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Far Horizons  by Bodkin

Far Horizons Epilogue:  Lovers’ Meeting 

Thranduil left as soon as he was able: quietly, his departure unannounced, leaving his son to take charge in his absence.  He rode swiftly across the plain and through the pass, before dropping down into the forest, his sole company his two guards, whose presence now was so natural to him that he considered himself to be alone, or as alone as ever a king could be.

He was greeted by the clamour of the trees, each vying for his attention, and the rhythm of the healthy forest – birch and beech and oak, pine and willow and ash – all  rose up to meet him.   And through it all twined her song – as strong and pure and joyous as it had been before its sudden brutal sundering.  It rang in him, resuming its place, filling the spaces that had survived so long on nothing but its echoes.  He almost faltered, so affected by its power that he felt as if the fumes of some vast distillery had gone to his head, but he could not slow.  This was one moment he should relish and draw out – but he wanted it done.

She would not meet him here, he told himself – theirs was not a reunion to be made in public.  She would be waiting for him to seek her out.  He felt his breath shortening and forced himself to draw air into his lungs: air vibrant with the growth of living things.

The trees told him they were waiting.  Half a dozen elves, armed but not prepared to attack.  His guards shifted uneasily behind him, anxious, wanting to have the comfort of their weapons in their hands.  He had told them to hold back, but they did not have to like it.

‘Lord Thranduil,’ the leading elf said, inclining his head in a movement that could be taken as a bow.  ‘The Lady is awaiting your coming.’

He managed to sound, Thranduil noted with amusement, as if he was displeased by their procrastination and found the new arrivals to be less than impressive.

‘And you are?’ Thranduil asked.  It would take more than this elf to intimidate one who had spent more than an age as a king of a realm fighting Shadow.

‘I am Amondil,’ the elf replied coolly.  ‘I have been sent to ensure you reach the place where the Lady has chosen to meet you.’

‘Come then.’  This was not the time to indulge in diplomacy.  Not when she was waiting.  ‘Is it far?’

‘Can you not tell?’  Amondil raised his eyebrows.

‘I can tell.’

Thranduil dismounted and, abandoning his horse to the care of his guards, began to head off at an angle between the trees. 

One of the guards started after him, but Amondil put out a hand to stop him.  ‘Wait here,’ he commanded.  ‘The Lady wants their meeting to be private.  He will come to no harm.’

‘It would be as well,’ the second guard told his fellow.  ‘My lord would not thank you for making a third at this meeting.’

The trees sang his path, their voices reaching a crescendo of excited welcome, so that, when he stepped into the glade of sun-kissed beeches, their silence came as a shock.  He stopped and the speed with which his pulse had raced to bring him to this spot slowed.  The small waterfall trickled down the gleaming rocks, splashing the ferns and mosses, providing a joyful counterpoint to the rustling of the canopy.  Shafts of sunlight sliced down between leaves of living green, pooling on the rich russet brown of the forest floor, crowning with light the slender figure standing there.

He moved cautiously, as if afraid to startle her. 

She looked at him; her lord, her love, from whom she had been reft, with whom she was reunited, and she smiled.

‘You have not changed,’ she said.

‘You are even more beautiful,’ he replied.  ‘I have missed you.’

The understatement made him laugh softly, as the fleeting memory passed through him of long sleepless nights when he had not known if he could endure his aching hunger for her, when only duty and his love for his son had forced him to bear the torment of his longing.

‘I did not think you would come,’ she told him.  ‘I thought that your sense of obligation would hold you in the Greenwood.’

‘It kept me long enough,’ he sighed, ‘but no task lasts unchanged for ever.  I am here now.  If you still want me.’

They continued their slow approach, drifting closer to each other almost without volition, like leaves in a stream pushed together by the current, their eyes drowning in each other’s gaze.

‘I tried to stay with you,’ she said.  ‘I fought as long as I could.’

‘I failed you,’ he grieved.  ‘I should have kept you safe.’

She shook her head.  ‘You cannot be in control of everything about you, King of the Woodland Realm.  You did all you could.’

‘And now, Laerwen?’

‘And now we begin again,’ she smiled, raising her hand to touch his face, running her fingers along his cheek, like a breath of breeze in a bright dawn. 

He turned his head and placed a gentle kiss on her cool palm. 

His touch ignited a fire in her, a desperate need to be close to him, a longing for a contact that had been absent for so long, one that did not require conversation or explanations.

She closed her arms round him and held him with an urgent strength that surprised him, even as he clasped her to him.  Her kiss was sweet and fierce and deep and he returned it with a ferocity that alarmed him.  He eased back, not wishing to distress her.

‘I am not made of glass, my husband,’ she murmured softly against his lips.  ‘I will not break.  Would you like me to prove it?’

He laughed.  ‘No time for courting, my lady?  No gentle touches as we sit by the stream, or sweet caresses as we feed each other wild strawberries?  No hours spent in conversation as we watch the dance of the stars?’

‘That too,’ she conceded.

She drew him across the glade to pull him down beside her on a soft green bank studded with tiny white flowers. The stream rippled down between lush banks as tiny glass-like minnows swam against the current. 

‘This reminds me,’ Thranduil said in a voice warm with fond memory, ‘of a certain glade in Lasgalen.’ 

She smiled at him, soft blue-green eyes twinkling.  ‘Me, too,’ she admitted.  ‘It is why I chose to meet you here.’

He turned towards her, as serious as he had been when he had asked her to commit her life to him.  ‘We have been apart a long time, my wife,’ he said.  ‘I would not force myself on you in the heat of this very welcome moment.’

‘I have been longing for this reunion without expectation of reward since the hour my eyes opened to these lands,’ she said with quiet certainty.  ‘This interlude is ours, my lord.  None will approach us until we leave this grove.’  She grinned at him mischievously. ‘And I am less noble than you – I would force myself on you without hesitation.’  She stretched her hand to cup his head and leant towards him, meeting his eyes with patent sincerity.  ‘We need this, my lord,’ she said seriously.  ‘Once we have recreated our bonds, we can begin to build a new life together.  You and I – and our son.  We have lost so much, but we have another chance.’

‘We can take all the time we need,’ Thranduil told her, folding her gently in his arms and placing a delicate kiss on her brow.  ‘Let us enjoy the journey.’

 





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