The Missing
by Dinledhwen
Part 13
When we reached the Great Hall, King Éomer instructed that
Gamling and the stable staff be placed in a large dormitory type room
so that the Healer and his aids could care for them all in one place.
Then while a fair blonde haired young woman ran ahead of us, he
personally led me, Gimli, and the two men carrying Legolas between them
to a room now well lit and made ready for us by the young woman close
to his private quarters.
“This had been Théodred’s room. I will see to it that two more
beds are made up for you and Gimli. Is there anything that you will
need to treat Legolas with?” he asked me after the two men had gently
laid my brother down on his back on the soft bed and had left.
“I could use a cloth and some water. The wound the dart created bled
some after I pulled it out,” I replied after I had bent over and
examined my brother’s neck closely.
So King Éomer had the young woman go and fetch what I needed
while he left to see how his men were doing. While we waited for the
young woman’s return, Gimli asked me “How long will Legolas be asleep?”
“I don’t know,” I said with a sigh as I straightened up and looked at
the worried Dwarf. “It all depends on how much of the tranquilizer they
had put in that dart. So I’m afraid we will just have to wait patiently
until he wakes up.”
By then the young woman had returned with a bowl of warm water and a
clean white cloth along with several other women who quickly began to
make up the two mattresses they had brought with them into beds.
Meanwhile the young woman asked me shyly “Is there anything else you will need?”
“No this will be all,” I replied while giving her a kind smile as I
took the offered bowl and cloth from her. It was then that I noticed
her eyes were a lovely shade of green.
Now my smiling at her caused a rosy blush to color her cheeks when she
shyly smiled back. Then she bowed her head slightly and quickly left.
“If I didn’t know better, I would say that young woman is becoming
smitten with you,” Gimli said in a low amused voice while the other
women left the room closing the door behind them.
“You noticed too,” I replied equally amused as I set the bowl down on
the bed side table and began to gently clean Legolas’s bloody neck.
“Hmmm I wonder if that’s due to “elvish magic”,” I said while glancing
down at the Dwarf who was now standing beside me watching.
Now Gimli gave a snort like laugh and said “Oh you elves are full of
that “magic” when it comes to the women. I dare say if you asked her
now she would gladly marry you.”
“Well I have no intention of doing that!” I said firmly as I rinsed out
the cloth. Now that I had cleaned the majority of the blood away, I
could see that the dart hadn’t created a very big wound. “I’m a
confirmed bachelor.”
“Then you and Legolas have even more in common,” Gimli said as he tried
to see what I was doing by standing on his tip toes. Then he grumbled
“Blast it! I’m still too short to see his neck. How does it look?”
By now I had washed all the blood away. “Not bad. He has a small round
puncture wound the size of a large dot which isn’t bleeding anymore.”
So with nothing more to do then wait, we dragged over two chairs to the
bed and had only been sitting there for a few minutes when there came a
soft knocking on the door. I was about to get up and answer it but
Gimli held up his hand and said “I’ll get it,” which I let him do.
As it turned out it was the young woman who had knocked and I had a
hard time keeping a straight face when I saw the look of disappointment
on her fair face when Gimli answered the door instead of me.
“King Éomer said you would want to keep these yourselves,” she
said handing over to the Dwarf Legolas’s weapons something I had
completely forgotten about when I saw that my brother had been hurt.
Then I couldn’t help but notice the young woman glancing shyly at me
over the top of Gimli’s head while he politely thanked her. She bowed
slightly to him and left before he closed the door.
“She certainly has got her eye on you,” he said to me once again in an
amused tone of voice while he handed me Legolas’s weapons. “You should
be the one to check them for any damage since you’re more familiar with
elvish weapons.”
“Yes she does,” I replied a bit absentmindedly while I checked
Legolas’s bow. It was unharmed so I propped it up against the bed.
“So what are you going to do about her?” Gimli asked me while I slipped
each white knife out of their scabbards and checked the blades. Both
were undamaged and razor sharp so I slipped them back in.
“Well for now nothing. So far it’s a harmless fantasy on her part,” I
replied. Then I got up and laid my brother’s weapons on the larger
wooden table that had been shoved up against the wall under a window
that was up high on the wall. Through it I could see that night had now
fallen and the stars were twinkling brightly against this black velvet
backdrop. With a sigh I turned around and sat back down next to my
brother and Gimli.
“The stars are exceptional tonight my brother. I wish you could gaze
at them with me,” I thought softly to Legolas even though I knew he
couldn’t hear me. It was then that I realize that this worry I was now
feeling for my brother as I watched him sleeping was no doubt the same
he had felt several times in the past for me while he had sat in a
similar fashion watching over me.
And no doubt he also felt just as useless as I did now.
