A Better Place - The Hobbit Fanfiction

Eleventh Entry - Generosity

I spoke a few words here and there to the guards who came and went that day. All of them stopped in their perusal before I asked them to, hovering at my doorway or just around the edge of it. Some were shier than others, but I knew how to talk to shy people. Most however were completely willing to strike up their own conversations with me, asking about how the school I’d attended functioned and ran, what my day to day life had been like, or how my realm was different from theirs. As with some of my songs, I edited what needed adjustment coming from my world to their ears.

“What means of travel did you use?” one elf, Cerian, inquired, his shoulder leaned comfortably into the stone my door was bolted to.

“I lived not far out of our city so I walked when I was young,” I replied. “After I started working I was able to buy an old bicycle to travel.”

“What is a bicycle?”

I sat and leaned out with my arm stuck through the bars so I could draw with the water from my cup on the stone floor outside. Cerian crouched so not to loom over me. “A bicycle is a mechanical means of travel. It has two wheels usually, and you have to balance on those two wheels to keep it upright, so it takes practice. Most are made of wood and metal. There is a chain threaded from the rear wheel to connect it to a disk on the pedals, here, so when you turn the pedals with your feet the rear wheel turns and propels you forward. The handlebars, here, are connected to a tube affixed to the front wheel, so when you turn those bars you turn the wheel, and the wheel turns the bicycle.” I shook a drop of water off my finger.

Cerian grazed his fingers over the various lines and circles I had drawn as though reading them. “Fascinating,” he breathed. “I understand how that would function.” And then at his request I explained how each part worked, and the names of them, until he was satisfied he understood them all.

Perhaps an hour later—after I had also explained the use and mechanisms of a can-opener—Tauriel and Legolas arrived at my door with a ring of keys. Legolas spoke a few words to Cerian, who dipped his head and left, and Tauriel unlocked and held open my door

“You are permitted to visit your friends,” said Legolas. “But the king wishes you not to speak with them.”

I remained at the mouth of my cell, my own mouth open with dismay. “Why can’t I speak to them?”

“Do you still wish to come?”

I snapped my mouth shut and scowled at him. “Your king is very vexing,” I informed him, stepping out, and Tauriel hid a smile as she took up her place at my left side, hand on my right shoulder. Legolas walked behind us.

As we rounded a long bend I was beginning to hear the grumblings and muttering of the dwarves as they spoke to each other, and I felt half my weight I was so glad to hear the voices I so well recognized. Tauriel generously let me pull free of her hand and run to the first door I saw. I was no elf; they could hear someone running and went quiet until I threw myself to the bars of the first door and the person inside shouted, “Mabyn!”

“Mabyn?” called the others.

“It’s Mabyn!” cheered Dori, and he hurried to wrap his hands around mine where they gripped the thick bars. “How did you get out?” And then he saw the two elves approach me silently from behind.

I smiled, watery, and reached through to touch his cheek. “Mabyn?” he asked, confused, as I moved to the next cell and greeted Bifur similarly. It took them only seconds to realize I wasn’t speaking, and then they immediately and fervently wanted to know why. Oin stretched a hand through the bars to touch my throat and ask me if I was all right, to which I nodded, and moved along before he could ask me any more. Bofur and Fili tried the hardest to coax me to speak, reaching through the bars to touch my face. Thorin wasn’t here, I noticed.