The Professor

"Narheda," professor Sinadaris began, with a solemn timbre, quite unusual for him. "I know that you have based the pre-work for your thesis upon some of the findings done during the excavation of the ruins in Rendell. That you have put down a lot of work in trying to prove your theory about the people once dwelling in those ruins. Now, I admire your dedication and your zest. All those hours you have put in to prove the things you desire to prove. But," he paused and Narheda felt the silence unnerving, but braced herself from saying anything, since she knew he was not done talking yet.

"The thing is that the University has now chosen to end the work on the excavations of Rendell and cancelling all its undertakings there. And that is because the government has sold all their estates up there."
"Now, I don't follow, sure it can't..."
"The buyer is a very high profiled construction company which is planning to build a resort by the river."
"But the..."
"The excavation rights will of course be cancelled. We can still get one or two months to sample the most important artifacts from the digs and bring them down here to Sarmaltar. But we will not get any extended time or funding, so the idea is to do this as quick as possibly before filling in the dig again."

"Professor?"
"Wait," Sinadaris held up a plump and aged hand. "Let me finish. In fact, the Board believes that this is not only a disadvantage for the university. Because the things we, especially you, Narheda, have been working with up there have become – how should I say it – a bit compromising for the institution. So now, when the government decided to sell the estate, our Board sees a way to get out of this, uhm, predicament without having to make such fuzz about it. They can bury what they find problematic with the filling of the dig. And thus they won't have to answer to certain questions. So nobody will lose their face over the quandary."

"What questions?" Narheda tried again. "And compromising how?"
"I guess you know that, Narheda."
"No. Frankly I don't."
"Narheda," Sinadaris shook his head. "You're not stupid, daughter of Nihaya. I know, you can guess where I'm coming from."
"The... Elves?" she felt her throat running dry.

"Yes, Narheda. The Elves. You – and your mother before that, spent years trying to prove the existence of the Elven specie. During the first decade it was perhaps a bit funny with the doctorates looking for Elves among the ruins of Rendell. As if it all was about some girls and boys having fun on their professors' expense. Pulling their legs. Posting pictures on the ClickNet where they posed with old artifacts. But when first Nihaya and then you wouldn't stop engaging in this, it suddenly turned into something more than a just a funny game. It began to become slightly embarrassing for the University Board that we have full time paid researchers who were seriously looking for – Elves."

"Yes, but professor," Narheda inhaled. "Rendell – or Rivinederl or Rivendell as it was called in the ancient days – it has for centuries been regarded as the stronghold of the ancient Elves. For so long, these stories have been relegated to nursery rhymes and movie theatre materiel. And the general guy out there in the streets has believed the Elves to be nothing but fairytales. But when we started to excavate up there, I mean, when my mother and her project group started to excavate up there thirty years ago, when I was but a kid, they found this lost city. This city which most people thought never existed, save for in the mind of the bards. The city of the Elves. And we found artifacts matching those which the legends told about. The ancient weaponry and signposts carrying a language, which..."

"...which was all probably about a minority tribe of humans after all. With a bit of a different architecture and alphabet, I admit, but still nothing but humans."
"But the skeleton parts. Those who we brought with us last summer! They prove clearly..."
"Not any whole skeleton was found, and you know that. Those parts prove very little. The only thing it gives away was that the male must have been extremely tall and that the woman was as tall as a regular Grand Gondor man, however more slender than a Grand Gondor woman. But all expertize looking at those skeletons, claim they were nothing but humans."

"Humanoids," Narheda corrected him.
"Humans," the professor insisted, still sounding so annoyingly calm and held together she wanted to scream at him, just to trigger some kind of reaction. Any reaction! But she knew better than that. Instead she simply said:
"Sinadaris, honestly, do you believe in that assertion? That they were human, those skeletons?"
"To be frank with you now, Narheda, it doesn't matter what I believe, this is not my decision. It is the University Board which has decided to close down the Rendell excavation. They have ordered it to be filled and are acting upon the direct order from the government, which is selling the estates. There is very little a man in my position can do. A simple professor."

"But if we can prove?"
"There is no way we can do that, and you know it now. There is no time, Narheda."
"But my thesis?"
"I'm sorry."
"I can't start over again. Not with anything else. I'm 32 years old already!"
"You have very little choice, dear child. If you don't want to pursue another career."

"But we have two months, you say. If I can find a way to prove that there has been Elves during those months, then wouldn't you think it could be possible to stop this termination of our work?"
"I can't see how you should be able to prove such a thing. Besides, honestly, no one believes in the Elves these days. No one believes that there ever was a race called Elves."
"A Humanoid sub-specie."
"A Humanoid sub-specie, I know you call it that."
"Not just me, the biologist Traven of Gerentha, who examined the first skeleton, the male skeleton. He said it was different enough to be labeled another specie."

"And just what difference should that make?"
"He believes Humans and Elves were not able to pro-create."

Now the Professor leaned back in his chair, sighing and making a face as if he was about to correct a misbehaving child.
"Traven of Gerentha is a sensation maker. Do I need to point out that he's been trying to prove the existence of Hobbits and Dwarves as well? Not to mention those tree beings, whatstheirnames. Using outlandish methods of analyzing of the human DNA, analyses, which no other of his profession claim are being performed correctly. If there's anything Traven of Gerentha can do so is it making the sensationalists eating out of his hands. The tabloid press."

"Just because the tabloid press likes him does it have to mean he's wrong?" Narheda posed a rhetorical question.
"Not necessarily no," Sinadaris had to admit, but he immediately went on. "But in this case it's undoubtedly so. And regardless of that, the Board has made its decision, and it became my somewhat unfortunate task to deliver this decision to you. Now, I do feel sorry for you, Narheda. I know that you are ambitious and have put in a lot of hours and engagement in this excavation. But it has come to an end with the decision the board made and I cannot change this. I can only recommend you to go to Rendell and to finish the work up there as swift and elegant as possible. And then to return to Sarmaltar and try to find something else to engage in. With your skill and energy it shouldn't be that hard. Just drop that disappointed face, will you. It doesn't become you."

*O*O*O*

"He said that?" Darik asked, his brows rocketing up in disbeleif as Narheda finished the recollection of her meeting with professor Sinadaris. When she barely nodded her head, Darik put a comforting hand upon her shoulder. "But there must be some way to appeal," her fiance went on and she looked into his kind, brown eyes, shadowed by the too long fringe. She regarded his well known, angular face surrounded by a halo of light brown curls, lacking any trace of white in spite of him going on 40. That hair took all kind of saturated, almost luminescent colours in the firelight from the nook and as he tilted his head, the light fell upon his slightly reddish stubble, making it glitter like sprinkled gold.

Darik, son of Jarik, had always been so supportive of her work. No matter that he was in a completely different business, as a programmer of infomates, he had always been listening to her description of her research, of her belief that there really had existed an Elven specie once. And her die-hard strive to prove it.

Then it mattered less that she had no clue about the work he was doing for DigiWare and what was really happening under the hulls of those infomates, no matter that these machines had become more or less indispensable to the people of Gondor. Darik has always been the listener. The firm shoulder to lean on when the going got tough. And now it was seemingly tougher than ever.

This evening, as so many others, were they sitting in the living room watching the firelight and shadows dance across their familiar surroundings. Their furniture, mostly modern ones in rounded plastic forms pleasant to the eyes and with cloned leather details, but also older ones crafted out of wood and steel. The rug checkered in six nuances of red, the headlight dimmed down to a faint orange, the decorative terracotta urns with their swirling black patterns holding large plants. The abstract art on the sole wall which wasn't occupied by book shelves, the switched off broadcast receiver. The BR was an old one, without 3D, and they had planned to replace it a long time now, but never gotten around.

"Now, Dar, what am I going to do?" she asked as she put her hands upon his shoulders, then ran them down his chest, feeling the warmth of his body beneath the silken fabric of the ocre-yellow caftan, making small circles with her fingers.
"It won't be hard for you to find another line of work, dear," Darik did his best to reassure her. "There are many teaching positions open for a brilliant mind like you."
"It's not that," Narheda despaired. "I don't doubt for a second I could find a teaching job, should I just put up my resume at any of the ClickNet work databases. It's not that. It's my legacy. I promised my mother to continue her work. I cannot let her down on that."

"Nari, dearest," he took hold of her hands, squeezing them lightly and with affection. "Sometimes we have to let go. Sometimes we make promises which we later on cannot keep, no matter how we try. Now, when it comes to the those we make to the dead, I know how they can appear set in stone, becoming a burden as society keeps changing around us, making the past obsolete including its prospects. Making the promises we gave earlier impossible to keep. But sweetheart of mine, I truly believe that your mother would have understood, had she known what was going on."

Now, Narheda felt how the salty sting beneath her eye-lids turned into a blurry cover across her eye surfaces, as the liquid overflew and the tears started down her cheeks. She sniveled as more of the tears ran into her nose and in response Darik took her in his arms and held her hard, almost rasping her forehead against his stubble.
"I... I don't know... what to... to do," she staggered between the sobs and he threaded his left hand up her hair, undoing her ponytail as he softly murmured comforting words into the shell of her ear.

"This board decision, is there some way to appeal?"
"I don't know. I've never heard of anything like it at least."
"But there has to be a way," he was insisting. "We'll think of something, darling. Together, you and I. But not tonight, it's late and we're both exhausted after a long day. Each in our own line of work. But tomorrow, when the sun has come up again, it will feel much better. We'll both be well-rested and ready to take on the world with another attitude. Nari, you are not a spurned archeologist, you are not laid off, nothing like that. You still have your job."

"But what does that matter when I have nothing to do with it? When they are closing my dig? Destroying my life's work? Discarding my dreams? And most of all are they insulting my mother. Nihaya put her whole life into this enterprise, she gave so much and eventually she even sacrified her own life."

Closing her eyes, Narheda recalled the accident which had killed her mother and three other workers at the dig, and if she wasn't crying already she would have as those recollections invaded her brain, sending visions which she for so long had tried to suppress.

"Don't give up that easily, Nari." Darik suddenly let go of her, to be able to tilt up her face and making her meet his eyes, seeing the seriousness in them. "We will figure out something to make you keep your dig. Or at least prove that what you have been doing the right things. Perhaps there's some other way to verify that those Elves really existed. I will help you, I won't let you down on that, I promise." Darik placed a kiss upon the bridge of her nose before he continued. "I know a lot of odd people. Nerds, you might call them. But I believe some of them can pull some threads and find interesting things in the other end. Come now, let's go to bed and we'll work together on this starting tomorrow."

"I..." she felt hesitant, but she didn't want to disappoint him. Instead she sniveled one last time before drying off the tears from her cheeks and standing up from the sofa. Then she stepped back and held out her hands towards her beloved.
"Yes," she agreed. "Let's go to bed. And make love to me tonight, Dar!"
"With pleasure, Nari," he smiled gently at her as he too stood up.