Laer o Faen

I Wend U-lam

Third Age of Middle Earth – 2840

Na sui gûl dhelu egor maenas ne gar i ûr tyfn o mínsto i vela athar phân nauth?

Tauriel slowly made her way down into the conservatory, where she had been told the Lady Nieniriathlim could be found, her mind straying back to the brief conversation she had shared with the king on the day of his departure for Imladris.

"Watch her, gain a measure of her, and then earn her trust," he said. "For I desire a second pair of eyes, free of the taint of all things passed."

"Do you not trust her, my Lord?" Tauriel asked softly.

"I doubt she is a threat," he told her without directly answering the question, "In fact, if what I feel is correct, by far the opposite."

Sitting in his throne, had any other seen him, arms laid in gracious curves on the rests of the chair, long legs unevenly extended, they might have thought him relaxed. But Tauriel saw his free hand flex, saw the line of vexation near his dark brow, and the storm gathered behind his pale blue eyes, and knew that he was far from at rest.

"My Lord?" she asked softly.

There was a moment in which she thought he had not heard, and never before had she seen him that way, but then he cast off the strange mood, unfolded his tall frame from where he sat, and descended the steps to her side.

"Watch her keenly, Tauriel, become first her shadow, and then her protector. Ensure that the servants she has been assigned afford her every courtesy; see to her every need." He instructed, and then added as if almost an afterthought, "and report to me upon my return."

She knew the king did not speak anything as an afterthought, and so for several days, she had followed his command, first watching the timid explorations the young Elf – probably not much older than Tauriel was herself – made of her new surroundings, watching from the shadows, as she became more familiar with the rooms adjacent to the apartments in which she had been given leave to stay.

That also had left many within the halls unsettled and wondering. For millennia, those apartments had lain empty, untouched, and yet, after speaking with her, the king had ordered the rooms be made available to his guest.

Tauriel took a breath to shake off the half-realised awe she felt as she looked on the undeniably beautiful Elf, and finally stepped from out of the shadows, descending the short stair that led down to where she was sitting reading.

Her head was bent over the pages of the book, and her brow furrowed as though in concentration; her golden hair tumbled around her shoulders and the fall of the blue and silver gown sparkled around her like the spray of the many waterfalls that graced the Halls of the Elvenking. It was easy – too easy – to believe the whispers that had begun to fall from lips within the court of the king.

"My Lady," Tauriel said to announce herself, once she reached the foot of the stair, and as the Elf looked up from the book, Tauriel offered her a smile, and bent her head in a brief bow.

"Please," the Elven woman said. Her voice was quiet, melodic and soft in countenance; gentle, though it held an obvious trace of discomfort as she went on. "You do not need to show such graces with me." She folded her hands across the book she had been reading, her fingers almost tight against the edges of it as she looked up at Tauriel, to add, "I think I have seen you round about these past several days."

It was so softly spoken, the admission to Tauriel that she had noticed her constant presence, and yet without any accusation or anything other than honest query in her voice.