A long-time reader on FanFiction.net who has faithfully followed GreenScholarTales for years requested this scene time and time again. I wasn't sure if I was going to ever write it at first, because I thought I might leave Thranduil's final fate open to interpretation. However, I think there is a certain poignant beauty in tying off all loose ends.

And so, this is for you thrndlwood.

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Thranduil stood alone upon the shores of the sea, trembling in every limb.

For many moons this stretch of sand and trees had been his home. Working by moonlight and secreting himself away from the curious eyes of Men during the day, Thranduil had built himself a boat. It was a modest little craft, little more than a hull of grey ash, a mast and a hand-woven sail. It had taken him nearly six months to finish, and that largely due in part to Thranduil's lack of experience as a shipwright. Still, it was finished, and would serve to keep him from drowning in the crossing. That much Thranduil knew, having tested the boat twice before in the shallows off the shore.

It was not the perils of the sea that kept him frozen there upon the beach though. It was what lay beyond. Somewhere, far beyond the misty curtains of the world, lay Valinor.

Valinor...

The salty ocean breeze seemed to sigh that blessed name, and a single gull flew overhead, crying. No sun shone today; Arien hid her golden lamp behind a veil of cloud. The waves lapped iron-grey and cold upon the shore. Soon it would be winter, and the lands that had once been Fornost not far to the east would sleep beneath a mantle of snow. Thranduil would not even have the star of Eärendil to guide him as he sailed, and that frightened him. He had delayed in this final journey for nearly a thousand years though, and now he could bear it no longer. He would discover the doom which the Valar held for him, whether that be death at the hand of Ulmo and imprisonment in the Halls of Mandos, or eternal exile from the ones he loved. The thought of the Sea-Lord tearing asunder his vessel and drowning him beneath the waves almost relieved Thranduil when weighed against the latter. If he were to set sail and simply follow the bending of the world, unable to break free and follow the voyage of his ancestors to those blessed waters...trapped forever in this world which he no longer recognized and in which he had no place....

A shudder coursed through Thranduil. He would die. The last ten centuries had been some of the longest and emptiest years that he could have ever imagined. Without Anthelísse's golden smile, without Legolas' gentle laughter, there was nothing. He knew every stone in the Halls of the Woodland Realm - now little more than an abandoned hollow - as intimately as he knew his own hands. The few remaining Silvan elves that remained in the world had retreated away, melting further and further into the heart of the forest, into the very trees themselves. The children of Men told stories of them - of fey voices echoing in the hidden reaches of the forest and strange faces in the whorls of tree bark - but elves were less than a memory now. They were myth, and Thranduil was tired of being alone. Come what may, it was time.

The cool, damp sand beneath his shoe was the last that Thranduil ever set foot upon the shores of Middle-Earth. Pushing off into the surf, he worked to let out his sail and outrun the breaking waves. Salty sea-spray wet his face and hands as the prow of his little boat cut straight and true. Unencumbered by the silken robes which he had long ago left behind upon his empty throne, Thranduil was soon chilled. The life of the Eldar was still his, even after so many years spent in silent melancholy, but he was diminished and he knew it. Clad in simple garb and his once-smooth hands laden with splinters, even a child of Men would not be so foolish as to mistake Thranduil for the elf-king he had once been. He was a lone elf, the last of his kind in a world that had long forgotten him. His heart was sick and afraid, but nonetheless a brief throb of hope seized him as he departed the western shores into the unknown. With every moment that the coast faded behind him, he drew closer to Anthelísse than he had been in more than three thousand years.

Please, he silently beseeched the Valar. Please, if I can but see them just once more, I will be content to haunt the Halls of Mandos until the end of all things and beyond.

For a time as he sailed, Thranduil's thoughts dwelt on Fëanor, the dire craftsman who had led his people in exile from Valinor. As the first and chiefest of elven kinslayers, Fëanor was undoubtedly doomed to linger in Mandos' keeping until the breaking of the world. Many long years ago, Thranduil and Anthelísse had spoken of Fëanor and his fate. It seemed like another life, that time when Thranduil had freely bandied words with his wife about the Lord of the Noldor, and been reprimanded for it by a handmaiden. How many lifetimes would he trade now just to see Anthelísse's ever-knowing smile, to hear her voice as she spoke of politics and purpose? No doubt she and Legolas had been reunited in the centuries since he left Thranduil's side. Thranduil wondered if Anthelísse had taught their son of her heritage at last. Did Legolas now speak in the Quenyan tongue of his mother's people? Did he still mourn what would have been the inevitable death of Gimli Gloin's son? Thranduil hoped the presence of others such as Oropher and Nellas might have given Legolas some comfort after such a loss. He only wished he could have been there to share in the reunion of his family as it unfolded in the Blessed Realm.

Please, just let me see them once more.

The sun set behind the clouds, and Thranduil sailed throughout a long and starless night. The only sounds were the sighing of the waves and the fluttering of the sail. With no stars to guide him, Thranduil could only trust to hope and follow the horizon. When the sun rose bleak and pale, his relief almost gave him hope when his little ship proved to still be sailing west. As day passed into night and back to day again, Thranduil remained at the tiller and the sail, unwilling to look away from the horizon for even a moment, lest the spell of this fateful journey be broken and he find himself awash on some far eastern shore of Middle-Earth. Every day that he was permitted to continue sailing west on an endless sea, his hope grew.

Please, just once more.

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On the eve of the third night though, Thranduil's hope faltered. Black clouds gathered overhead, and the sea turned to froth and foam. A fiercesome wind arose and tore at his meagre sail with hailstone talons. Thranduil fought to keep the ship on course, but it was impossible to tell east from west and north from south. As the waves grew to tower overhead and smash upon the deck like hammer blows, despair awoke within Thranduil's heart. So the Valar did not intend to let him see the shores of Valinor after all. His slaying of Tharnor had not been forgiven; the wrath of the sea was clear proof of that. When the wind tore the sail from the mast and flung it away like a leaf in a gale, there was nothing Thranduil could do to stop it. Lightning flashed, illuminating a wall of black water rising beneath the bow. Thranduil clung to the splintered mast, half-blind and gasping when a wave of icy seawater smashed it way across the boat.

"Please!" Thranduil cried out to the churning sky. "Please, just let me see them once more!"

The storm did not abate though. The waves rose higher and higher, each threatening more fiercely to capsize the battered little craft. Thranduil's grip on the mast was numb, and his frozen fingers were beginning to lose strength. This was it, then. Ulmo and Ossë were going to drown him at sea, and his spirit would be sealed within the Halls of Mandos forevermore, with only Fëanor and the spirits of the forsaken for company. Still, perhaps that was a mercy...at least he would no longer be alone.

A strange sense of peace welled up from within even as the fury of the storm intensified. To hear elvish voices again - even if only the hushed, hollow murmurs of The Halls - would be something. To be in the presence of the Valar - even if only solitary Mandos - would be something. To exist within the same world as Anthelísse and Legolas - even if they were to remain parted by death - would be something. After all the loves and losses, beauty and misery of Thranduil's immortal life, if it all came down to this, perhaps his life still meant something after all. He had loved, and he had been loved. Perhaps, even if it all came to naught in the end, that was still enough.

Anthelísse...Legolas...I love you both more than words can ever tell. May you be blessed forevermore, I need nothing more than that.

Closing his eyes, Thranduil saw Anthelísse's smile as clearly as he had so long ago beside the fountains in Emyn Duir. With his heart at long last filled once again with love, Thranduil was at peace. He smiled softly and let his arms slip from around the mast. A wave of black water rose up...up...up. When it fell, it overturned the little boat, sending Thranduil, son of Oropher into the arms of the sea.

OoOoO

Ssssssshhhhhhhh

The sound of grass whispering softly in a gentle breeze touched Thranduil's mind. Slowly, so very slowly, he came back to himself. There was sand beneath his cheek, and it was the smoothest sand he had ever felt. The faint scent of green and growing things came to him. It was the scent of spring, as full-flowered and sweet as it had been when spring first came to the world beneath Yavanna's dancing feet. The Halls of Mandos could never sound and smell like this. Hardly daring to believe lest this prove to be a dream, Thranduil opened his eyes.

What he saw brought tears to his eyes. Beyond the beach of milk-white sand where he lay, a country of eternal beauty stretched on forever. Mountains cloaked in snow of the purest white gleamed beneath the rising sun, and at their feet a far green country unfurled like a beckoning embrace. The sun wreathed the clouds overhead in the richest pinks and brightest golds. Birds trilled from the edge of a nearby glade, and somewhere beyond elvish voices were raised in song. This was singing unlike anything Thranduil had ever heard in Middle-Earth before, not even in the Hidden Valley of Imladris. No sorrow touched the voices of these merry folk, and the song they sung was one of joy and gladness, welcoming a new day for the sheer pleasure of having seen the sun rise.

Slowly, as if one dreaming, Thranduil rose to his feet. All of the pains he should have felt after being cast into the sea simply fell away, leaving him standing tall and straight like the 'Sapling' he had once been. The pains Thranduil had long carried upon his heart fell away too, and the loss of their weight felt like being set free after a lifetime imprisoned. Heedless of his tattered clothes, his bare feet and unbound hair, Thranduil threw wide his arms and lifted his face to the world. Neither he nor his forefathers had ever set foot upon the shores of the Blessed Realm, but there was only one way to describe this feeling in Thranduil's heart.

Home.

The voices of the singers reached Thranduil once again, borne aloft on a breeze perfumed by spring blossoms and morning dew. For a time he simply stood there and listened, free at long last to experience the beauty of a life renewed. One voice seemed to rise above the others though. Clear and confident, it soared high like a call that pierced straight to the very core of Thranduil's spirit. Then it was joined by another, this voice full and thoughtful, and Thranduil was running.

His feet led him straight and true through a forest of young beech to a glade filled with the warmth of the rising sun. There he found a gathering of elves, all clad in such bright, summer-light raiment as would never have been seen among their people in the Third Age of Middle-Earth. Their eyes were bright and full of wonder as they rose to greet him, but Thranduil had eyes only for two.

Anthelísse looked just as Thranduil remembered her in his dreams. Seated on a weathered log, her golden hair spilled free about her shoulders, shining like the sunrise had come down out of the sky to wrap her in its own cloak. Legolas sat at her feet on a carpet of forest moss, and seeing mother and grown son together for the first time Thranduil realized just how much alike they were. He locked his gaze with Anthelísse's, and her eyes - as blue as the summer sea - were glimmering with unshed tears of joy. Without a second thought, Thranduil ran to Anthelísse and threw himself to his knees at his beloved's feet.

"Goheno nin (forgive me)...goheno nin."

His face was buried in the soft folds of her gown, and the scent of her enfolded him like a homecoming. Anthelísse's long fingers wound into his hair, and that alone was enough to send tears coursing down Thranduil's cheeks. The warm murmur of her voice - ah, her voice! - spoke to Thranduil as she held him to her.

"Oh meleth-nin (my beloved), why did you linger so long? We have waited so many long years for you."

"I was afraid, forgive me! Ai...Anthelísse!" Gazing up through his tears, Thranduil beheld her face with wonder. "But I do not understand! I slew one of my own people in anger, surely the Valar have judgement to pass upon me still? How can it be that I am here with you, unless I am dreaming?"

A warm hand came to rest on Thranduil's shoulder, and he turned to gaze up into Legolas's gentle smile. There was an ageless depth in his son's eyes that had not been there when last they parted a thousand years ago. The bowstring calluses mapped upon Legolas's hands were endearingly familiar though. So even in the Blessed Realm the greatest archer of the Greenwood still found means to practice his craft.

"You are not dreaming, Ada," he said. "Gandalf said you would come to us someday, and he was right."

"The Valar work in mysterious ways." An elf maiden with ringlets of pale gold and knowing grey eyes spoke up, much as she had when Thranduil and Anthelísse had been returning from Elrond's halls in Imladris. "Perhaps they feel that you have suffered long enough in your self-imposed exile. Tharnor has been released from Mandos' keeping and granted a new beginning upon these shores...it is only right that you now be granted the same."

Sure enough, behind Iminyë an elf with snowy white hair and mismatched eyes slowly rose to his feet. Thranduil felt Anthelísse's hand slide into his, guiding him to stand as well. He and Tharnor looked long at one another. Then Thranduil turned to Anthelísse and beheld her standing before him, as whole if not more so than she had ever been when first they met in the aftermath of the Last Alliance. Legolas stood waiting by her side. Anthelísse nodded her head, slowly but certainly. All that had passed had been in another time, another place, another life. To forgive would be the greatest gift that Thranduil could give, in no small part because he himself had been forgiven. Thranduil turned back to Tharnor.

Rather than speak, he simply reached out a hand. The other elf hesitated, one green eye and one brown searching Thranduil's face for a reason. Thranduil did not retract his hand though, and Tharnor took it. The two elves stood with hands clasped for a moment, then broke apart. There might never be friendship between the two of them, but there would be no enmity either. With an eternity to spend in Aman, strife had no place in either of their mended hearts.

Anthelísse laced her fingers between Thranduil's and lifted his hand to her lips. Her eyes were filled with pride as she gazed upon him. Then she smiled.

"Come. The others are waiting for you."

"My mother and father?"

"Oh yes, and many more," answered Legolas. "Come. Valinor awaits."

Then, with a kiss for Anthelísse and an embrace for Legolas, Thranduil clasped his family's hands and let them lead him away into the green hills beyond the shore. The other elves joined them, and together their voices rose in song to ring out over the treetops and beyond the mountains forevermore. And so it was that the last elf to depart Middle-Earth found his way home. Long may the Firstborn children of Eru live together in bliss beneath the stars of the Blessed Realm, and long may we who remain behind remember their names. For even as the world must endure without their light, nothing that is cherished is ever truly lost, and all that we love lives eternal within our hearts.

~ The End ~

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