It was an inescapable fact that in the past few years, PEACE had descended on Asgard even in her emptiness: remembered grace and serenity corded itself about the old, stone bones of the imperial palace and roamed through hollow halls with fragile-as-breath presence running knowing fingers over all of it’s occupants. In the long years that had followed that comparatively brief but earthshaking period when everything had changed so drastically, the realm had sighed and settled into reminiscence, sluggish pace slowing but never seeping out into shadow. ASGARD then, seemingly grey and graceful old lady held herself apart in evening’s dusk until the indigo spread of dark spilled itself about her like a quilt.

It did not loan itself to woman within; the one marionette-string entwined in it’s interior workings. Sif, who sat behind her desk once the chambermaid had gone again ( tea cooling on the corner like alter offering ) and folded one particular piece of cut down paper into her hand. Yet another communication from Muspelheim – old enemies who in the past months had become uncommonly tractable, friendly even. Convexly, relations with Vanaheim, Alfheim had become inexplicable terse. Not hostile, not even bad per-say just…TERSE. And complacent near to subservient. Enough that Sif had forgotten what it felt like not to look sideways at everything despite the fact that, by all accounts, nothing was wrong – could not, in fact, be better. Supposed golden era guided by all-knowing Allfather, who had seemed more revived and sharper than ever.

Part of new normality, odd as it was, had become her evening progression along the gleaming track of the rainbow bridge, where she could use Heimdall’s roving eye to compare reports of the condition of Yggdrasil against actuality; vain hope he might catch something she did not. The ritual, by now, had been braided into body like muscle memory, so much so that she doesn’t even offer a formal greeting as she passed into the gleaming central mechanism of the gateway, just a familiar smile - her first GENUINE one of the day - for it’s keeper.

          “And before then, they buck and stamp and kick for the teeth. I can tell you haven’t spent much time around wild animals. Don’t think I’ll be making the experience easy for you.”

          “I know the valley.” Oh, he is livid. Emotion shows itself first in the tension about his eyes, bleeding into the sharper corners of his mouth. “I penned your map. By what grace am I unfit to deliver siege at your side?”

          It begins, strangely, with sound. A grating whir, like Mordor’s terrible machines, long destroyed but unforgotten. For many moons it is only a distant noise; disruptive and sparking tension beneath his skin. And every season, the noise would grow louder. Closer.

          Just when it seemed on the precarious cusp of unbearable... all was silent.

          And thus marked the first shift of the winds that passed through the trees; the first darker turn of the earth. Winter came, and all of the Woodland’s deer fled Southwest, to Lórien.

          Well and fine, Thranduil thinks. He battles the winter woes by turning his focus to Heimdall instead. All else seems to be changing, but his love remains the same. Though he is not unscathed. His thumb maps his affection below Heimdall’s eye--- and in its wake, a smear of black ichor leaves a tribute that strikes neither fear nor concern in Thranduil’s gaze.

          It is a part of him, now. He accepts it.

          “Are you cold?”

          A truth, if ever there was one. In the future, near or far, there would not be so much as a shadow upon any realm that did not know this Khan’s name. It was a better fate to be close to him, Thranduil knows--- to be favored. Perhaps it will take some time, but Thranduil is patient. He has not been chosen only for his blood. He will have purpose here.

          “It is not enough that it listens. You must make an example, my Lord.”