Night Owls [Adanedhel] [July 3011]
Jul 12, 2018 22:27:32 GMT -5
Post by ELIRA on Jul 12, 2018 22:27:32 GMT -5
“Baruun, züün baruunaas züün tiish ...” Kelet muttered to herself, whispering and groaning under her breath as she kneeled on the floor in the most brightly lit corner of the library. She sat, surrounded by various maps of different make, encircled by parchment. East of East and West of West. Candles burned on the floor surrounding her, lighting the fine ink.
The East, the land of Rhûn, was scattered before her on parchments, though no map looked alike. All varied in detail beyond the sea of Rhûn. The mountain ranges lay similar, and one map insinuated that the Eastern Sea lay beyond the drawn area; but they were so vague. So lacking of detail. Kelet had more detail left in her mind of the lands than the maps shared, at least in the paths she had taken between here and Nalaikh.
She clicked her tongue against her teeth, as her eyes moved back to a scroll written in the language of the Easterling tongue, the words clear before her eyes, though obviously transcribed by one who was not native to the region. Kelet had remarked some of the lettering to be correct, lest someone else need know the proper form, though it was well enough understood by she who had been reading the script of the Wainriders for more than a thousand years.
Then beside it, a tattered parchment of Erlini, supposedly, the archivist had told her, it was the language spoken in the Farthest East. The parchment was memorized by Kelet, and everything pertaining to it in the whole of archives, though it was not enough, and she continually re-read it, as if it would give more clues. The common dialect of the sea and jungle elves who lived beyond the reaches of Rhûn and Khand. The Avari. Her kin, or so had been presumed. Kelet's stomach turned at the thought of kin. Her parents were long gone. Dead. There was no other answer for their disappearance but to know that they had come from somewhere… that there was kin. Her memory turned back to the day she had escaped Nalaikh, and the tall warrior, with long dark hair, and smooth fair face. She had not seen his ears. The distinguishing feature. Though something within her told her that he had been elven. This was his tongue. He had spoken words to her that she had not understood in those days, but this was his tongue, and the more she read of it, the more she seemed to remember the sound of her Mother's voice speaking the very same.
There were hints hidden among the parchments. Hints of Avari civilizations that had once thrived; though long ago were these papers written. A thousand years; two thousand, three. They had been in the archives since the early days of the third age, she had been told. The paper alone was older than the fair haired elf, and the words came from one who had seen such things even further back in the ages of time. Few came from the East and lived to tell the tale. It was rare that anything could be of greatest importance for an elf, to cause them to journey east across the steppes and the deserts of Rhûn.
West was the way of the elves. West, to Elvenhome across the sea, where dwelled the Valar. Since her arrival in the Greenwood, for Kelet refused to speak the name Mirkwood when she had learned it's meaning, even though she had been told the forest was dying, it seemed green to her. Fair and green beyond what she had seen in the wastelands of the east. Greenwood. It was and always would be; one of the lands she had visited in her dreams for long years as she had stared West from a window in the city she had once called home. Greenwood the Great, it was in her heart.
Footsteps sounded across the stone floor. Light; distinctly elvish. She had grown used to the silent form of movement, barely audible, and she shifted on the stone, her pale rose dress turning with her, brushing her loose, white hair back behind her shoulders, the candles surrounding her and the bell covered bangles that covered her wrists and ankles jingling. She loved the sound of bells, though they were so reminiscent of the land where she had been captive, she could not grow tired of them. Aside, they covered the her ruined skin, and offered a steady weight that she had become used to in her years wearing chains. They kept her grounded. She looked up to see the dark haired elf who had approached.
Though Kelet had never spoken to him, she had seen him in passing. Once or twice the year before; when she had been new to the Greenwood, and here and there in the past month, though there was something heavy about his being since he had returned. She had not seen him at the Midsummer festivities, nor in the feasting hall, though his parents had been present. Kelet was fond of his Naneth, whom she had conversed with when occasion was granted, and had kept some company with the lady's elk when it had seemed lonely in those months the family had been missing. Sirfal had been lonely. She too understood loneliness.