Mirkwood - Blog Posts

That's why he ain't on instagram

So if yall didn’t know, in The Hobbit book, Thranduil had the Dwarves locked up for approximately weeks, and Bilbo was just invisible and wandering in the palace the entire time, vibing miserably.

My headcanon, therefore, is that the Mirkwood Elves now have a local legend about a ghost haunting Thranduil’s palace, never seen but generally thought to be harmless. Thranduil scoffs at the idea, but has been seen glancing around at the dark corners of rooms. Legolas fully believes in it and is known to say hello out loud when he enters an empty room, in case the ghost is nearby.

It’s not until Legolas joins the Fellowship that he figures out that the supposed ghost was actually an invisible Bilbo the whole time. He never tells Thranduil, because he thinks it’s funny to see his regal father unnerved by the idea of a ghost.

Headcanon that because elves aren’t great about time, and tend to have their heads in the literal stars, it is not unheard of for food to rot without them being aware that enough time could possibly have passed since it was harvested for it to no longer be good; it’s only been what like five minutes, maybe five years…? can’t possibly have gone bad yet. And since it’s not like eating food that’s gone bad actually hurts them, they just kind of…do. Not all the time, or anything. But sometimes. Without noticing. And worse (especially in the opinion of Hobbits, but also in the opinion of really anything non-elven that has ever sat at an elvish feast-table, although they’re generally better about food that they serve to guests because they specifically cook stuff to impress then, which makes it a lot more likely that whomever is doing the apple-tart will go “oh hey these apples are all squishy, let’s get some new ones” than they do when they’re just cooking for themselves) without caring.

Headcanon that this is also because ever since the Two Trees fell, everything in the world has tasted a little bit of death and ashes anyway so how can they be expected to notice if that apple has a bit of brown on it, when everything already tastes like the bitterness of fading to their tongue? Everything except the absolute freshest, newest, ripest fruits of a new spring, anyway. So the first harvest-fest of the year is a big deal to elves, and it’s not entirely because they just really like it when the flowers come back. It’s also the only time they can eat anything without tasting the ashes of Morgoth’s treachery against their lips and it’s not something they really talk about or even consciously notice….

But they do.

Doesn’t stop the Hobbits complaining, of course.