The Prince's Pretend Mother

Second Entry - Almost Too Much Love

I crave the stain

Of tears, the aftermark

Of almost too much love

*

Legolas was twenty-two, his eye-level at the height of my hand when I stood, when Thranduil marched a hundred of our warriors out to combat a surge of orcs malevolently trying to pick us off because the human towns had been successfully defending themselves. I stood on a balcony overlooking the main gate as I waited for my son to come home. A number of other parents, spouses and siblings trickled in to join me as the hours passed.

Soon we saw the gold glints of our warriors' armor as they threaded their way silently back through the trees. Snow had begun to fall, but elves being nearly impervious to the cold, we who waited did not mind. We would endure far worse for the sake of our loved ones. I held Legolas lightly in my arms, afraid to hold him too tightly with the force of the anxiety that shook inside me, and watched as Thranduil led those who had lived to the front gates.

I had come down from the balcony to await him, not knowing if he would wish to see Legolas immediately or ask me to wait. With his engraved armor smirched with the dark blood of our enemies, Thranduil slowly approached us. Legolas cried out for his father and reached for him, squirming, as I watched the living step slowly inside. Thranduil saw me, but he turned away, and in that moment I knew what my eyes had not yet told me.

"Not yet," he quietly said to Legolas, reaching up to gently cup his face, and then walking away. No blood on his son, then.

I stepped past those who had returned, numbly out into the chill of the white afternoon, holding Legolas close against me. A few of the last soldiers to come inside were laying out their cloth-wrapped brethren who had not survived. I did not need to unwrap his face to recognize my son-I knew the way he fit in my arms, how tall he was, how gallant he looked in his finely wrought armor. I knew every shape of him, and had no trouble picking him out from the others, and sank to my knees in the snow at his side.

"Inladris?" Legolas asked. My son had been like an older brother to the prince, and he wanted to know what this cloth-wrapped form had told me that it hadn't told him.

"Legolas," I said quietly, laying my hand on my son's still chest. "This is my son."

I had to hide the majority of my grief so it would not overburden the living child I still held against me. Soon Thranduil came and lifted him out of my arm and stood behind me, recognizing my despair, but still I could not show it. Eventually Thranduil took his son away, and then I knelt with mine for the rest of the night, and the rest of the next day. I stood only when the funerals began, when those of his company who had lived came to lift him away for me. One of my son's friends helped me stiffly to my feet and walked with me all the way to the grounds where we would bury him, and where many others had recently been laid to rest. A bonfire had burned here all night to soften the frozen ground and I could still feel the heat of it through my feet.

Thranduil and Legolas arrived before they laid my son in the ground. Legolas stood between us, each of us holding one of his hands. I don't remember seeing him but I remember there being tears on his face. He, too, had loved my son.

The two stood with me long after was necessary, since I knew Thranduil had a policy about attending the funerals of those who had fallen while in service to him. More than an hour after my son had been taken by the earth he turned to me and laid a light hand on my shoulder. "I am sorry for your loss."

"If he must have died he would have best preferred doing it in your defense," I quietly replied, still looking at the turned earth beneath which my son now lay.