I suppose neither of us would enjoy getting chewed on, no matter if we may return or…. Whatever it is that may happen to you. The underworld? [Whatever that meant she was sure she still didn’t understand. She didn’t have too. She did wonder if her soul would find Mandos when she was in this entirely too foreign world but she tried not to focus on it or let the worry fill her tired heart.]
You have been stabbed? [That gods might hurt does not surprise her. Valar did seem to feel just as much as elves, yet how they handled things was often different.]
Ah. Like the sea serpents? Though ours are too big for it to matter if they are venomous or not. Or so I am told, I never saw the sea until it came rushing under my feet.
Hmm. Like Tulkas. Or so the songs say. I have never seen him though I suspect he helped in drowning half the continent.
A lot of it is. Especially the monsters made flesh by the one who should not be able to make at all. The other whispered that he twisted things rather than making them from nothing, but I could not say. I never wandered far from our wood.
They also said that Morgoth was as great as any mountain and that in his coming east he waded through the sundering sea. He did not swim or use a boat or fly like some can.
I do not know that they meant to. The Valar–though they love Eru's children–they often do not see all ends and do things in the same foolish ways we might. Only I could never sink a continent dragging a prisoner home and they could. Perhaps they thought they could take Morgoth back to Aman and leave us only a superficial wound and then accidentally broke our rips and punctured our lungs instead as they dragged him away in chains.
[She could only speculate. The depth of the damage was not understood at first. It took time for the land to crack and crumble where people still dwelt. It took time for even the long-sighted Eldar to see the land collapsing where the evil had been routed out. And they had frankly had many of their own problems at the time which did not help them understand in time.
Not that they could hold back the tides or raise the land. That was the dominion of the Ainur and all who had come had fled them now. Even her Queen who had felt little love of her people if her foolish, too tall husband no longer drew breath east of the sea.
Mithiel sighed.]
I suspect it is of little comfort, but nothing of your world makes much sense to me either. You do not feel like the ainur I have met yet you must be of similar make. If nothing else, we are united in confusion.
['We might'? Set doesn't think he would be so foolish as to flood a whole continent. Nor any of the gods here. He thinks anyway. Though the Nile floods, it's always for a reason.] I don't see how you can't know you would do that. Your...Valar? They do not seem intelligent.
[Set, that's rude. But he is always frank, even as he's grown past the angry being he once was, he is still frank.]
Thoth will figure something out. He is good at things such as that. Apparently better you or I. [Not meant as an insult.]
You should wait until I tell you how my King died. It is the most utterly ridiculous nonsense. All of them. I wonder sometimes if the Avari–those of our people who stayed in the east–were not the wisest of us all. We call them unwise, and the Noldor call them worse because they neither saw the light of the trees nor did they even attempt the journey but I am not sure our people ended up better off for leaving the lands of our awakening.
[Mithiel had been born in Doriath, she wishes now that she had died there too before all of it came to ruin, but still, she had felt the tug both east and west when her home still stood. She never did fully believe what was said about their most eastern cousins. It was only a pity that Morgoth had tormented them most of all.] But I am prattling on again. You may end up feeding me to these hippos of yours.
No doubt. I am ...sheltered, I suppose, despite all of the death and war I have seen. I do not pretend to understand more than I know. Thoth seems like he has a knack for working through problems. [And managing people. He probably has a whole host of skills hidden in his clever head that Mithiel could not easily guess at.]
[For once, he is curious how her king died. If anything, he's curious about the royalty of other places and how he should manage his own nation. Set wants to try to be better.
Though he is still very confused by the rest of it.]
When I was born my home, the forest that we called Doriath, was like any other forest. Monsters could come. Wolves, beasts without name. My parents hid with me in the tallest trees and tried to keep me quiet. [She remembers it in the way that the children of the Eldar could, and those of men could not. She remembers everything since she was conceived. There had been fear and horrors that did not bear repeating, but there had also been love. So much love and warmth even when it was too dangerous to light fires or even stray below the canopy of the trees. Mithiel swallows, ignoring the ache in her heart as she remembers the young faces of her parents who had been so brave for her. Whispering her stories and promises they did not know they could keep.]
You see our King was missing for centuries and we lingered, looking for him and in that time my parents made me but the world was dark then. Frightening. And then we found the King and also, it turned out, his Queen. Melian the Maiar. A powerful being who pushed all evil out of the forest and kept it out for all the centuries of my life.
Until her husband died, stupidly as I said, and she left us as though we were nothing.
I was sheltered because I did not have to face the world. The evils that visited us never pierced the girdle, or at least never got far and a simple elf-maid such as myself who cared only for minding the forest and making friends out of rabbits and trees was left to know only the wonders of the world and forget those early horrors.
For a time, anyway.The King has passed into the West and I can only assume she did as well. The princess is long dead, her children ruled briefly, though mortal young things they were and now it all sinks deeper and deeper below the waves and I have had my eyes forced open for good.
[Even though there are some of these words that Set does not understand, he gets the message. Perhaps in some ways, he had been sheltered as well. Set understood the evils of the world, had gone through his own darkness, but there had been things he had been blind to. As a royal god.
And maybe some things he had simply stayed ignorant of. Purposely. Without him truly knowing so.]
The reason you are here may be because of that. [it is the first time he does not sound short, annoyed.] Maybe there is meaning to it.
[She would not have taken offense if he bristled again. It seemed to be his nature, and in truth she could hardly blame him when thinking about how foreign and unknown this all was rather made her want to scream... but for perhaps the first time since they met he answers her in a way that almost feels like she is talking to one of her people.
Mithiel tries not to think about the fact she may never talk to another elf again if this truly is another world.]
I would like to think so. It is hard to live in a world without meaning or reason, though that so often turns out to be the case.
[Her words make him think. It would be hard to live in a world without meaning. Just chaos, just nonsense. He may have been the god of disorder but he didn't think it was something he understood.]
When the Nile floods, sometimes it does destroy. People lose their lives. But it leaves behind valuable fertile grounds and is necessary. I think that is how the world is meant to work. Bad and good must happen...
[Otherwise it is meaningless.
He shakes his head.] I am not a scholar. No need to listen to me.
[The many rivers and streams around Doriath seldom so much as slipped their banks let alone flooded before all came to ill. Whether that was their nature or her Queen had protected them from the rivers as well, Mithiel didn't know. The common elves were not really privy to such details even if now she thinks perhaps they should have been.
But her King and Queen had been wise and all-powerful. It had seemed fine, until it hadn't.
A soft sigh falls from her lips, bereft of all the words she might want to say or scream about because it was pointless and Set probably didn't want to hear it anyway.]
There was always chaos in the music that made us. Morgoth, once called Melkor, was there from the beginning. Or that is how the stories go. I suppose they could be lies as well. [They weren't. One thing a mere forest elf could understand just as well as a King was that Melkor was ancient and powerful in a way that could not be fully put into words.]
I am no scholar either, but I do know there has always been a lot of good in the world. Even in the time before the stars and before the sun or the moon took flight in the sky. There has always been hope. And always, a new day comes.
[Set listens and he thinks that she obviously has wisdom in her as well. Maybe he should listen, try to make sense of what she is saying even when it confuses him. He does need to listen more, Thoth always says. And Set knows he does.]
I would know there is good because I am the bad. [It was the point of him being king right now. To keep balance until good, Horus, would ultimately destroy him.
He continues walking and they are closer to the Nile now, with all of the people working. They all bow their heads to Set and he barely acknowledges them. Set must always continue to be cold, it fits the tyrant he must be.]
I am not so sure that is true. Even though I am sure you didn't like finding me, you still offered sanctuary. And I think not just because I am strange and novel. [If anything, Mithiel feels certain that being strange and novel was more of a disincentive to help her than if she had been something or someone he could easily comprehend and understand.
As they walked, Mithiel watched the people whom Set seemed almost determined to not notice. They were unlike her people, of course, but in many ways they felt familiar. If not like elves then like the men who had come west in these later days and worked harder for the labours the elves took for granted to be simple.]
I hope these hippos and crocodiles of yours aren't too close to all of these good people.
You are the foreigners god, is that not what you said? I do not think it is Thoth's wrath alone that motivates you. [Her tone has a gentle edge of teasing to it, though all amusement drains from her features at the thought that these people were being attacked every day.]
Every day? And neither they nor the animals can find a way to coexist? Can they not be spoken too? [It sounds like she means the people, but she definitely also means the hippos and crocodiles.]
[The teasing quality to her words is completely missed by him.] Most people see me as being foreign myself for that. They do not take it as you do. [As usually, foreigners were seen as a negative part of any growing lands.]
No beast can speak or understand human language. [His tone seems like this should be obvious.]
I don't expect they take much as I would. I am a strange, foreign thing after all.
Human, perhaps not. But not even your tongue? The elves taught the trees to talk and many beasts as well bend to our will through speech alone. [Elves do not consider themselves magical, so she doesn't think of it as a power or a magic, but maybe she should.]
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A hippo...is big. They are territorial and will kill you without a second thought.
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I will take you at your word. I am not sure that death would be stranger than appearing in a foreign land. Elves do not truly die like men.
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Only men die like men. Gods do not die the same here.
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Are there any other great beasts of concern?
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Snakes. They are reptiles with no limbs but some are poisonous if they do bite you.
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Ah. Like the sea serpents? Though ours are too big for it to matter if they are venomous or not. Or so I am told, I never saw the sea until it came rushing under my feet.
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Sea serpents? No. Is everything in your world so big?
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A lot of it is. Especially the monsters made flesh by the one who should not be able to make at all. The other whispered that he twisted things rather than making them from nothing, but I could not say. I never wandered far from our wood.
They also said that Morgoth was as great as any mountain and that in his coming east he waded through the sundering sea. He did not swim or use a boat or fly like some can.
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Set tries to pay attention, he truly does. But he cannot make sense of much of what she says.]
Everything you say makes little sense.
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[She could only speculate. The depth of the damage was not understood at first. It took time for the land to crack and crumble where people still dwelt. It took time for even the long-sighted Eldar to see the land collapsing where the evil had been routed out. And they had frankly had many of their own problems at the time which did not help them understand in time.
Not that they could hold back the tides or raise the land. That was the dominion of the Ainur and all who had come had fled them now. Even her Queen who had felt little love of her people if her foolish, too tall husband no longer drew breath east of the sea.
Mithiel sighed.]
I suspect it is of little comfort, but nothing of your world makes much sense to me either. You do not feel like the ainur I have met yet you must be of similar make. If nothing else, we are united in confusion.
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[Set, that's rude. But he is always frank, even as he's grown past the angry being he once was, he is still frank.]
Thoth will figure something out. He is good at things such as that. Apparently better you or I. [Not meant as an insult.]
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[Mithiel had been born in Doriath, she wishes now that she had died there too before all of it came to ruin, but still, she had felt the tug both east and west when her home still stood. She never did fully believe what was said about their most eastern cousins. It was only a pity that Morgoth had tormented them most of all.] But I am prattling on again. You may end up feeding me to these hippos of yours.
No doubt. I am ...sheltered, I suppose, despite all of the death and war I have seen. I do not pretend to understand more than I know. Thoth seems like he has a knack for working through problems. [And managing people. He probably has a whole host of skills hidden in his clever head that Mithiel could not easily guess at.]
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Though he is still very confused by the rest of it.]
What do you mean you are sheltered?
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You see our King was missing for centuries and we lingered, looking for him and in that time my parents made me but the world was dark then. Frightening. And then we found the King and also, it turned out, his Queen. Melian the Maiar. A powerful being who pushed all evil out of the forest and kept it out for all the centuries of my life.
Until her husband died, stupidly as I said, and she left us as though we were nothing.
I was sheltered because I did not have to face the world. The evils that visited us never pierced the girdle, or at least never got far and a simple elf-maid such as myself who cared only for minding the forest and making friends out of rabbits and trees was left to know only the wonders of the world and forget those early horrors.
For a time, anyway.The King has passed into the West and I can only assume she did as well. The princess is long dead, her children ruled briefly, though mortal young things they were and now it all sinks deeper and deeper below the waves and I have had my eyes forced open for good.
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And maybe some things he had simply stayed ignorant of. Purposely. Without him truly knowing so.]
The reason you are here may be because of that. [it is the first time he does not sound short, annoyed.] Maybe there is meaning to it.
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Mithiel tries not to think about the fact she may never talk to another elf again if this truly is another world.]
I would like to think so. It is hard to live in a world without meaning or reason, though that so often turns out to be the case.
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When the Nile floods, sometimes it does destroy. People lose their lives. But it leaves behind valuable fertile grounds and is necessary. I think that is how the world is meant to work. Bad and good must happen...
[Otherwise it is meaningless.
He shakes his head.] I am not a scholar. No need to listen to me.
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But her King and Queen had been wise and all-powerful. It had seemed fine, until it hadn't.
A soft sigh falls from her lips, bereft of all the words she might want to say or scream about because it was pointless and Set probably didn't want to hear it anyway.]
There was always chaos in the music that made us. Morgoth, once called Melkor, was there from the beginning. Or that is how the stories go. I suppose they could be lies as well. [They weren't. One thing a mere forest elf could understand just as well as a King was that Melkor was ancient and powerful in a way that could not be fully put into words.]
I am no scholar either, but I do know there has always been a lot of good in the world. Even in the time before the stars and before the sun or the moon took flight in the sky. There has always been hope. And always, a new day comes.
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I would know there is good because I am the bad. [It was the point of him being king right now. To keep balance until good, Horus, would ultimately destroy him.
He continues walking and they are closer to the Nile now, with all of the people working. They all bow their heads to Set and he barely acknowledges them. Set must always continue to be cold, it fits the tyrant he must be.]
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As they walked, Mithiel watched the people whom Set seemed almost determined to not notice. They were unlike her people, of course, but in many ways they felt familiar. If not like elves then like the men who had come west in these later days and worked harder for the labours the elves took for granted to be simple.]
I hope these hippos and crocodiles of yours aren't too close to all of these good people.
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Her second question is easier even if he knows she will not like the question.]
These people are attacked every day. Hippos do not like their territory encroached upon. Crocodiles attack far less but it is not unheard of.
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Every day? And neither they nor the animals can find a way to coexist? Can they not be spoken too? [It sounds like she means the people, but she definitely also means the hippos and crocodiles.]
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No beast can speak or understand human language. [His tone seems like this should be obvious.]
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Human, perhaps not. But not even your tongue? The elves taught the trees to talk and many beasts as well bend to our will through speech alone. [Elves do not consider themselves magical, so she doesn't think of it as a power or a magic, but maybe she should.]
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No. We can be...beasts ourselves. And we can turn into them but we do not speak their tongue. They are their own thing.
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