The Prince's Pretend Mother

Third Entry - A Piercing Little Star

I ducked my head and his hand fell away. “I do not know how to regrow the piece of me I have lost.”

“You never regrow.”

I sank into a straight-backed armchair that was luckily not far away, a soft stream of air draining out of me. “Then how do you live.” The tears I had not permitted to form were rising from the well I had buried them deep inside.

“You must grow around the scar.” Thranduil stood beside me and settled a firm hand on my shoulder. “I am sorry to diminish the significance of your sorrow. But Legolas must never believe that it is better to be like me.”

I pressed the tears out of my eyes and lifted my head to look up at him. “You have made a wonderful king.”

The twitch of my lips showed me his gratitude. “With luck he will never have to be one.”

I had to put my shadowy pain against Thranduil’s to learn to see and sense around it. In the following weeks I slammed my fists through the thorns I had grown, and when I had collapsed in my rooms with blood running invisible down my insides there were sometimes entire nights I didn’t sleep, or spans of nights, and my maid found me in the same place she had left me by the bed, having never touched it. In the following months, after having recovered from the shock of feeling genuine emotions again, I began to teach myself how to forget that I had been in mourning not long ago, and that I knew full well I would always be. One cannot grow back their fingers nor lose the scars. They can only relearn how to use their hands so they are not left to fumble and grasp at their own life.

I began engaging with Legolas again. He was too old to want to be carried anymore but we did climb the trees to talk or to read or simply to lay back and watch the birds sometimes. When he saw that his laughter wouldn’t hurt me he began chuckling again too.

I may have crumpled in on myself some days when he wasn’t looking or some nights after I had hidden it from him, but pretending to be happy eventually led to finding happiness too. If I had known being shouted at would help shove me into the solution perhaps I would have gone out of my way to confront an irate king before, but it had never occurred to me that one could be shaken out of mourning. As it was it mattered less to me how it had worked, only that it had.

“Yes well your military strategy is shockingly lacking, young man,” I lightly reprimanded Legolas as we sat one evening at supper. Thranduil had work he’d needed to finish and Legolas had asked me to stay. He was able, for the most part, not to vex his father at supper these days, but rarely did I leave when Legolas asked me not to go. “You cannot simply study the lessons you enjoy and avoid the rest.”

“I’d like to see you studying for military strategy!” he complained. “Moving wax figurines around on a board and keeping in mind the landscape, the season, the races involved, the treaties involved, the motives of each individual party, the nearest towns, the supply roots, the budgets, the training or suspected training of everyone who’s gotten caught up in it. It’s maddening.”

“So is life!” I shot back, eyebrows lifted in amusement. “Besides when will I ever need to know military strategy? I think I got off easy, being the one who’s looking after you instead of the other way around.”

“Of course you did, I am very well-behaved.”

“You wove flowers in my hair and insisted on watering them hourly when you were eight,” I reminded him with a sip of wine. This one was rosy, and with a light raspberry and wintergreen taste. I didn’t know where Thranduil found his wines but one never suffered, at his table.

“I did not.”

“You did too.”

“May I try your wine?”