till forever falls apart

chapter 42: gems

The gems Idhrenel had brought with her from Lothlorien, were the last of her craft packed away into a wooden box that fitted between Thranduil's hands. The necklace that was the last thing she made, the gems she had not had chance to forge into something beautiful before she was slaughtered.

She kept them in her writing desk, in their chambers in their's halls, tucked away safely with the rest of her jewellery, and every now and then she would take them out and look at them, their light suffusing her lovely face. "You could still make something of them, meleth-nín, to honour those we have lost," Thranduil would say, and his wife would always shake her head and swear that she would never again touch the tools of her craft again.

It was a long time after they had come to live in the Greenwood that she brought them out for the last time. Thranduil's parents were long dead and Thranduil and Idhrenel ruled the Woodland Realm in their place. She would take them to the Lonely Mountain, she had said, and ask the Dwarves to make something from them for her, to build a bridge between their people and theirs. It had been many thousands of years since Doriath had been sacked and their King ambushed and murdered by the Dwarves of Nogrod, and Idhrenel thought it was time they made overtures of peace.

Thranduil was not convinced, but his wife would not hear of his objections and he loved her too much to stop her. Besides, in his heart he, at the time, thought that she was probably right.

So she took the box of gems and the necklace to Erebor, and left them with the Dwarves. She would return, she had said, to discuss what was to be made from them. It was the first time that Thranduil had seen her so happy to talk of jewel-smithing since their earliest days together in Menegroth, and he thought, and he dared to hope, that perhaps that was a good thing, perhaps it would bring her back to the craft she had so loved when she was young. They had, had Legolas by that time, and Thranduil thought perhaps she might have taught her craft to him. But sadly none of that came to pass.

The King of Mirkwood remembers, eventually going, to reclaim the gems and the necklace from the Mountain, but the Dwarven King had demanded payment from him. No work had been done, and so he refused - and the box was snapped shut almost upon his fingers, the light emanating from the gems cut off, plunging him into darkness. And the gems were snatched from him, taken away, lost to him for ever. King Thranduil closed his late wife's nearly empty wooden box gently as he brushed his long fingertips over the intricate detailing around its rim. As he stood there, barely moving, he pondered over the memory of which took place when they had first met properly and how she had taught him how to carve intricately onto wood. She smiled a lot that day, he recalled. "Can I have a story?" A voice squeaked from beside him, which made him nearly drop the wooden box in fright. Thranduil placed the box onto his wife's drawer before he turned to face his still young son,who was beaming up at him despite all that had gone on in the previous week.

"Okay.. just one."