NEW LEAF (Legolas FF) | ✔️

Chapter 5: To Learn

Turwaithiel's PoV

It has been 5 days since I came to stay with Laralen's family. I had not intended to stay so long but the welcoming warmth that Laralen and her brother had given me was enough to make me stay for a while longer. I had not anticipated to miss the feeling of having company just weeks after leaving the confinements of my home.

Laralen had been nothing but a gracious host and a good friend. We had spent the other day talking about what lay beyond the borders that stood right at the edge of where their house stood. She had told me many things, of her life long ago when she had been a little child. The memories of her old home, but somehow it stopped only to the point where she had turned 13 and had caught the attention of a far more older man.

I helped around the house as much as I could. It was 3 days ago that I had learned that Bleon did not speak. Laralen had said he just stopped talking one night and she had been trying to get him to speak again but to no avail. She would often talk of her parents but would not prolong the subject.

I cleaned the dishes and swept the floor as Laralen sold things at the market. She had a garden behind their home and a few cows she had inherited from the previous owner. It was an elderly lady who had taken them in when she found Laralen wandering the streets of Bree with a boy in her arms. Laralen said that it was the most devastating night she had ever had. She almost lost Bleon. As time passed, I found myself more ready to open up to her. I had told her of Mantheniel and Lord Elrond and of the place I used to live. It came as a surprise to me that she did not know anything about Rivendell or any of the kingdoms of middle-earth. I used to think it was knowledge provided to everyone.

I sat across her in the lounge. It was already night and a fire was burning in the hearth. Laralen had a few wonderful talents, one of them being her skill with charcoal. She could sketch a landscape by pure memory but what she liked most to draw was people's faces. She had shown me a bunch of works she had made admitting that, sometimes, she did not ask the persons permission and therefore could not put a name on her drawing.

She was good with a needle too and confessed that most of what she and Bleon wore, she had made herself. The lady who owned the house had taught her so. She had died not two winters ago. Taken by a cold one winter night when nothing could seem to keep her warm. Laralen had not experienced the pain of loss until that unfaithful day.

She sat across me, a table board on her lap as she busied herself with her sketching. Smudges were on her face as she had the habit of touching it as she drew. I sat rigidly before her, making sure I would not move even though she had told me I could. We had been here since noon. Bleon sat beside her on a sofa and had fallen asleep when the sun had set.

Her emerald eyes glanced back up at me and I held my expression firm. The corners of her lips tugged a little before she continued her work. I had agreed to let her draw my face simply because she had begged me for 'she had never drawn an elf before'. It seemed to make her happy, so I was not one to complain.

"Almost," she murmured to herself as she seemed to be spreading something on the paper with her fingers. She pushed the wooden board before her, her eyes examining it before a triumphant  gleam appeared in her eyes. She turned the board around with a proud grin and showed me her drawing. I could not help but marvel at it. But could not, for the life of me, think of a good response that would not make me sound so vain.

"Your skill is magnificent!" I exclaim after finally choosing the words. She accepted my compliment with an elated happiness that seemed to radiate off her naturally. She turned the board back to her and nodded her head as if agreeing with the quality of her work.

"Thank you for allowing me to sketch you, Turwaithiel," she grins as she placed the board on the dining table. She then took the paper off and handed it to me with a quill pen.