Taking Readings I by Himring

Nan Elmoth

For the B2MeM 2011 prompt: Nan Elmoth [Seduction]

Written as a birthday gift for S.

This is a wood to get lost in. Consider what you do before you step under its dark boughs. Consider it well if you have a ship to catch and an ocean to cross. Consider it well if you want to be back at your cousin’s by suppertime or dine with your brother the week after.

This is not a wood for those who love the sun. Here, there is only fitful starlight and green dusk and deep, deep shadows among the tree boles. Follow the voice of unseen nightingales along the winding path, farther in, farther in. There is enchantment at the heart of the wood, but it is ambiguous.

If love is found here, it is the unexpected kind. Exogamy: a word for binding yourself to somebody fundamentally unlike you--the opposite of marrying your cousin or childhood friend, so to speak. Received wisdom warns against it, and often it is right. You could end up imprisoned, poisoned, even killed by rules you neither subscribe to nor understand.

Only, if nobody ever succumbed to the seduction of the unknown, how would we discover miracles? If nobody ever tried to learn a new language, where would we go for translators? It may be safer to sit still, fenced in by high mountains, but in the long run loss will find you wherever you are. If you are one of the lucky ones, you might emerge and find you have grown taller.

Chapter End Notes

(1) Thingol didn't have a ship to catch, strictly speaking, but "an island to catch" doesn't really work.

(2) In human societies that practice ritual exogamy, it may of course be quite possible to marry your cousin or childhood friend, as long as he or she belongs to a different moiety.