{*Virtually all 'Elvish' in this chapter and the following chapters is utterly fabricated. I was too lazy try to look it up and translate sentences.}
"Did you buy any of that persimmon tea they had fresh in the market?"
I adjusted myself so I sat more comfortably across his lap, trying to figure out just where in the hat I was knitting I'd gone wrong. "No, I forgot. Why did we need persimmon tea?"
"Because I like persimmon tea." He was slouched in the large armchair with his heard resting against the back, relaxing after a day of whatever it was he did. He'd explained it to me before but for the life of me I couldn't remember. But he no longer worked as a stonemason now that Erebor was no longer in a state of All Hands on Deck. Bofur had gotten back into his previous occupation of carpentry years ago.
"Oh. I'll go get some then." I shifted and his arm dropped across my lap to effectively keep me in. "I thought you only liked it fresh?" I'd get it tomorrow. Most of the merchants would be home too by now anyway.
"Doesn't mean I can't like it dried." He shifted himself so his legs wouldn't go numb. "Best you can do in the winter."
"Indeed." I still hadn't sorted out what to get Gimli for Christmas either, and as it was my first Christmas as a married woman I speculated that I ought to get him something. I was considering a carved and glazed ceramic mug, one of those ones with the lids on them to keep the flies and flowers out in summer. He'd probably like the fact that its weight and solidity meant it could double as a weapon in bar fights, if ever he got into another one. Not that his fights weren't justified, and mostly between friends who, once alcohol was added, simply misunderstood each other and still went home laughing, the occasional black eyes notwithstanding.
The next morning, as I sat using Gimli's still-sleeping back for support, my brow creased down at the letter Thranduil had sent me. We didn't write quite as much as we used to, not that we'd ever been avid pen pals. I wasn't sure how to tell Gimli I was leaving again; I wasn't sure if our being married had changed the way I'd done it before, simply announcing my intention to depart.
Finally though Gimli rolled over to face me and ran one hand over my back, warming the skin he'd left cool without him pressed against it. "Reading fan mail?" he mumbled, not entirely awake yet.
"No," I said with a chuckle. "I've been invited to a winter celebration in Mirkwood. Afterward there's something I'm going to help Thranduil with."
This woke him, and he scowled up at me. "Still helping a king who can't help himself, eh?"
I sighed. "Gimli, have you seen Thranduil? People don't speak honestly with him, he's too intimidating to give bad news to. People speak openly with me, they've got no reason to be afraid I'll yell at them."
"Aye!" he agreed. "Because they're not afraid of you, a little scrap of a thing who could no more fight off angry humans than she could an overlarge hummingbird."
"Gimli there are always elves around watching me, making sure I don't get into anything I can't handle on my own. Have I ever come back to you in any lesser state than when I left?"
He lifted one bushy eyebrow at me.
I rolled my eyes. "Other than that time, and that was nobody's fault. Do you really think the elves would send me into any real danger?"
"Of course I do," he retorted. "Not all of them would be comfortable with it, but there's a certain king among them who doesn't like you nearly as much as you think he does."
"This isn't about how much anyone likes anyone else," I snapped. "If I can be of assistance why shouldn't I be?"
"Because your giving assistance no longer involves just you, Mabyn!" he shot back, sitting up and both of us adjusting so we faced each other. "Before it bothered all of us but it was Bofur you frightened the worst, because he was responsible for you and still he wanted to give you your freedom, so he let you go. Do you have any idea how much he hated sending you off to places where he couldn't protect you but he could lose you all the same?"
I stood up and began throwing my clothes on. "And now I'm your responsibility and you're considering revoking that freedom?"
"In what way does it sound like I'm telling you can't go?" He stood up and began the same process. "I'm telling you how much I hate the idea of it! But I know better than to tell you what you can and can't do, surely you've figured that out by now."
I wrapped an emerald apron around my dress and tied it. "My guards will arrive tomorrow. I'm not sure when I'll be back."
"So he just went and assumed you'd leap to his beckoning?"
I fisted my hands and shouted at him. "He knows me, Gimli! It's been decades now, what did you expect?"
"I expected that you'd attempt to know him at least half as well!" he shouted back.
*
"They have been bucking against our borders for years but refuse to take responsibility for their own actions and opinions," Thranduil drawled from where he stood at his parlor window with a glass of wine, the day I arrived after having parted with Gimli angry, both of us furious with each other. I sat, a cup of hot tea in my lap, in one of their overlarge armchairs and listened with as much attention as I could spare. This was not the place for my marital troubles.
"And you think they'll tell me what they really think of you?" I said dubiously, taking an exploratory sip of the tea I hadn't yet tried. It was something foreign I'd never tried before, and I couldn't form a solid thought on it.
"I think they'll speak rashly if they think they have the upper hand," he responded, and I frowned.
"Just what shape does this upper hand take?" I gave the tea another chance.
"Suppose they found the daughter of a king in the forest and knew they could garner his good faith by returning her."
I pursed my lips. I wasn't as young as I once had been, though I was still in my youth by my own standards. Either way I no longer looked like a child, and I told him so. "People don't warm up to me the way they did when I was all cute and cuddly."
"The proper preparation can influence any opinion," he said with surety. "I have a few hints in mind." He gave me an up and down glance, to which I raised one challenging eyebrow. "It may have been worthwhile to put forth the effort to teach you our language for such occasions as this."
Legolas let himself into the parlor and closed the door behind himself. "I sincerely doubt," he said with a tiny smile, "that our Mabyn hasn't picked any up."
They glanced at me. I scratched my nose. "To people who don't speak Elvish I could speak Elvish."
They continued staring.
"Vridaya inlath iday muren ilia. Turun aniya mila timaladita. Soon av itana."
Their eyes had widened. I'd repeated my remembered phrases in their completeness, including the tones in which they had originally been spoken.
I shrugged. "I've told you; my memory for things I see is wonderful, but my memory for things I hear is phenomenal. How else would I have learned all those songs and poems? To someone who doesn't speak your language they won't know that all I'm saying is babble."
Thranduil thawed first. "Do you know what you said?"
"Haven't the foggiest. Those are just phrases I liked the sound of, and remembered."
"I see."
"Do you know the meanings of any of our words?" Legolas asked then.
"Tauriel has told me the meaning of a few, or translated individual words when I asked. I've picked up a sparse, sparse handful of meaningful words. Nothing I could really do anything with. Why, have I worried you?"
Legolas was smiling to himself, shaking his head. To his father he said, "This is why I suggested discretion when discussing sensitive subjects around our Mabyn."
My eyes brightened. "Oo, subjects such as what? My birthday gift?" I had never received any celebratory gifts from the elves before, so the thought of receiving one now amused me.
"No," said Thranduil. "However something else has occurred to me. In effort to help prove your position among us to those we hope to deceive, I have had a ring made to match ours."
It took me a moment to remember what ring they might have copied for me. I glanced over their left hands. Legolas almost never wore his, but Thranduil's rarely departed from his finger. His was also more decorative than his son's; then again the son was far less ostentatious than the father was to begin with.
My eyes went wide. "How serious are you being right now?"
He raised a dark eyebrow of his own and lifted a small, black velvet bag from his desk. Bringing it to me as he passed to the bookshelf he held it out. "Entirely. Make of it what you will."
I opened the pouch and tipped out the slender silver ring, cut with a more feminine design in mind. Its top was not flat, as Thranduil's and Legolas's were, meant for creating seals. Its band was etched with the same thorns however, the top imprinted with what looked to me like an exploding star. Having inspected Thranduil's ring in curiosity before I knew that this ring was indeed of the same make as theirs, but, even if he had bidden me to, I didn't know what to make of this. And I was afraid to ask. "This will certainly add authenticity to our act," I agreed at last. "Which finger does it go on?"
"Left," supplied Legolas, taking a seat at his father's desk and rifling through one of the drawers. "Index." His father spared him a cursory glance of his own, evidently wondering what Legolas hoped to find in his pillage. At last he came up with a small paring knife, the sort designed for trimming candles, and held out his hand. "May I see your ring for a few moments?"
I tugged it back off my finger—how they'd gotten the right measurement for it was beyond me—and brought it to him, standing with my eyes level to the desktop to see what he intended to do with it.
"It will be obvious it is new to any looking closely," he said to my and Thranduil's confusion, and beginning to score a myriad of diverse scratches across it, barely able to keep it pinched between his fingers, it was so small. "They are replaced most often in childhood, but details such as these will be important."
"Thank you," I said. Thranduil merely made some acknowledging, noncommittal sound. When he returned the ring to me and the knife to its drawer, I replaced the ring in its velvet pouch and tucked it into an inner pocket of my apron, where it would be safe. "So what's your big celebration for?"
A woman named Milia helped lace me into a vibrant, deep blue gown that had been made for me so I could attend the winter ball in the appropriate formality. This ball had many meanings to it, some of which eluded me even after more than one person explained them. Primarily it was a celebration of family, the winter a signifier of hard, but necessary times together. But, this being a festival of elves, of course there was no simple definition of it. It also honored those we loved who had died, and what they meant to us, and how they had changed our worlds while they lived. That was about as far as my comprehension went.
"But what if I step on the hem and tear it?" I asked, anxious, as I tried to sit still so Milia could appropriately arrange my hair, twirling and plaiting it up in silver and cobalt sapphire clips and ornaments. The hem in question was embroidered with hundreds of drops of glass, imitating the glimmer of the stars against the backdrop of an early evening sky.
"Just hold still," she murmured, on her knees to compensate for my height as she worked around the base of my skull. "Do you expect to find so many occasions to wear this gown that it cannot be repaired between festivities?"
"I expect I'll trip on it and tear it so high up the seam I'll be summarily banished from Mirkwood for indecent exposure."
She chuckled, sliding yet another jeweled pin into place. "I doubt that will be your fate. Or have you forgotten all of your grace in these last few years?"
"No." I fidgeted. "But fancy things worry me. They're valuable. I am not accustomed to such frippery."
Milia did wonderful things with my appearance as she prepared me for the evening's event, binding my hair in impossible ways until it looked like a wild waterfall from the back of my head down to where it tamed into a single curl that rested against my spine. The gown she'd inserted me into was cut for my adult figure, just in my child's stature, and draped down over me like cool water, and when I moved looked like the reflection of the night sky on a slumbering pond. Her last touches before permitting me to escape involved brushing silver powder onto the ends of my eyelashes and pasting small, hopefully fake clear crystals just underneath the tops of my ears, like painless earrings.
"No excessive jewelry?" I asked at last, afraid to remind her but afraid also to be chased down for it later.
Milia smiled and nodded toward a necklace I hadn't actually noticed, displayed on a contoured stand on my tall dresser. "I was only going to give it to you if you wished to wear it."
It was beautiful, truly. But I was very picky about things that touched my neck. I didn't even like scarves. "Just to be safe let's let it rest for the night," I said.
Even sans the lovely necklace, the effect Milia had created was stunning, and I expected no less of the other members of my quasi-family, and departed with relief to find them the moment Milia gave me leave to escape.
Legolas didn't appear to be home, but Thranduil was, and to my eyes he was already finished, simply preening to be utterly assured of his magnificence instead of simply your average glorious. He wore a shimmery, dark gray robe—gown, fancy tunic, I had no idea what the elves called such outfits—his tallest, twig-and-holly-berry crown, black boots with silver embroidery, and as I did, crystals pasted inside the points of his ears.
I propped myself in the doorway after he bade me to enter, crossed my arms and whistled. "Hey there, handsome." I chuckled at his expression and sat on the threshold, leaning into the doorframe, dropping my embroidery into my lap for something to do with my restless fingers before the big hoohah got under way.
His eyes flicked toward me again. "Where is your ring?"
I looked down at my wedding ring, baffled momentarily, then surprised. "Oh. Was I supposed to be wearing it?" I had thought it was meant only to add to my disguise. Or did Thranduil want me to wear it specifically so I wouldn't think of it that way?
He lifted his eyebrows, still adjusting his clothes, twitching at folds, in his gilt-framed mirror.
"I'll fetch it." I did so, shoving it onto my finger—it was a proper fit for a ring, firm around my joint—and returned. I was unaccustomed to wearing a ring on that finger, my pearl ring typically going on the same finger of the opposite hand, and adjusted its sit often with my thumb, as though reminding myself that it was still there.
"You do not sing half as much as you used to," Thranduil blandly remarked some minutes later.
I blinked up at him from the orange trees I was stitching. "Did when?"
"When you were in our custody."
I smiled to myself at how he phrased it. "I started singing in my cell because I was bored. And I thought you'd realized that I only sang to you to get your attention."
He quarter-turned just his head just enough to rest one eye on me, otherwise not stopping as he tugged at the buttons running down his chest. "Is that so."
"Of course. You were far too distracted with who you thought I was and what you thought I was doing and how you thought I was hindering you to see me properly. I needed you to see me properly before I could start to see you as well. Plus you intrigued me a great deal and it was a simple way to see you again."
He regarded me silently, keenly, for long moments as I sat placidly in the doorway. "Do you think it wise to inform your strongest benefactor of your intentional manipulation of him and his people?"
I flashed him a small grin, briskly tugging at a knot in my thread. "No one ever truly manipulates you, Thranduil. They can only hope to cast a nebula of influence. I cracked your prejudice just enough so we could see each other clearly through it. Is that so nefarious an intent? Or shall I question further why you have chosen to request my assistance in a situation that places me at a great risk, as opposed to one of your own people, one who would be far better able to protect themselves, therefore threatening my safety even further than someone else in my position would be threatened?" Gimli didn't think I was listening to him when he criticized my Elvenking, but I was. I wasn't pleased by what I found, but I was listening to him, and I was heeding his words. Just not in the fashion that he wanted me to.
Thranduil was watching me closely now, with both eyes, his primping motions having stilled. "Do you not think of yourself as one of ours?"
My gaze turned sorrowful even when I didn't want it to, and I dropped it into my lap before it could betray me any further. "Some days I don't think I belong anywhere. No matter what I do, some days I still think I'm just pretending, just dreaming, just lying to myself to escape having to wake up...."
I trailed off and he let me, unnerved by my insecurity, and understandably so. It was not a trait anyone was accustomed to associating with me.
"Dandelion, what are you doing sitting on the floor in that gown?" Inladris had spotted me. I hastened up and dusted off my rump as best I could without stabbing myself with my needle or tangling my thread.
"Sorry, Inladris." I gazed up at her in wonder, entranced by the way the rich plum of her sparkling gown set off the glints of pale yellow hidden in her fair hair.
She saw my fascination and smiled down at me. "Thank you, Mabyn." She then stepped past me and into Thranduil's room to ascertain that he would not let her down tonight, at least not in appearance, as if Thranduil was ever anything other than spotless and perfectly arranged. She smoothed the wrinkles in his shoulders and put stray hairs back in their place, and I wandered back out into the parlor to the window, to watch the snow fall. I hadn't seen snow before coming to this world—it would never not hypnotize me.
"This is also for you."
I jumped and found that Legolas had entered without my notice. He held an almost-black coat of some sort in his hands, and when he spread it for me I saw that it was cut with an uneven hem on the bottom, giving the appearance of leaves, with long and narrow sleeves tapering to a point over the back of the hand. I couldn't identify, even upon coming closer to touch it, the soft charcoal fabric of the majority of the coat, nor could I begin to guess how the fur inside the wide hood had been dyed such a bright, vital, thrumming shade of blue. Eyes round again, I gazed up at him and asked, "Since when do I warrant all of these gifts?"
He lightly smiled. "Your ring you have earned, and you needn't fear it, for it grants you only respect and protection, nothing terrifying such as power or command. The gown you required if you intended to attend this celebration. As said celebration is held in the open air in December, a suitable coat is also required."
I had to confess the sense in at least the last two, though I was iffy yet on the ring. I was not royal; I did not wish to be royal. There were ways of proving I was under the protection of the elves that did not bind me so tightly to the hip of the king. He had not given me the mark of his house, specifically, for my sake. But I held out my arms and turned, and Legolas helped me shrug into the thick coat, which fastened up the front with etched silver clasps. There being no mirror in Thranduil's parlor I was forced to look down at myself from above and attempt to gauge my appearance, but judging by Legolas's satisfied appraisal I deemed myself worthy, and beamed up at him. "Thank you. I can tell already it's both effective and attractive—everything a girl could want in a coat. Or in anything, really."
His lips curled up at the corners. "I am glad that which we provide has garnered your approval. Are you ready to leave?" He was dressed in some deep color between dark plum and midnight blue, his outfit of a similar pattern to Thranduil's, only cut to his knees instead of his ankles.
"I'm just waiting on you lot," I promised. "There's food at your party, right? I'll have you know I have not yet been fed."
He rolled his eyes. "Yes, Mabyn, there is food provided. For those mature enough to visit the foods display without bowling it over."
I jammed my nose in the air, not that the gesture really worked with a smaller nose like mine. Gimli had a good nose for it. "Ye of little faith."
"Starlight, we will leave without you. Where is Mabyn?"
"Coming!" I called, and hastened toward the front door, Legolas following sedately behind me. These cloth boots of mine were warm, but certainly not meant to be as effective as they were attractive. My feet skidded against the tiles.
Inladris walked with her hand tucked into Thranduil's bent arm, and I trotted out the door completely disregarding the fact that I ought to take care of where I walked especially tonight, if I was wearing Thranduil's crest, and we were to be presenting ourselves with the proper formality at this very elegant affair.
They let me do it too, all of them being quite accustomed to my, shall we say, lack of elegance myself. When we neared a lower ballroom however Legolas glanced back at me and gave a small gesture with his open hand. "I promise I shall not lock you away this time."
I giggled and caught up to him, slipping my hand into the crook of his arm and restraining myself to as fluid and gentle a stride as I could muster. Efficient movement was more natural a habit of mine than fluidity, but I did my best. This was why I didn't dance.
We entered the ballroom with no presentation, for which I hid precisely how glad I was, and I stopped frozen just a few paces inside, mouth agape as I ogled the decoration of this half-indoor ballroom. Legolas stopped a pace after I did, as was polite for whom one entered the room with, and I could see that my reaction to the interior decorating skills of the elves amused him.
The walls were draped in shimmering fabrics in all colors of the night sky, with glass beads dangling over them at intervals, and a tiny chip of mirror here and there, shaped like drops of water. The floor was painted in wide swirls like the arms of galaxies, the pale paint of which puddled and pooled in certain areas, as though the ground wasn't certain whether it wanted to be a sky or an ocean the elves so deftly danced upon. The ceiling had similar hangings to the walls. The furnishings were all white.
My favorite part, however, was what the elves had managed to create with ice. Bubbles of varying sizes from pebble to Thranduil's fist had been frozen while they lay against invisible—to me—strings sewn into the ceiling tapestries, and they hung in a gently drifting swath above us, like the undersides of frosted waves. I couldn't stop staring at those snowy orbs above us. They enthralled me utterly.
After several minutes Legolas felt the need to remind me that other people may at some point wish to pass through the space I apparently intended to occupy for the rest of the night. "They will not melt if you blink."
"Prove it."
"I thought you were hungry."
"I forgot I even had a stomach."
He chuckled and placed a hand on my shoulder, guiding me forward so I could watch the ceiling instead of our destination, and finally put me in a seat to his right, where he sat on his father's right, and Inladris on Thranduil's left. When small dishes of some whipped delicacy dotted with frozen raspberries arrived he nudged me with his elbow and slid one onto the clothed table before me. I probed blindly for my spoon.
"I can see you will be of no conversational use tonight," he remarked, turning to his father, and I knew he didn't need me to verbally reply. Forget maturity; there was beauty here the likes of which I rarely saw. I could be an adult another day.
Luviel spun up to my high seat—from which my toes could only dangle—some time later and lightly tapped my chin. "Come dance with us, Moss Flower. We fear you will settle into this position forever and never look upon us again."
"But I always have to look at you like this."
"We are not that tall."
"Hmph." But gradually I brought my gaze back down to respectable levels. "I've warned you about my dancing."
"Then come socialize with us. That is what your visits are for, are they not?"
A sigh erupted from my chest and I shoved my heavy chair back. "Very well. If you insist. You vexatious people you."
Luviel led me out the massive—eleven times my height, by my reckoning—doors into the snowy forest, more open here immediately surrounding the mountain, to where a number of my friends among the guards were chatting with each other. Their greetings warmed the icy air and I tucked my hands under my arms even as I grinned my own greetings back up to them.
"You are too still," Oloran declared, whisking my hands out from under my arms and whirling me into a dance that mostly consisted of him tugging and twirling me this way and that, and somehow managing to make us look too much like a drunk pair of fools. I had been offered heated wine that would certainly have thawed me out, but even watered I refused it.
Elven parties may be prettier, but by the break of morning I had come to the conclusion that dwarven parties were still more fun. Elves held their liquor better; where was the fun in that? Plus the dwarves had more general gaiety, rollicking and ribald, my very favorite kind. The elves were too adult for me sometimes, even if they were the ones who most promoted my childishness.