send a symbol ;; accepting♕ = bowing down before them
He is sunshine, star’s breath, clear summer skies after a storm. Legolas presses long fingers to his lips and slips behind a pillar, peering out, bright eyes fixed on the lord who passes through the Elvenking’s halls like a summer’s breeze, like all the music in the world had been distilled into a being called Glorfindel.
Or at least, so it seems.
The prince hardly dares to breathe. The halls echo with footsteps and quiet voices as Glorfindel walks, led by the Elvenqueen, towards the cavernous room where Thranduil and the Thirty-Point Throne await. Jen Myon’s hands are red. For once, it is not blood. Paint and dye stain her skin today.
As they walk, she and the golden lord speak of art, of drawings, and Legolas wonders whether Glorfindel knows how rarely his mother paints anything gentle. Her life’s work is a book of death, a catalogue of all the secret things that lay beneath the skin, each rendered in perfect detail with her brush and pen. Surgery is all she knows. But Glorfindel -- he, surely, must paint sweeter things.
Legolas blinks, realizing the footsteps have ceased. He dares to emerge from the shadows, inch by inch, craning his neck to see past a bend in the tunnel to where the two figures stand.
His mother’s pursed lips greet him. “Jen Avheon,” she says, using a name few others know. “Do not spy.”
“I do not mind,” the lord laughs. Legolas fights the sudden urge to blush. Turning, Glorfindel beckons him out. “Come, then, and join us.”
Abruptly aware of his dirt-smudged face and bare feet, Legolas slips out into the main hall, hovering nervously. Jen Myon lifts a hand and, as though pulled by some invisible string, the young prince hurries to her side, raising his eyes to look at her, hopeful, anxious, hardly daring to look at the lord beside him as though he were the sun.
"You have leaves in your hair again. Did you go into the woods alone?” she asks.
Legolas nods. Reaching out, his mother cups his chin, tips his head left then right, quick eyes glancing over him. Her mouth settles into a thin line. Knowing the steps of this familiar dance, the young elf holds up his hands. “I was not hurt, ammé.” He turns them, his pale unbroken skin warm in the torchlight.
Jen Myon takes his hands in hers. “Not today, no.” Legolas glances over at the golden lord, wondering if he, too, can hear the love in her cold voice. She squeezes his hands for just a moment. Then she releases them. “Introduce yourself.”
"Jen Avheon, is it?” Glorfindel is smiling as Legolas looks up at him. The prince knows his mother is hiding a displeased quirk of her lips at the sound of her language and her son’s name spoken by one not of this wood. “Or Legolas? I have heard both spoken.”
Shaking his head, the young elf says, “I am called Legolas. I----” A green leaf, like those for which he was named, slips from his hair and flutters to the floor. He blushes to the tips of his ears.
Glorfindel only smiles. “You love the woods,” he says. “That is good. And you are brave for going into them alone, though you should not worry your parents.”
Opening his mouth, the prince finds he has nothing to say. No words seem enough.
A hand clasps his shoulder, and Legolas must blink and take a breath before he can believe that it is Glorfindel’s. “Your mother and I must go,” says the lord, “but we shall speak again, no doubt.”
“Yes,” Legolas manages, watching him wide-eyed, “yes, please, my lord.” Placing a hand over his heart, he hurries to offer Glorfindel as deep a bow as he can manage, his loose hair swinging over his face, hiding his deepening flush of embarrassment. “I would like that. If it is no trouble.”
“It is never any trouble,” the lord promises.
His mother says only, “Bathe first, Jen Avheon.”
Legolas stays in the bow until the footsteps of his mother and the golden lord pass away into the darkness of the tunnels --- then he stands, bounces on the pads of his toes for a moment, bubbling with excitement. Then he races off in the opposite direction, never before so eager to dress and bathe.
