After those first few tumultuous days, time passed with few or no unfortunate incidents to mark them.  Still, Legolas knew that Gimli was patiently awaiting his return to Erebor.  He remembered how eager he had been to at last see his own homeland again, and had determined not to deprive Gimli of his own for much longer.  But he had kept him at least until today, for this was one day he would not wish to spend abroad, far from the landmarks and traditions that year after year had made it special.

He returned to his room now on this crisp autumn morning, bearing a carefully packed satchel on one arm.  He stopped a moment just inside the doorway, catching the faint smell of pipeweed in the air.  It had been a trying week for the Dwarf while surrounded by acutely sensitive noses.  No matter; they could endure another day or so, and then Gimli would be well on his way back to his own kind, a sobering thought for Legolas as he considered going with him.  The others were not thrilled with the idea, Calenmir, Anorrín, and Luinar.  That one had held his peace as ordered, but was still no friendlier to Gimli than he had ever been.  Legolas had long ceased trying to bridge the chasm between them, resolved to let the matter run its due course.  Luinar was a creature of extremes, he knew; and it would not surprise him if in another ten years or so, Luinar Linhirion would be one of Lord Gimli’s most pugnacious defenders.    

He turned to the wardrobe to quickly snatch a loose cloak before leaving.  A tentative chill was in the air outside.  But as he pulled open the door he was greeted by a great billowing cloud of smoke.  

“Ai!” he yelped, half in surprise and half in complaint, drawing back to cough.  “Gimli!  I can forgive your smoking in my room, but please,not in my clothes closet!”

“Thought you were your father,” Gimli apologized stiffly, relaxing his quick defensive posture.  Regardless of the understanding between them, the fear of Thranduil was still upon him. 

“Well, come out, for pity’s sake,” Legolas insisted, standing clear, “lest you die for want of clean air.”

“It is a bit thick, isn’t it?” the Dwarf admitted, stepping out.

“Yes,” Legolas agreed dismally, wondering if he might borrow a change of clothes from Calenmir until his were rescued.  He was known to endure many things, but never would he go about scented like a Dúnadan.  In any event, he was relieved to see that the cloak he sought had not been inside after all, but rather was left folded neatly in a chair by the capable hand of Erelas.  He would have to thank him later for that timely curtail of duty, probably not what he would have expected for it.

“Come, Gimli,” he said, pulling the green mantle over his shoulders. “Daylight beckons, and there is still something else I would show you.”

Gimli followed as Legolas led the way through the winding forest paths.  The Elf seemed to find simple pleasure in the silent company of the trees, so he did not interrupt.  The first nip of frost had come, and the great masses of leaves above had all begun shifting their colors, at length putting aside their spring and summer green for the rich hues of autumn.  There was the subdued racket of chittering squirrels and flitting birds, the instinctive autumn rush of nature effecting a strange calm on those who did not share their cares. 

At last after a long wandering trail they emerged into a sizable clearing where many a carefully pruned rosebush grew, all of a dark red.  The mounds they grew upon, Gimli noted again, were unsettlingly regular, those at the fringes fresher than others.  A great beech tree grew in the center of the field, welcoming the sun upon its changing leaves, strangely alone in the midst of the petite bushes standing in concentric rank upon rank around it.  It was a bright sun with a thinning but tenacious warmth, as though defying the onset of winter.  Gimli knew not rightly what this place was, but he had an instinctive idea.  A silence lay over it, the distinctive silence of the dead. 

“This is the Hírildan,” Legolas explained as they moved through the flowering sentinels.  “The Ladies’ Vale.  Here lie all the fair roses of Lasgalen fallen in defense of their home while their warriors met their foes beyond beneath the trees.”  As he passed, his fingers brushed some of the younger shrubs, planted upon still tall mounds.  “As I feared, their ranks have grown.”

Soon surmising that they were headed for the central tree, Gimli was content to hold his peace.  It was indeed a very Elvish tribute, so unlike the burials of Dwarvish dead.  There were no slabs of stone to mark the graves, no names carven in deep imperishable runes.  Merely a rosebush.  But, knowing Elves as he did now, he realized they might indeed rest easier knowing they left their bones in the slow embrace of living roots rather than entombed in unfeeling stone.  He could not confess to understand it, but he could see it.  And indeed it seemed fitting to honor thus the fallen flower of womanhood, lest their sacrifice be forgotten.  All a tomb in the heart of a mountain needed was a reverent dusting over the years; these memorials must be tended with care, in their own fair and silent way demanding the recognition and remembrance due them, the wives, mothers, and daughters of Lasgalen. 

Reaching at last the filtered shade of the beech tree, Legolas lay a fond but solemn hand to the smooth bark before turning to sit in the lap of its great roots.  "My father planted this tree,” he said quietly, as Gimli seated himself near, “over my mother's grave.  He would sooner sacrifice the great groves at his very gates than see this one come to harm.”

In that Gimli found reason for the prickle that traversed his spine as he leaned against the trunk, knowing it bore the full and vibrant blessing of the Elvenking.  He suddenly felt as wary as one who dares to touch dragon treasure, even if Legolas seemed not to mind him sitting against it.  But certainly he would refrain from picking at the bark. 

Calmly, Legolas opened the satchel he had brought with him and, brought out a lapful of pale yellow roses in full bloom.  Taking them in hand he began to skillfully plait them into a chaplet worthy an Elven-queen.  “These were her roses,” he said absently with a hint of a smile, talking to himself as much as to Gimli.  “Thranduil has maintained the line unbroken despite the ravages of the war.  Every year on this day he still cuts a bouquet for her, and I bring them here even if she cannot see.”  He paused a moment to select another blossom.  “This is my begetting day,” he said at last, by the way.

“You mean birth day?”

“It matters not, for often with us it is the same,” Legolas explained.  “But to me it seems foolish to celebrate that which is not rightly the beginning.  My first year of life was no less precious merely because I had not yet seen the sun.”

Gimli realized then he had never given much thought to Legolas’ mother.  His father had seemed enough to keep in mind.  But of course he had to have one.  He remembered Lórien, and wondered again what Lasgalen had been before Mirkwood.  Had it been happier then, without the lingering scars of war?  Had it prospered beneath the rule of a strong and just king, a fair queen at his side and a bright prince reared between them?  How full of promise the future must have seemed then.

Now he looked out over a nigh countless host of blood-red rosebushes, somehow terrible for their benign beauty in commemoration of atrocity.  He knew and had seen Dwarvish women in battle, for that strength was in their blood.  But it still unsettled him to imagine Elven ladies valiantly wielding bow and blade only to be brutally maimed and hewn down by orcs.  Yes, life was beautiful, but tragically so.  Not for nothing did roses bear thorns. 

And in regard to thorns, he glanced aside and saw that Legolas had begun to bleed in reward for his efforts, but seemed to take no notice.  A familiar Dwarvish insult rose again in his mind, something about Elves and their lily-white hands, creatures who shrank from pain.  How often had he repeated it?

“How is Lasgalen treating you?” Legolas asked, happily unaware of the other’s thoughts.

“Oh,” Gimli said with a noncommittal sigh, twiddling a fallen twig, “I must admit their tolerance is admirable, if somewhat strained.”

Legolas nodded, winding yet another long stem through the burgeoning crown of pale golden roses.  “We can only expect so much so soon,” he said.  “Tomorrow, if it please you, we shall prepare our mission to Erebor.”

“Oh, yes?” Gimli asked, bushy brows lifting in suppressed delight.  “Grand!”  Yet, he realized he would miss Thranduil when he had gone, something that was certainly strange enough.  What an endearing old firebrand he had turned out to be!  He and Glóin might have been the best of friends under other circumstances; they seemed somehow cut from the same cloth, those two.  But still, introducing Legolas would be quite an ambitious bite for him to chew as it was.

“Legolas, just look at your hands,” he admonished, as he would have scolded a careless child for hurting himself.

“It is no matter,” the Elf insisted, twisting the last errant stem into place.  “What is an expression of love if for it we make no sacrifice?”  He proudly examined his handiwork, mindful not to stain the delicate petals with his blood.

“Splendid,” Gimli said.  He had meant only to humor him, but he had to admit it was a lovely bit of work.  

Legolas hung it upon a low branch, a fair token very like the rings of wildflowers left by the children of Dale for the nymphs they imagined lived in the wells.  Gimli was strongly inspired to craft something now for his own mother, but could not see the brusque Lady Káli crowned with flowers of any sort.  He would think of something.

That afternoon, Legolas found his father in the wooded alcove just beyond the palace grounds, seated easily in the low slung branches of a rambling willow, watching a heron wade deliberately through the water.  He was clad in a simple but royal tunic of scarlet, a brilliant hue the silvan craftsmen prided themselves upon and reserved only for their King.  The gentle bite in the brisk air seemed not to concern him; he had endured many a harder winter than this would be.  He had endured many things.

Legolas approached and leapt into the branches with him.  “Are you pleased, father?” he asked then, seeking his honest opinion, though it was not often he was given anything else.  So much had come between them so quickly: the matter of Gimli, the stirring of the Sea, the abrupt end of Greenwood as they had known it and the beginning of a new era.  Now he would leave him for Erebor.  What was passing through his mind? 

Thranduil sighed, seeming loath at first to answer.  “We both know what it is to be lonely, Legolas.  Do not expect me to be pleased at the prospect of being lonely again.”

“I shall not be going all at once,” Legolas assured him, producing a folded parchment from his sleeve.  He had merely waited for the right time to bring this to his father’s attention, fearing to ask too much of him at once.  Marked plainly with the seal of Elessar, it was the charter from Aragorn and Faramir detailing the grant of his fiefdom in Ithilien.  Thranduil reached back and gently snatched it from him with the deliberate authority of sovereign fatherhood, breaking it open to let his keen eyes wander over the closely written page. 

“So, Aragorn wants you to be a prince of Ithilien, does he?”  He seemed to consider the idea, weighing the advantages in his mind.  It was asking much now to send his heir abroad for a considerable length of time – fifty, a hundred years of Men – beyond the reaches of his influence.  All through the past centuries he had trained and groomed him for the role, but now at last the time came for him to release him in the hopes that his fledgling had taken his lessons to heart and knew how to fly, a difficult pass for every parent.  There in the stream, the heron took wing just at that moment in poignant illustration.  “Well,” he sighed at last, “at least Gondor is not the ends of the earth.” 

“I have your blessing them?” Legolas asked eagerly, leaning over to look his father in the eye.

“This is your endeavor, Legolas,” Thranduil insisted, pointedly tapping the edge of the folded paper against his son’s brow above.  “If you wish to take it upon yourself, so be it.  But I must insist upon a renegotiation of these terms."

Thranduil hitched himself up into a more dignified posture on his perch.  Then he seemed to remember a question he had long harbored but left unasked.  “Pardon your father’s ignorance,” he said evenly, “but what, pray tell, is the Deeping Wall?” 

“Oh. The Deeping Wall was the defense of the fortress of the Rohirrim.  It was breached in the same way I assume the cellars were breached here.  But that devilry was the work of Saruman.”

Thranduil nodded solemnly, his gaze distant.  “So Saruman the White turned traitor, did he?” he mused grimly, and with some measure of unholy satisfaction.  “I truly am not surprised.  I had heard rumor of that, but they never tell me anything.”

“He insisted he was ‘Saruman of the Many Colours’,” Legolas corrected, in a sarcastically prim voice.  “He prefers to go about now in all the hues of the rainbow.”

Thranduil snorted.  “That sounds ridiculous,” he said with a severe bark of a laugh.  “Always will a fool sacrifice tradition to a meaningless whim.” 

Legolas knew his father had never loved that wizard.  Mithrandir he endured, and Radagast he favored, but Curunir had wasted no time earning his ire.  He remembered the first White Council his father had attended, for he was not regularly invited to such.  Thranduil had returned home in a high royal pique, and only later did Legolas hear that Saruman had been less than complimentary.  It was safe to say that Thranduil had hated him ever since.  He wondered what had become of the turncoat, released prematurely by Fangorn.  Had he crawled into a hole somewhere to brood upon his wounds?       

“Gimli wishes to return to his own home,” he said then, tactfully changing the subject to reflect more pressing matters.  “I have promised that we should begin our preparations tomorrow.”

“Very well.”

The brevity of his consent was somehow uncomfortable, as though he was not pleased but saw no point in objecting.  Legolas had the unpleasant realization that he was growing apart from him, which he in truth had no wish to do.  “I shall miss you, father,” he offered. 

“No more than I shall miss you,” Thranduil said, turning to him with the gleam of sincerity in his eyes.  “Go where you will, Legolas; and may the Sun shine on your path.  But tread with caution, I beg you.  You have always been a bright boy, but you have been somewhat sheltered here.  There are still those in the world who do not hold the tenets of honor in such high esteem as we, and do not recognize what should remain inviolable.  Reserve your trust for those who earn it, and do not at once assume the best of all.  The Long War is ended, but a longer one rages on, just as it has through all the ages – more subtle, but no less destructive.  Friendship or no, do not lower your guard in its face.”

“Heart of the hawk, wings of the dove,” Legolas said, repeating the well-learned maxim.

“Exactly,” Thranduil nodded, winding a slender leaf round his finger.  “Give them no cause for offense if at all possible, but do not let them influence you, and never sacrifice integrity to convenience.  Call a spade a spade if they give you no other way.  Better to fall to blade or shaft than to die the slow death corruption brings.  And I have seen both.”

“I know you have.”  Legolas smiled, for he had known his father would not let him go without a last instruction in the narrow paths of honorable political relations.  He had heard it all before, many times.  “Have no fears for me.  I will manage.”

“Manage,” Thranduil repeated with a touch of incredulity.  “I pray you do.  It is not for nothing that never has an Elf ventured into Erebor alone.  You do know what you are doing?”

“Rest assured, I have given the matter much thought in the past days,” Legolas said calmly.  “And my mind is set.”

Thranduil seemed to have to swallow that with an effort.  Plainly his mind was set otherwise.  “So be it,” he said at last, resignedly.  “But let it be said here and now that should any harm befall you at Dwarvish hands, the Mountain shall rue it before the end.”