The Ears of the Elves
By Asso
Chapter Twenty-six
I think that if I were to give a title to this chapter, a very appropriate title would be "Stubbornness and Desolation."
Believe me, my friends. It would be very aptly titled.
Maybe even "Darkness".
The Ears of the Elves
Chapter Twenty-six
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Untrue!
It was all untrue!
Atana! She was the cause!
She. And the affection she felt for her!
Not that... that strange and crazy thing that was boiling inside her.
That thing... that was not true!
The Princess proudly raised her head. (Yes. Yes!) Her eyes seemed embers. (It was like that!). Disdainful, her mouth came open. (Like that!). To Talk.
To slam into the face of her tormentor the truth.
No matter what.
No matter even the… the heartache she felt within herself as she replied with fierce pride.
But she ignored that pain. She shut it out as she spoke.
Aloud.
Too much aloud.
"Atana deserves this and much more from me!"
And she felt darkness within herself.
Because…
Because she was about to suppress – to destroy! - that strange and crazy and… marvellous thing that stirred inside her, that enveloped her heart with a warmth that she had never known.
And she felt the stupidity of her talking, of what she was going to do.
Because…
Because she knew that – stupidly - she was going to condemn Atana and herself to martyrdom.
And she felt being even more stupid.
Because…
Because she - stupidly and... and conscious of being stupid - desperately, with stupid stubbornness, struggled to silence that inner tiny voice that was screaming softly to her that she was going to tell the biggest lie that could ever be told.
Because…
Because she was going to lie shamelessly to him.
To the Nameless One
And… to herself.
But she silenced that little voice.
Fiercely, stubbornly, stupidly she silenced it.
And fiercely, stubbornly...
Stupidly...
Conscious of being stupid and stubborn, stupidly stubborn...
"Atana deserves any sacrifice from me."
The Princess stood silent a moment before plunging into the maelstrom.
"Even the sacrifice of being flesh vibrant of pleasure in the possession..."
The voice failed her.
"In the possession..."
She recovered. Stubbornly, stupidly she managed to pull herself together.
And her last words burned in her throat.
"…of the soulless monster..."
Oh, how they burned!
"… of the contemptible blackmailer..."
How much!
"...who has made me his slave."
In her throat...
"Slave of his despicable cravings."
And in her soul!
And then she fell silent, her eyes, suddenly faint, fixed on the blue and gloomy eye of the Nameless One.
"Sorry to say, hon."
T'Pol lifted eye and eyebrow at Trip.
Uncomfortable.
Just as sounded her voice. Low and faint. And falsely sure. In posing the rhetorical question.
"What, Adun?"
"The Princess wins over you."
And if T'Pol's voice sounded in the way it sounded, the one of Trip, to make up for it, was the opposite of what it should have been.
His was a joke, one of his usual jokes. Silly and made just in order to be so, to play down things. Which was a job that normally he was able to do very well. He was a master in doing that, also according to T'Pol.
But this time things did not go the right way, not according to his intentions, or at least according to those that would have been his intentions.
Actually, he did not succeed very well. Honestly, his voice should not have sounded as serious as it was.
And things got worse. Because he failed to restrain himself.
"Sure, if you think that the Princess is you, I have to consider myself rather lucky. It could have been much worse between you and me, if you had decided to give new and full vigour to the obstinacy of the Princess."
T'Pol lowered eye and eyebrow.
She was silent.
There was not much she could say. In fact there was nothing.
Her Adun was right.
If she had persevered a little more in her mad obstinacy, an obstinacy so much obstinate as to be even stupidity, exactly as in the case of the Princess... she would have lost him.
And there was a close one.
The voice, pensive, of Trip, startled her.
"I wonder how the Nameless One may have been able to pass over the obstinacy of the Princess, how he may have been able to compel himself to give her the way to save his soul from its damnation."
And, then, T'Pol spoke.
She understood and felt that she had to do it.
She spoke softly, with closed eyes.
And with quiet warmth. The warmth she felt inside.
"In the Princess there is a lot of me, but, fortunately, in the Nameless One there is a lot of you. He... he is a ruthless monster, but even a miserable shred of what remains of his soul is still a shred of your soul, my Adun. "
And Trip did not know what to say.
He swallowed.
He blushed.
He not even tried to stammer something.
He was silent for a moment, staring forward.
Then he coughed
He looked down at the PADD.
He cleared his throat.
He resumed reading.
All in all quite in a firm voice.
It could be said that even the sizzle of the flames in the braziers had stopped.
It could be said that everything had stopped.
Everything.
Turned into stone.
As the face of the Nameless One.
For long, endless moments it remained so.
Turned into lifeless stone.
Like his eye.
Like his huge body, bent forward, leaning against the edge of the bed with the hands.
Like the face of the Princess, turned white and motionless, as of white stone.
Then the blue eye came to life.
The eyelid slowly went down to cover it.
Then the eyelid went up.
The blue eye reappeared.
A pit of sadness.
The Princess saw it well.
She could not be mistaken.
Her heart could not be mistaken.
A bottomless pit of bottomless sadness.
Then the rage.
And then...
The frost.
As a living mountain, the great body rose up.
The Nameless One did not speak.
The Nameless One did nothing.
He stood for a long moment, naked and powerful, arms down at his sides, the blue eye, motionless and cold, hard, on her.
On the Princess.
On the beautiful elven Princess who... for a brief, wonderful moment... he had had the illusion that...
The blue eye misted over.
That...
A moment. A fleeting instant.
That...
Then the blue eye glowed grimly with frost again.
The leonine mouth remained closed and silent.
The blonde mane swayed lightly, as the big monstrous head was moving to nod with a slow motion that looked as laden with fatigue.
The monstrous head flexed down.
The blue eye looked down at the ground.
Found what it was looking for.
The big body stooped down.
The big hand, the living one, picked up what the eye had found.
The leather breeches. The leather jacket.
The garments which had been thrown to the ground before...
Before the two of them...
Slowly, the breeches were worn.
Slowly, the leather jacket has covered again the mighty bust.
One last look at the Princess.
One last, icy stare.
One last look.
Where frost was mingled with sadness.
Then, quickly, the big body moved.
Shoulders to the Princess, it reached the heavy veil that covered the exit.
The big hand lifted it up.
The big body slipped into the gap.
It stopped, just in the middle of it, enormous and dark against the dark of night.
The big monstrous head turned around.
The blue eye, vivid in the light of the braziers, looked at the Princess.
The monstrous mouth opened up, almost with effort.
It spoke.
The Nameless One's rough voice was heard again.
Low.
Very low.
Cold. Mocking.
And veiled. By something...
It was not sadness.
It was something more.
And the Princess sensed it like a blade that pierced her soul.
It was despondency
It was bitterness.
It was desolation.
"Thanks for the incomparable night that you have graciously wanted to grant this horrendous beast, my Princess. The cited beast, as far as being a soulless monster and a despicable blackmailer, won't forget it. Never, I assure you, Your Grace. "
The head turned around to the outside.
"It is still dark, but dawn is looming."
The head turned back to the Princess.
"I'll leave you to your deserved rest."
A break. Heavy.
"The coming day will be a demanding day for you."
The great leonine head stood firm a moment, then turned to the outside.
The big body passed through the gap in the tent.
The Princess saw it for a moment yet, before the gap was closed again, concealing from her sight the world.
And the Nameless One.
The Princess remained motionless on the bed, under the blanket, her eyes fixed on the now concealed exit through which the Nameless One had passed, disappearing into the night.
Her hand unconsciously moved, went to the collar that encircled her neck.
To the collar of her slavery.
While, in spite of all, her mind and her heart were reliving the wonder of what she had lived, in her first night of slavery.
The wonder of what she had lost.
And wouldn't have ever again.
"Trip ..."
T'Pol's voice was a whisper.
"Trip... the Nameless One will know how to remedy. The Princess -she, exactly she, she herself - will know how to remedy!"
But Trip did not listen
His voice rose again, after T'Pol's heartfelt interruption.
Sad and melancholic.
To give voice to the reading.
To give voice to the Nameless One.
To give voice to himself.
To all the despondency, all the bitterness, all the desolation that so many times he had been forced to chew up, to gulp down and savour because of the stupid stubbornness of T'Pol.
The opening in the tent closed behind him.
The Nameless One stood still.
His gaze wandered in the dark of night.
Everything was silent.
The encampment was still and silent.
The neigh of some steed.
In the distance.
The arcane nocturnal sounds of the forest.
Nothing else.
Everything was silent.
Even the sentries. Hidden. Among the trees. On the tops of the hills shrouded in darkness.
But over there, beyond the trees, over the hills, the first lights of dawn were beginning to brighten the sky.
The Nameless One's gaze turned towards those distant lights, barely hinted.
Then, slowly, he turned around.
There.
The manor.
Ramshackle. In ruins.
Wrapped in the dark.
Barely visible in the darkness.
There it was.
The manor.
Where he had found the Princess.
The Princess...
The Nameless One turned around again.
Towards the tent.
Where the Princess was.
The tent.
Where there was the bed where he and the Princess...
The big body moved laboriously.
The big monstrous head turned around one more time.
The blue eye looked again at the distant dawn.
The light would come again.
Would lit up again that wonderful world that was not his world.
Which was the world of the Princess.
Not the bleak and hostile world of ice where he had toughened himself up.
Where he had brooded on his revenge.
Where he had prepared his revenge.
Sure.
His revenge.
Now he had the means.
Now he had the Princess.
The Princess.
Who had given him herself.
Who had made him savour something...
The blue eye went down.
It looked down. Towards the terrain covered with icy and dark grass.
Something…
Like a flare, a fleeting flare of soft, warm light in his dark world and cold.
Something…
That he wouldn't have ever again.
End of Chapter Twenty-six
TBC
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So, my friends? I was right, don't you think?
Come on, come on! Lift up your hearts!
Dawn will rise!