So Comes Snow After Fire

22.v

Following Legolas out the palace gates and over the western bridge, Tauriel knew she was happier than she had been all these last few months. Last night, too giddy with nervous excitement to sleep, she had lain with Kíli's runestone held between her heart and her hand, and imagined feeling that first breath of free air brush her face when she stepped past the Greenwood's western borders. The closed air of the wood had been stifling to her since she had returned, and she had felt herself a prisoner, not only of the guarded realm, but of her own grief. Returning to the unchanged rhythm of her previous life had kept Kíli's loss so near, for old routines brought back the old discontents from which only he had finally drawn her.

Beginning this morning, she would discover a new life, a new way of carrying her love for Kíli so that he might remain alive in her, rather than call only to her out of the past.

Yet the past, it seemed, had a stronger grip on her than she had wanted to acknowledge, for as she stepped off the last stone of the bridge and onto the mossy forest floor, she froze, transfixed as if by an arrow through her heart.

Kíli needs me, the thought flew through her mind, unbidden, Kíli needs me, and I am leaving.

She turned, without conscious volition, and stared back in the direction of the Lonely Mountain, though she knew it would not be visible beyond the forest and the rocky rise of her own king's fortress.

For several moments, Tauriel felt distinctly and clearly that Kíli, her beloved, was in very real distress, torn by some crisis. How she knew this, she could not explain, though she was quite sure it was true. And then the feeling was gone.

The breath she had unconsciously been holding came back in a gasp, and she found she was trembling.

"Kíli!" she called softly. She knew he was hurting; he'd surely known the same pain as she since their parting. And if he was required to take a dwarven bride, surely his unhappiness would be doubled. Yet this last cause of grief was the very reason Tauriel could no longer help him. The truth was cruel and unfair, but it was still the truth.

Despite his stature, Tauriel had never thought of Kíli as small, for surely he was strong in both body and spirit. But imagining him now, facing his troubles alone, she was struck by just how small he was against all the vast concerns of a wide world. Who, of all the powers, would consider Kíli and offer him the support that Tauriel had once given? Surely there was someone who loved this one dwarf as much as she and who saw him even now...

Tauriel dropped to her knee, hoping that Óli—Kíli's Maker—would hear the prayer of an obscure wood elf. "Blessed Mahal," she whispered. Had any elf ever addressed Óli by his dwarven name? She had certainly never prayed to him before, by any title. "My Kíli is in need. Surely you must know this. I would go to him, if I could. I love him. But I cannot help him any more. He is your son; please, you must send him what he needs."

She bowed her head and two tears fell, striking the stones of the bridge with soft, distinct taps like knocking on a door.

"Tauriel?"

She felt Legolas's hands on her shoulders.

Tauriel tipped her head to the side, pressing her cheek to his hand. She felt her tears wet his fingers.

"Tauriel," he gasped. "You're weeping."

"I know," she said, rising. She turned and put her arms around his neck.

Legolas said nothing but placed a hand to the back of her head and held her against him.

After a bit, she said shakily, "I feel as though I must not leave him. But surely, I am just wishing for what we lost. I cannot return to him now. He is promised to someone else."

"I'm sorry, my dear friend. Surely, if fate gave only according to our desert, you would be with your dwarf now."

Tauriel noted that Legolas now said hadhod, rather than the far less respectful naug, which he had once used to speak of Kíli. How much of her prayer had he overheard?

"Thank you." She raised her head from him at last. "I am very sorry you have to bear with me like this," she added as she dabbed at her eyes with the tail of her skirt. "I had hoped to make a much more cheerful companion."

"Nonsense." Legolas offered her a kind smile. "I should be a faithless friend indeed if I did not see you through this trouble now."

Tauriel smiled then too, though the expression felt crooked on her lips. "The Valar aren't entirely blind to my desert, then. Come!" She linked her arm in his. "I shall feel better when my feet are moving."

"As you wish," Legolas returned lightly. He settled his arm a little more comfortably in hers, out of way of the heavy dwarven cuff bracelet Tauriel wore high on her arm above her leather vambrace, and he let her draw him down the road that led beyond the Greenwood.