Elves Through a Cage

The young elf-maid was pleased with her thirtieth birthday gift. A traveling Man had stopped by Imladris and given it to her parents a few sunsets ago, and she had wondered what it was. The Man had been a bit odd, with a strangely-colored beard and hair, like the snow on the distant mountaintops, and a face creased like weathered rocks. No one she knew looked like that, but she trusted the stranger. After all, he had given her the beautiful present, her Aewvereth. Her mother said it was a fanciful name fo r a small yellow bird, but the elf-maid insisted that the bird was Queen of all birds, ruling from her golden cage.

On the night of her birthday feast, she tried to bring Aewvereth to the table of the Elves, but her mother told her a bird could not understand Elvish dining customs and would peck at all the fruit. So the elf-maid packed the bird back into the cage in her sleeping chambers and left the dim room to be toasted, cheered and fed honeycake at her feast.

In the dark chamber, Aewvereth ruffled her feathers, looked about the room with her small, black eyes and tucked her head under her wing to sleep for the night. She smelled the feast and could feel the odors of fresh strawberries wafted into her slightly open beak. But she didn't understand the point of the feast, or what a Birthday was. She drifted off to sleep in the cage, still smelling the strawberries.

Days, weeks and then months swept by as they always did in Imladris. The river ran, the trees bloomed and lost their leaves and the Elves moved among it all singing and feasting and writing poetry. The elf-maid played with Aewvereth for awhile, making her a tiny crown from some beech-leaves and feeding her scraps from the kitchen. Always in the end she tired of the bird, who lacked the intelligence or experience to answer back when she spoke to it.

Five years had passed. Aewvereth sat in her cage more quietly now, and her trills came out as soft whistles rather than clear and ringing notes. Her feathers fell out onto the floor of the cage, and the elf-maid saw and ran to ask her mother what was wrong.

What her mother told her of the lifespan of birds Aewvereth never knew. Her eyes closed dimly upon a world she had little comprehended in life, and her cold body fell to the floor of the golden cage. From the kitchens she got a last whiff of strawberries before breathing her final breath.






Disclaimer: Elves do not belong to me, Imladris does not belong to me and nothing Tolkien ever wrote belongs to me.