“O what are you doing and where are you going?”

It’s a distant memory, your father’s voice calling playfully as you run over the grass. You remember shrieking as arms suddenly swooped you up and into your fathers’; those shrieks dissolving into giggles as you laughed at your father’s own laughter, at his delighted, loving face.

Remembering that now, watching your father follow Legolas as he tumbles over the grass, you think: Father’s face had seemed so young.  But you have watched over the years as the dancing blue-grey eyes became colder, inscrutable and stern; flaring now and then into a blazing fury. Or raging grief as he was assailed with each new Loss: his father, his wife; two children who sought rest and healing over the West. Many times, you’ve seen those eyes alight with compassion, and sometimes, you might see them with the ghost of a smile. But never, never, have you seen them dance the same way again.

You have never felt the change as keenly as when your hear you father calling your youngest brother: no longer quite so playful now, no longer quite so full of laughter. “Legolas! Don’t wander off too far!”

O what are you doing and where are you going?

Perhaps, you hear the slightest tinge of fear.

Your brother doesn’t know the change. To him, Ada will always seem closed and burdened: full of something he will have no name for until he is old enough to understand. And perhaps there will be no chance of understanding: every Grief is enough to break the heart of an immortal, but the loss of one beloved goes deeper… You have no words for it, you hope Legolas never will. But watching your father grieve, you at least know this: that it leaves an absence as immense as it is consuming; that it leaves the bereft one caught in a world between Life and Dark, one step closer towards wanting death. And sometimes, watching your father moving through the palace halls like a ghost; angry, sorrowful, and lost, you become afraid.  You are afraid for your father.

You are startled to hear a shriek, and you look up as your father finally manages to catch Legolas, turning him around in a whirling movement that leaves your baby brother laughing.  For one moment, your father’s face is both soft and alight: the love in Legolas’ sky-blue eyes mirrored for an instant in the storm of blue-grey. And it seems as if the burden of long years and of loss and grief has fallen away, and your father is again as you remember when he held you in this garden. Under the boughs of trees, under the play of light-and-shadow, scattering over Legolas, and you in your father’s arms. 

It’s only for one moment, it doesn’t last long. And as if he knows your musings, your father turns to meet your gaze.

“Celebas? What’s wrong?”

You shake your head. Nothing. Your father pauses, knowing, from long years of experience, the circumstances when it’s better not to take you for your word. But it’s late, Legolas is tired (despite vehement protests to the contrary), he needs dinner and a bath besides, and the others are waiting. So the three of you leave the tumbling- garden of your childhoods, where you and brother played, and walk towards the palace gates.

Still, you’ve come to understand something: and it assuages some of your selfish fears.

Your father will never leave. Not while Eryn Galen stands. Not while you, and your brothers and sisters are still here. The six of you, Celebas, are anchors holding your father to this world: links of love, the bitter and sweet and pain of memory. If his eyes no longer dance the way they did, if he can no longer laugh the way he used to; in that far-away morning in memory, he has never, never stopped holding you.

Nothing and no one in here is mine. ;) Legolas, Thranduil and their home Eryn Galen (Greenwood) are Tolkien’s, of course, but Celebas is Thundera Tiger’s character, and I am very, very grateful that she let me borrow him for this vignette.

The Bitter and Sweet of Memory was born out of Thundera’s descriptions of Celebas and Thranduil in Thundera's Mirkwood Solstice, and for Thranduil, in her story Fear No Darkness as well.  The story takes place in Thundera's universe a few years after Legolas’ birth and his mother’s death. After writing it, however, I realized it was very similar to Avon’s story Of Red and Green Leaves, structurally and thematically. (Not to mention the use of the song O Where are You Going? from the Hobbit...)So I’d like to thank both Thundera and Avon providing inspiration for this story, and to offer Memory as a tribute to them both.