Forget me not

Chapter 15

I found that we had travelled many miles from Lothlorien in our search, and the Prince had taken me many more miles to his camp, which had again travelled farther from Lorien. We were several days from the city, though quite close, considering how far we might have gone. The travel would be considerably slower than it would have been had I been alone. Unfortunately, we had to take the whole camp and, therefore, would be at least another day off or so.

I worried with every step for Elladan. I could do little, aside from taking off in the middle of the night, but even that was impossible. In doing so, I would have to escape the Prince’s watch, the guards outside of my tent, and finally the sentries around camp. Also, I was not going to get far without a horse and weapons.

I imagined all the horrible things that could have happened to Inwe and Elrohir, but surprisingly, my thoughts were with Elladan. My affection for him had grown quite a bit since my incident in the mountains. I found that I could not cease to think of his gorgeous long hair and his smile that would make me melt. I longed to be once again in his arms.

Fortunately, when we stopped, Legolas accompanied me in a quick search through the section of the forest we covered in our travels and that gave me a chance to look for his tracks, clothing, anything that might lead me to him. Above all, I feared that he was trapped by the spiders, that their venom worked its magic on him, and did what I supposed it had done to Helas.

I came to the conclusion that if it was the spiders that were haunting the forest, Helas must have been attacked by one of them and bitten. The venom must have hit him hard and stopped him from functioning like himself. It caused him to become violent, lose his memory, and be hostile toward everyone. I hoped that I would not find Elladan in such a state.

The third day of the trip, I was out with Legolas, and he forced me to let go of my fears by talking to him about how I felt. I had to admit that it made me more relaxed and less worried to tell him all the things that plagued my mind. He eased my thoughts, telling me that the sons of Elrond were not to be taken lightly. There was a good chance that they had come out on top. They were older than me and had a great deal more experience with handling themselves than many of the elves even I knew. Legolas also eased my fears by assuring me that from what I had said about Inwe, she was likely back in Lorien looking for me by now!

I tried not to think about things so dire and disastrous as my mind wanted to conjure. Instead, I listened to Legolas’ soothing voice telling me that it would be all right. It took a long time before we found something, and though I had hoped we would not, I was somewhat glad we did, seeing as I found proof of the Prince’s existence. I knew he had been with me and my memory of him was not just an after affect of the poison injected into me by the spider’s bite. His circlet that he had worn out with me was lying slightly covered beneath a wall of bushes and random leaves. I picked it up and called the Prince of Mirkwood to my side.

“This is his,” I told him. “He must have fallen around here. There must be something wrong.” My voice grew high and panicked. I did not want to see the body of the man that I was beginning to love wracked by insanity because of the venom. Nevertheless, I had to look for him. Legolas and I started everyone off at once.

A search party of the entire camp went out, each person with a partner, and looked for any more signs of the Prince’s being there. There was only a few broken branches and here and there something out of place, something broken, that might signify a struggle. We soon discerned a path that the Prince must have taken.

It led us to a deeper and darker part of the forest. There were various caves around, various pockets in the wall of earth and stone we found. Some of these had cocoons but none of them contained Elladan, Elrohir, or Inwe. We finally found a large entrance to something that appeared to be a cave. I sensed fear in all of the soldiers around me, but Legolas ordered them forward and into the cave.