Transmitting Chapter Seven. You Don't Need to Shout!
I'm sorry - it seems to take me forever to write, these days!
So - when we left them at the end of Chapter Six, The exploratory party were in the hidden valley Tindómë and Haldir had found on their earlier trip - but Gimli had just fallen and damaged his leg.
Transmitting
Chapter Seven
1850 words
The story is rated 15.
Rumil offered to guide her onto a pleasant dream path, for fear she might be worrying about Gimli, but Mirieth was sitting with him and seemed unworried and so Tindómë had simply allowed her mind to drift into sleep.
“Naneth!”
Well that was unexpected. She hadn’t expected to dream of Ithilienne. Especially not of Ithilienne shouting loudly.
It took a few minutes to sort out that this was not Tindómë dreaming about her daughter, but more Ithilienne ‘breaking into’ her mother’s sleep. Then came explanations.
“I knew I had The Key in my blood too, and I wondered what mixing it with Adar’s blood meant for me. I mean, I guess I could be used to open portal things like you can, because Haldirin’s blood got you back from the Aunt Buffy place. But Haldirin sees the Houseless, and Mithrandalf says it is because he has a mixture of Key blood and Elf blood, and so I thought I must have something too.”
Tindómë’s inner Dawn almost channelled Buffy and thought ‘That old thing?’ but she squashed it.
“So,” Ithilienne continued, “as you and Adar said I dreamed loudly as an elfling, and Legolas says I still do, I thought I would see if I could do it on purpose, and make use of it.”
“Well you certainly shouted loudly to me!”
“I know. I didn’t mean to. I don’t know if it is because you are The Key, or that I am getting better.”
The explanation continued. “… and I concentrate on the blood in my veins and sort of meditate, like you have explained we ellyth do if we wish to conceive - only not the same of course. And now I want to talk to you about how to make it stronger so I can use it to…”
“Of course!” Tindómë could feel her dream body bouncing up and down. “Of course! You could talk to Master Elrond for us! Gimli has had an accident and Master Elrond would know best about whether Mirieth is doing the right things. Now, how can I explain exactly what happened?”
“M’kay…” Ithilienne sounded hesitant as if, Tindómë thought, this was not quite what she had expected. “Did you see what happened? Can you think about what you saw?”
Tindómë thought of picking the mushrooms, and then the shouts from above, seeing what had happened, and then Mirieth examining the old dwarf’s injured leg.
“Naneth, do I really have to discuss this with Master Elrond? I mean if Mirieth says he has not broken anything, and he just needs the compresses and rest, then what more can Master Elrond do?”
Tindómë thought ‘X-rays would be good…’ but not out loud, if you could class it as ‘out loud’ when it was in a dream. Instead she said “He might get an infection or something.”
“Was his leg cut? That’s how Lithôniel told me infection would get in when my horse hurt his leg and it’s the same for everything that’s mortal, she said.”
Really, Tindómë thought, her daughter was getting quite bossy. Although, probably, she was right.
“Anyway,” Ithilienne continued, “If he did get an infection, and Mirieth could not find the right herbs where you are, I’m not sure Master Elrond could do much to help. But you could let me know in a dream, or Legolas could. I have ‘met’ him this way a few times now.”
‘Hmm,’ thought Tindómë, ‘he’s kept that quiet…’
“But, honestly Naneth, I want to talk to you seriously about this… thing. I know being able to give messages to Master Elrond would be serious, but it wasn’t what I had been thinking about.
“I mean, so far, I have been just sharing a dream path with Legolas, and now with you, which is not really new. You do it with Adar, and both of you have set me onto good paths when I was an elfling, and doubtless still could, just that you haven’t needed to.
“No - I was thinking about mixing it with sort of creating a portal…”
She paused and Tindómë almost said “Creating a portal takes complex magic…”, quoting Radagast as she had on a number of occasions in the past, but her daughter knew that and so she waited for Ithilienne to continue.
“You have told me that you think that, here, we are not quite in the same dimension as we were when we lived in Middle Earth, but in a sort of a ‘pocket dimension’, and the straight road is a path between, protected by magic, yes?”
“Yes…” Tindómë was beginning to get an inkling of what her daughter wanted to discuss.
“Well I asked Mithrandalf if he could just use my blood to open a portal between here and, say, Imladris. I could have let the Els know their Naneth is here and she is waiting and waiting for them.
“Or, say, here and King Thranduil’s stronghold - let him know who’s waiting here for him! But Mithrandalf said he wouldn’t. It wasn’t allowed. Maybe for some sort of world threatening emergency he might be able to do it, but not just to contact the elves left behind. Portals, he said, attract attention.”
Tindómë had not even asked the Maia about the possibility, although the idea had occurred to her as well. Morgoth might well be in the void, but the events that had brought Tindómë to Middle Earth showed he was not totally cut off or defeated, and opening portals, even just between Middle Earth and Aman, might create what Spike call a disturbance in the Force.
“But do you think, if I could reach them by dreaming, it would be… what did you once say… ‘below the ray-dar’? There wouldn’t be a big hole like the ones made with your blood, or the one Radagast made with Haldirin’s.”
Honestly, that seemed perfectly reasonable to Tindómë. She wanted to pump her fist in the air and yell “Go for it!”. Instead she tried to behave like a responsible adult.
“I don’t think it would really count as opening a portal - after all, opening a portal requires…” Her daughter joined in and they said in unison “Complex magic!”
“Which,” Tindómë continued, “you don’t have - so if it works it doesn’t count as a portal!”
Ithilienne smiled. “I knew talking to you would help, Naneth.”
“Applied logic… You probably need to carry on practicing for a little longer before you try the theory out though, Ithi.”
“I am not as tired now as I was the first time I tried…”
Then came a short discussion of just how tired she had been, and what she did about it, and Tindómë decided to really be the responsible parent, and tell her daughter to disengage and get some proper rest.
As she was going to ‘see’ Legolas in a couple more nights, if they did need information from Master Elrond he could let Ithilienne know but, now, Tindómë could see why not mentioning this new skill to the twins’ father might be best. As well not to raise false hope, nor to have him offering to help in some way, or to inadvertently pressure Ithilienne so that she pushed herself too hard.
…………
They were still in the valley when Ithilienne ‘visited’ Legolas two days later. He knew, from Tindómë, about their conversation on the evening of Gimli’s accident and reassured her that she would not need to try and explain this new skill to Master Elrond as the dwarf was recovering well.
She realised that she had not discussed with her mother whether or not they should give Legolas any hope of her contacting his father. At the moment it seemed to Ithilienne better not to. Not because he might try to ‘help’ or make her feel she should try harder, but she did not want to give him any false hope.
As he made no mention of it as a possibility, neither did she. Instead she told him that Lady Galadriel had arrived ‘on a family visit to her beloved daughter’, except that it was just as much a visit to discuss the new lands with Legolas’s Naneth, and consider the politics together. As these discussions would take place in Celebrían’s sitting room, over wine and cakes, it had seemed natural that Ithilienne join them; all three older ellyth told her that if she did reach ‘an understanding’ with Legolas she needed to be aware of just how much decision making was really in their hands, even if an outsider might think the Lords of various rank held the power.
She was not quite sure whether to mention that particular comment to Legolas, but he said, straight away, “They will do such a good job of sorting the politics out that, with any luck, by the time we return with sketch maps and more information they will have Lady Galadriel’s father believing that it is entirely his idea that distribution of the lands beyond the mountains will be totally in the hands of their ladyships and any of the Teleri, Vanyar or, more importantly, Noldor who want to move there will have to apply to them personally…”
As Mirieth had declared that Gimli should be able to sit on his pony “as long as he does not insist on getting off to look at ‘interesting’ rocks every few minutes,” the party would be setting off again the next day.
“Up into the next range of mountains - we really should think of a name for them. Haldir and Tindómë say they were climbing up for around four days, before they reached the watershed, and then there will be another two or three days down the other side before we reach any trees.
“But there is still more snow than they encountered, and whilst we won’t have to wait for Gimli to examine rocks, he will still need to stop more often than they did, to empty his bladder and to stop him becoming stiff. I want to see the trees - I want to feel them, hear them, and dance naked amongst them as Haldir did! We may have until the end of the world - but right now I want to hurry!”
Part of Ithilienne wanted as much time as possible to work out how to let King Thranduil know his wife was waiting for him, and to get his royal personage onto a ship. Part of her wanted to laugh at Legolas’s enthusiasm. And a third part wanted to be there to dance naked through the trees with him.
So, whilst he had originally been considering the practicalities of discovering whether they could still meet in his dreams when he left the trees, and how he could arrange the watches to be asleep at the right times, in the end it did not take her long to convince him that they should make the most of the way she could use The Key to feel every touch as if they really were in the same forest clearing.
So - when we left them at the end of Chapter Six, The exploratory party were in the hidden valley Tindómë and Haldir had found on their earlier trip - but Gimli had just fallen and damaged his leg.
Transmitting
Chapter Seven
1850 words
The story is rated 15.
Rumil offered to guide her onto a pleasant dream path, for fear she might be worrying about Gimli, but Mirieth was sitting with him and seemed unworried and so Tindómë had simply allowed her mind to drift into sleep.
“Naneth!”
Well that was unexpected. She hadn’t expected to dream of Ithilienne. Especially not of Ithilienne shouting loudly.
It took a few minutes to sort out that this was not Tindómë dreaming about her daughter, but more Ithilienne ‘breaking into’ her mother’s sleep. Then came explanations.
“I knew I had The Key in my blood too, and I wondered what mixing it with Adar’s blood meant for me. I mean, I guess I could be used to open portal things like you can, because Haldirin’s blood got you back from the Aunt Buffy place. But Haldirin sees the Houseless, and Mithrandalf says it is because he has a mixture of Key blood and Elf blood, and so I thought I must have something too.”
Tindómë’s inner Dawn almost channelled Buffy and thought ‘That old thing?’ but she squashed it.
“So,” Ithilienne continued, “as you and Adar said I dreamed loudly as an elfling, and Legolas says I still do, I thought I would see if I could do it on purpose, and make use of it.”
“Well you certainly shouted loudly to me!”
“I know. I didn’t mean to. I don’t know if it is because you are The Key, or that I am getting better.”
The explanation continued. “… and I concentrate on the blood in my veins and sort of meditate, like you have explained we ellyth do if we wish to conceive - only not the same of course. And now I want to talk to you about how to make it stronger so I can use it to…”
“Of course!” Tindómë could feel her dream body bouncing up and down. “Of course! You could talk to Master Elrond for us! Gimli has had an accident and Master Elrond would know best about whether Mirieth is doing the right things. Now, how can I explain exactly what happened?”
“M’kay…” Ithilienne sounded hesitant as if, Tindómë thought, this was not quite what she had expected. “Did you see what happened? Can you think about what you saw?”
Tindómë thought of picking the mushrooms, and then the shouts from above, seeing what had happened, and then Mirieth examining the old dwarf’s injured leg.
“Naneth, do I really have to discuss this with Master Elrond? I mean if Mirieth says he has not broken anything, and he just needs the compresses and rest, then what more can Master Elrond do?”
Tindómë thought ‘X-rays would be good…’ but not out loud, if you could class it as ‘out loud’ when it was in a dream. Instead she said “He might get an infection or something.”
“Was his leg cut? That’s how Lithôniel told me infection would get in when my horse hurt his leg and it’s the same for everything that’s mortal, she said.”
Really, Tindómë thought, her daughter was getting quite bossy. Although, probably, she was right.
“Anyway,” Ithilienne continued, “If he did get an infection, and Mirieth could not find the right herbs where you are, I’m not sure Master Elrond could do much to help. But you could let me know in a dream, or Legolas could. I have ‘met’ him this way a few times now.”
‘Hmm,’ thought Tindómë, ‘he’s kept that quiet…’
“But, honestly Naneth, I want to talk to you seriously about this… thing. I know being able to give messages to Master Elrond would be serious, but it wasn’t what I had been thinking about.
“I mean, so far, I have been just sharing a dream path with Legolas, and now with you, which is not really new. You do it with Adar, and both of you have set me onto good paths when I was an elfling, and doubtless still could, just that you haven’t needed to.
“No - I was thinking about mixing it with sort of creating a portal…”
She paused and Tindómë almost said “Creating a portal takes complex magic…”, quoting Radagast as she had on a number of occasions in the past, but her daughter knew that and so she waited for Ithilienne to continue.
“You have told me that you think that, here, we are not quite in the same dimension as we were when we lived in Middle Earth, but in a sort of a ‘pocket dimension’, and the straight road is a path between, protected by magic, yes?”
“Yes…” Tindómë was beginning to get an inkling of what her daughter wanted to discuss.
“Well I asked Mithrandalf if he could just use my blood to open a portal between here and, say, Imladris. I could have let the Els know their Naneth is here and she is waiting and waiting for them.
“Or, say, here and King Thranduil’s stronghold - let him know who’s waiting here for him! But Mithrandalf said he wouldn’t. It wasn’t allowed. Maybe for some sort of world threatening emergency he might be able to do it, but not just to contact the elves left behind. Portals, he said, attract attention.”
Tindómë had not even asked the Maia about the possibility, although the idea had occurred to her as well. Morgoth might well be in the void, but the events that had brought Tindómë to Middle Earth showed he was not totally cut off or defeated, and opening portals, even just between Middle Earth and Aman, might create what Spike call a disturbance in the Force.
“But do you think, if I could reach them by dreaming, it would be… what did you once say… ‘below the ray-dar’? There wouldn’t be a big hole like the ones made with your blood, or the one Radagast made with Haldirin’s.”
Honestly, that seemed perfectly reasonable to Tindómë. She wanted to pump her fist in the air and yell “Go for it!”. Instead she tried to behave like a responsible adult.
“I don’t think it would really count as opening a portal - after all, opening a portal requires…” Her daughter joined in and they said in unison “Complex magic!”
“Which,” Tindómë continued, “you don’t have - so if it works it doesn’t count as a portal!”
Ithilienne smiled. “I knew talking to you would help, Naneth.”
“Applied logic… You probably need to carry on practicing for a little longer before you try the theory out though, Ithi.”
“I am not as tired now as I was the first time I tried…”
Then came a short discussion of just how tired she had been, and what she did about it, and Tindómë decided to really be the responsible parent, and tell her daughter to disengage and get some proper rest.
As she was going to ‘see’ Legolas in a couple more nights, if they did need information from Master Elrond he could let Ithilienne know but, now, Tindómë could see why not mentioning this new skill to the twins’ father might be best. As well not to raise false hope, nor to have him offering to help in some way, or to inadvertently pressure Ithilienne so that she pushed herself too hard.
…………
They were still in the valley when Ithilienne ‘visited’ Legolas two days later. He knew, from Tindómë, about their conversation on the evening of Gimli’s accident and reassured her that she would not need to try and explain this new skill to Master Elrond as the dwarf was recovering well.
She realised that she had not discussed with her mother whether or not they should give Legolas any hope of her contacting his father. At the moment it seemed to Ithilienne better not to. Not because he might try to ‘help’ or make her feel she should try harder, but she did not want to give him any false hope.
As he made no mention of it as a possibility, neither did she. Instead she told him that Lady Galadriel had arrived ‘on a family visit to her beloved daughter’, except that it was just as much a visit to discuss the new lands with Legolas’s Naneth, and consider the politics together. As these discussions would take place in Celebrían’s sitting room, over wine and cakes, it had seemed natural that Ithilienne join them; all three older ellyth told her that if she did reach ‘an understanding’ with Legolas she needed to be aware of just how much decision making was really in their hands, even if an outsider might think the Lords of various rank held the power.
She was not quite sure whether to mention that particular comment to Legolas, but he said, straight away, “They will do such a good job of sorting the politics out that, with any luck, by the time we return with sketch maps and more information they will have Lady Galadriel’s father believing that it is entirely his idea that distribution of the lands beyond the mountains will be totally in the hands of their ladyships and any of the Teleri, Vanyar or, more importantly, Noldor who want to move there will have to apply to them personally…”
As Mirieth had declared that Gimli should be able to sit on his pony “as long as he does not insist on getting off to look at ‘interesting’ rocks every few minutes,” the party would be setting off again the next day.
“Up into the next range of mountains - we really should think of a name for them. Haldir and Tindómë say they were climbing up for around four days, before they reached the watershed, and then there will be another two or three days down the other side before we reach any trees.
“But there is still more snow than they encountered, and whilst we won’t have to wait for Gimli to examine rocks, he will still need to stop more often than they did, to empty his bladder and to stop him becoming stiff. I want to see the trees - I want to feel them, hear them, and dance naked amongst them as Haldir did! We may have until the end of the world - but right now I want to hurry!”
Part of Ithilienne wanted as much time as possible to work out how to let King Thranduil know his wife was waiting for him, and to get his royal personage onto a ship. Part of her wanted to laugh at Legolas’s enthusiasm. And a third part wanted to be there to dance naked through the trees with him.
So, whilst he had originally been considering the practicalities of discovering whether they could still meet in his dreams when he left the trees, and how he could arrange the watches to be asleep at the right times, in the end it did not take her long to convince him that they should make the most of the way she could use The Key to feel every touch as if they really were in the same forest clearing.