The Realm of the Stars

Chapter Two - Solitude of Spirits

SHE came back the next day. It was late afternoon, almost evening when Legolas seen her quietly making her way under the archway, and into the entry way. She looked about her cautiously, as if checking to see if anyone else was there, and then with slight upturn on her lips, she came inside and sat down on the ground. She swung off a bag she carried on her back and unzipped it, removing a slender metal thing, and also a bound book of paper of some sort. Then something that looked like a pen. She opened the thin metal thing to reveal a bunch of buttons that had numbers and letters on them, and pushed a button. She gasped in surprise.

"What the hell? No battery? I just charged it," she shook her head and then closed it, and put it back into the bag, "Oh well, thank heavens I brought this too." She opened the bound book of paper, and after leafing through it to a blank page, took the pen and began writing. Legolas watched her for several long minutes before, becoming bored decided to go about the upper level checking things outside the windows, glancing down at her occasionally.

She said she would be quiet, and she was. Boringly so. Occasionally, she would look up from her work towards the trees she was seeing above her and watch the leaves shiver in the breeze, then go back to what she was doing.

"Well, this isn't very exciting." Legolas mumbled to himself after a couple of hours. He then started to wonder what she was writing, and let curiosity get the better of him, made his way around the upper balcony to behind her where he could look down, and with his elf sight clearly see what she was scribbling with such concentration.

It took him a moment or two to realize it was a narrative of some sort, and spent the remainder of his time between checking out the windows for trouble or wild animals that could come in and try and prey on her and them, while reading what she wrote. It filled the time. Usually he brought reading material, but with her there, he was afraid to be caught off his guard.

Four hours into it the person he really had no wish to see entered, glancing down at the girl below them.

"She keeps to her word?" Tauriel asked.

Legolas nodded, "She does. What do you need?"

"Nothing. The guard that was to come to join you on this watch has been called away on personal business. I am here in his stead".

"Personal business?" Legolas inquired with a tilt of his head.

Tauriel cleared her throat and gave him a wry smile, "His wife has gone into labor."

"Oh," was all Legolas said, then it hit him, "Oh? A new elf-child enters the world today?"

"It seems so. So, it is a good day, I suppose," she smiled then looked down at the girl.

He followed her gaze.

"What does she write?"

"A fictional story of some sort. It seems entertaining enough." Legolas replied looking down at the notepad to read the latest batch of paragraphs.

"So, you've hardly been bored I take it?" Tauriel asked as she made her way to his side.

Legolas shuffled uncomfortably when she stopped beside him and looked down at the paper below, and watched the girl turn the notepad over to start a new page. He didn't care to be around her at this time. Time had made it easier to deal with his feelings, however, it did not change them. In a sense, he had grown to resent them. She knew how he felt as well, and yet, she stood here, acting as if she did not. It made him feel a little bitter.

"No, I haven't," the words came out through clenched teeth. "You may return to your post. The likelihood of a riot happening here is non-existent."