#eregmegil

[tathrin]

Some more Elves of Mirkwood, courtesy this picrew (and some heavy editing).

Legolas and his three closest childhood friends: Tulinwen, Gladhanar, and Ladinion. They're some of the last elves born before the Shadow fell over the forest, and maintain bright and youthful spirits despite the darkness that hangs over their lives.

Tiraran and Tarlas, Thranduil's two closest surviving friends and advisors. They are two of the oldest elves left in Mirkwood, and were both born before the Sun and Moon. It took them thousands of years to figure out they were in love.

Eregmegil and Hírilhúrin. Hírilhúrin is the chief (and much beleaguered) healer of the woods. Eregmegil is a Sinda of Doriath who was a child during the Kinslaying. Thranduil rescued him, and Eregmegil has been fanatically devoted to him ever since.

Tiraran, Eregmegil, and Hírilhúrin all fought for Greenwood in the Last Alliance, while Tarlas oversaw caring for the woods and those who stayed behind.

Tatharwen and Nivion, from Legolas's sister's generation. They were some of the first elves born after the war. (In fact, Nivion was one of the only elves actually born during the war, and he never met his father, who died in Mordor. He's not bitter.) Both are fierce fighters, and Tatharwen is especially famed for her dancing (but don't worry, she's just as graceful with her knives.)

Most of them have shown up in my Mirkwood fics already, and the ones who haven't will be making appearances in my Celebrimbor-Joins-The-Fellowship-AU story soon.

More picrews of my Greenwood OCs, including that sister, here!

[tathrin]

Quick little designs for a few of the elves of Mirkwood from my fics.

Height not exactly to scale, because it was a very small doodle, but generally accurate. Rílaerloth should be buffer tbh, but I was running out of room on the paper I was doodling on when I got to her so she accidentally got a little skinny because I was trying too hard to squeeze her in, sorry. Also there isn’t any embroidery or patterning on anything not because they dress bland in Mirkwood but because again: very small doodle. We’re talking each elf up there was drawn smaller than one of my fingers, so. Not a lot of space there to fit in smaller details.

Third Age designs for everyone except for Gilthawen and Oropher, who didn’t live to see the end of the Second; they’re in their Last Alliance gear.

[tathrin]

You mention Thranduil counting himself as sylvan and forest adoption. Is that a magical thing or legal too?

I'm not actually sure what this means, in terms of "legally" a Sindar/Silvan because as far as I know (which is not always very much admittedly, when we get into the Legendarium, so correct me if I'm wrong folks) there is no legal distinction between the different branches of elves, and I'm not sure what it would even mean if there somehow were? But I'm going to try and answer anyway, so please stop me if I'm completely off-base with my answer thanks.

But I suppose the core of the matter is that there isn't a root difference between the different groups of elves; the names are things that are used to distinguish by experience more than anything else, because they were all one group of elves once when they first woke up, and then they split-off to do different things and those things changed them. So the Noldor ended up being best at crafts because that's what they were all generally most interested in and they hung-out with Aulë, while the Teleri bonded with the Sea because they loved it/Ulmo, etc etc. And the more Treelight the elves got the taller/more powerful they generally became, and so on. But they're all elves, they just did different things and thus ended up being different, and the different groupings distinguish those resulting differences.

With the Sindar, you can see some of the fuzziness of those distinctions best I think, because they're Moriquendi, e.g. elves who never went to Aman...but their king, Thingol, did go; he was one of the first three elves taken there, with the hope that they would convince the rest of the elves to make the journey across Middle-earth. Except Thingol and his people didn't, because he fell in an enchanted trance love with Melian, and his people stayed to look for him, and then when he finally snapped out of it (the trance, not the love) they all decided to hang-out and build a kingdom here. But because they all ended up chilling with a Maia, and had a king who had been to Aman, they were the most Calaquendi-like of the Moriquendi and ended up getting called "Elves of the Twilight" because of it. So they're already messy! Because they're Dark Elves, but got taught lots of stuff by a Maia so they're a little bit like the Light Elves, even though they never saw the Light themselves! Except for Thingol, who is a Calaquendi, despite being numbered among the Sindar, who are Moriquendi! So they're Grey Elves, now! And everything is very clear! Whee!

(It's almost like dividing people arbitrarily into strict identity boxes never quite works for some reason huhhhh.)

Anyway, the way I write Green/Mirkwood is that the Sindar elves who came from Doriath to seek a more "natural" way of elvish life after all the Shit Went Down basically ended up casting aside most of their existing culture in favor of cleaving to the traditions and lifestyle of the Greenwood elves (as a result of their grief/trauma/sense of betrayal and loss, etc), and while there was almost certainly some cultural mingling in the end result it was probably like 80% Silvan and 20% Sindar rather than an even cultural exchange/mixing because sure, the Sindar aren't going to just erase everything about themselves (you can't, even when you want to) and the Silvan elves are definitely going to pick-up some stuff from their new buddies, because that's how culture works.

But the overall end result was much more Silvan than Sindar. And since to the refugees from Doriath that was the point, they came here on purpose for this reason, they end up calling themselves "Wood-elves" after, because that's what they chose to be now. And getting back to the whole "terms to distinguish differences begat by experiences" thing...well, that counts as one of the experiences that shaped them, so are they Silvan elves because that's the life they've chosen to live, even though they were Sindar elves before? Perhaps.

(I'm a big fan of Found/Chosen Family, so we know which thought I'm siding with lol.)

Whether or not other elves are going to accept that re-classification or not, or to what extent they buy into "you can just call yourself x and that's what you are now," will vary of course, and I think it would definitely be more difficult for some groups of elves to pull-off than others. (A Noldo, for instance, would probably get HELLA side-eye if they tried to say "no no, I'm x now, not a Noldor anymore, honest!" because a looooot of the shit that everybody else went through is a result of Noldor Bullshit, so I feel like most people would react to a claim like that from one of them with something more like "cute, but you don't get to wash the blood off your hands that easily, Noldo." But also given the general pride-levels of the Noldor I don't uhhh really see that as something likely for many of them to want to do anyway, so.)

But does anyone really care if Thranduil (or Oropher before him) wants to call himself a Wood-elf now? First of all, in the eyes of most of the elves who Care About Status, they're downgrading themselves ("more dangerous and less wise," remember?) by renouncing their Sindar heritage to become a "mere" Wood-elf; second of all, what difference does it really make to anyone? They're hanging out with the weird primitive forest elves and acting just as weird themselves, so why not call them Wood-elves too and be done with it? Whatever, nobody cares, y'all weren't even kings until you got to the weird uncivilized woods anyway pffft.

Now, Galadriel and Celeborn both seem to be counted as "of the Galadhrim" by the Third Age even though they're a Noldo and a Sinda respectively, and the elves of Lothlórien are mostly Silvan...but I also don't get the impression that either of them were even like yeah I'm a wood-elf now. Especially not Galadriel! She's an extremely singular individual! She's not just a Noldo who saw the Trees, she's Galad-fucking-riel for crying out loud! She's no "mere" Wood-elf, she was fucking taught by Melian and bears the Ring of Adamant. She's GALADRIEL. Even calling her a Mighty Lord of the Noldor doesn't come near to summing-up the level she's on. So she definitely isn't going to be going "lol yeah I'm just a simple Wood-elf tra-la-lallying through my tress," and if she did everyone would be very UM NO about that for sure because she's freaking Galadriel!

Anyway, taking the keyboard back from Gimli now and returning to the point ahem.

They led a land of Wood-elves, and considered themselves to be of the people of Lórien, but I don't think they ever rejected their own heritage or culture, either. So would they have taken Thranduil's "I'm a Wood-elf" statement as him saying "I'm one of THESE people now, not a Sinda anymore" or just a statement of allegiance to the elves of Greenwood? ymmv. Personally I write Celeborn as being rather "mm-hmm sure buddy" about his old friend from Doriath just "not being a Sinda anymore" but not, like, doing anything more than making the occasional biting comment about it because again: what difference does it really make? Anyway Thranduil's always been Extra, and hooking-up with the weird-ass cryptids of Greenwood just made him even moreso, so whatever it's no skin off his nose...

But on the subject of "weird-ass Greenwood cryptid elves," I also like to write the forest as really weird, in the sense of it's actually almost a little bit semi-sentient. (Because it is a weird place in a very different way from Lothlórien's "elvish weirdness"; that's more vibes, while Mirkwood is just. what. what the fuck. is going on. why is the RIVER LIKE THAT. WHY ARE THE TREES LIKE THAT. WHAT.) So for me, I like to write it as a thing where they actually specifically, actively bond with the forest itself, and it sort of...claims them? (See chapter six of this, which I haven't posted yet, but I'm hoping to soon because it's almost done honest shhh.) So yeah, this is the Forest Adoption thing I mentioned!

So in one sense, they are Wood-elves now, because they belong to the Greenwood...although the degrees to which they belong, and the degree to which their Sindar nature has become subsumed beneath their newfound Greenwood-ness, varies by individual (for instance, Thranduil as king is The Most GreenwoodTM because the forest is like "yes, this is MINE I have CLAIMED it" which is at least half of where the whole "king thing" comes from, because he's the most in touch with the forest, so who else would they look to when they need a leader? But Eregmegil is very much stand-offish to everything including the forest, and so isn't as much changed as any of the other Sindar refugees; everybody else falls into the spectrum between the extremes of the two of them).

So to bring this ramble to a close...I think it's still very much accurate from a technical standpoint for someone to call Thranduil a Sinda, and I don't think he'd like, throw you in the dungeons "for the insult" or even take it as an insult or anything like that, because yes he is a Sinda; but I think he considers himself a Wood-elf. Because those are his people, and that's his culture. And he probably introduces or describes himself that way, whenever the topic comes up (and he probably drops it into conversation around Celeborn as much as he can on purpose to annoy him once they start hanging out again in the Fourth Age).

But if someone was like "uhh technically you're a Sinda, your highness, because you were born in Doriath not Greenwood..." he'd be like "yeah and now I'm an elf of Greenwood wtf is your point?" and like. what is their point? Sure, he's got the height and power and knowledge of an elf who lived behind Melian's Girdle, but he lives in Green/Mirkwood now and has all the unhinged cryptid energy and weird forest-awareness of a quasi-feral spider-hunting Wood-elf.

So which is he? The answer is both, really. Because he's a product of all of his history, not just part of it; we all are. But his people are a Silvan people, and he's one of them; so when push comes to shove he's standing with the Wood-elves. Even if he's doing it with a Doriath-forged sword in his hands.

[tathrin]

Hi! You know I love your Mirkwood OCs. Can you say a little more about Eregmegil? Backstory? Any secrets? Why does he appear to have become a Gimli fan, after the life you've hinted at?

Oh OH! Eregmegil, yes, I would love to talk about him. I'm entirely normal about the elves of Mirkwood shhh. So, I'm guessing that this is largely in reference to the bit here where he carries Gimli through the trees so that he can get back quickly and find out whether or not Legolas is going to be okay after the orc-kidnapping, because there's no indication given in that story of why exactly it is Eregmegil should go out of his way like that for Gimli, yes?

So, yes: Eregmegil has very strong feelings about people being forcibly separated from somebody they care about, because his whole family was murdered in Doriath in the Second Kinslaying, and he has spent the rest of his life in Green/Mirkwood watching the folks around him lose people they love first in the Last Alliance and then in the long, slow defeat against the creeping Shadow of Dol Guldur. Including Angmeril, Thranduil's wife, who was one of the first elves they lost after the Last Alliance and whose departure was extremely traumatic for the whole forest for a host of reasons.

And it was Thranduil who carried little Eregmegil out of Doriath, having been the only one to hear him crying under his sister's corpse amidst the chaos, and having taken the time and risked his own life and that of his father to pull Eregmegil out and carry him out with them. Little Eregmegil latched-on real hard to Thranduil after that and has basically decided to devote his whole life to Keeping Thranduil Safe now.

But also he has a LOT of feeling about Protective Older Siblings, especially sisters, because his own died trying to protect him from the Fëanorians. So that's why he decides to pry himself away from Thranduil to go look after Rílaerloth for a little, because that's about the only impetus that could make him leave Thranduil when he's not 100% sure that Thranduil is going to be okay.

Hopefully all of those background details will get to come out in Coming Home Under The Trees, which is where I'm doing the bulk of my Mirkwood OC Building, but if you want an advance read of the Gimli-and-Eregmegil-bonding chapter that's going to eventually be included in that story...read on.

*also Eregmegil 100% has one of those oversized anime swords but he's so big no one can quite prove it.

NOTE that this is all rough first draft writing at this point.

Gimli stepped back, his palms raised in surrender. He shook his head at the hands that stretched back towards him. "Nay!" he gasped, his chest heaving in exertion. "Peace, you fiends! I must rest 'ere I fall off my feet."

The elves laughed and returned to their dancing, Legolas pausing just long enough to catch Gimli's eye and raise his brows in a silent question. Gimli nodded—he was fine, perfectly fine! He just needed a moment to breathe, for Mahal's sake!—and Legolas grinned and let himself be pulled back into the merry tumult under the trees.

Gimli brushed sweat-damp curls out of his face and looked around the clearing for a suitable seat. He did not want to go too far from the fire: the night pressed-in dark around the vibrant circle of elvish revelry and while Eryn Lasgalen was a more peaceful place than it had once been, his father's stories about Mirkwood lingered in his mind. Gimli was not keen to go wandering these woods with neither path nor elf to guide him back out of the shadows, not even now that those shadows at last were lightening to match the new name of their lands.

He spotted a likely log lying comfortably within the fire's glow, and Gimli made his way across the grass towards his pending seat with only two interruptions of elves trying to pull him back into the dance. He demurred politely and they shrugged and flitted off to their merriment without him.

The dwarf had to admit that Legolas had not been boasting when he had told Gimli that no one in all of Middle-earth hosted a revel quite as enthusiastically as the elves of Mirkwood. He had scoffed at first, expecting celebrations more in line with the gentle merrymaking he had experienced in Lórien, or the cozy nights of song in Rivendell. What he had found instead was carousing more akin to that which he'd experienced briefly in Rohan, yet somehow more raucous and unflagging. Mirkwood's elves cavorted as though they were going to war with sleep and sorrow both, and each twirl of their dance was a salvo in the battle against solemnity.

Gimli had kept up well, at first; dwarves are experienced revel-makers and they take their celebrations as seriously as they do their crafts or mining. But there comes a point in the night where dwarven celebrations turn from rowdy to melancholic, and in Mirkwood no such slower periods were allowed to dilute the tireless tumult of their festivities. The wine kept flowing, the songs kept rising, and the dancers kept spiraling around the fire as swift as arrows in the wind.

The problem, Gimli had finally determined, was that elves did not know how to appreciate sleep. It was because they did not partake of it properly, he thought, wandering as they did through half-waking dreams rather than sinking fully into slumber like reasonable folk. They did not know how to truly rest, so they simply kept going about their revels long past when all sensible peoples would have taken to their beds—aye, and then woke again without taking nearly enough time for slumber in between!

He was only a few feet away from the log where he intended to rest his feet when he realized that one end of it was already occupied; so still was the elf sitting upon it that, in the shadows at the edge of the clearing his green and brown garb blended almost completely with the foliage around him. Gimli was not sure if his presence would be welcomed or not—anyone sitting solitary at a bacchanal like this was doubtless seeking solitude rather than interruption by a near-stranger—but it would have been impolite to immediately turn aside, so he resolved himself to make a few minutes of polite conversation at least before taking himself off to some other seat and leaving the other to his chosen seclusion.

"Mae govanen," Gimli said with a respectful bow. "Forgive the intrusion," he continued when the elf—Gimli thought he recognized him as one of the guards he had met on his first arrival to the forest, although his head was muzzy enough that he knew it would take him several seconds to place the proper name—gave him a nod in response. He was still dressed in the light molded-leaf jerkin that served Eryn Lasgalen's warriors for armor and sported elegant bracers on his arms, but his sleeves beneath the armor were short enough to expose pale arms that were muscled almost thickly enough to belong to a Man although not, of course, to a Dwarf. His dark hair and white face were striking in the firelight—few of the elves of Eryn Lasgalen were quite so pale, and fewer of them sported such sharp contrast in their coloring—but it was the breadth of his shoulders and the stoutness of his arms that Gimli noticed the most. He was still uncomfortably slim to dwarven eyes, but less so than any other elf that Gimli had met. Had someone chopped his limbs down to a more reasonable length, he could almost have passed for a normal, if unhealthily skinny, person—at least if someone had loaned him a beard!

Realizing he was staring impolitely in his attempt to put a name to the face in front of him, Gimli offered a friendly smile and continued teasingly, "I do not wish to bring merriment with me to where it is unwanted, but if you will allot me a few moments in which to rest my tired feet from the revels you have chosen to eschew, I promise to keep my merry-making to a minimum in the interim and thus refrain from interrupting your repose."

He meant it as a jest, likely to segue into a bit of banter about dwarven endurance or perhaps commiseration about the other's likewise weary toes, but perhaps the elf could not see the grin on Gimli's face beneath his beard for he responded to his words as though they had been spoken in grim seriousness: "It is true, Lord Gimli, I am not much for merriment, but you are welcome to take your rest for as long as you like regardless of however much mirth you might feel or express; your presence brings no distress."

Gimli was taken aback but he hid it well; with another short bow he settled himself upon the lower curve of the fallen branch and stretched his legs out in front of him with a contented sigh.

"My thanks, Master Elf," he said, and finally the name came back to him: Eregmegil, the tallest of the elves of Eryn Lasgalen that Gimli had yet met, although that was not evident while he was seated thus. "You are a most generous host." Gimli glanced sidelong at the elf, but if Eregmegil's pale face evinced any particular feeling it was not distinct enough for Gimli to discern it in the dim shadows at the fire's edge.

As for Gimli, he smiled vaguely as a familiar laugh rose from Legolas's lips above above the nearby tumult, but he made no effort to spot the whirl of his golden hair twirling amid the rest of the cavorting elves. It was enough to know that his friend was happy; enough to sit here in peace and be happy himself.

The dwarf had abandoned his light jest at Eregmegil's words, being much more intrigued by this stoic elf than by his planned banter. "I hope you will not think it over-rude of a curious stranger if I ask why you have come to this revel, then, if you have no care for such things?" He flapped a hand in the general direction of the fire and the frolicking figures circling it. "Surely you would enjoy your evening more elsewhere, if you take no pleasure in such nonsensical cavorting?"

"My king is here, so I am here," Eregmegil said flatly.

Gimli was startled enough that he knew it showed on his face; only the fact that Eregmegil was not looking at him, but rather at the swirl of dancers at the fire, spared him the embarrassment of being seen to give such an impolite reaction. He could not help himself; it was a genuinely startling statement. The elves of Eryn Lasgallen were probably the least conscious of their king's rank as any people in all of Middle-earth, at least any that Gimli had yet met.

Dwarves were not given to standing on unnecessary ceremony themselves, but even at their most casual they were always conscious of their king's status as the king. These elves, by contrast, seemed to treat Thranduil more like a communal father-figure than as a ruler. Legolas and his sister did not even seem to qualify as royalty in the eyes of their people (no wonder, then, that Legolas had been more prone to introduce himself by his land than his lineage!) and while Rílaerloth was at least beneficiary of the respect afforded her as a commander of their warriors, Legolas—despite all of his heroic deeds—seemed to be viewed still as little more than a hapless child by many of his fellows, as though he were the whole forest's little brother rather than Rílaerloth's alone.

This behavior was strange to Gimli, and even after many days spent in company with Eryn Lasgalen's people he was still not used to their casual disregard for rank or ceremony—or so he had thought, until he was confronted by an example of someone acting more according to his expectations. Gimli was intrigued. Thranduil's people regularly showed affection for him, yes, but this was the first time he had seen any of them express the sort of dutiful devotion that beloved kings oft engendered in other lands.

He studied Eregmegil where he sat on the log beside him, but the pale elf's profile was as smooth and emotionless as if he had been carved from white granite.

"Think you that Thranduil requires a guard, then?" Gimli asked. "I thought the threats had been driven from your trees." He could not quite resist the urge to squint into the darkness past Eregemegil's shoulders—broad for an elf, Gimli noted, but still scrawny as a sapling by dwarven standards—although he was certain that the flickers of ominous motion he saw between the black silhouettes of the trees were only the result of his eyes and the flickering firelight playing tricks on him.

He was almost certain, anyway.

"Many of them have been," Eregmegil acknowledged. "The largest are all destroyed, and the rest have been hounded far from our halls, at any rate." His voice was no more coarse than any elf's but there was something to the tone of his words that made them seem more brusque than what Gimli was accustomed to hearing from his friend's people; a flatness that stood in stark contrast to the musical lilt that Gimli had begun to think was an innate part of elvish tongues.

"And yet you stay to guard him?" Gimli observed curiously. "That is admirable devotion."

For a long time Eregmegil stared at him in silence, so that Gimli began to think that he had offended the tall elf. He cast his mind about for a suitable apology, but before he could make one, Eregmegil broke their gaze to look back into the fire instead and said:

"He carried me out of Doriath."

"Doriath?" Gimli repeated, the half-formed phrasing of his repentance dashed instantly from his mind. He knew the name of Doraith, and recognition made his heart sink. "Ahh…"

"It was the Fëanoreans who brought tragedy to Doriath, in my case," Eregmegil said. The glance he slotted sideways at Gimli seemed to shine with a glimmer of momentary amusement at odds with his otherwise impassive mien before he faced forward again, stoic as ever.

Gimli nodded and tried to resist the urge to breathe a telltale sigh of relief.

"I was a child when they came, too small to fight," Eregmegil continued. His bland voice carried a bitter undercurrent. "My sister grabbed me and ran, but they pursued. She tried to fight, but she was no warrior. They dashed her knife from her hand and stabbed her with it. We fell, she curling low to protect me still. They stabbed her again with their long swords—stabbed us both as we lay there, but her body shielded mine and I was cut only along the arm." He gestured to the offending limb and Gimli was startled to see what seemed to be a long, thin scar along the pallid flesh. "She was cut deeper. I lay there, pinned beneath her like a caged bird, and watched as her fae left her eyes. I felt her grow cold in my mind and against my skin as we lingered there in the dark. She died, and I lay there trapped by her dead weight and my own sorrow."

Gimli's breath caught in his chest and strangled whatever insufficient words of sympathy he might have offered. Eregmegil did not seem to notice; he spoke matter-of-factly, although his eyes flashed with dark shadows in the firelight.

"It was Thranduil who pulled me from the ruin of her body," the tall elf continued calmly. "He heard my tears, somehow, even over the clash of battle that echoed through Menegroth's halls. Bleeding, his surviving father dangling half-dead at his side, his hands filled with the bloody swords of his living and dead father both, the Fëanoreans close on his heels, Thranduil still stopped and pulled me from my sister's arms. He set me on his shoulders and carried me, carried both Lord Oropher and myself, out from the ruin of Doriath; somehow still fighting to defend us all despite his burdens and his wounds and his own losses; carried me away from the darkness of our dying home and back into the light of the world beyond."

Gimli did not know if it was some trick of the firelight reflecting off of Eregmegil's grim grey eyes, or a result of the many droughts of heady elvish wine he had quaffed this night, but for a moment he could almost see it: the great halls of lost Menegroth, once a glorious testament to the marvels that could be crafted when elf and dwarf worked hand-in-hand, now incarnadined with blood and darkened with betrayal; its proud torches sputtering or gone out altogether, cut-down by enemy hands; too many fair elvish bodies strewn about the fastness of the Thousand Caves, cut down cruelly by blades of elvish make wielded by elvish hands; and one small child, sobbing into his sister's silent sleeve. Then from the shadows staggered Thranduil, his golden locks stained ruddy with blood, bare blades gleaming in both hands, one arm wrapped tight around his father's waist with Oropher's arm dangling limp across his shoulders, both elves bleeding heavily from many wounds; the elder nearly insensate and the younger wild-eyed and desperate, yet still in enough possession of his senses and his compassion to stop to help a fearful child…

(If the younger Thranduil in Gimli's imagination looked more like his son than like himself, well, what of it?)

He blinked, and the vision vanished, and there was once more only dark trees looming before his eyes. He cleared his throat, and managed to murmur something that expressed his sorrow for Eregmegil's losses without revealing the depths of his horror at such suffering at the hands of those who should have been kith or even kin rather than bloody-handed enemies; dwarves had fought amongst themselves in ages past too, of course, but somehow the level tone of Eregmegil's recitation made Gimli's skin crawl more than any tales of those regrettable conflicts had ever done.

(Maybe it was just that he kept picturing Legolas stumbling down those bloodstained halls rather than his father.)

Eregmegil accepted Gimli's admittedly less-than-eloquent sympathies with an impassive nod. Wishing to draw both his and the elf's thoughts to lighter places, Gimli cleared his throat again and asked, "So, ah, what was next? I confess I do not know the history of this forest as well as I should, but I believe that Thranduil and his father settled somewhere nearby before venturing forth to Greenwood, is that not so?"

"Yes," Eregmegil said. "We fled to Lindon. I was reunited with my surviving relations there. They made a home among the Green-elves and the other refugees who settled in Ossiriand." He was looking at the fire again rather than the dwarf, or perhaps at the dancers; his blank expression was as unreadable as his voice. "But Thranduil and Oropher were not content to live there among so many Noldor, not after the fall of Menegroth. Not after the Kinslaying. And nor was I. They soon left to go east, to find the Silvan elves who still lived there—here," he amended, tilting one palm up to gesture at the forest around them.

There should have been more bitterness in Eregmegil's voice, Gimli thought; bitterness or scorn or something. This cool, too-calm recital made him shiver despite the warmth of the fire.

"Oropher hoped to find somewhere to live in better ways, more elvish ways; the ways in which our people lived before the Valar meddled and the Enemy made war upon us," the elf continued in his passionless way. "My relatives would not leave the new home they sought to craft in Ossiriand, but I already knew then that my place would henceforth be ever at Thranduil's side. I joined with the handful of other Sindar who chose to leave Lindon and seek-out the elves who had never joined the pilgrimage of the Valar; who had never been coaxed to abandon their native lands or customs."

"Were you not still a child?" Gimli asked, surprised. He was no expert on elvish history, of course, but he had been curious enough about Legolas's homeland to question his friend about its founding, and he had thought that he had a better sense of the timeline than this. Had not Oropher left Ossiriand within only a few years? Perhaps Eregmegil had simply been older than Gimli had pictured him in the story of Doriath's destruction; he might have been only a little shy of his majority, like Gimli himself had been when his father had joined Thorin's expedition to Mirkwood all those years ago: Old enough to feel that he was being left behind, but still seen as a child in his people's eyes.

Eregmegil nodded, however. "A child, yes, but not a fool," he said in a dry voice. "I did not ask for permission, and so my relations could not deny me. I left with my lord and came to Greenwood." He looked around at the tall, dark trees that rose into the black night sky far overhead, beyond the heavy leaves, and his grey eyes were as flat as the dullest stone that Gimli had ever carved. He did not smile at the trees. Had Gimli seen any elf in this forest fail to smile at their trees, even the most shadowed and twisted of them? And these trees were bright and merry in comparison to many of their fellows, as though they too shared in the delight of the elves for their firelit revelry.

"And have you been here ever since?" the dwarf asked carefully. "Or are you newly-returned, now that the Shadow has lifted?"

"I left these woods only once, to follow my lord to war in Mordor," Eregmegil replied. "It would take more than Shadow in the trees to tear me from his side.  Wherever Thranduil goes I will follow him, even unto the breaking of the world and yet beyond."

Gimli could not help but shiver at the weight of those words. There may have been no oath sworn—or then again there may have been, in days long ago before Gimli's father's father was born to hear it—but there was a surety to Eregmegil's voice that was as unshakable as any vow. He meant what he spoke with every fiber of his elvish fae, and he would damn himself to the Void before he forsook that intent.

"And yes," Eregmegil continued, and once again there seemed to be the faintest flicker of amusement across his grim lips, gone so fast that Gimli could not be sure he had not imagined it, "also to these merry revels that you seem to find so trying."

"I do not find them trying in the least," Gimli protested. "I quite enjoy them, in fact—I am simply tired!" He shifted on the log and scowled petulant. "Well and after all, I am much shorter than the other dancers," the dwarf added, feeling unaccountably as though he needed to justify himself. "I must work twice as hard as them to keep-up with the pace of their cavorting. No wonder I tire before the rest!" he blustered, despite knowing very well that the heart of the problem was not the speed of the dance nor the unseemly length of elvish legs, but rather the fact that elves simply had no proper appreciation for the merits of slumber, strange creatures that they were. Gimli was a stout and hearty dwarf, and justly proud of his strength and endurance; he was simply mortal, that was all, and as such he needed to sometimes refresh himself in ways that these flibbertigibbet elves would never comprehend.

"I stand corrected," Eregmegil murmured, and Gimli was certain this time that he detected a flicker of genuine amusement ghosting briefly across the elf's thin lips.

He harrumphed a grudging acknowledgement of Eregmegil's words and propped his chin in his hands, the better to watch the dancing. His eyes slowly drifted out of focus and he sank into something that was halfway to a doze, content to let his thoughts float as aimlessly and amiably as the blurry figures of the cavorting elves in front of him. As tiring as elvish dancing could be for a mortal participant, there was something restful about watching them too. 

"Do not mistake me, Master Dwarf," Eregmegil said after a while, shaking Gimli from his reverie.  "I do not dislike the revels of my people." Eregmegil nodded at the fire, and the whirling shapes of the other elves cavorting wildly around it, their lithe forms coming slowly back into focus as Gimli blinked. "I simply prefer to enjoy them from the edges here, where I can find pleasure in their delight without feeling compelled to manifest any of my own."

Eregmegil's gaze slanted back to Gimli, and now the dwarf could see a hollow darkness behind the mirror-like grey eyes that fixed so coolly upon his own. Had it been there all along, unnoticed, or had speaking of the past brought the vacuous shadows to the forefront? Gimli could not say, but no more could he unsee them now. "Whatever joy I once found in dance or in song went out of this world when my sister's spirit fled to the Halls of Mandos," Eregmegil continued flatly. "But it pleases me to see my people's joy, and in this bitter world that is comfort enough for me."

In the months since Legolas first heard the gulls at Pelargir, Gimli had developed a habit of skirting all mention of the Sea. It was thus not difficult for him to restrain the urge to ask why Eregmegil had not sought the healing of the Undying Lands that so many of his people sailed away to find when their spirits fell to the burden of such unendurable grief. He did not need to ask; he already knew the answer. Eregmegil surely knew as well as any elf—and far better than any dwarf, even one named elvellon—that the wounds of his soul could be staunched in fair and distant Valinor. But leaving would mean leaving his king's side, which would be the most grievous wound of all. And so he stayed, and carried the shadow of his losses with him, and endured.

Not for the first time, Gimli thought that the unmeasured lives of the elves was far from the enviable gift that so many mortals seemed to think them. If they had lived solely in joy, then their years unending might be something to covet—but the more time Gimli spent with elves, the more tragedy and sorrow he saw surrounding them. He had never brooded on the inevitability of Mahal's Peace the way so many Men repeatedly shied-away from their own inevitable end, had never feared the inevitability of his own ending; but sitting here at the edge of the firelight with Eregmegil, Gimli thought that rather than simply inevitable, there might be a certain comfort in the knowledge that one day an end would come to him. There would never be a day when he sat, two Ages of the world removed from the deaths of his kin, separated from the joy of his people by the weight of his own grief.

A flash of gold in the firelight caught Gimli's eye and he smiled instinctively at the sight of Legolas whirling like a wild thing in his friends' arms. The dwarf's tired feet ached just from looking at the roister of the dance, but like Eregmegil he was pleased enough simply to watch the unflagging joy of those who spun.

Legolas had described Mirkwood revels as though they were weapons against the darkness that hung over their forests, and Gimli had thought he had understood what his friend meant before, but he realized that it was only now, sitting beside grim and grieving Eregmegil, that he truly grasped the meaning of this defiant cheer.

The elves of Mirkwood—or Greenwood, or Eryn Lasgalen, or whatever else one chose to call this forest; the shadows that had defined it for so long hung over it still, even as they finally began to lessen, whatever name it bore—they were not less cognizant of elvish sorrows than their grander kin; in some ways perhaps they knew those sorrows better, for there was nothing to insulate the simple elves of Mirkwood from their weight, nothing but their own deliberate scorn for the sadness that strove to claim them.

The world wished for them to sigh in sadness? Then they would sing, sing until their voices gave out and dance until their shoes were worn clean through and the very trees around them reverberated with the echoes of their weaponized joy.

[tathrin]

No I’m not having too much fun designing Greenwood/Mirkwood’s elves for my stories why do you ask.

1. Oropher  - first king of Greenwood. would punch god. no chill. 2. Thranduil - second king of Greenwood. prince of sass. 3. Legolas - oh sweet summer child. 4. Rílaerloth - too much big sister energy in one container. 5. Angmeril - punched gil-galad once. not sorry. 6. Merilgais - SHE HAS A KNIFE 7. Tiraran - keeper of Greenwood’s one brain-cell. very gay. 8.  Tarlas - married to the braincell keeper. shares custody sometimes. 9. Eregmegil - tall. broad. very chill. might actually be a tree. 10. Gilthawen - did not ask for any of this. and yet here we are.

[picrew source]

[tathrin]

Either I got an anon asking if Gilthawen was Thranduil’s queen and deleted it, or I dreamed that I got an anon asking if Gilthawen was Thranduil’s queen, and tbh at this point in my brain I’m genuinely not sure. So either way here’s a quick (silly) run-down on the cast:

Oropher, Thranduil, and Legolas you obviously know (I assume).

Angmeril is the one who marries Thranduil actually, although they were very Stoic Warrior Bros about it when they first realized they like-liked each other during the Last Alliance, because they had Their Duties To Consider, and didn’t actually get together (or talk about it except That One Time Vaguely, as you do) until after they got home. She has the standard “no, fewer battles than that pls” Greenwood energy, but is (relatively speaking) Very ResponsibleTM most of the time because she’s trying to live up to mum’s example and be a Dutiful Leader. Deadpan humor, mean right hook. Likes short weapons so she can make sure her enemy is dead up close and personal. Y’know, ladylike queen shit.

Merilgais was pretty young when she want to war and lost her mum and now is basically feral. But a really cheerful feral! (tbh she was kind of feral to begin with.) On one hand, you definitely want her with you in a sketchy bar, because she is always down to fight so she’ll have your back when a brawl inevitably starts. On the other hand, you don’t want her with you, because she will also 100% start the brawl if one doesn’t happen naturally. Think: Gabby Kinney, Middle-earth style. Is single-handedly responsible for at least 60% of everyone else’s (metaphorical*) grey hair. (Thranduil gets the other 40%.) Likes big long weapons for causing maximum chaos.

*elves have silver hair, not grey. we get it, professor.

Gilthawen was the mother of Angermil and Merilgais. They’re all native Silvan elves of Greenwood. She was a commander in Greenwood’s army in the Last Alliance and basically Oropher’s #2 during the war. They die together in the fatal charge, Gilthawen crumpled over the body of the king she died knowing she’d failed to save (because Greenwood is a tragedy underneath a golden smile, even when I’m being flippant). Always felt sort of guilty for bringing her daughters to war, but given the stakes she couldn’t come up with an argument good enough to justify stopping them. One of the few contenders in this madcap forest for role of The Sensible OneTM. That’s why chaos won and Greenwood is Like ThatTM now I guess: no more Sensible Mom Energy.

Tiraran is basically second-in-command after Thranduil, and oversees the warriors of Greenwood. He’s one of the oldest native-to-Greenwood elves still living (since most of them died in the L.A.) and was Oropher’s first good buddy in the forest. Often serves as the closest thing Greenwood gets to a voice of reason, which isn’t saying much. Generally unruffleable, so when he loses his cool you know shit’s hit the fan. Super loyal to Thranduil, but will not hesitate to tell him he’s being a dick. (Will also just smirk to himself silently watching the dick-moves when he thinks they’re funny.) Just because he can recognize what would be the sensible course of action doesn’t mean he’ll do it, though. He’s still a Greenwood dude.

Tarlas is Thranduil’s closest councilor and is the dude whom Oropher left in charge when he went to the Last Alliance. Favors speechcraft over warfare, and is probably 80% of Thranduil’s impulse control in any given negotiation. He and Tiraran disagree in just about every situation which makes them very effective advice-giving-partners actually, and they basically tag-teamed their way through the Third Age holding Greenwood (and Thranduil) together with spit and elf-tape. Eventually the dumbasses realized that they liked arguing a little too much and got married. This did not make them start agreeing on anything, they just smooch too.

Rílaerloth takes after both her aunt Merilgais and her grandad a little too much for her own health or anyone else’s good, and Legolas would like to point-out that having an older sister who is two thousand years older than you is unfair on many levels actually. Very much embraces the Greenwood Style of yeeting herself into combat even especially when the enemy is seven times her size. Teases her brother mercilessly. Believes that having fun is a way of fighting the Shadow, or at least giving it the metaphorical middle finger. Would give it the actual middle finger too if someone ever introduces that gesture to Middle-earth. Would probably get on super-well with both Boromir and Éomer; less so Faramir or Frodo.

Eregmegil is a Sindar elf who followed Oropher to Greenwood (or the son of two who did; I'm still going back and forth on whether or not he’s old enough to actually remember Doriath). Now he’s Mister Stoic Warrior Guy who is super zen about all things no matter how crazy everybody else gets about shit. Might make for a good calm-the-fuck-down effect on Thranduil (and Merilgais) if he wasn’t too chill to bother. Has an even bigger anti-Noldor grudge than Thranduil, he’s just quiet about it. Also super loyal. (Good thing Thranduil doesn’t want to do a Kinslaying of his own, because Eregmegil would just assume he had a good reason and start slicing without questioning.) About as buff and burly as elves can get. If anybody in Greenwood carries an oversized anime-sword, it’s this guy.

Also I don’t read The Hobbit enough so I kind of forgot Galion existed, so at some point I need to work him into things because you can’t just ignore the One And Only Named Elf In All Of Mirkwood whoops.

No I’m not having too much fun designing Greenwood/Mirkwood’s elves for my stories why do you ask.

1. Oropher  - first king of Greenwood. would punch god. no chill. 2. Thranduil - second king of Greenwood. prince of sass. 3. Legolas - oh sweet summer child. 4. Rílaerloth - too much big sister energy in one container. 5. Angmeril - punched gil-galad once. not sorry. 6. Merilgais - SHE HAS A KNIFE 7. Tiraran - keeper of Greenwood’s one brain-cell. very gay. 8.  Tarlas - married to the braincell keeper. shares custody sometimes. 9. Eregmegil - tall. broad. very chill. might actually be a tree. 10. Gilthawen - did not ask for any of this. and yet here we are.

[picrew source]