eachdraidh | memory. open to both courts.

[ All around is white, snow whips across the picture along with long strands of pale golden hair. A pace or two away a couple figures stand huddled together, pressed against a wall of a mountain. Two tall men, four hobbits whose heads barely stand above the surface of the snow, A DWARF* that stands a little taller yet still, and a greying man dressed in greys in a pointed hat. The image, oddly enough, shows them from somehow above all. ]

If Gandalf would go before us with a bright flame, he might melt a path for you.

[ For some, perhaps a familiar voice, for others perhaps not. Light of heart and little troubled by the storm. The man in the pointed hat answers him. ]

If Elves could fly over mountains, they might fetch the Sun to save us.

[ But no matter the wizard and elf exchanging jabs at each other, there are still Men with ideas here. One speaks: ]

Well, when heads are at a loss bodies must severe, as we say in my country. The strongest of us must seek a way. See! Though all is now snow-clad, our path, as we came up, turned about that shoulder or rock down yonder. It was there that the snow first began to burden us. If we could reach that point, maybe it would prove easier beyond. It is no more than a furlong off, I guess.

[ Another - the tallest - answers him: ]

Then let us force a path thither, you and I!

[ And for a moment there it seems that would be the end of the conversation, the camera - so to speak - follows the toiling men, the way they work through the snow with great trouble yet also with some success. Yet not before long, Legolas speaks up again, his voice rising easily in the noise of the snow storm. ]

The strongest must seek a way, say you? But I say: let a ploughman plough, but choose an otter for swimming, and for running light over grass and leaf, or over snow - an Elf!

[ With that said, he springs forth nimbly. The camera briefly showing his feet on the snow, sinking but only a little, leaving little imprints in the cover of snow. And he runs light and easy. ]

Farewell! I go to find the Sun!

[ He says with a last look to Gandalf first, then to the toiling men, Aragorn and Boromir. For them, he has a wave of a hand, before he speeds off. ]

( ooc; paraphrased book excerpt, sassing off to a maia, have at! visual aid, I mean what. *blanche is a loser kill me now I FORGOT GIMLI )

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[ There's a beat of silence before the reply, a soft exhalation of breath. He doesn't dare disbelieve, strange as it sounds. ]

It sounds like the beginning to a tale I might have told my nephew, when he was still young enough to clamber onto my shoulders to reach at stars.

[ Somehow, it awakens a vicious pang of bone-deep homesickness in him. He swallowed, thickly, against quiet questions and doubt that rose in him like weeds. ]

And did your quest come to happy end?

It is certainly a tale many elflings of those who remained are being told now. A tale that has reached even Valinor...

[ He was still ever so vaguely... awkward that upon his arrival his name has been known among so many of the high elves. That Galadriel herself has come to greet Gimli and himself when they arrived. Those hints of modest shyness ring clear in his voice when he trails off. ]

The looming shadow has been lifted once and for all, thus indeed it came to a happy end. Yet the sacrifice of those who have carried the greatest burden has been severe. Scars that ran soul deep, that could not be soothed, not even in a hundred years.

Not even in a thousand, or two thousand. That feeling has haunted me long, Prince of the Wood. And there are no happy endings for those scarred beyond memory, beyond recognition of what they once had been. Only the desperate and fragile hope that what peace they might find will be long end deep enough to ease the hurt a little.

[ Such a loaded conversation from something so light. Legolas parts his lips as if to say at first, but closes them back quickly enough. It all carries as an extended moment of silence, none of his physical reactions showing when it's set to voice only. ]

There are scars such that will never heal, I know that, [ now ] what shadows they cast will always loom and dim the gazes and darken the thoughts, but, I find, if you do not turn your back to the light, there is still happiness to be found. Among the green trees in the summer, on the meadows blanketed with colourful flowers, in a hunt... Those I have known were not unlike this in their lives, they found happiness in the little things.

If nothing else, the suffering sharpens the taste of joy on the tongue.

[ As for himself... ]

I can live with what nightmares haunt me and those that will, [ even when they stare him in the face, when they twist the terror into relief and the most perplexing sense of safety, fake or not, temporary perhaps, when they offer smiles. ] though I wavered on my feet for a time. I wager I am of the fragile ones.

[ Celegorm's reply is swift and certain, the mourning gone in favour of simple surety. ]

You are not among the least of the Eldar. You did not beg for release from pain, nor break under its pressure, great though it was. Is it not fire that we use, to burn impurities from steel and mithril? To awaken and reveal true strength in metal? Were you weak, you would have burned like dry grass in the blaze of my wroth.

You are like metal, instead. Tested, but proven. The scars upon you no worse than the ripples and layers one might see in the blade of a well-made sword: proof of your strength.

Scars of the spirit are far more insidious, by my reckoning, and I have never felt stronger for them. But, as you say: joy means less without suffering for comparison.

[ Oddly, he finds himself better able to listen to the very one who unmade him the way he had talking of what has happened, than those who have only glimpsed it on his skin or in his voice. ]

You did not break beneath their weight, is that not proof of strength as much as what you have carved into my flesh? You do not feel it, perhaps, but it is there.

[ Though these scars ran deeper, much deeper than Celegorm would want to make him believe. His pulse quickens, or perhaps it has sped up at the very beginning of this conversation and only now he seems to have noticed. Sympathy colours his voice, though, a thread of sadness for another, though he knows well that many would find Celegorm undeserving of it. Especially from him. ]

Though I cannot... begin to imagine the depth of your suffering.

[ Brief now. ]

[ He exhales a quiet, bitter hah. ]

It is... different for you, perhaps, who was born and grew on Middle Earth, where the battle against the great enemy coloured all things.

But I grew to my majority never knowing darkness or pain beyond that caused in the hunt. For greater than a thousand years it was so, strife utterly unknown to me. And when it came, it came so greatly, princeling...

So greatly. So terribly. The red blood of my father's father pooled against the marble. My sword reddened to my wrist with the blood of elves. The fires we started. The fires which burned us. Why, I wondered, when the whole host of the Ainur stood to prevent it? To protect us? To avenge us? I had lived so long in peace, the violence and cruelty were beyond maddening.

At length I remembered the hunts in which I rode alongside Oromë himself. I remembered the beasts that fell beneath his lance, each great and worthy, each driven at last to succumb to their wounds. A hunter does not care for the cries of agony or pain his prey may make. Not wolf, not elves, not men, not even Eru's first creations. They hunt, prey falls, blood spills, and the world keeps turning.

I would rather be a hunter of any sort than a beast waiting to be devoured. It was a hard lesson, and I wish, I wish with every fibre of myself that it had left a scar for me to touch, to feel, to see. So that I knew the pain was more than in my head and in my heart, and that I had survived it.

Edited 2014-07-16 19:30 (UTC)

[ It's all so overwhelming, the gravity of it, things he didn't think he could comprehend - or excuse, or forgive, it wasn't his place -, things he couldn't just explain away. In truth, he doesn't think he's even expected to say much of anything...

But words come all the same, quiet, a notch breathless as his heart hammers away in what feels like the vicinity of his throat. ]

That you were made capable of such cruelties, the marks you have left on the world around you. Burned ships, mauled and bloodied bodies of the elves, all those you have scarred.

They are not yours, never will be, but they are out there and they are as physical as any others.

[ And oh how this dull ache that runs all across every single line drawn on his back reminds him of how real these scars are, the memories of the time - always, always vivid and clear - adding a sting, sharpness like the a lash of a whip anew. ]

[ Celegorm squeezed his eyes shut; and blessedly, the locket transmitted only voice. ]

All that I do is a reflection of me.

[ Pain, yes, but no regret, nor hesitation. He exhales a sigh, and the sound of his headshake carries. ]

Keep your star close. If it remembers your better memories so well, it should be counted precious; and perhaps it will give you more light to see by in the growing dark.

[ And his locket clicks shut ]

[ His stomach sinks, chest feels like it will collapse on itself any second, yet there is a relief in all of it as well. Only now does he feel - when all that tension bit by bit dissolves - how he has wound himself up so tight, like the string of a bow drawn tight to send an arrow flying leagues.

It doesn't. Instead it's lowered and put away, like the comfort that washes up his senses with the sudden deafening silence.

He was never here, yet the air felt thicker, tasted of copper, though there was no blood filling his mouth this time. Legolas too shuts his locket, ignoring the odd, incomprehensible ache in his breast and heads out to find something to put his mind to other matters. Lighter. ]

memory. open to both courts.

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