The Prince's Pretend Mother

Twelfth Entry - What to Make of a Diminished Thing

{It seems I consistently forget to do this when I first pot something--thank you, EmpressDowager, for all the lovely attention recently! I appreciate everybody who appreciates my brainfruits, and even the people who don't. But I like you guys best.}

The question that he frames in all but words

Is what to make of a diminished thing.

*

The next words we heard Tauriel speak were at supper the next day. I at least—and I suspected Legolas as well—could see that her mind had turned down a more active path than the seas our grief tended to try to drown us beneath.

"I wish to learn how to fight."

Thranduil looked up from his book and Legolas and I from the diagram he was explaining to me, something demonstrating the use of hills when being pursued or in pursuit yourself.

Legolas straightened. "What kind of fighting is it you wish to learn?"

She looked up, meeting his eyes for the first time, he later told me. "All of it. I wish to protect people. What is it you do?"

He smiled, lacing his fingers together before him on the table. "I lead the guard for our realm, and have little to do with our army though the members of each often overlap in duties or projects."

She solemnly nodded. "That is what I wish."

"I will ask who among the instructors is available tomorrow and introduce you to whomever I find most appropriate. You are how old?"

"Thirty, My Lord."

Legolas nodded.

And thus the next morning he left even earlier than usual and returned in the afternoon for Tauriel. When he called her name from the front of the house I looked up from my paperwork and asked her, "Would you like company?"

"No, but thank you. I am still unhappy and very likely to snap at you and don't wish to hurt your feelings."

I smiled. "I understand. Enjoy yourself, Tauriel."

"She will do well in the guard if she has half the focus Legolas had at her age," I told Thranduil later as I joined him in his study to add my work to his.

He made a noncommittal sound.

"I am more concerned about her feeling alienated. She is one of the last children in our realm and living here has taken her away from the people she probably best knew. Though we are the ones most capable of preparing her for her best future."

He made a similar sound and I set the papers down and sat in the chair he left adjacent to his des so we could compare notes when I didn't feel like standing. "Thranduil." I laid my hand over his. "Have I forced you to take her in or overstepped myself?"

He shook his head, inhaling deeply. "As king of this realm all of its people are under my protection. By extension I am in some ways father to all of them. It is both my right and my responsibility to house and provide for those who haven't a proper home of their own."

"Then what ails you? You have not been yourself."

"I cannot promise to love her as you loved my son."

"I have enough love to suffice for the both of us." I smiled warmly, melancholy, at his averted face. "I know I cannot expect you to make any more room in your heart for those who were not born from it. You are not required to love her, Thranduil. Only to be kind, and to not let her feel that this is any less her home than the one she has just lost."

When he sighed I squeezed his hand, sighing myself. "What is it that leaves you like this, friend? You are unsettled."

Thranduil stood. "That is not your concern."