Little Moon
Updates: Laughing All the Way to London. I finished writing the last two chapters but I hate them sooooo, I have to rewrite them. My head has been a mess so I have about eight chapters of various fics that need to be edited that I can't wrap my head around. But I restarted the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogy so here we are.
oOo
KEYnote: Alright, timeline wise, it doesn't matter, just know it's actually within the realm of possibility. The elves, I'm taking libriterites with, also Legolas doesn't have a Tolkien age so I am scaling him young. HP and Tolkien timelines DO NOT MATCH, like at all, no equal timelines whatsoever.
Chapter 7 - Little Moon
Thorin had rarely been so furious.
"We will die in these uncherished caves. Look at the poor craftsmanship!" Bofur despaired.
"It's nicer than the last dungeon I was in," Luna remarked with a slight grimace.
Kili scowled across the space between their cells, they could see about half their company. "Why would you be put in a dungeon?"
“Aside from enraging elf kings worse than our uncle,” Fili chipped in.
Thorin had been placed in the same cell as Luna purely on account of him preventing any other elf from coming near her.
Luna's gaze went distant, "We were captured during the war." Her gaze sharpened on Thorin, "Will the elves torture us too?"
Too.
His heart broke for her, no child should ever know such pain. And a woman should be protected. He wondered again why Gandalf had allowed her to come.
However, he was all too aware how this mere child had succeeded against, or avoided, all the trials of this journey until now.
The blessings of Durin were with her, and she meant to be with them.
Thorin spoke gently as he could despite his anger, "It is unlikely. The elves have many faults but crude torture is not their want."
"How old were you?" Bawlin asked.
"Sixteen," she said easily before a hardness entered her voice. "They didn't break me, not with spell or knife. I told them nothing."
Thorin had to fight to not growl, he had to remind himself that she was from the Lands of Exile.
The Lands of Punishment.
Such a place wasn't even a true fear among most in Middle Earth, the rumours of such a place… well, it was a place for the very ancient to be punished, far beyond the concerns of mortals.
Thorin turned up his palm and Luna laid her small hand gently in his, "We will never let such a thing happen to you again."
She smiled, but her eyes held sorrow, sorrow older than her years. "War cares not for such promises. I fear the Elven King's greed, Thorin Oakenshield. I fear Lord Elrond's warning. What happens if we remove Smaug from the mountain? What powers will step forward? If the treasure is as large as you suggest… who will come?"
Thorin shook his head, "If we reclaim Erebor then our people will return home."
"And the woodelves? What will they do if there is no dragon?" she asked, gripping his hand, the only sign of her fear.
"They will respect us," Thorin growled.
Luna raised her brows, looking uncannily like an elf herself in her fairness and with hair as white as the elf-king's.
Fili chuckled, "The girl does have a point." His nephew gestured to the surroundings, "This doesn't precisely scream respect."
"We will make them respect us."
Luna pulled her hand back from Thorin's then, her gaze wary.
"Luna-" he began, but she cut him off.
"I am not afraid of dragons, King Under the Mountain, but I do fear war. Perhaps we should ally with Thranduil."
He gaped at her, then all but roared, "After what he did to you!? After what he did to us–" He cut himself off when he saw that she flinched back away from him, pressing herself into the stones.
He reminded himself that she was still young by human standards and fought to even his tone as he said, "The elves cannot be trusted, they are not allies."
Luna didn't look at him when she spoke, "How many would die for the pride of dwarves and elves?"
Thorin wasn't sure what to say to that, if it had been anyone else he would have snapped at them, but Luna's cheek was still a bit red where the elf-bastard had struck her and he had not the heart to reprimand her.
She glanced up at him, "If you were human, I would say this would end in blood and not fire as you led Bilbo to believe. Humans are far more dangerous than dragons."
Thorin frowned, "Humans have yet to defeat a dragon."
"In my world, humans drove dragons into extinction and drowned the world in blood and ash. I've seen war, I've killed and seen my people, innocent and fighters, alike parish for greed and fear. I do not like the elves, but are they evil? Would it be impossible to find a compromise with them? Not trust, just a deal?"
Thorin frowned at her, "You seem so sure that it will come to war?"
"You hate them," Luna said, "You even hated Lord Elrond when he showed you not but kindness."
Thorin twitched, "Elrond is a self entitled snob."
"And Thranduil's heart has been corrupted by hate and greed. To ignore him is dangerous."
"He let our people starve, fend for ourselves when we asked for their aid," Thorin growled. "We owe them nothing."
Luna stared at him with unreadable eyes, "But you owe your people much. Unless you are fighting evil, then war accomplishes only one thing."
Thorin raised a brow, "And what is that, Lady Lovegood?"
She met his eyes directly and said, "Pain and death."
Thorin felt a shiver go up his spine and looked away even as he muttered, "No one said it would come to war."
Luna pulled up her legs to her chest and said into her knees, "I think I prefer the Shire to the East."
Thorin's heart gave another twist, wanting to reassure this child who was hardly a child at all.
She was a creature too large hearted, too gentled spirited for the real world, to be exposed to such dangers.
But she had already lived through so much. Thorin wondered at her lack of bitterness, that she could remain so selfless when she had been so wronged in her short life.
Bofur asked, "Lassie, tell us the tale of your war so we might understand better?"
Luna sighed, closing her eyes as her voice filled the carven dungeons, "It was a world of magic and secret and we were a world divided."
The tale started before her birth, the first war ending with her friend's, Harry the Black's parents death, and began again when she was ten years old, when Harry first went to some sort of magical school where children were separated from their families.
She spoke mostly of Harry until her fifth year.
Where her and her friends formed an army because their elders were trying to leave them defenseless.
The tale only grew darker from there, from her father's betrayal to her own capture and subsequent escape when the real war started.
As evil as all the Dark Lords of Middle Earth were, Thorin had never heard of any who targeted children in mass before.
"Why target children?" Oin asked, Bifur, the toymaker beside him, looking nothing short of murderous.
Luna shrugged, "Grindelwald, the Dark Lord before him didn't. I think it's because Voldemort started so young. Harry said he killed a girl when he was still attending school."
"That's monstrous," Thorin breathed.
She flinched curling in on herself, "I killed people before graduating."
Thorin laid a gentle hand on her arm, "Murder is different, child, from fighting in a war."
"They are just as dead," she murmured.
"And how many more would be dead if you hadn't fought? If they had been allowed to live and kill innocents?"
She looked up at him, resting her chin on her knees, "I don't ever want to do that again."
"Yet you set out to help us kill a dragon?" Thorin asked.
She shrugged, "Death is a part of life. War does not have to be. Part of tending to others is knowing when their mortal lives have come to an end. I do not pretend to know when all creatures ought to pass on, but I know that dragon sickness is a terrible fate and one no dragon would wish upon another."
Thorin could not reconcile how old she sounded just then.
Men were strange beings and their females perhaps stranger for their strength was forged in different fires that Thorin did not pretend to understand.
"War scares you more than dragons," he repeated.
She nodded.
"Then once the drake is dead you must not stay at the Lonely Mountain."
Balin protested, "Wait, that was never the plan. That's why we brought Bilbo. To regain the Arcane Stone and unite our people under a single banner. Not kill the dragon and resettle Erebor."
Thorin looked across the expanse at his old friend, "Would it not be better to reclaim our home?"
Balin was gaping at him, "I understood you and the wizard were talking about this vaguely but Thorin- we are thirteen dwarves, we are not an army of any stretch of the imagination, we are not– We are not prepared. We could not call to help in time and how would we kill the dragon?"
"In the story you told us," Luna said. "You said there was a city of men? Do they still dwell near the mountain?"
"In Laketown, yes," Bofur said, "But–"
"Then they will know how to kill it," she stated matter of factly.
They all stared at her.
Balin said slowly, "There was an archer who knocked a single scale from the dragon, however, that is no guarantee-"
"They are human," Luna snapped. "They can kill anything they set their mind to destroying and if they have lived in the shadow of fear for decades someone among them would have come up with something."
Thorin stared at her, concerned now at finally hearing the bitterness in her tone, about her own people.
Not that Thorin much liked her people anyhow.
Bofur asked gently, "Why do you think that?"
"Because," she said dully. "In every man is born good and evil, and evil too often wins."
Thorin pulled her into a hug, and the child fell lax in his arms as if the effort of holding herself together had finally been lifted. She settled against him like a kitten finding someplace warm to nest.
She fell asleep not long after.
It was a silent pledge between them all that they would see her to safety. Bofur and Oin offered to return with her and Bilbo if they did indeed by some miracle slay Smaug and war came to their foothills. The others would have liked to go but all agreed they would need them for the upcoming battles.
Bofur was handy in a fight, but gentle natured and Oin was getting on in years. Balin was too keen a techticticain to part with.
The company worried for the days that passed.
But Bilbo came through for them, providing their escape in wine barrels.
oOo
Legolas followed his Adar out of the hall. The King hadn't stayed at the feast very long and he had drunk faster than he ever had before.
His father didn't stumble until they were just outside his chamber.
Legolas dismissed the guard before putting his shoulder under his adar's shoulder.
The king didn't protest, which was when Legolas truly began to worry.
"Adar?" Legolas asked as his father sat heavily on his bed, bowing his head in a gesture of defeat he had never witnessed from His father before.
Ever so gently, Legolas took off his crown and set it on the side table. Then he knelt at his sire's feet, "Adar, please speak to me?"
Adar didn't look at him, staring down at his hands, and he said brokenly, "Êlúriel, oh, Êlúriel…"
Legolas stilled, he was very young when his mother had disappeared and his Adar had ceased speaking of her, ceased allowing others to speak of her.
The girl today was the first to speak that name in nearly two hundred years. Legolas himself had hardly been of full maturity at hundred-twenty-eight years old.
Though he knew himself to be spoiled.m, he was, after all, the last elf child to be born in Middle Earth. It was sometimes annoying as his kin rarely let him get into trouble on his own, but then, he had never known a lack of love. Which was true of all elfings, but for him, almost all their Kingdom was as an uncle, aunty, brother, or sister.
Legolas took one of his father's hands and repeated, "Adar…"
King Thandruil looked up at him with tears falling from his eyes, "We fought that night. I do not know why Êlúriel did not come home, but I know why she left. Legolas, my son, you don't have a mother because of me."
Legolas squeezed his hand, wanting to ask what the fight was about and at the same time, not wanting to know.
In all likelihood, his mother had been killed or succumbed to some darker fate beneath the malice of evil things that ventured ever deeper into their realm. No matter what they had fought about, that would never be his Adar's fault.
So instead, he said, "I was young, Adar, but not a child."
Adar gripped his hand tightly to the point of almost pain and more emotions than he had ever seen on his sire's face were there for him to read.
Pain, regret, and deepest, deepest sorrow.
"If I had seen her body I would have left you too, but hope has hardened my heart. I'm in love with a memory, but it is a just fate that I suffer in this purgatory for being the cause of her departure."
Legolas had never seen his Adar like this and despite not knowing the circumstances, he knew that the pain of losing a mother paled in comparison to severing the other half of one's soul. So he said, "It wasn't–"
Adar spoke over him, the words almost hissed out. "She was with child."
Legolas stilled.
A sibling?
A younger sibling?
His heart twisted and he squeezed his hand, "I am so sorry, Adar."
"We lost them both." Then his adar pulled away, tears still fresh on his cheeks. "Goodnight, my son."
Legolas knelt frozen as his father turned his back on him and stretched curled up alone on his bed.
A dismissal.
One Legolas took, leaving the room swiftly and closing the door softly behind him.
He felt oddly light, his heart in knots as he tried to think through…
The stolen possibilities.
The reason why everyone treated him so softly, even visiting Lords from distant lands. Why he had never been allowed to travel on his own. Why his father was so angry, so cold, so distant at times.
He hadn't just lost his wife.
But a child.
An unborn child.
Legolas went up and up, searching for something, for solace, for council amongst the stars.
He wasn't the last elf born in Middle Earth.
Or maybe he was but he wasn't supposed to be.
A rustling went through the leaves, a breeze, a wind, a quiet song of the wood.
His home. His kingdom. His wood.
It's not yours. No one owns them. You belong to them.
In his grief, Legolas felt empty, and he let himself follow that quiet song, that soft call. It took him North, far from the spiders and far from his father.
oOo
Escaping was too easy.
Luna's 'inhuman' way of walking that she had caused her to skip most places to be called flaky rather than freakish, made her just one of the crowd here. Her appearance was easily masked by the cloak she picked up from one of the guards. She let some of her hair spill forward and it was like a free pass.
It was she who provided the distraction to draw the guards attention away from the wine cellar. And it was she who pulled the lever to be left behind. She promised them all that she would find her own means of escape.
Thankfully she had earned their trust by now.
There weren't many elves in need of being waylaid as the dungeons were deep below, and fortress or no, the elves had been described as loving the stars.
She went up, and up, and up, till she found an opening between branches, a staircase, and a watch tower.
It was nothing for her to leap from one tree branch to the next.
Unfortunately, it was nighttime, and it wasn't until the sun rose did she realize she had Northwest rather than East.
Luna sighed to herself, but a rebellious part of her, the part of her that had finally learned who and what she was, delighted in the time she would spend with the trees.
And despite knowing she was supposed to be hiding from the other woodland elves, she couldn't help singing softly to every tree she touched, greeting them, and speaking to them at night when she took her rest.
The sickness that had laid over the path that Gandalf had directed them to seemed distant here, these trees were old and wise. And they protected themselves.
She found food and little springs easily.
Some nights she would go up to the uppermost branches and talk to the stars who glimmered down on her.
Had this been her home, she might have been happy.
But such wishes were foolish, and besides, she would have never met Harry or the dragons otherwise.
She might have even been fearful of dragons.
That seemed such a strange notion.
Days passed, until a week or more had slipped past her count. Luna knew she was taking too long, she was even putting herself in danger of being found by the elves again. But she couldn't help but greet all the trees she passed, listening to the way the wind moved through them.
There was something magical about Middle Earth, as if the divine were closer, and unlike in the Exiled West. The things that grew and died here were awake and aware of themselves in their nature, and there was something beautiful about that.
One evening, however, she nearly fell to the ground when one of the trees opened its eyes and greeted her in turn.
Plunging toward the ground, she was caught by a branchy hand.
Luna looked up into the kindly face of a beautiful soul of an old heart of a living tree.
"Hello," Luna said.
The tree smiled at her and said in a voice of aged wonder, "Greetings, elfling, many star passings have there been since your kin spoke to us."
"I am new to Middle Earth," Luna said. "I arrived from the West only this year."
The tree let out a great breath of air that blew her hair back from her face. It hummed, "You are an elfling."
"So I've learned. May I ask what you call yourselves?"
The tree laughed, like the tingling of leaves in early autumn, "Our language is much too long even for your kind, though not as hasty as humans or dwarves you may be. But, in brief, we are Entwives."
"What name may I call you and if there are Entwives?" Luna asked. "Are there Enthusbands?"
"Treelyn," she answered before sighing, "Lost they are to us are our Ents."
Treelyn began her tale and other Entwives joined her with their dark eyes and beautiful formations. They were more reminiscent of giants in their shape than human, melded and bonded with different species of trees.
By the end of their tale, Luna was in tears, "When was the last time you asked anyone about them?"
"Thousands of years," an Entwive with cherry-blossoms said, "The elves don't talk to us anymore."
That made Luna mad.
How could the elves not help them?
They were woodelves.
"Elfing!" Treelyn called but Luna was already running back through the branches.
She might not want to admit to being an elf but she would do what she had to help these people, these beings who were trees given voice and heart, their families back.
There have been no Entlings for a terrible long count of years.
She would make the elves help them. Whatever it took. Even if it meant admitting kinship to the bitter King.
Luna was so caught up in her own thoughts that from one bound and the next she ended up smacking full force into another body.
They both tumbled down, the branches beating them until the man caught her around the waist and caught a branch with his other arm before dropping them in a controlled fashion to a lower branch.
"You," she all but snarled at male who was an elf not a man.
He blinked at her, "You– escaped?"
She folded her arms, "You followed me."
He frowned, his blue eyes looking mournful, his blonde hair mussed from their fall. "I wasn't, I didn't even know– did the dwarves get out too?"
She just scowled at him.
"Did you hurt any of my people?"
"Of course not," she snapped.
He shook his head, "Who are you anyway?"
"Maybe you should have asked that before you captured and imprisoned me, don't you think?"
"I haven't raised a weapon against you now, have I? And you are the one who crashed into me."
Never one to hold onto anger she muttered, "Luna."
He offered her a wane smile, "Legolas." He tilted his head, "Where were you going in such a hurry."
Feeling her fury return, her hands fisted, "Did you know about the Entwives and Ents fate!?"
He looked utterly taken aback by her tone and the subject, "What– I mean, yes, I know. The Ents lost their Entwives when they fled during one of the great wars."
Luna's heart leaped, "You know where the Ents are!?"
His pale brows rose, "Yes, they live in the Fangorn Forest, at the southeastern flank of the Misty Mountains–"
She jumped, clapping, "Treelyn will be ecstatic, would it be easier to bring Entwives to them or the Ents to the Entwives."
He gaped at her, "You know where the Entwives are?"
She pointed in the direction she had come from, "That way, so much for this being your forest if you didn't know they were here. I was going back to your fortress to ask for help."
He stared at her, "Even after we captured you and held you prisoner?"
"This seems bigger than me."
He nodded, "Yes, I suppose–"
"Little Moon," Treelyn called as she came through the other trees that shifted out of her way. Treelyn steps were so massive that the space Luna had run, the Entwife covered in minutes. "Oh, another elfling."
Luna turned to the tree with a smile, "This is Legolas, he agreed to help, he knows where the Ents are."
Legolas, for his part, let out a low prayer in elvish as he stared up at Treelyn with awe.
But it was then that Luna remembered the dwarves and that they were going to poke at a sleeping dragon.
A dragon with dragon sickness.
"Legolas?"
The stunned elf turned to look back at her, blue eyes still wide.
"I still have to help my friends who I was travelling with.” She took the elf's hand in hers, she noted the calluses caused by weapon training. “Will you promise to help the Entwives for me?"
He bowed to her at the waist, "Upon my honour, Lady Luna, I swear it."
She grinned. Then pointed in the direction she thought was the right way, "That way is East, correct?"
He took her hand and pointed it to the right, "Find the river, where the hills slope downward. This far North isn't safe. The nights will begin to get too cold and though it is a straight shot to the Misty Mountains, crossing the wastes without a mount is not a pleasant journey."
She nodded.
"Thank you, Legolas." She turned to Treelyn, "It was a pleasure meeting you and yours. I wish you happiness in being reunited with your people."
Treelyn smiled, "Go with the blessing of the forest, Little Moon."
Luna didn't tarry, lest Legolas change his mind in letting her go.
oOo
The world was changing, they all felt it.
The last of the elf children had been born two hundred years ago. Even the newest of lovers were no longer inspired to have children.
Indeed, a shadow had fallen over Middle Earth and the elves had grown weary of it all. They knew how this played out, they had faced these evils, fought these wars, and the main difference between now and then was that there were less elves and less worthy men.
Talk of returning West had increased.
The last goodbyes were being made.
But something had changed in the last year, some Western wind turning East, carrying upon it something new, something unknown and unexpected.
Rumours of evil growing in the North were falling eerily silent.
But as rumours fell silent other things seemed to be… waking up.
Or perhaps not waking but waiting, like birdsong before the dawn, harkening the arrival of a new day before the day itself could rise.
It was a change that those of Imladris and Lothlorien listened to and were mindful of when Gandalf the Grey and Radagast the Brown called for aid. The very capable Lord Elrond and Lady Galadriel did not come alone.
Elrond's twin sons, Elladan and Elrohir rode with him as the brothers Haldir, Rúmil, and Orophin joined the Lady Galadriel.
The Necromancy and his risen ghosts proved fearsome enemies.
"You should have stayed dead!" Lord Elrond initiated the battle.
Though, let it just be said that the majority of the work, despite the presence of three wizards and seven elf lords, it was the Lady Galadriel who cast the Dark Lord back into the void from which he came.
Haldir sighed, rubbing his temple, "Curse the man who could not be parted with the ring."
Elrond bowed his head, cradling the Lady in his arms, "Cursed he was, for the ring betrayed him and he was slain. None knows what has become of it now. It is lost."
"And lost it shall remain," Saruman the White said.
Elladan shook his head, "I may be young among those here but that seems unwise, a shadow–"
"Are you learned about such things?" Saruman demanded of him.
"Well, no, but as a human child taught me all too recently, that which we are most certain to remain consistent can be shaken away in moments."
"And fall on their arse," Elrohir added solemnly, though his eyes were bright with mischief.
Haldir's heart lightened to see mirth in the twins again. Ever since their mother, Galadrial's daughter had passed on to the West after being attacked on the road, a hardness had clung to them.
While others sorrowed, Celebrían's fate had not, for lack of a better description, become them. Even Arwen, the youngest, was more swiftly recovering.
Then again.
What life was there for elves in Middle Earth. What future?
Even the Woodelves had stopped having children when King Thranduil and his Queen conceived only for Queen Êlúriel to disappear from Middle Earth, no one knowing the cause or if she still lived.
The babe she carried with her unborn.
Elven betrayals were rare, but in the time of conception of a child?
Unheard of.
Such was their world, no children being begotten, the chance of meeting your intended love grew slimmer.
Not that being unwed was rare or unnatural, but the majority of elves these days never found another who made their heart sing.
Unless one had the misfortune to fall for a mortal.
For mortal love was a song of only tragedy.
So could Haldir truly blame the twins for allowing coldness into their hearts due to the cruelties heaped upon their mother?
Saruman was arguing but finally Gandalf ended the debate with, "There are many evils at work that we can fight until the day comes that the ring is found. In the meantime, I must go. I fear my company is in danger."
Elrond nodded, "I will take Galadriel back to Lothlorien." He glanced at his sons, their uneasy expression, "You wish to join Gandalf, my sons?"
The twins exchanged a look then gazed at the grey wizard, and Elladan asked, "Would you welcome our help?"
"Of course I would," Gandalf said.
"I will go as well," Haldir threw in, not ready to return to the peace of the forest. He was growing ever more restless. He longed to find something in Middle Earth to keep him here, but the sea had begun to call to him. And he knew it would not be many more decades until he set sail with his lady to the Western shores.
oOo
AN: Please thoughts, responses, butterflies, and feedback on the chapter?