Dead Inside
It had been ten days since the incident. Ada seemed distant and scared but most of all angry. He was changed the moment he walked through the doors, eyes glazed and hurt, dragging his feet sorrowfully but it took ten days go fully sink in. He wouldn't tell us why he was so mortified and we didn't know until one of the servants found her body. Then we were all mortified. Then he really changed. Angry at me, at nanneth, at everything. He locked himself in his study for two days strait, snapping at everyone who even knocked on the Dogwood door. We thought he blamed himself for her death but we soon found out it wasn't like that. It wasn't like that at all.
After two days he came out and the maliciousness began. He yelled at us, he didn't hit us but he came close many times. Soon he became much, much to over protective of us, me in particular. In the horribly evil way, he treated me as though I were the most disgusting he had ever laid eyes on. At first I was restricted to the courtyard, which I understood though I wasn't happy about it, I loved and cherished my freedom below very few things. A month later after getting angry at me for stepping out of bounds, and I do mean step, he grounded me to the house only and never let me out. He said I was unsafe and unworthy of freedom. Nanneth stood up for me once but then he started saying it only in private.
I tried to be good but whatever I did made him angrier and angrier. He saw me looking out a window and putting hand out into the cool breeze of freedom one-day and started to yell at me as usual. He restricted me further, to only the floor my room was on and forbid anyone to come and keep me company. And absolutely no windows. My Ada was so paranoid that he actually blocked the windows with wooden covers. I began to ache for the cool breeze in my hair, the soft rain on my face. I longed for freedom again so much it hurt to breathe.
One day I though it would be all right if I opened one of the covers just for a moment, on a rainy day. I wanted so much to feel it again. After all it was just a moment and Ada was all the way in the other side of the house. First I stuck out a hand, then the wind ripping at me like a ravenous dog I stuck out my entire head, caught up in the moment. Then I heard the soft thud of a boot on the marble floor. I froze and turned around slowly. It was my Ada.
This time I decided that he might respect me a little if I said something in my defense. I was wrong. That was the day he hit me. The blow was more emotionally devastating then it was physically. I fell to the ground and held my cheek, I remember it so clearly. He sneered at me, sprawled helplessly on the floor pathetically, as though I were something disgusting and vile an orc had spit up. He turned on his heel and walked away, an evil chorus of laughter echoing through the empty hall, through my entire life. That was the day I stopped calling him Ada and started calling him father.
For the first time in months I began to feel angry, a hatred I never knew could sprout within my depths and come out at someone I had once loved so dearly. Whenever I saw him looking at me, staring at me, glaring at me with a loathing that only he could produce, I felt that hatred well up inside me and I felt like killing or destroying. At first it scared me, scared me to the point of tears and I cried every night for shame that I hated my father so. I got over it in two days. The same amount of days it took him to hate me.
To vent my anger I wrote, in common, which angered my father. That was the main point, he couldn't read common very easily and not knowing what I wrote drove him even more crazy then he already was. He did eventually figure out what I had written and for this he locked me in my room. I wouldn't go without a fight and he knew it so he drugged me, held a poisoned cloth to my mouth so it knocked me out for hours. While I was out he took my writing, my reading, blocked the window, and stripped my room of everything I loved or found in any way amusing or interesting. When I woke up I wasn't in the room I had always loved as a child. I was in hell.
The next hundred years I spent sitting in my room wishing I was dead or he was. The only time I spoke to anyone at all was the once or twice my mother managed to sneak away from his guarding my door. She came in simply to talk to me about whatever I wanted, no pressure, no expectations. The only two times in that entire year I felt like I had half of an abusive life. She could only stay for a short time though and when she did I was left more depressed and angry at my father then before.
Ultimately I was depressed to the extreme. All I did all day was sit on my bed and stare at the wall, or the floor. Sometimes, when I was in one of my happier moods, I would stand up every once and a while. When I was really depressed I would lay on my bed and stare at the blank ceiling all day and all night, I wouldn't sleep, eat, or move in any way. I was in a sort of trance and that was the happiest hundred years of my new, prisoner life, since I spent most of my time dreaming of other places.
Then after that hundred years was over, one day I was in a good mood and went to the heavily boarded window. A bolt was loose so I tried carefully and silently to unhinge it. To my extreme happiness it came out and I saw outside again and it was the most beautiful site I had ever seen.
The trees seemed to glow under the moonlight, sparkling and twinkling up at me. A light wind caressed the treetops and I opened the window to let it fill the room. I saw a few late night, teen-age stragglers trying feverishly to get home before their parents find out. They didn't realize how lucky they were.
The air itself was enough to send me into hysterics but it was neither the time nor the place. Intoxicated by the long-anticipated night air and in a slightly delusional state I opened the window and silently crept out. I stood on the windowsill for only a second then jumped down and landed with a soft thud. A small twinge of pain shot up my leg but I didn't notice in my excitement nor did I notice as I shivered in the chill of night.
Once I was out, in my pajamas if you want to know, the first thing I did was smile. For the first time in a hundred years I smiled and it felt foreign on my face but any movement felt foreign at the moment.
I made my way to the forest, creeping behind bushes knowing that my father's room could see the entire kingdom and would most likely spot her if she didn't keep to the shadows. Once in the forest I was free and it felt good, almost to good. I didn't remember what freedom had felt like and I couldn't believe it was actually happening. My heart fluttered with every step, my mind whizzed with the prospect of doing anything I wanted. My breathing was heavier then it would normally have been, I was absolutely giddy.
After a while I stumbled upon a small stream just to the east of the main city. A large root had been uprooted and was so far from the ground it was taller then me. It was accompanied by many others forming a kind of dome right there beside the river bend. The water sparkled in the moonlight and everything had a pale eerie glow that enticed my beyond belief.
I slowly climbed the dome of roots and sat upon it watching the water flow, as if it were made of molten silver. Looking upward I noticed that this was a tree, like the ones I used to climb when I was an elfling and had had an ounce of dignity that wasn't harshly taken from me by my delusional father.
A now free me stood up, then hopped up to the first branch with my hands, soft from a hundred years of sitting on my bed. I continued to climb up, as fast as I could and soon I was so high I could see the tops of the trees. How could I have ever been away from this beauty?
From there I could see the border of the city where the youngster Haldir accompanied his father patrolling, keeping the Lord and Lady safe. If I looked the other way I could see the city just in front of the palace. A few women could be seen pinning their laundry to clotheslines for the night and some young boys chasing each other up and down the streets as their mother's yelled at them to go to bed. When the chase was over and they finally went inside my attention was drawn to the palace.
A couple of candles were lit near the windows creating a soft glow. There was only one balcony on that side and as my eyes traveled over it I saw her. My mother was looking directly at me even from so far away, she was still an Elf and had Elf eyes. I should have known she would know, she always knows. And I should have remembered she was always at her mirror at this time of night, assuring that she would know I was out. I smiled in amusement as she stared at me, I knew she wouldn't tell father. I could hear her reassurance in my mind.
After a moment of eye contact, she smiled, nodded approvingly and went inside as Celeborn entered the room. I turned away not wanting to see anymore, not that I could as the curtains were closed as a precaution. I sat for a long time, the exact time I don't know but I do know that I only realized that I had to go back when the horizon started to glow a pale pink.
I practically jumped down the tree and ran back to the palace. Swiftly I scaled the intricately carved building. As I passed the last floor I realized that I had yet to go left more, contrary to my previous calculations and would have to go across a window even further risking my chances of getting caught. I tentatively tested my footing on an engraved leaf before trusting it with my full weight and lowered myself in front of the seemingly deserted window.
A light flickered inside; startling me so I jumped over to the next window which had a balcony. Silently I hopped down and rested for a moment, sticking to the sides so there was very little chance anyone would see me. Then I saw another light flicker and voices erupted angrily from the door. I leapt easily back off the balcony and clung to the side of the house but stayed to listen out of pure curiosity.
"Where did she go?!" the first voice bellowed, deep and furious, "I know you know! You seen all in your mirror so don't tell me you don't know!"
She sighed inwardly, of course it had to be father. He was pacing and clenching his fists, ready to throw something across the room if need be, this was depicted in the shadows cast by the candlelight.
"I told you I don't know. The mirror shows only what I want to see or know not what teenaged Elves are doing at night!" a woman's voice echoed, obviously Galadriel. I smiled to myself because I was glad it was causing father so much distress.
"Fine if you won't tell me I'll have to go back to her room and look for evidence which means going through absolutely everything, not that there's that much to look through. I'll send out the guards. Kalien! Stivaen!" he called and immediately there were two guards in the room. He ordered them to search all of Lorien for me. I chuckled then, maybe a bit too loud but he didn't hear me.
"She needs her freedom, Celeborn, and who are you to take it from her?" Galadriel exclaimed helplessly, which was a big deal. The last time she felt helpless something very, very bad happened.
"I am her Ada, whether she likes it or not!" he yelled for all of Lothlorien to hear through the open sliding glass door, "Until I see fit she is my property, I own her, no one can set her free but me. Right now all she is convincing me of is that she is a stupid, arrogant, disobedient elfling that can do nothing but destroy and eat away at all that is good and true."
For a moment she was speechless. "You don't own her, nor do I. Whether you like it or not she will have her freedom and if it means stabbing you in the back, figuratively or literally though I would prefer figuratively, I'm sure that won't stop her!" Leaving her husband to dwell on that she left the room with her white dress swishing behind her and slammed that door.
And he did indeed dwell on that for a moment but quickly recovered and followed her out the door slamming twice as hard and headed for my room. Quickly I made my way to my room, which was only one window over. By the time I had gotten in, put the board back up, I had just enough time to hide under my bed before dad violently opened the door so that it knocked against the wall and bounced back a little.
"Where are you?!" he asked to himself in a soft malicious voice. Then he started to scour the room, over turning the mattress and blankets, and even tapping the floorboards to make sure I wasn't hiding under them. Note to self, rip up floor boards and hide stuff under them.
Nervously I watched his booted feet pace back and forth looking in ever took and cranny for me. Of course he would never think to look somewhere so simple as under the bed. Soon I heard him stomp out and slam the door to join the guards in their search for me.
I emerged from under the bed, covered in dust and smiling. After dusting off my clothes I laid on my bed and milled over all the events of that day. I had escaped from my prison and gain my sanity once again. I had smelt the fresh, sharp night air and felt the soft forest floor against my bare feet. I felt the friction of bark against my hands and gazed upon the city over the treetops. Then for the grand finale I had avoided my father's growing malice. That moment was the most liberating moment of my entire life to date.
The harsh opening of my door interrupted my musings and I saw my father once again, eyes wide and bloodshot, hair a mess with fly-aways. "Where in Valar were you?" he breathed threateningly.
I raised a confused eyebrow and put my hands behind my head to support it so I could look him eye to eye, "Why sitting right here, father, thinking about all the ways I've disappointed you through the years."
"As you should have been but no you were out in the forest." He strode over to me and put his face alarmingly close to mine in an intimidating way. "Weren't you? You treacherous little snake!"
At this I stood up in my own defense and he raised a hand to strike me in the face. But to his immense surprise before contact could be established I grabbed his wrist. He started to try and say something but was cut short by my surprisingly strong grip, hurting him quite a bit. Mercifully I let go.
"Get ready, Celeborn," I said with a dark look. "for the worst days of your life, for they are in the near future."
And thus what I called the rebel stage of my life, which lasted a very long time and remains in effect to this day, began.
The End
It had been ten days since the incident. Ada seemed distant and scared but most of all angry. He was changed the moment he walked through the doors, eyes glazed and hurt, dragging his feet sorrowfully but it took ten days go fully sink in. He wouldn't tell us why he was so mortified and we didn't know until one of the servants found her body. Then we were all mortified. Then he really changed. Angry at me, at nanneth, at everything. He locked himself in his study for two days strait, snapping at everyone who even knocked on the Dogwood door. We thought he blamed himself for her death but we soon found out it wasn't like that. It wasn't like that at all.
After two days he came out and the maliciousness began. He yelled at us, he didn't hit us but he came close many times. Soon he became much, much to over protective of us, me in particular. In the horribly evil way, he treated me as though I were the most disgusting he had ever laid eyes on. At first I was restricted to the courtyard, which I understood though I wasn't happy about it, I loved and cherished my freedom below very few things. A month later after getting angry at me for stepping out of bounds, and I do mean step, he grounded me to the house only and never let me out. He said I was unsafe and unworthy of freedom. Nanneth stood up for me once but then he started saying it only in private.
I tried to be good but whatever I did made him angrier and angrier. He saw me looking out a window and putting hand out into the cool breeze of freedom one-day and started to yell at me as usual. He restricted me further, to only the floor my room was on and forbid anyone to come and keep me company. And absolutely no windows. My Ada was so paranoid that he actually blocked the windows with wooden covers. I began to ache for the cool breeze in my hair, the soft rain on my face. I longed for freedom again so much it hurt to breathe.
One day I though it would be all right if I opened one of the covers just for a moment, on a rainy day. I wanted so much to feel it again. After all it was just a moment and Ada was all the way in the other side of the house. First I stuck out a hand, then the wind ripping at me like a ravenous dog I stuck out my entire head, caught up in the moment. Then I heard the soft thud of a boot on the marble floor. I froze and turned around slowly. It was my Ada.
This time I decided that he might respect me a little if I said something in my defense. I was wrong. That was the day he hit me. The blow was more emotionally devastating then it was physically. I fell to the ground and held my cheek, I remember it so clearly. He sneered at me, sprawled helplessly on the floor pathetically, as though I were something disgusting and vile an orc had spit up. He turned on his heel and walked away, an evil chorus of laughter echoing through the empty hall, through my entire life. That was the day I stopped calling him Ada and started calling him father.
For the first time in months I began to feel angry, a hatred I never knew could sprout within my depths and come out at someone I had once loved so dearly. Whenever I saw him looking at me, staring at me, glaring at me with a loathing that only he could produce, I felt that hatred well up inside me and I felt like killing or destroying. At first it scared me, scared me to the point of tears and I cried every night for shame that I hated my father so. I got over it in two days. The same amount of days it took him to hate me.
To vent my anger I wrote, in common, which angered my father. That was the main point, he couldn't read common very easily and not knowing what I wrote drove him even more crazy then he already was. He did eventually figure out what I had written and for this he locked me in my room. I wouldn't go without a fight and he knew it so he drugged me, held a poisoned cloth to my mouth so it knocked me out for hours. While I was out he took my writing, my reading, blocked the window, and stripped my room of everything I loved or found in any way amusing or interesting. When I woke up I wasn't in the room I had always loved as a child. I was in hell.
The next hundred years I spent sitting in my room wishing I was dead or he was. The only time I spoke to anyone at all was the once or twice my mother managed to sneak away from his guarding my door. She came in simply to talk to me about whatever I wanted, no pressure, no expectations. The only two times in that entire year I felt like I had half of an abusive life. She could only stay for a short time though and when she did I was left more depressed and angry at my father then before.
Ultimately I was depressed to the extreme. All I did all day was sit on my bed and stare at the wall, or the floor. Sometimes, when I was in one of my happier moods, I would stand up every once and a while. When I was really depressed I would lay on my bed and stare at the blank ceiling all day and all night, I wouldn't sleep, eat, or move in any way. I was in a sort of trance and that was the happiest hundred years of my new, prisoner life, since I spent most of my time dreaming of other places.
Then after that hundred years was over, one day I was in a good mood and went to the heavily boarded window. A bolt was loose so I tried carefully and silently to unhinge it. To my extreme happiness it came out and I saw outside again and it was the most beautiful site I had ever seen.
The trees seemed to glow under the moonlight, sparkling and twinkling up at me. A light wind caressed the treetops and I opened the window to let it fill the room. I saw a few late night, teen-age stragglers trying feverishly to get home before their parents find out. They didn't realize how lucky they were.
The air itself was enough to send me into hysterics but it was neither the time nor the place. Intoxicated by the long-anticipated night air and in a slightly delusional state I opened the window and silently crept out. I stood on the windowsill for only a second then jumped down and landed with a soft thud. A small twinge of pain shot up my leg but I didn't notice in my excitement nor did I notice as I shivered in the chill of night.
Once I was out, in my pajamas if you want to know, the first thing I did was smile. For the first time in a hundred years I smiled and it felt foreign on my face but any movement felt foreign at the moment.
I made my way to the forest, creeping behind bushes knowing that my father's room could see the entire kingdom and would most likely spot her if she didn't keep to the shadows. Once in the forest I was free and it felt good, almost to good. I didn't remember what freedom had felt like and I couldn't believe it was actually happening. My heart fluttered with every step, my mind whizzed with the prospect of doing anything I wanted. My breathing was heavier then it would normally have been, I was absolutely giddy.
After a while I stumbled upon a small stream just to the east of the main city. A large root had been uprooted and was so far from the ground it was taller then me. It was accompanied by many others forming a kind of dome right there beside the river bend. The water sparkled in the moonlight and everything had a pale eerie glow that enticed my beyond belief.
I slowly climbed the dome of roots and sat upon it watching the water flow, as if it were made of molten silver. Looking upward I noticed that this was a tree, like the ones I used to climb when I was an elfling and had had an ounce of dignity that wasn't harshly taken from me by my delusional father.
A now free me stood up, then hopped up to the first branch with my hands, soft from a hundred years of sitting on my bed. I continued to climb up, as fast as I could and soon I was so high I could see the tops of the trees. How could I have ever been away from this beauty?
From there I could see the border of the city where the youngster Haldir accompanied his father patrolling, keeping the Lord and Lady safe. If I looked the other way I could see the city just in front of the palace. A few women could be seen pinning their laundry to clotheslines for the night and some young boys chasing each other up and down the streets as their mother's yelled at them to go to bed. When the chase was over and they finally went inside my attention was drawn to the palace.
A couple of candles were lit near the windows creating a soft glow. There was only one balcony on that side and as my eyes traveled over it I saw her. My mother was looking directly at me even from so far away, she was still an Elf and had Elf eyes. I should have known she would know, she always knows. And I should have remembered she was always at her mirror at this time of night, assuring that she would know I was out. I smiled in amusement as she stared at me, I knew she wouldn't tell father. I could hear her reassurance in my mind.
After a moment of eye contact, she smiled, nodded approvingly and went inside as Celeborn entered the room. I turned away not wanting to see anymore, not that I could as the curtains were closed as a precaution. I sat for a long time, the exact time I don't know but I do know that I only realized that I had to go back when the horizon started to glow a pale pink.
I practically jumped down the tree and ran back to the palace. Swiftly I scaled the intricately carved building. As I passed the last floor I realized that I had yet to go left more, contrary to my previous calculations and would have to go across a window even further risking my chances of getting caught. I tentatively tested my footing on an engraved leaf before trusting it with my full weight and lowered myself in front of the seemingly deserted window.
A light flickered inside; startling me so I jumped over to the next window which had a balcony. Silently I hopped down and rested for a moment, sticking to the sides so there was very little chance anyone would see me. Then I saw another light flicker and voices erupted angrily from the door. I leapt easily back off the balcony and clung to the side of the house but stayed to listen out of pure curiosity.
"Where did she go?!" the first voice bellowed, deep and furious, "I know you know! You seen all in your mirror so don't tell me you don't know!"
She sighed inwardly, of course it had to be father. He was pacing and clenching his fists, ready to throw something across the room if need be, this was depicted in the shadows cast by the candlelight.
"I told you I don't know. The mirror shows only what I want to see or know not what teenaged Elves are doing at night!" a woman's voice echoed, obviously Galadriel. I smiled to myself because I was glad it was causing father so much distress.
"Fine if you won't tell me I'll have to go back to her room and look for evidence which means going through absolutely everything, not that there's that much to look through. I'll send out the guards. Kalien! Stivaen!" he called and immediately there were two guards in the room. He ordered them to search all of Lorien for me. I chuckled then, maybe a bit too loud but he didn't hear me.
"She needs her freedom, Celeborn, and who are you to take it from her?" Galadriel exclaimed helplessly, which was a big deal. The last time she felt helpless something very, very bad happened.
"I am her Ada, whether she likes it or not!" he yelled for all of Lothlorien to hear through the open sliding glass door, "Until I see fit she is my property, I own her, no one can set her free but me. Right now all she is convincing me of is that she is a stupid, arrogant, disobedient elfling that can do nothing but destroy and eat away at all that is good and true."
For a moment she was speechless. "You don't own her, nor do I. Whether you like it or not she will have her freedom and if it means stabbing you in the back, figuratively or literally though I would prefer figuratively, I'm sure that won't stop her!" Leaving her husband to dwell on that she left the room with her white dress swishing behind her and slammed that door.
And he did indeed dwell on that for a moment but quickly recovered and followed her out the door slamming twice as hard and headed for my room. Quickly I made my way to my room, which was only one window over. By the time I had gotten in, put the board back up, I had just enough time to hide under my bed before dad violently opened the door so that it knocked against the wall and bounced back a little.
"Where are you?!" he asked to himself in a soft malicious voice. Then he started to scour the room, over turning the mattress and blankets, and even tapping the floorboards to make sure I wasn't hiding under them. Note to self, rip up floor boards and hide stuff under them.
Nervously I watched his booted feet pace back and forth looking in ever took and cranny for me. Of course he would never think to look somewhere so simple as under the bed. Soon I heard him stomp out and slam the door to join the guards in their search for me.
I emerged from under the bed, covered in dust and smiling. After dusting off my clothes I laid on my bed and milled over all the events of that day. I had escaped from my prison and gain my sanity once again. I had smelt the fresh, sharp night air and felt the soft forest floor against my bare feet. I felt the friction of bark against my hands and gazed upon the city over the treetops. Then for the grand finale I had avoided my father's growing malice. That moment was the most liberating moment of my entire life to date.
The harsh opening of my door interrupted my musings and I saw my father once again, eyes wide and bloodshot, hair a mess with fly-aways. "Where in Valar were you?" he breathed threateningly.
I raised a confused eyebrow and put my hands behind my head to support it so I could look him eye to eye, "Why sitting right here, father, thinking about all the ways I've disappointed you through the years."
"As you should have been but no you were out in the forest." He strode over to me and put his face alarmingly close to mine in an intimidating way. "Weren't you? You treacherous little snake!"
At this I stood up in my own defense and he raised a hand to strike me in the face. But to his immense surprise before contact could be established I grabbed his wrist. He started to try and say something but was cut short by my surprisingly strong grip, hurting him quite a bit. Mercifully I let go.
"Get ready, Celeborn," I said with a dark look. "for the worst days of your life, for they are in the near future."
And thus what I called the rebel stage of my life, which lasted a very long time and remains in effect to this day, began.
The End