Disclaimer: The world of J.R.R. Tolkien is owned by Tolkien Enterprises and/or New Line Cinema. No money is made from these stories.

Note: I watched each of the LotR and Hobbit films at least three times but read the books only once. So do not expect any elfish words to be included.

Rating: M.

Warning: This story will contain some more or less light BDSM elements in the sexual scenes of the Woodland Realm festivals (voyeurism/exhibition included), but will tend to be rather on the vanilla side afterwards.

Important: The three stories Beltane, Samhain and Imbolc will share the following prologue which give them their names. They can be read independently of each other. I'll post the index overview once more chapter are written and posted.

AN: The following prologue gives you an idea about 3 Thranduil/OC stories I have in mind. Feedback on them is very much wanted and appreciated.

Wheel of the Year

~Prologue~

by StillWatersAreDeep

The wheel of life, the wheel of the seasons, the wheel of the year; all of these circles that measure the passing of time may be important for mankind, but if you have lived on this earth as long as the elves of the Woodland Realm, with eternity still ahead of them, all these wheels mean relatively little to them.

However, if you combine the wheel of the year with the wheel of fortune and add sexual incentives and some folklore stories of mankind into the mix, the wheel of the year again becomes interesting for the elves of the Woodland Realm. The folklores of 'The Queen of May and the Winter King', 'Aine and her two possible husbands Manannan and Ailill Ollamh' as well as 'The abduction of Persephone' were chosen to give the eight festivals of the wheel of the year a screenplay to entertain the uneventful life of the Woodland Realm elves. Ostara, Beltane, Litha, Lughnasadh, Mabon, Samhain, Yule and Imbolc which make up the Wheel of the Year, were divided as follows between the three folklore.

Beltane and Yule would in one year tell the story of the Queen of May who had an obedient Winter King during Beltane, but at Yule, she would be the one to submit to the Winter King. The elves to play the two figures chosen at random by blindly drawing a stone out of a box. Depending on the chemistry between the King and the Queen this events could be either dull or very, very intense in nature.

In the following three years the story of Persephone's abduction would be played out with a little twist. The actors Hades, Dionysus, Demeter and Persephone. It all began on Samhain of the first year. During the festival of the Death Dionysus and Hades would drink too much wine, making them lower their inhibitions and eventually ending up in bed. This act awoke the wish of having a wife to regularly share his bed in Hades. So in the next year the god of the Underworld asked Dionysus to seduce Demeter and give her more than a fare share of his potent wine during the harvest festival Lughnasadh. Demeter, thus incapacitated by a hangover, would not notice that Hades abducted her daughter Persephone during Mabon and made her his bed companion. The play ended on Ostara of the third year, where Demeter would finally have her daughter returned to her. Here, every actor except Persephone were randomly chosen, as the actor of Hades had the right to select his own Persephone out of the Mabon visitors.

And then we have Imbolc and Litha. During Imbolc an elleth would be crowned as Aine and she would be task to walk the festival grounds until she either met the ellon playing Manannan or Ailill. If she met Manannan, Imbolc and Litha would be spend in gentle lovemaking. But if Aine met Ailill, the King known in man's folklore to have raped her, the two festivals would be a battle of dominance between the two.

But as lovely, exciting and enthralling these celebrations of sexually interpreted folklore were, it were the actors who made the stories interesting. While all Woodland Realm elves who attended the celebrations knew that they could be chosen to play one of the figures, many of them did not think what taking part in the play could mean for their life after the celebration. They thought that behind the masks their identities would be concealed, save from any consequences in the years to come. And even contraception was not a concern. After all, it was well known that only a couple that was truly meant to be could conceive a child. So, while many players parted after the stories were told, there are three stories that drastically changed the lives of the actors.

Beltane, tells the story of a young elleth who was chosen to play the Queen of May with Thranduil, the Prince of the Woodland realm being her Winter King. Only her training as a healer allowed her to recognised who hid behind the mask with the unique scar on the hip. What is she to do when she realised that she is with child as the realm celebrates the Prince's marriage to another elf?

Samhain will show you how the story of Beltane could have unfolded if it was not an elleth but rather a young elllon who played the role of Dionysus during Samhain, seducing Prince Thranduil acting as Hades. What will he do when he finds himself with child and soon after gets appointed as Thranduils private healer, looking after him as the Prince and later King enjoys the life of a married man?

Imbolc, tells the story of a young woman of the race of man, sister to Aragon, healer apprentice of Elrond. During a visit to the Woodland Realm, she is enchanted by the idea of Imbolc and when she join the festival she is crowned as Aine. She knows that she can bring King Thranduil happiness again, but she is also aware that her mortality will bring him even greater pain in the end. So what will she do when she is forced to seek either Manannan, played by Thranduil or Ailill, figurately representing Denethor. If Denethor ever found out her existence, he would not hesitate to force her to become his wife and kill her brother to ensure that he would change from being steward to king of Gondor.

Three stories that begin with a celebration of nature and the desire of the flesh but whether fortuna's wheel chooses an elleth, an ellon or a woman to be paired with Thranduil will lead the king of the Woodland Realm down a different path in life.

So where did the wheel of fortune stop when you spun it? On Samhain? On Imbolc? Or was it Beltane?

~ Wheel of the Year ~

AN: So, which of the three stories would you like to read first? Or does neither of them interest you?