InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Eyebrow"

Thalia Grace (

wasatree) wrote in

thedoorway,
@ 2012-12-12 17:51:00

log; thalia and legolas
WHO: Thalia Grace and Legolas
WHERE:The forest!
WHEN: A while ago
WHAT: Thalia vs Legolas, Round One
RATING:
STATUS: log; complete.

It wasn’t that she was stealing a car to take Legolas on a jaunt to upstate New York’s forest, Thalia told herself. She was just borrowing for the day. And given that the owner pretty much just parked and left it for days at a time (she’d checked), she figured no one would miss it.

It ran well, though, and soon Thalia was pulling up to the entrance of Potts Tower, where she’d arranged to meet Legolas. Hopefully she’d get there before all the fangirls mobbed him. And hopefully she’ll be able to restrain herself from going into full-out fangirl mode herself.

It had been tempting for Legolas to step outside to wait for Thalia. He imagined, had he not be raised in the subterranean halls of his father and survived the mines of Moria, that the immense city would have left him feeling frightfully claustrophobic. Fresh air would have been welcome, but one glance at the number of people, particularly young women, who turned their heads when he set foot on the sidewalk deterred him. He had not forgotten the unexpected enthusiasm that had greeted him on the network. Perhaps now was not the time to meet the public, as he had heard some of the people around him say. Discretion left Legolas waiting just inside of the door, bow and quiver slung over one shoulder, long knife tucked in its sheath at his belt.

Thalia started to reach over to unlock the passenger door for Legolas, then remembered that this was a super fancy car with electronic locks. She wasn’t used to that. But she popped the lock and reached over to open the door for him, gesturing for him to get in.

With her kohl-rimmed eyes and her artfully torn t-shirt, she didn’t particularly look like a traditional Maiden of the Hunt, but she was wearing the silver circlet on her brow that marked her as Artemis’s First Lieutenant, and her bow and quiver - gifted to her by the goddess herself - were in the back seat.

A raised eyebrow greeted the unusual fashion choice, but Legolas said nothing of it. He had seen far stranger things in his time. Beyond that, Thalia had been kind enough to offer him sense of familiarity in this world by showing him to its forests. Legolas was many things, but an ill-mannered guest was not one of them. He nodded his thanks and slipped into the car, moving with ease despite his unfamiliarity with the vehicle. He settled his bow and quiver in the well at his feet, where he could rest both hands overtop the longbow given to him by the Galadhrim of Lothlórien.

“Thank you again for this,” he said to Thalia with a small smile. “It will be good to see the greenwood, even if it is not one of the forests of Arda.” His English was very nearly flawless, thanks largely to the gift all of the Eldar had for language.

For a moment, Thalia forgot he was in the car. “Oh, that is a beautiful bow,” she breathed, her eyes going wide at the sight of it. She loved her own bow and wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world, but his was beautifully carved and crafted, and her fingers itched just looking at it.

But then she recalled herself, and she grinned at him. “Oh, believe me, it’s my pleasure. I have heard so much about your skills, and I’m really excited to see them in action. Just...uh...you know, buckle up first.” She gestured to her own seatbelt, because she was not going to be the one to get Legolas Greenleaf killed in a 10 car pile up if she could help it.

A moment’s confusion was quickly followed by comprehension, and Legolas made quick work of the seatbelt, courtesy of Thalia’s example. “I must confess that I am most surprised at the knowledge others have of my world. I hope that I will not disappoint your expectations. In truth, I am most anxious to learn more of your own skills.” He glanced back at her bow and quiver. “Those are not the weapons of a novice, I think.”

“You are pretty famous,” Thalia said as she pulled out onto the street. She’d never received formal driving lessons before - it was all getaway driving or hotwiring - but she knew how to drive enough like a normal person to not get pulled over.

She focused her gaze on the busy Manhattan street, though she conversed easily enough. “I’m the First Lieutenant of Artemis - the Goddess of the Hunt - so I’m pretty good at it.” It was a statement, not a brag. “My equipment was a gift from her.”

“Indeed?” Admiration was clear in Legolas’s voice, and this time, he looked at Thalia with closer attention. “In Arda, the hunt is the domain of Oromë. He is a great friend to the Elves. It was he who called came upon our people after the Awakening. It is Oromë who named us the Eldar, the people of the stars, and sought to lead the first of the elves to safety.”

Legolas paused in thought, then continued. “Your goddess, the Lady Artemis … is she kind?”

The closer look revealed that she fairly radiated good health and vitality, more than the ordinary mortal would. “Oh, I didn’t know that,” she said, glancing at him briefly with interest. None of that had been in the movies, which was the basis for all she knew about Legolas and Middle Earth. Thalia wasn’t much of a reader in the first place, and Tolkien was ridiculously dense.

“But that’s cool - I guess there’s still a lot of respect for him, huh? As for Artemis...” She trailed off, trying to come up with the most accurate answer so as not to misrepresent her goddess. “I don’t know if you can apply that kind of word to her, you know? I mean, she’s a goddess. She doesn’t see the world the same way we do. Think of it this way: she’s the goddess of the moon, too. Would you call the moon kind for shining down on us and giving us light at night? Not really - it’s just what it does. And if it goes away every two weeks, it’s not being cruel, it’s just what it does. So Artemis is just who she is. But she’s definitely more approachable than the other gods - which is to say she actually hangs out with us - and she doesn’t mess with our lives for the sake of it. For a goddess, that’s pretty kind.”

“We have only one god, Eru, but the Valar are of his making, and they have wrought much of our world. Their decisions are not always easy to understand.” Decisions such as allowing one of the Firstborn to be taken from Arda, though Legolas wondered if perhaps the Valar had been powerless in this matter, and Eru alone could have prevented the tesseract from reaching into Arda. He had asked himself why many times already, and had yet to find a satisfactory answer.

Still, Legolas found himself feeling more and more at ease. Speaking of his world was comforting, as was learning more of what he would find in this one. Thalia was not mortal, nor was she an elf, but she was perhaps more like him than some in this strange city. “The Valar have largely held to Valinor since the sinking of Beleriand. That was before my time. With Sauron defeated, Oromë and the others may remain in Valinor, and allow Men to shape their own futures.”

"Yeah, the gods in my world have sort of eased off of direct contact with mortals, except the ones they want to get into bed with," Thalia said. They were on the state highway by now, having gotten out before traffic snarled the turnpike, and she could ease some of her concentration on the road. "But they still influence the mortal world in a lot of ways."

Legolas’s eyes widened at the first statement. In the long history of Arda, never once had the Valar bedded a mortal. Neither was it common for such relations to be spoken of so openly. “I am not certain I understand.”

Misunderstanding his source of confusion, Thalia said, “Yeah, I’m not really sure how it works, but they can take the shape of mortals and influence people that way. You know, guide them in a certain direction, convince them of the desirability of one path or another, turn them into jackalopes...”

“Ah. I … see.” Legolas did not understand, but the matter was one that he would trust to sort itself out later. “Do these gods and goddesses act in this world, or another?” There were more questions to be asked, he thought. Did Thalia’s deities act upon the world as a whole, or only on those they claimed? From what source did their authority and power come? How strong were they?

Thalia grimaced. The fact that the demigods were cut off from the gods in this world bothered her, especially since her life pretty much revolved around one. The others were more distant from them - they had their world-saving quests and all, but Thalia was the one who was with one almost every hour of every day.

“They’re out of reach from this world,” she said with a sigh. “I mean...it might be a good thing, because they cause drama for us wherever they are, but it’s just weird to live in a world without them.”

“I imagine it is.”

Legolas fell silent for a short time, his thoughts straying to his own home and the voices that had fallen silent when he was taken. The Fellowship had not yet said farewell to each other, though they had known that the day when they would was drawing near. He had hoped to soon bear witness to Aragorn’s long-awaited marriage to Arwen, perhaps even to take Gimli to the Greenwood and show him the wonders of the realm. A plan had begun to form to gather elves to bring to Ithilien to restore the forest in the wake of Sauron’s destruction. Melancholy swept over him for a brief instant, and with it, the longing to follow the call of the sea into the West. It seemed that call, at least, had not been silenced. He took a deep breath and pulled himself out of his reverie.

“Perhaps your gods are still here after some fashion.”

Thalia looked wry. “I doubt it. They’re not exactly subtle, at least not to us. If they’re here, we’d know it. Anyway, we’ll get to the park in about an hour. Did the SHIELD people give you a low-down on what this world’s like, or are there any questions you’re burning to ask? We have time.”

“I hardly know where to begin.” The world that blurred past the window was so foreign to him that Legolas was uncertain how to phrase his questions. “I am young by the measure of my people, but I have seen much. Nothing could have led me to suspect that any world could be as this one is. The touch of mortal hands on this land has eclipsed the work of dwarves and elves in its scope. I know not how such works could come to pass, nor what sort of civilization gives birth to such ideas. They live above the trees and travel in machines that turn a march of many days into a restful journey of only hours.”

“Yeah, that’s human invention for you,” Thalia said. She didn’t think too much about the wonders of the modern world: she’d been born into it. She supposed, as the years passed and her immortality took her to the far future, she’d find things to marvel at, but for now this was all normal to her.

She did know where he was coming from, though. “But if it helps, I don’t think most of this happened until the last hundred years or so, when they figured out how to get machines and computers to do the work or something. There are some Hunters who’re several hundred years old, and they said all this only happened recently for them.”

“That is yet young by the reckoning of elves.” Legolas thought of his father and the many other elves he had known whose lives stretched thousands of years beyond his own, some into a past that had become almost legend. Would their greater age and experience make this world more difficult to accept, or would they instead be more at ease in such strange surroundings thanks to all that they had seen in their long journey through time?

“I was told the year,” he eventually said, “but I do not understand the standard by which your years are counted.”

Several hundred years old was pretty old by Thalia's standards, especially when most demigods didn't even live to see their 20th birthday.

"How long do elves live?" she asked curiously. The movies had referred vaguely to lots of time passing and even more history, but Thalia didn't really have a frame of reference for it.

"Each year is 365 days here," she said, not sure if that was what he was asking. "The time it takes for the seasons to renew themselves."

“Elves are tied to the world until its ending. We can die, but we cannot pass out of the world in the manner of Men. Our bodies may be destroyed, but our spirits remain.”

The remainder of the drive passed quickly enough, with Legolas asking and answering questions, and coming to find that Thalia was indeed a welcome companion in this time of upheaval and uncertainty.

A little over an hour later, Thalia pulled into the overflow parking lot of Norvin Green State Park. There was no one parked here, which was exactly what Thalia wanted. She found a spot that was out of sight of the main road. If another car thief had a mind to steal this car, they could, but they’d actually have to look to find it.

It would be a bit of a trek into the heart of the forest itself, but Thalia figured Legolas wouldn’t mind. After all, the guy had walked for countless days straight on that ring-destroying journey. A bit of a hike wasn’t going to destroy him.

“So this is still kind of civilized,” she explained as she looped her quiver across her back. “But wait til you see what’s inside.”

Already, the surroundings were a pleasant change. Legolas tilted his head to look at the sky overhead, a smile making its way onto his features as he listened to the stirrings of the forest nearby. The air was lighter here, still not entirely clean, but lacking the cloying sense of too many people and too much smoke in a small area. “This is a welcome change from the city.”

“Yeah, and it’s nice that it’s not too far away,” Thalia added. “It’s a pretty nice change of pace.”

She found a path into the forest and started heading in that direction. “I was here once with the Hunters - or at least our world’s version of here. We were hunting a fire-breathing bronze snake.” That wasn’t a brag either - given that a Hunter’s life was hunting monsters, she was just making conversation. Although it wouldn’t hurt at all if it made him a little impressed.

“A fire-breathing snake,” Legolas repeated, slanting a glance in her direction. “It must have been formidable if there was cause for more than a single hunter.”

“We always hunt as a group anyways,” Thalia explained. “But in this case it was good we were all there. It was probably about...as wide as you’re tall,” she said, after sizing him up. “With near impenetrable scales. I mean, our arrows are good. They can pierce dragonhide. But this beast was something else entirely.”

She moved her hands animatedly as she described how the Hunters had finally managed to bring it down. There was obvious pride in her voice, but there was sadness as well: she missed being with them.

Legolas listened with rapt attention, intrigued. Elves welcomed a good tale, and this certainly was one. “I would like to have seen such a hunt,” he finally told Thalia. “I am sorry that your fellows are not here to share in the telling of it. If you are willing, I would like to come to know them through your eyes.”

“I’d be happy to share our stories,” Thalia said, smiling at him. The Hunters definitely didn’t get enough credit for what they did, and from what she could tell, their accomplishments weren’t really given a lot of attention in the books either. If nothing else, Thalia could at least share some of that with Legolas as a willing audience. “But what I’d really love to do is see you in action. Call it professional curiosity: the elves are known for their archery skills, and I would love to test your skills against mine.”

Legolas laughed lightly and unslung his bow. “Let it not be said that Legolas of the Greenwood denied the wish of a friend, nor that he left a challenge unanswered.” He was glad of the chance to indulge a familiar activity with another who could appreciate the intricacies of his craft. “Would you care to set the rules of engagement?”

“Oh wow, I just figured we could go nuts shooting at things,” Thalia said with a laugh. “There are so many ways to measure skill, aren’t there? Accuracy, distance, prowess, style, effectiveness under pressure...we should have a whole gauntlet or obstacle course for it. And there are already people clamouring to see us pitted against each other.”

“Is that so?” He shook his head with a smile. “This place will continue to astound me, I think.” Yes, he was well-known in his own world, but that notoriety did not compare with the way people in this world seemed to perceive and react to him. “Let us begin, then, and see if we may meet the expectations placed upon us.” He nocked an arrow and sighted a target some distance away, though still within the range he knew that mortal men and women could achieve. He released the arrow on an outward breath. The arrow lodged firmly in the trunk of a fallen tree, where it quivered slightly before going still.

Thalia watched avidly, admiring the skill with which he so easily made the shot. But when she realized how easy that shot was, she made a face. “Auw, come on,” she complained. “Seriously? Why are you holding back?”

She pulled an arrow out of her quiver and nocked it, carefully sighting her target. Once she was confident of it, she released the arrow, which flew straight and true to shear off the top of his.

“Consider this a beginning. I did not wish to make things too difficult.” He chose another target, this one just beyond the distance he would expect even Aragorn to be able to manage, and released another arrow to lodge itself on the middle of a narrow, broken branch that dangled above the forest floor. “Better?”

“Nice,” Thalia said, her eyes lighting up. That shot had taken incredible skill: not just hit the branch in the first place, but to hit it with such precision that the arrow would go in without snapping it right off the tree. It was a gorgeous shot.

But she could probably do better.

She carefully sighted her target, and released her next arrow. It hurtled past Legolas’s last shot, catching a strand of Old Man’s Beard moss on its tip as it went, and embedded itself at the tip of a tree branch yards further than where Legolas had last aimed. Then she lowered her bow and looked at him with a mixture of smugness, pride, and hope for his approval.

Legolas took in the sight with a raised eyebrow, impressed. “The Hunters of Artemis are indeed skilled.” Was it a blessing from her goddess, or were the hunters chosen for their talent and allowed to develop it? Both, perhaps, were the case. “Let us raise the stakes, then.” The elf sighted another target beyond Thalia’s, a small knot in a tree’s trunk. It was hardly wider than the tip of an arrow, but that did not prevent Legolas from hitting the mark dead center.

Thalia smiled, pleased, at his reaction. When he released his next shot, though, she let out a low whistle. She could barely see that knot from where she was, but she could tell that Legolas’s arrow had hit it dead-on. Her next shot was going to be harder. Hunters had fantastic eyesight, but not anywhere as good as elves. Legolas was probably going to win this distance one, by sheer stint of the fact that he could see further than she could.

But Thalia wasn’t going to give up just because there was a good chance she was going to be beaten. That was just unsporting. So she drew back her bow, whispered and unleashed another arrow, aiming for something further than where he’d hit. She knew she was going to hit something; she just hoped it was going to be impressive enough.

She hit something, all right, which was remarkable enough, but that she managed to do so with a sense of what she was hitting put her well above many of the finer archers Legolas had met outside of his father’s realm. “Well done,” he said, genuinely pleased that she had kept up with him so far. “I take it that you practice regularly.”

Thalia looked pleased as well - both at her accomplishment and at his praise. “Thank you,” she said, lowering her bow. “And yes - we do practice regularly. When hunting monsters, it’s important to be able to be at your peak performance. Anything less can be the end of you. But it’s not just archery I can do. Wanna see what else?”

“Please.” He was intrigued. Already, Thalia had given him much to think on. There were many in the world whose lives and natures were outside the realm of what he had known or been taught by tales and history lessons. What extraordinary talents and strengths would they possess? What gifts did the mighty of their realms bestow upon their followers?

She smiled brightly at him and pulled out another arrow to nock it. She didn’t release it immediately, though. Instead, she stood there with bow drawn...and then a spark of electricity gathered at her hand where it met the drawstring, traveling along the string until it reached the arrow and enveloped it in crackling blue energy. Only then did she release it - straight into the arrow that Legolas had landed on the narrow branch. There was a bright spark and a puff of smoke, and Legolas’s arrow fell to the ground, blackened and charred.

“Ai. Mae carnen, mellon nín,” Legolas murmured, duly impressed. “How did you come by such skill? Is it a learned magic, or must one be born with it?” He had not seen its like from any but the Istari, though he could hardly imagine Gandalf taking up a bow.

“Born with it,” Thalia explained. She turned to him, still smiling over the shot she’d made, and lifted up her hand. Blue arcs of electricity crackled between her fingers. “My dad’s Zeus, God of Thunder and Lord of the Sky, so I have some powers from that.”

“Remarkable. I have never seen the like.” The Valar and the Maiar were the only ones with such skills in his own world, and none had lain with a mortal. “Did you father seek a place for you with your Goddess of the Hunt?”

“Hah!” Thalia burst out laughing. She hadn’t meant to, but Legolas’s innocent question was off in so many ways she couldn’t help it. The thought of the womanizing Zeus sticking his daughter amongst a bunch of eternal maidens, coupled with the idea that he cared enough about her to set her up with a career option, was just too funny.

“Sorry,” she sputtered. “I respect my dad and all, but he’s not exactly an involved parental figure or anything. No, Artemis asked me to join.” She sobered, remembering the circumstances. “Her...um...her previous First Lieutenant, my predecessor, had just died. So she offered it me.”

“Ah. I do apologize if I have said something untoward. Those who were not born of Arda do not mingle with the other races as your gods seem to do.” One of the Maiar had wed an elvish king long ago, in a land that the Valar had swept beneath the ocean long before Legolas had been born, but he did not believe the marriage of Melian and Thingol could be equated with the unions that gave birth to individuals such as Thalia. “Were you seeking a place such as the one your goddess offered?”

“No, it’s fine,” Thalia assured him. “Our gods definitely...uh...mingle with humans. A lot. There’s a bunch of us here that’s the result of that mingling.”

She’d finished her giggling fit completely by now, but his last question drew a haunted look to her eyes. “I was,” she said, quiet now. “I had just lost something very...precious. Joining the Hunters was the closest thing to getting it back.”

Legolas bowed his head in solemn understanding. “Then I pray that you found comfort in your duties.” He had suffered his own losses as an elf of Mirkwood, with much of his life spent in the shadow of Sauron’s evil. Thranduil’s realm had been embattled far longer than any other elvish kingdom during the Third Age. “Loss is perhaps more difficult when one faces a long life.”

“Harder still when the loss comes back to life,” Thalia said, lowering her gaze as well. She thought back to her last battle with Luke on the top of Mount Othrys. It had undoubtedly been a fight to the death, with their friendship being the first casualty. And now he was back, and she didn’t know what they were any more.

She shook her head, not wanting to dwell on those thoughts. “Anyway, it was just a lot of drama, and joining the Hunters gave me peace. So I’m glad for it. I just miss them.”

“Of course.” The forest was a reassuring presence, but Legolas could feel the absence of his own home and those familiar to him quite keenly. “Let us move to less painful subjects, then.”

Thalia was only too happy to do just that. The drama of her past was already too present here in this strange version of New York, and this trip was suppose to be a respite from it.

“C’mon,” she said. “Let’s go get our arrows. I’ll race ya.”

(Read comments)

InsaneJournal

Post a comment in response: