The Prince's Pretend Mother

Thirteenth Entry - Glory of Her Childhood Change

{Thank you, HaneyMuffins, for the votes in the last week or so! I truly appreciate your feedback.}

I watched the glory of her childhood change,

Half-sorrowful to find the child I knew,

(Loved long ago in lily-time),
Become a maid, mysterious and strange,
With fair, pure eyes - dear eyes, but not the eyes I knew

*

Just as I had expected and more, Tauriel excelled in her lessons of learning how to kill things. Legolas took an interest in her progress but as he was frequently away from our mountain haven attending to other needs in the forest or outside of it he no longer spent as much time at home as he used to. I no longer had the luxury of his presence at least over supper every night. The first time our boy was away for more than a month I’ll admit I sat in the forest and cried for a bit before going back in to supper with Thranduil and Tauriel, but as I had the fullest faith that he would return my depression was only temporary.

I raised Tauriel with just as much love as I had raised Legolas, though she did not come to love me nearly as easily. As I had once told Thranduil though, one did not require love to give it, and I fully understood why Tauriel could not immediately love me. She wanted to replace her mother no more than I would have, had my mother died in my childhood. But the broken ones of the world required the most warmth, and I gave her everything she would permit me to.

Within two years she had been moved to a higher class of trainees, and I came to watch her one of the first days of training with her new instructor and new classmates. Tauriel didn’t need me to follow her about for any of the reasons I had followed Legolas even after he could lead himself, so I generally only visited her during the day, if I visited at all. Tauriel did not like to feel as though she were being patronized.

“She is running away,” I said half to myself one afternoon as I stood at Legolas’s door while he packed for another expedition, thinking of the blood-deep determination Tauriel fought and learned with.

Legolas glanced at me as he folded a deep green tunic and settled it into his satchel. “If she is running away she is running in the right direction.”

“Do you think she will do well?”

“Well with what?”

I shrugged. “Training, guarding….living?”

“Training she is excelling in, as I have heard. She has a protective instinct—much like you—and is driven further by her recent loss. I believe she will hold onto her loss enough to utilize it as a source of momentum. Whether or not she will be able to set it aside enough to live as successfully as I believe you have remains to be seen. What do you think?”

I sighed, sinking into a cobalt armchair. “I am not sure I know. She is more resistant to my charms than you were.”

“She is older too.”

“I suspect that is the root of the problem as far as connecting with her goes. She does not want to be helped, she wants to find her own way. Which I admire, but it is difficult while I am trying to mother her without hovering.”

Legolas smiled, and continued methodically folding. “My father was accountable to me when Nelide passed, as were you when your son and brother made their own crossings. Tauriel is not accountable to any of us, and therefore in no way feels the need to rush her grieving to its tapering for our sakes.”

“I do not know how to help her, Legolas.”

“Most people know themselves well enough to know when they do and do not need help—yourself notwithstanding. Perhaps she is right in that she does not require to help.”