A Better Place - The Hobbit Fanfiction

Alternate Entry Twenty-Seven - Attempted Survival

{Added pages are about 2/3 of the way through, at the 'eight minutes left' area.}

My arms were tucked safely in against my chest again to sleep. I lay on my back because it was the only way to lie without pressuring my arms or my shoulders and stared up at the domed ceiling, thinking about nothing in general. Mostly my mind drifted and I was all right with that.

I couldn't fall asleep sprawled there on my back so I worked my way out of the bed feeling like a two-legged turtle and padded over the cool stone floors and into the parlor, needing something else to look at. I stood at the window for a while but with the moon already hidden again I couldn't see anything. When I got tired of the window I stood in front of the bookcases and ran my eyes over every book title I could make out in the near-darkness. Most of the titles were embossed in gold or something else reflective, which made most of them fairly easy to read. I wondered how well elves could see in the dark. I looked over the small decorations—painted, shining ceramics or figurines or paintings—of the parlor walls or sitting on small stands or tables, wandering throughout the room and taking in more of it than I ever had before, and it took a surprising amount of time before I grew bored with my examination.

I wandered into the kitchen then and sat myself at Legolas's chair because that put the table at a good height to rest my head on. I kicked my feet lightly back and forth. A sigh swelled up from my belly and dispersed.

Perhaps a half an hour passed before I heard someone coming in behind me and curled sideways to see. Legolas moved a chair around to sit beside me. "Were you sleepwalking?"

"One has to fall asleep before they can sleepwalk."

"Ah."

"Usually we are not the ones who are close," I noted, nearly whispering because a house at night required a different shape of silence.

"Perhaps not," he allowed.

"I know you didn't approve, I suppose, of my friendship with your father at first."

"I did not know you well enough to know yet in what regard you would see my father."

"I often act more familiar than I feel."

He nodded. "I have noticed. I was glad to see that you were not naïve enough to believe that everyone automatically considers you their friend."

"I am glad you still permitted me to make my own decisions when it came to that. I hope you understand what I was doing."

"You were protecting yourself by making yourself an asset to someone powerful. Your logic was admirable. You hid it well with a particularly surprising cavalier demeanor."

"It is remarkable how much people don't notice when someone is smiling at them."

"And when said person is very talented at passing the impression that they haven't a care in the world."

"Yes, that too."

Legolas stood, going into the kitchen. He returned a minute later with a cluster of pale green grapes, a finger-length blade and a small, clear crystal dish. He laid the dish between us and began slicing the grapes in half.

I turned toward him in my seat after he'd sliced the grapes and he loosened the bandages until my left arm was free. "What are you doing?"

"My father was never fond of sweet things," he explained. "I eventually developed a fondness for salt. I spilled my grapes into some once and found the taste quite pleasing." He sprinkled a thin layer of salt from the dish onto the table between us, put a grape half cut-side down on the salt, and handed it to me.