The Prince's Pretend Mother

Seventh Entry - Out Like a Firefly

"Captain," I called down to him. "Is my brother coming in?"

The captain met my gaze with one of deepest regret. His voice was soft. "Milady, he is waiting outside."

It is cruel to bring the dead to places where they cannot see the sky.

I heard Legolas gasp and I staggered forward; I felt an arm wound with a leather bracer wrap around my waist. I grasped it as though I were the anchor and it the ship. "No."

I tried to pry Legolas's arm from around me, and heard his sword clatter to the floor as he dropped it to add his left arm to the fray. "Firven!" Perhaps he was not lost yet. Perhaps he could hear me.

Legolas tried to keep me on my feet but I did not want to stand when my brother would never walk with me again. I felt as though I had gone deaf, the world was vibrating around me, pressing me down and squeezing me between its every fiber. My throat was raw with what I could no longer hear.

Cooler hands than Legolas's fastened around my arms and Legolas's fell away. I sagged to the floor, struggling to breathe, to see, to hear, even if I no longer wanted to. Thranduil's cloak tangled around my feet from where it had fallen when he dropped to his knees beside me. I held tightly to his arm where it wrapped across me and at least kept me somewhat off the floor.

It struck me then to think of how Legolas was hurting. He had loved Firven too, but I had loved him more, so my pain was the one that took comfort. He had loved Milir also, and I had still loved him more, and then too I had been the one comforted. This realization only made me feel more as though I would fly apart at any moment, and I screamed, furious that the world, or the Valar, would do such a thing. They had promised us immortality. This ensured that we loved each other enough to die with each other, because we had the misplaced faith that we would live forever.

I don't know how I got from the southern gate to my own rooms but I became aware some while later that I was alone in my empty house, the curtains all drawn, the hearths burned down to cinders. This world was to quiet and ordered, it made my insides feel only more ravaged and ruined. So I took the poker from its rack by the fire and broke every window in my house, broke every plate, destroyed the mattress, tore down the curtains, and nearly bled to death catching my arm on broken glass when I threw a footstool out the window.

After that I shucked the clothes that still had Firven's death written on them and dressed myself in the darkest gown I could find. I fastened my cloak, pulled the hood over my tangled hair, and before dawn left my suite without anyone noticing. I heard footsteps approaching as I left and avoided them, but whoever had been coming to my suite must have recognized me and caught up with me anyway. Thranduil caught me by the wrist I had torn open against the window—hastily but firmly bandaged—and I yanked it away with a hiss.

"Not today, Thranduil! I cannot hide it from him today."

"Inladris—"

"I will return when I can." My entire body, my entire being, was shaken. I stood before him white-faced and trembling. I met his eyes and held them, refusing any sympathy, and demanding my willful release.

Thranduil watched me with a pained gaze, resigned. Finally he nodded. He unclipped a dagger and sheath from where they were hidden underneath the edge of his robe and extended them to me. "I know you will not take guards."

I accepted them both with a white hand tinged with blue. "Thank you." I left without saying goodbye. I suppose it was my inner mind's way of convincing me that I would return, to smooth that breach of my own good etiquette. At the moment I did not care. I felt that if I should be so destroyed inside the world should reflect my pain, and that was a dangerous way to be when one is close to the royal family. "Tell Legolas I'm sorry," I shouted without looking back, already halfway down the stairs.

"Come back and tell him yourself!" he called after me, and I knew that he would.

*

I knew our lovely forest was no longer safe so despite wanting to walk to the ocean and then wade through it, I only walked for a day. Out here I could scream and slash at all I wanted, and when I collapsed no one tried to make me stand up and face the world. The world had done me a terrible wrong, and I wanted it to know that. No one else had to see how weak I felt because of it. No one else needed to know how much I wanted to follow my mother and be with my family again. The humans think we lead kinder lives, being stronger than they are. They are wrong. Being stronger means we are sometimes forced to outlive everyone we love, even our own kind, and forced to attend funerals that inhibit our very beliefs. We are not meant to die. The Valar had to create a special hall just for us after the first of us were killed because at first they too had thought us impervious to life's terminations.

They were wrong. Life is not the act of breathing. Life is the act of loving. And sometimes one gives too much love away. When those one loves have died they take that love with them, and eventually there is not enough left to sustain the heartbeat of the one who gave it all away.

My mother gave all of her love to one person. I spread mine out between many, thinking I would be safer that way. I was wrong. Is this any kinder?

I could see how my mother left us, Firven and I. I understood how she had felt.

The question remaining was whether or not I wanted to be like her. Whether I wanted to follow the love that I had given away and lost.

Or if I wanted to stay with the love I had planted most recently, which I was still watching grow.

*

When I returned a little over a week later Thranduil was surprised and pleased to see me having returned so soon. I had let myself into his home and found him in his office. I stood before his desk in the same mourning clothes I had left in nine days ago, my hair a frothing mess of snarls down past my waist, my expression grim but clear.

Thranduil lifted his head. After a moment he said, "Despite the risk of sounding callous I did not expect to be granted your return so quickly."

"I cut down a tree. Somehow it helped."

His eyebrows came together. "With what?"

I placed the dagger, now twisted through the middle, point-down on his desk, balancing beneath a single finger.

Thranduil regarded the blade and then looked back at me. "A heated forge should not have bent that blade."

It had been a large tree. "I hope it wasn't a favorite."

With a wry snort Thranduil accepted my return of the blade, turning it in his fingertips to see what other damages I may have wrought. "Did its sheath at least escape your rampage?"

I placed it on the desk. "Thank you," I said, for the dagger, the sheath and the time. "I will return in the morning."

I turned to quickly leave and stopped at Thranduil's voice.

"Inladris."

I waited at the door, looking over my shoulder at him.

"How are you?"

I breathed. My voice was suddenly raw again, but graded with a slow acceptance that I would be in pain for the rest of my life. "I  may survive."

I was finding it easier to rage than to despair.

(pg65)

> from Paul's Wife - Robert Frost

{Dedicated to punk_and_proud because every notification today has been from them, and my Wattpad notification is somehow the same as my text messages and I was waiting anxiously for a certain text, so I was torn between excitement and frustration every time I saw that I had gotten a vote, but alas I had not gotten a text. Thank you, love!}