Blue Sky, Night Thunder: The Fool's Errand

[Belin]

OOC: Apologies, Childlike Empress, I just had to put something just before the last line of your post........

Hithduiniel was just as glad as Livia (or Carathon for that matter) for good food, a warm fire, and good company, as well as the interesting, though rather ill-fitting, change of clothes they’d found crunched into the saddlebags along with the food. A real adventure, finally—one with mysterious yet faithful companions and time to tell stories, and she was unwontedly silent for a while, as she drank in the welcome sounds of her brother’s voice, speaking sometimes her own language, and sometimes the other, which far less objectionable when spoken brokenly with a strong elvish accent.

And those she had left were nothing to her, really, any more than that pair of foreigners they sought, but it was a thought that preyed on her mind.

“Lenilos,” she said finally, as the dark was beginning to make itself an obstacle to conversation, “do you remember the story that Gaerdulin liked to tell us? The one with the dwarves, and the gray elves, and the terrible princes from across the sea?”

“I thought you didn’t like that story,” answered Lenilos absently, watching the elderly fire creep cautiously along the edges of its coals. “You never sat still for the whole thing, and anyway it didn’t have Orome in it.”

“I like other stories too , you know!” she cried quickly, in a slightly higher voice than usual. “And I did like it. I liked the bit about the princes; they were the scariest. I used to tell that to the birds.”

“They weren’t the scariest. The scariest was the part about the battle, when the newest soldier—you remember him?” She shook her head, but he continued without taking any notice of her. “The newest soldier stood in the hall of the king, and battled with three different dwarves, and they were about to---“

“No, listen ,” interrupted Hithduiniel. “I’m being serious . You remember the part about the stones that draw madness?”

“The Silmarils, how could anyone forget--”

“ Listen. I know something and I don’t know what to do. The brigands want that stone. They’ve ridden here from somewhere else--”

Livia, who was half listening and half understanding, in a dreamlike state of weariness that made the fire delightful, caught this last phrase and quickly put in, “Garolin. My home.”

“From Garolin home of Livia, and they rode into the forest looking for the foreigners, you remember, I don’t know their names, and they’ll probably kill everyone they see and burn down the house and maybe they’ll shoot the birds and I know that isn’t in the story, and do you think we should warn them, Lenilos? Because I don’t want to, but they’re so… you don’t know them.” She shivered.

“Wait, wait. They want the Silmaril?”

Hithduiniel leaned toward Livia. “He’s gone deaf,” she commented loudly.

“No, Hith, you’ve gone deaf. You’ve got to start paying attention to the ends of stories as well as the beginnings.”

She made a face. “But they’re always so sad.”

“Yet useful.” Lenilos smirked slightly, enjoying the moment of suspense. “If you’d listened you would know they’re all gone, years ago. They went away, we don’t know where, but they went off together, and Gaerdulin swears that right there ” -- here he peered up at the sky, and pointed at the brightest of stars that Hithduiniel had been watching the night before—“right there is a star that resembles it exactly. He’d seen the foreigners, you know, and their light, and he’d take no wife after that, nor admire any jewel. In any case, true or not, it’s gone now. They might as well look for Orome’s boots as that thing, silly.”

Hithduiniel leaned forward, with an incredulous sound that was almost a laugh. “Are you serious? Wait, of course you are, I forgot who I was talking to. By Orome’s bootlaces, that’s funny. Won’t they be furious?”

“And to think,” commented her brother dryly, “you missed the chance of telling them so yourself.”

“That’s what comes of being cheerful and preferring birds to doom, like a sane person, I suppose,” she answered, but a moment later she poked Livia in the shoulder to inform her, grinning, that, “My brother is smarter than the brigands.”

[ December 02, 2002: Message edited by: Belin ]