Thranduil glances over at her, all manufactured laziness (does it actually put anyone at ease?) and smiles. It does not reach his eyes.
“They fear death.” Rifter, elf—and the elves here sunk so low, so abnormal. Easier to assume her kinship is closer to his than to the elvhen, to assume she knows normal. “They glut themselves on it so to make it less of a monster. A corpse wrapped in cloth of gold is no less a corpse.”
Only an empty shell. Nothing to be worshiped, nothing to be feared.
He turns to her, properly, a hand briefly touching over his heard. “Thranduil. I lead the Research Division here. I am Sindarin. Who are you? What do your kin call themselves?”
Elf, quendi, elvhen. Always family, no matter the distance. They must be—without unity, they will be rent asunder, and the Men call them knife-ear all alike.
no subject
“They fear death.” Rifter, elf—and the elves here sunk so low, so abnormal. Easier to assume her kinship is closer to his than to the elvhen, to assume she knows normal. “They glut themselves on it so to make it less of a monster. A corpse wrapped in cloth of gold is no less a corpse.”
Only an empty shell. Nothing to be worshiped, nothing to be feared.
He turns to her, properly, a hand briefly touching over his heard. “Thranduil. I lead the Research Division here. I am Sindarin. Who are you? What do your kin call themselves?”
Elf, quendi, elvhen. Always family, no matter the distance. They must be—without unity, they will be rent asunder, and the Men call them knife-ear all alike.