The Prince's Pretend Mother

Eleventh Entry - Ever Less than a Treason

{I am dedicating this chapter to LittleFlowerss to thank them for all the love I've received in the past week. Thank you, love!}

Ah, when to the heart of man

Was it ever less than a treason

To go with the drift of things,

To yield with a grace to reason,

And bow and accept the end

Of a love or a season?

*

Decades fluttered by. Centuries came and went like slow tides. The holly Nelide had once planted in the royal courtyard adjoining their house had suffered for a few decades but in the last several had begun thriving again. Nelide's favorite had been a variety with deep-violet stems and veins, the spiny leaves edged in gold.

"She preferred silver," Thranduil told me while I was admiring the plants. "However this variety is rare, and she loved to have things people said she could not obtain."

"Oh really?" I asked, lining up one of the dark leaves along my fingertips. "How so?"

"People said she could not learn to fight the way she did."

"I hear she was remarkable."

"She was as a streaking star in a lunar eclipse."

"What else made her skilled?"

"Acrobatics, the many languages she knew, her ability to draw, her music, knowledge of strategy, dancing."

"Not horticulture?"

"No, why do you think the plants suffered so?"

A smile touched upon my lips and I clipped a yellow leaf from the base of the plant with my thumbnail. "Did it irk her?"

"Her lack of competence with verdant things? Yes, it quite did. I found it quite amusing."

"Why, are you particularly skilled with verdant things?"

"Absolutely not but she so rarely struggled it entertained me to sit back and watch. If it had genuinely enraged her I might have offered assistance. As it only aggravated her I simply observed. She needed humbling on occasion."

I shook my head with a grin and a sigh. "Oh you would. Thank goodness you do not believe I need it."

"Your greatest faults are not directed inward, Inladris, and pride is very firmly reflected upon the bearer."

I gathered my hair over my shoulder and held it to my chest as I leaned down against the grass and checked underneath the plant for caterpillars that weren't supposed to be there. "What would you say my greatest faults are then? I've given you my assessments."

"A scant few."

"You're several thousand years old, Thranduil. Don't make me tell you how misplaced my faith must be if you do not know who you are."

"You are several thousand years old as well, Inladris. Surely you know these things."

"Perhaps I do, perhaps I do not. I should like to hear your opinion."

"An excess of generosity."

"No, I don't believe it would be. I give you my opinion quite freely. It is only right that on occasion you do me the same gesture."

Thranduil sighed painstakingly from the stone bench he was reclined upon, his hands folded over his stomach. "That was my gesture. You suffer from an excess of generosity. You give too much of yourself for your own safety. Call it an excess of love, an excess of duty, an excess of...." He flapped his hand as he sought the word that most fit his needs. "Competency? No no. Dedication? Hm. I suppose that will have to do."