Standard Disclaimers Apply

A Beautiful Mind: Taken

I must be quiet. Like I've always been, I must be quiet. I must master the art of silence because silence is me, and to not be what you are should be the deepest treachery.

I fear it. I depend on it. It has helped me. It has cursed me. Silence. I was raised in it. And I glorify its name.

I know that the others have a few… abilities that I do not possess. I realize that I am treated unequally when approached. I… how can I explain this? I cannot see and I cannot hear, but I seem to have acquired a sense that is unique. I am able to understand my surroundings without taking time to understand or process. But because you do not have this sense, you cannot have a name for this. I will tell you that I "see."

I think I see other people's emotions. At first, these continuous waves, these violent and head-splitting images of feelings were hard to control as they blasted themselves into my psyche. When I was a baby, I remember being overwhelmed and horrified. What was this insanity? Swirling and twirling. Tangling and unraveling. Crashing and breaking. What was this that contradicted each other every moment in hundred thousand ways? What was this that was flaming violet, cool blue and harsh, blinding yellow? What were these monsters?

They could never be tamed.

Every new person to meet was to walk in the abysmal depths of hell. Was hell a fire, filled with sharp pains and tortures? Or, was hell a nothing, with an air so thick you were suffocated to an inch of your life, forever? To me, it was only a difference of who it was that I met. And, let me say to you, I have been to every hell that could ever be fathomed by the imagination.

Every man I met was corrupted. Every woman that talked to me looked upon me with fake pity—only a sweet icing over her true disgust. Of course, I cannot say this for all of mankind. I realize that I have met much less than my share of acquaintances. Thanks to my mother.

She took me everywhere. What the extent of everywhere was, I'll never know. But, every time, the feeling was different. The land gave over new colors. Yes, earth has emotions—Nature has emotions.

Some lands, where I never went outside, screamed for mercy. They wailed and groaned and had spasms of pure, unadulterated agony. They never stopped feeling the pain. They never stopped giving me colors! I was never kept in such places very long.

Mostly, Mother took me to areas where the colors were green and blue. I was never happy. But, it was in these places where I was not sobbing with the land.

I was always isolated.

I suppose you are wondering what my mother was like. I suppose you are wondering what she thought of me. I suppose you are wondering what colors I saw when she was near.

I think she had at least a little knowledge of my predicament. I believe that she caught on that I did not enjoy being with people. Perhaps, she was like me. Perhaps, it was just a coincidence, and I was born to a traveling, outcast mother.

I will never know what she thought of me. Either she was a very dull woman, or a very talented woman who could conceal her feelings even from me. All I know of her is how she had taken care of me. Well, she had taken care of me well, I should think. I was never unhappy because of my condition. It was always because of the condition of others.

Anyways, it was in one of these places, these green and blue places, where I was taken.

I awoke with a headache.

Where was I?

When the headache subsided, I realized the colors that were already forming in my mind were not of their usual hue and shade. They were so intense that they almost blinded my eyes, my mind's eyes, that is. Instead of their usual seemingly senseless turmoil, these vibrant colors danced the most intricate ballet.

They were beautiful.

They were little children, knowing of their lack of importance in front of an adult, but eager to show their small discoveries all the same, with bursting pride and hard-to-contain happiness.

I welcomed them, who could not love this innocence?

But, I was fearful of their mere existence. Where did these aberrations come from?

True, these beauties were of the usual colors of the forest-green and blue. But, they were blues and greens that seemed to have life breathed into them, from angels.

Did I die? Am I dead? Were we killed in that normal blue and green world and now I am in a place where the good go after life? I do not mean to be vain, but I have never been a bad person. Soon, however, my gorgeous portrait was invaded.

Instantly, the coldest black and the most sinister red assaulted my mind. The black froze my bones. The red gripped my heart with an iron fist. I could not move. My mouth was agape and my useless eyes widened to an impossible degree. And then…

SLAP

Something hit me. Something hit me! SOMETHING HIT ME!

SLAP

The Pain! I breathed in the mud I landed in. I choked on the mud. I choked on my disbelief. I choked on my own fear.

And I saw laughter. I saw the malicious laughter. It burst through his deadly black and red and dug itself into my stomach. This was worse than the cries of the most scarred land! So much more painful than the most cynical man I've met!

I didn't know what I was doing. Was I just standing there, taking this! Was I just lying there, crying—as if I were ashamed?

NO!

The Prince of Mirkwood ran swiftly through the trees.

His dance through the falling autumn leaves was graceful. And, try as they might, the stretching, naked branches could not interfere with his intense and focused run.

Dressed in a woodsman's clothes with a bow and some arrows upon his back, Legolas thought deeply as to why he was running.

Am I running away from something? Then, shouldn't I go back home to defend it from whatever this is?

Our prince had awoken just as the last shadows of the previous night began to disappear and had quickly dressed himself in nervous anticipation. He did not know the cause of his anxiety but sometimes, the magic of the universe chooses to interfere with the conscious workings of the mind and instill in it a brilliant insight or, in this case, a seemingly imaginative urgency.

Or perhaps I am running towards the source of the problem, and I was sent to destroy it. However, I do not even know if I was awoken because of an evil—perhaps I must discover a treasure.

But, what this treasure could be—Mirkwood's hero could not begin to guess.

From when he was a baby, Legolas was expected to be perfect.

It was ironic—how much his teachers stressed that perfection was unattainable and, at the same time, strongly and stubbornly insist that this was what he must become.

As idiotic and hopeless it was, Legolas worked for it. He tried to become the impossible not because he wanted to please his teachers but because he wanted to become worthy for his people.

He loved them, and he believed that they deserved nothing short of the perfection he wanted to provide.

He worked without rest to improve his mind—studying days and nights and learning in the hopes that one day, this particular fact or that exact thought would prove useful in a time of need.

However, he did not deter from strengthening his body as well. He knew that knowledge was nothing if he did not survive to share and use it, and so, he practiced with the best of his father's warriors and was beginning to hold his own.

But, even with all of this training filled with mental and physical pain, Prince Legolas of Mirkwood was not ready to face the challenge, a challenge that Fate mercilessly flung into his life.

He was not ready for the story that began with his discovery in a small clearing of the woods.

He stopped running when he heard a scream.