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Lost in Translation
Padma pressed her eyelids together in the morning light. She hated being woken up by the light, it was always bothersome. Darshan must have left the curtains open last night. Padma smiled as she felt a weight lift off of the end of her bed. She covered her face with her pillow, as she often did, and muttered into it something in Hindi. She always chastised him about something or another in the morning, and always she would open with that same 'where do you think you're going' line that her mother had always used on her. She took in a deep breath and removed her pillow from her face abruptly.
"Byak! What is that?" She wrinkled her nose and stuck out her tongue as she realized that the strange smell was not coming from the bedding but wafting through the air. "Darshan, did you try to make chapatti again?" Padma sat up, waved her hand in front of her face, and tried to swing her legs out of bed only to discover that the edge of the bed was much farther over than she was used to. She opened her eyes sleepily and snapped to full attention as she saw white sheets next to her darkly colored skin rather than the purple and red tones of her bedroom.
"Where am I?" Padma shouted and backed up against the headboard. She gave a small shout as a hand touched her but she clamed quickly as she realized that it was just the statue on the stone headboard of the bed. She turned around and spotted two regal looking men eying her with dispassionate expressions. She stared at them for a long time and then prompted them again. "Well?"
The two of them looked at one another and broke out into conversation. She hadn't the faintest as to what language they were speaking, but it was entrancing to listen to nonetheless. The taller, nobler, blonde man turned to her and spoke in a language much different than the first. This one was significantly less enchanting to the ears and wits, but it got the job done. This was probably how English sounded to them. Padma just stared back at them with that same blank expression they had given her.
"Um…no speakenze Duech?" Padma, who wagered that their language was more likely German than Spanish (which was a fairly wide jump as far as linguistics go), slurred together the only sentence she knew in mock German. She told them she didn't speak it.
They just eyed her blankly and shared another few words. Finally, after a long, uneasy silence, the blonde man left and the darker haired one tried to coax her into a slightly more relaxed place than curled up against the headboard with her fists up. He had just barely managed to convince her, with only base sign language akin to charades, that he was not going to try to kill her when the blonde man returned with another dark haired lordly man behind him. This one was wearing a dress, but if he noticed the strange look Padma gave him, he said nothing. In fact, he said nothing at all, just stared at her in silence for nearly two minutes.
"What is it? Do I have something on my face?" Padma had finally snapped under his stony gaze. She couldn't take it! It was driving her mad to have someone simply stare at her like that for so very long, and without even a motion towards any idea or concept whatsoever. They were a bit taken aback by her sudden shouting, but her lively arm motions towards her face and that extending of the arms in irritation that carried the universal meaning of 'WHAT!?' aided them in understanding this outburst. The third man arched an eyebrow at her, held up his hands, and slowly motioned for her to calm down. He asked her something, but she just screwed up her face and eyed him back before shrugging and shaking her head.
Padma, in fact, was quite fortunate that she had landed in this particular place at this particular time in this place's history. Her dark, Indian complexion, long black hair, and Hindi designed jewelry had given her an advantage in this place. Confusion on the part of peoples not easily confused was a decided bonus. They had intended to interrogate her as to how she managed to get that close to Imladris without their knowing, but upon discovering that she did not understand the common tongue they relented for the moment and unanimously decided that she must have simply been a particularly lucky individual.
Fortunately the elves had some politesse about them for prisoners and trespassers, for even as Padma stared at them blankly now they did not think or speak too ill of her or the situation. Had she, like you, known what they were talking about than she would have realized why, exactly, the blonde one was going to be bothering her for quite some time. And, if she had any of her wits about her again, she would have noticed far sooner that these were not mortal men, but the most refined and regal of the Elves. After much conversation the three of them reached a second unanimous decision of the day. The two possessed of dark hair left from the room and the blonde one turned to examine her. After much silence he took a seat across the room from her and seemed to be deep in thought until she interrupted him.
"Am I dead?" Padma asked in a mystified tone that, apparently, transcended the language barrier. He turned to pay her full attention, but simply furrowed his brow at her. She pointed to herself and made a fairly standard motion across her neck before letting her head fall limply against her shoulder. Apparently he missed the questioning tone in her voice as he stood up abruptly and stared at her in horror. Padma's eyes widened, she shook her head, and waved her hands about randomly as if to dismiss the notion he'd assumed—by the look of it, he thought she wanted to cut her throat open.
"Lost in translation," Padma muttered and tried to conceive of a better method by which to communicate than charades.
After nearly half an hour the two of them managed to communicate, via charades and quickly learned short words, the questions 'Am I dead?' and 'What's that smell?' Surprisingly, the latter had been far easier than the former. By the end of their little exercise in the powers of charades and simply spoken base words the both of them were eager for something easier. Both pondered for a while and, finally, the blonde man came to a reasonable concept. He crossed the room to a small dresser, opened the top drawer, and took out a pair of writing instruments (they vaguely resembled quills…) and a large stack of yellowed paper that looked disturbingly as if it had not been made from trees.
"Tecil," the man said and handed her one of the strange, feathered pens.
"Tecil?" Padma asked oddly and eyed him until he motioned to the pen in his hand. "Oh! Pen! Tecil!"
The man nodded, repeated the word to her once more in the less brilliant of the languages she had heard from them, and Padma wrote it down on the page. This pattern continued back and forth until every inanimate object within the room and a few things that could be seen out the window were labeled and learned by both parties in the others' language(s). It was when they began to classify one another and the several adjectives used to describe people that they came to a series of most eerie commonalities. The word 'men' and 'man' for example, were the same in English as they were in this lesser language—Westron was it? The word 'woman' was varied slightly, but the word 'human' was totally foreign to anything other than English and Hindi.
"How could they be referred to as Men and not Human?" Padma asked more rhetorically than seriously but she got a response nonetheless.
The elf drew a small figure on the paper, it was just a bit beyond a stick figure, and wrote a word above it. He repeated the word in Westron for man and the word in his language—was it Sindarin…or did he say something about Kenya?—and tapped the word with his pen. He then drew another figure with pointed ears, like his, and wrote another word next to it. This was the third of the commonalities. Elf, in Westron, elf in English, and elda or eldar in his languages.
"First born? Eldest?" She wrote that down and drew a little scribbled figure of a baby and a one. He paused at the one, but when she held up a single finger he realized what she meant and nodded. "Wow…and here I always thought Elves were little tiny things…. That theory is right out, isn't it?" She grinned at him as she asked this. He just smiled back, unsure, and agreed to seem polite.
The two worked for some time longer and, after much confusion and much deliberation, they had managed to identify one another by direct first name basis. She could not refer to him, in their language, as Lord Glorfindel—she had enough trouble with the name itself—and he could not grasp the concept of a secondary name that didn't refer to parentage. They, in the end, simply gave up on the idea and began to call one another by rather butchered sounding versions of their names. He winced and laughed slightly as she tried to pronounce and then rewrite his name, and she just gave him a conciliatory pat on the shoulder as he tried hers.
The two had mastered very, very basic grammar with the small amount of vocabulary they had amassed by the time the sun had crossed behind the tall mountains overhead. It was, perhaps, still three or more hours until dinner would be set out, but the blonde elf left the room to gather them up some food nevertheless. He returned with a pair of plates bearing something that resembled food on them. He looked excited, as excited as she had seen him look, at least, since he had managed to write her name correctly in her language, so she assumed it to be edible. She started to eat it and instantly her mouth argued with the pleased expression on his face. She fought herself not to spit it out at once, so odd a taste and texture it had to it, simply out of politesse. She ate it and tried to look pleased, but after the third bite she knew it would not sit well with her stomach. She reached to take a drink from the mug he had brought her and nearly gagged as she realized it was not water but wine.
Sadly, her face had been so surprised and sickened by the combination of the wine and the food that even Glorfindel could not prevent himself from laughing. His laugh, however, was fairly ill-timed as it had occurred just as he attempted to swallow some of his food. He froze for a moment and tried to clear his throat. He coughed and hit himself in the chest lightly, but when it did nothing he began to panic. Elves were immortal, yes, but there were few things that could survive without air. Choking was nearly as surefire a death as swords and flame. He stood up abruptly and stumbled towards the door. He wasn't certain what she had done, or how it had worked, for their own method for correcting this rare occurrence was quite different. She had managed to force the offending piece of bread free by an odd maneuver with her arms around his stomach and her behind him.
"Are you alright?" Padma asked as she released him and he leaned over, gasping for air. She forgot for the moment that he couldn't understand her, and so did he, for he smiled at her and drew her up into a very un-elvish embrace while speaking very merrily in Elvish. She had no idea just how strange it was to be hugged so by an elf-lord, so the importance of his actions eluded her, but she smiled and nodded nonetheless. He released her, laughed, said something very nice about her in Elvish, and decided that he liked her much more for this act of quick response.
It had taken days before Padma was able to do many things in this place, namely, eating without wretching only a few hours later, convincing them that she didn't drink, sleeping properly, speak and be spoken to with any grasp of what was being said, and coping with the clothes they provided her. The first of these problems was not a very permanent solution for the only way she saw around it was to sneak into the kitchens and cook her own food. The ingredients still made her a little queasy due to the fact that they were very different from those she used to purchase at the market, but the familiar (ish) flavor of her own recipes did much to comfort her. Unfortunately the elves around her had as little love of her cooking as she did for theirs. The rest simply took time and a bit of understanding.
After several weeks, when the elves, particularly Lord Elrond, had gathered that she now understood a good amount of Westron, they decided to question her about herself. They were not a very trusting bunch, but after several mishaps and her general level of ill-grace they had determined her to be little more than a hazard to fragile pottery and the curtains of the kitchens. They called her to Lord Elrond's library one day and she, completely unsuspecting of what was to come, arrived quite early. When the three of them entered the room, however, and neither man made a move to take up a book, she determined that this was not to be a casual conversation.
"You wish to know where my home is?" Padma repeated the question in the form of another question, as she often did for she was not wholly fluent in this language. "Far off, through a door on the water." This was the most coherent answer she could give them for; honestly, in correlation to this place she did not know where her house lay.
"Very well." Elrond inclined his head and pondered on this for a long time. He was well versed in maps, but he knew naught of such a thing. Fortunately, he could not press her answer further for he had no maps that accurately displayed the region he suspected she was from. "What are your skills there?" Elrond had to force his level of diction down considerably, and still Padma was confused. Glorfindel had to attempt a translation of the question to her and her face lit up with understanding but quickly darkened as she tried to think of an answer.
"I do not know the words to tell you," Padma said quietly, with a bit of an uneasy expression. Elrond motioned to Glorfindel and she bit her lip before attempting to tell him. The problem with Padma's profession was not that she did not speak the words for it in Elvish or in Westron; it was that neither language accurately held words to describe it as her job did not yet exist in Middle Earth. She told Glorfindel and he repeated the word, silently, and aloud several times before turning to Elrond and shaking his head. She was a Pyrotechnition and a Demolitionist. "But, I suppose that is, if I were to explain it in a very broad manner I could be called a weapons smith." At this the two elves stared at her, slightly taken aback.
"A maker of weapons?" Glorfindel asked skeptically, as if she didn't quite understand what she had told them. She nodded and he arched an eyebrow. He shot a look and Elrond and the two continued on with the questioning.
"How did you come so far into our land without our knowing?" Elrond's next question was met by that same ponderous look that he had received every time he tried to ask, but this time, unlike the others, she had formulated a response.
"I opened a door to the mountain." This seemed a very strange reply indeed, and Glorfindel would have asked her of her certainty as he did before had he not seen the positive look in her eyes upon her speaking.
"Where is this door?" Elrond asked, assuming she meant that she had found a path or a tunnel.
"In my home." This simple answer they did not expect and it flummoxed them, though they did not show it on the outside.
"How?" Glorfindel asked quickly and Padma looked up at him.
"I had with me my keys, my bag, and the door simply opened to me. I know not how or why." Padma smiled at him a bit sadly. "Maybe another will open and I may leave your dreadful food behind me." Padma laughed to clear herself of her accumulating depression and Glorfindel cracked a smile.
"Do you suppose that this door could be opened again?" Elrond asked, without even so much as a lightening of the eyes at her jest.
"Maybe, sir, though I know not how it opened to begin with." Padma shrugged and looked down at her feet to avoid the stony eyes of the Elf Lord. She only looked up when she heard something being set upon his desk before her. "My bag." Padma gingerly lifted it; she'd thought she'd lost it in the storm when she fell. She looked up at the two, standing elves before her and even with her lack of knowledge she knew this meant she had their trust.
"Glorfindel," Elrond spoke without turning his eyes from Padma. "Perhaps you could show her to the smithy?"
"Sir?" Glorfindel asked and creased his eyebrows slightly.
"If she is a weapons smith, that would greatly explain why she is such a terrible cook and maid, don't you think?" Elrond's lips curled up at the edges into a light smile and Glorfindel stifled a laugh. This was an even weightier honor than that before; never had Lord Elrond ever made fun of her in such a wanton way!
Author's Notes: Well here's chapter 2, but due to lack of vacation the next chapter will not come so swiftly. We slowly have Padma learning Westron (and vicariously, Glorfindel learning English) and some Sindarin…or was that Quenya? Right, whatever!
Thanks to my reviewers—you guys rock! (You think I'm good!? How'd that happen…?) And unfortunately there are quite a few authors who disregard syntax and diction when writing. I sincerely hope I haven't…If you catch an error, please tell me! I tried to read this over, but when reading my own work I tend to read through the errors….
As for the Padma/Padme thing…I named her Padma because of it's meaning in Hindi—all the names of my OC's can be looked up for underlying meaning at .
Interesting Tidbit!
Rohan is a male Hindi name which means "ascending."
Tolkien, tricksy one he is.
You read…why not review too while your at it. A little R&R is good for a soul.