far too many evenings. Celeborn had called it a rhetoric lesson. As if she needed any more of those, growing up in the same house as Erestor. 

She kept her eyes on Legolas while she waited until Celeborn was in the middle of a sentence, and then thought, He looks gorgeous in tight breeches.

Celeborn’s stumble after his words was the greatest delight of the trip thus far.

Legolas must have noticed, because his eyes flashed with amusement, the ghost of a smile curling at the corner of his mouth. He decided to save Celeborn from further embarrassment, and held out his arm. “Would you like to join me for the festival, lady?”

Thranduil turned from his formal welcome to Celeborn to look his son in the eyes, and Arwen could tell what passed between them.  

Behave , that look said. 

Arwen’s gaze crossed Legolas’ with a new sympathy. She knew all about being kept on a short leash.

Legolas must be keen to be away from his parents’ eyes, and she could not blame him. As she took his offered arm, Celeborn eyed her with an expression remarkably like Thranduil’s: 

Behave . 

She smiled back. Always .

Beyond the wood a tree lined greensward lay verdant beneath the sun. The afternoon was warm and bright, and the grass underfoot was dotted with wildflowers — white and violet and gold. Gently stirred by the summer wind, they swayed around the Elves’ feet. Arwen inhaled their scent in the air, laced with the smoke of many bonfires. It seemed that the whole population of Greenwood, Sindar and Silvan both had gathered here. She wandered among them with mingled delight and unease. 

As she watched, gourds filled with a clear liquid were passed from hand to hand. The thrum of drums and flutes was so loud that the rhythm reverberated inside her chest. Every elf in Thranduil’s realm looked eager to dance and drink themselves into oblivion.

At home in Imladris a visiting prince would receive a solemn reception, with all the household bidding them welcome in the forecourt, followed by a formal dinner and several speeches. Arwen had expected Thranduil’s own version of the ceremony — a dignified state protocol — but if this wild revel was Greenwood's equivalent, then these Silvan Elves and their customs were far more alien than she ever expected.

Feeling lost, she let Legolas steer her to one of the fires, where a group of youngsters — and how did this place have so many young Elves? — were drinking and egging each other on to leap over the flames. She recognized Tauriel among them. 

Legolas was greeted with shouts and hugs — such a far cry from the court ceremony — clearly one of them. To her they crossed their arms in salute, the Sindar way. These Wood-elves  faced her inquisitive looks without fear, but with a certain bluster. 

Captain Tauriel — wearing buckskin breeches, some blue woad paint and little more — caught Arwen’s gaze and held it, unblinking. 

“The Greenwood welcomes you, Lady of Imladris.” 

Sindarin Elves might rule this land, but there was nothing submissive about this strange Silvan woman, from the proud line of her chin to the way she held her slender shoulders straight, without a trace of shyness about her barely covered chest. 

Her warrior’s tattoo was a prowling lynx, sinuously winding itself around her torso, every hair of its tawny summer coat sharply outlined against her pale skin. Warrior’s guild tattoos were an ancient tradition among both Doriath’s army and the Lindar war bands. Tauriel’s was wholly Silvan in both subject and style. It made her look even more alien.

Her smile was cat-like indeed. “Will you drink with her people?” she asked almost sweetly, and proffered the drinking gourd. 

Arwen hesitated, forcing herself to look at the liquor sloshing in the gourd in Tauriel's hands instead of her painted skin. A pungent, not entirely unpleasant scent wafted up, pine and juniper and some other herb she could not quite name. 

Legolas laughed. “Be kind to our guest, Tauriel! She has never tasted your brew before!”

Tauriel was unmoved. “Surely the Golodhrim teach their daughters to hold their liquor?”

Arwen hesitated. She was well used to wine, in proper amounts and always well-watered, but Elrond had never presented her with the golden liquid he poured her brothers on cold winter nights, in small crystal glasses. Nonetheless she returned the Wood-elf’s gaze and accepted the challenge.

She took a mouthful of the strong spirit. Alcohol vapour burst into the back of her nose, filling her sinuses with the burning essence of summer. Her eyes watered and she battled not to cough. Warmth spread through her throat and chest.

The Wood-elves laughed, but not in a bad way, and the atmosphere defused. Arwen had passed some sort of test. Now Tauriel’s smile reached her eyes, and on the gourd’s next pass she handed it to Arwen with a grand flourish. The world turned warm and golden after that one, and she was happy to stand by the fire, be introduced to Legolas’ friends, and listen to their drumming until her heartbeat seemed to mesh with their rhythm. 

Then a horn sounded, a series of short blasts, and order appeared in the scattered crowd.  A pattern sorted itself into orderly lines. These were military companies, and now they set themselves in clusters before a row of archery targets. Feasting and fighting lay close together, it seemed.

Garlands of flowers decorated the field and everywhere musicians and dancers roamed between the warriors. The scent of pies and sweets filled the air, and yet... This was no festival but a show of military strength, all but saying “Greenwood needs you Noldor no longer.”

“Do you shoot, Lady?” Legolas asked, almost casually. 

Arwen raised her chin and straightened herself. “I do.”

“Surely you will enjoy a friendly game of archery before we feast?” 

Arwen sensed another challenge. She had perhaps been less than wise to drink on every pass of the gourd, but that outrageous Wood-elf had dimples when he smiled. 

She rose to her feet with only the barest of wobbles, and surveyed their little group, noticing their wide, sweeping gestures and too-loud voices. She was hardly the drunkest person around. The Elves of the Greenwood certainly knew how to have some fun. 

“Agreed,” she replied, and noticed how Legolas’ nose crinkled when his smile grew wider. “Let me send for my bow.”

Haldir had been hovering nearby, but Legolas was quicker. “May I offer you mine, Lady?” 

He had a mischievous look as he held out a Silvan recurve bow, sculpted from layers of different woods and what looked to be horn, so different from the Noldorin longbows of Imladris. The wood was smooth and still warm from his grip. She caught his eye as she stroked her hand up the sinuous shape of the body. He swallowed audibly.  

With slow, deliberate movements she loosened the topmost button of her dress, just to give herself some freedom. Then she raised the bow, and drew.

“Lady, your dress …” Legolas deftly interrupted her before she could reach for an arrow. 

He was right: her billowing sleeves were like to be caught in the string, the precious cloth ruined. She suddenly felt foolish and pompous in her gown of satin and silk, a bodice stiff with embroidery in the silver and night-blue of her House. Heat rose in her cheeks and she cursed her own lack of foresight. She had picked this sumptuous dress to show herself to best advantage, but now that the day had turned out very different she could hardly go back to her rooms and change. 

“Allow me …” From some pocket, Legolas produced a ribbon. The afternoon sun was hot on her face as he tied back her sleeve, looping the silk around her arm. For a breathless instant his fingertips stroked the soft, pale inside of her forearm, and she shivered with the warmth of that touch. His fingers lingered a moment too long. His cheeks glowed — but perhaps that was the wine — and his gaze darted away when she sought his eyes.  

“Now, lady, I would see your skill.”

The first targets were stationary, and she easily struck the gold. There was a smattering of polite applause. 

Next they shot at billowing flags flown from high branches. She acquitted herself well. Celebrían had taught her this game, and taught her well, but the crowd was swelling, and Arwen felt a thrill of nerves. The Mirkwood bow was strange to her hand, and she wished she had her own. 

Legolas noticed, and at once turned to her. “It seems I am enjoying an unjust advantage. These recurve bows can feel flighty to one used to a Noldorin longbow.” 

He stood for an instant, hesitating with hands half-raised by his sides, then seemed to decide. 

“The trick is to pull it so .” His right hand came to rest above hers on the string, barely touching, but Arwen was exquisitely aware of the small point of contact. Legolas’ skin was warmer than hers, and pleasantly rough with archers’ callous. He smelled of juniper and the skin-warmed leather of his armguard, which highlighted the elegant flex of his muscled forearm. The solid warmth of him at her back was intoxicating. 

The wind picked up, a gentle caress whispering over her heated face, as together they drew back the string until his hand was maddeningly close to her lips, so near that she might have pressed a small kiss to it. The very idea was madness, and she felt her cheeks colour deeper yet. 

“There, lady.” 

Arwen nearly startled as his other hand touched her back. She had nearly forgotten he had two, so focused had she been with the one by her face. He had to be almost embracing her now, as an archery teacher will a student. 

Ai Elbereth! It was unbearable, to be touched and yet not, held under tension like her own bowstring. 

His breathing held — when had she grown so aware of it? — and without a word or sign they, together, released the string. 

Twang! That sweet thrum of tension released as the string returned to its rightful place. 

Arwen had to force herself to look at the target instead of him. The Wood-elves were watching. Legolas failed at it, however, and she could feel that blue-eyed gaze burning her still. She could not, did not look, and turned her eye towards the target. 

Perfect aim.

Legolas stepped back, but she still felt it, this drawn tension under the skin, like a bow that will not truly relax until it is unstrung... Then she saw his face, red-cheeked and bright-eyed, and knew that it was the same for him. 

His smile was a thing of beauty. “Lady, you have skill at this! But can you hunt clay?”

Shooting clay pigeons was a Sindarin feast-day game, and Arwen had played it for long-years. Her brothers would get fearsomely competitive about it, and only last year she had revelled in Elrohir’s cry of frustration as she snagged the victory from his hands. 

This time, she hit all but one. 

Beside her, Legolas was a vision of speed and skill as he drew, nocked and set free one arrow after another in a smooth motion. Every single one of his clay pigeons exploded in a rain of shards.

 “Best of three?” His smile was radiant.

She needed a deep breath before she could retrieve her lessons in diplomacy from the heated recesses of her mind, and scrambled for the right answer. “You may win, your highness.”

He bowed before her, deep and formal. The applause was more than just polite. She had made an impression on these Wood-elves. Good .

“A look at our coming feast, perhaps?” Legolas asked, all gallantry.

“Gladly!” Some food might help her overcome her sudden loss of eloquence. It must be the drink. 

The sun was setting, and blue shadows deepened in the forest. Around the cooking fires the light was red and leaping gold, the air warm as an embrace. Arwen loosened another button on the neckline of her dress. It showed far more skin than was considered seemly among Noldor, but it was likely no one here would care. 

At the largest fire of all — a wide-spread bed of glowing coals — a pair of bare-chested cooks laboured at turning an iron spit, their slender bodies shiny with sweat. A drummer beat the rhythm for them as they sang a merry cooking song, and judging by the gourd they kept passing back and forth they were rather enjoying themselves. Then she realised what they were roasting. 

Arwen had seen large boars. One tended to meet many of them in Elrohir’s company. This, however, was an absurd, bear-sized monstrosity of a wild pig. With great sense for drama, the cooks had left the head with its massive canines attached when dressing it for the spit. They were the size of her forearm.

“By Araw!” she exclaimed in open-mouthed astonishment. “Whoever downed that is a worthy hunter! Do you spear these on foot, or from horseback?” 

“Do you hunt, lady?” Legolas seemed surprised.

“Of course, and more than boar!” Arwen tried not to sound affronted. Did he think of her as a child? “Imladris lies near the Coldfells and the Ettenmoors. My brothers and I hunt the great fell-wolves in the Northern wilds.”

There. Let this sheltered princeling try and match that .

Legolas did share his sire’s prickliness, it seemed, for his tone grew annoyed. “Wargs mean little to the hunters of the Greenwood. We chase fouler things!”

Arwen raised an eyebrow and cast him a disbelieving glance. “What could be worse than a Warg?” 

“Spiders!” Legolas revelled in her shock. “I can tell that you have not heard of them. Trust me, your Golodhrim hunters would not know what to do with them!”

Arwen raised her eyebrows at the epithet. “How many have you killed?” she asked with a sharp edge to her voice. 

Legolas could not arrange his face in time. 

“You are not allowed near them!” she exclaimed, perhaps a little louder than was diplomatic.

Legolas took the blow without flinching, and proved not without insight of his own. He smiled knowingly. “Have you ever seen a living Warg?”

Arwen recalled last autumn’s aborted expedition, when Elrohir had packed her off home the instant it grew clear that their quarry was Warg rather than wolf. Her brother had never raised his voice to her, but that day as she argued, his face grew hard and closed like never before; and when she kept protesting he had called her a foolish child. 

“No,” she confessed, and Legolas’ face softened into sympathy. “My brothers forbid it. Elrohir in particular is … watchful. I would hunt naught but hares and partridges if he had his way. Mother is more lenient, but only to a degree.”

Legolas sent her a knowing look. It seemed he knew all about being controlled by vigilant elders, kept to the hand like a jessed hawk.

A foolish little sting of a thought struck Arwen. It was silly, absurd, utter madness, but now that she stood here in the forest, awash in the pulsing throb of flutes and drums, with the bonfires sending fountains of red embers floating through the dark and the dancers’  pounding feet beating the ground... Now it seemed different, and no longer foolish. She was trembling, breathing fast, charged all over with excitement, about to burst with it like a flower tears from its bud. There had been something of this feeling at the formal Silvan feast-days in Lórien, but never so wild and strong and untempered. 

“I need some fresh air,” she blurted out, and bolted. The dark woods swallowed her shame, and she breathed fast in the shadows beneath their sheltering branches. 

It was cooler away from the fires. Here, the still air smelled of green things growing, the scent of a sleeping summer wood. The clearing's golden light gave way to the starlit dark, and the music grew less demanding, but perhaps gentler for it. Arwen breathed deeply, leant against a stately silver beech, and closed her eyes in search of her familiar self.

It was not long, merely a couple of heartbeats, before the tree sang in greeting, and a dark shape moved beside her. 

Curse him, he had followed her!

She turned to face Legolas. His eyes glinted pale blue in the starlight; his expression was unreadable. Something lay there for the taking, something strong and wild and hugely important that she could not name, but she would nevertheless grasp with both hands. 

“I would like to hunt these spiders,” she said, but then added, coyly, as she had seen some courtiers address her brothers, “Would you be my companion?”

Elladan and Elrohir usually rolled their eyes behind these women’s backs, but on Legolas it had a different effect. 

Colour rose in his face, and his voice grew rough and low. “Yes. We shall hunt.”

Far and wide her lesser broods, bastards of the miserable mates, her own offspring, that she slew, spread from glen to glen, from the Ephel Dúath to the eastern hills, to Dol Guldur and the fastnesses of Mirkwood. But none could rival her, Shelob the Great, last child of Ungoliant to trouble the unhappy world.

 

The Two Towers, LoTR Book 4, Ch 9, Shelob's Lair

Chapter End Notes

Welcome back, friends!

This week we saw a meeting, a match, and the hatching of a wild plan. This story is my first attempt at writing romance, and I had a great time getting these  two to fall in love. How did I do? I'd love to hear your thoughts on our lovebirds, their elders, and of course the Greenwood and its people. A comment would make me a very happy scribe.

See you next week,
Idrils Scribe

"The Elvish folk of this realm had migrated from the south, being the kin and neighbours of the Elves of Lórien; but they had dwelt in Greenwood the Great east of Anduin. In the Second Age their king, Oropher [the father of Thranduil, father of Legolas], had withdrawn northward beyond the Gladden Fields. This he did to be free from the power and encroachments of the Dwarves of Moria...and also he resented the intrusions of Celeborn and Galadriel into Lórien."

Unfinished Tales, History of Galadriel and Celeborn

“Hush, lady, or someone will notice us. Come with me!” Legolas’ hand closed on Arwen's arm. Darkness and light in turn passed over him as he moved beneath the boughs, ever-shifting patterns of shadow.

She would not be led like a child, and took his hand instead. His pupils widened, but he did not speak as they ran, both equally swift and silent, through the darkened wood, away from the clearing and the leaping orange glow of bonfires. The Silvans dancing about them threw long shadows that danced a rhythm of their own. Arwen breathed deeply, woodsmoke and the scent of leaves. The wind whispered in the beeches like a caress. 

Getting away was easy, in the end. Celeborn and Thranduil had withdrawn to a private pavilion, curtained off from the main feast. Judging by the voices raised in rapid Doriathrin, they were reunited with their ancient arguments where they had left them at their previous meeting. 

Galion should have been keeping an eye on the young prince, but he had arranged his own happy reunion with his old friend Haldir — who was supposed to be minding Arwen — and some of Thranduil’s finest Dorwinion. Both were already unsteady on their feet, and guileless. It was easy to send a Song of dreams their way. 

“Can you Sing people to sleep?” Legolas was awed. 

“I am a child of Lúthien,” she replied, desperate to keep her face straight the way Galadriel would on such occasions. She had never had the chance before. 

Legolas raised an eyebrow. “I was expecting that to be more of a poetic exaggeration, if you will.”

Arwen snorted. “Glad to hear they have taught you such long words in these parts.”

Legolas made a face.

They slipped in and out of Thranduil’s halls easily. Instead of her rooms, Legolas led them to an armoury, and there they equipped themselves with the stout and simple gear of Greenwood’s hunters. 

Arwen left her court dress hanging from a peg in the change room, where someone was sure to find it. It would be criminal to ruin the precious gown on a journey through the woods. 

Legolas, too, changed out of his feast-day finery, and set to plundering a storeroom. 

“Do we need all that?” Arwen asked as he emerged laden with waybread and pemmican. 

“It is a four day ride to Amon Lanc.”

“Are the nearest spiders at Amon Lanc ?”

 “The keep is infested, but Father’s council is divided on whether we should exterminate the vermin.” Legolas' eyes glistened in the room’s half light. “I would like to present him with the finished task.”

Arwen had no need to pry for an explanation. Legolas was so full of the tale that it spilled from his mind like an overflowing cup: Thranduil’s selection of spider hunters had not included Legolas, and father and son had had words . 

Arwen had no desire to get involved in their family quarrels. Someone had to be the voice of reason. “It is too far! We shall be gone for more than a sennight. My grandfather will be livid!”

Legolas shrugged. “If you are frightened, I could take you to the Dwarf Road. We may find some eggs in the undergrowth, a small spiderling at most. We shall be back in time to go hawking with the court.”

Hawking partridges from horseback was traditional, completely safe, and mind-numbingly boring. Unacceptable. “I am not frightened!” 

She thought of Celeborn. He would be upset at being left behind, but maybe… “Do you have a pen and paper?”

Legolas was astonished. “Whatever for?”

“I will leave a note for Grandfather, so he will not worry.”

He shrugged. “The quartermaster’s room.”

The office was small and musty, but it did hold a pen, inkstone and some scraps of paper.

Dear Grandfather,

Prince Legolas and I have gone spider-hunting together. Are you not pleased that we get along so well? He brought more supplies than we could possibly need and has kindly loaned me a sword and bow, so there is no need for concern.

We shall be back in eight ten days or thereabout.

All my love,

Arwen

She pinned the note to her dress where it hung from the peg. Surely whoever found it would see both items delivered to Celeborn. 

The stables lay dark and silent, with all the grooms at the feast. Legolas’ horse was a gorgeous roan stallion of some eastern breed she did not recognize. 

He saddled a bay stallion for her. The horse pawed at the ground, head held high and nostrils flaring. “He is quite spirited. If you prefer a calmer horse, the chestnut in the paddock outside might—”

“I am from Imladris.” Arwen could not help her tone of insult. “I ride better than any Elf of the wood.”

Legolas only raised his eyebrows. He helped her mount, and his hand on her knee was warm, and lingered but a heartbeat too long. Their eyes met in the dark stable, and she knew what he wanted. A hot wave washed over her. 

This, too, was an unprecedented chance. She had known some secret touches, a few stolen nights, all in Lórien. Who in Imladris would dare touch the lord’s own daughter, guarded as she was by her formidable brothers? It was unfair. When Elladan and Elrohir wished for company, they did not sleep alone. Only Arwen’s bed stood cold. 

The night wind cooled her glowing face as they flew down a tree-lined path. Yes, she would take every chance that presented itself.

----

On the festival grounds they needed to stay in the shadows to avoid stumbling revellers, but soon enough the forest lay dark and silent around them. Trees leaned over them as they cantered down a southbound passage. 

“This is the great south path,” Legolas said, and he seemed very much sober now. “Few use it these days, for we no longer go to Amon Lanc.”

Arwen recalled seeing Oropher’s distant hall from her flet in Caras Galadhon. The keep commanded the surrounding forest from its high hill. “Why did your father abandon such a fair house and a strong fortress? Is he that frightened of my grandmother and a few mountain Dwarves?” 

“Amon Lanc was darkened by memories of the dead,” Legolas replied, his face grave as he stroked his roan’s neck. “The spiders have it now.”

“So… How does one approach these spiders?” Arwen managed to make the question sound casual, as if at home in Imladris she led expeditions every day, discussing tactics with the hunters with Celebrían’s poise. 

Legolas’ face was closed, and she could not read behind his eyes. “Our warriors pierce their eyes, then burn the eggs in the webs. The venom is their prize. It paralyses instantly — very fine for hunting deer!”

Arwen failed to keep the morbid fascination from her voice. “How do they remove the venom from the spider? Is it like milking a viper?” 

Legolas shook his head. “We cut out the venom-glands, near the mouth.” he declared with eagerness in his voice. “Those and the mandibles. As long as your forearm, and razor-sharp — quite the trophy!”

From his belt he drew a long knife he had picked up from the armoury. The weapon was undeniably Silvan, with its hilt carved in the likeness of a leaping lynx and a sheath of woven conifer bark dyed a bright spring green, artfully knotted into leaflike patterns.

But the blade … When he handed her the knife, she first thought the bone-white material was ivory, but then a strange sheen played across it, an iridescence like a fly's wing. She drew a finger across the smooth surface, and shivered. A fell Song thrummed within: of rending, tearing, drinking blood. 

She swung it about, trying the heft, and found it pleasant enough in the hand, then tested the edge. Gauging a blade was among the first things a young huntress was taught, and Celebrían’s daughter did it properly:  with a scrape of the thumb across, not along to slice herself. Even done the right way, the knife nicked off a paper-thin slice of her thumb pad. 

She cursed, and sucked the small wound. “A vicious blade. Should Elves be wielding the work of the Enemy?”

“Easily said, from the safety of Galadriel’s wards. Here in the Greenwood we must defend our land however we may. Even with the Enemy’s own weapons.” Even in the dark, Legolas’ eyes shone, fell and fierce as his knives. “Why should we care if the Noldor fear our ways?”    

Arwen was not about to be outdone. “We shall kill two spiders each — at the least! I shall take my mandibles home to Imladris, as gifts for my brothers!”

Surely a spider-mandible knife each would suffice to remind Elladan and Elrohir once and for all that their sister was a grown woman. 

“Mine shall be for my father” said Legolas, with a strange look in his eyes.

"Legolas had a bow and a quiver, and at his belt a long white knife."

-Book II, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

Chapter End Notes

Welcome back everyone,

Yes, they're doing this! As Arwen says, there is absolutely no need to worry: they've got  A Plan. 
A short chapter this week, simply because a nasty stomach bug got the better of me and I couldn't edit the rest in time. I'll make it up next week, promise!
I'd love to hear your thoughts about the chapter. A comment would definitely cheer me up as I languish on my sickbed ;-)

See you soon,
Idrils Scribe

They met few people on the road. Just once did a Silvan hunter slip from a stand of young birches to hail Legolas in a woodland dialect Arwen could barely understand. She was wary of this strange visitor. Despite the summer heat the woman wore a camouflage cloak of cloth of nettles dyed in shifting patterns of grey and green, and she had drawn her hood. 

Legolas had no such doubts. He broke into a smile, and leapt from his horse to greet the Elf. 

“Well met, Elder Erferil! How goes your hunt?” Legolas made a small bow, hand over his heart. Clearly this was a person of importance in the Greenwood. 

“Well met my prince, and Celebrían’s daughter.” Erferil’s Sindarin bore the Greenwood’s melodious Silvan brogue. A calloused hand pulled down the green hood, and Arwen stiffened in her saddle as cold horror shivered down her spine.  

Erferil was ancient indeed. One brown eye shone with the remembrance of starlight over the waters of Cuiviénen. 

The other sat blind and still in its socket, a sickly white. The side of Erferil’s face was a dripping swirl of pinkish scar, like molten metal in a smith’s fire congeals into new and alien shapes. What hair she had left was braided with feathers in the Silvan fashion, but half her head was cratered and bald. 

Arwen was a child of peace. She had seen scars of old war wounds in Imladris’ House of Healing, but never before had she met an Elf so maimed. She knew not whether to stare or to avert her eyes from Erferil’s mutilation. 

Despite all her courtly training she must have gasped. 

Erferil took no offence, it seemed, because she smiled a lopsided grin. “Worry not, young lady,” she said, merry as any Wood-elf. “It has been two Ages since I took this wound. I am well used to awkward introductions.” 

Arwen regained her composure, and dismounted. “Well met, Mistress Erferil the Motherless,” she declared with a proper curtsy. “Forgive my thoughtlessness.” 

“Think nothing of it, lady. You took it better than most Elves your age, even your own mother!” Erferil laughed at the memory, and Arwen made a note to ask Celeborn for that particular story. 

Soon enough Erferil’s expression grew serious once more. Her lichen-greened fingers worried at the arrows in the quiver at her belt. The fletchings were goshawk, and the gaze in Erferil’s eye as she examined Legolas was as hunter-sharp. “As the keeper of these woods I must ask: what game do you pursue this far south?” 

Arwen’s heart leapt in her throat. Surely their spider hunt would end here: even if Legolas would stoop to falsehood, he could not deceive one so ancient and clever as Erferil. 

“We ride to hunt spiders at Amon Lanc.” Legolas said bluntly, facing Erferil as he spoke.  

“Ahh … a drastic resolution to the great debate!” Erferil’s laugh rang like rain on leaves. “I am proud to see you honour your mother’s blood. Good hunt, my prince, and may you make your mark!”

Then her smile vanished, quick as a winter dusk. “Spiders are a dangerous quarry,” she warned. “Take heed, young ones, lest you repeat my old mistake.” She gestured at her ruined face.

“What mistake?” Arwen croaked past the knot of dread suddenly filling her throat.

“Ah, lady … a good hunter should know her prey like she knows her own lover.” Erferil caught Arwen’s gaze, her good eye boring into hers as if she wanted to sear the words into Arwen’s brain. The resemblance to Elrond was eerie. “Not all spiders are alike. Some must bite to inject their venom. Others can spit it far, and the stuff melts flesh like acid.”

Arwen winced, and at the sight Erferil once more grinned her lopsided smile. “Kill them before they get within spitting distance!” 

With that, she drew up her hood, bowed, and disappeared into the undergrowth. A small rustle, the edge of a trailing cloak, and it was as if she had never been there at all. 

Summer birdsong and the gentle drone of insects was all that broke the heavy silence as Arwen and Legolas mounted once more. 

“Erferil did not try to stop us?” Arwen asked, once her shock had worn off. She wanted to say more, ask Legolas if he was scared, too, but pride froze her tongue. This was her one chance to hunt real prey, a beast worthy of song. They would not turn back on her account. 

Legolas shrugged a little too casually, and Arwen noticed how his restless fingers fiddled with a loose thread on the embroidered edge of his saddle blanket. “Why would she? I am her prince.”

Clearly Thranduil’s pomposity was a family trait. Arwen managed not to roll her eyes. Better change the subject. “What did she mean by ‘the great debate?” she asked.

Legolas grew even more uneasy. “The Silvan elders are petitioning my father to have Amon Lanc demolished. They feel some dark taint upon it, and fear that the keep might be manned against us some day.” 

He suddenly looked sad. “The Sindar counsellors all disagree, as does Father. I have never seen him so distraught. They cannot bear to part with the old hall, because my grandfather Oropher built it.”   

Arwen tried and failed to imagine icy King Thranduil growing sentimental over a building. “Surely your father …”

“It is a Greenwood matter.” Legolas interrupted her. “My father’s counsels should not concern outsiders,” he declared pompously. “It is not for me to reveal them.”

Arwen snorted, glad for something to laugh at. “I know. You are the prince.” 

Prince or not, Legolas was a pleasant travel companion, clearly well used to camp life, and they made good time on their southward journey. 

Beyond the narrows, a hush fell across the forest. Without being told Arwen knew that they would meet no more passers-by. Ever since the slaughter at the Last Alliance these lands had been deserted.

Nonetheless, they did come across a house. 

The glade was breathtaking, with clouds of wavy hair-grass growing in tussocks beneath the birches, all dappled silver dancing in the moonlight. A gorgeous summer abode, but the longhouse stood empty. No fire burned beneath its roof, no song filled the echoing space. The white chalk patterns spiralling across the loam walls were strange and vaguely menacing.

Arwen brought her horse to a stop with a shout of surprise. “Look, a house! Did you not say no one has lived here since the war? It looks newly built.”

“There is no one here. Let us move on.” Legolas sat pale and still on his horse. 

As in Lórien, the Silvan Elves of the Greenwood liked to live in longhouses, entire clans beneath a single roof of reeds and bark. These houses were fluid, they shifted and moved with the seasons as the woods around them changed. They popped up like mushrooms, almost overnight.

This one had a watchful air to it. Arwen knew that tell-tale ripple in the world’s warp and weft.

She dismounted, unsettled. The fine hairs on her arms stood upright with the force of the Song that had been woven here, but Elrond’s daughter was not one to turn aside from a show of power, no matter its source. She straightened her shoulders and, clenching her hands, entered the dark doorway.

Underfoot, the floor was clean and bare without the usual carpet of rushes. No droppings either — clearly no woodland bird or beast had dared enter here. Her footsteps echoed eerily through the hollow space. 

A dark shape fluttered beside the door. Arwen’s blood froze. She gasped and almost made an embarrassing leap outside, but then her eyes adjusted. 

Nothing but a Silvan cloak hanging from a peg. The magpie feathers were smooth beneath her fingers, but Power thrummed through the garment, prickling her skin. The cloak must belong to the Singer, but why did they leave such a precious thing behind? 

And it was more than a cloak. Small trinkets were laid out upon the floor. Arwen walked among the rows, more astonished with each find. Roper's tools. A hand loom, such as a Silvan woman might use to weave colourful mats of reed. A beech-wood book. The faded shoe of a small child, stitched with amber beads. Through it all some skillful Singer had woven a taut, thrumming thread of Power, but she could not discern their intent.

She turned to the door to ask Legolas, and was surprised to find him still standing by the horses. When she called him over he refused to come near the house. 

“This house is no home. What is it for?” she demanded when she made her way back to him.

“A place for the dead,” he said, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. “Built for the Houseless Ones to inhabit.”

“The dead should go to Mandos!” she blurted out, shuddering. Only evil spirits lingered in Middle-earth after death, fallen Elves lured to the Morgoth’s service. Why would these Silvans have dealings with such abominations? It was unconscionable. 

There had to be some different, reasonable explanation. “Do you build empty longhouses in the woods to draw Houseless spirits away from your homes?”

“No!” Legolas’ eyes widened. He seemed shocked by the very notion. “We want to draw them back home, to the lands of their birth.”

“The dead have no business in Middle-earth. They belong in Mandos.”

Now it was Legolas’ turn to be confused. “They are Wood-elves. They belong in the Greenwood!”

Arwen swallowed. Erestor had held forth a few times on the subject of the Dark Elves’ benighted unwillingness to turn to the light and order of Valinor, but to be faced with such unnatural behaviour was quite different. She was about to debate Legolas on the matter, but then other lessons of Erestor’s — the ones about diplomacy — returned to her, and she changed the subject.

“This house is empty,” she whispered. “I can tell.”

“Yes,” replied Legolas, grief in his voice. “It is a failed attempt. They do not return, our beloved dead.”

“Return from where?” Arwen asked, now wholly confused.

“The Dead Marshes.” Legolas’ voice was soft and sad. “There they lie, and they will not rise.” 

'I don't know,' said Frodo in a dreamlike voice. 'But I have seen them too. In the pools when the candles were lit. They lie in all the pools, pale faces, deep deep under the dark water. I saw them: grim faces and evil, and noble faces and sad. Many faces proud and fair, and weeds in their silver hair. But all foul, all rotting, all dead. A fell light is in them.' …

`Yes, yes,' said Gollum. `All dead, all rotten. Elves and Men and Orcs. The Dead Marshes. There was a great battle long ago, yes, so they told him when Sméagol was young, when I was young before the Precious came. It was a great battle. Tall Men with long swords, and terrible Elves, and Orcses shrieking. They fought on the plain for days and months at the Black Gates. But the Marshes have grown since then, swallowed up the graves; always creeping, creeping.'"

TTT, Book IV, Ch 2 The Passage of the Marshes

Chapter End Notes

Welcome back, I hope you had a good week.

I'm back among the living, thanks for all of your kind well wishes!
Arwen dives into Silvan culture in this chapter, meeting Erferil and finding the empty house in the woods. Introducing an OC is always a bit nerve-wracking, so I'd love to hear what you think about Erferil and her people.
A comment would make my day!

See you next week,
IS

'There lies the fastness of Southern Mirkwood,' said Haldir. 'It is clad in a forest of dark fir, where the trees strive one against another and their branches rot and wither. In the midst upon a stony height stands Dol Guldur, where long the hidden Enemy had his dwelling. We fear that now it is inhabited again, and with power sevenfold. A black cloud lies often over it of late.

Fellowship of the Ring, Book II, Ch 6, LothLórien

A scuttling sound cut the still air. It was but a squirrel dashing up a trunk, but Arwen leapt back nonetheless: the animal was black as night.

Around Amon Lanc, all undergrowth had withered from lack of light and air, suffocated beneath gigantic spruces, ancient firs and pines whose sombre branches formed a vaulted roof of darkening green a hundred feet above their heads. Whatever birds inhabited these parts did not sing, and their only accompaniments were silence and the wet squelch of rotting needles beneath their horses’ hooves.

Ahead a stony hill, wholly treeless, lifted its bald head above the canopy. The crumbling remains of what had once been Oropher’s great hall dominated the landscape, drawing the eye like decaying teeth in a Mortal’s face.

The windows stared outward into nothingness. In some the broken stained-glass panes remained like many-faceted eyes, now dulled and dimmed, but not dead. Something was awake there, and it watched.

The road to the gate remained open. Tangled branches, suffocated by trailing webs of spider-silk, had overtaken all but the path that cut straight as a spear through the dark forest. A small tingle of Power played across Arwen’s mind: a strong but hidden will was at work here. 

The gate gaped like an open maw, fallen arch-stones lying on the threshold like shattered bones. Arwen did not want to walk in that door — she had never been so sure of anything in her life. 

Legolas beside her had gone pale. “Do you want to turn back?” he whispered, and she knew he would like her to say yes. She did not. 

“Come,” he said with an upward glance to where Arien rode above the mists. “The sun is still high; the spiders should be sleeping.”

“A little way ahead and to his left he saw suddenly, issuing from a black hole of shadow under the cliff, the most loathly shape that he had ever beheld, horrible beyond the horror of an evil dream. Most like a spider she was, but huger than the greatest hunting beasts, and more terrible than they because of the evil purpose in her remorseless eyes. Those same eyes that he had thought daunted and defeated, there they were lit with a fell light again, clustering in her out-thrust head. Great horns she had, and behind her short stalk-like neck was her huge swollen body, a vast bloated bag, swaying and sagging between her legs; its great bulk was black, blotched with livid marks, but the belly underneath was pale and luminous and gave forth a stench. Her legs were bent, with great knobbed joints high above her back, and hairs that stuck out like steel spines, and at each leg's end there was a claw.

As soon as she had squeezed her soft squelching body and its folded limbs out of the upper exit from her lair, she moved with a horrible speed, now running her creaking legs, now making a sudden bound."

The Two Towers, Book 4, Ch 9, Shelob's Lair

Inside, the reek was overpowering. That alien smell of bugs in their thousands, crushed and left to decay: an overpowering odour of chitin and rot. A long year’s worth of spider’ prey — insect carapaces and small animal corpses — crackled beneath their soles, layers of them ankle deep. Small spiders still fed on the dead husks, and they scuttled away into the darkness before their feet. 

Dark shapes dotted the ceiling, and at first glance Arwen thought them strange-shaped lamps. Then she looked up and into the glassy eyes of a deer spun in spider-silk. One of the holy white hinds, judging by what fur could be seen beneath the strangling webs.

Legolas winced. “This deer has hung here less than a week.” 

“Is it alive?” Arwen pointed at the ceiling, at the hanging shapes. The silk cocoons were eerily white, like shrouded corpses. “They all are?”

Legolas looked very pale. “Probably,” he replied. “Such is the spiders’ poison.”

Arwen drew her hunting knife and turned back to the white hind. “We must deal the poor beast mercy.” 

Arwen had eviscerated her own game on many a hunt. She reached up on tiptoe, and with a single expert cut severed the deer’s throat. The animal was definitely alive: blood sprayed from the great arteries, pulsing over Arwen’s hands, her boots, a growing pool of steaming red at her feet. 

At the smell of blood, the tiny spiderlings’ hunger overcame their fear of light. They came chittering, millions of tiny feet and glinting eyelets, a tide of pale bulging bodies covering the blood, her boots, climbing to reach her hands and the knife. 

Arwen howled in terror and, leaping back, she flailed wildly to shed them.

“Shhh!” Legolas hissed, his eyes wide with terror, and she composed herself before him. 

The hall’s tomb-like silence descended once more. Nothing moved in the shadowed space. Only the spun beasts at the ceiling rotated slowly in a wind from some gaping doorway overhead, like a bounty of monstrous fruits. 

“We cannot kill them all. We must only look for Elves or Men!” Legolas whispered.

Only now did it strike Arwen: the dreadful realisation that there might be more than deer hanging in this hallway of horrors. 

Legolas elbowed her, and she almost screamed again. “There!” he whispered urgently, and ran further into the hall to one of the hanging bulges. He drew his knife and began to slash at the silk cocoon. 

When it gave way, there was a face.  

Arwen racked her brain, in that single heartbeat of terror, for how to go about healing a patient so horribly poisoned, but there would be no need... She could not even tell whether this shrivelled husk of a woman was once Elf or Mortal. The head was dried to skin and bones. They stood still and stared for a moment, frozen before the horror of it. Then Arwen thought to pull back the curtain of hair and found leaf-shaped ears. Legolas groaned as if in pain, and took his dagger to the silk cocoon once more, slashing in frustrated rage until the body dropped to the ground with a horrid little thump . It had been sucked dry. 

“Dineloth,” Legolas murmured, running gentle fingers down the spiralling clan tattoos. “She still mourns her husband. She used to climb to this dreadful place and look out towards Mordor. Ai, for her suffering!”

Arwen did not know this woman, and she knew for certain that her houseless spirit was not here. Her concerns were more prosaic. “These did not hang her from the ceiling,” she said as she shook off another clutch of spiderlings clinging to her blood-soaked breeches. “Where are the ones that did? We need to know, or we might soon hang beside her!” 

It sufficed to draw Legolas back to the present. “Spiders tend their eggs in a breeding chamber, away from their larder.” His eyes flashed with hate. “When we find it, there shall be a reckoning!” 

There was nothing for it but to leave Dineloth’s body behind. On they went across the gruesome bed of corpses, halting only to examine the cocoons dangling overhead. Those all held beasts and birds, thank the Valar. At the end of the hallway with its horrors stood two columns shaped like great beeches. Between their stone boles rose a wide marble stair.

“The great hall,” Legolas whispered.

Atop the stairs hung a pair of massive bronze doors, twisted on their hinges. Fascinated, Arwen put her foot on the lowest step. Dried carapaces and egg membranes crackled like straw beneath her boot. 

Legolas’ hand closed about her arm. “Not that way. The spiders will see us.” He thought for a moment. “My father has old drawings displayed in his study. If they are correct, there should be a smaller entrance beside the guards’ room.”

He led her through a side door, into what must once have been an antechamber. Wooden benches lay mouldering on the flagstones. The stuffed head of a great warg still hung, absurdly, mounted upon the wall. The far door stood ajar, and behind it shone a red glow like fire. 

They approached it in silence, like hunters stalking some ravenous thing, and with a whispered cantrip of hiding Arwen pulled open the door. 

High up by the hall’s eaves the setting sun cast a sickly orange light through shattered windows, illuminating a nightmare: a heaving mass of silk and spiderlings writhed from wall to wall. The entire great hall had become one monstrous breeding chamber.

Despair struck them. They could not barge in for a surprise raid. They could not even step foot on the floor, lost as it was beneath the mass of spider eggs. 

“We can never kill this many!” Legolas hissed into her ear.

Arwen’s  eyes played across the roof-beams — ancient oak, dry as powder. An idea struck like a flash of lightning. “We must lock the doors, then set it on fire!” 

Legolas was shocked at the very notion. “This is my grandfather’s hall!” 

Arwen shook her head, and gestured at the nightmarish, many-legged mass writhing in the hall. “It is Oropher’s no more.”

She ran back to the hallway, to the weathered bronze doors on their battered hinges. “We need some lever to move them. Perhaps a young tree might …”

Legolas shook his head. “Only Song will move them. The Song of Oropher’s House.” He smiled. “It is a good thing you came here with me.”

His voice was gentle, lacking the artful timbre of Noldorin classical schooling, but sharp and clear as an obsidian blade. 

The doors shivered, moaned, and for a heartstopping instant of terror Arwen believed they would shatter. Legolas frowned, and lay such Power beneath his Song that the very air before him seemed to shimmer. Then, with a woosh and a clang, first one door, then the other turned on its hinges and fell shut. 

Legolas leapt up the stairs to stand upon the highest step, where he lay both palms against the doors. “Remain closed!” he commanded with a thrumming wave of Power beneath the words.

Arwen looked upon him with new awe.

He grinned and made a mock bow with grand flourish. “They did teach me something , in this wood of ours.”

The crumbling benches in the guards’ room made for excellent kindling. Legolas wrapped his arrowheads in strips of a torn spare shirt, and smeared them with tallow from his pack. 

Then Arwen thrust open the door. The first flaming arrow arched through the hall to strike a fat cluster of eggs on the throne. A hellish din of shrieks went up as it burst into flame. With a popping sound, a writhing mass of unborn spiderlings poured forth, and they were whitish and transparent as corpse-ghosts as they spilled onto the flagstones. 

Legolas moved too fast for even her eyes to follow as he nocked and released another arrow, its tip an arc of flame. It struck a waving curtain of silk hanging from the rafters, and a hail of smouldering fragments rained down on the spiders below. Legolas did not stop to watch them writhe and shriek as their nests caught fire, but lit and launched another arrow, and another. 

Arwen grew aware of a whisper, dry and awful like brittle bones cracking at the edge of hearing. 

“Intruders! Foul Elves! Take them!” moaned a chorus of dreadful voices. “Grasp them, bite them! Hang them until they rot!”

The spiders came streaming towards the door, and Arwen stepped forward to shield Legolas. Wielding a flaming plank like a club with one hand and her sword with the other, she drove them back. 

Everywhere, silken nests and the foul carpet of debris — egg casings and spider droppings and the empty, sucked-dry husks of men and beasts — caught flame like dry tinder, and soon the hall was a mass of flame. Acrid black smoke stung their eyes. 

Now the spiders no longer whispered, but shrieked. “Closed! The door is closed! Bite them, kill them, get out!”

An elk-sized spider came leaping for Arwen’s head, and in its despair it no longer feared fire nor blade. It came for her, pincers clicking, poison dripping down to hiss and splutter upon the floor. 

Erferil’s mutilated face swam before her eyes, dripping whorls of scar tissue and that clouded white eye. Bile rose in her throat, and some deep animal part of her clamoured for her to bolt. 

Run! it beat through her blood like a battle-drum. Run now, run far, and save yourself!

Arwen’s hand went lax about her sword hilt. She would run, as far as her legs would carry her, without care for Legolas, or her own honour. She would run and hide in a hole in the ground. She stood there frozen for an endless moment, torn, her breath heaving, sour bile in her mouth.

She should have been bitten and maimed, then, but Legolas’ bow sang, and the beast fell with an arrow sprouting from its eye. For but a moment he caught her eye. He remembered his own first battle well enough to understand. He touched her arm, his hand warm against her skin, and the feeling brought her back to herself. She nodded her thanks, and stood tall before him once more.

Another wave of spiders came roaring, a moving wall of clicking pincers and clawing legs. A jet of greenish venom hit the wall beside her, and the stray drops on her arm made her hiss with fiery pain. There was nothing for it but to retreat behind the door and bar it with rotting wood. 

“Run!” Legolas screamed, and then they were both fleeing, legs pumping, lungs burning with each smoke-laden breath, the screeching, many-legged tide of horror chasing them.

They flew past the dreaded hallway, the hanging cocoons, Dineloth’s dessicated corpse, Arwen’s heart thumping in her throat, her legs burning like a brand. Beside her, Legolas shrieked as the foremost spider lunged forward and caught his arm with her pincer. He struck wildly with his long knife, and the beast fell.

On they ran, out of those dreadful doors, stumbling into the cool night air and down the slope to where their fettered horses waited at the foot of the hill. Behind them thrummed the dull roar of the flames, rising until it overpowered even the burning spiders’ death-shrieks. Flakes of soot began to rain down around them. 

Arwen scrambled with shaking hands to saddle her snorting, trembling stallion. Only then did she dare turn around for a final look at Amon Lanc.  

Oropher’s hall was no more. A crown of fire rose upon the hill, lighting a tower of black smoke that billowed to the clouds in leaping bursts of madder and crimson.

“They will see this from Caras Galadhon to the Forest Mountains!” Arwen gasped as they leapt into their saddles and began a mad dash away. 

“Good,” replied Legolas dryly, pointing over his shoulder at the calf-sized spiders chasing them. “We could use some help.” 

Chapter End Notes

And so out heroes finally meet the dreaded Mirkwood Spiders. 

This chapter was fun to write, both for the swashbuckling adventure of the battle scene and the chance to revisit one of my favorite chapters in the Hobbit for inspiration.  I'd love to hear what you think of it, a comment would make me a very happy scribe!

See you soon,
IS

When the sounds of pursuit died down at last — the chitinous clicking of limbs and those horrid spidery voices would long haunt Arwen’s dreams — Legolas reined in his lathered horse. They had ridden hard and far in a northerly direction, out from under from the south’s blackened leaves and strangled glades. 

Here, the forest’s song lay green and open about them. 

Legolas swayed in his saddle. He was favouring his arm, where the spider’s bite stood red and swollen against his pale skin, but he straightened his back, undaunted. 

“Come, Arwen. This way.” He pointed to what seemed an impassable knot of brambles strangling a venerable oak. 

Arwen hesitated to force her poor, exhausted horse into that thorny tangle, but to her astonishment the stallion went eagerly. Legolas sang a Silvan song, his voice hoarse and soft, and the brambles opened before them. 

The instant Legolas fell silent, the vines knitted tight once more. They stood inside an open space beneath the oak’s mighty crown, an enclosed bower of green. This must be a remote Silvan hunting camp, judging by the neat stack of wood resting beside a well-used firepit. 

Legolas stumbled, wobbled, then plopped down on the deep leaf-litter beside the fireplace, his eyes glazed with pain. His face was the palest Arwen had ever seen, moon-white and sharp in the clearing’s half-light, and suddenly she wished nothing more than to gather him up into her arms and ease his suffering. She knelt beside him and began to tug at his sleeve, rolling it away to expose the spider bite. When she reached her mind to his, the touch chaste and proper as a healer’s, even that clinical illusion of intimacy poured warmth down her limbs. 

The bite may have been glancing, but spider venom was impressively caustic. The wound was a swathe of blistered and sloughing skin all the way up his arm. A sharp, sour odour stung her nose, like the muriatic acid jewelsmiths used for etching. Legolas was silent, his eyes shut tightly, but when she peeled back his sleeve his breath came in great, groaning gulps.

“Your tunic is soaked with venom. Take it off.” Arwen had never been much of an actress, to the despair of her rhetoric teachers, but now she did capture Elrond’s bedside manner of detached authority. Legolas obeyed her without question. He looked even younger and more lost in his undershirt. 

She had no alkaline solution to rinse the wound, but had to make do with water. Then she  Sang as she debrided it as best she could with the meagre contents of their packs. She had honey for salve, but little more than a torn-up undershirt to bandage the arm, and could only hope that the linen would not stick to the wound. Legolas sat still and straight as she worked.

“There. That should keep until we get you home.” Arwen picked up Legolas’ discarded tunic from where it lay crumpled amidst the leaf litter, careful to avoid the venom-soaked sleeve. The summer night crept towards dawn. No Elf would call this cold, but Legolas was shivering nonetheless as his body battled the venom. He needed his clothes. She could think of nothing for it but to draw her hunting dagger. 

Legolas sent her a strange look as she cut through the buckskin of his tunic with a jerking motion, chopping off the fouled sleeve and dropping it at her feet, where it lay coiled like a snake. His face was as pale as the bandage.  

She breathed deeply, then threw out the words. “I was foolish to goad you into coming here. Forgive me for this, and for what could have happened.”

Legolas was indignant. The dappled light of dawn painted him in copper and gold, his hair a luminous flame above the pale expanse of his face. “My decisions were my own.” 

He winced as she helped him pull what remained of the tunic over his head. “Remember that I am a warrior of the Greenwood,” he continued. “If I must die defending her I shall gladly do my duty.” 

At that much pompousness, she could not help but inject some practicality. “Will your father be of that same mind?”

Legolas shook his head, suddenly dejected. “He will tan both our hides.”

Arwen sought his eyes, and dared a smile. “Yet another peril we must brave together.”

Legolas, too, smiled. 

Beautiful. 

He was looking at her like he had caught that thought, still and poised in anticipation.

Arwen leaned in and pressed her lips to his. 

His skin was warm, with a light scent of forest and woodsmoke, but his lips were soft as silk. He held still, awaiting what she would do next, and only when she took his face between her palms to pull him closer did his good hand come up and twine around her head, his lips opening for a deeper kiss, all sweetness. A soft ohhh escaped him, then, and a cresting wave of arousal coursed through his mind. The thrill of having done that to him drove her onwards. 

She opened her mouth against his, hot, eager, seeking , adding teeth to the soft skin of his neck and he keened — ai Valar he keened for her. The sound filled her belly with liquid heat.

Legolas drew her closer as best he could with one arm, his body now hard and hot and impossibly alive against her. Arwen had heard of this, the way lust blooms hottest amidst the stink of death, life reasserting itself in a desperate rush of desire. He seemed to feel it too, for the next hard, hungry meeting of their mouths was as inevitable as breathing... 

Do I want to marry him? 

She had been asked that very question so many times, and still she did not know the answer. 

She pushed the doubt from her mind by reaching for the lacing on Legolas’ tunic, the tanned deer hide supple and alien beneath her fingers. As Arwen’s hands worked, the coarse leather caught at her nails, so different from the softness of his skin beneath — it made Arwen’s blood rush, a heady sensation. He let her loosen the ties and pull it off over his head, baring the pale skin of his chest, a tender contrast with his sun-darkened arms. 

Legolas sat there, awash in gold from sunlight filtered through a sieve of leaves. His skin was dappled in it, patterned in his forest’s light. Aware of Arwen’s eyes on him, he raised his chin and stared back, his gaze unnervingly deep. Arwen merely looked at him, drinking the sight of his body like cold spring water.

Then she moved and set her lips to the divot beneath his throat, breathed warm musk, and revelled in the strangled moan she drew from him.

His vengeance was delicious. He knelt up to undo her shirt, eyes asking as he went. She had to help him lift it off over her head and undo her breast band, and then he swallowed and sat very still for an instant. 

“You are so beautiful,” he whispered, almost reverently. His voice was the colour of that fine whiskey her brothers brewed in winter: dark and amber-gold. It seemed he could not meet her eyes. His boots scuffed the forests’ leaf litter as he moved. The earthy smell of beech-leaves and mould rose up. “You are like...”

Arwen refused to be compared to Luthien yet again; not here and now. “Touch me!” she demanded, in a harsh whisper. 

He did. First he stroked her breasts with just his fingertips, admiring, very carefully. Then, beyond all expectation he leant forward to press small, feather-soft kisses to the skin, the flutter of his eyelashes like butterfly wings against her. Arwen drew a great gulp of breath.

“You are so beautiful,” he whispered again, and then he lowered his head and took a nipple into his mouth, and it was her turn to close her eyes and moan in delight. 

She sank backward, leaning against her pack as he licked and suckled, gentle and yet not. It was good — ahhh, it was good.  He had done this before, she realised then, to other women, and jealousy leapt within her like a snarling wolf. 

She would do better. He would find her the best. 

Legolas’ finger stroked down to the ties of her breeches. “May I?”

She could not find words, nodded, and he untied them and pulled them down reverently, as if unwrapping some precious jewel.  

She rolled to the side to take the rest of her clothes off. An undignified wriggle with tangled legs, and then she was naked before him. Legolas could not stop watching, eyes wide to catch every detail: the pale expanse of her legs, the thatch of hair between them, and glimpses of moisture within.

His fingertips stroked slowly, leaving a trail of sensation. Gooseflesh sprung up in their wake. Down from the valley between her breasts, down to her belly, down, ever down to the dark hair, and then lower still. Sweet and hot his hand rested there — motionless, teasing — and she shuddered. 

Dipping his head, Legolas tasted the skin of her belly, breathed her scent, then lapped at that sweet place where her leg met her body until the pulse of her great artery leapt and sped beneath his lips. The feeling must have pleased him, because he rested his mouth there for a moment, warm against her skin, and breathed her in. 

She wriggled, then twisted her hips sideways so his mouth went where she wanted it. “Please. We have little time. Do not waste it.”

“Is this a waste?” His little chuckle, a mere puff of air against her skin, made her gasp. “As the lady wishes.”

A fall of wheat-blonde hair fell across her thighs in a silken caress, and then he bent to her.

Legolas was a man of many talents, it seemed. He did this well and thoughtfully, though his position must have been awkward with only one good arm to take his weight.

Arwen leant back and allowed the sensation to overtake all thought until she was flying: lost and found and adrift all at once. 

Within that ecstasy, images flapped at the edges of her mind, frantic like birds' wings beating against glass. Arwen knew it at once: a vision. Irmo’s hand, the blessing and curse of her House. The Sight swirled and eddied, cresting along the waves of her body’s pleasure: 

A white city, banners flying in the morning wind atop the great spire of its citadel. A great desire took her, wild and inescapable as a flood, to fly up like a bird, like her grandmother Elwing once had, to speed to that white city and rest upon its spires.

When she came down from her high, Legolas was looking at her with a strange emotion in his eyes, and seemed almost hesitant to touch her. She pulled him down, against her, finally laying skin to skin, the warmth of him a delicious contrast with the cold ground.

He was hot and hard, shuddering as she took him in her hand. His face was even more beautiful in the wild abandon of pleasure. Beautiful, and wholly Elvish. Suddenly she desperately wanted to see more of it, and she rolled over to pull him on top of her. For a moment, they were an awkward tangle of arms and they had to adjust for his wound, but then he lay between her legs, his face above hers. 

“Have you done this before?” His breath was warm against her.

“Only … unofficially.” 

He smiled knowingly. “Ah, you Noldor hypocrites.”

“How many lovers did you have?” she retaliated, indignant. 

“A handful,” Legolas sounded casual, as if he were not violating the Valar’s very laws. He gave her a clever look. “How many unofficial ones?”

Far less than a handful, but Arwen would not admit that anytime soon. “Curiosity does not become you.” She softened the rebuke with a kiss. “Come here.”

Here they were, posed at the edge of a cliff. She held his hips as he steadied himself over her, a soft smile on her lips that turned into a frown and a moan as he thrust forward into her. He threw back his head and gasped her name.

He thrust a few times, artlessly, arrhythmically. Perhaps he was caught in an ecstasy like she had felt just a moment before; she whimpered at how he felt inside her, his hardness piercing her, and at the sound a noise caught in his throat and his eyes focused on her, some wonder caught within them. His strokes went even and deep and thorough; she rolled her hips to meet his, wanting to give him pleasure as he gave her.

He was beautiful above her, his good hand stroking the sides of her face and the tangles of her hair, the contrast of his soft lips with the strength of his hips. His forest-brown eyes were wide, he was biting his lip as if to concentrate, to hold on to this moment, to commit every detail of her and of this to indelible memory.

I could love Legolas , she realised, moved by fondness and compassion for her companion in the dangers of this journey. She imagined a deeper love, a love of ages, of shared lives, grown around each other like trees entwined in the forest. 

Yes, I could love him.  

But the vision returned, then, swirling at the edges of her mind: Stars and eagles, sunrise over a snow-capped mountain, an army encamped beneath starred banners, a dark-haired girl dancing in a courtyard of white stone. 

She gasped, utterly lost in the vision.  

I could love Legolas. But if I do, there will be no white city, no starred banner... And my children will be different children. 

Legolas drew her back to the here and now. He shifted, moved an arm beneath her, still buried within her. Grasping her tighter against him, he murmured her name like a prayer as she ran her hands along his strong back. 

She could not tell how long it lasted, this delightful closeness, thrusting and kissing. A heartbeat, an hour, an eternity. 

They laid forehead-to-forehead, mouth against mouth, legs entwined and minds pressed together until he spilled into her with a deep moan.

----

Once the glow of sex and adrenaline had faded, Legolas grew serious. “Your grandfather came here to offer you up as a weregild,” he said, his fingers caressing the side of her face. “Do you wish to be one?” The words lay between them like an offering, to be taken or rejected by Arwen’s choice.

“We could make our home here in the South,” he mused, his hand stroking soft as a butterfly's wing, down the lines of her throat to the swell of her breast. “I could be my father’s vice regent. Many of our folk will follow me, and dwell with us in Amon Lanc.”

Arwen gave a small sigh of pleasure and turned her body to his, the silken warmth of his skin a delightful contrast with the rough bedroll. She smiled at the thought. “Yes. Those among the Galadhrim who wish to take me for their lady might come. And Grandmother would not be far away.”

“No.” Legolas physically recoiled, alarm in his eyes. “My father would not tolerate her anywhere near him.”

Arwen raised an eyebrow. “I will receive who I will.”

Legolas shook his head. “But this is the Greenwood. Thranduil’s will is the law.” A muscle jumped in his temple, so tight did he hold his jaw. 

Arwen sat up, the cold morning air gripping her naked skin as the blanket slid from her shoulders. She thought of Thranduil’s court, stars ensnared in the canopy, the Greenwood’s courtiers wheeling their eternal circuits around the great hall like moons pinned in their King’s orbit. 

Not so different, in truth, from Imladris. 

In that instant she knew the source of her nagging sense of unease, both at home and in these woods. She would revolve around no one. Arwen Undómiel could not be anything but the centre of her own universe.

She stood, making sure to show off her body to its best advantage. Legolas swallowed, his eyes very bright in the shaded clearing. She retrieved the last of the wine they brought, unstoppered the bottle and drew a long swig. Then she joined him in the bedroll once more. 

“We might not need silver rings anytime soon, but I do like you.” She took another sip, making sure to lick the last drop from her lower lip. Her hand skimmed down Legolas body, and found him more than willing. 

A few strokes had him panting, his eyes wide and his mouth open in a grin of delight. She withdrew her hand, and when his face fell she demurely offered him the last of the wine. 

“Here, to give you strength.”

Chapter End Notes

"Ahem..." taps mic... "is this thing on?"
This is an important moment in a fanfic writer's career: I proudly present my very first sex scene! First of all I should thank my beta's, who endured a couple of truly excruciating drafts. I hope their therapy is going well. 

Whew. It's written and out there on the internet for all to see! Well, they say the first one is the hardest. Perhaps there are more to come ;-)

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this chapter, about the sex of course, but also the worldbuilding (LaCE-y enough for you?) and characters.

A comment would make me a very happy (and deeply relieved) scribe.
See you next week!
IS

Arwen climbed to the topmost branch of the sheltering oak and raised her head above the canopy to see the summer morning paint the Greenwood with gold.

A cloud of purple butterflies fluttered about her, of a kind she had never seen before in Imladris or Lórien. Their wings were iridescent, a delicate richness of colour that leapt and changed with each wingstroke. When she called, one landed on her finger, flapping its shimmering wings, and she laughed out loud with the pure joy of discovery.

She looked south first, to the hill of stone towering over the forest. The halls of Amon Lanc had become a smoke-wreathed carcass, but when she strained her eyes she could make out small, dark figures moving about it. These were not spiders: they moved with Elvish grace. If one of Thranduil’s patrols had reached the burning keep already, that meant they had to be in the area — Legolas and she had not been as alone as she had believed.    

To the west, nestled between the mountains and Anduin’s silver ribbon, the green towers of Caras Galadhon shimmered in the morning light. Galadhren lookouts must have spotted the fire from their high perches in the city’s topmost flets. Both King Amroth and Galadriel had probably been raised from their beds to climb up and see the blaze with their own eyes. She wondered what they would make of it — would her grandmother be angry? Arwen winced. Her future held some highly uncomfortable conversations. 

As Arwen swayed with the tree’s branches, rocked gently by the west wind, she realised that in all her life she had never been this free, or this unmoored. Never before had she made a decision with real consequences. 

Amon Lanc lay in ruin, her eyebrows were singed, the woodland prince was wounded but thoroughly satisfied, and her body ached pleasantly after last night’s pleasures. All of it was her doing. She found she rather liked the sense of accomplishment. 

This day was a crossroads, a delicate tangle of possibilities and paths branching forward. Some would bring her from the watchful eyes and guiding hands of her own family into another one just like it, kept and cosseted.

She would choose differently.

Legolas sat below her with his back against the tree, cradling his injured arm. He gave a little wave as she climbed down. 

She had wanted to tell him that the Wood-elves had reached Amon Lanc, but suddenly all she desired was for this private idyll to last as long as possible. “What do you call those purple butterflies?” she asked him instead, pointing at the canopy. “We do not have them in Imladris.”

“They are forest dwellers,” Legolas said, smiling. “We call them purple emperors. Their lives are short — but a few weeks in high summer, but how fair they are! I love how they shimmer.”

Arwen thought for a moment. “Their iridescence is interesting, like opal, but subtler. Could you not gather them when they die in autumn, and make their wings into a brooch?”

Legolas shook his head, baffled by the very idea. “They turn drab upon dying.” He smiled once more, smitten with his woodland creatures. “We must climb up to watch the emperors in the summertime, while they are alive. I fear I shall miss them this year.” He held up his injured hand, but he was laughing. 

Legolas rose and poured her water from his pack, and Arwen tasted soot as she sipped it. 

“There are Elves at the keep,” she remarked. “I saw them in the distance.”

Legolas smiled. “We should pay them a visit. We have not taken our trophies yet.”

----

The forest around Amon Lanc seemed less gloomy now that the spiders were dead. Morning sunlight streamed down between the whispering spruces in long beams of honey and lemon-yellow. The merry hammering of a woodpecker rang through the silent woods. 

The fire had burned an ugly scar into the dry summer forest. Arwen and Legolas rode among charred stumps long before they reached the hill. Cinders cracked underfoot, and in places wisps of smoke still curled from the smouldering soil. 

Arwen stopped to examine a scorched spider corpse. The heat had twisted the creature’s limbs into grotesque poses, like some monstrous, horse-sized children’s toy. The carcass stank of burned meat and an alien, sweetish smell. Bile rose in her throat. She swallowed as her stomach roiled, thinking that she might never be hungry again. 

She had never seen any living thing charred like this before. She ran her fingers over the devastation that was once the spider’s eye, and wondered how a person might look.

Did Elrohir feel this horror, when he spoke of burning piles of Orcs? Arwen sometimes overheard him talking in hushed tones with Elrond or Celebrían, always dropping the subject when Arwen approached. Elrohir seemed tense as a bowstring when he returned from those patrols. She might have been kinder to him, less abrasive and more understanding. She would, from now on. 

Legolas interrupted her thoughts, hunting dagger in hand. This might be his first time, too, but he was not about to let it show. Despite his wound he sawed into the creature’s face with abandon. Clearly there was a score being settled here. 

“Here are the mandibles,” he explained as one after the other the fearsome fangs came loose and dropped to the ground, sending up small puffs of flaky ash. Arwen picked one up between thumb and forefinger, carefully turning it this way and that. 

“Still sharp, even after the fire.” She managed to grin like she did this every day. “Impressive.”

Legolas smiled. “How many would you like?”

Arwen drew her own knife from her belt. “As many as I can carry!”

It became a perverted children’s game, darting from one scorched carcass to another between the stumps of burned trees, shouting as they pointed out new and fresher ones, their feet leaving grey footprints in the ankle-deep ash. 

Only when they both had a bag full did they relent, stopping for a drink of water and a laugh at each other’s soot-stained faces.

Legolas pulled her in for a kiss, his mouth eager as he nipped at hers, just as sweet and sharp as last night. The sun had risen high before they finally made for Amon Lanc.

----

The keep looked like something out of Mordor. The roof was gone, windows turned to black holes into nothing. Charred stone pillars reached to the sky like outstretched fingers on begging hands. And everywhere, filling the lungs was the stench of burned spiders, rotten-sweet and scorched. 

They met the Silvan warriors in what was once the courtyard, but the scene was not what Arwen expected. Instead of mourning, they walked into a feast. A company of Wood-elves filled the air with drums and flutes and the high ululations of Silvan war-songs. The crowd chanted Legolas’ name, reaching out to touch him as he rode past. 

“What is happening?” Arwen asked, overwhelmed by the pounding drums. She had expected a scolding for their disappearance, for the destroyed hall — they had even burned trees ! — but instead Thranduil’s people seemed ecstatic with joy.

Legolas smiled. “We fulfilled a long-held wish last night.” 

Erferil ran out to meet them. Thranduil’s marchwarden wore her green woodland gear, but she seemed less grim when crowned with a circlet of wood sage and red campion. Her scarred face broke open into a wide, joyful smile, and she was clearly, obviously drunk .

“Hail, spider-slayers!” Erferil called out to both of them, holding out a gourd of drink. “You did a brave deed! Legolas, you have earned your warrior’s mark for this!” She turned to Arwen. “You, too, lady, if you wish?”

Arwen imagined returning to Imladris with a warrior’s tattoo. Something outrageously Silvan, like a burling stag or an elk. Some among the more traditional Noldor in Imladris raised eyebrows when Elrohir came home from his fostering in Lórien bearing a perfectly civilised horse. The marring of the Evenstar would spawn endless laments, her skin no longer fair and smooth as Lúthien’s.

An attractive idea, but ultimately meaningless: Arwen had never cared for martial matters. She enjoyed neither the hand-to-hand combat - which she had been made to learn regardless - nor the grander arts of tactics and strategy. Her ambitions lay elsewhere.

“Alas, I am no warrior, nor do I wish to become one,” she replied with a small bow of thanks. “I am a huntress though, and your prince has supplied me well with trophies.”

“Those you shall have,” laughed Erferil, “and our good will and gifts besides!”

The day progressed with many well-wishes and passes of the gourd, and even more drumming and dancing. 

At last the sun set behind the Misty Mountains in a great wrack of colour, painting Celebdil, Caradhras and Fanuidhol scarlet and crimson as fresh-spilled blood as the first stars bloomed silver in the east. 

Arwen had lost track of Legolas amidst the revellers. She found him high upon the battlements, looking south towards Mordor. In the courtyard below surged the wild drums of a leaping dance, joined by many voices raised in song and laughter, but Legolas stood silent and alone, his shoulders tense. His hands clung to the scorched remains of the parapet, heedless of the soot. 

She did not speak but stood at his elbow, her shoulder against his, and watched. Beyond the southern Greenwood’s tangled tapestry of trees stretched the Brown Lands, bare downs of withered grass where cold eastern winds drove choking whorls of dust into the air. The Black Hand blighted that once living land beyond healing. 

Further south loomed Emyn Muil, but Legolas' eyes looked past that strange and twisted knot of hills, grinning like broken teeth in the waning light. 

Arwen winced: beyond Emyn Muil lay the Dead Marshes. 

She knew those lands, as did all who lived in Imladris. Gilt-edged maps of Dagorlad hung upon the library walls. The Hall of Fire heard a thousand songs about the Siege of Mordor, fire light playing across the stern faces of ancient warriors as they plunged into remembrance. Gil-galad’s great banner and his blackened armour stood in the armoury as tangible history lessons for the young. Arwen had been a mere child, but she would never forget that bleak look of remembered horror on Elrond’s face when he first told her the tale of the Last Alliance. 

The High Elves had lost their king. So did the Greenwood, but Oropher’s people perished with him.  

“Have you ever seen the Dead Marshes?” Legolas asked, his gaze and his mind miles away.

“No,” she replied, “but I have heard songs. A dark place. Have you ever been there?”

He nodded, swallowed around something heavy. “My father took me once. We saw the faces in the water.”

Legolas, too, had a burden of terrible history pressing down on him since the day he was born. Arwen could only feel sympathy.

“Some say that they are not truly there, our friends and kin,” Legolas said. “That the dead faces are but memories, the horror of the Dagorlad inscribing itself on the land.”

“That is also what our loremasters say.” Arwen was glad to offer him this one small comfort. “Sauron has not the power to keep the dead from Mandos.” 

Her words were meant as a kindness, but he received them like a draught of vinegar. “Mandos is not for Silvans. Greenwood Elves belong in the Greenwood.”

But a few days ago, Arwen would have scoffed at  such blasphemy. Now, she turned away from him to face the courtyard below, lest he see the doubts in her eyes. 

Erfaril was singing to the beat of a deerskin drum amidst a throng of dancers. Power thrummed beneath her Song, a leaping, exultant shout of joy and defiance against the Darkness. 

This dance was ancient as Cuivienen, a wild revelry from the depths of time, wholly free of the cultured restraint of the West. The dancers threw leaping shadows against the keep’s walls in the golden firelight as they took long, elegant jumps over the flames, each more daring than the last, greeted with great merriment and uproar. 

The very walls of Amon Lanc drank in Erferil’s Song. Already, moss and lichen were sprouting on the blackened stone as life took hold once more. Now, at last Arwen understood Legolas’ esteem for the scarred huntress: here stood one of the great Singers of the Lindar, and by those arts did Thranduil keep the darkness at bay.

As Arwen looked upon Legolas’ feasting people, she realised that truth was a many-faceted thing. When Erestor waxed about the blessed light of Valinor and the rightness of Mandos, he was right. But Erferil might sing of the woods and the blessed spirits sheltered beneath its boughs, and she, too, had the right of it when viewed a certain way.

Arwen and Legolas had this in common, at least: they were both children of two worlds, forever straddling the divide, building bridges and breaking them with every word and deed. 

She slipped her hand into Legolas’. He held it tightly, his palm warm against her own. Together they stood, and watched as the stars opened in the darkening sky. 

The moon had risen when a swarm of black birds swooped in from the north to whirl above the keep, a scatter of holes in the starlit expanse.

“Are those crebain ?” Arwen asked with alarm, recalling stories of Sauron’s twisted mockery of crows.

Legolas shook his head and smiled a bright, genuine smile, a pale streak in the layer of soot on his skin. “They are just daws. Message-carriers. My father must be getting anxious.”

The day’s joy leached from his gaze, and he grew nervous. “We should go home. Father will be livid, and being kept waiting in your grandfather’s company will not improve his temper.”

The ride back to Thranduil’s stronghold was swifter than their coming. At Erferil’s command the marchwardens whisked them north with military efficiency, with fresh horses at regular intervals. 

Even so, the news of Amon Lanc’s destruction ran through the woods on swifter legs. A crowd of celebrating Silvans wearing their feast-day best had gathered before Thranduil’s doors to welcome their triumphant prince with flutes and drums. 

Arwen had expected Thranduil and Celeborn, but it was Galion who awaited them among the drunken revellers. Thranduil’s seneschal stuck out like a sore thumb, wearing formal court robes and a face like a month of rain. 

Haldir stood beside him, somehow looking even dourer with his arms crossed and one raised eyebrow. 

“So glad that the pair of you could make it to our feast!” Haldir’s cutting sarcasm was the terror of Lórien’s armed forces. “The king, too, will be ecstatic. Your grandfather and he are waiting inside. For quite some time, actually. They have been such a delight to us all.”

Legolas swallowed audibly. The reckoning had come.

The great hall was shadowed, swathed in heavy silence when Arwen and Legolas entered, a sharp rebuke after the merriment outside. 

Legolas’ back straightened, his face pale and sober, and Arwen realised he was afraid. She linked her arm with his unhurt one, and together they advanced to the dais. 

Thranduil once more sat in state upon his throne, and that formality in itself was a reprimand. The Woodland king’s gaze revealed nothing, but his expression was as heavy as his robes — a drape of storm-dark velvet lined with ermine, his bright blond hair crowned with white gems that flickered like lightning. He seemed all sharp edges, anger glinting from him like starlight upon steel. 

All ancient dissent between Lórien and the Greenwood appeared wholly resolved: Celeborn sat beside Thranduil on the dais, in the chair where a counsellor might sit, and he, too, was dressed in robes of state, his circlet on his brow. His expression was unfathomable. 

Legolas wavered, but then, brusquely, Thranduil gestured for Legolas and Arwen to approach. 

Legolas offered his arm, a warm and solid comfort, and in silence they began the long walk to the dais, dread mounting with every step. Thank the Valar that the hall was empty - at least Thranduil had spared them the humiliation of a dressing-down before all his court. Only now did Arwen realise how they must look — road-stained and bedraggled, spider silk in their hair, Legolas’ arm in its makeshift bandage. At last, after a small eternity of mounting terror, they stood before the King of the Greenwood.

"Greetings, sire!" Legolas stepped in front of Arwen, making himself first to bear the onslaught. 

Thranduil leant back on his carven throne, arms crossed and face like a thundercloud, watching his son for an endless, unbearable moment.  

“Reckless you have been, son, in meddling with matters far beyond your authority! Thranduil’s voice boomed through the silent hall, sending a lone wood pigeon flapping from the rafters. “An ill deed it was to involve an outsider in the affairs of the Greenwood!” 

He gave Legolas a withering look. “Of late you have often asked me for advancement, for a place among my warriors and a voice in my council, and I believed you were ready for it. Today you proved me wrong. The fault is mine — I should have kept you on a tighter leash.”

Legolas was a brave man indeed. He stood up straight, saluted his father formally, like a warrior, and presented a spider’s mandible. The hall’s muted light glinted off the razor-sharp edge that had drunk the blood of Elves.

“I present to you my warrior’s mark,” he replied in formal, archaic Silvan. “The spiders of Amon Lanc are dead.”

Thranduil’s tone cut like a knife. “And your Grandfather’s hall is burned to the ground,” he replied, in Sindarin.

“It only served to shelter our enemies!” Queen Síloril’s approach had been utterly silent, but now the door at the end of the hall fell closed behind her with a metallic clang . 

Síloril strode the length of the hall to stand beside Legolas before the dais, tall and majestic in her cape of iridescent feathers. Her woad-blue loremistress’ tattoo was dark against her pale skin, and Arwen was reminded that here stood, not a foreign ruler but one who was deemed wise and worthy by her own people. 

“Legolas is a son of the Silvans, husband,” she spoke, “and he has his ear to the forest. Even without a seat on your council, he knows that we Silvans have pleaded for years that the keep should be destroyed, lest it be manned against us. He has taken the matter from your hands.”

She turned to Legolas. “You have become a warrior,” she said in the Silvan of the Greenwood, and saluted her son in the way of the Wood-elves.

“If you must punish him, then as an adult!” she said to Thranduil, her voice sharp as a knife. “Shall you have your captains court-martial him?”

Thranduil’s look would have cowed a lesser woman, but Síloril stood unmoved before him. 

“Are you suggesting these two should be congratulated for their insubordination!?” Thranduil demanded.

“A Sindarin concept, husband, but even so the term does not apply,” Síloril smiled, “Legolas cannot have disobeyed your orders, for he never received any.”

Thranduil breathed in through his nose, nostrils flaring. “Lady of mine, once more I am reminded that you and I are of different kin.” 

Síloril did not answer her husband, clearly unwilling to stoke up marital disputes before their foreign guests, but she turned a fierce look upon Thranduil, and for all her simple buckskin, the pierced pebbles around her neck where a Sindar Queen might have worn diamonds, she was royal in strength and dignity. 

Thranduil knew it, because his gaze was sharp as his words when he turned to Arwen. 

Blood filled Arwen’s face beneath those deep-seeing eyes. Surely Thranduil must know what had passed between his son and her. He sent her a strange little smile, and she blushed hot as the midday sun. Yes. Thranduil definitely knew.

“But we have two miscreants here!” he proclaimed, his voice filling the hall as if this were a well-rehearsed play. “Celeborn, what say you?”

A telling look passed between Thranduil and Celeborn, and Arwen’s stomach sank. She had not expected to find these two in league against her. 

Celeborn rose to stand upon the dais with a rustle of grey silk. His mithril circlet was a flash of light in the shadowed hall as he nodded to Síloril, and for a moment Arwen saw Elu Thingol’s general, a vision of ancient Doriath. 

“The Queen's words have been spoken also in Lórien’s Silvan councils,” Celeborn said, and motioned towards the doors, where Silvan drums and flutes continued unabated. “Caras Galadhon will sound much the same right now. I expect that Nimrodel and her people will give my granddaughter a hero’s welcome.” 

His eyes gave away nothing when he turned to face Arwen. “It will not detract from your punishment. Folly must have consequences, so you will unlearn it.”

The girl who rode out from Lórien mere days ago would have dropped her eyes to the flagstones and mumbled an apology, but that girl was no more. Today’s Arwen stood up straighter, shoulders squared and arms clasped behind her back, and met her grandfather’s eyes. 

She had whispered these words to herself over and over during the long ride from Amon Lanc, in preparation for this very moment. They now came to her lips with ease. “Will you build a treehouse in a beech, Grandfather, for me to languish in until I improve my ways?”    

Both Celeborn and Thranduil blanched.  

Síloril alone was unimpressed. The merry chime of her laughter broke the leaden silence blanketing the hall. “A tongue as sharp as a Dwarvish blade!” she chuckled, smiling as if all this were but fireside banter. “Ai Celeborn, surely you will not make her Sing a cloak from her hair to get away from you?”

“I shall not repeat the errors of the past.” Celeborn’s tone was glacial. “But you risked too much, child.”

Celeborn had that particular brooding look Arwen knew well enough from childhood mischief, so she did not provoke him further. All she did was nod.  

Thranduil saw it, and scoffed. “So we cannot punish one without creating a martyr for the Silvan cause; nor the other lest we repeat the Lay of Leithian.” His nostrils flared again. “So be it.” 

He drew a deep breath. “Legolas! From now on I shall keep you too busy for such follies.” He leant forward on the throne to skewer his son with his gaze. “Report to the barracks tomorrow at dawn. They should have useful work for you, even with that arm. And rest assured that you will remain under orders from now on.”

“Yes, sir!” Despite his injury Legolas saluted with military perfection, his shoulders ramrod-straight. He somehow managed to look smug doing it. 

Thranduil ignored it, and instead turned to contemplate Celeborn with an air of pity. “Kinsman,” he said, and Celeborn’s face lit up at the word. “I have no idea what the Golodhrim do with wayward daughters, but tell that father of hers that this one needs something better to do with herself than embroidery, lest she demolish his valley!”

Thranduil’s gaze met Arwen’s, and for the first time since they set foot in his halls, the king’s smile reached his eyes. 

----

Later, in Celeborn’s room, he embraced her, and Arwen could have wept for sheer relief. The room bathed in golden light from many candles, with thick walls of stone between her and the strangeness of this perilous forest.

Thranduil’s cooks had prepared proper Sindarin food, mulled wine and spiced hazelnut pasties. Arwen bit into one, flaky pastry and honey-sweet filling bursting into her mouth, and the familiar taste almost brought her to tears. 

Then, small and worried, she dared ask. “Will you tell Father? And Elladan and Elrohir?”

Celeborn poured himself some wine in one of Thranduil’s ostentatious silver goblets. He drank deep, then nodded. “In great detail. Elrohir, in particular, must be reminded that he is your brother and not your guardian. He needs to slacken his grip.” 

For an instant his eyes glazed over with memory. A painful one, it seemed from his white-knuckled clench about the stem of his cup. “We made a similar mistake with him, long ago.” 

Arwen drew back, astonished. “Why would you do that for me? I thought you had the beech for my treehouse picked out!”

Celeborn smiled, and raised his hand to stroke her hair back from her face. She tried her best not to recall Legolas doing the same - Celeborn was frighteningly good at seeing minds when he wanted to. 

Even if Celeborn saw, he did not seem angry, and said only, “I, too, was young once.”

He cast her a clever glance. “You came back in one piece, having executed a strategic manoeuvre that kept Lórien’s captains quibbling for half an age. You should tell Elrohir that you have bested him, and watch him seethe. It should be entertaining.“ 

At that, she embraced her marvel of a grandfather once more, resting her head on his shoulder like she did countless times as a child. Without a moment’s hesitation he laid his hand on the crown of her head, warm and gentle, a benediction.  

Her gratitude must warm his mind like a ray of sunlight, because his voice went soft and he whispered, “hunt a Warg-fur for me, will you?”

This mighty beech was named Hírilorn, and it had three trunks, equal in girth, smooth in rind, and exceeding tall; no branches grew from them for a great height above the ground. Far aloft between the shafts of Hírilorn a wooden house was built, and there Lúthien was made to dwell; and ladders were taken away and guarded, save only when the servants of Thingol brought her such things as she needed.

It is told in the The Lay of Leithian how she escaped from the house in Hírilorn; for she put forth her arts of enchantment, and caused her hair to grow to great length, and of it she wove a dark robe that wrapped her beauty like a shadow, and it was laden with a spell of sleep. Of the strands that remained she twined a rope, and she let it down from her window; and as the end swayed above the guards that sat beneath the house they fell into a deep slumber. Then Lúthien climbed from her prison, and shrouded in her shadowy cloak she escaped from all eyes, and vanished out of Doriath.

 

The Silmarillion, Quenta Silmarillion, Ch 19, Of Beren and Lúthien

'This is the Hall of Fire' said the wizard. `Here you will hear many songs and tales-if you can keep awake. But except on high days it usually stands empty and quiet, and people come here who wish for peace, and thought. There is always a fire here, all the year round, but there is little other light.'

Fellowship of the Ring, Book II, Ch 1, Many Meetings

Imladris, the year 3018 of the Third Age.

Legolas came to her in the Hall of Fire. He was silent as he slid into the seat beside her, his face grave. The Lady of Imladris knew she must make a sorry sight, sitting alone with her eyes on the figures across the hall. 

One was small, age-bent and grey-haired. He was seated on a low stool with his back propped against a pillar, his hairy feet bare on the mosaic tiles. Beside him on the ground stood a drinking-cup and a porcelain plate with bread and cold meat. His companion, sitting in a high-backed chair, was tall enough that he had to lean over to converse with the old Hobbit in hushed tones. 

“An unusual pair,” Legolas said softly, not to disturb the minstrels playing a light pavane for those inclined to dancing.  

“They are dear friends.” Arwen could not help but smile — Hobbits tended to inspire good cheer wherever they went. “A shared love of pipe-leaf and poetry. Master Bilbo is quite the wordsmith.”

Legolas’s nose had wrinkled at the mention of pipeweed, but he, too, was affected. “They are a special kind, these Halflings. Master Bilbo in particular,” he replied, his tone indulgent. “My father is quite taken with the little fellow. We would love to host him once more in better times. Alas, for their short lives!”

A silence fell, in which he grasped the bitterness his words must hold for her. He blanched, and his hand clenched around his armrest. Arwen laid hers on it in a gesture of forgiveness, and left it there. They both watched Aragorn’s smile as he debated Bilbo on some peculiarity of rhyme or metre. 

“Arwen …” Legolas hesitated. “You must have heard these words many times, from all here who love you, but I must speak them myself.” 

She cast him a sideways glance, seeing the wet shine to his eyes. “Lúthien’s fate may seem sweet to you now,” he began, hesitant, but then he hit his stride, “but remember the bitterness at the bottom of that cup. You are not her, Arwen! If there is any doubt in your heart, if you desire to walk away … do so. It is not too late to turn from this path you have chosen.”

Arwen had this conversation so many times, with her father, her brothers, her grandparents, her friends. This night it was laid before her once more: a possibility, so bright and seductive. She would see her mother again, in that far green land where nothing decays and nothing ever changes. All who loved her would be spared from grief. 

But what of me? What of my destiny?

She recalled her vision, so long ago in the Greenwood, its hidden meanings now fully understood. Love’s sweetness, the delights of a marriage bed, a baby’s toothless smile. The White City under a swift sunrise. Arnor restored to glory. Seven stars and seven stones, and a white tree. 

All blessings, all hers. 

But the end — ahhh, the end would be bitter as bile. A reckoning, the bliss paid for in full. 

And beyond that … she would know . At the last, she alone of all her House would see what only Lúthien and Elros had yet seen. Aragorn would walk with her, on those strange paths where hope was Men’s only certainty. 

A minstrel’s voice rose to the sculpted rafters in an ancient lament for Doriath, his grief sharp as a blade as he mourned a world drowned beneath the waves of a sea Arwen would never cross.

“I am not Lúthien,” she said at last. “I … I love him, Legolas. Strange as it may sound when said about one so young, I truly do love him.” 

Legolas looked at her with deep searching in his gaze, like a man trying to grasp words written in an unknown language. He was trying, at least, and she needed desperately for him to understand. 

“There is a peace in transience,” she murmured, “in the certainty of an ending. Life can only be full if it is finite.” The pain in his eyes was a slap, so she added hastily, “And I shall make my mark before then.”

He cast her a sideways glance. “You are certain of this? Do you not doubt, in your heart of hearts?”

“No,” she said with full conviction, her eyes on Aragorn as he sat there beside the old Hobbit. She was suddenly terrified for her beloved. He was great and noble, but just a Man — mortal and fallible, and burdened by the greatness of his destiny. He might yet fail.

“Will you watch over Aragorn in the war to come?” she asked Legolas. “Will you go with him to the very end?”

Legolas took her hand, and brought it to his lips for a soft kiss. His hand was warm around hers, and she was painfully aware of the blood beneath the skin, thrumming with the life of the Eldar. His smile became a deep well of sadness.

“Arwen … my friend.” Even after all these years, her name was a blessing on his lips. “If this is your will, then I will see it done.” 

Chapter End Notes

And so we reach the end of this little tale!

I'd like to give many thanks and a round of applause to my wonderful betas who made this story so much better.

Thank you, reader, for joining Arwen and Legolas on their adventure, and for all the phenomenal feedback! I'd love to hear your final thoughts about this tale. A comment would make my day, as would any recs!

The next chapter is a little peek at my next story: The Ring and the Star. I'm also working on new chapters for 'Roots and Wings', and 'The Roads not Taken'. 

Thank you all for your support for my work, and see you soon!

Idrils Scribe

"In 1974 the power of Angmar arose again, and the Witch-king came down upon Arthedain before winter was ended. He captured Fornost, and drove most of the remaining Dúnedain over the Lune; among them were the sons of the king. But King Arvedui held out upon the North Downs until the last, and then fled north with some of his guard; and they escaped by the swiftness of their horses.

The Return of the King, LoTR Appendix A, Annals of the Kings and Rulers: Eriador, Arnor, and the Heirs of Isildur: The North-kingdom and the Dúnedain

“Lord, I implore you.” Fíriel wrung her hands within the wide drape of her sleeve. “Do my sons not deserve to know whether they are orphans?” 

The Queen of Arthedain held her head high beneath the Elvish disapproval. Fíriel wore mourning already, a heavy winter velvet dark as anthracite. The dress made her look like a black stain against the colourful Elvish robes of Círdan’s privy council. 

“If you care so little for the House of Isildur,” she said, “whom you once called friends and allies, then consider your own folk, Lord of Mithlond! Your mariners crewed the ship you sent out after my husband. Surely you wish to know what befell them?”  Clearly she had not yet grown used to begging. Her grey eyes were wide with shock at finding herself in the petitioner’s seat. 

Elrohir kept from shifting in his seat beneath that gaze, and held his tongue. As Círdan’s guest and envoy of Imladris he should not interfere in the affairs of the Grey Havens. As if Ossë shared the queen’s anger, a cold west wind rattled the room’s arched windows, howling as it whipped the lead-grey sea outside to foam.

Círdan had risen to greet his royal guest, but now he sank back into his chair. His ancient face was lined with grief, as if the past year burdened him with another age of the world. 

“Your highness …” he began, then thought better of arguing and motioned for wine to be brought for Fíriel and her son. 

Even now, Círdan gave the queen her due courtesy. The remains of King Arvedui’s proud court - Queen Fíriel, her son Aranarth, and a handful of battered courtiers - had reached Lindon at the head of a ragged caravan of refugees from the sack of Fornost, bearing little more than the clothes on their backs. 

All winter they had been guests in Círdan’s care, with little hope of repaying that hospitality. He watched her as they waited for sweet Dorwinion and almond biscuits. Fíriel took a polite sip, then laid her hands in her lap. 

“Your highness, what you ask of me is a pointless act of sacrilege,” Círdan said at last, once the queen was installed comfortably, flanked by Aranarth. “Elostirion is the highest hallows of the Eldar in Middle-earth. Its palantir looks only to the West. You will not learn the King's fate by gazing into it.” 

Fíriel’s glare could have split rocks. “Would you call Aranarth gazing into the stone a sacrilege? My son is Elendil’s heir. Need I remind you who carried the seven stones across the Sea?” 

Aranarth sat still and pale amidst Círdan’s counsellors, seething beneath their sharp elvish gazes. With a mere thirty-six winters he was a proud prince already, and a prickly one. No one in the Havens was quite sure how to address him. With his father Arvedui missing, he languished in a no man’s land between crown prince and king. 

He could not escape it: even if Arvedui’s body were to miraculously wash ashore on the next tide, Aranarth’s crown would be hollow. The Witch-king had destroyed the last kingdom of old Arnor, and no one yet knew what might be salvaged from the rubble. 

Elrohir watched the prince glower, and a tide of ancient sorrow washed over him. Elrohir was young in the reckoning of the Eldar, but he did recall the splendour and glory of the North Kingdom as it once was, the starred banners flying from the white walls of Fornost Erain and the mighty tower of Amon Sûl. 

Arnor had fallen to infighting. Quarrelling princelings carved Elendil’s realm up between them like a side of meat, only to have the Witch-king slay them one by one. Only Arthedain’s royal house now survived, and the North was reunited indeed - beneath the black banners of Angmar. Elrohir balled his hand to a white-knuckled fist, unseen in the wide drape of his sleeve. He should not blame Fíriel or her son - his own kin! - for the folly of their ancestors. He tried not to, with all his might. Other Elves would not be so well-willing.   

“I need no reminder, your highness,” Círdan replied. “Seven stars and seven stones and one white tree did your house carry from Númenor. But by Elendil’s own will did the Palantir of Elostirion pass to the Elves, and no Mortal hand has touched it since.”

Firiel opened her mouth, but Círdan quickly said. “I deny not your son’s worthiness, but his purpose. Unlike the other Palantíri, the Elostirion stone is aligned with the Master-stone in the Tower of Avallonë. Its eye is fixed on Eresseä and cannot turn elsewhere—”

“Elendil’s heir may impose his will upon the stone.” With a sharp gesture, Aranarth flung back the trailing sleeve of his court robe. The Crown Prince had been outraged at the suggestion that he wear mourning. His chosen garb was princely enough: a costly sea-green silk embroidered with breaching whales in silver thread, but it sat small on Aranarth’s broad shoulders - clearly a loan from some Elvish benefactor. 

Elrohir pitied this boy in borrowed clothes. The House of Isildur had fallen far indeed. The Sack of Fornost left Aranarth a pauper, wholly dependent on the good will of the Elves. The people of Arthedain could no longer pay the royal taxes: their corpses lay heaped in town squares, their farmsteads reduced to smouldering rubble. Arthedain’s fields sat fallow, its herds wantonly slaughtered by voracious Orcs. Weeds sprouted thick on the ancient trade routes.

“Lady, the Palantír is far older than Elendil.” Círdan’s tone was kind, but decisive. “The stone was created to gaze West, and looks not to the lands of Men. It will serve no other purpose. To apply force might destroy it, and deprive the Elves of Middle-earth of our last connection with Valinor. I cannot allow it.”

“My husband could be in desperate need even now!” Fíriel’s eyes burned with anger, but it was a thin veil over the fear beneath. 

“That is true, but you will not learn it through the Palantír.” Círdan delivered his final verdict. Aranarth’s face twitched into a mask of rage before he could master himself.

Elrohir recalled a time when Dúnedain armies dwarfed the forces of Lindon and Imladris. A time when the hand that moved the levers of power in the North had been Mortal, and the Elvish realms were but satellites in Arnor’s orbit. Círdan would have been hard- pressed to refuse any request a Queen of Arnor might care to make of him. That time was now past. 

He watched with sympathy as Aranarth seethed in his chair. How bitter it must be for this proud prince to watch his royal mother beg, the cold knowledge that his House no longer possessed the leverage to command the Elves, that what aid they received was mere charity. 

Elrohir withdrew from the reception room, and discreetly sent Ardil to have a word with Círdan’s chamberlain. He needed to speak to the Lord of the Havens in private. 

Arvedui must be found. 

The only Stone left in the North was the one in the Tower on Emyn Beraid that looks toward the Gulf of Lune. That was guarded by the Elves, and [...] it remained there, until Círdan put it aboard Elrond's ship when he left [....]

But we are told it was unlike the others and not in accord with them; it looked only to the Sea. Elendil set it there so that he could look back with 'straight sight' and see Eressëa in the vanished West; but the bent seas below covered Númenor forever.

The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A, Annals of the Kings and Rulers: Eriador, Arnor, and the Heirs of Isildur, Footnotes

Chapter End Notes

Times are dark: the Witch-king has conquered the North, and the Dúnedain are leaderless and scattered. Pack your fur cloak and join Elrohir, Ardil, and Prince Aranarth on an expedition into the icy north in search of lost King Arvedui.
I'm always eager to hear readers' thoughts on new stories, so please leave me a comment if you feel like it!