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Greenleaf's Day Out, Chapter 4: Secrets in the Stacks (young Legolas family fic)

Completed Work: Chapters [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Summary: Legolas struggles with his reading lessons and finds help and encouragement from his scholarly brother, Prince Arvellas. (brief OC character profile in end notes).

Word Count: 3.2k

Content: G-rated, fluff, family, comedy

To Read on AOC: Link

Divider credit: @firefly-graphics

Greenleaf's Day Out

Chapter 4 - Secrets in the Stacks

Third Age 250

The Woodland Realm, Greenwood the Great

Legolas yawned and pushed the heavy, leather-bound tome across the table away from him. “I am bored,” he announced loudly. His complaint jarred the peace of the enormous and mostly deserted main hall of the palace library.

The elfling who sat on the opposite end of the long table raised her auburn head. “Well then,” she said crisply. “Keep it to yourself and keep quiet. Those of us who are not bored are trying to work.” She ducked her head once more and returned to the lengthy scroll unfurled before her, scratching furiously at it with a brown feather quill.

Legolas gaped at her for a moment, before the O-shape of his mouth twisted into a scowl. Screwing up his eyes, he stuck his tongue out as far as it could go and held it there, waiting for her to take notice.

A reproving sigh came from a voice familiar but unseen. “Your Highness, you know well it is not proper to make faces, especially at young ladies.”

Hearing this, the she-elf bristled and raised her head. Legolas immediately relaxed his face into an expression of innocence.

He had enjoyed barely an hour at the stables with Gelir when his morning of freedom was cut short. His mistake had been getting distracted and lingering in one place for too long. Word of his whereabouts passed on and on from mouth to ear until it eventually reached Ninniel’s attention. The next thing the princeling realized, he was seated behind a great oak desk in the palace library, with books and scrolls encircling him in stacks that rose above the top of his head.

“If that book is not to your taste, then perhaps we could find something better suited to your interests.” Belorfing was a palace tutor, and a member of the realm’s exclusive guild of academics and scholars. Legolas rather liked the nickname he’d heard palace residents use for them: “the Inkhands”, for the perpetual stains on their fingers from hours of spent copying texts. But this morning, Belorfing’s chief duty was to provide the young prince a helping of schooling for the day, upon the request of his wife Ninniel. She did not say it outright, but Legolas knew that being sent to study when he was supposed to be on holiday was a small punishment for his earlier acts of mischief.

“This text simply drones on and on without end,” Legolas groaned, his head flopping down against his outstretched arm. “I cannot seem to care about it.” The truth was, he had been given the choice of whether to practice his writing, his oral recitations, or his reading, and the last option had seemed to be the least taxing…at least at the time they were presented to him.

Tauriel’s head whipped up again, and she cast him a look heavy with incredulity and disdain. “That is the Valaquenta!” she sputtered, pointing at the rejected book. “How can you even think of calling the Valar boring?!”

“I did not say they were boring, I said this is!” Legolas retorted, slapping a hand on the closed book. “Whoever wrote it did not do a very good job, if they managed to make the likes of Ainur seem dull as rocks.”

“Perhaps if you placed more focus on completing your reading assignments quickly, you would be able to move on to more exciting texts in our lesson plan,” said Tauriel, primly tossing her auburn braid across one shoulder. “While you dawdle on the Creation accounts, I am about to start on the War of the Jewels.”

“You are not!” Legloas blurted out, his face suddenly flushing pink. It was a surprise to no one that Tauriel was ahead of him in their shared lessons, but realizing she was that far advanced struck him with shame.

“I am!” She sniffed and went right back to scribbling. “And you could be too, if you stopped wasting hours in play."

Lost for words, Legolas fought the urge to make another rude face. Not for the first time, he wished Eru could have blessed him with a different birthmate, so he could spend his days with someone a little less aggravating and a little more fun. Despite her stubborn focus on their studies, Tauriel did not aspire to be an Inkhand herself; she declared loudly and often that she would someday be a healer, an even more exclusive profession in the kingdom. Legolas didn’t understand how or why she was already thinking of such things. Not even his Ada has asked him to consider what he aspired to someday be, which was a relief since he hadn’t the slightest clue.

“Speed is of no importance here.” Their tutor’s voice was kind but firm, and defused the brewing conflict. “Your progress is your own; it is not a competition.” He rested a hand on one of the tall stacks and gave Legolas an encouraging nod. “Because this is an informal session today, you may choose whatever text you wish to read. Anything on this table, or even the entire library.”

“Truly?” Legolas brightened. “Anything?”

“Go back and explore the stacks, but do not take too long. Leave enough time to finish a few chapters before luncheon.”

“Thank you!” The princeling pushed back his chair with a loud scrape that echoed in the library’s silence. He bounded off, pretending not to hear yet more of Tauriel’s irritated clucking.

The library at Bâr Lasgalen, the Elvenking’s abode, held one of the largest archives of written work on the continent, second only to that of Osgiliath and even above that of Imladris, or so Belorfing boasted to Legolas. But the teacher also shared with him that it had not always been so. Belorfing, in his own youth, had been there during the first days of the great palace, and had since helped gradually build up the library and the collection it housed to its current grandeur.

“Your father is the most voracious reader I had ever known in my life,” Belorfing once said to an eager princeling, who craved stories about his father more than any tale of Elven lore or legend, since so seldom did the King speak of himself. “He has read perhaps every single book and scroll within these halls, some more than once, and can recite back passages from many of them to the letter.”

Little Legolas had laughed at this, believing it to be a joke. “Ada? A reader?” In all his few years, he didn’t think he had seen his father hold a book even once. The Woodland King was not a scholar but a great warrior, like Mirion and Turhir, or so everyone he knew proclaimed.

“His Majesty was born before Beren ever set eyes on Luthien Tinuviel,” Belorfing said, and then clarified further for the puzzled child, “He has been alive for many, many years. He has had much time to read to his heart’s content.”

The knowledge of his father’s passion for reading only made Legolas more determined to prove himself as well-versed as at least stodgy Tauriel. He stepped briskly among the high shelves, pausing every now and then to examine a title. But the choices were too many, and the young elf’s mind struggled with the burden of the decision to pick just one.

Within minutes, he bore a heavy stack of books in his arms that reached up to his chin. Realizing he was coming back to the same dilemma he had started with, Legolas set the pile back on the ground in a frustrated huff. Think, think, he commanded himself. This should not be so difficult, if silly Tauriel manages it so well.

A pensive glance upward led to a sudden inspiration, as his eyes beheld the higher shelves that rose up to the circular roof, the narrow balcony accessible by a single staircase. He had never browsed the upper level of the stacks. All the material from his assigned readings were kept on the lower floor, easily accessible. He had always assumed the more onerous volumes, only suitable for the Inkhands and therefore of little interest to him, were stashed up there gathering dust.

All the more would reading one of those books show Tauriel and more importantly, impress his father!

Mindful of his time limit, Legolas raced up the stairs, his agile footsteps producing no noise even in his rush. He was not sure why, since the upper level was not off limits as far as he knew, but he felt like he would get into trouble just for setting foot in the area.

He gazed back down and saw that Tauriel had not moved at all from her position, and that Belorfing was absorbed in his own reading at the farther corner of the room. He wondered how visible he would be from down there, when his head barely came above the balcony railing.

“ Focus,” he muttered, hearing echoes of Tauriel’s challenge in his mind. But the leather spines and covers in those shelves were even more confounding than the ones down below, and many of them bore no titles at all.

Now desperate, he pulled out a fat black tome closest to his reach and tucked it under his arm. As he turned to head back towards the staircase however, an oddity caught his eye. A dull gleam in the empty space left behind where he’d taken the book.

A keyhole.

He quickly removed several more of the surrounding volumes and revealed the small door, barely two feet high and even less in width, built into the back of the shelf. The elfling grinned, reached out and stuck his finger against the keyhole. In the next half-second, he yelped and jerked backward in shock--not from the thing he’d touched, as it was just an ordinary keyhole, but because of the unexpected voice that suddenly called him by name.

“Of course you of all people would uncover this little secret space in the vastness of this entire room.” His brother Arvellas crouched down, for the low shelf with the hidden door came up only to his waist. “Not that the discovery will do you any good, since only one key exists for this lock.”

“It is you, isn’t it?” Legolas grinned, standing on his toes gleefully as Arvellas started putting the books back on the shelf to conceal the door. “You have the key--this is your secret compartment!”

“You give me too much credit, little brother,” Arvellas said with a chuckle. “If you believe I have the power, cleverness, or nerve to build a hidden door in the king’s library. Nay, this existed long before my time. I am merely borrowing it from Ada. In fact, he holds the only key so only by his leave can I retrieve or leave anything.”

“What do you store in there?”

Arvellas stood straight and gave him a reproachful but gentle look. “It would not be a very good secret if I were to simply tell you, would it not?”

“I suppose.” Legolas frowned. “But if something wondrous actually dwells inside this library, I would just like to know what it is.”

“You need no secret door for that! Mysteries and treasures beyond the price of gold are all over these walls,” Arvellas said, with a sweeping gesture at the shelves around them. “If you think it tedious work to practice your letters for an hour or two a day, just imagine the labor it took from hundreds of scribes across many centuries to create all these.”

Legolas noted the black ink marks on the older prince’s fingers and palms, remembering that he was perhaps chief among those laborers in the Greenwood. Whereas his other brothers were rarely to be found inside the palace during the daylight hours, Arvellas was hardly seen outdoors while the sun was up. The only times Legolas could count on seeing him was when he went to the library for lessons, or at suppertime when their whole family dined together in the courtyard by the light of the stars.

“Here…” Arvellas held out a book to him, bound in rich green leather with gold lettering on the cover. “You may keep it for as long as you wish, although it is my hope that it would not take you too long to finish.”

“The Powers of Arda,” Legolas lifted the cover to read the author page. “By Arvellas Thranduilion.” His eyes widened. “You wrote this?”

“That and a few others.” Arvellas laughed. “Judging by your tone, you thought all I do is study and make copies of texts, of the works of others?”

“No,” Legolas denied, flushing scarlett in his lie. That was indeed what he had assumed. In the elfling’s mind, record keeping was the task of elves at least his father’s age, or older. He did not equate any of his brothers with those regal, albeit stuffy, lords.

“Belorfing told me you are struggling to finish the Valaquenta,” said Arvellas. “That account, however beautiful and true, was written in the Years of the Trees, its words from ages long past. Perhaps my version will be more to your liking. I have done my best to make a thorough narration, leaving none of the ancient knowledge out, but using language a bit more straightforward and, might I say, spirited."

Legolas hugged the book to his chest, his face awash with newfound admiration. “This sounds brilliant! I would like to read all of the books you’ve written.”

“Start with that one first and see how you fare.” Arvellas smiled and placed a guiding hand on the younger elf’s shoulder. “Come. Maybe a bit more quiet and privacy will help further your concentration.”

After relaying their plan to Belorfing, Arvellas escorted his brother through a door in the far-eastern corner of the library, a chamber that until then, Legolas had only managed to peer into, but never enter. It was the scribes’ workshop, or scriptorium, as Arvellas later explained. Only one other elf sat inside working steadily at his station. He glanced up, surprise registering momentarily over his face, but then he simply inclined his head to acknowledge the princes before returning to his task. He did not question the child’s presence.

The silence in the chamber was even more profound than that of the main hall, but Legolas found he did not mind it. He settled into a cushioned armchair that Arvellas placed beside his own work station, and the two brothers worked side-by-side. Legolas took to the task of reading his new book, and though every so often his thoughts would drift away from the pages, something about Arvellas’s near presence took him back. The sounds the elder prince made--the rustle of parchment sheets, the dance of his quill upon paper, fluid and effortless (unlike Tauriel’s furious scratching), even the occasional, barely perceptible murmur of a thoughtful, “ Hmm ”--made a music of their own.

Legolas lost awareness of how much time had passed until Belorfing finally came to fetch him, amazing the elfling with the announcement that study time was over. He had never managed to sit still and read for more than fifteen minutes before, much less a whole hour!

“If all books were written like yours, then I would not struggle so much to read and learn my history,” Legolas declared, skipping upon the stone patterns on the floor while Arvellas walked alongside him as they exited the library. Much to the elfling’s delight, his brother offered to go and take lunch with him. Legolas usually ate luncheon with only his mother, and occasionally his father, but rarely did his brothers pause their daily business to include it in their schedule.

“That is a kind compliment of my work, brother, but I am sure you exaggerate,” said Arvellas. “Countless authors and books exist in this world and as you grow and learn, you will find much to entertain and educate you.”

“Or perhaps the problem is with me,” Legolas said. He stopped and looked up at Arvellas with mournful eyes. “I think I simply hate reading,” he whispered, as though confessing a dreadful sin to Eru himself.

Arvellas’s laughter puzzled him. “Even if that were true, and you hate reading now, you have years ahead of you to change your mind,” he said. “It takes time for some. Ada once admitted to me that he read very little for the first thousand years of his life. His interest caught fire only after he met Ammë and found inspiration in their travels together.”

He smiled at the renewed hope in Legolas’s eyes and continued, “I myself refused to sit and read more than a few pages until I was twelve. Ammë found herself having to constantly reassure Ada that his son would not be illiterate.” He shrugged. “Like you, perhaps, I lacked interest in the work of others and desired to create accounts of my own.”

Legolas balked at the idea. “If you have seen my practice scrolls, you would find I am not much better at writing.”

“Then life as a scholar may not be for you, and that is all right. There are many other paths to choose from that are suitable for a prince of Greenwood,” concluded Arvellas.

Legolas looked relieved as he considered this, but then blurted out in genuine distress, “I just want to do well enough in my lessons so I can keep up with Tauriel! She thinks I am a halfwit!”

“A halfwit ?” There was a hint of secret knowledge in Arvellas’s smile. “She told you so?”

“Not in those exact words,” Legolas admitted. “But the other things she says make it clear what her thoughts of me are. She is so… so… vexing .”

“Then we must correct her perception of you,” said Arvellas. “I shall speak to Ammë on her return and make some arrangements--”

He blinked, cut off and caught off-guard by his brother’s loud whoop. The excited Legolas promptly turned a somersault, flipped into a handstand, and proceeded in that position the rest of the way into the dining hall. Arvellas followed behind, amused by his brother’s joy and yet wondering what he might have gotten himself into.

Continue reading: Chapter 5 - Royal Welcome

NOTES:

ARVELLAS THRANDUILION 3rd Prince of Mirkwood Year of Birth: Third Age 89 Most noteworthy skills: various degrees of literacy and fluency in many Middle-Earth tongues (eventually including limited understanding of Khuzdul and even of the Black Speech) Notable physical feature: light facial hair (mustache and beard, appearance varies in time) Hair Color: dark brown Eye Color: blue Etymology: "King's Leaf" (Sindarin)

BAR LASGALEN ("House of Greenleaves" - Sindarin) A grand palace and surrounding lands built by Thranduil in Second Age 2022, located north of Amon Lanc just east of the Gladden Fields. While only a prince at the time, Thranduil built the palace for his beloved, Lady Maereth, after she had refused his proposal of marriage. This gesture of his, among other deeds to prove his devotion, swayed her decision and they were married a few years after its completion. Upon the death of Oropher and the ascension of Thranduil to the throne in SA 3434, the lands of Bâr Lasgalen became the new capital of the Greenwood Realm and seat of the royal family.

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