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trenaro athen - tell him the whole story

Gohen: Redemption

Beta: Ilye, Fimbrethiel

chapter thirteen

"David, we must talk," Erestor said quietly, touching his lips to David's slightly parted ones. The hazel eyes slowly opened, still clouded with sleep, but the Man smiled up at Erestor. "Come; Marcus has made tea and coffee."

David blinked slowly, fully waking as Vincent helped him up. He slipped on a pair of silk trousers and yawned as he padded through the hallway behind Vincent. "Why couldn't this wait until the morning?"

"Because what we need to tell you is important," Erestor said, sitting on the sofa, patting the cushion next to him. "Sit, David."

"I am not a lap dog, Vincent," David said sourly, but he sat.

Erestor glanced up at Maglor before returning his gaze to David. "My name is not Vincent, David."

David stopped in mid-sip of the scalding coffee Marcus had handed him. He raised his eyebrows and set his mug down. "I figured it wasn't, but I was not going to press you for what you were really called."

"Well, don't worry," Maglor said from his position by a window, perched on a stool. "We have decided you need to know who we are."

"Did you, in all your studies, study linguistics?" Erestor asked, wanting to probe David's knowledge a bit.

David nodded. "Of course. I am a historian, and as such, I had to learn various languages and how to interpret ones I may not already know."

"All right. Did you ever study the languages Professor Tolkien created for his world?" Erestor ventured.

Once more, the Man nodded. "I took a semester on it. It was fascinating. Why? What does that have to do with your names?"

"I just wanted to know if you had heard of Tolkien's works before I told you who we were." Erestor's eyes met David's, not sure what he was searching for. All he saw in the warm, hazel orbs was curiosity and confusion. Erestor bit his lip for a moment, and urged by Maglor's impatient clearing of his throat, Erestor just blurted it out. "Our names are Maglor," Erestor said, nodding his head in Maglor's direction, "and Erestor."

David pursed his lips and furrowed his brow in thought. "Okay," he nodded. "That's one. What are the other five impossible things that I need to believe before breakfast?"

"You're taking this remarkably well," Erestor noted.

David shrugged. "Hell, if I can believe in vampires, I can believe in Elves. I can even believe in vampiric Elves from a fictional world flowing from the pen-scratchings of a long-dead British repressed homosexual."

"Hmm. He didn't seem that repressed when I met him," Maglor mumbled.

David pinched the bridge of his nose. "That's two," he groaned.

Erestor moved closer to David and took his hands. "It's very simple. Part of the mythos is that Tolkien translated all of the tales from the Red Book of Westmarch, right? Well, the truth is, that's exactly what happened. I'll show you."

Maglor leaned forward when Erestor stood and walked to the small library. "Erestor rescued the original Red Book from the scribes of Gondor at the very beginning of this, the longest of all Ages. The time of the Elves was over, and the book held the only complete account of our history. Erestor protected that book for centuries. It was only because of the direst emergency that he was finally forced to leave it behind."

"And I never stopped searching for it," came Erestor's voice from the library door. He held in his hands a tattered, but still tightly bound red book. "It is hard to believe that it wasn't destroyed, and for a long while, I despaired of ever finding it intact again."

"Tolkien found it, didn't he?" David asked. "He found it, and was able to translate it because of his linguistic training."

Erestor nodded. "The book is basically Middle-earth's Rosetta Stone. It contains enough Quenya, Sindarin, and Westron -- which virtually gave birth to primitive Gaelic and Welsh -- to piece together most of the meanings. Tolkien started to publish some of the early translations in scholarly journals, and that's how I found him."

"Publishing these fantastical stories would have destroyed any credibility he had," Maglor continued. "So we went to him and persuaded him to publish them as fiction and completely obscure their source."

David looked at Maglor skeptically and prodded, "Persuaded? You mean...?"

"Yes, as in it took a preternatural force of will to convince him," Maglor said with a hint of frustration. "Fortunately, the human mind is easier to manipulate during states of extreme relaxation; say, in the aftermath of an orgasm."

David held up his hands. "More than I need to know."

Erestor sat down beside David again and placed the book in his lap, opened to a well-known page. The Man looked down at the strange language. Foreign though it was, the lettering was Romanized, and the vocabulary was frighteningly close to English -- close enough for him to understand the few words before him.

"There and Back Again," he read. "A Hobbit's Tale by Bilbo Baggins." David looked between Erestor, Maglor, and the book. "You're not bullshitting me, are you?" he said in dead seriousness.

"No, dear David. I am afraid we are not," Maglor said softly. "Close your eyes and run your fingertips along Erestor's ear."

Unsure of this strange command, David hesitated. When Erestor nodded encouragingly, David shrugged and closed his eyes. Erestor guided the mortal's questing fingers to his ear. David slid his fingers upward from the lobe, expecting to feel the gentle curve across the top, but instead, his touch revealed... a point? His eyes flew open, and sure enough, he could see his fingers resting at the tip of a pointed ear.

"How did you do that?" he demanded, pulling his hand back. He looked at Erestor's other ear, but saw only the ear he would expect to see.

"I didn't do anything," Erestor explained. "You did. Your mind refused to believe what it was seeing until you touched it. This is how we can move among mortals in this Age of Man without arousing suspicion. The human mind simply refuses to see what it cannot accept to be true. Even now, if you do not concentrate, you will likely not see us as we truly are."

David squinted at Erestor's ears. The vampire -- no, dammit, the Elf -- was right. Even focusing right at the tip of the ear, the point seemed to fade in and out of sight. When his eyes began to water, David blinked several times. "Right. So, what are we up to now, four or five?"

"Trust me, breakfast is coming soon, your Majesty," Maglor quipped. Then he turned slightly to address Erestor. "Trenaro athen."

Erestor sighed. "There is more. Now that you know who we are, it is time for you to learn who you are. When I was probing your mind, I saw a face that I never thought to see again. It was someone I knew in the times when this book was written. I thought for a moment that your family had made the connection to Tolkien's works."

"No way. There's no way that we would have ever come up with something this incredible," David said quickly.

"I know that now. I went through your wallet this morning, wanting to know more about you, and I found the source of the face I saw. Your father's face."

David's face twisted in confusion. "But I thought you said it was a face you'd known from Middle-earth?"

"It was." Erestor reached into David's lap and turned the pages of the book to almost the end. On the page, looking up at David, was an ink drawing of a Man in battle armor wielding a sword inscribed with Elvish runes. The face was identical to that in the photograph that Erestor now returned.

"Who am I looking at?" David said with a slight tremble in his voice.

"That," Maglor interrupted, "is Aragorn, son of Arathorn, also known as King Elessar of Gondor. He is your ancestor."

David stood up, oblivious to the book still on his lap. Erestor rushed to catch the Red Book before it hit the ground. Maglor, meanwhile, watched David. The Man paced back and forth a few times, staring down at the picture of his father. Finally, he stopped and looked up at the two vampires. "That's six. I think I want waffles for breakfast."

Then he passed out.

Maglor groaned and walked over to the collapsed Man. "This is becoming a terrible habit," he grumbled as he lifted David up, following Erestor down the hallway and into their bedroom.

It was bright when David opened his eyes. He was nude, covered with a thick comforter, and his head pounded. He sat up slowly, cradling his head in his hands. God, what the hell happened?

Then he remembered.

Elves. Vampires. Aragorn.

"I see you have woken, sleeping beauty," Erestor said lightly, placing a tray on the bed beside David. "We were beginning to worry." Erestor pointed toward the tray. "I believe you wanted waffles?"

David's stomach turned at the sight of the butter- and syrup-drenched waffles. Instead, he took the warm mug of fragrant tea in hand and sipped the sweet liquid, closing his eyes against the harsh afternoon light. "Could you close the shades? My head is killing me and the light is not helping."

Maglor appeared and closed the blinds, plunging the room into twilight. "Does that help?"

"Yes, thank you," David said, continuing to sip his tea and relax against the pillows. As he drank the tea, David pondered on what he remembered of Tolkien's works, as well as what Erestor and Maglor had told him themselves. "I thought the Elves sailed West," he said absently.

Erestor nodded. "They did."

"Why haven't you?"

Maglor joined the two on the bed, sitting cross-legged. "We are not of the Elves any longer, and so the way is shut to us. Aman is not our land anymore."

"If Aman exists, and it is to the west, why have we never come across it in all of our sea explorations? One would think that such a place would be easily noticed," David said, setting the empty mug on the tray.

"Well," Erestor began, "when the Númenoreans decided to seek the Blessed Realm, the Valar removed Aman from the circles of the world. They hid it from all but the Elves who would one day return. When an Elf prepares to sail for Aman, they merely begin sailing west. If they are deemed worthy, the path is shown to them and they sail to the harbors there. The Valar admit only those they desire to," Erestor finished sadly.

"Have you never tried?" David asked, his heart aching at the sorrow in Erestor's beautiful voice.

Maglor laughed hollowly. "Oh, we have tried. Sailing west never really works out for us."

David tilted his head as he regarded Maglor quizzically. "How so?"

"Each time we have sailed westward," Erestor said on a sigh, "something terrible has happened to the ship. A hurricane, churning seas, whirlpools, icebergs--"

"You were on the Titanic!" David cried, wincing as his head pounded. He took a deep breath, willing his stomach not to expel the tea onto the lovely comforter. "I have a photograph of you both, standing on the gangway leading up to the Titanic. You were smiling and waving."

Maglor snorted. "Erestor insisted we be on the maiden voyage."

"I did not!" Erestor shot back, pinching Maglor's exposed ankle.

"Ow! Yes, you did! You bought the tickets and told me you would leave me in Liverpool if I did not come with you." Maglor turned to David, still rubbing his ankle. "He made other, more frightening, threats, but I shall not repeat them."

Erestor glared at Maglor. "I should have left you in Liverpool."

They stared at one another, and David soon realized that they had forgotten he was in the room. He cleared his throat, shifting uncomfortably. "So, what happened?"

Maglor smiled rakishly. "What happened? Well, for an unsinkable ship, it sure as hell sank."


	Navigation multi-story arcs previous next Translations trenaro athen - tell him the whole story		Gohen: Redemption Beta: Ilye, Fimbrethiel chapter thirteen "David, we must talk," Erestor said quietly, touching his lips to David's slightly parted ones. The hazel eyes slowly opened, still clouded with sleep, but the Man smiled up at Erestor. "Come; Marcus has made tea and coffee." David blinked slowly, fully waking as Vincent helped him up. He slipped on a pair of silk trousers and yawned as he padded through the hallway behind Vincent. "Why couldn't this wait until the morning?" "Because what we need to tell you is important," Erestor said, sitting on the sofa, patting the cushion next to him. "Sit, David." "I am not a lap dog, Vincent," David said sourly, but he sat. Erestor glanced up at Maglor before returning his gaze to David. "My name is not Vincent, David." David stopped in mid-sip of the scalding coffee Marcus had handed him. He raised his eyebrows and set his mug down. "I figured it wasn't, but I was not going to press you for what you were really called." "Well, don't worry," Maglor said from his position by a window, perched on a stool. "We have decided you need to know who we are." "Did you, in all your studies, study linguistics?" Erestor asked, wanting to probe David's knowledge a bit. David nodded. "Of course. I am a historian, and as such, I had to learn various languages and how to interpret ones I may not already know." "All right. Did you ever study the languages Professor Tolkien created for his world?" Erestor ventured. Once more, the Man nodded. "I took a semester on it. It was fascinating. Why? What does that have to do with your names?" "I just wanted to know if you had heard of Tolkien's works before I told you who we were." Erestor's eyes met David's, not sure what he was searching for. All he saw in the warm, hazel orbs was curiosity and confusion. Erestor bit his lip for a moment, and urged by Maglor's impatient clearing of his throat, Erestor just blurted it out. "Our names are Maglor," Erestor said, nodding his head in Maglor's direction, "and Erestor." David pursed his lips and furrowed his brow in thought. "Okay," he nodded. "That's one. What are the other five impossible things that I need to believe before breakfast?" "You're taking this remarkably well," Erestor noted. David shrugged. "Hell, if I can believe in vampires, I can believe in Elves. I can even believe in vampiric Elves from a fictional world flowing from the pen-scratchings of a long-dead British repressed homosexual." "Hmm. He didn't seem that repressed when I met him," Maglor mumbled. David pinched the bridge of his nose. "That's two," he groaned. Erestor moved closer to David and took his hands. "It's very simple. Part of the mythos is that Tolkien translated all of the tales from the Red Book of Westmarch, right? Well, the truth is, that's exactly what happened. I'll show you." Maglor leaned forward when Erestor stood and walked to the small library. "Erestor rescued the original Red Book from the scribes of Gondor at the very beginning of this, the longest of all Ages. The time of the Elves was over, and the book held the only complete account of our history. Erestor protected that book for centuries. It was only because of the direst emergency that he was finally forced to leave it behind." "And I never stopped searching for it," came Erestor's voice from the library door. He held in his hands a tattered, but still tightly bound red book. "It is hard to believe that it wasn't destroyed, and for a long while, I despaired of ever finding it intact again." "Tolkien found it, didn't he?" David asked. "He found it, and was able to translate it because of his linguistic training." Erestor nodded. "The book is basically Middle-earth's Rosetta Stone. It contains enough Quenya, Sindarin, and Westron -- which virtually gave birth to primitive Gaelic and Welsh -- to piece together most of the meanings. Tolkien started to publish some of the early translations in scholarly journals, and that's how I found him." "Publishing these fantastical stories would have destroyed any credibility he had," Maglor continued. "So we went to him and persuaded him to publish them as fiction and completely obscure their source." David looked at Maglor skeptically and prodded, "Persuaded? You mean...?" "Yes, as in it took a preternatural force of will to convince him," Maglor said with a hint of frustration. "Fortunately, the human mind is easier to manipulate during states of extreme relaxation; say, in the aftermath of an orgasm." David held up his hands. "More than I need to know." Erestor sat down beside David again and placed the book in his lap, opened to a well-known page. The Man looked down at the strange language. Foreign though it was, the lettering was Romanized, and the vocabulary was frighteningly close to English -- close enough for him to understand the few words before him. "There and Back Again," he read. "A Hobbit's Tale by Bilbo Baggins." David looked between Erestor, Maglor, and the book. "You're not bullshitting me, are you?" he said in dead seriousness. "No, dear David. I am afraid we are not," Maglor said softly. "Close your eyes and run your fingertips along Erestor's ear." Unsure of this strange command, David hesitated. When Erestor nodded encouragingly, David shrugged and closed his eyes. Erestor guided the mortal's questing fingers to his ear. David slid his fingers upward from the lobe, expecting to feel the gentle curve across the top, but instead, his touch revealed... a point? His eyes flew open, and sure enough, he could see his fingers resting at the tip of a pointed ear. "How did you do that?" he demanded, pulling his hand back. He looked at Erestor's other ear, but saw only the ear he would expect to see. "I didn't do anything," Erestor explained. "You did. Your mind refused to believe what it was seeing until you touched it. This is how we can move among mortals in this Age of Man without arousing suspicion. The human mind simply refuses to see what it cannot accept to be true. Even now, if you do not concentrate, you will likely not see us as we truly are." David squinted at Erestor's ears. The vampire -- no, dammit, the Elf -- was right. Even focusing right at the tip of the ear, the point seemed to fade in and out of sight. When his eyes began to water, David blinked several times. "Right. So, what are we up to now, four or five?" "Trust me, breakfast is coming soon, your Majesty," Maglor quipped. Then he turned slightly to address Erestor. "Trenaro athen." Erestor sighed. "There is more. Now that you know who we are, it is time for you to learn who you are. When I was probing your mind, I saw a face that I never thought to see again. It was someone I knew in the times when this book was written. I thought for a moment that your family had made the connection to Tolkien's works." "No way. There's no way that we would have ever come up with something this incredible," David said quickly. "I know that now. I went through your wallet this morning, wanting to know more about you, and I found the source of the face I saw. Your father's face." David's face twisted in confusion. "But I thought you said it was a face you'd known from Middle-earth?" "It was." Erestor reached into David's lap and turned the pages of the book to almost the end. On the page, looking up at David, was an ink drawing of a Man in battle armor wielding a sword inscribed with Elvish runes. The face was identical to that in the photograph that Erestor now returned. "Who am I looking at?" David said with a slight tremble in his voice. "That," Maglor interrupted, "is Aragorn, son of Arathorn, also known as King Elessar of Gondor. He is your ancestor." David stood up, oblivious to the book still on his lap. Erestor rushed to catch the Red Book before it hit the ground. Maglor, meanwhile, watched David. The Man paced back and forth a few times, staring down at the picture of his father. Finally, he stopped and looked up at the two vampires. "That's six. I think I want waffles for breakfast." Then he passed out. Maglor groaned and walked over to the collapsed Man. "This is becoming a terrible habit," he grumbled as he lifted David up, following Erestor down the hallway and into their bedroom. It was bright when David opened his eyes. He was nude, covered with a thick comforter, and his head pounded. He sat up slowly, cradling his head in his hands. God, what the hell happened? Then he remembered. Elves. Vampires. Aragorn. "I see you have woken, sleeping beauty," Erestor said lightly, placing a tray on the bed beside David. "We were beginning to worry." Erestor pointed toward the tray. "I believe you wanted waffles?" David's stomach turned at the sight of the butter- and syrup-drenched waffles. Instead, he took the warm mug of fragrant tea in hand and sipped the sweet liquid, closing his eyes against the harsh afternoon light. "Could you close the shades? My head is killing me and the light is not helping." Maglor appeared and closed the blinds, plunging the room into twilight. "Does that help?" "Yes, thank you," David said, continuing to sip his tea and relax against the pillows. As he drank the tea, David pondered on what he remembered of Tolkien's works, as well as what Erestor and Maglor had told him themselves. "I thought the Elves sailed West," he said absently. Erestor nodded. "They did." "Why haven't you?" Maglor joined the two on the bed, sitting cross-legged. "We are not of the Elves any longer, and so the way is shut to us. Aman is not our land anymore." "If Aman exists, and it is to the west, why have we never come across it in all of our sea explorations? One would think that such a place would be easily noticed," David said, setting the empty mug on the tray. "Well," Erestor began, "when the Númenoreans decided to seek the Blessed Realm, the Valar removed Aman from the circles of the world. They hid it from all but the Elves who would one day return. When an Elf prepares to sail for Aman, they merely begin sailing west. If they are deemed worthy, the path is shown to them and they sail to the harbors there. The Valar admit only those they desire to," Erestor finished sadly. "Have you never tried?" David asked, his heart aching at the sorrow in Erestor's beautiful voice. Maglor laughed hollowly. "Oh, we have tried. Sailing west never really works out for us." David tilted his head as he regarded Maglor quizzically. "How so?" "Each time we have sailed westward," Erestor said on a sigh, "something terrible has happened to the ship. A hurricane, churning seas, whirlpools, icebergs--" "You were on the Titanic!" David cried, wincing as his head pounded. He took a deep breath, willing his stomach not to expel the tea onto the lovely comforter. "I have a photograph of you both, standing on the gangway leading up to the Titanic. You were smiling and waving." Maglor snorted. "Erestor insisted we be on the maiden voyage." "I did not!" Erestor shot back, pinching Maglor's exposed ankle. "Ow! Yes, you did! You bought the tickets and told me you would leave me in Liverpool if I did not come with you." Maglor turned to David, still rubbing his ankle. "He made other, more frightening, threats, but I shall not repeat them." Erestor glared at Maglor. "I should have left you in Liverpool." They stared at one another, and David soon realized that they had forgotten he was in the room. He cleared his throat, shifting uncomfortably. "So, what happened?" Maglor smiled rakishly. "What happened? Well, for an unsinkable ship, it sure as hell sank."