#m;t

The air was alive and pulsing with the sounds of uninhibited and contagious laughter, clear flutes, and ringing harps. For the first couple of hours, Mariel sat fixed to her mother’s side and gave tribute to the stars in a soprano whose tone was only husky when contrasted with the impossibly perfect chime of her parent’s much more experienced voice. What she lacked in range, however, the elleth made up with by simply sounding unique. Stamina, though, was still something with which she struggled as a fresh songstress. 

Rest your voice. Enjoy the feast.

That’s what her mother said once her magical, parental ability to sense limits in her child's abilities reared its head. Admittedly, she had been itching to actually join the party. While hers was always a musical household, it was not often that she had so many others to dance with, celebrate with. She probably got a little carried away, honestly. Loose blonde curls bounced with each movement, cheeks rosy and aching from a combination of alcohol and laughter as she fluttered between partners with some semblance of grace. 

“Adventurous? Goodness, by the time I am finished with my days work, I hardly have energy left.” Haldir laughed as well, shrugging his shoulders.

“That being said, I do enjoy other things, I suppose. Ones life can not be all work and sleep.”

At his honest admission, Mariel couldn’t help but laugh softly, too. It wasn’t rude or mocking, instead coming entirely from a place of understanding. “You suppose,” the elleth teased, bright grin still in place. “Of course not. I am sure you must have hobbies for those off days, however infrequent they must be.” 

The Elvenking slowly breathed in only to just as slowly breath out his nose. His silver blue gaze appeared to glow beneath the low lighting of sunlight that fought to shine through the thick canopy of trees of Eryn Lasgalen. While it may have been inconvenient she managed to find his perch out of the vast sea of trees around him, the Elvenking wasn’t one to turn one of his kind away from trouble.

                The ground shook as if the very fires of Mordor itself erupted just below them. Such a tumultuous action caused the ellon to have to hold onto the tree’s branch above him. There was a troll wandering about within this part of the woods. It’s stench permeated through the air and Thranduil’s nose wrinkled. It was close and accidentally headbutted their tree.

    ❝ Whatever that will result in you not falling, ❞ he said dryly.

Even though some time had passed since the veil of darkness had lifted from the forest, the occasional vermin still managed to creep back in from time to time. If it weren’t for the creature’s telltale lumbering about, she would’ve known its identity solely from the pungent stench it left behind to rise and filter through the trees in its wake. It took more self control than she was willing to admit to keep from gagging, but her eyes did involuntarily water.

Often slow in both movement and mind, a troll made up for any shortcomings with brutal strength. For that reason alone, Mariel knew better than to confront one head-on without a game plan. “Fair enough,” she breathed softly, jerking with the abrupt nudge but managing to ride out the rocking motion without incident. Not ready to tempt fate, however, the elleth went ahead and carefully dropped to a lower branch with more support once it was safe enough to do so.

elentelume:

    Elrond leaned back against the wall with a soft grin, folding his arms across his chest and closing his eyes. There was something magical about the harp if you asked him, perhaps it was the magic to ward away nightmares and bring a peaceful sleep, mayhaps that had just been Maglor’s voice. He had never experimented.       He recognized the scales as things that his father had played as a warm up before dinner. The missed notes in the beginning ruined a bit of Elrond’s illusion, but the notes quickly began to flow quick and correct as she began a new piece. He had not heard something alike the piece before as he had lived most of his life surrounded by folkish music that Lord’s and Ladies danced to during the late nights.       The last note rang in his ears, but not in a good way. Still, when the elleth laughed, he joined her, all be it a bit softly.  “You did very well, I wish I could help you but I have never heard something akin to what you played before…” He gave a small shrug, “No doubt father would know, but I never had the ear that he did.”

Twisting in her seat to swing both her legs over to one side and better face him, Mariel couldn’t help the faint heat from warming her face. Even if she laughed it off, she still made a mistake in front of the Lord of Imladris and that was admittedly rather embarrassing. She wasn’t sure if her mother would be mortified at the attempt or proud that she even tried.

“I should have paid more attention as a child. My mother was one of the best harpists in the Woodland Realm, but I, unfortunately, was not gifted with her musical prowess,” she admitted honestly with a hint of a sad smile. “Every once in awhile I feel compelled to play, but the urge almost exclusively appears at the most inopportune times so nothing becomes of it.” 

Great Big List of Memes [ X ]

〰 our muses are at the beach shore together

As much as she appreciated and treasured the rare, calm nights traveling treetops and stealing lingering glances at the flickering stars above, there was something precious and delicate about the transitional pastels of a fresh day. With night’s slight chill still hanging in the air, she emerged from the forest and silently made her way across a rocky shoreline. In the distance, lights danced in lanterns dotted around the settlement of Laketown but, beyond a fisherman or two, there were hardly any signs of life this early in the morning. The water continuously and gently lapped at the shore, incredibly calm for the time being.

One of the easiest ways to pick out a foreigner in the Wood was by how closely and literally they stuck to a path. For someone who grew up here, more often than not the trees provided a nifty and convenient highway to get from Point A to Point B. Rarely did strangers take advantage of the high road, however. With light footfalls, the blonde carefully went about her patrol as she had countless times before. This particular portion of the forest was relatively secure, but one could never afford to drop their guard when filth has a way of waltzing in any chance that it can get.

Speaking of filth, the elleth paused and dropped low as the distant sounds of a conflict filtered up through the trees. Orcs? Were they having issues with the spiders? Or perhaps one of her companions had engaged an enemy close by? Either way, curiosity got the best of her and she promptly drew closer to the source of the disturbance. Even enhanced eyesight couldn’t see straight through tree trunks, so she sacrificed a higher vantage point for a clearer look by dropping to lower branches. 

[ @i-dream-of-oceans ]

Mariel felt like a rock jutting out of the riverbed and standing firm as comrades and unfamiliar faces flowed past with drinks in hand without a care in the world. Laughter bounced off stone walls and large smiles radiated from all sides, but she found it hard to return even the simplest of cordial greetings. As blue eyes tried to reconcile these jovial snapshots with the nagging turmoil swimming in her head, the elleth was left with blatant confusion and, honestly, a bit of anger, too. Since joining the guard, she was made painfully aware of the state of affairs in their forest. Orcs, spiders, and worse still, but yet people were laughing? They were feasting as if nothing else mattered, and she couldn’t understand what she had missed. Why couldn’t she be as carefree as they were? Did they so easily forget about the dangers? The price that was paid to keep it all at bay?

The soft ringing of a harp was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Ducking her head, she escaped the ring of conversation she’d been looming in for the past several minutes. With a soft thud, she set aside her own wine glass as a sudden urgency bubbled in the pit of her stomach. It was during a rather ungraceful beeline for the exit that she nearly smacked straight into Elydir, which was of course embarrassing. If she weren’t so focused on an abrupt need for fresh air, she might’ve been more bothered by it.