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A short while later, Thranduil sat upon the edge of a small river bank, becoming acquainted with his newborn son. Despite all her protests, Anthelísse had been utterly exhausted by the birth. It had taken endless cajoling, coaxing and reassuring to get her to finally relinquish the infant. Thranduil had left her already drifting off into a deep reverie, their son swaddled in his arms.

Now as he held up the tiny elfling, Thranduil marvelled at the wonder of this new life he and Anthelísse had created. The sunlight through the autumn treetops of the Greenwood cast the babe's face in a warm glow. Inch by tender inch Thranduil studied every detail of the child.

A tiny hand peeked out over the edge of his swaddling blankets, five little white fingernail crescents tucked into a half-curled fist. The little tuft of white-gold hair atop the elfling's head was as pale and fine as spun silk. Thranduil fingered that downy curl with a gentle caress, almost afraid to touch the baby's skin too firmly. His son smelled like earth after a rain and something else, the scent that was solely that of a newborn.

Thranduil's touch elicited a stir from the baby, who gave a little snuffle as he squirmed inside his blanket. Carefully, ever so carefully, Thranduil lowered his son onto his knees and cradled the elfling's shoulders.

"Mae go'vannen, ion-nin." (Well met, my son.) Thranduil murmured, testing out the words on his tongue. He had a son, and he was a father. That was an entirely new role, the likes of which he had never before worn. Thranduil had been many things throughout his nearly three thousand years; a son, a prince, a husband, a king. To be a father was his newest and greatest title, one which Thranduil could not imagine ever being any less of a wonder to him than it was now.

"May I join you?"

Taking care not to disturb the baby, Thranduil turned to look over his shoulder. Nellas was standing nearby, having approached with almost unearthly silence. The sleeves of her gown were still rolled to the elbows and her long brown hair was pulled back. At this time they were no longer a king and a dowager queen, but simply a new father and his mother.

"Of course, Naneth." Thranduil nodded to a patch of moss on the riverbank beside him. A pair of black squirrels raced up a tree trunk across the stream, their nails making tsch tsch sounds in the gnarled wood. The sound reached the elfling's tender pointed ears, and he opened his eyes. Nellas folded her knees and sat cross-legged, as Thranduil often remembered her doing when he himself was a very small ellon.

"May I?" Nellas opened her arms and reached for her grandson. Thranduil gingerly passed the baby over, tucking in a loose end of the swaddling blanket as he did. "Hello, little one." Nellas crooned, settling her precious bundle into the crook of her arm. "Welcome to the world."

The baby blinked, watching Nellas through half-lidded eyes. She lightly stroked him along his velvety cheek, and he yawned.

"Anthelísse and I have decided on his name." Thranduil said, watching his mother and son together with a full heart. When Nellas looked up at him he smiled. "We took your advice about a name that reflected the nature of all three elvish peoples; Sindarin, Noldo and Silvan. His name is Legolas, or Greenleaf." Thranduil pronounced the name very deliberately, taking care to enunciate the Silvan inflections to the otherwise Sindarin words.

"From the word 'laeg' for 'green'?" Nellas asked, surprised. "That is a very ancient, very rare form of the word. I have not heard of its use besides with regards to the Green elves of the First Age. They were the ancestors of our modern Silvan elves, yes?"

"Exactly." Thranduil nodded, pleased that Nellas had caught onto the meaning.

"And where do the Noldor come in?"

"That is where Anthelísse's knowledge of Noldo history was invaluable." Thranduil said, beaming with pride. "In Gondolin there lived a Noldo elf with a Sindarin name, Legolas of the House of the Tree. During the Fall of Gondolin the people looked to him for his keen eyes and knowledge of the mountains to guide them to safety. His name in Quenya was Laiqalassë, and so our own Legolas shall have the same counterpart to his name, for formal use if ever he finds himself among the Noldor."

"Legolas." Nellas rocked her grandson slowly in her lap, a slow smile spreading across her face. "Legolas, Prince of the Woodland Realm."

As if hearing and understanding his name, Legolas opened his eyes all the way and cooed up at Nellas. The queen cocked her head in sudden fascination, prompting concern from Thranduil.

"What is it Naneth? Is he not perfectly whole and well?"

Nellas chuckled lightly, turning her attention back to her anxious son. "Be at ease Thranduil, your son is one of the fairest children ever to bless the face of Arda. As light and golden an ellon as Lúthien Tinúviel was dark and beautiful an elleth. I was merely wondering at his eyes. They remind me a great deal of someone whom I knew well a very long time ago."

"Truly? Whom?" Thranduil asked curiously, leaning in for a closer look at the baby's face.

Legolas's eyes were quite captivating, even for a newborn. A subtle grey-blue around the pupils, they darkened to nearly indigo at the irises. More notable even than the color though was how they moved. Admittedly Thranduil had little experience with elflings this small, but the way in which Legolas's eyes focused on the world around him was striking.

"Beleg Cúthalion, the Strongbow of Doriath. He too had eyes that seemed to not only see but mark everything around him. 'Archer's Eyes', we who knew Beleg called them." Nellas laughed then, low and softly. "Beleg's eyes were green though, much like my own. Still, the focus is quite remarkably alike."

"'Archer's Eyes' you say?" Thranduil said, leaning over and stroking the bridge of Legolas's nose. The baby almost went cross-eyed trying to follow his father's finger, and both Thranduil and Nellas laughed despite themselves. Indignant, the tiny elfling yawned and promptly settled in for his third nap in the space of an hour.

"Thranduil, there is something that I must now tell you." Nellas said, carefully handing little Legolas back to him. "Something that has led me to wait many years for this day."

"Naneth?" Thranduil settled Legolas onto his lap, a hand on either side of the precious little bundle.

Nellas gazed long into the waters of the forest stream before speaking again. "Since the day Oropher died, my heart has yearned to take ship from the Havens and follow him. It may be tomorrow, it may be a thousand years from now, but someday Mandos shall see fit to release your father from his halls. When that time comes and he is given a new form in Valinor, I want to be there to greet him." Nellas laid her hand on Thranduil's shoulder, and her expression was one of untold age. "From the moment you were born and I took you into my arms, I knew that I would love you forever. Nothing could ever happen to change my love for you, nothing. You have given your father and I more joy than you shall ever know. Now that I have seen your firstborn child though, I am complete. Nothing more remains for me to do upon these shores." Nellas stroked Thranduil's cheek with the back of her fingers. "These days belong to you, to Anthelísse, and now to Legolas."

"You would leave us...leave me?" Thranduil cried, struggling with shock and disbelief. He saw the weariness in Nellas's eyes though, and remembered for the first time in a long time just how old his mother truly was. It was the crux of elvish agelessness that sometimes even elves themselves could forget how heavy the weight of eternity is.

"Believe me ion-nin, I would like nothing better than to keep you close to me now and for always." Nellas said, letting her hand fall from Thranduil's cheek to Legolas's. "But the world is for the young, and my place is with those who came before me in the Blessed Realm. Besides..." The queen winked, and a sudden flash of the wild, untamed maiden she had once been danced across her face. "...we will not be parted forever. One day, when you have grown old at heart and seen your own children welcome their children, you shall come and join your father and I in Aman, yes?"

"Of course I will Naneth, of course." Thranduil promised, leaning into his mother's embrace. The three generations stayed linked together that way for some time, listening to one another's hearts and the bubbling of the stream.

Some time later, Thranduil carried his sleeping son back through the encampment towards his and Anthelísse's tent. He had given orders that they would not move until two days hence, to give Anthelísse a chance to recover. And so most of the Greenwood elves were taking advantage of the time to explore the forest around, tell stories, sing songs and generally mingle. There was an air of some sadness in the camp that they were leaving their beloved mountainside city behind. There was also a measure of anticipation though, and curiosity as to what their new life in The Halls would look like.

Thranduil spotted a figure standing by themselves in the shadows between two tents though and frowned. He recognized Tharnor, the Master of Coin immediately by his mismatched green and brown eyes. The Silvan elf stood with his arms crossed and a scowl on his narrow face, a scowl that only deepened as Thranduil approached.

"Speak your mind and have done, Tharnor." Thranduil demanded crossly, keeping his voice down so as not to wake Legolas. The elfling had already demonstrated incredibly sharp hearing that made his naps rather prone to abrupt ends. "I will not endure your continued ill temper for the rest of eternity."

Tharnor's pale eyebrows flew upwards, and he swept a derisive gave over the sleeping princeling in Thranduil's arms. "You do not wish to know what is on my mind, Aran-nin. It is better that you continue on your way, and do not press me."

"I shall press you as far as I like to get answers from you, Master of Coin!" Thranduil whisper-shouted, his temper rising. He had had it up to the tips of his ears with the Silvan elf's sulking. "Either lay your grievances out before me now, or never so much as think them again for the rest of your days."

"You wish to hear my grievances so badly then?" Tharnor hissed. "Very well then, Oropherion, you shall hear them and hate me for it." He jabbed a long finger at sleeping Legolas. "My people have endured your house running roughshod over us entirely too far. First your father comes to us, little more than a vagrant of Doriath with a paltry hundred of you Sindarins in tow. Do we turn you away? No! Not only do we open our homeland to you, we accept your father as our king! That could be endured, even I can admit that your father was a rare figure among Sindarins. Even after Oropher led us nearly to ruin in the Last Alliance, we continued to support your house and your ascension as your father's heir. But how did you repay us?" Tharnor practically spat the words in Thranduil's face. "You return from Mordor with a Noldo bride! The Noldor have done nothing but sow wrath and ruin in their path since the day the kin-slayer Fëanor led them in rebellion across the sea. We Silvans above all can attest to the destruction of the Noldor upon these shores. They have done nothing but ignore and belittle us, the faithful inhabitants of Middle-Earth since they day their cursed boots touched the soil. Now you ask us to accept a prince of Noldo blood as heir to the throne of the Woodland Realm? Bah!" Tharnor punctuated his angry diatribe with increasing volume, heedless of the elfling who was even now tossing restlessly in Thranduil's arms. "We always believed that you would wed a Silvan, and thus reaffirm the partnership between your people and the true folk of the Greenwood. You were supposed to join with us, not set your rule apart by marrying with an elitist Noldo! You have distanced yourself from all the Silvan folk of the Greenwood, and now here is the proof!" Tharnor pointed accusingly at Legolas once again, finally waking the elfling. Legolas whimpered and began to cry, dropping all pretense of being asleep.

Thranduil was floored. Clutching his son to his chest, he was torn in a million different directions. A very large part of him wanted to lunge at Tharnor and tear the Silvan limb from limb. Another part wanted to turn and run away with Legolas, shielding his child from all the anger and darkness of the world. He had never imagined that any in the Woodland Realm would have borne him any ill will for marrying the one he loved.

"Aran-nin, are you alright?" A female voice sounded over Legolas's crying, and Thranduil recognized Thenniel. The russet-haired scout stood with a hand on the hilt of her dagger, sizing up Tharnor and evaluating the situation with a warrior's eye. Looking around, Thranduil realized that a number of elves were watching the gathering storm apprehensively.

Drawing himself up to full height, Thranduil subdued his horror and rage beneath the first defense that came to hand; a coldly imperial face.

"Thenniel, you and all present are to bear witness to what I have to say here and now." Turning a glacial gaze on Tharnor, Thranduil held Legolas close and rocked the infant to soothe him. "Tharnor son of Thirnen, you are hereby stripped of your rank as Master of Coin. No longer are you to serve on the council, nor are you to have any status within the Woodland Realm. I order you to report to Gurithon for assignment to the armed forces of the Greenwood; we have more need of sharp blades than we do of sharp tongues. If this is unacceptable to you, then you are to depart from my sight immediately and never return to dwell within the borders of the forest. This is my pronouncement and my decree as king."

The disgraced former Master of Coin stared long and hard at Thranduil with his mismatched eyes. When he did not move, Thenniel made a threatening advance toward him. With a minimal jerk of his head that might have been a bow, Tharnor submitted.

"If that is your wish, Aran-nin."

Without another word, Tharnor turned on his heel and stalked away. At a nod from Thranduil, Thenniel followed after him to ensure that he either reported to Gurithon or left the camp. The scout's long red braid swished back and forth behind her as she went.

Holding Legolas against his shoulder and rubbing his little back, Thranduil hushed the elfling until his piteous crying subsided. As he made his way toward their tent though, he could not help but look at the elves he passed in a new light. Was the smile of that Silvan elf as he passed genuine, or did they too hide resentment within their heart? Was Tharnor an outlier, or did more think the way he did? Thranduil suddenly felt immensely protective toward both Anthelísse and Legolas. He would do anything to protect them from harm, anything at all. That he swore no matter who threatened, be they orc, dwarf, man...or elf.

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