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tauriel

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He had forgotten heat, except for the heat of fire and the machines that kept Rapture running. For a long time there had just been cold - water, metal, ice in his hands. No sunshine, no summer. Coming to Darrow had been like a reminder of something he had encountered in a dream: vivid, even real at the time, but fading. But then, bit by bit, he had remembered. Not just the sun but some of what he had done in it: swimming, picnics with groups of laughing people he supposed must have been friends of the man he had been, dinner and drinks and dancing. Once, he was almost certain, he had climbed a mountain; he remembered the sun on the snow and holding fast to the rope, crags above him and thin air below. He recalled things like classes - a university? He remembered the sawing drone of cicadas as he hiked through thick forests.

The forest through which Delta walked now wasn't nearly as thick as what he recalled in those fragments, but there were cicadas, and by some miracle the dense, heavy heat of mid-July had gentled to something that felt very much like the softer weather of late May. It was too beautiful to stay indoors, even at work, which he still enjoyed very much.

So he was alone, not really hiking but instead wandering without any real purpose, letting his perception drift through the dappled light streaming past the leaves, listening to the cicadas, and for once, not remembering.

The memory he was making now was enough.

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Tauriel enjoyed the woods, though they were not nearly as ancient or as beautiful as Mirkwood they had a beauty and tranquility all their own. She often took to spending days at a time out here, getting to know them, ever tree and rock formation, how ever branch and pebble felt underfoot. She wanted the animals to know her when she wished her presence known to them and to be able to hide it from them she she saw fit. It would never replace her home but that did not mean it could not seem familiar all the same.

Which meant she knew when someone was in her woods, as she had begun to think of them, though others likely had more claim to such a thing. Still, the instinct to see who had entered into her lands was a strong one, a familiar one, so she ran along the branches to see who had come there. When she saw who it was, she smiled to herself.

"Welcome, Delta," she called out from a tree, easily balancing on the branch. "You look as if you're enjoying your walk."

He looked up, mildly startled, but when he saw who it was he smiled and lifted his hand in a wave. She looked completely at ease on her perch, and again he was struck by the ways in which, while much of the time she looked mostly human, she wasn't at all.

"The forest is beautiful." He looked around, almost as if seeing it for the first time. "I'm still not quite used to it."

Tauriel smiled and jumped from her one branch to another, moving from tree to tree as she descended down to the forest floor. It was odd to her to think that he could come from a world where there was no forest, no trees such as these. Having lived so long among the woods she imagined it would be just as strange as if she were to live in his world.

"It certainly holds a sense of majesty, doesn't it?" she said once she was on the ground. "Many of these trees have likely been here longer than the buildings."

He nodded. "It's peaceful. At least right now. And not really like the park." He stepped forward and laid a hand against one of the thicker trunks, and if he focused his imagination, it was almost as if he could feel the sap moving beneath the bark like blood.

"Do you spend much time here?"

Edited 2014-07-27 16:47 (UTC)

"It is very different from the park."

The part seemed as if it were trying to be the forest without being quite so wild, which was part of the beauty of the forest. To make it safe was to make it less than it truly was and thus lose a portion of the beauty. Delta was right though, at the moment the forest was indeed peaceful.

"I try to spend as much time here as possible, though it is not the same as home it is close enough to be comforting."

"You miss your home," he said. It was obvious, almost ludicrous to say something so plain, but to him it was still a strange thing. He didn't miss Rapture, couldn't possibly, and didn't recall enough of his life from before to even know what he was missing.

"Have you tried to find a way back? Since you got here?"

"I do. Much as I wished to travel Middle-Earth back in my world, Mirkwood was my home for hundreds of years. It's different knowing it's not possible to return home if I wished."

She had sought to return to her world, though through by which method she could do so she didn't know. Her magic didn't lend itself to such things, not did show enough of science to begin to understand how creating a way back to Middle-Earth would work. She had been forced to examine more passive methods.

"I have searched for a way to return home, yes, but I haven't even begun to find anything like a way home."

"No one has. Or if they have, they haven't told anyone else." He started to walk, slowly, trusting her to follow. A narrow deer track cut through the trees, lined with small clusters of wildflowers. "Not that I would want to go back. But I know many people don't feel the same way"

"I am truly glad that you have found a place such as this were you might be happy," she said, walking along beside him. She envied him of a sort, to be where you wished to be, away from a home that did not feel as your home. Why more people who would be happier here could not arrive, she did not know.

He smiled, ducked his head. Telling someone else you were happy for them simply because they had had good fortune was, oddly, still new to him. In Ryan's Rapture it would have been unheard of. His time in Lamb's Rapture hadn't been long enough to know how people spoke to each other in quieter moments of love or friendship, but somehow he had a difficult time imagining it.

It was sad, a little, that simple kindness was one of the things he had had to learn when he first arrived. Not in himself but in others.

"I just wonder sometimes... what if whatever brought us here sent me home again? I suppose it could happen."

"I hope that you are allowed to stay here as long as you like," Tauriel said. She did not think that was likely since most of those that were brought to this place had no say in it at all. If she did she certainly would not have chosen to come here, certainly not considering the poor timing of when she was taken from.

"Is there anything in this world that you find particularly enjoyable that you do not have back home?"

He shrugged. "It's difficult to say. I don't... I don't remember much of my life. The earlier parts of my life. Maybe I would miss things, if I could."

So much of it had come back. But only in pieces, and only blurry, indistinct. The clearest parts were from... Persephone. And after. And those things, he would still prefer to forget.

"Then I am glad that the memories you are making now are good ones."

It was difficult for her to imagine what it must be like to not remember your life before a certain point. Even the most long-lived of the Elves did not suffer a loss of memory of their earliest days. She had seen humans so old that their minds failed them, but this seemed to be different from that. Amnesia, she believed that it was called.

"Yes. Though sometimes I think it might be good to remember." He kicked at a scatter of leaves, listened to it rustle and whisper. Soon it would be fall, which was becoming his favorite time but for mid-spring when everything bloomed.

"Do you think we can know who we are if we can't remember who we were?"

Edited 2014-08-08 18:57 (UTC)

"I suppose that you cannot truly know whether it is best to remember until it happens."

For there was always a chance that the memories would be unpleasant, more than just sad they would be the memories of one who was not a good person. Delta seemed a good man, Tauriel could only imagine what would happen if he were to find he was not always so.

"But I believe that what you think, say and do tells you who you truly are, Delta. Memories would perhaps tell you why, but they cannot tell you what you are."

He nodded, musing on the answer. He still wasn't sure what he thought, what he believed, but it seemed like as good an answer as any, and it made sense that appealed.

Lily seemed to know who he was. She seemed sure. And Eleanor... She seemed sure of who he was even when he himself hadn't known. She had showed him.

"I remember so little. I have only a few years' worth. Hardly a lifetime." He glanced at her again. "I'm sorry if this is rude, but can I ask... How old are you?"

"I do not mind if you ask," she said with a smile. Normally it was she who volunteered such information and she felt entirely comfortable sharing her age. Indeed, often the reaction of others was quite amusing when the learned of how old she was.

"I am over six hundred years old. My kind are immortal. If we are not slain we do not die. We do not age or suffer from disease as humans do."

It didn't entirely surprise him. She wasn't human, he knew that, and he knew legends and myths of ageless magical creatures. Of course it was possible.

More than anything else, it was just hard to conceive of. What it must be like.

He smiled at her again. "Our lives must seem like an instant to you."

"At times, yes, though I have had little contact with humans in those years," she said, and it saddened her. She had been learning, especially in Darrow, that there was a great deal of diversity in the world and she had missed out on much of it. While it had been important to keep the borders of her home safe she felt as if she had wasted some of her time.

"But for all that, it seems as if at times your lives shine all the brighter for it."

"Things should be more precious to us if they don't last." He thought of Eleanor, then, of Lily, and of how - in a way he hadn't really entertained before - he would lose them someday. Or they would lose him. It came to the same thing.

He thought it with no fear, but with a little sadness.

"Often these days I think about time. How we can see it differently, even if we measure it the same."

"I hope that such a sentiment has brought you happiness through cherishing what you have all the more," Tauriel said. Perhaps she understood better than some Elves how quickly something could be lost, having lost her parents when she was so young. Even more so, she had lost those under her command. How much more might Delta hold tightly to that in his life?

"Who we spend it with has a great deal of impact on it as well."

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