Anneth has long clung to her dreams, though sorrow has threatened to murder them again and again. There was a time when sorrow made her hopes only sweeter, but as Sauron grows yet stronger in the East, she feels everything she has ever held dear fal...
For in the multitude of dreams and many words there are also divers vanities: but fear thou God.
- Ecclesiastes 5:7
If you can dream and not make dreams your master,
If you can think and not make thoughts your aim...
- "If" by Rudyard Kipling
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"Ada!"
Voronwe heard his daughter and followed her voice, and found her outside the home, concentrating on a tree with a knife in hand. She bit the inside of her cheek and threw the knife. The end stuck firmly in the tree's trunk and she smiled brightly, turning to her father with pride in her face.
"Well done, iell," said he, and when he saw how her smile grew yet brighter, he too smiled. "But your technique is not precise, rather abysmal, and calls for correction if you are to obtain any remarkable skill in this."
She groaned.
"Ada, but I shall never be in a moment where I will desperately need the knowledge and skill to throw knives!"
"Ai, Anneth, you never could tell, for some day, you may find yourself in desperate need of a way to defend yourself. Do not dismiss the thought, Anneth, even as I know how you dislike the idea."
The elleth frowned and threw the knife once more, following the instructions of her father. Her knife's blade missed the trunk entirely, the handle bouncing off the bark harmlessly.
"I have followed your directions precisely, Ada, and I have failed," she complained, retrieving the knife, now rather discouraged.
"Iell, be not discouraged, for if you had followed them precisely, you would have succeeded. However, skills do not come within a few mere attempts. They must be practiced and cultivated."
And so Anneth undertook the great task of learning to throw knives. Each morn she took her place before a tree, throwing and throwing until her arms grew weary or her frustration conquered her resolve. Laineth would shake her head disapprovingly at her husband when she saw their daughter so caught up within her quest to master the knife, while Voronwe only smiled proudly, glad that his daughter had taken interest in things other than daydreaming and immersing herself in imaginations that she did not even bother to write down. It gave peace to him as a father to know that Anneth now could have a way to defend herself should the shadow return. There was no doubt in his heart that it would return, yet the question of when it would return continued to linger.
Voronen though the whole ordeal hilarious, seeing as he, an already mighty ellon (in his own eyes), had become quite proficient at the art of throwing knives. He was as skilled in spinning them as a stone is at floating, a fact which consoled Anneth immensely each time her brother gloated about his skill compared to her lack thereof.
