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It is said in Dale that the elves remember all that they have witnessed, and that their memories fade not, but remain clear from the mists of forgetfulness and old age. So an elf may call upon a day long past, and tell tale of it as though it were yesterday.
The people of Dale have many such stories. Most of them are half true at best, to say nothing of the slanders heard from the tongues of dwarves. But in this matter they were right: elves remember all, and may revisit their memories as they please. Everything Laerophen had seen, all that he had felt and heard and sensed and touched since the sweet half-sense of childhood had passed, was as yesterday to him. Happy hours he had spent in the reverie between sleep and waking, roaming the woods with Laindawar when they had yet been green, or recalling with a thrill the first reading of the Lay of Luthien in his father's little-used library.
To Laerophen's mind, there was but one point on which the men of Dale erred. It was better, oh how much better, not to remember. And if one must remember all that one had seen, how much better then not see at all.
One only had to look at his little brother Legolas to see this. He had been still in early childhood in the reckoning of elves when their mother had gone away across the sundering seas. Laerophen remembered the long journey home without her, how Legolas had run to greet them at the gate with his harried guardsmen following behind, and how his merry young face had gone blank in confusion. He remembered how Laindawar's hands had shaken just slightly at his bag as he pulled out the shell he had brought back for his littlest brother, the last child the wood was likely to see for a time. He remembered, too, how Thranduil had knelt in the leaves to be at eye level with his youngest son and told him his mother had sailed for Valinor.
Laerophen thought of this moment often. He did not wonder at its accuracy, for the memories of elves play no tricks as those of the second born are wont to do, but still he wondered at it, for it seemed to him that this gentleness in his father was the last of its kind. Much had been sundered with that parting, and no memory of old times could Laerophen now recall without a shadow of sorrow.
When do we sail then, Legolas had asked, but Thranduil had already stood and brushed the dirt from his robes and was striding away into his hall. Legolas had run after him and his brother and, not catching them, had turned to Laerophen and clutched at his travelling cloak instead. He was an affectionate elf, more affectionate than was proper in the customs of their people, but he was the last child of the Greenwood and much was now tolerated that Laerophen would not have dared.
Not yet, little brother, he had answered, and put his hand on his head like a huntsman might hood a falcon and so calm it. There is much work to do here. Legolas had nodded seriously. Laerophen studied his face, but the boy looked calm and resolved.
Yet what could time mean to an elf so young? Laerophen may have fancied himself very old beside little Legolas, and indeed he was, many ages older was he, and Laindawar older still. Yet only with the departure of their mother had time begun to take shape for him, and what had once been a still pool, ever unchanging, became a stream which rushed running all about him. He took to wandering the forests, sometimes with Laindawar but more often alone, and whole weeks would he spend in easy remembrance, until the present and the past were as one to him and he walked in a waking dream. He pushed back against the running tide of time, even as it caught him in its current, for all about him the woods were darkening and the evil fastness was taking hold. He did not blame his father in the matter, for he was a wise king and a warrior who had seen the ruin of Doriath and the Battle of Dagorlad. His father knew better than most the perils of remembrance and so he shut himself up in forgetting. No true forgetting could Thranduil muster, and this was but a semblance of forgetfulness, brought on at time by elf wine and starlight, but indeed Thranduil forgot his friends and his worries, forgot the needs of his woods and his joy in the company of the trees. He forgot the tales of old and the cares beyond his borders, heeded no council, received no entreaty and left his sons and his people to grow wild as the darkening land. Much had departed along with their queen, though she had not meant it to be so. And so it was that Laerophen was forced to put away his remembrances and turn his tears to song, for the woods of old were no longer the woods in which his waking body walked, and he, at least, knew still well the difference.
Besides, he had a younger brother who needed him.
Legolas and his playmates, alone of all the elves of Mirkwood, knew not what had been lost, for to him, as to all children, the whole world was still young. Laerophen's little brother delighted in his freedom, bought as much from the indulgences of the Wood Elves, who liked to hear the laughter of children in these later days, as from his father's strange moods. The brothers tried to school him as best they could, but he was as haughty as his father and distracted by light and birdsong. Indeed he grew to be a princely fighter and a keen hunter, and this was no bad thing, for every year their home grew more perilous and more grim. He danced well, spoke proudly, if with little tact, and stood tall, more naturally graceful than either older brother, and, if not more fair, then less unbowed, so certain was he in the ways of the world and his place within it. Laerophen despaired of his schooling at times, for he was wilful as the forest creatures who no longer answered to their names. At last he happened upon a way. Legolas, more than anything, liked to show off, and so they would make the lessons into games that he might win, or might lose to his friend Tauriel or such other youth as there were left in their halls in the Third Age.
And if Legolas was no keen study of his books, still he loved to hear Laerophen sing the stories of old, of the Silmaril and the friendship of Narvi and Celembrimbor (which he liked especially, because Laerophen bade him keep it secret from his father). Most of all he liked the Lay of Luthien, the tale of Beren's forbidden love and Luthien dancing in the meadow, and the mortal gift that was granted to her. This last part he demanded over and over again, and when he was too old to be sung to sleep, when even the wood elves themselves had taken on the name of Mirkwood for their home, Laerophen would hear it in snatches from his own mouth.
You should not encourage him so, Laindawar had said to him once. Laerophen had disagreed, he saw no harm in giving Legolas the songs of his people. At any rate, he cared little for Laindawar's opinion on the matter, for he was often away on diplomatic business and rarely saw the child. Only later had he understood Laindawar's meaning. To their little brother, their mother was a figure of old, important and distant as any tale. He never heard the cry of the gulls in his dreams, never felt the spray of the sea, so cold it had been, and the wind so cutting. He had never doubted that he was loved, or that he would one day take his own place in the great stories. At times Laerophen thought of telling him how it had been, but he thought better of it. Legolas was cheerful, and was that not his birthright, to live for ever in the deathless days of elves? Had not the weight of the changing years pushed their mother to the sea and his father to despair? It would not have been a kindness.
So Legolas grew tall and proud and strong, skilled with his bow and fast in his friendships, though his thought was strange and crooked to the elves of Greenwood at times. He was one of the few true children of Mirkwood, and his thoughts ran in strange unchanneled currents. He alone of Thranduil's children did not know the pain of true parting. And so it was that he departed from Rivendell in the year 3018 of the Third Age, as one of the nine walkers, having known neither loss nor grief, well acquainted though he was with its workings in his home.
Bitter was the lesson and hard its learning for Legolas Thranduillion, though in later years it seemed to him that sadness itself had been the gift.