Title: The Tale of Marian
Chapter: 24/?
Rating: PG13 this chapter.
Pairing: OFC/Haldir
Genre: Adventure/Romance/perhaps a little Angst
Timeline: AU, modern times.
Beta: None this chapter.
Feedback: Welcomed, begged for, appreciated.
Warnings: None.
Author's Notes: This is a work in progress.
Disclaimer: See Chapter 1 for disclaimer.
THE TALE OF MARIAN
CHAPTER 24 – "Evening, When the Measure Skips a Beat"
It was the afternoon of January 10, and we had reached the Sea. I could smell and taste it for miles before I saw it in the distance like a shimmering blanket cast over the world. I could feel the cool heaviness of the dampening air, and finally, hear the echo of the sea lions' bark. The gulls weren't far inland, which meant that the weather on the coast would be calm. It was ideal. We arrived to gray waves plying a dark gray glistening shore. Gray-green grass bent to the faint breeze. Pale sunlight filtered through a fine white ocean mist, turning to a pale gray-blue sky to the north, and home.
I can remember every ocean vista I have every seen: The shifting colors, the whirling winds and pounding waves, and the sunlight - the ever-changing, forever entrancing sunlight. More often than ever, I dream of the drumming of the waves on the shore resounding with the beat of my heart, and the gulls' white wings flashing gold and rose in the setting sun. She is like fair Elbereth, the Sea. I remember thinking then that it wouldn't be long until she called my name.
She called in some way to Marian and the other Men as well. As soon as we reached the coast highway we rolled down the windows, stopped the van and got out as if compelled. By unspoken agreement we took off our shoes and ran along the beach, laughing and whooping and cramping our bare toes in the frigid salty water. Bruno, thank the Valar, didn't like going into the water, and Marian rejoiced that we were spared a shaking-dog shower. It was a welcome moment of joy and freedom, breaking the tensions of yesterday and this morning. The stress of our companions had been a heavy presence in the close quarters of the van.
After waking everyone at the motel and setting off, we spent a good long time speculating how someone had found out about us, and what they wanted. I ever-so-gently suggested that perhaps Matt had not been as trustworthy as Marian had thought. She assured me (rather forcefully, I might add) that she had neither told him where we would meet or when we would leave. Perhaps Tommy had done it, Joel pointed out, since he was the only one missing. Poor Tommy Woo, no one knew him so everyone suspected him - but there was no way to tell. It was just as possible, Yasmin said in a superior tone, that it was one of us. That made everyone uncomfortable and quiet and not terribly fond of Yasmin all of a sudden. Tensions in the van mounted. But Marian, dear heart, told Yasmin that was ridiculous - they had all put their faith in her, and she would certainly do the same for each of them. That was when we discovered we could see the ocean, which was fortunate timing.
After getting sand all over inside the van, we drove on up the coast and stopped at a diner. I was looking forward to returning to Methentaurond and enjoying some real food and perhaps a bottle of strong blackberry wine with Haldir, but the diner wasn't too bad. And it was certainly eventful.
We were seated in a pair of booths placed against one of those long plant dividers that, delightfully, had real plants in it. Marian had just come inside from delivering a stack of hamburger patties to Bruno at the curb when he began to bark wildly. I felt it at almost the same time. I looked expectantly at my glass of water. After a moment the surface began to tremble ever so slightly. I turned my attention to the ferns hanging over the side of the planter, which were vibrating gently. I felt the shaking begin in the booth seat. That's when the other seated customers began to notice. Marian and the waitress, both walking toward us, hadn't felt it yet. Next, the silverware started to rattle on the table.
"Earthquake," Joel announced calmly, continuing to eat his dinner. Everything else happened at once:
Arianna jumped up from the table in a panic. I caught her arm and sat her back down. She landed in my lap and stayed there. If she hadn't been so scared it would have been quite nice.
Sandy looked wildly around the diner, possibly taking inventory of any priceless artwork on the walls that might need to be saved. She could have saved herself the trouble - there wasn't any.
Plates and vases began to work their way along the display shelves, and one customer caught a jug as it jumped off of a shelf on its way to the floor. He held it up like a trophy.
Marian and the waitress stopped and stood still part way to our tables. Marian looked up at the ceiling just in case, but there was nothing more threatening than a few low-hanging lamps over our tables. Mason and I had each grabbed hold of one. The waitress stoically held her water pitcher with both hands.
The floor began to shake noticeably now, and the air vibrated with a low, rumbling sound. So did the windows, and the lights. Dieter and Yasmin looked like they were frozen to their chairs, and Mason, lamp in hand, was trying to act more in control of the situation than anyone could be.
A woman somewhere in the diner screamed, and people began to yell advice to each other across the room: "Stand under a door frame!" "Get under the table!" Others (the Californians, I assumed) simply sat or stood and waited. Marian motioned for us all to stay where we were. That was my girl: there was no use in trying to yell over everyone else - it would have made her sound frightened, and she knew it.
Bruno stopped barking and I relaxed. I knew inside, though I don't know how to explain it to you, that this was as bad as it was going to get.
Then it stopped.
"3.5," the man who had caught the jug declared as he put it back on the shelf. "What a ride!"
"6.5, San Francisco," Joel raised his fork and contradicted with a slightly worried frown.
The waitress shook her head. "5.0, in the ocean, San Andreas fault line off of Eureka," she guessed precisely. "I'll bet five bucks on it," she called out to the diner at large.
"Here's five dollars that says 4.0, Mendocino!" Roger challenged her, and slapped his money on the table. "We have earthquakes in Chile too, you know," he said aside to me with a wink.
"You're on," the waitress pointed to Roger, and turned on the overhead TV. Marian walked over and put a comforting hand on Joel's shoulder.
I could have bet and won, but that would hardly have been fair. As it was, I admit that I was a little concerned.
The non-Californians (and non-Chileans), still a bit wild-eyed and unsteady, stared at the gamblers in stunned disbelief. Arianna was still on my lap and didn't seem inclined to move. I wasn't rushing her - I am happy to be accommodating when a lady is in distress.
"Is it over? Will there be another one?" she asked me in a small voice. I shrugged and gave her right hand a comforting rub. She had clamped onto me so tightly she was starting to cut off my circulation.
We waited for the news stations to pick up the event. It didn't take long. Mortals are intent on measuring and analyzing and hypothesizing. You are all really quite intriguing. It had been a 4.5, the reporter said. It was an unexpected location because there were no known fault lines in that area. It was sparsely populated. No damage had been reported. Experts were gathering their gear; scientific investigations would be launched. Helicopters were being dispatched. They would bring us the latest updates, with pictures, direct from the scene. Roger and the waitress put their money back in their pockets. Joel relaxed noticeably. The epicenter shown on the map inset was not far from the coast, as I had felt it would be, uncomfortably near where our path would lead us. Of course, only Marian and I knew that.
"Great," Marian mouthed silently to me.
Though the small town we were in wasn't far from the trailhead, we decided to stay one more night in a motel to avoid the media and their cameras. We did not need to have our pictures in the background on the 10 o'clock news.
i 11 January
A winter storm came in off the ocean tonight. I'm glad we didn't try to set off on foot today - it would have been a miserable start.
Here in the motel, people are starting to argue with each other. It's only natural, considering that each of them, as experts in their fields, are headstrong and opinionated in their own way. They are pushing each others buttons to see what happens. And of course the weather makes for pretty close quarters.
At the same time, they are getting to know each other, discovering those shared values that Jason and I were so careful to choose them for, and tentative friendships are beginning to form.
Finally we were able to have a good long conversation. We had been interrupted at the Soda Works and unable after that to really sit down and start off properly.
Now there were lots of questions and concerns, and I did my best to reassure everyone and give them as much information as I felt I could at this point in our journey. I am beginning to empathize with the position Lindir had been in when we had first met. I am finding myself doing much the same thing with these people as Lindir and Haldir did with me- deciding when and where our group is "ready" to be told certain things. I swear I will never get mad at Lindir and Haldir again for not telling me things until they think I'm ready. And I will protect Jason, no matter what.
I reminded them why we are doing this, what we needed to accomplish. I tried to make them feel again in their hearts the vision of what we could learn. I am convinced that everyone shares my ultimate goals.
I told them that this was the last chance they would have to contact friends or associates or relatives, but to be sure not to give away our location or purpose - they had to stick to their original stories of where they had gone and what they were doing, and to be sure not to use the motel phones or post a letter - that would show a postmark. Before I could tell them that they would have to borrow a cell phone from someone to do this, Mason, Sandy and Yasmin pulled cell phones from their backpacks - cell phones that we had adamantly stated would not be allowed.
I repeated why it was so important not to bring electronics of any kind with us, and that they would have to leave them before we left in the morning. I received instant opposition.
"What if we have an emergency? What if we need a doctor?" Sandy objected nervously.
"I am a doctor," Joel interjected.
"But are you a real doctor? I mean, you're a researcher, aren't you?" Yasmin asked.
"Yes, Joel's a real doctor, and a very good one," I interrupted before Joel could get rude. "And the people we're going to meet have excellent healers. We'll be in good hands."
Then the real questions started: Where, exactly, were we going, and when would we get there? How could we hike in this kind of weather? What were these people like? Were they dangerous? Why did they hide from the rest of us?
"There could be other kinds of emergencies that we'll need the phones for," Yasmin argued. "We don't know these people or their customs. We could do something wrong and be attacked."
"If you were attacked," Jason said lightly, "you wouldn't have time for a cell phone."
"We won't be attacked," I said with a sidelong look at Jason to behave. "We have been invited. These people are aware of our customs, though they may not approve of all of them. They are much too wise and good to resort to violence except in self-defense, which includes defense of their home. That's another reason we need to leave the cell phones behind - they are a danger to them. We can be tracked by using them. It could lead someone straight to them, someone who would misuse and mistreat them and everything they can show us and teach us - someone, maybe, like the two men who tried to follow us; who could still be following us now.
I lived with them for over a month," I said to Yasmin. "I wasn't hurt by them in any way. Just the opposite - I was treated with the utmost kindness and understanding. Jason has lived with them, too. We should look up to them as our role models and our teachers."
"Are you saying that they believe themselves to be morally superior to the rest of us then?" Mason asked defensively.
"They're fallible just like we are," I tried to tell Mason, "but yes, I believe they are deeply moral people. They aren't as tempted as we are by greed and power - that's why we can learn so much from them. They will inspire us.
You all know how "gray" the world is now, as they would call it. Good and evil mingle and are difficult to recognize; even the definition of what is good or evil is unclear, values are different between our different cultures and even between different professions in the same society. It's difficult to know what choices to make. These people see things more clearly than we do. They not only have a long, long history, both spoken and recorded, but they have actually learned from history. They don't repeat their mistakes like we do, from generation to generation.
"I've never studied a culture with THAT good of a collective memory," Yasmin said skeptically. "Are you sure you two haven't just been brainwashed?"
I knew that this question would come from them - wasn't it a question I had asked myself, while I listened to Lindir teach me about the elves? I was afraid I was beginning to sound like a lunatic, but I knew Jason couldn't, and shouldn't, help me. I wasn't sure I knew how to answer Yasmin, except to be as honest as I could.
"When I first met them, listened to them" I said carefully, "I was afraid of exactly that. I kept telling myself that I couldn't believe what they were telling me; that they were trying to brainwash me. I was afraid that they were some kind of crazy cult. But all of my instincts told me that they were who they said they were. I decided to trust my instincts, to go with them and let them show me that what they were telling me was true. And it was true, more so than I could have ever dreamed.
I'm asking you to take that same journey with me. I'm asking you to meet them, listen to them, and to reserve judgement until you see and experience what I have. Then, if you still don't believe it that's ok. But I guarantee you that you will. It will be the experience of a lifetime. You'll be glad beyond measure that you came.
But if you have any reservations, if you're wondering if you really want to come, now is the time to decide."
'Look Marian," Mason said. "I for one want to see this. I've seen your notebooks and I know that there's something intriguing going on here, something unique. You couldn't pay me to give up the chance to be among the first to see it with my own eyes. But we've left our computers, our video cameras, all of our analytical tools except our own brains that would have helped us study and record and prove the reality of what we're going to see."
"Oh come on everyone," Roger urged. "There are those of us who got along just fine before these things were even invented."
"But these phones will be our only contact with the outside world," Mason argued.
"I think that's the point, Mason," Dieter commented dryly.
Mason ignored him. "You have to have some flexibility, Marian. I'm not leaving my cell phone behind."
I heard murmurs of assent from a few of the others.
"I think we should vote on it," Yasmin declared.
They weren't hearing me! They weren't hearing me tell them how dangerous those phones and other things like them could be to the elves. Some of them were scientists, but they weren't hearing me tell them not to change the very place that we were going to study! If I let Mason and a few of the others run over me now, I would lose all of my authority, all of my influence. But if I pushed too hard, I would lose my team altogether.
"This is not a democracy," I said calmly but clearly. The murmuring stopped and eight faces looked at me expectantly. "These people chose me to be your leader because they trusted me to protect them, to honor their needs as well as our own. Our first objective, above any other, should be to do no harm.
I want your opinions, and I need your expertise. I don't mind if you argue with me or with each other, because we all need each other's ideas and it's important that we all understand and respect each other. But in the end, the decisions must be mine.
I know what we are headed into; you don't," I said to Mason. "I know that is making everyone somewhat uncomfortable right now, but for our safety and theirs, I can't tell you yet exactly where we're going. We will, on the other hand, teach you as much as we can about their customs along the way, before we get there. So here are your options. You can hand over your cell phones and any other electronic devices you are carrying to Dieter, and you can come with me and Jason. If you don't, you will have to go home and forget you were ever here or that you know anything about the rest of us.
This also isn't a typical employer/employee relationship," I added carefully. "This will be your last chance to quit and turn back. If you come with us tomorrow, you must be completely committed to the entire four months. It is too dangerous for these peoples' safety for anyone to leave after tomorrow. You have tonight to make up your minds, and I hope you'll decide to continue. We've made a good start. We need you, they need you, and I'm depending on you. All of you."
"You keep calling them "these people," said Arianna. "What do they call themselves?"
I hesitated. What did they call themselves, if not elves? If I told this group right now that "these people" were elves they would run away screaming, and I wouldn't blame them.
"They named themselves Quendi,," Jason rescued me by saying. "It means 'those who speak.'"
I looked around the room at each of them, trying to emphasize how much I was counting on them to stay. No one said another thing. Everyone just looked at me in total silence, and I couldn't tell what anyone was thinking. I felt like I was suffocating. I had to leave the room and get some fresh air.
"I'll leave you alone now if you want to talk it over. I know you have each seen only parts of my notebooks. At eight o'clock I'll spread them all out and you can all see all of them. And we'll tell you as much as we can about them. We'll start tonight.
Thank you all for listening."
And I left the room and came here, by the fireplace in the motel lobby. The rain is pelting the windows across the room in wind-driven gusts. I can't keep my hands from shaking. /i
I found Marian in the sitting area of the motel lobby looking very upset, and Bruno laying at her feet in front of the fireplace looking very comfortable. I sat down next to Marian and put my arm around her shoulders, being careful to keep my hands in respectable places. Sadly, this was not a good time to goad her. She leaned into me and we sat quietly that way for a while.
Then I took my grandmother's mithril ring off of my finger and held it out to her. I thought that by this time it might be relatively safe to do so, but I was ready to duck just in case. She didn't say anything, but at least she stayed next to me and looked at it.
"Haldir and I wish you to have this," I told her. "And if Orophin was here, he would agree."
"Why?" she asked me tiredly. "You don't need it for anyone to recognize me anymore."
"It is a gift, Marian," I said patiently.
She took it tentatively from my fingers and turned it around so that it sparkled and danced in the light from the fireplace, even though it was just a gas flame. I noticed again, as I had when we first left the house, that she was no longer wearing her wedding band. "Tell me about it," she asked.
"It was commissioned especially for our grandmother by our grandfather, from an apprentice of Fëanor himself."
"The elf lord in Valinor who made the Silmarils?"
"Yes, the very same. It is a betrothal ring. One is given by an elleth and an ellon to each other at a meeting of their families. You would call it an engagement ring. It is designed and made only for this one purpose. After the rings are given, the couple waits a full year until the giving to each other of the gold wedding bands. Then the couple five the betrothal rings back to each other treasure them, never using them for any other, lesser, purpose."
"But this would be a different, lesser purpose, Jason. Would that be right? Why didn't your grandmother keep her betrothal ring? You aren't reconsidering proposing to me after all, are you?" she glanced at me sideways and asked. Ah, her humor was improving.
"I am not really sure," I answered truthfully. "Why she didn't keep it, I mean," I clarified when Marian put her hands on her hips. "Our adar and naneth believe that my grandmother loved her child, our father, so much; that she and grandfather denied tradition and granted it to him. She was told by others that doing so would bring only trouble, but it has ever brought good favor to my family."
"You mean it's a good luck charm?" she teased me.
"Marian, elves do not believe in luck. We believe that some things are simply meant to be. This ring doesn't hold what you would call magic. But I and my brothers would like to think that some of the fea, the spirit, of our grandmother, and perhaps its maker, reside in this ring."
"But it belongs to your family. I know it means a lot to you. It's priceless. It's flawless," she hedged indecisively, turning it around and around. I knew what she was too embarrassed to say to me.
"You are as dear as family to me, meldis, you know this. Haldir has given me leave to speak for him in this as well. No thing, no one but the Creator of all Things is flawless; not even me!" Finally, I was rewarded by a smile. "Do not strive to be perfect, dearest. Only strive to be true to yourself."
"Thank you, Jason," she said then, and hugged me tightly. "You are family to me, too." Hearing her say that to me was the best reward in all of Arda.
"And Haldir. . . he is. . . " she began hesitantly.
I could see she was struggling with one of the deepest of feelings that are granted to both the First and Second Children. I waited for her to tell me.
"Where should we start," she reached out to pat Bruno and asked suddenly, "to tell them about the elves tonight?"
"It is always good to start at the beginning," I suggested. I hoped she would take my subtle hint that I was speaking of not only all of the elves, but one in particular. But I was patient; I knew she would tell me when she was ready.
"Why do you not place the ring on your finger?" I asked when she fumbled to put it back on the chain around her neck.
"I don't know if that will be alright. Will it?" she asked hesitantly. I took the ring from her hand and slipped it onto the middle finger of her left hand. "There," I said. "It is the wearing on the index finger of the right hand that signifies a betrothal."
"I don't understand," Marian said in amazement, holding her hand up in front of me. "It fits me perfectly. How can it fit me? You were wearing it not a moment ago, Jason, and your finger is much larger than mine. The ring was bigger than this when you slipped it over my finger. I know it was!" With each word Marian spoke a little lower and seemed to get a little more nervous. She pulled the ring off, looked at it, then slipped it back on. Then she did it again. I believe she was afraid if she kept it on much longer it would continue to tighten, which of course it would never do. Yet even I was somewhat surprised at how quickly it adjusted to her hand; and I intended to relate the tale to Haldir.
"It is an elvish ring, tithen muinthel," I reassured her in a whisper as a rain-spattered family entered the far side of the lobby accompanied by a strong gust of wind. "It is as I told you. Some things are meant to be."
i 11 Jan. P.S.:
I took Jason's advice and started at the beginning, as Lindir had done for me. I told all I could remember of the Song of the Ainur - the beginning of the world - and of the Valar: Elbereth, Nienna, Manwe, Yavanna, but the others I couldn't remember. Where I faltered, Jason filled in, carefully, as though he was also telling it for the first time. I don't quite know when we will tell them about Jason, but I think we should wait until we are far along the trail, and with at least some of the other elves. I don't want him to be alone and outnumbered. Not that I think our group would endanger him, exactly, on purpose. They would probably just corner him against a tree and nit-pick him with academic questions until he went crazy. Then Joel would want to give him a physical exam, which would probably be the last straw. No, I wasn't about to put sweet Jason through anything like that.
"How interesting," Sandy commented in excitement when we were through. "It's a sort of combination of western religions and myths; Christianity, Greek and Roman mythology. . . the Valar could be the embodiment of the Greek gods, or the Angels."
"Celtic legends, Norse mythology, German heroic literature. . . " Arianna chimed in.
"I don't know, Marian," Yasmin told me skeptically. "Cultures create religions to make themselves feel like they have control over the things they don't understand. It's like the Quendi took every western religious belief they encountered and rolled it into one all-encompassing theology. I don't think they are nearly as advanced and sophisticated as you and Jason think they are."
"Are you saying that anyone who believes in God can't be part of an advanced society, then?" Mason challenged her.
"Come on, Mason, you're a scientist," Yasmin countered. "You're supposed to look for logical explanations, not let your religious beliefs cloud your judgement. "Don't tell me you believe in Angels, now."
"I do believe in God, Yasmin." Mason hedged. "The closer and closer we look at the intricacies of our world, the more convinced I am that it can't have just been some cosmic accident."
"Joel, help me out here," Yasmin said, rolling her eyes.
"No can do," Joel said and stood up like he was about to lecture one of his classes at the university. "There are things that happen in surgery that can't be explained by logic alone. Miracles do happen."
"You only call them that because you can't explain them," she declared in triumph.
Then Roger added thoughtfully that he knew, scientifically, why a seed sprouts, but it was still a small miracle every time it happened. Science, art, beauty, God are one and the same, he insisted, and said that our society tried to compartmentalize and separate them, but ultimately it would find that it couldn't. That was one big reason, he insisted, that the world was in the mess it' was in right now."
"Spoken like an ecologist, Roger," Mason said in approval. " 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy' ", he quoted Shakespeare to Yasmin. How un-magical and uninteresting the world would be if we knew everything was explainable in scientific terms."
"If it wasn't January I'd say you were all in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," Yasmin declared. "Next, Mason and Roger will be telling us they believe in fairies and elves and people that turn into donkeys. Oh, and Sasquatch, too, since we're in his neck of the woods."
"Bigfoot? Here?" asked Arianna. "In Hungary we have also the legend of Bigfoot. He is called Grendel there."
"It's just a hoax," said Yasmin, waving her hand dismissively. I thought back to my midnight near-encounter in the fairy ring, and Bruno's feverish barking, and wondered.
"Maybe," said Roger. "but then again, maybe not." He reminded us all that Native American legends spoke of him decades before the hoax that we know about.
I told Yasmin it was appropriate that we were talking about Sasquatch. Local Indian elders said, I related to the group from my childhood memories, that Sasquatch is a messenger from the Creator. He appears in evil times as a warning that man's disrespect for nature has upset the harmony and balance of existence, that we must change our ways or face disaster.
"Perhaps," added Sandy, "all of those fairytales from different cultures that we read about in books and see in paintings - tales of wizards and goblins and elves and giants - maybe there was a time when there was some truth to these things. Maybe that's why they linger in our myths and legends."
"What if the Quendi's version of the beginning of the world came first, not after?" Arianna said quietly, and since she hadn't yet said a thing, we all turned to listen to her. Her face turned a little pink, but she continued. "What if all of the other mythologies and religions came from them instead of the other way around?"
"What would make you think that?" Sandy asked, intrigued.
"Well, their writing, for one," Arianna said shyly, holding up Jason's book that was spread out on the bed with the rest of my notebooks. I"ts structure and symbols are vaguely similar to several different medieval languages, and moreso to their common roots, but it doesn't seem to derive from any of them. It has a freshness, an imagery and beauty that is elemental, unique."
Joel asked, "How can you have picked up on that so fast? You've only seen these writings for a couple of days."
"Jason has been reading with me," Arianna said, and looked to Jason for support. If I didn't know Jason so well I would have worried that his hormones had made him careless. So I worried anyway.
"Jason has picked up the language much faster than I have," I interjected, shooting him a worried glance. I was becoming concerned that Jason seemed unusually quiet and almost sad. "Well, we aren't going to agree on the fate of the world's religions tonight," I turned back to everyone else and said to try and deflect attention away from him.
"No, we're not," Joel agreed. "So why don't we all tell Marian and Jason what we've decided instead."
Dieter got up from his perch on the windowsill and, with military precision, presented me with three cell phones and a pocket planner. "We are all with you Marian," he said proudly, "and with you, Jason." That's when I realized that his is really the only viewpoint on the subject of religion, and many other subjects, that I don't know anything about. He is private in many ways, but this doesn't bother me as it would have with some of the others. He's just the strong, silent type. I feel I can count on him.
"Yes, we are," Yasmin confirmed. "Even though I personally think that you and Jason have been overly influenced by these people, we all share your purpose, and we'll go all the way with you. Especially me, since as an anthropologist I'm also professionally concerned that the rest of you may be too easily attracted to their obviously religion-based culture; I have to be there to keep you all in line."
Mason groaned and pantomimed being sick to his stomach.
Yasmin had a completely serious look on her face, but I saw the little twitch of muscle at the corner of her mouth.
"You all have no idea how much this means to me," I said with relief. "Thank you. Oh, and Yasmin," I told her, "you are a major pain in the ass."
The room erupted in laughter.
"I'll take that as a compliment," Yasmin smiled proudly.
Jason added his thanks, and uncurling himself from his cross-legged position on the floor, gracefully but somewhat more stiffly than usual, he left our motel room. Telling the others that I had to go check on Bruno, I followed him.
I found him outside on the beach, standing in the wind, with Bruno. It was still raining weakly, but it looked like it might stop soon.
"What's wrong?" I asked him, taking his arm and staring at the dark ocean with him.
"It is a grief to me, Marian, this disbelief of Men. The Elves know the Light. We know we are part of it. Your kind does not know, but can only choose to believe or not to believe. I have often asked myself, why this should be so for you."
"That's not exactly true, Jason, at least not for me. I do know," I assured him, squeezing his arm, "but I only knew, I mean really KNEW, after I chose to believe. Even so, it is hard to know which decisions are the right ones."
"A 'leap of faith,' " Jason said, jumping deftly from the sand onto a piece of driftwood and shaking his head. He stared out at the dark booming waves for a moment, waves that I could more hear than see in the surrounding darkness. It was like trying to see into a building through a curtain wall of glass at night when the lights inside the building were out. Then he pivoted back to look at me. "The ways of the Valar are a mystery to us when it comes to the world of Men, but it is clearly meant to be that way for you."
I told him that Yasmin couldn't make that kind of leap yet. I told him not to be sorry for us, that we would find our way. I kissed him on the cheek for good measure. Then I found myself saying the same sort of thing to Jason that Haldir had to me - you will have enough to do to help Haldir with the elves' own journey. We walked arm in arm (and dog in hand) back into the dry calm and warmth of the motel. /i
From the poem "Evening Without Angels", by Wallace Stevens
meldis = friend
tithen muinthel = little sister