PITY THE YOUNG

The morning sun filtered down through the oaks and beeches of Doriath, dappling their summer leaves and the ground below with rays of gold.  The stillness of the waking forest was stirred by the scratching of a squirrel as it descended from its leafy nest, the light cascade of birdsong, the lilting call of quail in the thicket.  Pale blooms of niphredil dotted the shaded hideaways, ready to welcome the warmth of the dawn upon their petals once more.

The gentle song of the wood was suddenly accompanied by peals of fair laughter and a hasty rustling through the brush.  There came Lúthien, the enchanting daughter of the king.  She bound through the forest barefoot in her simple gray gown with only a girdle of twisted silver.  She moved with the heedless grace of one born to the wild and free ways of the untamed world, her dark hair streaming behind her, fleet and sure as a deer.

She glanced behind to see a flash of gold, her companion crashing through the undergrowth with a bit more noise than she had made.  Her young kinsman followed as best he could, valiantly endeavoring to keep pace with her.  They both enjoyed leaving the stately court behind in these playful forays into the wood, and she was trying to take him more often before he finally grew out of his childhood.  It kept him out of the trouble adolescents of his age often found for themselves.  He still could not catch her, but each time his chase improved.

Lúthien slowed in a secluded glade beside a babbling offshoot of the Esgalduin where the grass grew thick and soft underfoot, allowing him to catch up to her.  He was not too far behind and soon came panting into the clearing.

He was armed with only a silver flute in his belt, a gift from his mother who thought he spent entirely too much time playing with swords.  He had only seen thirty-five years of the sun, and had not yet attained his full form or stature, both of which promised to be great.  The traces of boyhood lingered in his face, and he was as bright and spry as Celeborn had been in his younger days. 

“I shall catch you someday,” Thranduil boasted as he recovered his breath, though his smile betrayed the impossibility of it all.

“Perhaps,” she laughed, “but it will not be this day!  Your legs are not yet long enough.  Perhaps later when you have filled out more.”

“You never cease to humor me, Lúthien,” he smiled, folding his legs beneath him in the deep grass.  “Not even the doe can keep pace with you.”

They often came to this place.  Lúthien had long hallowed it, so that it was called the Hírilad, the Lady’s Vale.  She danced now upon the grass, and it seemed the living spirit of the wood had taken visible form.  Thranduil played for her, for she always insisted that dance was poorer without music.  The birds were drawn to their lady, and flitted round with a song of their own.

“I fear I am a poor substitute for Daeron,” Thranduil apologized when the song was ended and the dance stilled.

“The apprentice is not expected to rival the master,” Lúthien smiled as she came to sit near him, folding her legs in the grass, “and his fingers are more often upon the harp than the bow.  You have skills of your own.”  Plucking one of the wild lilies that grew all around them, she slipped it into her dark hair like a white star amid the night sky.  “I hear that Master Cúthalion has nothing but praise for you.”

She saw his eyes glow with pleasure at that.  Several errant wisps of hair made him look even younger, not yet concerned about cultivating the meticulous appearance of the elder lords.  “I do try,” he said modestly, though with some measure of underlying pride.

“Many try; it seems you succeed.”  She gathered more of the small long-stemmed blossoms to make a chaplet of them.  “The King is quite pleased with you, and he expects you to be a great credit to our house.  Now the Finarfinionnath have not even their honey-colored tresses to lord over us!”

Thranduil seemed more thoughtful at that, finally pulling the ineffective stay from his hair which then fell like a river of gold over his shoulder.  “Lúthien, you have been more often among the Golodhrim than I,” he said.  “What do you think of them?  Why have they come?”

Lúthien hesitated, for she did not know what to tell him.  A light breeze swept through the leafy boughs above, making the shadows dance.  “We know not why,” she said at last.  “It was first said that they were sent by the Belain to aid us in our hour of need, but the Queen now greatly doubts that.  A shadow lies upon them which they have yet to explain, and still we wait for them to enlighten us in their own time and of their own will.  But they are proud.”

Silence hung between them, the same uncomfortable uncertainty that arose any time one tried to ferret out the secrets of the Golodhrim.  Nerwen had gracefully deflected Celeborn’s inquires, nor had fair Finrod offered the full tale.  They were indeed proud, and yet Lúthien was almost certain she had also sensed some measure of shame.  It seemed they had brought something upon themselves they were still unwilling to bare before their Mithrin kin. 

Lúthien looked to Thranduil, still in the first bloom of youth and innocence.  She recognized a resilient spirit in him, but one that could still be shaped like white-hot steel.  Given the time and nurturing, he could yet be molded into something great, another pillar of Mithrin strength, remembered alongside Thingol, Galadhon, Celeborn, Oropher, and the other lords of Doriath.  Or he could yet be twisted into something ruined, crippled by strife and bitterness, marred as she had heard and suspected Fëanor to be marred, consumed with pride and jealousy. 

Pride.

“Pride has been the honor of some,” she said at last, “but the downfall of many.  Do not allow your passions to rule you, Thranduil.  A rampant garden overtaken by weeds pleases no one, and scatters the seeds of discord far and wide.  The mind is the master of the heart, for it will guide when the other is given to caprice.  Cultivate passion with discipline, and it will serve you well.”

“That is what my grandfather has often told me,” Thranduil confided, twisting his fingers in the thick grass.  “He seems to think my father somewhat lacking in those virtues.”

Lúthien nodded with a strange shadow of a smile.  “In that mind, I trust he is not alone.”  She knew Lord Thalos well, one of those favored by her father the King.  Born of Vanyarin mother before the March of the Eldar, Thalos seemed to have inherited their sedate demeanor along with their singular beauty.  It was with considerable reluctance that he had granted Lord Oropher leave to wed his daughter, for that scion of the crown could indeed be capricious and overbearing at times.  Now it seemed he endeavored to hedge those tendencies in his grandson before they grew like thistles.  But, fair-haired or not, Thranduil was Oropher's blood, and such efforts were not always successful.

“It seems strange to me that pride should have driven them from their homes,” he mused, almost to himself, digging the end of a twig into the dirt.  “If the Blessed Realm was darkened, I do not know what better place they expected to find here.  I certainly have no desire to leave Doriath.”

“We are sheltered here,” Lúthien said with a wan smile, “and for that, I am thankful.  Young ones should be allowed to grow and mature in peace.  You are skilled with bow and blade, but it is another matter to use them to take life in defense of your own.”  Gently, she lifted Thranduil’s chin and traced the line of his jaw with a tender and sisterly air, knowing there would come a day when the starlight in his eyes would inevitably be sharpened, when the blind trust of youth would fade or be broken.  He still allowed her to touch him, to offer the endearments she had offered when he was a child.  There would soon come a day when he would not.  At times she thought one of the keenest tragedies of life was that the young must leave their fairest years behind them, gradually transformed and disillusioned by cruelty and injustice.  Now it seemed even the immortal West was not safe.  What had their cousins of the Blessed Realm seen that had scarred them so?  Or was it something they had done?  What was the shadow they had brought back to Middle-earth with them, and how long could the enchantment of Doriath resist it?

“I wish that you may never know the brutality of war,” she said, her voice heavy, “but in this changing world, I fear all such hope is vain.”