View Single Post
Old 01-17-2004, 03:49 PM   #60
piosenniel
Desultory Dwimmerlaik
 
piosenniel's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: Pickin' flowers with Bill the Cat.....
Posts: 7,816
piosenniel is a guest of Tom Bombadil.
Sting

Gondor

‘Bird never told you?’ he said, a frown puckering his brow. ‘Legend has it that the greatest of the Maenwaith, only the most skilled of their leaders, can take the form of the dragon.’

‘I knew it!’ she chortled to herself. She gave her mental image of Bird a poke in the side. ‘I was not wrong to think that she could do this, to push her, as it were.’ Pio shook her head in wonder. ‘But what of this legend that the most skilled of their leaders are the ones to do this?’ she murmured, as Baran finished this explanation. His voice had drifted off; he went no further. In a moment of exasperation she snapped at him, wanting more information, more proof.

‘By the One!’ she thought, as he went on. ‘If only we had had this information from the start. Bird and I could have followed it to its source.’ She looked hard at the mountain of a man who had now picked up his tale and was chuckling over some reference to food and Rivendell. ‘What other tidbits of information might he have stored away in the nooks and crannies of that great skull of his?’

Her attention was drawn back to his words with his reaching into his rucksack and the withdrawal of a scroll. ‘Copied,’ she wondered, ‘or “borrowed”?’ She couldn’t tell from where she sat. ‘It took a long time, but I found it,’ he was saying, ‘the tale of the were-wyrms of the Last Desert.’

She listened closely to the Elvish retelling of the incident, the lines between her brows deepening. Bird was the only Skinchanger she knew, and all her understanding of them was based on her long friendship with the woman. Small, and olive skinned – that she could reconcile with her knowledge of Bird. But the attack on the Elven houses, though the scroll mentioned no one was killed, she could not see Bird doing that. Not unless the Elves had done something that could be construed as evil or horrendous. Bird would have thought of something else – organized great swarms of gnats to bedevil them or quick and sneaky fleas to terrorize their tender flesh until they left in frustration. Pio followed her own line of thought about the dragon – had it been her, and she felt her ‘homeland’ threatened, then perhaps she would have brought the dragon. But not to just drive the Elves away – she would have left no survivors to carry the tale away with them.

Another line of thought niggled at the back of her mind. A map she had once seen at Sam’s house in the Shire, when she had gone there with her friend, Cami Goodchilde. A Dwarven map – there were mentions of dragons on it, near some great mountain east of the Hithaeglir; east of Thranduil’s forest, as she recalled, and then again north – in some place referred to as the Withered Heath. Seeing her interest, Sam had let her read some of what had been written in the old red leather book. The Last Desert – that was where she had heard that phrase before! And some reference Bilbo had made to the Were-wyrms. He had been talking to the Dwarves who had come to enlist his aid. ‘Tell me what you want done,’ she recalled him saying, ‘and I will try it, if I have to walk from here to the East of East and fight the wild Were-worms in the Last Desert.’

'East of east' – and now here was Baran telling her there were olive skinned people and dragons with them in the south.

Baran’s face was looking at her in expectation, his voice now silent. From the corner of her eye she saw Cook motioning to her. She nodded at Cook, then spoke to Baran. ‘You have brought me more information than I can digest at this moment. Will you stay for supper,’ she asked, standing up from her chair. He stood also, towering above her by a number of inches. She could not tell from his expression if he meant to go now that he had spoken with her or would stay a while longer. She had, after all, said nothing yet about Bird, or where she might be.

‘The meal will be nothing fancy,’ she continued, hoping he would follow as she stepped toward the dining room. ‘And I will apologize beforehand, there will be no meat. Except for the occasional offering from the river or sea, I prefer not to eat it. But there will be plenty to fill your appetite. Cook’s good loaves of whole grain breads, and honey and thimbleberry jam from my neighbor, cheeses also, and fruits, as we can get them at this time of year. And thick bean soup spiced with herbs to drive away the evening’s chill. Will you come?’

He hesitated, then stepped forward. She chatted with him as they walked along, drawing him out on other topics of interest to her.

‘Please, if you listen at all to a skeptic’s pleas,’ she thought, as they all stood by their chairs at the table and faced West for the brief, silent moment before the meal began. ‘Let him have “borrowed” the map, also.’

Last edited by piosenniel; 04-07-2004 at 12:10 PM.
piosenniel is offline