The Prince's Pretend Mother

My Mother, Nelide

- Six Months After Recovering Nelide -

"Inladris, are you busy?"

Inladris lifted her head from where she was trimming flowers she'd chosen from Thranduil's garden, at a small table in her room, and smiled. "Of course, poppyseed. What's troubling you?"

Legolas slid out the chair beside her, taking a seat, and folded his hands before him. He tapped his thumbs together. "Father has been telling me about Nelide." At her nod to show she'd known this, he said, tasting each word carefully, "I wonder why, when he has so much to say, he never said anything about her before? I can hardly remember him ever saying her name."

Inladris sighed, a light breath. "Where is your father?"

"Out scouting with the guards."

Inladris laid down her knife, gently slid her stem clippings and pile of leaves aside, and laid her hands over his. "When I was a child, I killed a bird by accident. Have I ever told you that?"

His eyebrows rose, and he shook his head.

"I was quite young—though old enough to know better—when I found it in our garden. It was hurt; it couldn't fly away. My parents had told me not to touch wild animals, but it was so small it didn't look like it could possibly do me any harm. It didn't occur to me how much harm I might inadvertently do to it. My parents were out, and Firven and I had been arguing so I didn't think he'd help me. I didn't know when my parents would be back. I stood over the poor stumbling thing envisioning all the terrible things that might happen to it—a cat might eat it, it could starve or dehydrate, it could get cold and freeze—I imagined so many terrible and many highly unlikely possible but still unfortunate outcomes, that finally I convinced myself that I had to help it, I absolutely must, or the bird would surely die.

"So I picked the bird up. It fought me, and I dropped it. The next time I picked it up I held on better. I took it inside, and went to the kitchen and poured a bowl of water and a bowl of seeds we put on the bread, and filled another dish with towels to make a nest. I provided everything I thought it could want or need."

Inladris blinked, looking over his shoulder rather at him. "Then I very carefully opened my hand and the bird fell out, dead. I'd held on too tightly and it suffocated. I wanted so badly to protect it from the things I thought it should fear that I killed it myself."

She took a deep breath. "For a long while I was so ashamed of what I'd done, and so confused by it, that I never told anyone. Then when I grew up and finally did understand what had happened and what had led us to that point, nobody wanted to listen to the confessions of a frightened child out of a grown girl's mouth, so again I never told. Did I do a bad thing, if I had good intentions for it, but somehow managed to fail so miserably that I caused someone pain?

"Do you understand, Legolas? When your father came home without your mother, you were too young to be able to understand what he had to tell you, so he kept it to himself. He feared so many things, so many hurts, on your behalf that he tried to keep all of them from you. Unfortunately, your mother had become one of the things that hurt him so much he was terrified to share her with you because he knew that if you knew what had happened, it would hurt you, too. And it took your father so long to feel all right again after what happened. He didn't want to in any way burden you with what already burdened him. He forgot that sometimes we need to hurt a little to save us from hurting a great deal more. We cannot live sealed inside glass our entire lives." A tiny smile touched her lips. "We all must break a little or we'll suffocate trying to never breathe our last."

Slowly, Legolas shook his head. "I understand. I am astounded, as always, by your ability to explain even the most convoluted of things in the most thoughtful of ways."

Inladris took up her knife and flowers again with a short chuckle. "Yes. Well. What I lacked in social dexterity I made up for in introspective skills."

"You did indeed."

"Although, Legolas." She paused again, but this time laid only one of her hands over his. "I would consider—though it is a decision that must be made only with your own comfort—how you name Nelide. Not only for your father's sake, but for you as well. She had precious little opportunity to mother you, but as you get to know her, you might consider naming her yours. I think it would help you feel closer to her, if only to her memory."

His brow furrowed. "I hadn't consciously thought about it. Father always called her Nelide; he never referred to her as my mother, I simply knew that she was."

"Well, we have been cheating a bit, you and I, in our casual use of the terms 'mother and son'. I've wondered sometimes if even after you were old enough to fully understand, I should have avoided those terms for us entirely, so as not to impose on who your real mother is. It just seemed that you had so little to hold onto, you needed someone in your life to stand in that space and, even if only lightheartedly, claim that name for you."

Legolas smiled. "I think you needn't worry over such small things."

"Oh but my nutmeg, these are the only things I worry over. Motherhood is my primary occupation, or don't you remember that as soon as you began attending your own adventures, I immediately mothered your father?"

"Did I ever call you that?"

"You did call me Mother, once, when you were very young. I think I was too harsh in tone when I told you that I was not your mother and I never would be. I was terrified you might say it in Thranduil's presence, and terrified of how that would hurt him."

"I'm sure you did just fine."

"Oh, what an insult upon my character, to have done simply 'fine'."

Legolas chuckled, stood, and leaned down to kiss her hair. "I'm sure you are quite all right. If not, seek out Father, and he'll tell you in no uncertain terms just how well you are."

Inladris snorted, shaking her head as she stripped the bottom leaves from a thick-stemmed flower. "Somehow he always manages to make me question my sanity while doing so. Have you noticed? It is a genuinely unnerving skill of his."

"What, being able to reassure people while still flustering them? Yes, I wholeheartedly agree. Do you need a new vase?"

Inladris glowered through the table at the shards she'd kicked beneath it. "Yes, when you get the chance." She muttered something unintelligible to herself.

Legolas smiled, and left her door open behind him. 

(A/N: Good News: I've started work on Legolas's story! Bad News: Still slow as heck. Anyway, here's a taster. If it gives you any indication of my progress, this taster has doubled the number of pages that I've written thus far. :/ But the plot is essentially fleshed out!)