Without changing her tone, she continued, "Oh, where are my manners? Would you like something to drink?"
"Yes, please," Katie said, speaking for them all. "What would you guys like?"
"Just water, please, Madam," Estel said, and the others nodded.
Katie's grandmother laughed. "Oh, please call me Vivian," she said.
"Pepsi for me," Katie added, and her grandmother disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.
The MElings stared at Katie in shock. "That was not quite the reaction I was expecting," Legolas stated in some confusion.
Katie shook her head and raised her hands, disavowing any knowledge of the inner workings of her ancestor's mind. "Nothing my grandmother does surprises me anymore," she said quietly, so as not to be overheard, but with a chuckle. "She bought a CB radio a few years ago, and uses it to talk to truckers when she's bored. She recites them limericks at two o'clock in the morning; they love her."
The MElings didn't ask what all of that meant, but they didn't ask, assuming it would take a lot of explanation. But the idea of reciting anything to anyone at two o'clock in the morning sounded vaguely amusing and strange to Elladan.
"You ought to see her on days she has a Red Hat Society meeting," Katie continued. "Her outfit's incredible. Last month she and her chapter went out on Friday night in their full regalia with grass skirts over top and did the hula right in the middle of the mall for no reason whatsoever. Apparently, they attracted quite a crowd."
"What is the Red Hat Society?" Legolas asked, confused.
"Basically, an organization of women who refuse to grow old with dignity," Katie answered with a grin. "Her hat's on the wall back there where we came in."
Just then, her grandmother reentered the room with a tray and passed them all their drinks. She put a bowl of nuts and a plate of cookies on the coffee table and told them to help themselves.
"Now," she said, when they were all settled and she was sitting in her armchair with a fizzy yellow drink in one hand and a big chocolate chip cookie in the other, "spill. What's brought you all to my doorstep?"
They all looked at each other. Katie cleared her throat. "Well, we've got a bit of a problem."
"No place to keep them all?" Vivian asked with a grin.
Katie smiled back. "No, that's the least of our troubles. You see…" she paused. "This is really weird for them. It's nothing like their world. And I mean, nothing. Like, there aren't even elves here."
Vivian nodded in understanding.
Katie took a breath to continue, but seemed at a loss as to how to proceed. To the surprise of them all, Elrohir broke in.
"The world is beginning to… disintegrate," he said explained. "I can see it all around us. And I know that the end is a long way off, but I see the signs of it, I can see it coming. Does no one here know that the world is dying?"
Vivian nodded. "Oh yes, some of us realize it," she said. "'The earth wears out like a garment'."
The MElings all looked surprised. "You know?" Elladan asked. In his millennia of experience, only the elves had been shown these things.
"How do you go on with that knowledge?" Elrohir continued. "How can you live with it, knowing the end is coming soon?"
Vivian smiled gently. "Well, as you say, it is a long way off, far beyond any of our lifetimes. Has the knowledge been bothering you the whole time you've been here?"
Elrohir nodded. The others simply looked on. It was so quiet in the room, it seemed like Elrohir and Vivian were the only ones there, simply talking to one another.
"I can't stand the thought that our own world will become like this someday—that it too will end, and all its beauty and joy end with it. Elves—we are connected to the world, in a way that humans are not. We take a simple joy in the loveliness of the earth, while humans look beyond the world. We love life—and to see the world dying is, for me, the saddest thing I have ever experienced. I have learned to live with the death of humans, for I have lived through many of their generations. But I have never seen the end of a world so imminent as I have here in the past week."
Vivian said nothing while he talked, letting him speak his mind. In the silence that followed, she took a pensive bite of cookie and sip of her drink, gathering her thoughts. She set down her glass on a nearby coaster with a movement of finality.
"How do you deal with the deaths of people?" she asked him probingly.
He furrowed his brow in thought. "When humans die, they leave the circles of the world. As far as we know, their fëar—their spirits—do not end with death, only their bodies. Elves assume that human spirits must live on somewhere else."
"And the earth wears out and dies like a human body," Vivian said, drawing a parallel. "Does the earth also have a spirit?"
"Not in itself," Elrohir answered her. "But it was made according to the plans of Ilúvatar, the All-Father. And his spirit pervades it, all the good in it, as coming from his design—just as an author's spirit pervades a work he has written, or a song-writer's his music."
"Then that spirit, that author's spirit, lives on, even when his book is destroyed—it lives on in the memories of the people who have read the book. You say that humans go on to someplace beyond the world—then their memories will go on, as well, and the spirit of the beauty, joy and goodness of the world will continue. Nothing the… All-Father has made can end without his consent. The body of man dies, but his spirit lives on that he may enter a new way of being. Perhaps the body of the earth dies, only that the spirit of the All-Father living in it may transform it to enter a new kind of existence."
The MElings all sat silent, thinking over what Vivian had said. It made sense, particularly taking the case of the elves. They all knew that after an elf died, his fëa could be sent into another earthly body to heal the ills done to it in the former life. Perhaps Arda was the same—perhaps it would die only to be given a new life, to cancel out the griefs of the former. Elrohir shook himself.
"But we cannot know that will happen," he said, low and despairingly. "We cannot know that will be the outcome."
"No, we can't," Vivian said calmly. "Just as we can't know for sure that we will still be alive in the next five minutes. We truly know very little, are sure of almost nothing in this life. But we carry on, in the same way you carry on when someone you know and love dies. You must have faith—you must have hope. The All-Father is good, and all his plans must be good. We know this. We must simply trust in him."
Estel smiled. "The elves say that the All-Father demands only two things of his children, elves and men: belief in him, and trust in him. Estel." He turned to his brother. "You always said it yourself, Elrohir, that we must just have hope, and trust that everything will turn out alright in the end."
Elrohir looked at his human brother, then at Vivian. The love and wisdom flowed from her, and also hope, and joy. Here was a human, like the wise woman Andreth, who understood the grief of the world better than all her kin, and yet unlike Andreth, knowing these things, she still had hope, she still rejoiced in life.
And he could do no less.
A smile lit his face. He smiled more broadly and truly than he had since they had left Middle-Earth. A positive light issued from his features. With one graceful movement, he stood and crossed the room to kneel before Katie's grandmother, who looked shocked but not entirely displeased to be honored so by such a handsome being.
He took her still-ungnarled hand in both of his. "You are truly a Saelon, a wise-woman. Le hannon o guren." He kissed her hand.
Vivian smiled down at him and blushed like a schoolgirl.
000
They all spent the next hour filling Vivian in on the details of the MElings' stay in Pennsylvania. She laughed long and hard when she heard that they had appeared unceremoniously in the dorm bathroom, and giggled like a girl while Legolas told of their first experience riding in cars. Walmart, the girls' reaction in the dining hall, all of it was rehashed. The MElings cackled at Katie's wicked impression of Liz when she saw Legolas for the first time, and Legolas when he tried the school's potatoes au gratin. Now that Elrohir seemed to be his old cheerful self again, their laughter took on a new tone of relief.
Vivian invited them all to spend the night—she had a guest room, which the MElings courteously insisted Katie take, and the others would sleep in the living room, either on the couch (which converted to a double bed) or the armchairs.
There wasn't enough room for them all to eat lunch in the little kitchen, so they sat in the living room to munch on their sandwiches. Elladan felt his heart lift when he realized that Katie's grandmother was also serving fresh fruits and vegetables. There had been all too little of that at Watson College.
Vivian put them all at their ease very quickly. She invited them to explore the house, and they took the invitation. Elladan followed Legolas back the hall toward the door. Legolas turned to go down the stairs to the basement, but a decoration caught Elladan's eye, on the wall opposite the red hat. It was an unusual ornament: two pieces of wood nailed one of the other, crossed at the middle. The vertical piece was longer than the horizontal, and hung down farther. In the middle of this wooden cross were carved the letters "ihs". Elladan resolved to ask Vivian about it later.
Turning around, he saw the thing that had so intrigued him when he came in the house. It was the poem hanging on the wall next to the fantastic red hat.
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat that doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickles for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beer mats and things in boxes.
But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.
He was chuckling by the time he finished it. "What is it?" Legolas asked, coming up the stairs. Elladan indicted the poem, and waited for Legolas to read it.
Legolas laughed. "It is Vivian, all the way through," he agreed. "She is somehow so like an elf—a 'grown-up child'."
"Yes, she is. There is something about her," Elladan said, "something I cannot place. She is like an elf, but not an elf, like a human, but not quite like any other human I've ever met, not even Estel and his kin."
Legolas nodded. "There is not a trace of it in Katie or her friends," he added.
"Did I just hear someone take my name in vain?" Katie called down the hall.
"Legolas was just telling me how messy and unkempt humans are," Elladan called back, with a grin and a wink at Legolas. Legolas tried hard not to laugh.
Katie stomped down the hall and smacked them both simultaneously on the shoulder. "Careful, my little elflings, or I may not let you use my hairbrush tomorrow morning," she warned them ominously.
Vivian, who had been coming down the hall to fetch something out of the basement smiled mischievously as she overheard this statement. Going down the stairs, she called slyly and half-flirtaciously back over her shoulder, "They can use my hairbrush tomorrow morning."
TBC
AN: Vivian's drink is Mountain Dew. :)
"The earth wears out like a garment": Is 51:6
Le hannon o guren: Thank you from my heart
The poem is by Jenny Jacobs
My ballet studio's annual performance is tonight! Wish me luck!
Erasuithiel: Wow, your favorite? —warmfuzzies— Yay! Yes, I hope everybody likes Katie's grandma as much as I do. :)
EresseElrondiel: Where are you from? I'm not sure how far the rocks/stones thing goes, but I'm under the impression that the stream/creek thing is definitely native Pennsylvanian. But I could be wrong. I thought "redd up" was a Pennsylvania Dutchism until I read it in Jane Eyre. OO
Hermione at Heart: The only one who has commented on that so far! Congrats! lol
Laer4572: I actually wrote in the cookies and soda bit before you mentioned it, but yes, they are good for munchies!
Darkened Dreams: What IS this about grandmas and cookies and homemade lemonade?.!. :)
Dorehiel: —winches— Ouch! I bet that smarted… You should see my left big toenail right now. I must've done something to it in dance class, because the whole thing's black… I liked the line about the bathroom, too. :) Seemed a very grandma thing to say.
RavensDestiny: Yay! My readers are communicating with one another about my work! —is terribly excited—
Thanks also to fk306, Arlindor and Madd Hatter! (And, since the ballet we're performing tonight is "Alice in Wonderland", Madd Hatter's name is particularly appropriate!. :)
If you review, maybe Vivian will give you chocolate chip cookies and homemade lemonade!