It's not the external cold that holds him in its grasps, now. He can feel all of his toes and fingers, and the day's flight has left him tired. When they reach the fringes of the wood that Strider calls Lothlorien, there passes over him a sense of comfort in the sight of trees - so living, so like the Shire's forests, so utterly in contrast of the dark-light stone that they left behind and he never wants to think on again. And yet - the alienating hush unnerves him. He moves closer to Merry, eyes searching the branches around that only echo this place's silence, and finds himself too frozen to be afraid when arrows line around the entire Company, drawn by ethereally quiet archers that, after time spent in Legolas' presence, seem wholly familiar.

No; it is the Lady of the Wood, Galadriel herself, who exudes a preternatural unfamiliarity that leaves him shrinking between Boromir and Merry, unable to hold her gaze. He studiously looks at the ground for a moment, and when the Lady's words of Gandalf's demise pass over his head, he looks back up, eyes dark with the sting of remembrance and defiant guilt. He meets her eyes this time - and sees no reproach, no condemnation, but an even acceptance and a searching query. What follows, he does not expect, and the fell voice in his mind is indistinguishable from his own desperate thoughts. Could you have known?

He does not remember being shown to his quarters in the towering reach of a platform in the trees. He only knows that when he is able to think again, he is too far off the ground, too high up in this sylvan room of sorts to even pretend to be at ease. The moon and stars are denaturalized here; there is no balm of birdsong or crackle of fireplace to lull him into his dreams, and the haunting strains of the elven lament fall hard on his ears. He cannot cry, and when the height of his arboreal prison looms again to his mind, he can take it no longer and starts the descent to the ground without Merry.

A few moments' time finds him in a tiny niche at the roots of a tree, huddled into the cradle of gnarled wood and cool dirt. Out of sight but not of earshot, he finds the elves' dirge for their Mithrandir more soothing from the ground, muted in the walls of his nook. He knows Merry will come and find him, just like always, and when his prediction comes true, he lets Merry in. He falls asleep to the indolent lullaby of Merry's breathing, and wakes to the same sound, assuaging and comforting once more.

And in the lapping waves of the Anduin, gazing at the Argornath - kings of the Men who still defend Middle Earth's tenuous light - he thinks there may be hope after all.

Warm.