Sword and Arrow

Chapter 74

When Aragorn and Beruthiel wandered back into the King's House half an hour or so after sunset, Legolas's family was already there. Eirinel was by the stove and Míthien was helping cut vegetables. Their family and Aragorn and Beruthiel had settled in a comfortable routine of sharing dinners together. It was a good way to relax after Aragorn and Thranduil had put on their grown-up faces and gone to negotiations and meetings for the day.

"There they are," Legolas said. He held a sack of potatoes under one arm and Thurion under the other. "Eirinel! They're back!"

"Took you two long enough," Eirinel said, striding out of the kitchen as she dusted her hands of flour. "We were beginning to worry about you two lovebirds."

Beruthiel blushed deeply and let her hand slip out of Aragorn's. "You shouldn't have started without me. Here, I can help." With a lingering glance at Aragorn, she left with Eirinel to go back into the kitchen, Legolas trailing behind with the potatoes.

"So," Legolas's mother said with a small smile, "what were you two up to, gone for so long?"

"Not much," Beruthiel said, though her cheeks and ears were still red. "Aragorn took me up to the old guard tower to watch the sunset."

"How romantic," Eirinel said with a laugh. "In Mirkwood - I suppose it's Greenwood now - the most romantic thing we do is climb up into the trees to see the moon. And that's only when the spiders aren't at it."

"There was that one time that Legolas took you spider hunting," Míthien pointed out. "You liked that, didn't you?" She laughed, the knife a blur between her fingers. Beruthiel wondered where a queen learned to chop vegetables so well, and a princess had learned to make such excellent gravy.

"Oh, yes," Eirinel said. Her laugh was like ringing bells. She swept the potatoes that Míthien had chopped into the large pot and sprinkled a little salt over them. Turning to Beruthiel, she said, "Legolas was quite interesting when I was still courting him." She turned over her shoulder to look at him - he was talking to the rest of the men.

"I think he still is," Beruthiel said drily. "No offense to either of you, your Highnesses, but he can be a pain in the ass."

Míthien laughed loudly. "That's my son!"

"So tell me," Eirinel suggested. "What was this whole journey all about? Legolas will not tell me more than the basics. He says there is too much grief for him to bear."

Beruthiel hesitated. He would be right - there was so much horror, so much death and so much loss. But Eirinel had a right to know, didn't she? "It began when Lord Elrond held the Council at Rivendell," she began. "We had people from all over Middle-earth come - Legolas from Mirkwood, Gloin and Gimli from Erebor, Boromir from Gondor, and so many more. Lord Elrond and Gandalf had found out a reason for Sauron gathering strength in Mordor again." And so she told them her story - how she had gotten tangled up with this group of adventurers, of Moria and Lothlorien and Boromir's death. She told them about the battle of Helm's Deep and the army of Sindarin elves that had showed up, and the battle of Pelennor Fields and the battle at the Black Gate.

Every now and then, Eirinel or Míthien jumped in to add something that had happened back at Mirkwood - the few Mirkwoodian elves that had volunteered to go to Helm's Deep, the news that during the Battle at the Black Gate King Thranduil had ridden out to Dol Guldur to throw down the dark power that sat there. It made Beruthiel glad that down here in the South was not the only place that evil had been driven away; that there were other people like them working to rid their homes of darkness, only hundreds of miles away.

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The dinner table conversation turned to everyday things like the recovery after the war, the rebuilding of important buildings in Minas Tirith. The House of Healing was much better than it had in the days following the last battle as more and more soldiers had been discharged. Aragorn himself (often accompanied by Beruthiel) spent much of his time there with the healers, putting his elven medical skills to good use.