#annuigwae (oc silvan elf)

[esculentevil]

Ektalas the Sharpest Point, wife/hero of Thranduil and mother of Legolas

Day 5: Elves | Pastels | Grief | Portraits | Archetypes Written for @lotrladiessource​‘s Lord of the Rings Ladies Week!

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“Ai, ni dur o--!”

Legolas looks up half guilty and half giggling as his father huffs down at him and the right mess he’s made of the older elf’s inner chamber office--that is: the desk ill-advisedly tucked into the corner of his personal quarters’ drawing room where Thranduil often gets lost in paperwork not suitable for reading in his throne room. It’s hidden behind a half-curtain (currently open because Legolas didn’t close it) designed by the wonderfully talented royal weaver, Legolas’ honorary grandma, Towolain, and the fact that the first thing anyone sees when they enter the room is the opposing wall--or, rather, the lack of one.

His balcony is the other reason Thranduil deals with the more sensitive papers here, in his chambers, where he can just look up and be soothed by his woods.

This is, of course, most likely the reason he’s come to them now (there are, Legolas sees, papers clutched in his hand--the one not holding his staff--and Gelpili, a majestically albino Peregrine Falcon and his father’s messenger bird, perched elegantly upon aforementioned hand’s linked shoulder--meaning that, rarely, something has arisen that both demands his father’s undivided attention and the privacy of his personal rooms); and why, obviously, it should be empty.

(Instead of stolen into by his young son and his... o stars...)

~

“What is all of this, khin nia?”

Gelpili screeches softly in equal confusion, gently fluttering down to peek and peck cautiously at the colorful papers surrounding Thranduil’s son. Legolas grins and giggles at the large bird, shifting so it can more easily see the bright images smeared over the leaflets, before turning his innocent gaze to his irked father, “I’m draw-ing em’g!”

“Emig, gwinig,” Thranduil automatically corrects, his eyes wide and lips round; his entire countenance, in fact, shocked and shook and shallow of color.

He is as pastel as the paints his son has pasted himself with.

(As the ones he, himself, once mourned his home with.)

~

The painting is almost too painful to look at.

~

Petal pink cheeks stare back at him, their rosiness reminding him of laughter and life under the light and love like he fears he will never know again.

Soft sage clothing form forested furrows upon the bottoms of most of the pages, their messy ridges resembling the mountain ranges he played in as a child and reminding him of a time long passed when he and his father still smiled. Meanwhile, gentle gold accents summon the sun’s rays upon those mountains, reminding him of his people’s heartbroken journey to sail beyond the gray and just how GREEN he learned the world can still be if he has a new home within it.

Opalescent orange hair spreads in warm waves across the pages, like faint fire blooming upon the horizon as the sun, itself, arises and bathes the world in love and light and life as fragile and fierce as bloody clouds taking her soul upwind...

Upon the fluttering wings of butterfly blue eyes curled with love and laughter, shining like cold stars in the summer sun--pale, hollow, and lifeless...

~

Nothing like they should be.

~

Not, mind, that the image, itself, is much like she had once been.

His wife was never so pale as to flush so much so needlessly: in truth, ruddiness like this was a rarity for her as she was born and boldened and blossoming millennia before the darkness of Sauron’s shadow encroached upon their lands and so her face--in fact: the entirety of her--was a beautiful, deep, rich tan which, most of the time, held her blood rushing blushes at bay.

She had also preferred much warmer colors than that of their wood’s name: browns were her favorite to wear and she only ever wore green to celebrations--especially, he remembers, his father’s birthday as Oropher was all about green--and to sleep (where in she would actually take a page from him and steal something from their passed father’s closet to curl up and seek comfort in); although, the gold is very much on point as yellow was her favorite color, period.

(There is also probably something to be said about her status as a warrior and hunter: someone whom roamed their lands more than their trees and, therefore, would have needed to blend in more with the ground/dirt/EARTH than leaves.)

Her hair was also not actually orange or even red: it was TINGED such colors, especially during sunrises and sunsets, but the true hue of her hair was a deep and dark brown enriched by a warmth that the sun loved to imbue itself in.

~

Her eyes were not blue; period.

~

“They weren’t?”

Thranduil’s eyes blink, his lips having formed the thought into voice and publicity long before he had even been able to realize it, and gasps softly as his knees give out--no longer able to support him--and he ends up sharing his study’s floor with his beloved son, somber bird, and fallen hero; formal documents forgotten.

Thickly, he swallows.

Then, he softly shakes his head, “No, ion, they were not...” before slowly, reaching out and taking hold of a pale yellow color, the somewhat off-white hue of corn, and presents it to his curious and eager son, “They were like the sun.”

~

“Pretty...~!”

Thranduil smiles softly as Legolas gently gasps in delight, tiny fingers touching the slightly damp paint with care and caution. The Elvenking’s own fingers continue as they were: caressing the forever image of his long gone wife, Ektalas, which resides evermore in his mind, and imprinting it on the leaflet before him.

Both the paper and the person.

“Yes, she was...” He speaks so softly and with such affection that Legolas turns and looks up at him with earnestly inquisitive eyes. Thranduil almost laughs: blue her eyes may never have been but that gaze... she often had it, too.

(Especially back when she was still a child and they’d only just met...)

“Is that why you loved 'er?”

Thranduil blinks down at his son and pointedly raises his eyebrow, “Is prettiness any reason to love someone?” He’d meant it to be somewhat rebuking; but, then he realized just how cruel that was when Legolas just purses his lips and brows, confusion clearly evident on his entire person like a beacon.

Legolas had never even known how pretty she was.

So, how could he know there was more to her?

~

“Your mother was a wild one,” he says at last, mottled hands fighting the urge--the NEED--to pet back his young son’s hair, “Just like you.”

Legolas perks up, eyes bright with joy at the idea and comparison for he can, once again, hear the pure affection and warmth in his father’s voice. He loves it.

Thranduil smiles and mixes some more pastels into his painted wife’s hair, making it a flaming brown; “I met her one heated horizon--I remember not which hours it was, set or rise--as your grandfather and I guided our remaining people west towards the last rays of light... the last bits of color in our lives...”

He trails off, eyes far away as he recalls that day. The sun was burning the sky and mountains down--meaning it probably WAS sunset when he had met her--as it floated behind them, bathing their passing party in red, orange, and gold.

Or, at least, that’s what he KNEW was happening.

As an elf suffering grief and hearing the call of the sea... all he really saw was gray.

~

“Until I saw her in the corner of my eye: this little spark of light in the leaves;” Thranduil smiles and kisses his son’s head as he adds more pale yellows--golden corn--to his wife’s hair as haloing highlights: exactly as he met her; “Exactly like you, little leaf.”

Legolas giggles gayly and claps his hands with childish glee, happy to hear that; clearly. His father chuckles at him, enjoying his joy, and ignores the splattering such action incurred. (They’re in their dressing gowns, anyway, so it’s fine.)

“I had thought she was a flame--thought the trees were on fire--flittering through the leaves--I did not think she was a part of the sunlight for, to me, it was...”

“Gray?” his son fills in, half unsure and half understanding. He’s head the stories and knows what sea-longing is; he’s also aware that, generally, his kind of elf (Silvan) doesn’t experience it and, chances are, he never will, too.

Legolas will never understand what it is to see the world gray.

And that honestly makes Thranduil incredibly happy.

~

“She was the first bit of color I saw,” Thranduil confesses, voice quiet and quivering as his elf-soft fingers mix some yellows and oranges and greens thereby making a lovely and warm light brown--perfect for Ektalas’ skin tone; “And I thought I was loosing my mind.”

He adds the mix to the half-dried base layer of off-white he’d used to form her shining face, allowing what was still wet to lighten as it will while he shades and warms and contours the shapes of her lifted cheeks, the strength of her jaw, and the slope of her pointed nose. He breaths slowly as he falls back into time, remembering long ago when he would lay upon the greens of their meadows, Ektalas stargazing beside him, and trace these solidities with such serenity.

To think that now, after both so long and so little, he would do the same...

In paint and pain and pastel.

~

“Did em’g find it for you?”

Snapping out of his memory ridden trance, Thranduil blinks down at his son and raises an inquiring eyebrow at his question. He almost looses it when Legolas, adorably, raises his own little brow back. (He has the sweetest boy, he swears.)

“Is that why you loved her: she found your mind???”

The Great Elven King really does loose it then.

(So cute!!!)

~

“No, khin nia...”

He pauses as he calms himself and wonders, honestly, what he means by that: what is he really saying no to? Technically, she DID find him his mind, his sanity, as well as his will to live--to REMAIN. She found his reason to stay for she was it.

Still... “That is not why I love her...”

That’s why she’s his best friend.

~

“I had thought I was seeing things,” he finally starts back, tracing the strong brow of his wife’s image with the same color he used for her hair with notes of black; “For the light I was seeing was too pale to be flames and I remember, too well, the red of true fire and the heat of dragon fire--I will never forget these things; nor will I ever forget the pale light of your mother smiling through the leaves.”

“Like she is here?” Legolas asks, pointing his plastered finger at the painting.

Thranduil follows his gesture and smiles back at the memory gazing back at him, “No, khin nia: she had been but a child for this.”

Legolas’ eyes widen comically as he gasps.

~

“Back then, she was a tiny young thing; and, with her hair aflame with the sun resting into the west (the color of which I knew but could no longer see...), Ektalas had looked, for all the world, like a sweet sapling aburn--and I feared.”

“Was she ok?” Legolas asks, eyes wide and worried; and his father quickly nods and kisses his head once again.

“She was fine; it was all a trick of the light; but, the splash of red where I knew there should only be green grays, caused me to panic and, truly, not even see what I was seeing; I could only think: O Stars, she’s on fire!

“And act on it.”

~

“W’at did you do?”

Legolas leans against his father’s broad chest eagerly, eyes peering upwards brightly, and Thranduil smiles as he gazes back down at his little leaf.

Then, quite suddenly, he’s laughing--mostly at himself.

“I threw water on her!”

~

“We’d been collecting rain water, in case we needed it but couldn’t find a river or other such source, and storing it in sealed amphorae which we kept tied in carts--along with other necessities like food and clothes and bedding--and to animals;” Thranduil expanded, well after he’d finished laughing at his son’s scandalized and spluttering gaping; “This is what I removed from my father’s caribou and used.”

“To throw on emig???” Legolas’ face is still affronted, clearly not fathoming how, exactly, his kind and calm and courteous and keen father could ever... “And she... She LIKED it?!?!?!”

Thranduil is certain he hasn’t laughed this hard in at least a hundred years.

Legolas really IS just like his mother...

(She’d be so proud of him...)

~

“No; and, at first, when I realized I hadn’t dosed her--for there was no fire anywhere; just her hair--but simply drenched her, I panicked even more and hastened to apologize.”

“As you should!” Legolas huffs upsetly at his father.

He then huffs even more as Thranduil can’t help but laugh even harder.

The Elvenking is quick to amend himself, however: “Yes; athon; and I did.”

~

“Although, it took me a while to, honestly: as I attempted my apology, she turned suddenly and took off into the forest--THIS forest--” Thranduil gestures around them and smiles at the look of awe and awareness on his young son’s face; then, he continues, “and, in my panic, I blindly followed her into the thicket.”

“Did you... scare her???” Legolas frowns with his whole face, upset but mostly just confused. He’s spent much of his young life asking his older siblings (Mallosnell and Annuigwae, mostly, as they’d been the oldest) about his mother, as she had been killed when he was far too young to be able to remember her, and everything he’d been told up until this point made her seem fearless--because she WAS.

It was one of the things he loves most about her:

She feared nothing; not even dying if it meant protecting their baby.

~

“No, khin nia, I could never make her afraid.”

He says it soothingly, at first; but, then, he chuckles as a thought occurs: that, truly, it’s too true!

“Not even when I wanted to: not even when I was the one whom was afraid and wanted, so badly, for her see that--see sense--and stay home where it is safe...

“She was never about that... She was about making it safe for everyone else.”

~

“She was a war’ior!”

Thranduil laughs lovingly and nods, using his pastel covered nail to detail lashes onto his lost love’s face in the same paint as her brows, “Yes, naed, she was.

“She was the greatest warrior I’ve ever known; strong, steadfast, a bit stubborn, but... she always made me feel safe and secure; her strength made me sound.

“And that, khin nia, is why I love her.”

~

Legolas is frowning.

Thranduil watches him for a moment, worried, as butterfly blue eyes stare down at Ektalas’ grinning visage with an expression the Elfking cannot quite see. There’s a pensiveness to the elfling that his father knows is too big for his age--

But, then, their son is looking up at him with such sorrowful sadness that, immediately and without question (and with no regard for the paint on either), Thranduil embraces his child--his baby--and holds him close to his heart.

Legolas’ voice is small but strong, just like hers: “Are you scared now, atheg?”

~

“La, ndilakhin nia; ni eʒallu thossui pi ʒar de.”*

~

“So, why’d she run away--” Legolas suddenly asks, little pastel-smeared form tucked safely into the hollow of his father’s body as though he’s hiding in a tree; “If she wasn’ afraid?”

“Ah...” Thranduil chuckles, his deep voice reverberating against his son’s back, as he carefully adds gold flecks and white highlights to the pale corn yellow orbs that are Ektalas’ painted eyes. They stare back at them with the warmth and light of the very stars and their own people’s souls when filled with healing love.

How fitting.

“She thought it was a game: I drenched her so she had to drench me; in fact, she led me straight into a lake with her run--literally: she pushed me right in!”

~

Gelpili’s feathers rustle gently as it rests in Thranduil’s (ignored) office throne.

The official papers the Elfking came in with rest (just as ignored) right under it, their papyrus bodies making a perfectly pleasant nest for its long snoozing form. Before it, upon the ground, sit--still--the set of woodland royals: The Spring King, Thranduil, and The Sweet Leaf, Legolas, and The Sharpest Point, Ektalas. Laughter fills the air as all three paint gayly together, well into the late evening, with a mix of the elfling’s pastels, his father ink wells, his grandfather’s quills, and his mother’s smiling stills; all three learning and grieving and HEALING.

Just as the Elfking once did with his father (whom always encouraged his art, even before The Fall; but even more so after realizing it helped him cope).

Just as Thranduil once did with HER (whom always saved him; still does).

☆ﾟ.*･｡ﾟ☆ﾟ.*･｡ﾟ☆ﾟ.*･｡ﾟ☆💎🌲☆ﾟ.*･｡ﾟ☆ﾟ.*･｡ﾟ☆ﾟ.*･｡ﾟ☆

*Hi; yea; I tried really hard; but, I’m sure I still failed even harder; so... that one all Elvish line: “No, child I’m devoted to (who’s) mine; I (am) to be never afraid if I have you.”

Also, I have been writing this for two whole folk dancing months and STILL I only just finished and I can’t even tell if this is any good or not; I think everything but the ending is fine; literally everything but the last bit is exactly(-ish... Little Legolas interrupted so much so often UGH! Dx lol Love the lil sod tho) how I wanted it--full cathartic crushing and everything--but UGH... Forever dissatisfied with myself =/ Still, this took so much more out of me than I expected... Please excuse me as I go curl up and die around my Thranduil’s sword, thanks. Thoughts?