Title:  Idylls of a King Forlorn, Part 1: Calen Lass
Author: Gloromeien  
Email: andromeda_strayn@hotmail.com
Pairing: Legolas/Elrohir 
Summary: In the fourth age, a mysterious stranger come to Minas Tirith, bearing ill news 
for King Elessar and his elven guards.   
Rating: NC-17 for m/m slash, adult themes.
Disclaimers: Characters belong to that wily old wizard himself, Tolkien the Wise, the 
granddad of all 20th century fantasy lit. I serve at the pleasure of his estate and aim not 
for profit. 
Author's Note: This is a tiny bit AU, though I prefer to think of it as un-documented (as it 
*is*, my research was thorough), rather than a complete distortion of cannon. Takes place 
during the reign of King Elessar; he has been on the throne for about 20 years at this 
point. The race of men has grown prosperous, though there are still remnants of the 
Shadow lurking about (as well as natural events that aren't necessarily 'evil', just 
undomesticated, such as, oh, a troll. For all the ideas/depictions of elven grief and the 
'fading', I am endlessly indebted to the excellent slashwriter Ilye, who's work can be 
found in the Library of Moria. I was so moved by her own descriptions of these things 
that I had to give it a whirl myself, I hope she can forgive me the borrowing. I've made up 
a couple of characters: the darling Amaranthiel and the fallen Menethren. And the quote 
is from 'Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Brownîng. Dedication: To the 
Pirate King, for the months of inspiration and those rapturous curls, and to my favorite 
audience member/critic/cheerleader/kindred spirit/Welsh person, whom I'll call the Lady 
Cariad.  
 
 
***************  

'The lilies of our lives may reassure
Their blossoms from their roots, accessible
Alone to heavenly dews that drop not fewer,
Growing straight, out of man's reach, on the hill.'
 

Crouched between the jagged crags at the base of Emyn Arnen, the gray-cloaked 
interloper observed the sheer mountain slope unseen by the elf and the man-child scaling 
its surface. Such an uncommon sight for the hills of Minas Tirith, elfkind entrusted with 
the protection of a boy, but there they were, an elf as rugged many a ranger and a youth 
as lithe as the Eldar, ably grappling over the sleek, silver-flecked shards of the 
mountainside. 

The observer's slate-dull cloak, as well as his seasoned hunting skills, easily kept him 
from the man-child's detection. The elf was another matter entirely. Though the pale 
peaks of his ears were plain enough against a long, gleaming cascade of obsidian hair, his 
was the body of a warrior. Tall, lean, as the elfkind, but his limbs and torso thick with 
meat, more befitting the horsemen of Rohan. Far from limiting his natural grace, his 
movements seemed enhanced by this added weight, his every motion whispering of 
untold might restrained. Indeed, even his dress was foreign to the Eldar. Though his 
quiver bore the markings of Imladris, he preferred a ranger's leather tunic, chaps, boots, 
and the fat-bellied sword of the witch-realm in the mountains of Angmar; his shift and 
cloak the deep violet of Gondor's most revered knights, the King's guard. His angular 
face and hawkish regard still betrayed elven refinement, though his mouth was 
unnaturally full, his lips sinuous, scarlet. 

As they neared the lower shelf of the slope, the elf-warrior paused, peerless, on the sheer 
edge, his burnished indigo eyes ruthlessly surveying the area. The interloper stilled, 
willing his breaths to deepen, his mind to quiet, the blood in his veins to lax. The elf 
stood, immovable, for several moments, then sprang onto the path as if a dancer in flight. 

"Eldarion!!" he called to the man-child. "This way!!" 

Before the youth could bother reply, the elf was over the next ridge. Though his voice 
had not yet turned, Eldarion could be heard to grumble, as he scampered up the last of the 
sheer face of the slope. At the sound of his naming, the hidden observer slightly raised 
the brim of his hood, his trenchant blue eyes taking closer stock of the struggling boy. 
The edges of his lips curved upwards appreciatively, half-smirk, half outright smile. So 
this was Aragorn's heir. 

As the watcher shifted position to better observe the awkward young prince, a booming 
yawl resounded through the foothills. Before the kingling could even draw his sword, a 
horn-crowned cave troll, easily twenty times his size, barreled down towards him. The 
interloper leapt to his feet, then up onto a nearby rock, for better leverage should he need 
to intervene, the youth's elven protector now far out of range. For one of such might, the 
elf is careless with such a precious charge.  

Eldarion, surprisingly agile, slid under the troll, then darted through a nearby forest of 
stalactites, dangerous ground for the creature's crude bulk. The cave troll lunged, again 
and again, but the prince's slender frame sped away at the last second. His maneuvers are 
deft, the gray-cloaked stranger noted, and the creature will soon tire. But will it be soon 
enough?

The cave troll's anguished groans echoed through the cliffs and crags, their force 
crumbling both the sheer face of the mountainside and the peaks of the stalactites. 
Eldarion, his nerves fraying, swung at the troll's bludgeoning arms with the practiced 
precision of an apprentice swordsman, but the creature's brute force time and again won 
over. At last, with a reactionary swat of titanic impact, the prince's lithe frame collided 
with its monstrous arm, spun, then smacked into the merciless, defacing rock of the shelf 
wall. 

Without another thought, the hooded figure let the first of a flurry of lethally accurate 
arrows fly. Gelatinous spews of green blood burst from the cave troll's neck, as the 
creature roared his last and fell. The youth, bathed in sickly muck, was soon on his feet 
again, the interloper now at his side. 

"I would have bested him, Uncle," Eldarion squawked in frustration, momentarily 
blinded by the green goo. With a gentle chuckle, his cloaked savior offered him a 
handkerchief and was himself revealed. The prince gasped, grasped the hilt of his sword. 

"I am no threat to you, pen-neth," the stranger assured him. "I am pledged to your father, 
the King. Who should, if I may be so bold, chose the guards to his heir with greater care."

"It was a test," the youth replied, rather testily, for one so young. The cloaked observer 
was instantly reminded of the boy's father, and his more tempestuous nature in his youth. 
"I was to slay the cave troll."

"But surely the intent was not for you to be slain, should you fail," the interloper 
remarked. "Where is your guardian?"

"Seeking you out, I've no doubt," the prince challenged, with undisguised ire. "His senses 
are keen."

Before the hooded stranger could answer for himself, he jumped back, narrowly avoiding 
the incisive path of what was no doubt an arrow from the elf-warrior's Imladrian quiver. 

"Reveal yourself, stranger," the guardian hissed, dropping down from the ledge above 
them. "That is no peasant's son you trifle with."

"Then perhaps you should take greater care with him," the stranger snipped, only the glint 
of his crisp cobalt eyes visible through the cloak-hood's shadow. "Son of Elrond."

The elf-warrior's eyes shone a warm violet when he recognized one of his kin. "What 
business does a Mirkwood elf have so far from the East Bight?" 

"It is long since I lay in the fields of the Bight," the archer sighed, lifting away the gray 
wool of his hood. "Though many a night past I have dreamt there, of snow-capped peaks 
and of misty marshes, and of Gondor's gleaming white tower." 

It was Legolas.

Upon the revelation of the elf-prince, Elrohir was doubly struck. Though elven 
refinement kept the tremors from his face, the Eldar had never before remarked upon the 
archer's silken grace. Years ago, they had fought together in the War of the Ring. Perhaps 
the threat of destruction was too near, or the stench of death too sickenîng, but Elrohir 
held little memory of Legolas beyond his fervent battle cries, the fatal sting of his arrows, 
the lethal slice of his twin slit-knives. The smirking, porcelain-carved creature before him 
had no place in such black, violent remembrances. 

"Forgive me, edhel," Elrohir all but whispered. "I mistook you for another."

"Is there a Mirkwood archer who would dare threaten the life of the heir of Gondor?" 
Legolas chided mirthfully. "I must speak on this with my father."

Elrohir's embarrassment was thankfully masked by the young prince's confusion. 

"Is you father a king?" Eldarion queried, now utterly befuddled by the day's strange 
happenings. "Is this another of your brothers, Elrohir?"

"He is of my kin, mellon-nîn, and thus my brother-in-arms," Elrohir replied, his eyes still 
locked on the Mirkwood prince's wry expression. "And a great friend of your father's. 
This is Legolas, son of Thranduil." 

The boy's face beamed with nothing short of awe.

"You are the fearless Legolas!!" the bedazzled youth exclaimed, knees quivering as if to 
bow. Legolas swallowed his mirth deeply down, then laid a fond hand on the crown of 
the prince's raven hair. 

"And you are the picture of your mother, pen-neth," Legolas noted with affection. 
"Aragorn's pride must suffer greatly." Legolas winked slyly at Elrohir, then rested his 
hand on the boy's shoulder. "But come, I have urgent business with the King."

"Your return will lighten his spirits, meldir," Elrohir remarked, upon reflection, 
somewhat stupidly. "For these are burdensome times. The Queen has birthed yet another 
daughter, the delicate princess Amaranthiel."

To his surprise, the archer's face grew darker.

"My return, perhaps, may cheer him," Legolas replied, a shadow falling over his soft 
features. "My news may not be such comfort."

			*		*		*

Though the feast before them befit the return of Arathorn from the grave, few of the 
company tasted a scrap of it, once Legolas began his tale. The Mirkwood prince himself 
had remarked on its opulence, decrying recent years of rabbit stew, dewberries, and 
lembas bread from his adventures in Fangorn forest, though he would only sip fitfully at 
his wine and swallow the occasional spoon of broth, for respite more than hunger. 

Earlier, King Elessar had blessed him with the warmest of welcomes, clasping the 
reluctant elf tightly against him and murmuring gratitudes into the sharp peaks of his 
ears. Legolas had bore it graciously, Elrohir had noted, his not uncommon smirk of 
bemusement in ample evidence throughout the numerous salutations at court. With her 
fussy, darling Amaranthiel to occupy her, Queen Arwen had made her excuses, leaving 
Aragorn, Eldarion, and Elrohir to lunch with the new arrival. 

Legolas remained jovial for much of the meal, as the King spoke fondly of the trials of 
his reign and the archer recounted tales of his years in the Glittering Caves. His traveling 
companion, the dwarf Gimli, had been called to the home of his great-great-
granddaughter, who had born quadruplets and was shamefully short-handed. The thought 
of Gimli tending to his great-great-great-grandchildren carried their mirth through to the 
main course.

"You seek another companion, gwanur-nîn?" Aragorn suggested, with a twinkle. "You 
have returned to force my abdication and claim me as your own?"

Legolas, indeed the entire company, laughed heartily.

"And what of your daughters?" the archer teased. "Who would protect their honor, in 
your absence?"

"I would!!" Eldarion exclaimed scornfully, to the amply great amusement of his elders.

"Indeed, you would, mellon-nîn," Elrohir encouraged softly. "Once you have bested the 
cave troll."

Elrohir was pleased to note that this last comment restored the glint to the archer's 
aquamarine eyes, not seen since that morning's encounter. He smiled, almost 
imperceptibly, across the table at Legolas, who swiftly averted his dimming gaze. A chill 
passed through the elf-warrior. 

"Your absence has been felt, Legolas," the King suddenly turned solemn. "You have 
strayed far too long. The babe that was born on your last visit is now almost grown." 
Aragorn nodded towards Eldarion, who reeled in astonishment. "I hope you will tarry 
here awhile, meldir."

Legolas fell silent, his natural elven calm suddenly eerily distressing. 

"You were correct in your presumption that I seek out your company, Evinyatar," the 
archer began, with cautious deliberation. The formal address unsettled the King, who 
drew back in his seat, the set of his jaw taking on a regal solidity. 

"Ai'nad in my power to grant is yours, Prince of Mirkwood," Aragorn responded, his tone 
officious. "I will not fail you."

"Ay, I know, gwanur." Legolas bowed his head. "Forgive my formality, I simply…" He 
raised his eyes again, their color darkened to a deep midnight. "Upon my return from the 
Glittering Caves in Fangorn, I sojourned in the remains of Lothlorien. There, I received 
word from Mirkwood. Other than a few servants, my father and Menethren, his chief 
counsel, were all that remained of the wood-elves. A dragon struck the northern thatch of 
forest. It would have burned the entire wood to ash, had Menethren not rode out. The 
forest was saved from the dragon's wrath… Menethren… he fell, Aragorn." 

As the Eldar fell, so did a deadening silence over the table.

"My Adar… my father is fading. Menethren was… *is*, perhaps closer to the bone, his 
melethron…his beloved. I am told he will not last out the month."

"Can he not be bound to another, Legolas?" the King asked, with learned temperance. 

"He refuses," the prince acknowledges. "He wishes to pass on to the Halls of Mandos, to 
be reunited with Menethren who is slain. I cannot fault him such a wish." Legolas took 
another dull sip of wine, more to wet his parched mouth than to savor its dry flavor. "I 
would not ask that you undertake such a journey, aran Gondor… but there is no one to 
sing for him. None but me to carry him to Imladris, to be shroud in the Eternal Flame. 
Adar was the King… Menethren a valiant warrior. They deserve their honor."

"And they shall have it." 

It was as gentle a pronouncement as King Elessar had ever made, but its simplicity spoke 
volumes to the assembled company. 

"I shall journey with you to Mirkwood, gwanur-nîn, fear not." Aragorn met the archer's 
wounded eyes with his own steady gaze. "Together we shall lament the fall of the green 
forest."

"I shall join you, if you will," Elrohir cautiously added. "It has been some years since I 
have seen Adar, Elladan, Imladris..."

Legolas allowed himself the faintest of smiles: "I would be glad of it, mellon-nîn. Your 
voice is of peculiar melody, if I recall." Elrohir, startled by his praise, could only nod in 
deference.

"Eldarion, you shall accompany us, as well," Aragorn decreed, dismissing the hushed 
tone of the proceedings and moving on to more practical matters. "Time you learnt to 
appreciate the many shades of ruling a kingdom." 

The young prince's eyes, alight with wonder, were soon tempered by the thought of the 
journey's sad purpose. 

"We set out at dawn," Aragorn announced with finality, turning to Legolas one last time. 
A twinge of satisfaction could not help but spark his drawn features. "We ride again, my 
brother."

				*		*		*

The court minstrels strummed a blithe, lilting Edhellondrian melody, the strains as 
vaporous as sea foam, when Arwen swept onto the terrace of the White Tower of 
Gondor, Amaranthiel nestled tight against her heart, finally at rest. Though rose-red 
embers still floated above the horizon, the evening's celebrations were already waning, 
the courtiers well aware of the trials of the journey to come and many preparations yet to 
be attended to. 

Most of the Gondorian nobles had retired; the King, however, was sequestered beneath 
the eastern turret by his councilmen, who had not received the news of his imminent 
departure well. Legolas, the cause of all this – celebration and inquisition both – kept 
vigil close by, though weary, instinctively protective of his adanellyn.

Her brother loomed by the hearth-fire; his reflective eyes aglow with lilac flames, but his 
ears, she well knew, scouting for signs of unrest among the councilmen. Elrohir loved, 
and was beloved, of man and elfkind both - his years with the Rangers proof enough of 
the duality of his nature – but though he was often champion of edain bravery among the 
Eldar, he knew their weakness cut just as deep. Even in times of peace, the most elvellyn 
among the edain could prove treacherous, where the safety of their King was concerned. 

Arwen doubted not of his safety on this journey, simply of his peace of mind. Estel had 
attended his share of Eldar memorials, but this demise of the Greenwood of Thranduil 
would leave its black mark on every member of the company. Her one comfort was the 
presence of her father and the gentle Glorfindel, at Imladris, who would cater to both the 
ritual and the spiritual needs of the mourners. Perhaps, if Amanranthiel proves of sweet a 
disposition as her sisters, I shall join them at Rivendell. 

Her infant daughter now heavy with slumber, Arwen took a seat by the hearth-fire, her 
concern for Elrohir's spirit even more acute than her frettings over her husband's. Her 
brother's regard for the Mirkwood prince was unmistakable to one who knew him so 
intimately; the elf-warrior's attention had scarcely wavered for an instant from the fair 
calenlass, since his unexpected arrival. He is too long in the world of men, Arwen 
reflected, as her brother blessed her with fond regard. Though he is pledged to Estel, he 
longs for elvellyn company. 

"Another little treasure," Elrohir murmured, as he bent over to kiss his dormant niece's 
brow. "I 
expect she will be grown some, when I return."

"She will be bright as a jewel," Arwen remarked playfully. "She will still sparkle at the 
sight of you, nîn bellas." Elrohir seemed not to hear, his cautious gaze drifting once more 
towards the east turret. "And you, gwanur? Will you have grown some upon your 
return?"

A smile threatened her brother's stern lips, but they held tight. 

"I marvel at his resolve, sebellath," Elrohir commented solemnly. "To watch your father 
fade, to know the kingdom you would rule will soon vanish without a trace, your legacy 
smote in dragon's fire… your homeland abandoned…"

"I have not known you to be so melancholy, Elrohir," Arwen chided delicately. "The time 
of the Eldar in Middle-Earth is ending, the few that remain… there will come a time 
when you, too, will long for Valinor. Estel is all that keeps you."

"This is my home, Arwen," Elrohir snapped, unthinking. "Do you think yourself the only 
edhel in Middle-Earth who would forgo an eternity in Valinor for love of this land and 
her true people?"

Arwen smiled softly to herself, her brother's resolve both intent and admirable. She 
would not press him further, her tone again turning mischievous.

"Are you certain it is the edain Gondor who enthrall you, gwanur-nîn?" she teased. "Your 
attentions seem fixed on…others." Elrohir could not keep the sheepish grin from curling 
his sinuous lips. "He is weary, and morose. Estel is skilled at shifting his council's 
concerns towards his own. Perhaps the prince's mind would be eased by a turn in the 
garden?"

"Perhaps," her brother replied enigmatically. After further long moments entranced by the 
firelight, the elf-warrior bowed his head. "I would ask a service of you, sebellath."

"Ai'nad, gwanur-nîn."

"The journey will be long," Elrohir began, his voice barely more than a swift exhalation. 
"Our bond, uncertain. I would take Rites with him, before the morn. It will ease his pain."

"Of what Rites do you speak, Elrohir?" Arwen's face darkened, in deep confusion. She 
was well aware of the customs of elfkind and had never heard tell of any Rites. 

"Among the warriors of our kind…" he haltingly explained. "The warrior's passion on the 
battlefield can overtake him, as well as… during the Rites of love. Often, in the history of 
our people, warring tribes came together of necessity, to fight a stronger foe, a greater 
menace. The chieftains of these tribes must reconcile their own difference, must build a 
common trust, in order to ally themselves fully. Thus, on the eve of battle, they would 
enact the Rites of love, giving their body's pledge to the other. It became custom, over 
time, when embarking on a journey, or a quest… or during the quest, to renew the pledge, 
to comfort an ailing comrade… It is custom. To set the mind, and the body, to the task at 
hand, and not… but the request must be formally made. By a third party." 

"And you ask me to…?" Arwen swallowed a definite giggle.

"He is a hallowed warrior," Elrohir quickly added. "The request need not be… elaborate. 
He will know of what you speak." 

After some inner-deliberation, Arwen rose to her feet, bending gingerly over to kiss her 
brother's flushed brow. With lithe, measured steps, the Queen tread calmly in the 
direction of the east turret, her rich, crimson gowns wafting in her wake. 

Elrohir watched her float across the terrace, his hawk-eyes rapt, anxious.

Though he had been observing the siblings' conversation for some time, Legolas greeted 
the Queen with a warm, unknowing smile. His senses ever-attuned to the moods, the 
tones, and the postures of the surrounding company, as any cunning fighter's should be, 
Legolas was as conscious of the peredhil's veiled scrutiny as he was of the councilmen's 
scorn, the fiddle player's growing fatigue, and the slumbering princess' dulcet dreams. As 
Arwen approached him, he relaxed his guard, the dull ache returning to his shoulders and 
his back creaking unmercifully. I need rest, he remarked inwardly, not for the first time 
that evening. Perhaps Valinor beckons after all. 

Much as Mandos lured him, he would not leave while Aragorn's light still shone. His 
tired eyes flicked from Arwen to Elrohir. So many wait-out the King's lifetime. 

"The battle rages on, mellon-nîn?" Arwen queried, now at his side. 

"I fear it will last out the night," Legolas almost groaned. "You would think he was their 
lover. Were it not for all the children you've born him…" This last restored the twinkle to 
the archer's chill cerulean eyes. Arwen chuckled fondly. 

"Indeed, my husband is a potent menace in every aspect of his kingdom," Arwen 
smirked, some might even say wickedly, at her kinsman. "By which I am reminded to 
beseech you to keep him well, Prince of Mirkwood. There may well be another prince or 
princess to coddle upon his return."

At this wondrous news, Legolas laughed outright, which drew the deeply-creased frowns 
of several councilors. 

"I will keep him well, melduir, fear not," Legolas quietly assured her, the mirth all but 
drained from his face. 

"You are weary, Legolas," Arwen cooed, with grave concern. "Will you not take some 
rest? Elrohir has bade me ask if you will claim a warrior's right, and take Rites with him." 
Legolas regarded her, just then, with a mixture of surprise and peculiar intent. "There is a 
bath in his chamber, and…"         

"Elrohir would take Rites with me?" Legolas seemed to consider more than ask, growing 
pensive. His gaze crept over to the fireside, but the peredhil was gone. To his chambers, 
no doubt. Such confidence.

Despite his exhaustion, the archer found his journey-worn body bristled, sparking in 
anticipation of a night's indulgence with the dark, rogueish elf-warrior. Not since the 
Quest for the Ring had Legolas lain with another, and never before out of any deep 
affection, simply need. Indeed, a warrior's Rites, in these peaceful times, were a rare 
luxury; a ritual the archer had only experienced once before. The memory of that scarlet 
evening, coupled with his body's insistent approval of such needed indulgence, swayed 
his mind. Added to the fact that it would be Elrohir's burden, as the initiator, to please 
him…

"If you will excuse me, mellon-nîn," Legolas bowed politely, as Arwen swallowed yet 
another mischievous smile. "I believe my fatigue has finally caught up with me."

				*		*		*

As he padded surreptitiously down the winding halls that led to the royal bedchambers, 
Legolas struggled to quell his body's growing anticipation. Thoughts of the elf-warrior's 
raven beauty, of his swordsman's bulk and his archer's grace, of his edain roughness and 
his edhil luminosity, clouded the prince's already weighted mind. As he searched, 
distractedly, for the Imladrian's door, his skin simmered, restless, his tongue sponged his 
mouth ruthlessly dry, and his loins tensed to aching. Legolas feared that one brief touch 
of the Eldar's lips to his skin would be his undoing. It has been far, far too long…    

At last recognizing the elven blessing inscribed on the arching door-frame, Legolas 
paused before the peredhil's chambers, a small slip of his mind still concerned that 
Elrohir had invoked the warriror's Rites. Why had he not simply approached him? Why 
such formality? They had fought in the War of the Ring together, was that not proof 
enough of their allegiance? The situation did not sit right with the archer, but he would 
broach the topic at a later time. At present, he found he could no longer ignore the 
gnawing, wanting throb at the center of his being. 

His sword, as they say, was at the ready.  

Before he could raise a hand to knock, a voice inside bade him enter. As he made his way 
into the heart of the rooms, Legolas was enveloped by the voluptuous scents of the 
Imladrian baths: cinderlocke, pealshell, and rich vergammon flower. As he loosened the 
laces of his tunic, he recalled the long night he'd lingered at the baths, with Boromir, 
soaking in the fuming swirls, drinking miruvor, and praising the coming renewal of 
Gondor's White Tower. If only the brave 
adan could be here to witness it's current glory… 

"Suilad, elmellyn." Elrohir's welcome broke through the prince's sensory meanderings; 
his bare, beckoning torso silenced any lingering doubts as to the rightness of these Rites. 
Legolas stroked his gaze appreciatively, deliberately, over the elf-warrior's sculpted 
frame, the tightly-knotted, diaphanous sarong wound around his slim waist the only 
attempt at modesty. His pearlescent black hair hung in loose, wanton waves over his 
shoulders, the tips licking at the delicate wisps of hair circling his purple nipples, proof of 
his half-edain heritage. His ripe, violet eyes shone out, unrestrained, as fierce and 
mesmerizing as the elen above. 

Legolas was breathless. 

"Put yourself at ease, calenlass-nîn," Elrohir murmured, as he advanced towards him. 
"Give no thought to your troubles. I will soothe what ails you." The peredhil's thick, 
calloused fingers caressed the length of his face, as he leaned in for a first, tentative kiss. 

With firm purpose, Legolas placed a warm hand at the center of Elrohir's chest. 

"You claim a warrior's right, gwanur-nîn," Legolas reminded him. "We cannot embrace 
as lovers." 

Elrohir's face softened, whispering lightly: "And who is here to know, melethron? I 
would give you every pleasure…"

"Forgive me, mellon-nîn, but I would not lead you falsely," Legolas cooed, fearful that 
the prince might chafe at his words. "A warrior's Rites I am here to claim. I cannot… I 
will not lay claim to the rule of your heart." Elrohir seemed to accept this, exhaling with 
little difficulty.

"It is I who must ask your forgiveness, elmellyn," the elf-warrior beseeched him. "I 
mistook… it is forgotten. Please… your bath is drawn. Do not forgo such well-deserved 
ministrations for my assumptions…"

"Aye, indeed, I shall not," the prince assured him, taking hold of his hands, beckoning 
them to disrobe him.  With a grateful, affectionate glance, Elrohir obliged.

Despite his earlier pledge, the full sight of the golden Eldar's lissome, crystalline beauty 
deeply affected the Imladrian prince. The muslin wash of his skin, the fine craft of his 
shoulders, the sensuous slope of his navel, which, once Elrohir shed his riding chaps, 
revealed a shaft of such tongue-leadening potency as the darkling elf had not thought 
possible. Nevertheless, he momentarily stifled his own desire, guiding Legolas into the 
molten depths of the bathwater. 

With eager, nimble fingers, Elrohir undid the tight weaving of his braids, then wove his 
hands through the archer's flaxen hair, massaging the scalp. Legolas sighed, sinking in, 
his features laxing into blissful serenity. As Elrohir's silken touch moved down his neck 
to his shoulders, Legolas leaned his golden crown back against the Eldar's chest and 
softly began to sing.

It was unlike any elven song Elrohir had heard before, almost decadent in its richness, the 
prince's opulent, eloquent voice as thick as a mouthful of cream. The effect was viscerally 
sensual; the languorous rhythms seeped through his senses, starting a slow burn over his 
skin, searing down his spine, and singeing into every cell of his being. The raven-haired 
elf swooned despite himself, caught in the rapture of the archer's song. 

With able, knowing arms, Legolas divested him of the sarong and lured him into the 
balming waters, crawling over him, stroking the entire, incendiary length of their bodies 
together. Soon, his velvet touch seemed everywhere at once, over his legs, down his 
arms, up his back, across the heaving plain of his chest, through the sleek waves of his 
sodden hair, that slow, seductive song ever beckoning. 

With his own fierce, guttural moan, he succumbed to the archer's passion. 




To Be Continued… 



A/N (con't): I'm not going to add a lexicon for the Sindarin words… I think the context is 
clear enough, in most cases. If there are any questions, then feel free to email me (or do 
your own research, it's fascinating!!). Miruvor is, of course, a restorative drink made at 
Rivendell (or so they tell me), the rest of the herbs mentioned are made-up.  




Title:  Idylls of a King Forlorn, Part 2: Namar
Author: Gloromeien  
Email: andromeda_strayn@hotmail.com 
Summary: Memories evoked for two members of this makeshift 
fellowship, as they arrive at Mirkwood.   
Rating: R for m/m slash, adult themes.
Disclaimers: Characters belong to that wily old wizard himself, Tolkien 
the Wise, the granddad of all 20th century fantasy lit. I serve at the 
pleasure of his estate and aim not for profit. 
Author’s Note: This is a tiny bit AU, though I prefer to think of it as un-
documented (as it *is*, my research was thorough), rather than a complete 
distortion of cannon. Takes place during the reign of King Elessar; he has 
been on the throne for about 20 years at this point. The race of men has 
grown prosperous, though there are still remnants of the Shadow lurking 
about (as well as natural events that aren’t necessarily ‘evil’, just 
undomesticated, such as, oh, a troll). For all the ideas/depictions of elven 
grief and the ‘fading’, I am endlessly indebted to the excellent slashwriter 
Ilye, who’s work can be found in the Library of Moria. I also would like to 
thank Tyellas, at www.ansereg.com, for her excellent summary of all 
things Elrohir and Elladan, as well as her own amazing fic. I was so 
moved by both these writers that I had to give it a whirl myself, I hope 
they can forgive me any minor concept-borrowing. Menethren, however, 
is a character of my own devising. Quote from ‘Sonnets from the 
Portuguese’ by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. All Elvish quotes, at the end. 
Dedication: Once again, to the Pirate King and the Lady Cariad.  
 
 
***************  

“Let the world’s sharpness, like a clasping knife,
Shut in upon itself and do no harm
In this close hand of Love, now soft and warm,
And let us hear no sound of human strife
After the click of the shutting.”

The path was worn, the dirt scattered at the edges, entire lengths densely 
covered with spills of autumn leaves, but Aragorn had tread it too often to 
mistake his way. Even twenty years on, the day he’d first set eyes on the 
Argonath, the day Boromir fell, razed through his mind like a flaming 
arrow at the Helm.

As the curled tip of the wide-bellied canoe bit into his collarbone, the King 
gazed up at the relics of ages past, his kin, and silently wondered, not for 
the first time, if they would have chosen as fatefully as he, had they born 
his burdens. Though at times his destiny seemed not of his own choosing, 
but that of some bittersweet hand, he could not fault the Valar’s hallowed 
guidance; if they could have been said to guide him, a man. Perhaps I fell 
under the great light of the Evenstar.

Collapsing the canoe on the hilltop, they halted their portage for the night. 
Preferring the sanctuary of the trees, the King left his companions to raise 
the camp. Memories of this place clasped him tightly. He wandered up 
onto a forgotten king’s mighty sandal, a part of him ever mindful of the 
elves’ progression below, and his son’s protection. 

Hours – yet mere moments – later, a cry pricked sharply through his 
solemn reverie. His agile glare plunged down to the campground, where 
Legolas fired ripe, oozing frogberries at a livid Eldarion, fresh from a 
swim in the river. The prince, chest dripping with splotches of purple gore, 
devised swift revenge, pummeling the archer with several fistfuls of 
limestone pebbles. The battle escalated, but the King turned his eyes away, 
glad that Legolas still found some merriment despite the gray purpose of 
their journey.

“Your ministrations have kept him well,” Aragorn remarked, in lieu of a 
welcome, to the Eldar lurking in the woods nearby, not doubt seeking his 
counsel. Elrohir cursed to himself, then sprang up the foot, to join him. 

“He is not one for grief,” the elf-warrior dismissed, swooping down beside 
the King with all the elegance of his kind. “He holds much regard for his 
father, for his choice, but in the manner of a soldier for his general’s 
bravery in the day’s battle.”

Aragorn nodded, judging this wisdom profound. 

“Legolas is the soul of mischief, of valor, and loyal to a fault,” the King 
observed. “I would not cross him lightly. Yet his heart is… cold. I have 
seen him pursued all his life by elf-maids, by my kinswomen, and by 
elvellyn of all stations. He hath lain with them for sport, at times, he hath 
befriended most who pined for him… but he hath never loved.”

“What?” Elrohir started, unsettled by this revelation. “Never loved 
another?”

“His spark is too bright to kindle a single flame,” Aragorn argued. He 
turned his slate-blue eyes away from the shore, up to the blushing horizon. 
“On this very shore, I knew him… while my kinsman betrayed us… while 
he lay dying…”

At this, the elf-warrior vehemently shook his head. In the looming 
twilight, shadows creased his angular features. 

“Boromir died bravely,” Elrohir insisted. “And rightly, Aragorn. He was 
tempted by the Ring. He would not have let the hobbits be. He would have 
burdened you further.”

“His death is my burden,” Aragorn mused.

“You have restored his city to glory,” his foster-brother assured him. 
“Boromir did not die in vain.” The King seemed to accept this, the ache in 
his eyes rescinding. He thrust a steady, leaden gaze upon the Eldar. 

“I have known him,” he cautioned. “Known his sweetness. Known the 
fever of his song. It envelops you, ensnares you, and you cannot resist. 
You are well to comfort him, for comfort is dearly needed, but do not 
mistake restoration for reverence. So few of your gentle kind remain in 
these lands. I would not see another fade. Certainly not one so beloved, 
mellon-nîn.”       

At that, Elrohir snorted proudly, but betrayed a creeping sorrow. 

“I would not fade for love of him,” the elf-warrior declared, with false-
timbered bluster.

The King nodded once, chastely, his solemn stare again finding the shore; 
the yellowed patch, at the forest’s edge, where Boromir had lain. 

He shut his eyes, resolutely, attempting to forget the past, to dismiss the 
ghost of the future…

				*		*		*

Their hunger sated by a fine roast quintail hen with the requisite crushed 
frogberry glaze, the King and the two princes tucked up by the fire with 
the bitter Ithilien mead and tales of journeys long ended. To the Mirkwood 
elf’s astonishment, Aragorn had never fully recounted to his son of their 
months in the Fellowship of the Ring, nor his pursuit and capture of the 
creature Gollum. 

Polishing both their weapons and the last of the mead, the two warriors 
began the sprawling tale. Their voices lifted to embellish certain passages, 
fell hush to further enthrall the young prince. Fondly, they mimicked old 
friends, which often had them laughing, complicit, at some private 
remembrance. Eldarion devoured every last detail, rapt, occasionally 
glazing with awe at his father, as if he’d transformed into another being 
entirely. He knew of Estel, beloved to his mother, Elessar, King of 
Gondor, and Evinyatar, the renewer. Aragorn the man had often eluded 
him, however, and as for the valiant Strider, the Ranger… he struggled to 
perceive the remnants of this rogue’s cunning in his father’s just, noble 
ways. 

Elrohir had early made his excuses, preferring to steal a private moment in 
the tent he shared with his elf-brother. Like Eldarion, the trek to 
Mirkwood had uncovered many mystifying secrets for the darkling elf. 
These troubled him. Unlike his twin, Elladan, loremaster of Imladris, who 
took to brooding more often than not, Elrohir typically favored action over 
deep reflection. To his mind, few were the trials that could not be 
overcome with a sword, with a decree, or with a ceremony of some 
mystical nature. Elladan often chided him for ignoring the nuance of elven 
existence; for this reason, perhaps, he preferred the cruder ways of man-
kind. Yet, on the foot of his forbears, Aragorn had proven himself as 
deeply shaded as an elf-lord… 

With a patient hand, Elrohir struck the wind-chime, then lit the frayed 
wick of his stick of ederwood essence. The musk-rich, gauzy smoke soon 
wafted around him, as he assumed the  position of worship before his 
makeshift altar. He exhaled longly, voiding his lungs of his life’s breath, 
courting favor with the Valar. He prayed to those ethereal ones, for the 
light of knowledge to guide his path, for the strength of a steady hand, for 
wisdom in a vital choice. 

The thick, gossamer fumes eased him into a fugue. Time passed in 
vaporous drips, balming, replenishing the confounded recesses of his 
consciousness. He gave himself to the languorous rhythm, all thoughts of 
archers, fading kings, and bereaved warriors dissipating into the void 
around him. 

A chill wind washed over his back, the ederwood smoke sucked out into 
the bitter, riverside night. With cautious movements, Elrohir snuffed out 
the essence stick, struck the chime. His prayer-heavy frame stretched out 
along the top of his bedroll, his head drunkenly sluggish. It was often this 
way, if he surrendered himself entirely to worship; in truth, the light, 
mesmerized feeling pleased him. 

It was several moments before he realized Legolas had entered with the 
wind.

“Are you well, mellon-nîn?” the archer inquired, frowning slightly. “You 
move as though chained to the ground. You consumed little at supper, 
though the quintail was fine…”

“I have sung to the Valar,” Elrohir murmured. He struggled to fully open 
his eyes, to show Legolas the fading glow of the higher state shimmering 
therein. 

The Prince of Mirkwood knelt beside him, placing a tense palm against his 
cheek and indeed seeing the lilac blooms of his eyes. Satisfied that his 
companion was of good health, he rose to shed his boots, tunic, leggings… 
then shivered violently at the sting of the bitter air. 

“You are cold? Come, I will warm you,” Elrohir beckoned, still somewhat 
dazed. His oft-translucent skin was flushed a deep rose, the meditative 
state of the Eldar almost womb-like, for some. 

Legolas could not resist. Without hesitation, he slipped into the prince’s 
embrace, resting his golden head against Elrohir’s warm chest. With a 
long, relaxed sigh, the darkling elf extended his arm over the length of the 
prince’s back. 

Despite the comfort of this stolen moment, Elrohir’s senses sharpened 
anew. 

“You are weary, meldir?” 

“I am well,” the archer assured him, though his tone lacked conviction. 
“The young prince never seems to tire. You are well-matched.”

“Aye, he is spirited,” Elrohir smiled fondly. “Much like his mother, in our 
youth.”

Legolas thought on this. He added: “It is a grave pity he does not more 
resemble the King. When his soul passes… this world will have indeed… 
lost.”

“Think not on such darkness, mellon-nîn,” the elf-warrior cooed. “There 
will be legions to mourn him. We will find solace together.”  At the 
archer’s continued silence, Elrohir ventured further. “Though I am ever 
thankful an elf cannot fade for love of man-kind. Our people would be 
decimated.” 

Legolas allowed himself a smirk, at this, but his eyes held fast to 
solemnity. 

“It is Aragorn you love, then,” Elrohir cut to the quick. “I knew one so fair 
would not leave his heart to decay.” 

At this, the archer laughed outright.

“Love Aragorn?! Surely you gest!!” The Mirkwood prince raised his head 
to meet the son of Elrond’s cool, indigo eyes with mirth-brimming blues. 
Still, he soon tempered. “The aran Gondor is as true to me as the brother 
of my heart, for certes, and as such I love him dearly… these are not 
romantic pledges. They are those of a warrior to his king, of one brother to 
another, not… but I protest too much. You will think me besotted with 
him.”

“Nay, I do not,” the Imladrian prince reassured him. “I know well the 
devotion of which you speak. I merely wondered… what illustrious soul 
could have, in the past, won such a valiant heart as yours.” 

Legolas again fell silent, though his glare spiked out to lock with Elrohir’s 
own. “Why do you ask this?”

“The King claims you have never loved. I could not believe it so.”

The archer shrugged, softened. His cheek returned to the small of the elf-
warrior’s now tepid chest, his answer trickled across the paled skin. 

“I never saw the need of it,” he hushedly began. “It brings only pain, or 
uncertainty, or grief. I am not made for such things. I longed for the 
world… but never for another with such passion that I would forsake my 
freedom, my adventuring… it strikes to the heart of me, the calling from 
Valinor. I would not leave Middle-Earth. I am content with these lands to 
travel, with my friends among her peoples… “ Legolas grew restless, 
eager to dismiss the topic. “And you, elmellyn?”

“Seldom through my years have I loved,” Elrohir admitted. “But well. 
Yes, dearly well. An elf-maid, in my youth… but she proved intemperate, 
marrying another during my absence. I was all-too easily consoled by a 
fearsome Galadrim. A horseman of the Rohan, in the last age, and before, 
a noble son of Osgilliath. They are well-sung, in my orisons.” The elf-
warrior grew somber, his own thoughts clouded by doubt. “I pray Elbereth 
it will favor me again, before Elladan and I must chose our fate.”

“Your Fate?” Legolas queried intently. “Which is this?”

“We are not true Eldar, as you know,” the peredhil explained, his features 
severe. “We have little time, after Estel’s passing, to chose between 
passing to Valinor and remaining in Middle-Earth to die a mortal. If my 
Adar remains to mourn our sister, perhaps we shall see the autumn of 
Eldarion’s rule… but his thoughts are turning to the sea. Valinor beckons 
him.”

“Cursed place,” Legolas almost spit, curling further into the elf-warrior’s 
solid frame. “We are of one mind, mellon-nîn. I would that we could ride 
the wilds together, without end.” Then, with less venom. “You would 
make a fine companion.” 

“Better than the dwarf?” Elrohir teased, but could not shake the frost 
seeping through his veins, the thought of forsaking centuries at the 
archer’s side for the placid meadows of Valinor sickening his soul. 

“Aye, perhaps,” Legolas laughed, though there was little mirth in its 
timbre. “Certainly less quarrelsome…”      

				*		*		*

The forest howled. The cracked, gutted trunks spiked up, around them, 
cindered black as granite shards. Those that had not yet fallen hung limp, 
compliant over their gnarled roots, their branches abruptly severed, the 
bark stripped to the bone, clumps of blood-red sap clotted around the 
wounds. The jaundiced patches of grass, amid the ash-field of the forest 
ground, stood, stagnant, in the fetid air, oblivious to the stench of 
petroleum and of decay. 

Legolas lurched through the last of his cherished Mirkwood, his vision 
blurred, sodden. He could not hear his footsteps for the din of nature’s 
tortured wails; his tears gratefully blinding him to the bird skeletons, 
flower shreds, and occasional horse carcasses rotting in the firebeast’s foul 
mulch. Aragorn walked mere steps behind him, ever-mindful of the 
elvellyn’s hold on his composure, while Eldarion and Elrohir clutched one 
to the other, both equally determined, equally forlorn. 

Despite his intense distress, a virile, voracious anger kept Legolas at the 
helm of this black fellowship, though he mourned his dear-held forest, he 
would not allow the fire-breather’s destruction to torch his resolve. 
Blotting a coarse sleeve over his eyes, he strode on, relentless, through the 
smoke-hung hollows of the forest’s remains, ever-vigilant. 

Suddenly, warning stabbed through his spine. Before he could give his 
fears voice, Elrohir had drawn his witch-sword, Anduil’s feral glint 
flashed behind him, and the kingling’s new bow was strung tight. 

The Warg-pack was on them before they could breathe in.  

After witnessing the ravaging of his homeland, Legolas found relief in the 
slice of his arrows, as they put out eyes, pierced tender hide, and 
punctured fur-thick throats into a bloody spew. He blazed through the mire 
of hack and slash like a bolt of lightening, chasing down one particularly 
rabid creature as he vaulted off a tree trunk, claws spread, to maul 
Eldarion. The archer shot true, twice, thrice, in the neck, then sprung his 
silver knives in one fleet motion and mercilessly gutted the beast. The 
youth gaped at his playmate’s ferocity, but there was little time to spare. 

The Wargs seemed to come from every direction, their broken bodies soon 
piling up with the other remains, the parched grass-blades adrift in the 
dark crimson rivers. The King and his son dammed the flow from the East, 
a golden head amid the carnage to the North, while a darkling menace 
slaughtered fervently to the West. To the South, the cerulean crags of the 
Mirkwood Mountains loomed large, as foreboding as they were impassive. 

At last, the charge of Wargs weakened, the North-come horde lessening 
(or the deadly archer’s reputation spreading). Aragorn and Eldarion caught 
up with two of the more cunning devils to his right, Legolas instead turned 
his attention to Elrohir, at his left. Though his sword was mighty, the elf-
warrior’s blows missed as often as they struck, the Eldar visibly struggling 
to mark his target. While the edain brethren were still going strong, the 
steadfast edhel could not catch his breath.  This angered him enough to 
force a feral burst of precision, soon ebbing into self-defense. 

A chill passed over Legolas’ heart, but he did not let it linger. Instead, he 
shot off a flurry of rapacious blades, the Wargs surrounding Elrohir soon a 
clump of blood-slick fur at his feet. His fury spent, Legolas trudged over 
to his kinsman and slung a weary arm over his shoulders. 

“The trees… their weeping…” Elrohir remarked, quick to justify his 
fatigue. “They haunted me… I could not block them out.” He stopped to 
catch his breath, ever-conscious of his poor showing. “I thank you, 
calenlass, for your-“

“There is no need,” Legolas assured him, a frisson jutting down his spine 
at the Eldar’s defensiveness. “I would have fallen many times over, had 
your sharp eyes not found me in distress at the gates of Mordor, gwanur-
nin.” 

The darkling elf’s warm, violet eyes met his in gratitude, but Legolas’ 
gaze could not let his half-truth shine through to comfort him. Instead, 
they grew wanting. 

“We will take Rites, at my father’s house,” Legolas whispered salaciously, 
hoping to distract the Eldar from his growing distress. “You shall favor me 
then.” 

“With all the skill in my power,” Elrohir replied with a flick of his tongue, 
though his body cringed at the thought of further exertion. 

“Come, elvellyn!!” Aragorn called over to them. “ We go East. The dark 
does not wait!!”

				*		*		*

Night had long fallen when the journeymen stole up the torch-lit steps of 
Thranduil’s tree-top refuge. Menethren’s valor had saved the giant wood-
oaks that sheltered the Sindarin tribe, though none remained in the thatch 
of bow-houses but the fading King, a few servants, and one unexpected 
guest. 

“Mae govannen, gwanur-nin,” Elladan declared, as he swept both his twin 
and his foster brother into his arms. Eldarion, bedazzled anew, could not 
rip his eyes from the be-gowned Eldar, an exact replica of Elrohir with the 
exception of his tranquil, gray eyes, his learned demeanor, and his 
loremaster’s frame. Though once a strength equal to the elf-warrior’s, long 
years in the libraries of Imladris had refined his once meat-thick limbs into 
a more elven sleekness, unlike Elrohir, who remained a potent mixture of 
elf and of man. 

Elladan moved serenely through the newly-met company, over to the 
Mirkwood prince. Legolas’ eyes remained stricken, as before, their earlier 
ferocity snuffed by the dank halls of his home. The haunts of his 
childhood were now truly haunted, empty of their devout, welcoming 
population, harkening for the return of those that had forsaken them. Guilt 
striking to his core, he gripped the Eldar’s outstretched hands with 
undisguised despair. 

“Mae govannen, calenlass,” Elladan stated, bowing solemnly. “I fear he is 
not long of this world. He waits, I believe, but for your return.” 

Legolas nodded, squeezing his hands as if to draw strength from them, 
then straightened his posture, chin bravely up. Without another second’s 
pause, he strode forth, to the front of the company, and marched evenly 
through the halls, to his father’s rooms. The others quickly followed, at the 
ready. 

Aragorn, never one to dismiss unforeseen events, fell back to Elladan’s 
side. 

“Please, do not mistake my intent,” he began his inquisition. “But how is it 
that you come to be in Mirkwood?”   

Elladan smiled softly, as if wondering what had taken the King so long to 
ask. “It is a curiosity, this twinship I share. Even at such distance, if 
Elrohir feels something acutely… I sensed only an urgent need of my 
presence in the Green Wood. I knew not what had befallen, nor does my 
father, as yet. I discovered the King’s grave plight upon my arrival.” 

Aragorn accepted this, clasping a warm hand to his foster-brother’s 
shoulder. “I am glad of your company. Your wisdom is well needed. The 
road has been… a trial.” 

“I doubt it not,” Elladan replied, casting cautious eyes towards the rest of 
their severe companions. Despite the urgency of the situation, he stopped 
the King, letting the others push on. “Tell me true, Estel. Is my brother 
well?” 

Aragorn swallowed hard. It was not the time for such confidences, but 
Elladan’s interruption of their sworn charge spoke volumes of the gravity 
of his concern in this matter.

“I cannot say for certain,” Aragorn insisted. “But he is not… as he ever 
was.”

“Do you suspect a cause?”

“Have you felt… something… when this twinness overtakes you…?”

Elladan sighed mightily, but did not hasten to reply. “I, too, am not certain 
of the cause of these... troubles. It is not sickness. I feel he is somehow… 
diminished? I am unsure. I can say only that his spirit… the spirit of his 
self, inside me, of our oneness… at times… it grows cold, Estel.”

The King’s features grew increasingly resigned, but he would not 
comment on the matter further. 

“We tarry too long,” he compelled him. “We shall speak on this later.”

By this time, Legolas stood under the arched entrance to his father’s 
chamber, face steeled, teeth grit, but legs cemented in place. Elladan 
rushed to catch up, sweeping past the Mirkwood prince, through the 
mighty doors, and into the room itself, leaving no time for second-glances. 
Eldarion, trembling, fell back against his father, but Elrohir stepped 
valiantly forward, taking his kinsman by the arm and leading him, with 
small, measured steps, through the black threshold. 

At first sight of him, Legolas swayed, almost imperceptibly, but the elf-
warrior held fast to him.

The once-golden King of the Mirkwood realm lay across the bed, like the 
flayed skins of a burst spore, mute, gaunt, skeletal. His anemic bones 
tented the stretched wax of his skin at the joints; what little flesh that 
remained pooled at the bottom of his limbs, like turned, globulous gelatin. 
His hair, the grimy white of mud-clumped snow, clung to his skull-cap 
scalp in natty, knotted patches, his elven crown like tinfoil. The rich-
silked, cobalt splendor of his robes only underlined his rotted pallor, 
though their presence offered the onlookers a piercing reminder of the 
import of their decorum. 

Legolas, quaking almost imperceptibly, eyes glistening, slipped out of 
Elrohir’s grasp and strode boldly over to the bed. He knelt at Thranduil’s 
side, only then perceiving the tremulously faint signs of life still in the 
ancient King. 

“Ada,” Legolas whispered, barely able to find his breath. “I am returned.”

To everyone’s surprise, Thranduil’s black eyes widened, wandering over 
to take in his son’s troubled face. With inestimable effort, he lay a 
creaking hand over the prince’s. 

“Melethron…” 

“Eglerio le, Thranduil, Adar-nin,” Legolas intoned, his voice growing 
stronger. “Hiro le hîdh ab `wanath.“

“Be at peace, nin ind,” Thranduil comforted him. “Do not let my passing 
harness the wild spirit I have loved so well. Claim your freedom, nin 
bellas. Find your path through the green woods of this world. What news 
of the Glittering Caves? What of their beauty?”

“I have known it well, Ada,” Legolas responded. “Ten years I dwelt 
there.”

“And the aran Gondor? Is he well?”

“He is here to mourn you,” his son revealed. “He is here to see you home.” 

“And your brothers? Are they near?”

“They await you at Mandos,” Legolas reminded him, the hand over his 
turning to ice. “Rest now, Ada.”

“I will not rest until you have answered me, nin ind,” Thranduil insisted, 
his in-bred need to rule overtaking him. Legolas almost smiled. “Han bâd 
lin, melethron.”

“Dolen i vâd o nin, Ada.”

“Si peliannen i vâd na dail lîn. Si boe u-dhannathach, nin bellas,” 
Thranduil instructed, with learned patience.”You know of which I speak, 
Legolas.”

Caught suddenly in a wave of sorrow, the prince gripped his father’s hand. 
The Mirkwood king’s choked, rasping cough shook his entire being, 
rattling the joints as if shaken by a mighty tremor. Legolas clung to him, 
through the pain, then stroked a calming touch over his withered head. 

 “I would not keep you further,” the prince solemnly ventured. “I Aear cân 
le ‘Namar’. I chair gwannar na Mandos. Si bado, no círar. Gerich veleth 
nîn, Ada.”

“Gerich veleth nin, Legolas,” Thranduil pledged, even as his black eyes 
caught their last glimmer of the world. His heavy lids closed shut, their 
last sight the golden brilliance of his son and heir. 

Legolas opened his mouth, to sing for him, but his voice was lost. Not a 
whisper, not a sound, not a moan could he utter, such was his sorrow. His 
brave, unwavering eyes gave in to his grief, the tears spilling over his 
desolate face, his sallow cheeks. 

“*Ada*,” he cried, bowing his head to the King’s frigid hand, still clasped 
tightly in his own. 

The company was frozen, bereft. They watched the faithful prince grieve 
for his father, grappling to keep hold, the sight helplessly overwhelming. 
Aragorn knelt, to pay tribute to the King’s passing, Eldarion quickly 
followed suit, as did Elladan. 

Elrohir, however, trod noiselessly over to the sobbing prince’s side, laying 
two steady, tender hands on his quaking shoulders. With a whispered 
prayer to the Valar, he softly began to sing a hallowed hymn of mourning. 
Elladan soon followed his brother, joining him in song. Aragorn and 
Eldarion stood at attention, immovable, honoring their Eldar brethren.

After several moments, Legolas found his voice, his strength anew. 

He sang more beautifully than ever before. 



To be continued… 



Elvish phrases:

Eglerio le, Thranduil, Adar-nin.  Glorify him, Thranduil, my father.

Hiro le hîdh ab `wanath.  May you find peace after death.

Han bâd lin, melethron.  This is your path, beloved.

Dolen i vâd o nin, Ada.  My path is hidden from me, Father. 

Si peliannen i vâd na dail lîn. Si boe ú-dhannathach, nin bellas.  It is 
already laid before your feet. You cannot falter now, my strength.

I Aear cân le «Namar». I chair gwannar na Mandos. Si bado, no círar. 
Gerich veleth nîn, Ada.  The Sea calls you “Farewell”. The ship is 
leaving for Mandos. Go now, before it is too late. You have my love, 
Father.

Gerich veleth nin, Legolas.  You have my love, Legolas.

Ada Father

Nin ind  My heart

Nin bellas  My strength



Title:  Idylls of a King Forlorn, Part 3: Faeg
Author: Gloromeien  
Email: andromeda_strayn@hotmail.com 
Pairing: Legolas / Elrohir
Summary: In the stark landscape of Mirkwood, Legolas is confronted.   
Rating: NC-17 for m/m slash, adult themes.
Disclaimers: Characters belong to that wily old wizard himself, Tolkien the Wise, 
the granddad of all 20th century fantasy lit. I serve at the pleasure of his estate 
and aim not for profit. 
Author’s Note: This is a tiny bit AU, though I prefer to think of it as un-
documented (as it *is*, my research was thorough), rather than a complete 
distortion of cannon. Takes place during the reign of King Elessar; he has been 
on the throne for about 20 years at this point. For all the ideas/depictions of elven 
grief and the ‘fading’, I am endlessly indebted to the excellent slashwriter Ilye, 
who’s work can be found in the Library of Moria. I was so moved by her own 
descriptions of these things that I had to give it a whirl myself, I hope she can 
forgive me the borrowing. All quotes from ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’ by 
Elizabeth Barrett Browning. All elvish quotes, at the end. 
Dedication: Once again, to the Pirate King and the Lady Cariad.  
 
 
***************  

Seeing that I stand unwon, however wooed,
And rend the garment of my life, in brief,
By a most dauntless, voiceless fortitude,
Lest one touch of this heart convey its grief. 

His cool, cerulean eyes swept over the view of the black bow-houses, the 
sagging branches, the cinder-scarred earth far below his high-bourn 
balcony, the moon-less night that surrounded him.  

The ruins of his kingdom. 

Clothed in nothing but sweat, saliva, and the slick wash of the peredhil’s 
seed, spent thickly across the puckering skin of his abdomen, Legolas 
met the callow midnight with craven eyes. Despite Elrohir’s eager 
compliance to every perversion of his dark needs, despite hours of 
burning deep into his war-brother with brutal, un-balmed thrusts, a 
parasitic restlessness bit into the seams of his spine. 

In the room behind, the Imladrian prince lay cocooned in slow-drying 
sheets, laced, Legolas forced himself to be reminded, with his own blood. 
The dull, musty breeze encrusted similar stains to the archer’s own 
swollen thighs, his legs and his loins well-brazed by their roughness. He 
could not bring himself to regret what had passed between them, nor did 
he believe Elrohir to be sunk in else but a peaceful slumber; still, the ease 
with which he’d overtaken his companion, so often gentled by their Rites, 
had shaken him. I claim the Rites of mourning, yet it is he who cleaves. 
And I, in turn, punish. 

As suddenly as a spooked stallion, Legolas reared his head, the flaxen 
waves of his loose hair rippling behind like a banner. He crept stealthily 
back into his chamber. He collected the elf-warrior’s fallen sarong from 
the hide before the hearth, expertly wrapping the plush indigo velour 
around his solid waistline. His slender hipbones pushed up, over the 
woven edge, as he padded carefully to the bed. For several moments, he 
stood observing the somnambulant elf for any signs of distress, then 
slowly bent over him to suckle, rather sweetly, at the nape of his neck. A 
warming hand brushed tenderly over the body he had rode so well, 
assuring the Mirkwood prince that the lax form was tucked-in tight. 

Sure in this, he left him. 

The hollow gloom of the archways and the stairwells failed to disquiet one 
so familiar with their elegant geometry. Many nights had the prince stolen 
down these very passageways, a blithe streak oft mistaken for moonlight, 
in the early years of his adolescent escapades, to rendezvous with, or to 
expertly avoid, a covetous admirer. A fortnight since his father’s passing, 
this thought brought the first smile to his sinuous lips in that mournful 
span of time. The momentary urge to return to his chamber and rouse his 
sated bedfellow with a thick-tongued penitent’s kiss threatened, but he 
held to his path. 

The kitchens beckoned mercilessly. 

A solitary candle flickered in the heart of the massive wooden carving 
table. In the fire-bricked hearths hung pregnant pewter cauldrons, the 
walls adorned with glinting racks of huge copper pots, quicksilver knives, 
lava-black ladles, and trunk-fat spits. To his raucous stomach’s relief, he 
found a veritable midnight feast laid out for him: spitting-hot soup, fresh 
breads, cold meats, dwarf-churned cheese (a distinct preference over 
those Shire curds the halflings chomp so gleefully), and a veritable trough 
of mead. 

Before he could praise Elbereth for his culinary fortune, however, a hand 
rested on his shoulder. 

“Mae govannen, mellon-nîn,” Aragorn greeted him wryly, an arched 
eyebrow silently remarking on the elf’s wanton appearance. “I see your 
hunger has returned.” 

“Indeed, it has,” Legolas replied, with an ambiguity of meaning, as he cast 
his eyes once more over the awaiting meal. “Could I bear upon your 
grace to share your supper?”

“With pleasure.” The King gestured him towards a place at the table. 

As his friend watched on, his slate-blue eyes amused, benevolent, 
protective, the archer devoured every last morsel of the hearty meal, 
more nourishment in this one sitting than he had consumed in a month’s 
time. Aragorn chose to sip leisurely at his soup, relieved at the progress 
his bereaved friend was showing, both in his brazenly immodest 
appearance and in his zestful, near-relentless appetite. Perhaps, at last, 
he is mended. 

After Legolas wiped the last of the mead-froth from his mouth, the King 
allowed himself a booming chuckle. The elf smirked, bashful, and laid a 
firm hand over the adan’s own. 

“My thanks for every breath of your kindness. It has consoled me well.”

“I have missed your company these last days,” Aragorn generously 
stated. “I have been pained to see you so… solemn.” Legolas nodded, 
thoughts of the past fortnight’s shadows dulling the gleam of his fair 
features. “Yet you have admirably bested the trials of grief.”

“Bested them, yes,” the prince conceded. “But they are not yet 
conquered.” Trembling, he withdrew his silken palm, sinking further into 
the hard wood of his seat. “Let us speak of light matters. The Queen tells 
me she is yet again with child.”

The King let out a helpless mewl, then settled his face into a fond, 
mischievous smile.

“*Indeed*,” he mused. “She made no note of it before our departure.” He 
considered this a moment, then laughed at himself. “But I am glad of it. 
Another treasure. We are blessed.” 

“With potency, some may say,” the archer teased. 

“Aye, I will not counter you,” the King gladly accepted the ruse. “Though I 
will allow that it is the quality of our love that proves our family 
so…peopled. When one is enthralled in such raptures as ours, every 
chance to make that blissful connection is… crucial. Indispensable. 
Essential.”

At this, the prince fell pensive. “Your love… is an example to us all.”

Aragorn smirked ruefully. “What do you know of love? In this, your heart 
is chaste as a Shire-ling on the eve of her wedding day.”   

“Aye,” he faintly responded, his earlier spark now smote entirely. “I am not 
fit for it.”

With a hawkish glare, the King steadily observed his elf-brother, noting 
both his tone of dissatisfaction and his implied self-berating. The heathen 
seeds of Thranduil’s demise had grown, weaving taut, sickly vines over 
the prince’s celebrin spirit. Aragorn folded his fingers together, in a 
gesture of self-restraint, and laid them on his lap. All may not yet be lost.

“Mellon-nîn,” he began. “I would not burden you further in such a 
sorrowful time. However… a matter has arisen of which both Elladan and 
I myself feel you must be appraised, without delay.” 

The prince’s dagger-keen stare sprang up to meet the King’s own. “What 
matter is this?”

Aragorn withheld his reply a moment, his eventual words explicitly 
cautious. “The day of the Warg attack in the woods, the day we arrived 
here, did you not note a… a weakening of Elrohir’s skills. After the battle, 
he seemed disoriented, short of breath… when even my son was not.”

“The woods affected him deeply.” Legolas leapt to his defense. “It is the 
nature of our kind. I, too, heard their cries, but it compelled me into fury. 
Elrohir… felt the woods differently than I. It was no weakness, Aragorn.”

“There have been other moments,” Aragorn gently insisted. “Other… 
signs.” 

Legolas turned his face away, shut his eyes. The weight of his gorgings 
forged to lead in the bowels of his being, their bilious fumes swelling, 
searing in his throat. With far too capable ease, his mind marked the sum 
of a dozen fell moments, where the archer had excused away the half-
elven’s fatigue and inaccuracy with a callow thought to his mixed 
heritage. 

“He fades, gwanur-nîn,” Aragorn murmured, but firmly. The warrior 
reached across the table, gripping a solid, steady hand over the archer’s 
own. “Elladan, in his twinness, has felt its grip. He’s felt the chill pass 
through his heart, when you… when you have denied his brother, these 
few weeks past…”

“I mourned my father!!” Legolas cried suddenly; whether from anger or 
sorrow, Aragorn could not know. “I *grieved*, as an elf truly grieves, for an 
ageless, honorable love. Not one so quickly found, born out of… foolish 
reverie.”

“Do you judge Elrohir’s heart foolish?” Aragorn growled, his temper rising. 
“Easily conquered?”

Legolas bowed his head. The calloused skin of his fingers, his branded 
thighs, the purpled backs of his forceful legs, and the blood-crusted scars 
across his shoulder blades, hidden by his sheath of hair, bore witness to 
the elf-warrior’s ravishing, at his willfully ignorant hands.   

“I *do* judge it so if he fades for love of one so… so hollow and base as 
myself.” 

“*Legolas*…” The King’s shoulders sank, his anger extinguished by such 
dispirited words. 

Sensing his friend’s coming argument, Legolas quickly added: “I speak 
right, Aragorn. One who’s heart is cold, as mine, can never be worthy of 
the devotion of such… such a valiant, tender soul. I know myself. I 
know… my ways.” The archer swallowed back another corrosive mouthful 
of bile, the memory of grayed, pleading eyes in his doorway, of gut-core 
wails at the *height* of their meeting, of an iron hand clamped over the 
elf-warrior’s throat nearly besting him. He held fast. 
    
“I cannot save him,” he decreed, in a strangled whisper. 

Aragorn rose to full imposition, his face shroud in blackness. 

“Then break with him,” he near-commanded, his chest heaving with 
barely-kept rage. “With Elrond’s care, and his twin brother’s strength, 
there may still be a chance to save him. He may not be… without hope.” 

This, above all else, brought new color to the prince’s ashen cheeks. 

“He may be saved?!” Legolas asked, desperation and relief mingling 
within. 

“He may,” the King replied, with a fierce solemnity. “He may die. Over 
years of relentless agony and the soul’s fiendish torments. As your father 
did, forlorn King of Mirkwood. Forsaking Valinor, the gift of eternity, and 
the Middle-Earth you both cherish so well.” Aragorn lifted his head to the 
light, his noble breadth as imposing as the tower of Barad-dûr. “His 
valiant, tender heart burnt to cinder. As did your green wood, under 
dragon’s breath, son of Thranduil.”

With that, the King kicked back his chair, leaving Legolas to stew. 

				*		*		*  

Elrohir shivered, once, then stirred. 

The dawn had risen, wan and weary over the fog-plagued haunts of this 
hollowed Mirkwood. From the cloying sheets of its prince’s bed, the elf-
warrior’s drowsy gaze could barely perceive the sugary peaks of the 
mountains to the south, their pale cast whitewashed into the cool, static 
morning haze. His body’s length felt similarly vapid, as if he’d dueled to 
ravaging the evening past, yet the wounds, once struck, balmed and 
mended by unseen, gracious hands. 

Before Elrohir had occasion to examine himself, Legolas returned. 
Though he had not bothered to cleanse himself of the remains of their 
coupling, the prince’s manner betrayed no evidence of the previous 
night’s ardor. The burnished orbs of his cerulean eyes hung low, glazed 
and mirthless. He shed the sagging sarong without care, though his mind 
was clearly engaged in some further sorrowful contemplation, most which 
Elrohir had thought charred to dust in their passion. 

Despite his obvious preoccupation, the archer deposited a tray on the 
bed-table: a steaming pitcher of cream, a bowl of fortifying oats speckled 
with dried berries and fresh apple shards, a cup of herbal tea, and 
cimmeg root for seasoning. When he turned to his bedfellow, his face 
resumed a mask of studied calm. Even in life, he shields and wields with 
a warrior’s poise.

Legolas perched on the edge of the bed, ably mixing their breakfast. The 
elf-warrior tucked a tight grip into the seam of his thigh.        

“Have you taken your rest, my brave one?”

“Some,” came the murky reply. 

“I have been gluttonous with sleep,” Elrohir smirked wryly. He curled up to 
the prince’s flexed leg with a panther’s feral grace, his flint-eyes darkened 
a cool indigo, darting perilously down the length of his bare chest. “I am 
hungry for… the day.” 

The archer rose with a start, when the rough texture of the peredhil’s 
salmon pink tongue lapped over the taut skin of his kneecap. Despite his 
reactionary skills, his lap was summarily doused with thick, warm cream. 
Though Legolas stood, aghast, glaring, the Imladrian prince was soon 
beside himself with laughter. 

The archer’s rage and shame burned as hot as his resulting arousal. 

“Come, maltaren-nîn,” Elrohir beckoned, his mirth quenched by the flood 
of desire. “You are betrayed, and burning. Let me-“ The archer snatched 
his hand away in a fierce, crushing grip.

“Do you think me so base? So wanton?” Legolas seethed, his eyes 
ablaze. “I had gone twenty years without another’s touch.”

“And you wither at mine,” Elrohir retorted, emboldened by this challenge. 
His steadfast warrior’s heart suddenly buckled, heaved, pumping icy 
swells through his veins. Headstrong, he kept on. “You have suffered 
greatly these last months, calenlass, and for that I will forgive this 
insolence. But it is ungracious to spit in the face of one who just this last 
night bore the dagger’s edge of your need without grievance, with nary a 
cry in protest.” 

Fingers of searing frost clamped around his throat, choking off these last 
few words. Elrohir bit down tight, desperate to suck back his dry, 
wheezing coughs, but this prideful struggle only wrought the salty sting of 
tears. 

Before he could strike-out in protest, he was shroud in the soothing heat 
of the prince’s arms. 

“Edhored, mellon-nîn. Im faeg. Im faeg.” Legolas repeatedly murmured 
into his tousled hair, fearful, mauling hands rediscovering their form in his 
bruises. “Tolo dan na ngalad.”

As the Imladrian prince’s breaths grew long and full, both of the Eldar 
fought to remain centered. For several tense moments, Legolas held his 
ailing elf-brother, ever-conscious of the healing effects of his iron-lock 
grip. Elrohir, for his part, felt his body surge with energy, enough to flip the 
archer onto his back and jab the butter knife to the soft of his slender 
throat. 

The menace of this thought alone chastened him. 

What has become of me? Both men demanded of themselves. 

Elrohir wrenched himself away, sprang to his feet. Still, he remained at 
the bedside. He heard Legolas gather the sheets, wipe the remnants of 
the now-cold cream away. A cup was raised, tea haltingly sipped. A dull 
lethargy few would mistake for calm seeped through him. 

“In the spirit of our Rites, gwanur-nîn,” the Mirkwood prince dared to 
whisper. “May I charge you with a most… exceptional task?” When the 
elf-warrior hesitated, Legolas pressed cautiously on. “Are you still sworn 
to aid me in this journey?”

“I am,” smacked the reply. 

“I am glad of it,” Legolas added, before confronting the meat of the 
matter. “I would that your father be warned in advance of our coming. Of 
the nature, if you will, of our grave purpose. The fellowship is set to depart 
under cover of night. I ask that you ride out, this very hour, for Imladris, 
and bear message to your father. Your brother and I have both composed 
letters, for your charge.” He heard the archer rise, at last, and come 
towards him. “You will reach Imladris vital days before our arrival, if you 
ride swiftly. As I know you can.” 

Brashly, the elf-warrior turned on his heel, the sheer force of his hawkish 
stare striking true. 

“You would be rid of me.”

“I would your father be warned of such black tidings.”

“And who will bear the black yearnings of your heart while I am gone?” 
Elrohir retorted. “My brother? The King? The young prince?”

“I will bear them alone,” Legolas countered, but without his typical bite. 
“As always.”

This last slashed through the elf-warrior as quick and as deep as the 
blade of an Uruk-hai, though he bravely bore the brunt of it. 

“I am charged,” he stated firmly, bowing his head. “I will ride within the 
hour.” 

Legolas, his guilt gutting him through, raised his head to lock eyes with 
his elf-brother.

“But mark this, maltaren-nîn, for rare is the day I am so lamely 
overthrown,” Elrohir continued. “No matter the nature of the battle, or the 
other’s fearsome size…”

His eyes, black as midnight, slit into the archer’s own.

“You will never stand alone.”



To be continued…       



A/N: Elvish phrases

Edhored, mellon-nîn. Im faeg. Im faeg. Forgive me, my friend. I am 
weak. I am weak.

Tolo dan na ngalad. Come back into the light.

Maltaren-nîn. My golden prince.       



Title:  Idylls of a King Forlorn, Part 4: Eglerio
Author: Gloromeien  
Email: andromeda_strayn@hotmail.com 
Pairing: Legolas / Elrohir
Summary: Elrond weighs in on the sorry state of affairs.  
Rating: R for m/m slash, adult themes.
Disclaimers: Characters belong to that wily old wizard himself, Tolkien 
the Wise, the granddad of all 20th century fantasy lit. I serve at the 
pleasure of his estate and aim not for profit. 
Author’s Note: This is a tiny bit AU, though I prefer to think of it as un-
documented (as it *is*, my research was thorough), rather than a complete 
distortion of cannon. Takes place during the reign of King Elessar; he has 
been on the throne for about 20 years at this point. All quotes from 
‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’ by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. All elvish 
quotes, at the end. 
Dedication: Once again, to the Pirate King and the Lady Cariad.  
 
 
***************  

‘I did not wrong myself so, but I placed 
A wrong on thee. For perfect strains may float
‘Neath masters hands, from instruments defaced,-
And great souls, at one stroke, may do and doat.’ 

With gray eyes as hard as forged hearthstone and a scowl creased as deep 
as the bark of Fangorn forest, Elrond peered across the Imladrian valley at 
the procession edging along the eastern ridge. Their blithe, reverent voices 
had announced them hours before; Rivendell’s well-selected acoustic 
position, among the foothills of the Misty Mountains, shepherding their 
glorified tones through the house of the High Elven.          

Sage Glorfindel ever by his side, Elrond had observed the gaining progress 
of the mourners for the larger part of the morning. The immaculate verse 
and tremulous beauty of elven funeral dirges, though sorrowful, had ever 
captivated him. Though he knew the days to come would be long, and the 
road to true serenity burdensome, he drew what solace he could from both 
the strength of Glorfindel’s tender arms and the grave magnificence of the 
hallowed voices: his grandson’s unsullied soprano, the archer’s ravaged 
alto, his son’s lush tenor, and the King’s wearied bass. 

As the golden balm of sunlight spread over the valley’s scope, the 
fellowship crept along the path to the grand stone archway of Imladris. 
When the singing was of such intensity as to wring tears from the cobalt 
eyes of his fierce, beloved Glorfindel, Elrond began his descent to the 
courtyard. 

There, his keen stare had occasion to observe the slow-moving procession 
unseen. Momentarily distracted by his eloquent grandson’s resemblance to 
the Lady Evenstar, he was nevertheless quick to note Estel’s well-guarded 
frustration, as well as his Elladan’s barely-veiled concern. The Mirkwood 
prince, however, bore the brunt of his cruel glare. 

Merely hours before, their rest had been disrupted by the arrival of his 
second son; or rather, a horse carrying a ghostly pale, feverish, near-
delirious shell of what had formerly been his brash, foreboding Elrohir, 
endlessly bleating his own miserable dirge. 

/Calenlass, maltaren-nin, calenlass…/

Even from such foliage-shroud vantage, Elrond saw the Mirkwood 
prince’s shame clear as the flow of the Bruinen below. For one so fearless, 
he, too, was much altered by a different grief, his stance couched, his skin 
waxen, his eyes, normally the soul of mischief, haunted. Though his letter 
had detailed the saga of his son’s unraveling, they spoke little of the tale 
the archer’s own face told: starvation, flagellation, bereavement of such 
intensity as to easily vanquish even the most stalwart of elven hearts. 
Whereas, before their arrival, Elrond had thought the prince fit to be 
flayed alive; upon witnessing the state of his despair, the High Eldar knew 
he had judged him too harshly. 

The realization did little to quell the rages of a father’s heart. 

With Glorfindel steadfast at his side, Elrond tread down, into the 
courtyard.

“Mae govannen,” he solemnly welcomed them. Before any formal 
greetings could be heard, his grandson flew into his arms. 

“Ada!!” Eldarion exclaimed with undisguised glee. Elrond clung to the 
bristling youth, his weathered face softening. 

“Eldarion!!” The King swiftly reprimanded. “Is this the courtesy you show 
the Lord of Imladris?”

“Welcome, pen-neth,” Elrond murmured to the youth, who dutifully 
ignored his father and gazed with unblemished awe into the worn eyes of 
his elder. Elrond, too-easily recalling the regal blue twinkle of a similarly 
disobedient, angelic child, soon tempered him. “There is no need of 
courtesy here, melethron-nîn. This is your home.” 

Elrond reluctantly passed his daughter’s son off to Glorfindel, opening his 
mighty arms to embrace his foster son. 

“Suilad, Estel-nîn,” Elrond sung heartily. “I fear we will need your 
renewing strength, before long. These are dark days.”

“Indeed, father,” Aragorn sighed, his look telling the tale of their journey’s 
trials. 

After a passing greeting to Elladan, who left to ride the casket into 
sanctuary at the Last Homely House, Elrond turned to the last of their 
company. 

“Mae govannen, Legolas Thranduilion,” he decreed, perhaps more 
incisively than even he intended. 

`Lord Elrond,” Legolas intoned with difficulty. The eyes that met the High 
Elf’s were purpled with pernicious anxiety. 

“I have received your correspondence,” Elrond continued. “And bring 
news from the High Council. The King of Mirkwood shall be sheathed in 
the Eternal Flame at the coming dawn, and the matter of the Green Wood 
will be heard a week hence.”

“I am grateful for the Council’s regard in this matter,” Legolas thanked 
him dully. “And may I ask… after the messenger…?”

Elrond cleared his throat, the memory of his fading son’s appearance still 
closely held. 

“Yes,” Aragorn questioned outright. “How fares Elrohir? Elladan held… 
some concern.”

“He arrived but hours ago,” Elrond began. 

“Hours?!” Aragorn pounced, shooting a glare at his elf-brother. “But with 
his speed, he should have bested us by three days time, at the least!!” 

“Aye,” Elrond rasped, his voice abandoning him. He forced resolve. “I am 
astonished that he was not lost entirely. He arrived… frayed, incensed… 
raving, even… I fear it will not be long, if another is not found…”  

At this pronouncement, Legolas could visibly be seen to wither. 

“Ada,” Aragorn implored him, the finality of the situation taking hold. “Is 
there nothing to be done?”  

Elrond bowed his head, too proud to have his foster son witness his 
acceptance of defeat. 

“I know of no remedy, Estel, that can mend a broken heart.” 

With that, Elrond swiftly turned to lead the journeymen into his home. 
Eager for further news of Elrohir, the King followed him.

Legolas, with heavy conscience, followed thereafter. 

				*		*		*

The yellow tongues of the Eternal Flame lapped over the edges of the 
casket of fine carved Mirkwood oak, as the dawn blushed through the 
willow branches that surrounded the clearing at Imladris. The flames 
melted through the cherrywine stain, charring the scenes of Silvan victory, 
of the hallowed Valar, and of the King’s own woodland realm engraved 
within. Circled around the raging pyre, the assembled elves chanted 
piously, their low-sung hymns reverberating through the billowing leaves 
around them. 

Legolas, steady, near-entranced, stood at the head of the blaze, Aragorn 
close at his side. He stood, unmoving, as the logs crumbled to ash, as the 
walls of the casket collapsed, as his father’s flesh was sucked from his 
very bones by the all-consuming flames, those then melted to coal-black 
dust. He stood as his kinsmen sung of the days of ages past, of elves felled 
by the fading grief, of loves lost and won again, of ageless eternity in the 
Hall of Mandos, the Havens in the Western sea, of Valinor. 

He lifted his eyes but once, on instinct, to stare through the flames, the 
smoke, at the shadowed path leading up to the Last Homely House. There, 
a figure he at first mistook for the very ghost of his father awaited him, the 
hushed indigo of his eyes beckoning, their cast pale, but striking deep. The 
peredhil loomed, shroud in the violets and blues of a warrior’s ceremonial 
garb, the sheen of his long, wild hair as black as the coal-cinder. 

The prince of Mirkwood raised his eyes but once, when the haunting 
figure began to sing. 

It was a song unlike any other the assembled elves had heard before, lush, 
longing, as if Elbereth herself had given it voice. Even as the figure 
descended into the clearing, his every movement hung as if by the weight 
of a dozen stone pillars, he sang true, with sweeping breaths of bleak, 
reverent devastation. The figure joined the circle; the prince lowered his 
gaze into the thick of the crackling pyre. 

The elven warriors grieved for the fallen king. 

				*		*		*     

“I am well, Ada!!” Elrohir bellowed, overturning the bowl of broth, the 
fresh washing, and a fine silver carafe with one fail swoop of his walking-
stick. “I will not be held in this… this *dungeon* a day longer!!” 

His mouth soured into a scowl, the prince lumbered over to the oval eye of 
the window and peered down into the valley below. There, Erestor 
prepared the horses for a hunting party, Glorfindel and Aragorn took a 
leisurely stroll, and Eldarion made his way to the archery fields, struggling 
with his new bow, a gift from his presently bemused grandfather. 

“True, your progress has been remarkable,” Elrond argued, with practiced 
diplomacy. “But you are not yet fully recovered. The slightest upset could 
arrest this current remission, which may–“

“I must see him, Ada,” Elrohir cut straight to the heart. “Any progress I 
have made will be for naught should I wither at the least sight of him.”

“You are still too weak, my elf-knight,” Elrond noted, a tremor of fear 
creeping into his voice. His son may have been plagued by feverish 
delirium at the time, but the Lord of Imladris recalled all too vividly the 
long nights he’d spent nursing him as best he knew how, helpless to 
soothe the body that shook to breaking at the slightest breeze, that shrank 
painfully away from even the softest touch. “So named for the iron will 
that proved necessary to survive your very birth into this world!! I have 
born witness time and again to your valor, nin bellas, but should the grief 
strike you anew…”

Elrohir turned himself from the pastoral splendor of the view, sighed. His 
tempered gaze rested on the wearied face of his learned father, the usual 
elven tranquility of his features now scored with barely-disguised agony. 
Elrond’s gray eyes were flecked with five separate hues of silver; a sure 
sign of the sea’s maiden call. 

With bitter irony, the elf-warrior noted that his father was only being kept 
from sailing West by the High Council deliberations over the Mirkwood 
prince’s destiny, and perhaps his own grave plight. While he recognized 
the inherent dangers in seeing Legolas again, what his father could not- 
could never- know was that his death-hour pledge to the Mirkwood prince 
was the only thing that kept him well. 

Mere days before, as the peerless light of the great Halls of Mandos 
cradled him from above, he’d heard the elven chorus around Thranduil’s 
pyre. In the very moment of his passing, as his own eternal flame was but 
a fuming pile of cinder, he was blessed with a moment of lucidity. Hours 
praying to the Valar had taught him to forage for these stolen moments. 
His devout practices helped him cling to his Middle-Earth, grasp hold, 
once again, of the sage elven life, and force his spirit to rise, like the 
phoenix, not from the ash, but from his ashen deathbed. 

If he passed, as the Mirkwood king, his fair prince’s heart would indeed 
turn to stone. Elrohir had sworn to stand by him. He had sworn a warrior’s 
pledge to sing for the fallen king. He’d rode, at his own peril, for three 
torturous weeks at the prince’s misguided word. As he stared across the 
blazing casket into Legolas’ ice-blue eyes, he knew the greatest battle of 
his life was yet to come, that he was no soldier at all, should victory elude 
him. He would not allow the archer’s pride, fear, and self-loathing to 
conquer him. He would not condemn his mule-headed maltaren to a 
Valinorian eternity without ever knowing the bliss of love. 

He would fight this from his last, to the last.

After the funeral, the mighty elf-warrior had made his recovery through 
sheer force of will; that, and his knowledge of the prince’s love for him, 
held captive in the core of his being, kept him on the narrow path to 
serenity. 

“He will seek you out,” Elrond underlined with finality. “He will not see 
his error until you have grown cold and fallen, until all is lost.”

Yet his father knew none of this, and thus judged Legolas a danger to him. 

“*Ada*,” Elrohir cooed, shuffling patiently over to take his hands. “A 
compromise?”

Elrond raised a pointed, shrewd brow. “What mischief is this?”

“Legolas leaves soon for the hunt,” the prince essayed, with near-
Elrondian rationality. “I will observe their departure from the window. 
Stay at my side. Should I suffer from this vision, I will remain in this very 
chamber for an entire fortnight, sipping broth and reading The Hobbit’s 
Tale.”

Elrond’s eyes darkened. “You mock me.”

“I do,” his son admitted, not without the afore-blamed mischief. 

“Yet there is wisdom in this,” the anxious father reluctantly admitted. 
“Come. The hunters shall be departing soon.” 

With a pleased smile, Elrohir took his father’s arm and allowed himself to 
be guided back to the oval window. Below, a small party of elves had 
gathered, the Mirkwood prince not yet among their ranks.

“What is their charge, Ada?”

“A dozen or so quintail, mossfield boar, and, pray Elbereth, an oxreeth,” 
Elrond informed him. “There will soon be feasting in our halls.”

“What feast is this?”

Elrond paused, suddenly, caught in a trap of his own devising. 

“A coronation,” Elrond dismissed. 

“A coronation?” Elrohir repeated confusedly. “But who is to be…” The 
answer struck him. 

Elrohir swallowed hard, shut his eyes. His focus turned inward, towards 
his own eternal flame, which had begun to flicker. He thought of Legolas, 
alone, bereft, among the remains of his once-green forest, each trunk as 
hard and gray as a tombstone, upon his head a spiked crown of withered 
rosebush vines. He felt a surge of empathy, of compassion, and grasped 
hold. He poured this energy into the blue of the flame, into that hot, 
scorching center, until he felt its warmth flow through him. 

All this transpired, unnoticed, under Elrond’s rapt examination. 

“But Mirkwood has fallen to shadow,” Elrohir commented, as if not a 
thing were amiss. 

“The Council is yet uncertain as to the location of his kingdom,” came the 
enigmatic reply, ever-conscious of the strain such talk provoked. 

“I see.” The elf-warrior nodded patiently, but remained thoroughly 
confused as to the ways of the Council’s often eccentric logic. 

“*I* see the hunting party is poised for departure,” Elrond insinuated with 
satisfaction. “And Legolas is surely not among them.”

“He is often tardy. He is meticulous in his preparations.”

“He is never tardy,” Elrond all but decreed. “Though I have known him to 
be well-prepared.” 

Elrohir stifled a snort of exasperation, as he watched the riders charge into 
the eastern woods, not a flaxen sheath of hair among them. 

“Shall I have Irthiesien, in the library, seek out The Hobbit’s Tale?” 
Elrond queried mirthfully. The prince turned to glower at his father, but 
met with a surprisingly lenient gaze. “Or shall I fetch your brother, for a 
stroll by the archery fields? The young prince of Gondor has himself 
suffered more than a few sleepless nights at your expense. I cannot think 
how a *brief* lesson would be other than wondrously restorative to you 
both.”

With that generous proclamation, Elrond left his cherished elf-knight to 
his own wondering, at the even-handed benevolence of his father’s rule. 

				*		*		* 

With knowing, nimble fingers, the archer knotted the prickly tips of the 
sap-treated horse hair, then fed the opposite end through both of the silver 
bow’s eyes. Weaving the elastic strand into his careful grasp, he searched, 
with a tuner’s ear, for the right tension. As he expertly completed the re-
stringing, he lifted his cerulean eyes to meet Eldarion’s attentive stare. The 
task complete, he plucked the bow like a minstrel’s harp.

“Do you hear?” Legolas inquired of his student. “She sings true.“ 

“You are a master,” the youth near-gasped.

“I am merely the veteran of a noble quest,” the Mirkwood prince replied 
humbly. “The Valar’s light would hardly be well-served by an archer who 
could not re-string his bow in the heat of battle.” The young Eldar paused 
to admire his work. “Shall we test her?”

Eldarion’s eyes sparked with delight. 

The archer rose, shrugged on his quiver, then, as he strode towards the 
chalk marking that delineated the minimal distance for a practitioner’s 
stance, fired off a constant, deadly accurate stream of arrows into the 
center of the target. With nary a smirk of self-satisfaction, he offered the 
bow to the gape-mouthed princeling. 

“She is steady,” he appraised. “A fine instrument. Will you try her?” 

“I c-cannot best you,” the youth stuttered.

“But you are well-schooled,” Legolas protested. “I do not ask that you best 
me, merely that you strike the center ring of the target. This distance is of 
elven measure. Even your father, with his great skill, finds it 
troublesome.”

“Though he would rather be skinned alive by a coven of brew-drunk witch 
maidens,” a familiar voice announced, as a cloaked figure limped away 
from the cover of the trees. “Than admit to any weakness in weaponry 
skill, or in any other thing.” 

“Saitë,” Eldarion cried, then dashed over to greet his hobbled master. As 
the Gondorian prince crushed into him, Elrohir chuckled fondly and 
lowered the hood of his burgundy cloak. “You are well again.”

He beamed a supple, violet gaze at the dumbstruck archer, who struggled 
to maintain his composure.           

“I am healing,” the peredhil amended, scruffing his lean fingers through 
the youth’s ebony curls. “Adar thought a turn out of doors would replenish 
me. I am too long in the dark. I recover, yet I remain pale as a ghost.” The 
elf-warrior noted Legolas’ visible shudder at that pronouncement. “He had 
charged Elladan to watch over me… but the Loremaster of Imladris, as 
you may know, is easily distracted. It was little trouble to steal down here 
to see you.” 

“I am glad of your deception,” Eldarion whispered to him. “I longed for 
word of your progress, but father would not heed me. I feared the worst.” 

“Ah, fathers,” Elrohir grinned down at him. “Such troublesome creatures.” 
At the youth’s complicit giggle, the darkling elf was quick to 
surreptitiously add: “Much as Mirkwood archers.”    

The prince of Gondor coughed out a laugh, then guided his ailing guardian 
to a nearby log. 

“Come Saitë,” Eldarion remarked. “You will help me master this elven 
track.”

The prince of Mirkwood stood stalk-still throughout this exchange, the 
sight of his elf-brother restored halting him to near-paralysis. The elf-
warrior was no longer of a warrior’s build. The sickness had well-feasted 
on his meaty frame, gorging itself on what little swell, paunch, and gristle 
there was to be found. The languorously elegant figure proved far more 
elven in his new, lissome grace. Though his slender limbs hung with 
fatigue, the sharper angles of his face gentled his once-rapacious regard, 
almost sweetening his features to an ethereal delicacy. 

The archer’s dormant heart began to simmer in its rib-caged berth, the 
resulting flood through his brittle veins vertiginous. He lurched back, 
dizzy, as Eldarion sped past, struggling to regain his focus. He aimed his 
swimming attention at the youth, at the target, applauding limply when the 
arrows struck true. 

He nearly swooned when a cool hand pressed into the small of his back. 

“You have sharpened his instincts,” Elrohir complimented warmly. “As I 
could not have. He is better for it.”

Oblivious to the youth’s continued demonstration, the Mirkwood prince 
met the peredhil’s patient, open gaze with bleary eyes. He raise his hands, 
brushing tense, tremulous fingers down the slope of the elf-warrior’s 
sunken cheek. 

“You are not…” he barely exhaled, his voice tight, ragged. “I have not…”

“Legolas,” Elrohir cooed. He reached up, tenderly stroking soothing hands 
down the back length of the archer’s neck, over his stiff shoulders. “You 
are not to blame for what has befallen me. I did not heed your warnings. I 
felt myself… invincible. A grave mistake…”

“A warrior’s mistake,” the prince echoed, though the words were 
despairing. “A valiant error, gwanur-nîn.” Suddenly struck by the truth of 
the sight before him, Legolas released a groan of emphatic relief. He threw 
his arms around the elf-warrior, almost winding him in his ardor. “You are 
healed, Elrohir. *Healed*…” 

As the darkling elf’s weary grasp wove around his waist, a chilling 
thought assaulted the Mirkwood prince’s respite. The only possible reason 
his elf-brother could be so renewed. An unknown desolation sunk its teeth 
down to his very bones, as he shrank away from the peredhil, struggling to 
maintain composure.

“You have found another,” Legolas barely murmured, as he tore his 
gleaming eyes away from the other’s consoling gaze. “You have been 
bound…”

Before Elrohir’s tired arms could grab him, the archer began his retreat. 

“Legolas,” the elf-warrior beckoned, now too weak to follow him. 
“*No*…” 

“I am glad of it,” the maltaren answered harshly back, not understanding 
why tears sprang from his wounded eyes, why his shoulders quaked so. 
His only thought was of the river, of a water-shroud sanctuary he’d often 
sought in days past. “It is rightly thus.”

By the time Elrohir gathered breath to call him, the forest had swallowed 
him up.


To Be Continued…


A/N: 

‘Saitë’ Quenya word for teacher

‘Maltaren’ Golden Prince



Title:  Idylls of a King Forlorn, Part 5: Dago Hon
Author: Gloromeien  
Email: andromeda_strayn@hotmail.com 
Pairing: Legolas / Elrohir
Summary: As Legolas struggles with his dark, turbulent feelings, Imladris 
is invaded by a vicious foe.
Rating: R for m/m slash, adult themes.
Author’s Note: Takes place during the reign of King Elessar; he has been 
on the throne for about 20 years at this point. The race of men has grown 
prosperous, though there are still remnants of the Shadow lurking about 
(as well as natural events that aren’t necessarily ‘evil’, just 
undomesticated, such as, oh, a troll). For all the ideas/depictions of elven 
grief and the ‘fading’, I am endlessly indebted to the excellent slashwriters 
Ilye and Tyellas. Menethren is a character of my own devising. Quote 
from ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’ by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
Dedication: Once again, to the Pirate King.
 
***************  

/‘The first time that the sun rose on thine oath
To love me, I looked forward to the moon
To slacken all those bonds which seemed too soon
And quickly tied to make a lasting troath.
Quick-loving hearts, I thought, may quickly loathe;
And, looking on myself, I seemed not one
For such man’s love!’/

As the thunderous swells of the Loudwater swept over the mossy growth 
of the riverbed, down from the Misty Mountains through the valley of 
Rivendell, Legolas dove, as ably as a freshwater minnow, into the current. 
His bowsman’s arms ripped into the clear, blue waters of the Bruinen, 
propelling him further through the gauzy shafts of sunlight that beamed 
down into the depths, a labyrinth of amber stakes. 

He swam rapidly, furiously, as if the very tide would suck him down as 
into the Dead Marshes. With a last, powerful kick, he emerged in the 
shadow of a flat-topped rock, then hoisted himself onto the well-baked 
surface. As breathless, and as breathtaking, as the mermen of legends past, 
the Mirkwood prince stretched out across the coarse stone, his sheathes of 
sodden hair clinging to his bare torso, his green leggings matted, like 
seaweed, to his limber legs.    

Only then did he release a long, charged breath.

He dipped his fingers over the edge, into the cooling river. Without the 
shade of the sweeping willow branches and the lush oak leaves that 
guarded the green spaces of Imladris, the sun’s sweltering rays seared into 
his skin, the pure heat an unrelenting assailant. The lucid blast of his 
blood-pump crashed through him still, flooding his bewildered mind with 
gushes of foreign, unwelcome feeling. With a blunt thud, his head fell 
back, the burden of resolution too weighty for his assaulted body to 
support. 

/Like a coward, I fled. At the crux of it, when he sought me out, I flew as a 
startled doe into the woods…/

His shame scorched as hot as the sun. His unsteady gaze wandered up, 
into the immaculate sky, and he thought of his people, in Valinor. 

/Perhaps this strangeness is nothing but the Sea’s call. Perhaps the Valar 
summon me./ 

His throat dry, the lie was bitter in his mouth, painfully swallowed. His 
senses still grotesquely acute, buzzing around him like a deranged swarm, 
the Mirkwood prince dared not move, least the cacophony intensify. He 
felt sick one moment, giddy the next. This condition infected his every 
thought, his every motion, until he dug his nails into the scarring rock and 
growled a curse at the sky. 

“Give me peace!!” he roared, but was silenced by a nearby splash. He 
bolted up, raptly surveying his surroundings, then paid the price when the 
nausea returned with a vengeance. /Will nothing quell this insidious fury?/ 

Before long, Aragorn’s sopping arms splattered over the rock’s edge, as he 
yanked up his hulking frame, in full hunting gear. 

“I heard your cry,” he announced himself. “Even on the plain of 
Gorgoroth, I did not heard such violent words pass your lips, mellon-nîn. 
What has befallen you?”

“I know not,” Legolas bleated morosely, suddenly stricken by a wave of 
sorrow. “I am not… unwell, nor weak, yet my heart rages like a throng of 
Rohirrim. I sweat, yet I shiver still, my mind is a fog… I cannot quench 
this rapacious thirst, this… *longing*…”

“For what do you long?” Aragorn asked quietly, yet even as he posed the 
question, he suspected the answer elusive. To the Mirkwood prince, at the 
least.

Indeed, Legolas could not form a proper reply. His stare soon betrayed 
him, drifting off towards the distant archery fields. The King’s stealthy 
eyes soon traced the same path, catching sight of Eldarion and… /could it 
be?/ 

In the fashion of an oft-burdened ruler, Aragorn grew pensive. Though 
scarcely a fortnight had passed since their arrival at Imladris, there his 
foster-brother sat, pale, but of reasonable health, when just nights before 
he lay dying. There was one, most grievous of nights, on which Elrond 
had called for him, unable to further endure his child’s tormented 
suffering. With one look at his elf-brother, Thranduil’s ghost had glared 
back: hollow, withered, and gasping. Yet there he stood, correcting 
Eldarion’s arrow-hold, adjusting his balance, encouraging him as ever 
before. /How can this be?/

“Tell me, gwanur-nîn,” he inquired cautiously of the troubled prince. 
“What brought on this strangeness?”

“I am uncertain as to the cause,” Legolas insisted, yet the truth shone clear 
enough from his saddened face. It sounded loud as Gondor’s own battle-
horn whenever he looked northward. 

“I see.” Aragorn caught upon an idea. “I will fetch Lord Elrond. Perhaps 
he may prove insightful-“

“I am not ailing, Aragorn, merely dazed,” the archer snipped. “It will 
pass.”

“Then Elladan, perhaps,” the King essayed. “A Loremaster such as he 
could readily snuff-out the culprit, should it be ancient in origin, or 
obscure.”

“And what may his books tell me?” Legolas spat outright. “That I should 
pass over the sea?”

“Do you feel it may be the sea’s calling?” Aragorn queried innocently, the 
picture of brotherly concern. “It has struck you mightily. I have ere seen 
an elf so…overcome.”

“I am not *overcome*, as some lightheaded maiden,” the Mirkwood 
prince seethed, his cobalt eyes flaring. “I am merely… I am merely…”   

His vision softened, swayed anew; Legolas shut his eyes. Evasions could 
pass his prideful lips, but he could not form words to deny, to give the lie 
voice, to give it to one so dear, so honorable. To the King.   

“Merely in love, at long last,” Aragorn chuckled fondly. “Though it does 
take rather tenacious hold of you. Perhaps if you gave in…?”

“I will *not* give in!!” Legolas growled, which only caused the King to 
laugh more heartily. 

“My, you *are* quarrelsome,” he chided good-naturedly. “Little wonder it 
grips you with such teeth.” 

The prince fell quiet, unreasonably so. He sank back, though the hard shelf 
of rock offered no sanctuary, no respite. He turned his face away from the 
sun, into what little shadow his head could cast. 

“I cannot love another,” he decreed, as if to convince himself. “I will not.”

“And, yet, you do,” the King remarked delicately. “And quite deeply, by 
the looks of it.”

“I have not the heart to love him,” Legolas whispered. “He deserves… he 
does not deserve such a black and withered thing as mine own, cindered to 
coal as my father’s funeral pyre.” 

“Who among us has a heart not tarnished by some fault, or weakness of 
our nature?” Aragorn began, stroking his calloused fingers through the 
prince’s damp hair. “Would mine have been so pure, when I made Arwen 
my lady. My Queen. Yet she loves me… and I am but a foul-tempered, 
ungraciously-scented, roughshod Dunedain. Hardly blessed with your 
hallowed elven ways.” 

Legolas smirked, faintly, despite himself. Yet the darkness lingered. 

“He is restored, Aragorn,” the archer persisted. 

“Aye, he is much altered since I last saw him.”

“By what force?” Legolas implored. “By what possible force other 
than…?”    

The King’s eyes narrowed, seeing, at last, the matter’s gray focus. 

“It cannot be,” he ventured. “Who else among you remains unbound? 
Glorfindel is bound to Elrond, Erestor still frequents the serving-maid, 
Gorlomewen has long bedded Hellestiel. Ada would not dare chose 
Verithen or Caerir, their mutual devotion, though yet undeclared, in ample 
evidence… Elladan is his brother, though I dare not even think on this…”    

“You yourself told me of his body’s ravaging mere days ago,” Legolas 
reminded him. “You would not let me look on him, such was his 
resemblance to my Adar in his passing.” 

“Indeed,” Aragorn sighed, near-bafflement. “It is most… troubling.” 

Before either could suggest a plan of action, the faint scent of thick, acrid 
fumes blew through on the wind. A colossal, earth-quaking roar shot 
through the valley, bracing the trees and shoving the waves over-bank. 
Both warriors leapt to their feet, earlier musings forgotten in a tense, 
horrific instant. 

A cloud of black, hungry smoke crept over the eastern forest. Another 
furious groan sounded out. 

“The dragon,” Aragorn proclaimed, vainly attempting to harness his 
mounting excitement at the unavoidable promise of battle. “And the 
hunters half a day gone. We must take arms!!”

Without another thought, he drove into the river. 

“Vengeance will be a doting consolation,” Legolas snarled at the first sight 
of flames, then followed him to the shore.

				*		*		*        

As the two darkling princes, one of Imladris and one of Gondor, galloped 
up the winding trails of Rivendell towards the stable and the adjoining 
armory, the earth shook so mightily that Elrohir could not distinguish the 
path’s unsteadiness from his own. Furious cyclones of leaves spun around 
them, branches snapped in their wake. The steps to the armory were 
quilted with foliage: willow wisps, uprooted thistles, scabs of birch bark, 
ederwood, haybale, even the long grass from the westward tombs. 

“Go to my father,” Elrohir ordered his charge through the din. “You will 
need his protection.”

“I would fight, saitë,” the young prince shouted over the wilding wind.

“I would that you lived to reign, pen-neth,” his guardian declared with 
unwavering finality. “As would the King.” With a sour nod, Eldarion 
scurried off, up to the main wing of the Last Homely House. Elrohir, a 
black smear amidst the violent gusts, soldiered on. 

His walking-stick long cleft in twain, the elf-warrior, spurred by the 
memory of the ravaged Mirkwood, felt no need of it. Indeed, when the 
dragon’s fearsome cry had blazed through the serene valley, his body had 
achieved a wickedly potent synchronicity with the beast’s incendiary rage. 

His dormant, knife-blade warrior’s senses were instantly reawakened; the 
scent of the potential kill provoked him, adrenalized every waning muscle, 
until he veritably throbbed with anticipation. He could already feel the hilt 
of his witch-sword prodding into his swollen palm; the slice of the jagged 
belly-edge through scaled flesh, the hot spurt of dragon’s blood a Valarian 
benediction, rich in his mouth like midsummer wine. 

The feeling gained further fire, when he entered the armory and came 
upon Legolas. 

“I will wield the sword of Angmar in the elf-knight’s stead,” the archer 
called over his shoulder, as he eyed the deadly wall of weapons. “What 
think you, Aragorn?” 

His ardent eyes the ominous blue of midnight and his still-sodden hair 
inked a dark gold, the entire sheath woven as the braids of the hostile 
Rohirrim, the woodland elf’s face betrayed an air of barely contained 
menace, as he raptly perused, with an executioner’s relish, the instrument 
selection. Yet he moved with poised economy, gathering, savoring his 
strength. His lean limbs were sheathed in sculpted armor, which 
conformed to every rip of his taut abdomen, the very plum of his biceps, 
his quiver and his Lorien bow bisecting the silver wash of his back.  

“I fear it would but prolong the beast’s agony,” Elrohir commented wryly. 
“Should I attack him unarmed. Best be swift, and merciless.”

“Menethren knew no mercy,” the archer seethed, his surging senses 
hearing the words but not the voice that spoke them. “I will banish the 
very word.”

The elf-warrior chose from the wall, as Legolas stood, transfixed by a 
vision of the vengeance he would wreak. 

“The Angmar is mighty, true,” he counseled. Elrohir lay a solid hand on 
the archer’s leathered shoulder, proffered a sleeker foil. “But it is a 
butcher’s blade. Try on this Mirkwood finery.”

“Igraneil,” Legolas murmured, awestruck. His gracious archer’s hands 
clasped the ivory hilt, then stroked enticingly along its shimmering length. 
“My father’s sword.” 

“The sword of the King of Mirkwood,” Elrohir corrected him. The sight of 
his maltaren holding the weapon of his birthright with such cruel intensity 
was so criminally arousing, he could almost claim him there and then. “It 
serves the one who bears the title.”

The uniquely held tone of the voice beside him finally penetrated through 
the archer’s bloodthirsty mind-set. His withering stare whipped up, 
slapping the elf-warrior back into the truth of the moment. 

“Elrohir!!” he exclaimed. “Why have you come here?!”

“To bloody my witch-blade with butchery,” he almost purred. “Why else, 
gwanur-nîn?” 

“You are unwell,” Legolas decreed, gripping his grandfather’s sword with 
fearsome finality. “You must seek shelter in the Homely House.”

“I will not,” Elrohir spat at him, turning away from the heart-clenching 
anger in his beloved’s eyes. “I ride with the Mirkwood King.” 

In broiling defiance, the elf-warrior tore off his cloak, yanked his armor 
off the wall. He clamped the hard metal over his now-aching chest, then 
fought, with trembling fingers, to bind the ties. He felt the short-lived 
spurt of energy seep decadently out of him, the sickly lethargy creeping 
through. Still, he would not give in.  

“I will not ride you to your death,” Legolas barked hoarsely, his throat 
parched near to choking. “Elrohir, I will not see you fall. I could not-“

“I will not fall,” the elf-warrior blasted, his preparations, though sluggish, 
perilously close to completion. “I will *slay*.” This last was hissed 
through clenched teeth, whether from menace or from shortness of breath, 
the archer could not surmise. 

The thought of Elrohir slain in this vengeful battle struck Legolas to the 
core. 

“I beg you, mellon-nîn,” he cried. “Gwanur-nîn!! Go to your father. Leave 
me my vengeance!!” 

The darkling elf paused only to bow his head. 

“I am sworn to you,” he renewed his pledge. “My hand in this will not be 
stayed.” 

Before the elf-warrior could take another step, the archer’s bow-string 
sang true. The sting of the arrowhead, now buried in the thick of his 
shoulder, was lost in the swoon of impact. The smack of the tiled armory 
floor, however, registered vividly. 

Footsteps sounded beyond the door.

“Aragorn!!” Legolas bellowed to his approaching friend. “Fetch your 
father!!” 

The boot clacks rapidly retreated, as the archer knelt over the wheezing 
peredhil. With astonishing gentility, he gathered Elrohir into his arms. 
Carefully, he removed the constricting armor, then dug the arrow blade 
out. He ably employed the elf-warrior’s cloak as both bandage and pillow, 
then lay him down across the floor. 

His eyes betrayed a bitter torment, as he gazed upon the twice-struck 
prince of Imladris. He bent to whisper to his sweat-slick temple.  
        
“Forgive me, melethron-nîn,” the Mirkwood prince cooed. “I told you of 
my weakness. I may not have had the strength to save you… but I cannot 
watch you fall.” 

As Elrohir, near-delusional, held fast against the voracious darkness, 
Legolas grazed supple, quivering lips across his sallow cheek, then 
pressed them timidly to his gasping mouth. The kiss was quiet, and 
unsure, the archer’s first since his woozy adolescence, but the feeling 
behind it burned pure, sucking the drifting spirit back to present day and 
sparking his soul’s waning flame. The darkling elf inhaled sharply, 
coughed, and Legolas quickly withdrew.

Before Elrohir could press him further, he was gone. 

				*		*		*    

The stench, more foul than the Orc forges of Isengard melded with the 
bilious lava of Mount Doom then doused with troll sputum, announced 
them by a mile, but neither warrior seemed the least bothered by it. Their 
armor was brazed black, their clothing charred to rags, their bodies were 
splotched with olive-yellow ooze – the latest in dragon viscera… and their 
smiles cut a swath as broad as a ten-paddled canoe across their blood-
smeared faces. 

“*Eglerio*!!” Legolas blasted into the smoke-streaked breeze, both 
heralding their return and trumpeting their victory. 

“Eglerio, Thranduilion!!” Aragorn echoed with twice the bass rumble, as 
he clamped a delightfully weary arm over the archer’s shoulders. “You 
have wreaked a thundering vengeance, gwanur. I wager the Halls of 
Mandos quake with the cheers of fallen Eldar warriors. The day is 
blessed.”

“Aye, it is that,” Legolas admitted, unable to quell his beaming smile even 
for a moment’s reflection. “I saw my father’s eyes, as I slew the beast. 
When last it cried out, I heard Menethren call the charge. They are at 
peace, Aragorn.” 

“And they are proud,” the King chimed in. “There will be revels in 
Mandos tonight!!” 

The two fighters laughed heartily, savoring the elation of conquest. Not 
since the War of the Ring had either had their swords so bloody, their 
instincts so challenged, their years of training so vital to their survival. 
Both basked in the last remnants of their battle-fever, in the waning 
moments of their cherished partnership. Though, in their private lives, 
both felt the pull of other mates, other friendships, neither could forswear 
a deeper kinship than that which they shared in the heat of battle. 

As brothers-in-arms, they would never be more perfectly matched.  

“The hunters will rue the day they chose a dozen quintail over such a 
fight,” Aragorn remarked mirthfully, his satisfaction undaunted. 

“I will have them sever the head, when they return,” Legolas noted, with 
wicked relish. “I shall have it bronzed and hung over the gates at 
Mirkwood. ‘All who pass hither do so at their own peril’!!” The former 
ranger hung over his side, nearly choked by his snickers. “Will you also 
claim a prize, mellon-nîn?” 

“A single tooth,” the King gracelessly recovered. “My smiths will core it 
and use the shell as a goblet. Legend tells, if you grind the core to 
powder…”

“What, then?” the archer queried, rapt with curiosity.

“It is a potent aphrodisiac,” Aragorn purred salaciously. “Though those 
who strike down their potential lovers come to make little use of such 
potions.”

“And a man with five daughters ought to consider the outcome of such a 
charm’s influence,” the prince shot back. His brow furrowed, not at the 
gibe, which even he felt well-deserved, but at the question of Elrohir’s 
condition. 

“Aye, gwanur-nîn, we are triumphant!!” The King boasted. “Do not linger 
on such gray matters, when there is so little time left to us. Let our glory 
ring across the valley-bed!!” 

His kill-sated smile renewed, Legolas joined him in a final cheer.

Their self-satisfied grins faded soon enough, when they marched through 
the Rivendell courtyard and came upon Elrond’s testy glare. Legolas’ face 
soured, fearing the worst, though the King’s barely-contained amusement 
was long from being smote. 

“We are victorious, Ada,” Aragorn declared, hoping to temper him. “The 
beast is slain.”

“And Thranduil avenged,” Elrond stated with knife-point precision. 
“Imladris claims the honor of offering shelter to her saviors. A pair of 
nobility, and valor…”

The two warriors grinned patiently, waiting for the axe to drop. 

“Whose dedication to their quest crushed every thing in their path,” Elrond 
near-snarled.

“Father!!” The King protested.

“Silence!!” Elrond cried, his eyes two wounded ebony pools. He turned 
the black hole of his stare on Legolas, who stood fast. “You will bathe. 
You will eat, then you will take rest, for none can deny you have fought 
bravely. You will *remain* in the north wing of the Homely House, and 
await the High Council’s decision, but you will not venture forth from 
your rooms unless under explicit order from I, myself, *alone*.”

“Is this how you treat a son of the Firstborn?!” Aragorn demanded, ablaze. 

“This is how I treat the one who has ensnared and corrupted the heart of 
my child!!” Elrond raged, not sparing even his foster son his fury. Yet a 
father he was, still, to this King of men, and the sight of his disbelieving 
eyes tempered him. “You rule in Gondor, Estel. *I* am Lord of Imladris. 
You have always respected that distinction. Respect it now. Take 
refreshment at the baths, then escort the prince to his rooms in the north 
wing. I warn you not to defy me.”

With that, Elrond swept up the steps, into the Last Homely House.

Aragorn let go an impassioned roar at his retreating father, unsheathing the 
fearsome Anduil and whipping her through the surrounding air. He 
stabbed her into the ground at his feet, as if into the dragon’s very flesh, 
the act appeasing his anger somewhat. He turned to Legolas, who had 
swallowed every scathing word like a hobbit after a hunger strike. The 
pearls of his cheeks had sunken in; his cerulean eyes now cinched, hollow. 

“He is dead,” the prince rasped, broken. 

Aragorn clasped his limp arms, as if to shake the hope back into him. 

“If he were dead, you would be free to roam. He would not sequester you 
so severely.”

“Then he is bound,” the archer mused, almost seeming to prefer him dead. 
“Why else lock me away, until he is freely loved by another?”

“You underestimate how totally paternal pride can fog even the most 
learned father’s mind. His behavior is rash, instinctive. The Sea’s call is 
fierce, and his suffering, ever constant. He can no longer bear the weight 
of Imladris’ rule.” 

“In this, we are shameful brothers,” Legolas barely spoke, the day’s 
maddening trial overtaking him. 

“Come, gwanur,” Aragorn cooed, weaving an arm around his waist and 
guiding him up the steps. “We will rest your cleaving heart. So full, and 
yet still so newly formed.” 

Later, when the balming flow of the mineral bath enveloped him, Legolas 
saw clearer. 

Sunk in the whirling pool’s sensuous depths, a cup of miruvor on the 
pielstone ledge and  his sage king-brother by his side, the Mirkwood 
prince released the last of his burdens into the silken swells that massaged 
over his steaming skin. Wooed by the tongues of lethargy lapping along 
his creaking limbs, he momentarily surrendered to the lush, vaporous 
sensation that filled him. 

“Drink,” the King laxly urged. “It will restore you.”

The archer slowly lifted the cup to his mouth, the hot liquid gushing over 
his ready lips, soothing the walls of his throat. 

“They have warmed it,” he remarked, not overly impressed. 

“Arwen often adds a splash of cream,” Aragorn noted. “She craves the 
sweetness.” 

“And you, if I do not mistake, crave her company,” the prince smirked, 
with little malice.

“Aye, that I do,” the King sighed, lost to contemplation. “To find solace in 
her arms, to celebrate this day’s glory with her, in our bed… I would 
treasure the rarity of such an end. Such a tender gift…” Aragorn pinched 
his eyes shut, rubbed his wrinkled brow. “I prove fine comfort to you.”

“I am green in the ways of love,” Legolas replied. “Your longing is an 
able teacher.” 

“So you concede to love,” Aragorn concluded, treading as carefully as a 
dove on a turret’s ledge. 

Legolas fell pensive; his look distant, pained.

“If he would chose me,” came the vague reply.

“Does the fading heart chose?” the King pondered. “I wonder…” 

“If I am his choice, and truly thus,” Legolas responded, with rapt sincerity. 
“If he would suffer my coarseness… then I would give him this unruly 
heart.” The archer’s tranquil blue eyes drifted down, into the molten 
depths of the baths. 

With a faint blush, he added: “I love him, Aragorn.” 

The King, heartened by this admission, pressed further. “Then you must 
go to him. Declare yourself.”

“And what of Elrond’s fury?”

“It will pass,” Aragorn all-too-easily dismissed. “It will be immediately 
overthrown when the realization hits him that, in order for Elrohir to fully 
recover, you must-”

“I cannot think the Lord of Imladris so full of hubris that he would 
condemn his fading child to such black ravaging for spite, Aragorn. He 
*must* be bound.”

“I think you mistake Elrond’s wisdom for selflessness. He is ever married 
to his ways.”

“I pray Elbereth *you* do not mistake him,” the prince vowed darkly.

“Such melancholy, this love evokes in you,” Aragorn teased fondly, 
hoping to distract him. “You should rejoice. You heart is opened.”

“How can I rejoice when my heart lays dying by my own hand?!” Legolas 
cried, with chilling ferocity. “Time and again I strike him down, time and 
again I cleave to the core of him and gut him through. I am a menace. I am 
too ill-formed to love him well!! And though I cannot else but claim my 
love… I cannot shake the fear that it will be the end of him. No matter 
what passes between us.” 

Silence fell, swift, razing like a scythe. Neither dared speak for some time, 
the frankness of the prince’s bleak pronouncement resounding, like a shrill 
bell, through the bath hall. Aragorn drained his glass down, inwardly 
praying for words, any words, that might inspire the prince to cast off the 
guilt that consumed his very soul and poisoned the heaving tide of his 
passions. Now, more than ever before, the King wished his blessed wife 
beside him. 

“I will go to him, this night, gwanur,” Aragorn resolved, at last. “I will tell 
the toll of it, give him the choice. He is a warrior of proud conscience. He 
may chose death.” 

“Or my death,” Legolas stated, without a trace of emotion. “This, he may 
choose.” 

Aragorn bowed once, chastely, the fangs of true fear sinking into him for 
the first time since their brave Fellowship had left Imladris, in charge of 
the burdensome Ring.

To Be Continued…



Title:  Idylls of a King Forlorn, Part 6: Edro
Author: Gloromeien  
Email: andromeda_strayn@hotmail.com 
Summary:  Can Elrohir overcome his anger and forgive his beloved? Can 
Legolas give himself to love? Can Elrond actually crack a smile? All will be 
revealed…
Rating: NC-17 for m/m slash, adult themes.
Disclaimers: Characters belong to that wily old wizard himself, Tolkien the Wise, 
the granddad of all 20th century fantasy lit. I serve at the pleasure of his estate 
and aim not for profit. 
Author’s Note: This is a tiny bit AU, though I prefer to think of it as un-
documented (as it *is*, my research was thorough), rather than a complete 
distortion of cannon. Takes place during the reign of King Elessar; he has been 
on the throne for about 20 years at this point. For all the ideas/depictions of elven 
grief and the ‘fading’, I am endlessly indebted to the excellent slashwriter Ilye, 
who’s work can be found in the Library of Moria. I also would like to thank 
Tyellas, at www.ansereg.com, for her excellent summary of all things Elrohir 
and Elladan, as well as her own amazing fic. I was so moved by both these 
writers that I had to give it a whirl myself, I hope they can forgive me any minor 
concept-borrowing. Quote from ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’ by Elizabeth 
Barrett Browning. All Elvish quotes, at the end. 
Dedication: Once again, to the Pirate King and the Lady Cariad.  
 
 
***************  

/“Let us stay rather on earth, Beloved, - where the unfit
Contrarious moods of men recoil away
And isolate pure spirits, and permit
A place to stand and love in for a day,
With darkness and the death-hour rounding it.”/

As he strode through the drapes of shadow and the pools of torch-light 
along the northern hallway at Imladris, the King of Gondor was deeply 
shroud in thought. Though his parting words to Legolas had been hopeful, 
the Mirkwood prince’s bleak attitude had rooted dark, cloying weeds of 
doubt in his own faith in love. Perhaps the blissful outcome of his own 
romantic toils had spoiled him to the perils love could wring from the 
unsuspecting soul. 

In his youth, Aragorn, though heir to the throne of Gondor, had never 
defined himself as more than a ranger, an elf-friend. While he had once 
led the most daunting charge Middle-Earth had ever known, his was not a 
true warrior’s heart. The hunt thrilled him on occasion, as did the 
remembered glories of his elf-brother by his side; this day’s kill had 
indeed been such a moment. That moment ended, the King had gratefully 
reclaimed his throne, his pacifist’s spirit renewed. 

Not so for the prince, haunted as his homeland, who, in all his hundreds 
of years, had never shed the burden of his warrior’s vow. Legolas had 
never in his life taken a breath without the threat of some invasion: in the 
declining Mirkwood of his youth, on the deadly quest to destroy the Ring, 
in the winter of his fading kinsmen from this Middle-Earth. /Little wonder 
he fears this choke-hold love will sunder him. And with Elrohir’s 
blundering example…/

Nevertheless, the archer’s latest fatalistic pronouncements would thaw 
the most arctic of hearts. Thranduil’s choice of death had only further 
blackened his son’s graying view of the nobility of devotion; if Aragorn 
knew him but a little, he would judge his last, most self-indicting decrees a 
foiled despot’s cunning plot masked as incensed ravings. Regardless, the 
matter was now in his hands. 

He must seek Elladan’s counsel. He prayed his twinness proved a boon, 
not a hindrance.  Seconds before he gave thought to seeking out his 
foster-brother, two be-gowned figures floated up the steps, from the 
eastern wing, their drawn faces in pious contemplation of some grave 
matter. 

When the King met up with them, he gave a start.

“Melethron,” Aragorn exclaimed, at the sight of his Queen. Arwen gasped, 
then threw open her arms, gathering her husband’s weary bulk into their 
soothing folds.   

The King, felled by such tenderness, gripped into her lithe, doting frame, 
yet mindful of the ripening bud at her belly. This he knelt to bless with a 
kiss, after first drawing thickly from her ready mouth. Rising, he melded to 
her again, weaving his arms around her downy curves and burying his 
face in her neck. 

“Are you well, nîn ind?” he asked, his voice burdened with concern. “The 
beast…”

“We came from the west,” she assured him. “And were safe in the 
Homely House when the dragon struck.” She sunk further into his arms, 
not needing to give her own worries voice. 

“And our daughters?”

“They remain with Accathiral, in the White City,” she explained. “All but 
the little one, who I could not part from. But she weathered the journey 
with able Gondorian fortitude.”

“Aye, I am glad of it,” Aragorn sighed, still reluctant to release her. “As I 
am to have your strength with me in these trying times, my love.” Only 
then did the King make note of her companion, the very Loremaster he 
sought.     

“Indeed,” she murmured, pressing her cheek to his chest. “We have just 
come from my brother’s bedside.” The skip in her throat spoke volumes of 
the elf-warrior’s condition. “He is so proud. And I, selfishly, could only 
think: what if my lord had been so in our relations? What if I had lost you 
to a warrior’s wrongheaded notions of virtue?”

“Do not reproach yourself,” he appeased her. “I could think only the 
same.” He pulled gently away, gazing into her soft face. “I longed so 
desperately for your strength through these black nights, my lady.”

“It is here, husband,” she cooed, lacing warm, lissome fingers through the 
slick waves of his hair. “I would first speak of the morrow with my dear 
brother, but then we too shall retire.”

“I already long for it,” Aragorn all but groaned, then turned his attention to 
Elladan. “Come to our rooms awhile, Loremaster. I also have grave 
matters to impose upon you.”

With a preoccupied nod, Elladan shuffled after them, his focus 
despondently inward. He did not seem to have noticed a moment of what 
had transpired between them. By the time they swept into the elegant 
simplicity of the Queen’s sitting room, Elladan had not recovered himself.         

The King, ever officious, began at once. “What news of Elrohir?” Arwen 
looked to her brother, who exhaled a long, measured breath. 

“He is… coping well, I suppose,” Elladan offered blankly. “His wound is 
virtually healed. By what force, none can say. The grief still grips him, but 
he holds ever fast, aided, I’ve no doubt, by the vehement fury he shares 
with our Adar. I believe you felt its heat this late afternoon.” 

“Aye,” Aragorn acknowledged, a hint of mirth creeping into his tone. “The 
dragon seemed less fea