A Fool's Love
A/N: For those who have been commenting on this story over the past few years, thank you so much! I'm sorry it's taken me so long to update. I have deleted the original two chapters, and am in the process of uploading an entirely new story, one that presents a more agreeable and accessible narrative (I hope), though the plotline remains generally the same. Also, as many people have heard me say, I'm a graduate student and thus am rather short of time; therefore, I will attempt to update this as often as possible, but bear with me! Obviously, I haven't forgotten this story, and hope to finish it, at some point in the distant future…Again, thanks for sticking with me, and I hope you enjoy the new chapters!
Chapter One: San Francisco, when we made love, you used to cry.
If you're going to San Francisco
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.
If you're going to San Francisco
You're going to meet some gentle people there.
All those who come to San Francisco
Summertime will be a'lovin there
In the streets of San Francisco
Gentle people with flowers in their hair.
All across the nation
Such a strange vibration
People in motion
There's a whole generation
With a new explanation
People in motion, people in motion.
All those who come to San Francisco
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.
If you come to San Francisco
Summertime will be a'lovin there
If you come to San Francisco
Summertime will be a'lovin there.
-Scott McKenzie, San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair), 1967
The day dawned bright and clear above the Golden Gate, the sun glimmering off the high orange arches of the bridge. The mist burned slowly away, unfurling from the bay in iridescent wisps; the air smelled of salt and blooming spring trees. Lilacs opened along green walkways of the city and the scent of hydrangeas mingled with the crisp breeze from the bay.
Druid crouched, as was her custom, atop a support spire of the bridge. From her perch, she gazed out over the rippling bay. The water spread below in a long, wide azure ribbon. The sea reminded her of older times; the calm, rhythmic lapping of small waves on the shore and the dingle of harbor buoys. Boats anchored in the harbor dimmed their nighttime lights and raised their colors for the day. Gulls dipped and dived at the water, wings spread in all swift motion. She breathed deeply. The wind gusted and spread her cloak behind her, wafting.
"It will be a lovely spring this year," she said. Lovely as every spring can be, or could be, baring clouds, fog, and heavy wind: the precipitators for the untimely dropping of petals from the trees.
Her companion stood nearby, leaning slightly into the wind, one arm looped around the light tower. He, Rumil, had never tasted sea salt before, and he licked it eagerly from his lips. Rumil could not take his gaze from the billowing sails of the sailboats across the bay and the ripples left in their wake.
He said, "Are you sorry we are not staying longer to see the spring?"
"I've seen many springs," Druid replied, her countenance serene and gray eyes calm. "What is one more?" It seemed to her that all the world revolved around the spring, the cyclical birth and flowering, as earth chased sun and moon followed sun; and all blossomed around her. "And have these past months we've spend here passed quickly for you? You'll have fabulous tales to tell your brothers Haldir and Orophin of this strange land when you return," she said, laughingly.
"And I have seen the sea! Alas that I must leave it tomorrow, for it has awakened my heart and gladdened it beyond all anticipation," Rumil sighed. "I'm filled with joy everlasting in its air. How Haldir ever managed to return from this place, I cannot fathom. It is really the only place to live."
"Perhaps you've heard Ulumúri, Ulmo's horn made him by Salmar."
"Chance would be a fine thing! But the Valar do not pass beyond the realms of Arda, so it must not be his horn that's stirred me and given me longing," he said gaily. "The air just agrees with me."
"Yes, yes, I know what you mean," agreed Druid, less joyously. "I too feel a longing for this place, but I must put that aside. It is time to return to Loríen," she said, as Rumil's smile faltered. "Tomorrow we shall depart, but before, I have one more errand. My lawyer is expecting me this morning to review the taxes on my estates. Afterward, we'll bid farewell to your family here."
"As you wish. Silwen will wish us to spend one more night, to see us off with a proper meal."
"I would expect nothing less," Druid said. "Haldir did well with such a wife."
The elves looked out over the bay, and Druid marked the passing of the time on the rising sun.
"We must depart," she said, standing languidly from her pose. "The people below will soon become aware of us, and it wouldn't be well if we were seen up here." She stretched her lengthy legs and with a final look to the sea, she leapt from the platform and landed on the thick steel cable that ran across the bridge.
Rumil breathed once more of the sea air and followed her lead, leaping from platform to cable and sliding downwards toward the bridge with one foot placed lightly and swiftly in front of the other in rapid motion. He exclaimed, "It is a long way down!" as he was nearly halfway along the cable. Druid paused and turned, crouching along the cable.
"So it is," she cried, gripping the cable with both hands. "Be mindful of your footing!"
Rumil looked out over the sea, mindful of her words but feeling a sudden and strange desire to leap from the cable. Druid, having watched him turn and adjust his footing, now glimpsed his eyes as they darted from the cable to the water and back again. His feverish look alarmed her and she noticed that the wind's tempo had increased; the waves below now crested white with tips of foam. "Rumil!" she cried again, as he leapt from the cable and soared out over the water. His body arched and he dived with both arms stretched above his head, palms pressed together as if in prayer.
The wind whipped into his face; his eyes stung and he closed them as he rushed toward the water. He heard Druid cry out behind him but his jump so exhilarated him that he paid no heed. It felt for a glorious moment that he was flying, pressing ever onward toward the waves. It was a sudden urge that had possessed him and though the water would be chill so early in spring, he wished to feel it one last time before he departed for Arda.
His fingers, outstretched, sliced through the water and as it encompassed his arms he gasped until finally his head was submerged. He shivered: even for an elf the water was cold, but it felt glorious against his skin. His light elvish clothing and soft boots clung to his skin but did not weigh him down and he glided through the deeper water like one of the sea lions he had seen some days ago resting on the platforms near the pier.
Rumil swam towards the surface and burst through the clear sheen of sunlight on the water. Druid glared at him from above and he waved his hand. "The water's marvelous!" he cried.
Druid put her hands on her hips and sighed, her long tunic pressed back against her legs by the wind. He continued to wave his hand, beckoning her and she finally laughed. Turning slightly, she said, "Elbereth protect me" as she cast herself from the bridge.
Her clothes flapped in the wind and her hair flung out behind her. Rumil had noticed that she wore her hair untied when out among humans, though she normally sported a thick braid to her waist; now her hair glimmered in the early morning sunshine and wove through the air. She spread her arms perpendicular to her body like a swan in flight and let her fingers trail openly as she fell. Moments before she struck the water Druid brought her arms together into a dive and sliced gracefully into the waves, a small ripple the only indication she had passed.
When she emerged, Rumil was floating a ways off, treading water on his back as he gazed pensively at the clouds overhead. "I never thanked you for bringing me here," he said as she swam to him. "Why did you in the end? I know you were unsure."
Druid trailed her arms casually through the water. "This is a strange land," she began slowly. "In the end, your brother Haldir could bear it no longer and asked to be returned to Arda, though his wife remained here. Silwen came to this world to escape her pain, and she has succeeded, in small part, though she will never return to Loríen. And you, Rumil? I felt you were dissatisfied," she said.
"I was bored," he cried.
"Nevertheless, I hoped to assuage you. This land of men is in continuous motion; they do not cease to build greater and better things; they do not sit and contemplate their achievements before continuing on to the next task. They are in constant war, both with each other and with their state of being. A man's only desire is to live a better and longer life, but the only means he sees of achieving this is through constant destruction of the world and of other humans who must share the world with him. I have traveled here for many years, years beyond the scope of their thought—seen the civilizations of men rise and fall—none so great as Númenor, but with technologies undreamt of in all of Arda. Or Valinor," she added. "I fear for them and yet, their comings and goings and their short-sighted advancements hearken to a chord in me, and I find myself rejuvenated in their presence. The race of men fascinated me when first we found them in Middle Earth, and these beings, though they are of a different sort, are as intriguing, as enterprising; and to the elves, we who live forever," she said this darkly, "this can herald and heal many things. Our race needs a little fresh blood now and then," she said, borrowing a human idiom.
"I believe you because you've lived many hundreds of years, nay, even thousands of years among their kind here," Rumil said slowly, "but if you had told me, truthfully, of this world before we came here, I might have been too afraid to come!"
"Which is precisely why I said nothing." She began a breaststroke across the water. "But you, Rumil, would be afraid of nothing. Come," she beckoned, "we should return to Silwen's apartment and make ourselves presentable. I have the meeting with my lawyer."
Rumil followed with slower, contemplative strokes. "But you never said why you brought me," he said, trying to prolong the conversation. "To assuage my boredom, yes, but many of us grow tired of the world and yet you do not bring them."
She swam a few strokes. "Perhaps I was just lonely," she murmured, arms and legs skimming the water.
They arrived at the shore quickly and stripped to their under-garments while wringing the outer ones out onto the sand. They walked briskly to the apartment, avoiding the questioning stares of the people strolling in the early morning. A short time later, after they had bathed the salt from their bodies, they donned fresh, dry clothing, and sat down to breakfast at Silwen's table.
As Rumil and Druid spoke quietly at the table, Rumil's brother's wife wafted around her kitchen: juicing oranges; slicing strawberries, bananas, and pears into a blue glass bowl; scrambling egg whites ("I find the yellow revolting," she told Rumil during their first breakfast many months before) with zucchini and aubergine julienne, sprinkled with shredded carrots.
Silwen was tall, as her race went, and though not as tall as Druid, she towered over Rumil. Sometime in the mid-nineteen twenties she had cut her sunlit hair and styled it into a bob, the fashion at the time. She said often, jokingly, that Haldir had initially been dismayed, but when she gave him the long braid he had forgiven her and now continuously wove it into his bow string and slew many orcs the last eighty years with her aid. She had yet to grow her hair past her chin.
As Silwen spooned fruit onto her guests' plates, Rumil stretched his legs beneath the table and ran fingers through his wet hair. It was certainly a strange land, he thought, as he contemplated the exotic foods laid out before him. Certainly, he was glad he had come. Something important had happened to him here, in this world, over the past weeks, or even had yet to happen, he wasn't sure, but there was something shifting in his life, ever-so-slightly; shifting like the soft evening breeze that heralds a storm. But he was young, of course, and what did he know of these things? San Francisco was marvelous, and exciting though it was, even he felt that it was time, finally, to return home.