AFTER you "freshened up", you returned to Thranduil. Seeing he was asleep you chose to climb in next to him. It was most likely mid-afternoon when you both awakened. After inquiries of how he felt, and some terms of endearment, one thing started leading to the other. Holding turned into kissing, which led to touching, which turned into heavy petting, and against your better judgement, you finally found yourself astride him, naked, panting and moaning along with him, riding the sword of loins into white blinding bliss. He followed you into the realm of orgasmic, divine pleasure, and both of you spent and sweaty, fell into one another holding and touching, chatting carefree until you both nodded off again.
You awakened before him this time, and slid out from under the covers with the purpose of relieving yourself, then ordering both of you food and cleaning up to some degree once more. Once those things were done, you found him awake in bed and looking out the window at the red and yellow hues dancing through the leaves declaring night was falling.
"I ordered dinner to be brought here for us." you informed him. He smiled at you and opened his arms to invite you to him. Taking the invitation you crossed the room speedily and gently slid beneath the covers again into his arms.
"How many days was it in the human world?" he asked settling back against the headboard.
"I'm sorry?" you looked at him questioningly.
"That you were gone."
You frowned. You had spent a great deal of time trying to forget about that. "Two nights, two and a half days, I believe." You recounted it in your head.
"It has been three years here." he replied casually. You glanced at him, he seemed lost in thought, but not surprised by the time difference.
"I don't understand how that happened. This world exists in the human world to some degree, correct?" you ask not sure how to even truly explain the question.
"Time has to move differently in different places and dimensions. I..." he hesitated and looked at you, "kept you here longer than I should have. I will not deny the reasons were entirely selfish, but I do hope you understand this, that I love you more than you can possibly imagine."
You smiled at those words but still did not really understand the explanation. "I'm still not sure I get it."
He chuckled. "Everything has consequences. I had to turn back time in your world, and in turn it sped up time here to compensate. Yet in truth, even I do not truly understand all the full dynamics of it. I believe only the Great One does."
You bit your lip and sighed as you just nodded showing you accepted the clarification, even if it did not really explain much. You instinctively knew you had a lot to learn, and he would be your teacher.
"There is something I must tell you. It may however, make you write me off as mad, or even evil... I do not know." You sat up as he said this. He sighed and you seen him looking off to a dark corner. Not enough dark to let her in. But you could tell it unsettled him. "It is about my late wife, Legolas' mother." You felt him squeeze you tighter unconsciously. You swallowed hard as he began. "Our kind is immortal, but can be slain or our life can be taken by unnatural means similar to the way every other being can be."
You nod in understanding as he continues. "She... she had been a very beautiful, even kind woman. However, she was very well aware of her beauty, and also very jealous over me. Why I do not know as my devotion to her never wavered, but she could stand no other creature to openly show any type of romantic interest in me. I would be lying if I did not say I was the same towards her, but not as possessive... even obsessive as she. She also was a great enchantress, and both of us possessed mirrors of magical properties. I still do... it is a necessary tool."
He paused to be sure you were following along. Satisfied, he continued, "The one thing she wanted above all else, was the one thing I seemed unable to give her... a daughter."
You went rigid when he said this and it made him stop and look at you, "Are you okay?"
You nod, and then smile at him reassuringly.
"Many centuries passed and a daughter just never came. It was as if her womb had become closed after Legolas' birth. However, when I was passing by in the forest one day a man was leading a young girl through the woods. He was drunk, and pulling on her so hard that it was obvious of its pain to the girl. She finally fell, and for whatever reason he planned to beat her and possibly just leave her there. I, and my party stopped him. He told us she was useless, and he wished her dead. He then gave her to me as a "whore". Stating she was not good for anything else."
Elizabeth's face came to your mind, and you bit your lip. So, you were now going to hear the full story.
"Our kind has always been known to take children and women in. Usually they are abused or abandoned. Others are simply drawn here as it is the place they are meant to be. Eventually, they become like us... turn into one of us." He gave you a long, inquiring look. Making sure you understood.
You did. You were drawn here for apparently a lot of reasons. You would definitely not only become like them, but one of them.
"The girl was very lovely. Nothing to my queen's stately beauty, but still beautiful in her own right. I told her I would take her in, but first needed to let her return to her own world so that I could tell my wife of it. The girl seemed happy about the situation and I took her to the very farm I left you at. The new owner had always been good to our people, and he needed someone to help him in the house."
"She stayed with him, and I returned home to tell my queen about this child. At first she was elated. Very much so, and when she met the girl who was apparently 12 at the time, she was very taken with her. However, my wife wanted the girl to make her own decision in time to live with us. Not to become another "stolen" child."
"So, for a couple years... four to five, I believe, in human terms, the girl stayed with the farmer." He caught your eyes briefly, and his brow crossed. "I believe you know a little bit about this. Am I right?"
You shrug and smile. "Just rumors, and fairy tales."
He snorted. "You mean that ridiculous Snow White story?"
"Yes, that one.
I assure you... if you eat a poison apple, you are going to die and stay dead." he told you laughing. Then he turned serious, "Yet, I must ask, what rumors?"
You shifted in your place a little and looked away. "They had a picture of a young teenager at the house you led me to. They said that a woman of your kind used to visit her, and that she was killed... by poison."
You looked down at this, and when he did not answer you looked up and seen him staring at you. The expression was not one you could name. There was not anger there, nor anything very prominent at all. He looked almost reserved.
"You realize my dear, that my people, are also now yours?" he asked dryly.
Mortified, you look away. "Yes, yes. I just am still coming to terms with it, I suppose."
He snickered and looked up, out the window. "Those rumors are sadly true. Did they tell you her name?"
"Elizabeth Smalls."
He merely nodded, and then took a deep breath, "Yes, that is her. Lovely little thing, was she not? Porcelain skin, lips red as blood, hair black as ebony... Your "Snow White" I suppose."
You smile and nod. "Tell me what really happened, please."
"On her seventeenth birthday we were going to bring her home. Until then my wife visited her everyday. Every day Elizabeth became even more lovely. I was proud of my fortune, and visited her on occasion with my wife. However, in that lied the problem." He shook his head. "One time, it had been very obvious that Elizabeth was attracted to me. My wife caught on. I assured her that it was not reciprocated and made a point not to return with her the next couple of times she visited her. Which may have been my biggest mistake."
"Maybe I could have prevented what happened, at least to Elizabeth." He looked out the window at this. "When we returned, my wife became obsessed with her beauty. No amount of reassurance I gave her calmed her. She had a mirror... a special one. That when she asked it, would show her the answer to any question she asked. She started asking it only one question over the next several months that led to Elizabeth's death, 'Who is the fairest in the land?'"
"It always showed her, her own face. With that she was sated... until just before Elizabeth's birthday it did not. It showed her Elizabeth's." He turned to look at you, and you could not help trying to picture this scene in your head. You really could not understand how the two could be compared. Fortunately, Thranduil explained that next. "You see, while my wife was physically superior to Elizabeth in looks, she had let her vanity poison her own heart, and even her mind. She had turned from being a kind, intelligent, beautiful, loving person, into a jealous, cruel, and vain person. It consumed her. The mirror was showing her the heart of beauty, not the appearance of it."
"Unknown to me, her innocent, pet attraction to me was what drove my wife over the edge, and she decided to plot out a way to end it, not by talking to her as a mother would. But by murdering her. She first tied her up in a bodice she had gifted her too tightly, but the old man found her before it was too late. Then she gave her a necklace of ribbons which she tied too tightly about her neck. Again, the old man found her and helped her. Finally, she dressed up as a human and came to the farm pretending to sell trinkets and combs."
"She convinced Elizabeth to take a comb and try it on. However, the comb was dipped in a special poison that seeped into the wood of it, and was potent enough to go into the skin as the day wore on. She gave the comb to her, and by the end of the day, as it was mid-summer, the poison in the comb had killed her. My wife was smart enough to know not to just outright stab her with the comb, which would have killed her within a few minutes. She let it be subtle and hard to trace. The only way they knew it was poison was because of the comb itself. It was the only trace left behind, and the antidote to it is something only my people know." He finished and sighed. He looked down and then at you. "That is the story of Elizabeth, but not all of my wife."
You set yourself with resolve to not flinch, no matter what he told you. "The death of Elizabeth, her murdering her, was a sin of course, and it also was heartbreaking to her in a twisted way. When she came to herself and understood what she had done, she mourned Elizabeth, and also relished in it. The mirror was forgotten, but not the vanity and madness, jealousy and spite that it reflected her to have. Madness consumed her, until one day when the entire court was in audience, she came in to the hall. She confessed to all present what she had done, and that we should all feast and dance for her daughter would have come to live with her that day. Then she took some red hot irons from the fire place and placed them in her shoes, saying she would dance until she died. Which in a way she did. Screaming and writhing in pain she had put the shoes on before anyone could understand the scene..., let alone stop her, and fell to her death off a steep ledge from the castle."
He stopped and twisted in spot for a moment. "I..." he looked at you then away ashamed. "I did not know how to handle it. I became consumed with my own grief of her, and I would not let them bury her, nor burn her to ash, and erect a memorial. I began searching for ways to cheat death. Ways to bring her back. Finally, after many months I found one."
You tensed up and went cold. You seen him do the same. "I performed the ceremony at the next full moon. A necromancer's spell. A dark spell that no one should ever attempt. Yet so lost was I, that I would do anything... and so I did." He licked his lips and stared into your eyes. "It demands a great deal of strength and energy, such as only a god would have. I am no god." he said sadly.
"I ended up fainting half way through it, and the creature that emerged from it was a half-baked thing. My wife, but not her. Nor was it any full creature or spirit meant to exist. She was what they call a shadow walker. She has all of her bad traits, yet hardly any of her good ones, save only her love for Legolas. She will not hurt him. It was the only good in her that was salvaged. She is neither living, nor dead. She can only be seen by those who have touched death, or who have spotted her in an enchanted mirror."
His brows furrowed and he looked at you puzzled, and worried. You had to snapped yourself out of it. You had an answer to everything... save one thing... How do you get rid of her?
"Have I told you too much?"
You shake your head and sit up straight. "No... I was just..." you glance at the closed door, knowing she was just outside there. His eyes followed you, and became large.
He cut you off. "You can see her too?"
You hesitated then nodded frantically in confirmation. "I wasn't sure how to tell you. I first seen her on the day my mother died, and have since."
"You touched your mother after she died?"
You nodded. He closed his eyes and let out a heavy sigh. When he opened them again, he looked at you intensely. "That is how you know to leave a great deal of lights about us now. I am sorry."
You looked at him confused. "About what?"
"I am sorry that you have been brought in to this."
You smile. "At least now you have another person who can see her and hear her. I just do not understand how more people do not."
"Many do I believe, but do not like to admit it." he answered wryly.
"What exactly is it that she wants? Besides to just abuse and belittle everyone?"
"She wants me." he took your hand in his and gave it a gentle squeeze. "She wants all of us. To drive us all mad. Above all else, she wants me dead."
You pulled back horrified. "Yes, there are only two ways she can be released from this existence. The first she will never willingly concede to, the second is by my death. If I die, so does she."
"Well..." you prompt, "what is the first way?"
He did not answer right away, and it made you nervous. "Someone else must take her crown willingly." He gave you a poignant look. You now understood. You understood a great deal. He had kept you here on purpose. He began to make you like them... on purpose. Everything was a plan. While a bit of that made you feel betrayed, it also gave you a sense of yourself. Afterall, had you not really been seeking him all your life, and this realm? You were indeed meant to come here for this. Manipulations or not, you could have left any time. You knew it, and so did he. With that, you settled it in your mind.
But that brought the more pressing issue forward... the shadow walker right outside the door.
As if he could pick up on all your trains of thought, he finally said before closing the subject, "Be careful of her my dear. She is no ghost. Nor is she what she once was, and she is very dangerous."
No one had to tell you that, but you had made your choice. You had proclaimed it to her, and you still stood by it. You loved him, and nothing would change that. So, all you could do now was find out exactly how you would take this bitch's crown.