Transitions
Misty hair, furtive fingers and the refusal of this amorphous figure to step out of the unending twilight of the trees. A dark place but there is light, the moon erratic and half orange, raving in the grape-hung night.
No, it is not possessed of insanity but it is not yet full, gibbous and obvious in its wish. This one, the one over there who should have green eyes—and they surprised me by being blue yes, they did.
There is something gorgeous about him, it's a him, something unknown, something impossible, something unobtainable. That is the beauty in it. We must learn to appreciate what we have.
He's a singer, hair and light like the rippling of a played harp. Young and old, the lovely defiance of time. Maybe because it likes him so much. Time appreciates what it has. I think that 'it' might be a feminine. There's something wonderful about the feminine nature, that it knows instinctively to appreciate. The male spirit has, perhaps a little stereotypically, been too assertive, possessive because it wants to protect.
Let's see what happens next then. The figure is nearly gone, my dreams. And so I extend my arms, reach further farther, will I run fast enough…
Memory
There was a time in Mirkwood, as there were many times, it was remembered vaguely, not with the weighty salience of finality, but the passing memory of continuity.
It was a day hazy with autumn, gentle wines of russet and disorganized poetry beneath the boughs of late bloom, and now hazy also with the years between. He recalled this as it was a day they spent outdoors, sweet marvel of fruit and maturity—Mirkwood was a brighter place then.
The stream was not as ebullient as it had in new spring, it gurgled, reflection was cast; their ripples showed distortion—this was the way of time.
"So Little Greenleaf, who do you want to marry when you grow up?" his father's affection had always been evident, affection and pride in his only son; the child fingered the wild flowers, they were lush and full, on the brink of decline, but they shone with the moment, for the moment.
"I know! I want to marry Naneth." He named that irreplaceable feminine influence in every child's universe; in his eyes, there was no woman fairer.
Thranduil chuckled, a low sound, dulcet and goldenrod. "Ah, but Little Greenleaf, Naneth is already married to me."
"Oh, alright then." Legolas furrowed his brow as he tried to think of another being he was remotely likely to marry.
"Mirithil will do then."
"Mirithil, are you certain?" Thranduil recalled a certain little elfling who had crawled into his arms, recalcitrant and petulant as his nanny had refused to allow him to eat more than three spoonfuls of maple syrup at breakfast, he disagreed with her reasoning that more was too rich for little elflings like him. He remindedefore I left the old town, now even hazier with the years between we were three, now two. His grief was a lasting kind, and I could not quite reconcile this new, darker image of an elf to the one I knew before. The fortress of the floating world shook, I entered the circle of his arms, I and tucked it into his father's hair, "There; that matches with your hair. It is prettier than your crown too."
Laughter filled the glade, much like the ripples heard before, then a high squealing joined it as Thranduil scooped his son into his arms and twirled him."
"I'm flying!"
- - -
Childhood: some slow mellow town on the edge of extinction, but always and definitely infinite; for me it is somewhere in the sleepy remembrances of yesteryear, but it does not sulk at neglect. It just is as I left it, everpresent.
I remember my mother; she stays there in that old town, not much to be said. She is part of the world that belongs to no one, perhaps it is best, when the innocence of childhood is gone, flaws appear, shadows become material. There is an old glamour in not knowing. And only the brave dare to know and learn.
Father and I; something I am rather proud of, we are secretive but not mysterious, as a child I imagined we were the sole inhabitants of some wild lyrical floating world, Mirkwood came second, it formed the tangible and my father was king, an idea I was only vaguely aware of and did not care to investigate.
Before I left the old town, now even hazier with the years between we were three, now two. His grief was a lasting kind, and I could not quite reconcile this new, darker image of an elf to the one I knew before. The fortress of the floating world shook, I entered the circle of his arms, I have never doubted my father's affection, but I suspect, always have and still do, that when he looked at me with that peculiar emotion in his eyes at that moment, he realized something. I was the only one, the only little elfling there would ever be.
Mother figures in my more fantastic dreams, more ivory and ideas than a face. I was young, the elven equivalent of four in mannish terms.
Still, I have been told that I resemble my mother, carry her little details, I wonder if that was painful for my father, to see a living remnant of the never-again wife.
There are dregs that survive the tragedy—a portrait hung in my father's bedroom is one, not particularly spectacular, and I prefer it that way, to have my mother's image as plain as possible, not dressed with a rented splendour.
She surprised me by being dark haired, I had known this, it had always been a fact. Still, I stroked my own hair, so different from hers as I confronted the picture for the first time after someone informed me of the resemblance.
I wonder about it sometimes, is it really there at all? My father seemed to think so, he ever mentioned it and though I might doubt it, I keep in mind his covert praise. In any case, there are facets of a character which pictures cannot convey.
It happened quickly, in childbirth, not some brutal, hurtling incident, the exact details are unknown to me and rather unimportant to me. I do know that it was a brother I might have had. He came, cold and quiet, slightly blue, a dead silent presence which awed me then and now too. it is really that simple, life and death, death and life. One moment moving, heaving with labour, choked with a stifling pain, a woman in the darkness and also the light of childbirth, and in the next moment gone, gone with movement, memory, gone with all the moments she had had and the moments which might have been.
So, after all this introspection, I present to you a real and definite fact, we are a family of two. I love my father dearly.
There is a place just beyond Mirkwood, where time runs in tandem to with towns, cities, Gondor, Mordor, evil, changing morality, undying mortality. That place is one of Men, they chose that certain place, down river, down the river leading away, out of the shadows of the cool under-eaves of the wood.
Ashes of age, that irremovable stain and still quite lively with children, tattered homes, and those less weary. This is mortality, when you see the old and the young and the almost acceptance that they will all end in the dusk, somewhere in the west.
I visited this place (once a while elves enter this place—it is no longer quite rare, we are nothing more than slight curiousities) a visit that came in the months following my return to the woods.
I felt even a little lost amongst the people who would leave before us, and yet inherit the earth despite their clamour and inconstancy, their short memories.
So many people: the girl in the torn skirt, dusty but still new and shining. The one in his prime whose life was mostly purpose, less love, less emotion. The ones who thought less—children in the mid-season—and all was fleeting. The thoughtless ones, careless, who looked brutal but seductively vulgar—to put a name on them they would be whores, almost decent by daylight's transformation.
A dog roved the streets like he owned them, maybe he did. A marketplace bursting with sound and light.
Some stray puppy—it reminded me oddly of Estel, dark, innocent and curious. I think perhaps it liked me too; it followed me, at the end of the tour around the marketplace, just as we left for what must have been unfamiliar territory for it, it left us, and I think I saw a larger one, a mother I hoped, herding it away.
Trips to the town were often for trade and sometimes to conduct the self-appointed duty of the elves to see that all was right and nothing had happened which would affect our territory. This was of the latter; here is a rough idea of the day's happenings: an inspection of the denizens of the town, particularly its shadier districts. Then there was the visit we paid to the ruler—he was almost indolent with lack of activity. This character had air of vague grief about him—that of the unfulfilled, unaccomplished and yet he was too aged and far too much a creature of habit to change himself.
--No, no trouble at all. Had been his response, he extended an invitation for us to stay; half eager, half cursory.
We declined, politely, also cursory. I remember this strange ritual of our two parties; the slow dance, awkward, graceless circle we made as we pushed each other back and forth as we were expected to.
Afterward came some idle wandering, only a short while though, 'til the Mirkwood contingent returned: there wasn't much to see. It was not a so much a town of regrets as it was a sleepy place, lost in the weir of time, trapped in their own idylls. There were no vestiges of a lost glamour, but the plaintiveness of a child who could nnot grow up, only old.
Still, there was the youthfulness typical of Men. And I hope, whatever of it that can be preserved is preserved. I hope and continue to Hope.
The daffodils solidified with the sun shining through them, the poppies were bright, so bright that no one and nothing could compare with them. It is easy to see how anyone could fall in love with this plane of the universe, so easy to see its unpretentious glory, that it becomes hard to see how anyone could possibly fall out of love with it.
Or perhaps…not so much falling out of love, but losing illusion as he had put it. He was leaving, a very good friend of mine:
--I am leaving, going over the sea.
And I said to him: …the unimportant words of consolation…
He was gentle in that way, very much a friend—it is not that the world has become less than what it used to be, but that…the idea of its magic is gone. I see at last…the world is decaying…for me it is. I must go before it festers.
--It's a point of view, an opinion. Not a rule. Now, you stay here as long as you can. Stay, because it is a most beautiful thing we have, stay because it will fester for all without preservation. Just stay with him.
And at this, he knelt to grasp the earth. He was wistful at leaving despite having had his mind made up by some tragedy, what it was is simple and obvious but no less painful and full in its malice. An orc attack had taken his sister, the family had fragments strewn throughout the ages of his life, all disappearing at random, and the keepsake was always quiet somber devastation.
Looking back at what he said I can see the little inflections of his personality. He refered to the earth as a male entity, in his decidedly male life many things were so. Those that were feminine were either obviously so: a doe, a flower, ambiguous ones were rare. The moon was such an example, claimed by him for his sister, now gone. So that was his life, a mostly male family and male community and male community, being away for long periods on patrol.
About how he had changed. This melancholy wisdom was almost sudden and drastic, his astuteness was typically coloured with humour and the newness of adventure. I wonder if it can ever be restored; the mind once stretched to newer heights can never return through the portal, back to the younger days.
So, that would be my friend, nameless to you because I would not want to keep him to this earth, however symbolically.
There is a question which comes to me often in the dark; is it better to remember, or to be a bird, white and free-winged: to forget and just let life melt into the clouds as though it was not ever there?
Please review—I'm dying.
LegolassQ—thanks for your comments. They were very helpful, thank you for investing time and effort to say something useful.
I'll think on that. Is this any better?
And also,
Thank you to everyone who reviewed, they are appreciated and cherished to the nth degree.
If anyone has criticism, please bring it up. Flames welcome.
Kit.