The Forbidden Child

Secrets Revealed

It was evening now and white starlight illuminated the Fellowship's faces like candles in the dark. Everything here was so white, so pure. It was so much different from anywhere else Lessien had ever been. Everyone, even the gruff dwarf Gimli it would seem, was dressed nicely and blended peculiarly well into the community.

They were safe and that was all that mattered.

Sitting beside Sam, Lessien observed him. His face was pale but his eyes were wonder-struck as he gazed around him.

"Are you feeling well, Sam?" Lessien asked and she put a hand on his forehead, pushing back his sandy locks. His temperature was high and she looked worriedly at him. "You better rest, my dear Samwise, as we are to leave on the morrow. Even if the wonders of Lothlórien seem too much to miss, I can assure you that even your dreams will be better than the sights you see."

"Can you?" he asked.

"Can I what?" she replied.

"Can you sleep, now?"

"Yes, no darkness shrouds my mind here. And how many times do I have to tell you that you need not worry about my well-being. You are not my servant," Lessien interjected, a soft laugh in her voice.

"I may not be but what are friends for?" Sam answered sleepily. With those words he lay back on the soft ground beside Lessien and soon enough soft snores erupted from him.

She smiled and leaned back. She planned to descend into her Dreamworld but instead was pulled into a series of memories.

Suddenly in her mind appeared a familiar girl with a pale, prominent face and long brown hair. She was beautiful and looked to be five years old.

The child was skipping along.

Behind her a woman cried, "Evie! Come along!"

The child brushed back her half finished hair and revealed her slightly pointed ears.

It was Lessien when she was very young, when she was still called Eve.

The girl turned to look at the woman but a grey flash crossed her eyes. It was a cat and she had no choice but to follow it.

Her hands outstretched as she chased after the skipping cat through the knee-length crispy grass. The laughs the child emitted were like tinkling bells echoing through the afternoon day.

Suddenly the beautiful child stumbled across a bumbling brook in the midst of her chase.

Drip, drop it seemed to sing as it busily danced by in its tiny blue waves, sunlight caught often different angles of the water, making it sparkle and shimmer.

The child's short attention span was temporarily focused on the trickling body of water.

Again, her eye was caught on the grey cat and she watched as it crossed the body of water on a rickety bridge that seemed to appear out of thin air.

Behind her, her mother still called but seemed to be warded away from the enchanted discovery of Evie's.

On the other side, the grass was luscious and the trees seemed to look healthy and different. To the young girl their trunks looked like skinny bodies and the long, drooping branches looked like dozens of swaying arms. The place seemed magical. Everything was new, and no one could find her.

No one would find her.

The dream disappeared for a moment and turned forward to a year or so later when Evie had set up fairy houses all over, and had named the birds and their nests. She had made more than two dozen flower crowns since she had found her magical forest and each one was tucked away safely in her little cabinet at home.

Each day she came here, her mother thought that finally Evie had made friends as all normal children do, but she was wrong. Nevertheless, she dressed Evie nicely and tried her hardest to brush out her stubborn hair, and made her dress in skirts and wear slippers.

Though she did not enjoy the primping, Evie used it to her advantage and pretended to be a princess. Soon she began to make grass dolls, where she would take clumps of grass and proceeded to tie them together with flower stems. She would dress them up in bright blossoms and dried leaves.

The two best she made were the fairy king and queen. The rest were subjects in the court.

No matter how hard winds blew, the dolls never blew away with them.

When winter came, Eve managed to trudge through the snow and to her secret forest. There, sticks and withered flowers made up her palace for the subjects. Now that it was winter she put the giant willow trees to work, guarding her subjects.

It wasn't as cold here as it was back home and the snow wasn't nearly as deep.

The toddler Eve was now replaced with her 17-year-old self, when she had fallen asleep on a willow after a fallout with her mother.

This was the same day she met her father again.

A flash-forward took place and suddenly Eve was being pushed back against a tree by Tom.

It didn't make sense because this place had always been untouchable until that day.

"How did he get here?" Lessien asked to the air.

"You were no longer a child, I had to make you see that. You are no longer under my protection."

"But why? What were you protecting me from?" Lessien interrogated.

There was no reply.

"Why?" Lessien now said alone, wide awake, to the ghostly white lights.