Fanfic100 Prompt 076 - Who?
Title: The Power of Words
Prompt: 076 - Who?
Rating: PG
Characters: Eärendil, Elwing
Summary: Those who killed Elwing's parents weren't orcs.
Word count: 384
Notes: Everything belongs to the Professor.
I forgot the exact words I spoke that day. They were hardly important: I was a most talkative child back then, and the things I talked about were often horribly inappropriate ones. The sound of my own voice comforted me, and I had the notion that visions could be disarmed by being forced into words, which then dissolved and blew away in the breeze. So there were words. Orcs. Dragons. Fire.
Given the way I was, it must have been an oversight on the adults' part that they still let me talk to Elwing. Thus one day the inevitable happened: she broke her silence, rounded on me, teeth clenched tight, eyes aglitter, and cut me off in the middle of a babbled sentence with a vicious push.
Then she spun on her heels, and ran away from me as fast as she could. I sat on the ground, too shocked to chase after her. If I did, I would have been just like one of the things I'd been describing only a minute ago, so uncontrollably, so sickeningly.
And then all the words came roaring back together upon the wind, and congealed right back into visions.
My mother came for me, and this time, I stayed quiet while she talked. Eventually I worked it out in my head. They were my mother's father's fathers' brother's sons. So Elwing had a perfectly good reason to hate me like an orc, except she never said so before because she never said anything.
I didn't see Elwing for weeks afterwards. I didn't want to. I looked around at everybody next to me, trying to build this new home, trying to continue, trying to hide the facts from me because I was so, so hopelessly stupid. All my childish notions were hopelessly stupid. Words might be only words and I might imagine I could control them, but they were insidious and wicked. They had claws and maces and great shining whips of flame; they could never be disarmed.
Years later, I passed through many voyages and adventures, and came at last to stand upon an entire other land, surrounded by Powers far greater than the imaginations of men and elves could ever begin to touch. And I remembered this.
It was the most dangerous moment I ever faced.
Table here
Prompt: 076 - Who?
Rating: PG
Characters: Eärendil, Elwing
Summary: Those who killed Elwing's parents weren't orcs.
Word count: 384
Notes: Everything belongs to the Professor.
I forgot the exact words I spoke that day. They were hardly important: I was a most talkative child back then, and the things I talked about were often horribly inappropriate ones. The sound of my own voice comforted me, and I had the notion that visions could be disarmed by being forced into words, which then dissolved and blew away in the breeze. So there were words. Orcs. Dragons. Fire.
Given the way I was, it must have been an oversight on the adults' part that they still let me talk to Elwing. Thus one day the inevitable happened: she broke her silence, rounded on me, teeth clenched tight, eyes aglitter, and cut me off in the middle of a babbled sentence with a vicious push.
Then she spun on her heels, and ran away from me as fast as she could. I sat on the ground, too shocked to chase after her. If I did, I would have been just like one of the things I'd been describing only a minute ago, so uncontrollably, so sickeningly.
And then all the words came roaring back together upon the wind, and congealed right back into visions.
My mother came for me, and this time, I stayed quiet while she talked. Eventually I worked it out in my head. They were my mother's father's fathers' brother's sons. So Elwing had a perfectly good reason to hate me like an orc, except she never said so before because she never said anything.
I didn't see Elwing for weeks afterwards. I didn't want to. I looked around at everybody next to me, trying to build this new home, trying to continue, trying to hide the facts from me because I was so, so hopelessly stupid. All my childish notions were hopelessly stupid. Words might be only words and I might imagine I could control them, but they were insidious and wicked. They had claws and maces and great shining whips of flame; they could never be disarmed.
Years later, I passed through many voyages and adventures, and came at last to stand upon an entire other land, surrounded by Powers far greater than the imaginations of men and elves could ever begin to touch. And I remembered this.
It was the most dangerous moment I ever faced.
Table here