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The halls of the Woodland Realm slumbered in silence, bathed in the pale blue wash of winterlight. The great roots of the mountain curved like ribs overhead, and the soft hush of water - always water - murmured somewhere unseen. The throne stood empty, but its king did not.
Thranduil stood beside a column carved with winding leaves and stags, his figure still as a statue draped in silver and white. In his hand, he held an apple - small, red, and flawless. Its skin gleamed under the light, and in this place of marble, moonstone, and timelessness, it seemed out of place. Too warm. Too alive.
He turned it in his hand with almost clinical detachment, his fingers grazing its curve as if uncertain whether to crush or cradle it.
“A gift from Lake-town,” he murmured, more to himself than to the guard nearby. “How quaint.”
Footsteps echoed softly through the cavernous chamber - light, deliberate. Elenariel’s presence was never announced; it simply filled the space, subtle and certain. She approached, eyes flicking to the fruit in his hand.
“A peace offering?” she asked, brows lifted. “Or are they attempting to bribe you with orchard fare now?”
Thranduil didn’t look at her. “A bribe implies some understanding of value.” He raised the apple, studying it against the light. “This is sentiment. Mortals love to give what they cannot keep.”
Elenariel stepped closer, her cloak brushing the floor like silk. “Perhaps because they know they must lose it. That’s why they give it meaning.”
He glanced at her then, something unreadable in the tilt of his mouth. “How poetic. But sentiment does not hold a realm together.”
“No,” she said softly. “But it holds people together. Even you, once.”
His fingers stilled on the apple. The silence that followed was not empty. It thrummed, low and cold.
“You overestimate what once was,” he said, voice cool and precise. “Or perhaps you confuse memory with myth.”
Elenariel reached out, brushing the edge of the apple with the tip of one finger, as if testing his distance. “And you,” she whispered, “confuse detachment with strength.”
Their hands hovered close, the apple a fragile thing between them. He did not move.
“Tell me,” he said at last, “what would you do with this fruit, if it were yours?”
She smiled - small, enigmatic. “I’d eat it. Let it remind me what sweetness feels like… before it fades.”
A flicker passed through his eyes. Not anger. Not affection. Something weightless and dangerous: longing, swiftly buried.
Without a word, he set the apple down on the cold marble ledge beside them. Its red skin stood out like a wound against the pale stone.
“Let it stay there,” he said quietly, stepping back. “Let it rot, if it must. That is the fate of all mortal things.”
“And yet,” she replied, watching him walk away, “they bloom again, year after year.”
He paused. Just for a breath but he did not turn back.
When the chamber stilled once more, only the apple remained - round and glistening in the pale light, a defiant symbol of everything he refused to taste.