Twenty-four hours in Mirkwood by Quente  

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A trip in time

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Elu Thingol rarely followed Melian in her seasonal rounds, but the winter had been especially bitter that year outside of the girdle, and snow had fallen despite Melian's best song and intentions. And so Thingol followed her as the sun rose above Neldoreth, the better to protect her should she tire -- it was his duty, and it was no difficult task to watch his lady dance and sing the snow away.

"No --" Melian cried, as Thingol's foot chanced just a hair too close to one of her workings.

"What?" Thingol said, distracted, for her glorious hair had trailed like a dark shadow across his path, and he allowed himself to stumble rather than fall upon it.

Several dark and confusing moments later, Thingol emerged into a glade that was full of spiders, but empty of Melian – and her song. Had he fallen outside the girdle, somehow? The glade was full of a short variety of Elves, some with reddish hair falling against speckled skin. Interesting. But there was no longer time to observe.

Immediately he drew Aranrúth, and fell in with these folk who did not look familiar to him. The spiders swarmed furiously for a hard moment, putting Thingol in mind of the time before the Hunter had come. His body had not forgotten the dance it made with blade and swing, and alongside his kindred who fought with dual knives, he made swift work of their foes.

When there was finally peace in the glade, Thingol realized that these diminutive folk of the wood were looking at him with strange expressions.

One of them, a taller elf whose hair marked him of Thingol’s own kindred, came forward and bowed.

"I am Legolas Thranduilon, Lord from afar. You look as though you have fallen out of legend, and in a timely way at that -- the spiders are hard-driven this winter to find food, and they pressed our patrol beyond our strength."

Thranduil was surely too young to have a son. Hadn't he just been born? Thingol looked about him, and then reached out with his mind to his wife. Her presence was indeed absent from this wood, but the connection pulsed within, and he felt from afar her wash of ... amusement?

Ah, I remember now. I allowed you a night in this time and place, a glimpse of what will be. You will return to me at dawn.

Time and place? Strange. Still, Thingol had not ventured this far beyond his halls in time immemorable, and the adventure amused him.

Thingol gave a nod to this young scion of Oropher. "Lead me then to Thranduil," he said, pausing to clean the ichor and web off Aranrúth. "For there is much that I would know."

~

Thranduil stared at the great lord of of his birth country, who was looking about him at the woven tree roots and hidden bowers of Thranduil’s home in the Greenwood as indulgently as a grandfather. Rain was beginning to fall, and a persistent leak that was “fixed” by a convenient bucket pattered a series of drips into it.

"Oropher truly returned to his Avari roots, I see," Thingol said finally, piercing tree-lit eyes settling on Thranduil.

“Silvan,” Thranduil corrected, a little irritably. The mistake was common, but the distinction was important. His people had journeyed at least this far, before they were too enamored of Greenwood the Great to continue onward. “My lord,” he added belatedly.

Thingol raised a single eyebrow, glancing around. “Well. I, for one, could not tell the difference. It matters not! I will be back in my own great kingdom at dawn.

Thranduil took a breath, letting it out before forcing the smallest smile. This must be a working of Melian, and should not therefore be interrupted. “I had forgotten the greatness of Menegroth, it is true. Long has it been since I have walked the halls of my birth.”

…Indeed, since it fell to the murderers. Thranduil hesitated, and then felt the strangest sensation of a finger passing over his lips, as if a spirit had held his mouth closed.

Ah. "Well, my lord, come and dine,” Thranduil said instead. “I can share at least one invention with you that we did not have in my youth. This will help you forget every woe, be it from battle or time itself."

With alacrity, Thranduil's steward turned toward the cellars, and Thranduil led the greatest of all Sindar through to his hall.

Three cups later, Thingol sprawled as easily as Thranduil at his undoubtedly rustic table. "I must bring this back to Menegroth," Thingol declared. 

“What year is it for you, my lord?” Thranduil asked, refilling their cups.

“Time is a strange thing to count, would you not agree?” Thingol said, lifting the cup.

“Well, that explains several points of history.”

~

“Imagine,” Thingol said, much later that night, leaning into the circle of Thranduil’s folk, “Imagine the most beautiful maiden you’ve ever seen, but with hair that was the darkest shadow beneath an ancient tree, with eyes as piercing as stars glinting on a still pool – a dream and a promise all at once.”

“But what did she see in you?” Asked one elf, more curious than wise.

“A fair question,” Thingol said, raising a hand to forestall Thranduil’s admonishment. “When I saw her I fell into a dream. Every one of my senses desired her. And yet we stood as still as the oldest trees in Nan Elmoth and gazed at one another. -- And so, it could not have been my wit that captured her.”

“Maybe your height?”

“Your hair?”

The chorus of voices suggested one thing and another while Thingol considered them all, his deep voice filling the hall of woven roots with his opinions. He raised his glass of Dorwinion wine, toasting the air.

“She had an answer for me eventually,” Thingol said, his expression becoming hazy with longing.

Thranduil gestured to his steward to remove the wine. Perhaps he’d been unwise to get his ancient lord quite that drunk. Whatever Melian’s answer had been, it should absolutely remain lost to legend.

~

Legolas and Thingol sat together in the branches of the tallest home-tree whose roots wove the great hall, watching as the pale sun of early Spring lit the back of Erebor.

“Have the Stunted Ones infested that mountain too, then?” Thingol asked, his brows curved in distaste. His fingers, Legolas noted, curled protectively around the wineskin looped about his neck. He had  not been joking about bringing it back. Legolas wondered how tales of Doriath would change, as soon as Thingol returned.

Remembering his history, Legolas cast a wry glance at him. He took a deep breath. “I know that many call them enemy,” he began carefully. “And yet not all they do is ill. In that, they are much like our own kind. Here, we do not call them ‘stunted’ – we simply call them Stone-lords.”

Thingol snorted. “I will call them Stone-lords until I return to a land where custom remembers them better, which will be soon enough.”

Legolas pressed his lips closed. That was as far as he’d go, then, with Thingol’s return promised as soon as the sun touched him. If he’d had more time, he’d carefully share stories of collaboration, of Celebrimbor Féanorion and his friend Narvi, and the plentiful trade his father’s kingdom used to have with the people of Erebor.

“You have a fine realm, little cousin,” Thingol said, watching as the sun walked itself treetop by treetop to where they were perched. “Tell me, have I visited Greenwood in this age of Arda?”

Legolas opened his mouth, only to have a bird fly into his face rather emphatically.

“Mff,” Legolas said, mouth full of pinions.

“Ah, the sun reaches us. Give your good father my thanks for the wine –”

And with that, Thingol was gone.

~

Returned to Menegroth, Thingol sighed and warmed his feet at the fire of his own chamber.

A bird of stone made its way through the trees in relief against the walls, each wave of wing a marvel of water-worked cogs. The stream that powered the lights and warm air and water in his room flowed through a cistern along the wall, and his wife sat at her water-powered loom near him, watching as it worked away at her design.

“And did you learn aught from your encounter with your distant kin?” Melian asked, her voice probing the knots in his mind that he’d been worrying over.

“I fear for them, these elves beyond the Ered Luin. Their lives seem as short as their stature, for they have been at constant war with the enemy these past centuries.”

“And that is what concerns you, my tall one?”

“What concerns me is that none would sing or speak of our fate. Surely you and I live here still, while our distant kin populates those lands. For what could overcome the protection you have lain around us?”

Melian looked at Thingol with an impenetrable expression. “We do live during their time, but far, far, from here, and we speak to them not.”

“Oh, so I will finally sail?” Thingol asked, straightening up. Perhaps he’d best send a letter to Nōwē, to gain his people berths on those great ships, when they tired of Doriath.

Instead of replying, Melian stood and walked over to him, winding her fingers into the silver fall of his hair. She tugged once, sharply, so that he looked up at her. Thingol felt so  harmonious to her – such a perfect fit for Doriath, a young curl of song just beginning to find its proper measure and rhythm in the thousand caves of their home. For a short time, for a long time, for the small moment of their existence in the grand music of time.

“The purpose of your excursion was to remind you to always treasure that which you have,” Melian said, staring down at him.

“Yes, my lady,” Thingol said immediately, and allowed himself to succumb to the skill and power of her hands. Any journey with this end was successful, no matter that he was already forgetting the intended lesson.