An Unexpected Love

SEVENTEEN

The small metal needle moved in and out of the fabric. The room was quiet and the only movement came from the elven woman sitting on the large bed in the room. The fabric being sewn was black, the thread was black, and the details on the fabric were minimal but the ones that were there were black. The silver-haired elven woman had been in her new home for a little over a week.

During that week, her schedule was the same every day, wake up from a dream and realize her reality, she would then skip the first meal of the day and lay in bed until the dark-haired lord of the city would come and force her to get out of bed. She would then design and create a dress from scratch, either for herself or for her mother. Throughout the process of making the dress, she would refuse to rest or eat anything until the garment was finished. Usually, the garment would not be finished until the late hours of the night. She would then, for the first time each day, leave her room to visit her mother where the dark-haired lord would be waiting for her. As the duo sat with her mother, they would eat and talk before the lord would walk the woman back to her room and she would toss and turn in bed until exhaustion finally caught up with her.

She hadn't smiled, she hadn't laughed, she wasn't even able to look Lord Elrond in the eye. When she was leaving Greenwood and packing up her belongings, she was able to mask the pain, to mask how much her heart was breaking. But the further the company of elves got away from Greenwood and closer to Rivendell, the more depressed Navaheya had become. It had finally set in when she saw her mother lying in a bed inside the beautiful city's walls. She wasn't ever going to go home. She was never going to have her mother back again. She was never going to love another elf. And the elf she did love? Well, he was gone, and she would never get him back.

Simply put, Navaheya Silverlace was a shell of herself. She wasn't sleeping enough, she wasn't eating enough, and mentally, she was barely aware of her own numbness. The little amount of time that it was taking her to construct each garment worried Lord Elrond, he was convinced that she was overworking herself to the point of exhaustion. However, every time he had tried to bring it up to the silver-haired seamstress, she would change the topic of conversation to something else that didn't really matter, like that evening when she switched to conversation to asking about the weather outside.

Lord Elrond closed her bedroom door behind her after wishing her a good night, he stood there for a few minutes, debating on barging through the door and staying with Navaheya until she actually spoke about what she was thinking and opened up. Instead, he walked through the empty halls of his city before entering his personal study. The Lord had received a call for help to handle her situation, now it was his turn to send a call for help to handle her. He knew he should be heading to his own chambers and resting, the sky had grown dark before, and staying up would not do him any favors. Instead, he sat down at his desk and pulled a piece of parchment in front of him.

Lord Elrond sighed deeply in exasperation and frustration before he started writing his letter. Lord Elrond had known Navaheya since she was a small, he had seen every side of her, both physically and emotionally. He had never seen her act like this before. Her face never broke out into a smile anymore, she wasn't talking to anyone who wasn't himself, and her designs of her garments were different. The dresses she was making were not full of life or joy, they were not inspired by the land around her or a different race, the clothing she was designing were inspired by the hollowness in her chest and the pain in her heart.

The elven lord expected the woman to be upset and he expected to see changes in the seamstress that he deemed his honorary little sister. However, he was not expecting to see a complete lifelessness to her that almost reflected her mother. Lord Elrond continued to write, even after the details of the situation were explained. He was frustrated and angry, he wanted her to live in Imladris with him so he could observe both her and her mother. But, he did not want to observe her like this, with her heart being torn out of her chest and her life draining from her soul because she was stripped away from the one she had grown to love. Her heartbreak was killing her, and it was his fault.