Legolas sits with hair undone. Rain falls on the window, heavy enough to disguise the world behind entirely. The diamond panes of glass look out upon a river. This river will fall to the land, will join the Bruinen, will to flow to the sea. He has never seen the sea. But Aragorn has told him how the great waves rise and fall, and crash and break on the earth. How nothing else sounds like it. How it could drive you mad, with want or love, or fear.
Aragorn isn’t afraid of the sea. He isn’t afraid of death either. He brought Legolas pieces of sea glass — a treasure. Legolas put them in a glass bowl on his windowsill.
‘Have you ever seen the sea?’ he asks Bilbo Baggins, who once lived in his house, although they never met. That was before Aragorn and the sea glass.
‘No,’ Bilbo says. ‘But I will someday. I’ve promised myself that.’
Legolas nods. The ring once lived in his house too. He didn’t feel it. He doesn’t feel it when Frodo carries it either. He hasn’t asked anyone else if they do or don’t. He thinks it might make Gandalf feel strange, but he doesn’t dare ask.
‘What else did you promise yourself?’ Legolas asks. He rests his chin on his drawn up knees. Bilbo sits quite close to the fire, and he has a green blanket over his lap. He is old. Younger than Legolas in years, but older than him in every way that matters.
‘That I would see my Frodo again,’ Bilbo says. ‘That we’d have a happy ending.’
‘How do you promise a happy ending?’ he asks. Death is strange and far away. But it always seems sad.
Bilbo looks at the fire, and Legolas looks at the window.
‘It has to be,’ Bilbo says. ‘All the best stories end that way. Or, well, my favourites do.’
‘I don’t like thinking of endings,’ Legolas says.
‘That’s because you’re an elf.’
Legolas does not disagree with Bilbo. He hugs his knees and rocks back and forth, humming. The melody is like the rain, and not like the sea. The sea he can hear in the shell Aragorn brought him.
‘I’ll see it too someday,’ he says.
Bilbo looks at him. ‘A happy ending?’
‘The sea, and no endings.’
‘Every story ends somewhere, Thranduilion.’
‘I know,’ Legolas says, but he counts death as violence. Bilbo can count death as peace. ‘I’ve heard that all water runs to the sea.’
‘Yes, but not all find it.’
The rain thins. Legolas can see the world outside again. A crow flies to a white pine. Water runs slowly down the window.
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"All my life I have been moving forward, and now I am here. I have a mortal’s voice, let me have the rest. I lift the brimming bowl to my lips and drink."
— Madeline Miller (Circe) ,
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i like to think if annabeth and percy ended up living around mortals they would tell their friends abt some of the stuff they went through bc they can’t really hide it forever except they make it sound like their family’s part of the greek mafia
a lot of “yeah my dads…influential…in greece”
or “my moms,,pretty powerful in greece,, yeah she’s up there lol..anyway”
like they make it sound like maybe poseidon and athena are two “business CEO’s” who butt heads but everyone thinks their two mafia leaders who hate eachother
annabeth slips up and brings up the 7 months percy was missing and they have to cover it up saying his aunt, on his dads side, sent him away to a boarding school in greece where he wasn’t able to contact anyone here in america
“yeah we don’t really talk to her after..that..”
it doesn’t help that their friends can hear them hiss in greek to each other when they don’t want them to know what their saying
or when their stretching in a certain way that makes their shirt ride up and there are obvious scars hidden underneath
and it honestly all makes sense just going off the vibes of the two of them so no one really questions it because who would and anytime either of their parents appear shifted into their mortal counterparts everyone keeps their eyes downcast
dj khaled: anotha one
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