As evening began to fall, the entire entourage slowed to a halt and gradually proceeded to pitch their bivouac over the lush fields.  There was no hurry, and the whole atmosphere of the journey was one of well-earned leisure. 

Large pavilions were spread and erected all about, one of green for the King and lords of the Mark, white and silver for the King and Queen of Gondor, one of pale silk for the Lord and Lady of Lórien, and another of gold and autumn red for those of Rivendell.

After he had let down a drowsy Gimli and comfortably picketed Arod among the other steeds, Legolas discarded his crown for a time and did his share of pulling ropes and driving stakes.  Elladan and Elrohir were more often than not at his side as they and a host of others set up their father’s pavilion, but when they had gone Legolas found himself tying off a tent rope with the help of Lord Glorfindel.

“Well met, Thranduilion,” the mighty elvenlord greeted him amiably, pulling the silken rope taut so Legolas could easily knot it around the stake.

“My lord,” Legolas returned with all due respect.  His Sindarin kindred had always held their own reservations regarding the High Noldorin Exiles, but Glorfindel had won even Thranduil’s regard despite his checkered past.  Moreover, Glorfindel had no part in the wrongs done the Doriathrim, so there were no grievances between them.

Glorfindel, for his part, had ever entertained a strain of surrogate paternal affection for the endearing young Sinda ever since the King of Greenwood had sent his son for brief fostering and instruction in Rivendell before the long war had begun.  More than simply an education for the prince, it had been a gesture of goodwill between re-settled Lasgalen and Imladris, one that had done much to heal the wounds of the Last Alliance.  Glorfindel had been greatly relieved to find that Oropher’s heir, while retaining the legendary fire and bellicosity of his father, was more willing to be a part of the larger picture of Elvendom in Middle-earth.  And, continuing the lightening trend, Oropher’s grandson was so unlike him that, had he not known better, Glorfindel would have denied that Legolas was of his blood at all.

“You know you do not have to do this,” he continued in their Sindarin tongue, “Prince of Lasgalen.”

“Then neither do you, my lord,” Legolas countered pointedly, looking up from where he knelt in the grass, with a cheeky yet unfailingly polite smile.  “Do not worry; I shall not soil your robes.”

“I know you will not,” Glorfindel said.  “But the son of a King does not spend himself upon his knees erecting a tent for another lord.”

“A son of Thranduil does many things,” Legolas said soberly, securing his knot with familiar dexterity.  “Privilege and idleness should never go together.  You should know that well by now.”

“Indeed I do,” Glorfindel murmured to himself, testing the rope with a few good yanks.  “He must drive you, a prince of his own blood, twice as hard as he does the least of the royal household.”

At that, Legolas sat back upon his heels and held steadily the gaze of the other, a new and somber gravity about him.  “I drive myself,” he said, “and never as hard as my father is himself driven.  Lasgalen is not like Gondolin or Imladris.”

Even to Legolas, his words came as a surprise.  Rarely did he presume to gainsay an elder lord, much less call him naïve to his face, but the sufferings of his homeland had been weighing upon his mind and his latent passions smoldered now in a strange and ill-contented mood.  He knew Glorfindel had known more than his share of brutal warfare, but it was innately difficult to accept criticism of a long and openly besieged wood from an Elf of the Hidden City and the Hidden Valley.

Glorfindel took it calmly.  Neither apologized, for in truth there was no need; the point had been taken.  “Does the devastation of Greenwood often trouble you?” he asked instead.

“It does,” Legolas admitted as he climbed to his feet, not surprised that Glorfindel had guessed in part the nature of his agitation.  

“The hurts of Sauron run very deep,” Glorfindel sympathized, laying a hand upon his shoulder and inviting him to walk with him, “and only a greater hurt can begin to heal them.  Now that the sacrifice has been made, I believe your own may recover now in peace.”

“That is the least we may hope for,” Legolas agreed, “lest the wars bleed us dry.  What strength remains in Lasgalen has been sorely tried.”

“Yet it remains still,” Glorfindel insisted somberly, as together they walked round the back of the pavilion to join the others. 

As they rounded the bend, Legolas noted Gimli among the bustling Galadhrim, happily driving stakes for the Lady’s silver canopy.  All about were the sounds of their work, the clinking of spikes and the flapping and billowing of cloth in the wind.

“There is a waning realm before us now,” Glorfindel observed rather glumly.  “Laurelindorinan cannot stand, bereft of the power of Nenya.  And Imladris shall fade, deprived of the protection of Vilya.  Yet, in Lasgalen,” he sighed, “in that niche of northern Elvendom which has been held at the point of a blade for the past age, the power of Thranduil still holds, dependent upon nothing save the raw courage of his people.  Thus have they survived, and thus will they endure.”

“It was a difficult path to take,” Legolas remarked, remembering the blissful days of his youth before the Shadow, and then the dark years of toil and vigilance and bloodshed that had followed.  They made light of it when they could, but those years had by necessity made killers of them all.

“It was a path we should all have taken,” Glorfindel mused darkly, mostly to himself.

Ordinarily Legolas would have been insufferably proud of Lasgalen's independence.  But now, here at the end, the fact that they could continue on in Middle-earth while all the other Eldar took ship seemed hardly worth the suffering.  “Do not regret the guarded peace of Imladris,” he said darkly.  “Why should we stay when there is naught left here to endure for?”