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The elf of Mirkwood is strange.
In language and action, he is both like and unlike Haldir’s Silvan kin in Lothlórien. When they spoke for the first time, Haldir recognized it in him immediately: distant kindred, separated by location and lore – someone who knew the tales of Nimrodel and Amroth from afar, rather than one who had ever met them; someone who exclaimed at the wonder of the Golden Wood with recognition but not familiarity. His dialect is similar to the one spoken in Lothlórien, but with certain words or accents that Haldir does not recognize; doubtless a linguist could trace the differences and identify their source, but –
But Haldir is no scholar. He is a marchwarden of Lothlórien, one of the forces marshaled in defense of their prized borders, and it is that behavior too that he recognizes in Legolas of Mirkwood.
Haldir watches him now from above, from the higher branches of a mallorn at the edge of the living space set aside for their guests. The rest are asleep, lulled by the lateness of the hour and the safety of the wood, but Legolas perches on a lower branch, half-crouched in its crook like a bird ready at any moment to take flight. His stillness is absolute, but the stillness that preludes a flurry of feathers – the promise that he could be in motion faster than a blink, faster than a thought, if disrupted.
This stillness is like his accent – something almost familiar, something that could almost be the speech of Haldir’s own kin, but just off enough to remind Haldir that this elf is different. The guards of Lothlórien wear stillness as a means of defense and attack, a strategy when guarding their borders from marauders and orcs – the knowledge that their would-be predators can be made easily into prey for as long as they remain unaware of their silent watchers. A stillness that waits only for the order to burst into motion, a stillness they might shed as a cloak on glad return to lovers and friends, to sing and rejoice and make merry.
Legolas wears it as his own skin.
He is safe here – they have all been assured of their safety. Even Gimli the Dwarf has received amends and trusted them; even he sleeps soundly in the beds provided for the strange fellowship that has made their way into the good graces of the Lady. But Legolas sits upright even in the night, his dark hair a shadow-smudge against the dim light of the tree beneath him, incongruous here in this wood where he might be recognized as kin.
It is not only his mannerisms that set him apart, Haldir realizes, but perhaps also his choices.
With caution, he approaches Legolas, rustling the leaves deliberately as he descends. If tales of Lothlórien have made their way to Mirkwood, similar tales have traveled back south, and Haldir has no wish to learn their truth. “Well met by moonlight, cousin,” he says when he is close enough for polite speech.
“And you.” Legolas does not turn to look up. The lines of his shoulders are sharp in the darkness, his very shadow unsoftened by the generosity of the moonlight.
“You do not rest with your companions,” notes Haldir. “Are our accommodations to your liking?”
“They are very comfortable, yes.”
Haldir is close enough now to note the stiffness in every notch of Legolas’s spine, the tension practically humming at his edges. The lines of his body are as cautiously defensive as his words.
“But not to your comfort, perhaps?”
Legolas does startle then, his head twitching just slightly up before returning to face forward again – the motion of a bird looking up from its meal at the perception of a predator. And that is it, Haldir realizes all at once – that is the difference in Legolas’s stillness. In Lothlórien, they move as defenders, yes, but as predators – as those who might leap upon their unsuspecting marauders in the darkness and make the hunters into the hunted. Legolas’s motion is that of one who has always been both, always at the same time.
He recovers his composure in the space of a breath. “Forgive me, kinsman,” he says. “I am unaccustomed to such a . . . well-protected land.”
Haldir freezes at those words, just for a moment. What lies beneath that simple phrase? – what manner of tales and speculations have made it to the forest of Mirkwood, and on what real knowledge might they be based? And what does Legolas mean by speaking them now?
His own lapse lasted no longer than Legolas’s, and Legolas has not turned to look at him, but he can tell that it has not gone unnoticed. That as keenly as he is observing his kinsman from the north, he is being as keenly observed in turn.
“And so it troubles your rest?” is all he says.
“Rest,” Legolas repeats, drawing out the word on a sigh that rustles like the wind through the mallorn branches. “I suppose. I feel – at odds,” he confesses, “when sitting idle.”
Did he mean those words as a slight? An implication that the elves of Lothlórien do naught but sit idle? Or does he perhaps speak with less guile than Haldir attributes to him, and he merely means exactly what he says?
Whether or not the slight is intended, Haldir cannot let it go without response. “I am of your mind,” he says, “as are many of my folk. Perhaps you would do well to converse with those who guard the borders.”
He did not mean it as an invitation, but Legolas looks up – turning to face him for the first time, piercing him with those dark eyes, the moonlight glancing off them like blades. “Might I?” he says. “It would – it would make me easier to have an occupation.”
And that – yes, that mannerism Haldir knows.
He is not wholly ignorant to the tales that fly about Lothlórien in the outside world, about the way they sit in the safety of their borders and have naught to fear. Those who tell the tales do not know the work that the marchwardens put in, the fear that always lives just outside those borders. The tenuousness of their safety, so beholden to the Lady’s will, but always defended with sharp eyes and sharper blades.
Perhaps in this they are kindred spirits, as well.
“I understand,” he says, to that end, and extends a hand to Legolas, inviting him to follow Haldir further up the tree. “I think we might find some use for your eye and your hand at the bow.”
“I would be glad of it,” says Legolas, and he unfolds at last, flowing to his feet and allowing Haldir to take his hand. The clasp is firm, solid, bow-callused palms pressed against one another, and in that touch, Haldir knows that they are not so unlike after all.