Wildest Storms | Love of Royals: Book III

XI: Ancient Powers

The awkwardness following the aftermath of the storm hangs over us like a cloud of insects.  None of us really talk during the long traipse northward, our entertainment disappointingly limited to listening to the unpleasant squelch of our own footsteps, or trying to find some interesting sight in the empty plains of the Wold.  If there is any saving grace, it's either the rich, earthy scent that has erupted from the ground after rainfall, or the fact that Telamír's hair is in fact ruined while mine has barely a strand out of place.

Determined to avoid the mortification of my eye contact, Glorfindel focuses himself on leading us in the right direction.  It isn't a difficult task to head north, keeping the Anduin to one's right and the Misty Mountains to one's left, but I suppose if it stops him from blushing at me again, it must seem like a decent distraction.  Just the thought of that brief pink tinge to Glorfindel's cheeks is enough to send heat flooding to my own face.  That had been the first time he'd really become flustered in front of me, and Valar, it was adorable.  If we'd been alone, I might have teased him about it in the hope of seeing it again, but that isn't the case right now.

Even Glorfindel's magic has become closed off to me, in some desperate bid to restrain himself from interacting with me.  The others can't tell when our powers are interacting, so why shut his off?  I'd become quite used to our little dance of magic that hummed in the background of our journey before now, and miss it now it isn't there.

Alëaren is quiet, but that's nothing unusual.  Telamír, meanwhile, has gone into a sulk.  Most likely due to the fact that his hair and clothes aren't recovering too well from their experience with the rainstorm, and not really much to do with how we haven't seen sight nor sound of Fíria, Fírion and Tauriel.  Even when we reach the banks of the meandering river Limlight that borders the Wold from the Field of Celebrant, there isn't so much as a footprint to show that they might have passed this way.  I wonder if it's just me who has the nagging thought that they might have gone south as we'd originally planned, hoping to meet us in some Rohirric village.  If that is the case, then Valar save us.

After hours of searching for a point shallow and calm enough, we undergo the challenge of wading across the Limlight.  It is mainly a challenge because of Tel's complaining—a factor over which Lëa, Glorfindel and I all manage to bond with just a few exasperated glances between us.  Because of this slight amusement, the coldness of the water that laps around my thighs doesn't bother me, despite it being midwinter in these parts.

Once my legs have just about dried off, we find ourselves crossing through the realm of Lothlórien, and entering its rich forests just as the sun dips low over the horizon.  We journey under a canopy of golden mallorn trees, a species native to this part of the world which I have never had the pleasure of beholding before.  In spite of the season, all the leaves remain fixed to their branches—and not shrivelled in the typical winter brown, but fresh and pristine and an almost brighter gold than Glorfindel's hair. 

This forest is as ancient and powerful and mysterious as my own, but in a vastly different way. While Mirkwood rots under the growing darkness, Lothlórien seeks to blind us with its shifting kaleidoscopes of evening sunlight glinting off the elegant leaves. It taunts us with the knowledge that it could so easily trap us within its unfamiliar labyrinth of gold-dusted paths.

This is not your world, Woodland Star.

I blink a few times. That voice didn't belong to anyone in my company. It was as though it came from within my own mind—but it was not my voice that spoke.

Visitors do not usually hear me from this far away. You are strong.

It's a female voice, deep and hypnotic, inside my head yet somehow interwoven with the leaves and the sunlit air itself.