I was up before dawn, dressed in trousers and a simple shirt, with my dwarrow-made knife subtly tucked into one of my boots. I made straight for where I had seen the stables the day before, going directly to Korova. Padfoot was asleep in the same stall, curled up on a pile of hay. I sighed, thinking of what a nightmare it would be to brush out of his fur. I gave the horse a once over, getting his little brush out of the saddlebags that were set to the side and attending to his royal cowness.
It was after I had probably spent a little too long on Korova when Padfoot finally woke up. He nearly lost his mind, tail wagging stupidly quickly, drool flying everywhere. I took the brush to his fur, talking all the while in English to help him calm down. The sun had finally risen by the time he had settled down, and I made a mental note to try and get to him before he woke in the mornings. We were disturbed only a little while later when Rochian entered, looking surprised to see me there. I waved at him cheerfully,
"Good morning."
Rochian just stared for a second, "Miss, I did not expect to see you, is everything alright?"
I nodded absently turning my attention back to Padfoot, "Fine, fine. We've just never spent a night apart since we lost our home. I just wanted to check on him."
I was met with silence and glanced up to see an intensely guilty-looking elf. Well, that made me feel a bit awkward. I stood, dusting the hay off my pants, and putting up the brush before giving Padfoot one last scratch behind the floppy ears.
"Well, it was pleasant seeing you again Rochian, but I should probably get back to my room. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to leave it or not."
I swept to the door, only for Padfoot to try to follow me, I stopped him with a hand in the air in front of him, "Stay with Korova."
He whined, so I reinforced it with English. "Stay with Cow."
He flopped down in the hay, pouting by the looks of it. I sighed, leaving before I could give in to him. It's not like the elves wanted a fur monster like him waltzing around their clean palace, leaving a trail of fuzz and drool. I made it back to my room to find the same female elf from before knocking on my door and looking slightly annoyed.
"Miss Holly it is time to wake now."
I cleared my throat, causing her to jump. I wondered for a second how long she must have been there to be annoyed enough to not notice me here.
"Sorry, ma'am. I had to check on my dog. I should have left a note."
I grimaced, ruffling my hair in the back so it probably stuck up weirdly. But it was one nervous tick that I wasn't going to be giving up any time soon.
The elf woman drew herself up proudly, back straight. "No matter, try not to let it happen again. Grab what you shall need for the day, and if you shall follow me?"
I ducked inside my room for a second, grabbing my TARDIS bag and ducking back out, closing the door behind me. She started walking before the door shut fully, not slowing down for my shorter legs. I was a half inch below five feet, and the possibility of growth was gone, now. Thanks, weird interdimensional magic. I shoved that depressing thought away as I followed the striking woman through the halls, wishing she had at least given me her name. Perhaps she was one of those elves who hated humans. It seemed likely when she stopped in front of oaken double doors, opening one and ushering me in.
"Because of your disappearing act you missed breakfast. Lunch will most likely be brought to you and whoever was assigned to your silly project."
She swept away and I resisted the urge to wilt. Well, it was really too much to expect all elves to be kind and accepting of outsiders. I pushed through the open door, letting it slide closed behind me. There were shelves everywhere, and no one was in sight. I wandered over to one of the tables, sitting in the first seat I could feel the lazy warmth of the sun. I was looking around at the shelves, kicking my feet slowly as they dangled above the floor.
The chair across from me scraped gently on the stone floor and my eyes darted to the elf sitting across from me. There is no such thing as an old elf, but this one had silver hair, long and silky, trailing over slender shoulders. His eyes were a clear green, looking me over curiously.
"You must be the daughter of man who I'm supposed to help record the legends of her home."
I nodded, unsure if elves shook hands, so I just waved, "Holly Rhodes, at your service."
He raised a silvery eyebrow before nodding his head slightly, "Lirior, at yours. Now, Lord Elrond mentioned you had texts for translation? From what? The Language of Rohan perhaps?"
I bent down, grabbed the TARDIS bag, and unzipped it shuffling through the things inside, wondering what to start with.
"No, it's called English. Well, there are a few in Spanish, and some poetry in French, but I can translate it all the same."
"Then I do not see the point of my presence, if you are capable."
I stopped in shuffling for a second to glance up at him, he didn't seem annoyed, merely curious, so I went back to searching as I answered,
"It is the common tongue I have problems with, you see. I...I'm from very very far away and we never had anything like it. I picked up most of what I know from a dwarrow and traveling with the ranger Esegar. Lord Elrond most likely thought it would be best to have someone who knew what they were doing to make sure whatever I wrote would be...well, would make sense."
"And you can write? I am told that such a skill is unusual for a daughter of man."
I pulled out my pack of God-sent gel pens, opening the pack and pulling one of them out, as well as my old spiral-bound notebook from English class. I opened it to a clean page, leaving the bag in my lap. I clicked the pen,
"I am capable of writing, but Westron still gives me fits, honestly, but my own language I can write easily."
I etched my name, first only, in cursive before clicking the pen closed and flipping the notebook around so he could see it. He glanced at it, but was honestly more interested in the pen.
"What is this?"
I handed it to him readily, if he exploded ink all over himself then I had a bajillion more of these things. "It's a pen. Like a quill that holds the ink inside of it. You click the bit on the bit on the top and it hides the ink so it doesn't get everywhere when you aren't using it. They were common where I'm from."
He played with it for a bit, and I just watched, amused. This guy was probably thousands of years old, but here he was clicking a pen like a toddler. I waited for him to tire of clicking it, and when he looked back up I slid the notebook his way once again,
"Here, write something. It's smoother than using a feather."
He obliged, scratching out something in Westron, it looked like a bit of poetry, but there were words I was unsure of. I let it go, instead turning to watch his expression as the pen glided over the paper. He picked it up, looking at the writing utensil anew.
"Remarkable. How does it work?"
I grinned, holding a hand out for it.
He parted with it reluctantly and I thanked those endless hours of boredom in class for knowing how to do this. In less than five seconds I had screwed the various pieces apart, laying them all in a row. He looked mortified until I assured him I could put it back together easily enough. I pointed out each spring and its role, as well as the tube that held the ink.
After I had put it back together and proved it worked by adding my last name to the paper he sat back in his seat, posture still leagues ahead of mine.
"Well, that does prove without a doubt that your lands are beyond the scope of our imagination. Elrond had mentioned that everything was supposedly 'different'...perhaps your legends shall be dissimilar from what we already have recorded."
I resisted an eyeroll, of course they don't have every possible permutation of story or poem. I pulled out my English book, letting it thud to the table and pointing to it.
"Well, here's a book of short stories and poems. It should be a good place to start."
The first thing I turned to was the Telltale Heart, which I figured was a bad place to start with an elf. So I turned a bit more until I got to one of the shorter poems. Another Edgar Allan Poe thing, but it was short enough. I read it through, sighing.
"The ones with rhyme scheme will be difficult to do justice, especially when I don't have much experience with Westron."
Lirior waved a hand through the air delicately, dismissing my worry.
"Well, that is what I am here for. Translate the best you can and we shall come up with something."
He pulled out paper, and I handed him the pen, pulling the textbook closer to me. I read a line in my head in English before attempting to force it out into Westron. We went through the first poem quickly, the actual taking down of words going quickly, but the finalizing took longer than I thought. I got a good lesson on literature from this place though, and how to tailor the translations so they made sense and still had the same meaning and impact (iambic pentameter can suck my dick). We were brought a small lunch including fruits and bread. I grabbed the first apple I saw, abandoning the book.
"Ohhhh, I haven't had fruit in years."
The main staple in the village had been meat, grains, and occasionally the vegetables they grew or traded for. There wasn't fruit, I figured they didn't grow well where we were. Running around with Krumran we hadn't exactly stopped somewhere that would sell such a thing. I didn't think dwarrow cared much for fruit, either. Esegar and I had avoided all towns like the plague.
I munched on the apple, trying to pinpoint the differences between my world's apples and this world's apples. It had been too long to be certain, but this apple seemed…better. Perhaps it was the whole 'no toxins in the air and ground', or maybe it was just elf magic. Or maybe it'd just been so long even shit fruit would have been divine. When I looked up to grab something else Lirior was frowning at the fruit bowl,
"Surely there was some at your meal earlier?"
I shrugged, "I went to sleep shortly when I got here so I suppose I missed dinner, and then I went to see my dog in the stables, and was told I missed breakfast."
He was silent after that, so I assumed he had forgotten my comment, moving on to his own food. There was some sort of alcohol as well as water. I eyed it for a second before grabbing water, knowing that at this point I would be a lightweight when faced with magic elf alcohol. Plus I'm underage. Not that the elves went by that crap of course, or that I had cared about it previously anyway. But at this point I was around nineteen... I had to pause for a second at that realization. Nineteen. I was almost twenty. I wouldn't be a teenager anymore. I also hadn't changed a single bit. It was getting frustrating now that I noticed. I shook off the thoughts and grabbed a pear before Lirior could snag the last one.
Once the food was gone we went back to our work. After the first poem was finished he read it over appreciatively.
"It is well written by this Poe person. The fascination with the sea makes it at home in an elvish library, truly a good first choice. But perhaps we should move on to the spoken legends. It's not like these translations will go anywhere, however, memory tends to fade."
The memory of humans, he means. But I can understand either way. I shifted in my seat, setting my water to the side, "Well then, pick something."
He shifted, and I took the small twitches to be surprise. It was going to take a while to start to consistently translate their little giveaways.
"I'm sorry?"
"Pick something, anything really, and I can bet we have a legend on it."
He just stared for a second before casting his eyes around, he didn't really believe me, probably expecting exaggeration. I waited for him to choose something ridiculous, and wasn't disappointed.
"A teapot."
He had an eyebrow raised in challenge, so I leaned forward with a grin, setting elbows on the table and my chin in my hands.
"Very well, a teapot has a prominent role in the tale of Beauty and the Beast."
It took about an hour for me to get through all of the Disney movie, and a few more for us to get it correctly in story form. My rambling wasn't the best way to tell a story, but the information got across in the end and Lirior was brilliant at organizing it so it flowed properly. When it was done and set to the side we both just stared at the stacks of finished papers. Lirior broke first, sighing,
"Well, there really is a legend involving a teapot. Though I didn't think it would include one that spoke."
I hmmed, staring at the papers.
"Do you think we should mention somewhere in a note that Belle was French, and that her name means Beauty in their language?"
We ended up putting little tidbits like that in notes at the end.
I had him name another object for us to get another legend, and he glanced once around the room before staring into space for a second.
"Do you have legends involving elves?"
I grinned, deciding to take a moment to test his humor, or his patience, whichever won.
"There are many legends involving elves, though not many with them being similar to you guys."
He looked offended by the time I was halfway through the story with the little elves helping the shoemaker, but he wrote it anyway. By the end, he sniffed,
"I was not aware that the race of Man looked down on us so."
I raised an eyebrow at him, sitting back in my chair.
"Looked down on you? In that story, elves were the only thing that kept that guy alive, and happy. He was grateful to them, and they were kind to one another. It was a wondrous working relationship. Besides, where I'm from no one believed that elves were real. They were thought to be something for stories, and there were many different types of those stories."
By the time that story was finished, little notes made at the end, mostly how it wasn't meant disrespectfully, night had fallen. Lirior stood, pushing back his chair and pushing the manuscripts we had finished to the side of the table.
"Leave your things for tomorrow. They shall not be bothered. I believe it is time for us to eat."
I followed, nearly tripping on the way out the door. Lirior was tall, definitely over six feet. I hadn't seen him standing until then, so I pouted for a second when out of his view. I couldn't have been given a short elf? When we reached the dining hall there were elves eating in various places around the room, and I had to wonder what the point of this room truly was. Was it a dining room for special occasions, for guests, or for anyone living here who wanted some food? I didn't ask, simply following Lirior and sitting across from him when he motioned for me to. I had honestly been expecting awkward silence now that we were out of the library, but I was pleasantly surprised. The conversation was mostly about the 'legends' we had recently recorded but we branched out to personal things after a while. Lirior was old apparently, though he wouldn't admit how old.
"What of you then, daughter of man? So willing to ask, but not to tell?"
I shrugged, counting the days for a second,
"Nineteen."
The surprise on his face was irritating, but he cleared it quickly. I was expecting what he said.
"You look much younger."
I scowled, "Yeah, well, I suppose age is difficult to peg once if you're trying to cross a species when doing it."
It took him a second to parse through what I was saying, but when he did he shook his head, "No, I have met many of the race of men, and I would not put you as being of age yet."
"…My health is weird at the moment."
I didn't elaborate, and he didn't ask. He didn't need to pry answers from me, most likely he could just ask Elrond and get all the info.
We parted ways after we ate, and agreed to meet in the library at the same time as before. I slipped through the courtyard and over to the stables in the dark to visit Padfoot, once again encountering Rochian. His job was probably to look after the horses. I was afraid Padfoot might not be getting fed and that I would have to schedule some hunting trips to get him food, but that was squashed when I arrived. He was gnawing on something and I raised an eyebrow at him.
"I didn't think elves would have meat lying around."
The dog abandoned what he was doing to rub drool all over my pants, and I gave him a solid hour of attention, nattering on in English the entire time. When I had to leave I gave Korova a bit of fruit I'd snagged from the table, and bid them both goodbye, trying to ignore the whines Padfoot gave me.
"Sorry, boy. There's nothing I can do about it. I'll be back in the morning."
He wasn't convinced, but lay down in the hay all the same. I bid Rochian goodnight on the way out, resolving to bring one of my furs out in the morning so he could have a proper bed, rather than just hay. I took a bath again before crawling into bed, wishing once again that I could have my dog close.
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Once again, I apologize for the delay. I went on a Star Wars bender, and then a Naruto one for a while.
As always, please leave your thoughts
~TimeLordOfPie
