A Better Place - The Hobbit Fanfiction

Twenty-Fifth Entry - Banishment and Sanctuary

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"May I recite more poetry for you today?" I asked Thranduil when I'd found him. He had been particularly elusive today.

"If you will," he drawled, in an 'if you must' manner more than 'if you wish'.

"You whom I could not save

Listen to me.

Try to understand this simple speech as I would be ashamed of another.

I swear, there is in me no wizardry of words.

I speak to you with silence like a cloud or a tree.

What strengthened me, for you was lethal.

You mixed up farewell to an epoch with the beginning of a new one,

Inspiration of hatred with lyrical beauty,

Blind force with accomplished shape."

Czeslaw Milosz had not written a poem that I did not love, and that did not hurt me because I felt it so well. At the end of this one I tried another.

"Forget the suffering

You caused others.

Forget the suffering

Others caused you.

The waters run and run,

Springs sparkle and are done,

You walk the earth you are forgetting."

He was listening, though I knew he was consciously giving the appearance of not doing so.

"Love means to learn to look at yourself

The way one looks at distant things

For you are only one thing among many.

And whoever sees that way heals his heart,

Without knowing it, from various ills-

A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.

Then he wants to use himself and things

So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.

It doesn't matter whether he knows what he serves:

Who serves best doesn't always understand."

My cloak had no pockets so I had tucked the indigo stone down the front of my tunic. It pressed its hard edges against the center of my ribs but eventually it warmed to my fluctuating temperature and I hardly noticed it. After all I had worse hurts to distract myself from.

I was wandering aimlessly through the camp that evening when I heard the shouting. That I recognized the voice immediately clotted my blood with ice in my arteries. I was in a less closely populated area of the camp, on the southern edge of it, so finding my way to the voice was in no way difficult. I rounded a knuckle of rock to see Thranduil standing with his shoulders hunched in fury, his back to me as he shouted at Tauriel, who faced him and accepted the abuse without a word.

"You think you have the right to impose yourself since you once had my favor?" Thranduil was accusing. "You are in no way worthy-"

I had stood for a moment in awestruck horror, but at those words I threw myself at Thranduil's back and dragged at his fine, pale cloak, yanking on it to get his attention. "Stop!" I hollered at him. "Don't say that about her!"