Maglor in the 1848 French Revolution by Aprilertuile

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July 1847

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Maglor finished the day’s work, and they all four shared a meal that evening. Joséphine seemed dazed and so painfully shy that Maglor was half afraid to frighten her by accident, even though she cried on his shoulder a few hours before and she clearly wasn’t shy in front of him at that time.

Once the meal was over, Maglor went to gather his belongings, just a bag of clothing, and his instrument. Luckily he was used to travelling light, and moving at a moment’s notice by now. His bag was always ready in a corner.

“Max?”

“Hm?”

“For this evening… Do you know… Do you have an idea of… How to proceed?”

Maglor snorted in amusement.

“Ismérie isn’t renting out most of her rooms for now.”

“And unless you can pay, I won’t let you stay more than one day for free!” Ismérie answered firmly.

“One day is a bit short of time, Ismérie.”

“I can’t just give away rooms, Max. And if I did, why to you and not to the kids outside? And why not the old beggar two streets over? I just can’t.”

Maglor hesitated but nodded.

“Alright, one night,” Maglor agreed. 

“And so for tomorrow night? Because I don’t think I can pay for rent somewhere. I just don’t have the means to do that right now,” Louis asked with uncertainty.

“Then if necessary, we’ll go in the street for a few nights. But we’ll see tomorrow, alright?”

Louis seemed nervous but nodded, and accepted the key Ismérie gave him for a room in the tavern while Maglor was checking he hadn’t inadvertently left something in the room.

In the morning, Maglor picked up his bag and his harp, and left the tavern with Louis at his side. Maglor settled on a place not rich enough for him to get immediate retaliation from the city guards, but good enough to earn a bit of attention from the people, and played. For this crowd, he played the new popular melodies of the middle-class.

One thing Maglor found interesting about the ways of the human population. Wherever they played, be it in front of a king or in a tavern, minstrels often were considered lower than servants on the social scale, which, to him, never made any sense.

Might it be different, perhaps, with those working with the operas and theatres?

He doubted it. They all worked with patrons and those people were generally rich self centered men that delighted in being known for their “generosity”. Those men always wanted something in exchange.

In any case, Maglor played. He played as long as there were people around, and then he stopped.

Some people had been generous. Not enough for a room, but it was a start, and at least enough for some food.

Food that Maglor shared without thinking about it with a kid that was looking a bit too faint, making Louis smile in fond amusement.

However, the young man’s amusement was short-lived, as he stressed about what to do that very night:

“Max, for tonight? Do you know where we can go?”

“We don’t have many choices. We can either break in somewhere, or we can sleep in the street. I don’t know about you, but breaking in has a high chance of ending up with someone in jail, and I’d rather avoid it. Besides, the weather isn’t that bad now.”

“Yeah but… The street is dangerous.”

Maglor shrugged. He couldn’t say the contrary. Gone were the days he could claim with certainty he was the most dangerous thing in the street. Sure there’s a lot of things he could do that humans couldn’t, or forgot how to do, and he was hard to kill… But humans excelled in the art of killing others. He wasn’t sure what it meant for the future, but yes, he too considered the streets dangerous.

“Church street,”  Maglor said.

“What?”

“Find a church, stay discreet and sleep near it. People are generally not in a hurry to commit murder on the front door of a Church.”

“I… Never considered the logistics of the best place to murder others before.”

“You never spoke to people living in the street before then. They have a lot to say on the matter.”

Which is how Maglor knew to avoid sleeping by the bridges. Murders, rapes, thefts, fights or disappearances, happening far too often recently, drove the people living in the street to avoid the area at night whenever possible. He was not going to commit that mistake.

 “I… Not really no. I mean… They live on the street. They’re dangerous.”

“And where do you live now, remind me?”

“That’s… different.”

“How?”

A faintly shocked silence answered him and Maglor smiled tiredly.

“You’re not that high in the social hierarchy, my friend. You think your Joséphine’s cousin would see the difference between you and a street urchin? That he would even care to make such a difference? The only thing you have that’s different from all these people out there, is that you have studies and hope. But imagine you stop your studies there, what will you have?”

Louis bit his lips at that, thinking.

“Or give those people the means to study or a chance to an apprenticeship or the chance to find a job. What do you think they’ll do?”

Louis opened his mouth to answer, but his eyes fell on a little child curled up against a doorway. Dirty as could be and emaciated like… Like far too many people since the famine started.

“I don’t… know.”

“Some people think they’d just squander all their chances on alcohol, that if you give people on the street money to pay for studies it’ll do nothing, and change nothing. That they’re poor because they deserve it, or because they’re too stupid to change their situation, or because they want to be. But the truth is, most of those people out here are people like you and me who fell on hard times and never had anyone to lend a helping hand. They’re no different than you or me. And at the current time? Nothing says we’ll find a place to live in.”

Maglor wished he could reassure Louis. However, he didn’t lie, and wanted Louis to understand that he couldn’t keep making a difference between himself and someone who lost everything, but still they had good chances: with food prices getting lower, some business were sure to reopen soon, and failing that, Maglor still knew how to play music and act as a minstrel.

He was pretty sure that he could, on a more permanent basis in the foreseeable future, walk the fine line between being ignored and being outright noticed.

He really didn’t want to be noticed. Not these days among humans.

Over the years, he learnt that no, even in a fit of pride fit for the prince he hadn’t been in millennia he couldn’t play his best, play the most beautifully he could… Not among humans. They reacted with fear more often than not to things they didn’t understand, and they couldn’t understand Maglor’s music.

And he couldn’t fight a crowd every time he tried, and humans could be damn vicious when they wanted to.

Once upon a time he’d have had a ready answer, and would have claimed he could and would just pick up everyone from the streets and “save” them if necessary to prove he wasn’t someone people needed to fear, and that his music was something good.

But since then he learnt the hard way that there were limits to what he could do. There were always limits, probably, but once upon a time he had simply not seen them.

Now he has learned to pick and choose who he could help and how he could help.

Not that he always wanted to help or be noticed for his skills mind you. Sometimes he just wanted to sit in a dark unused corner, forgotten by the world.

Other times he just wanted to never meet another living being ever again. That generally happened just after he lost someone he let himself love.

And sometimes he just needed to meet the pitiful or begging eyes of a child to react and ensure the child’s future.

In his defence, Maglor had already lived a long time. Several millennia tended to allow for such events to happen far more naturally than during shorter life-spans.

It was entirely logical and natural.

And until Maedhros came back to destroy his argument with a far greater dose of logic that the subject deserved, he could and would stick to this explanation, thank you very much.

In any case, Maglor led a downcast and deep-thinking Louis to a street that should be relatively safe, according to what little rumours he had gathered while being employed by Ismérie. Safe from others in the streets, as well as from malevolent beings, or… from the city guards.

And wasn’t it telling about the current times that the city guards were as much a danger to the homeless as random murderers on the prowl?

The street was… Crowded, there was no other word for it. Grey, grim, the floor was just dirt under their feet. The smell in the street alone was almost enough to make Maglor nauseous: it was a terrible mix of dejections, detritus, sweat, indistinguishable smells of dirty streets.

The walls of the building around them were cracked, and most of all, every doorway was taken by a homeless person. All more grim and dirty than the last, and oh, they were so thin and ragged looking…

Louis looked distinctly out of place, sitting on the floor, and that alone might attract trouble. Maglor would probably not sleep that night just for that reason alone. Not that Maglor was proud of the fact he could and would go unnoticed in the streets as just one more homeless person fit to be ignored.

But there could be safety in staying unnoticed.

About as much as there could be danger in it.

It was all about luck and being at the right place at the right time.

“What if we find nowhere to go? I don’t have that much money at all. Not enough to pay for a room somewhere more than a single night, and eat. And I’ll need to eat. We’ll need to eat.” Louis whispered, trying and probably failing to be discreet.

The others who were nearby probably heard everything and would keep that in mind.

“Then we find somewhere safe to sleep, night by night, during the summer months, and we’ll see how it goes, and how much money the both of us together can raise for when the weather turns dangerous in the street and we absolutely need a shelter for safety’s sake.”

“The weather’s hardly deadly or there wouldn’t be so many people…”

“The weather can be deadly. And so many people survive in the street because there’s always short term solutions to find, and again, and again, night after night until the weather turns less deadly. Be it shelters to find, something warm to wear, hells, even exchanging services with someone who does have a home they could open, as I did with Ismérie, can work.”

He’d know. One particularly nasty winter a bit higher up north some years ago had only seen him survive because some benevolent homeless man had pulled him near a fire they had had going at the entrance of a makeshift shelter they made.

One should never underestimate the ingenuity of one who had nothing, and nothing to lose.

He might have been an elf, but that winter had been a nightmare from start to finish. Starting with the tragic loss of his previous beloved harp and up to the fact that he hadn’t been in great physical or mental state at that time.

“Well… Well, at least we’re not hungry.”

Louis was looking extremely ill at ease, until Maglor moved to sit right against him.

At least they weren’t alone.

Louis ended up falling asleep leaning on Maglor’s shoulder. And Maglor didn’t sleep at all, but kept an ear on the sounds of the street.

At some point, as the others in the street were asleep, or mostly asleep, Maglor found himself humming quietly and wanting to sing.

The night was so quiet…

There was no light in the street but that of the moon.

No sound either but that of quiet breathing and night animals coming and going.

Maglor bit his lips. It was neither the time nor the place.

Besides, all he could think of was highly inappropriate for human company of this day and age. Some songs of times long gone had been… Ah, interesting.

Maglor amused himself for a short while trying to imagine Louis' reaction to some of them. Maglor was… Pretty sure he’d be either amused or entirely too scandalised for no real reason. Louis, like Ismérie, could be so touchy on the strangest subjects…

The most graphic song of human origin he knew must have been a Spartan one. Or perhaps it had been written by an Athenian trying to get a rise from the Spartans. That… Happened far too frequently at that time, admittedly.

Though the Spartans hadn’t been the last to poke at the Athenians in turn so…

In Maglor’s opinion, Spartans had known how to party even if they were as a rule completely insane, and far too war and religion oriented to be sane company for long.

Of course, one could always argue that Maglor wasn’t entirely sane, but even then, Maglor had had to leave Sparta sooner than he had planned.

To be fair, there had been the threat of slavery coming up far too often in conversation, so… Maglor had considered that, lover or no lover, the better part of valour was to go discover some other area of Greece.

Maglor spent the rest of the night distracted, thinking back on one of his travels in Ancient Greece, and then songs, and how shocked Louis might find it to discover all the things Maglor had gotten up to at that time.

The kind of fun he rarely ever let himself feel in all his time among mortals.

Maglor was so distracted actually that the rising of the sun surprised him.

Perhaps he should have gone to Greece, instead of France.

Hm… Next time he needed to move perhaps.

Louis took no time to awaken, stressed as he already was, even in his sleep.

“Well, good morning I guess.”

“It is a good morning indeed. Now, let’s go.”

It was clear enough that Louis wanted to ask where, but Maglor just pulled him up and pulled him with him when he left the street… Alongside a lot of the homeless people.

“Why is everyone leaving?”

“Because we gathered there to sleep so someone will have alerted the city guards. Now that the sun is up, they’ll come soon to disperse everyone, and I have other plans for today than ending up in jail for something like having no roof over my head, thank you.”

Louis looked bothered by the idea.

He followed Maglor to a slightly more rich part of the city: the streets were paved, the buildings looked neater, newer, empty of homeless people. It wasn’t the outrageously rich streets with the beautiful mansions that had flowers on all the windows, but it was clearly not the same streets of dirt and poverty that they had slept in.

“If you want to go to classes, I can keep your bags for now, and I’ll stay around here so you can come back to me for them when you’re done.”

“No, it’s fine. We need to find a place to live anyway.”

“Before that, my dear, we need money.”

Louis nodded, looking tired. If it was that easy to earn money…

Much to the younger man’s despair, they spent several nights in the street. Maglor was sorry to see how easy it was for Louis to give in to misery at the first personal difficulty when the young man was usually very vocal about unfairness and justice, and helping those who needed it.

Maglor guessed it was always easier to act or to stay hopeful when at the end of the day, you got to go back home and forget the problems you had been working to solve. Things were always different when there were problems you had to live with yourselves.

However, as food prices became more affordable, here and there, slowly, over a few days shops started to open again, trying to gain consumers by being first there without losing money by reopening too soon.

So jobs were still pretty scarce, but if one knew how to argue with the shop owners, there were enough menial tasks to do here and there to get a somewhat decent pay day, and so money for a cheap place to rent.

So Maglor encouraged Louis to go back to school. Let him not waste his chance, and he promised to meet him at Ismérie’s tavern that evening. He himself would look for a place to rent for them both.

To say that Louis spent the day fretting wouldn’t be too far from the truth, however he found himself with so much work to catch up on what he had missed that he appreciated that Maglor had pushed him to come back.

By evening, when he got to the tavern, Louis found Maglor already there and waiting for him, looking clean and fresh. Joséphine was there and avoided looking at him, which Louis couldn’t help but note with slight resentment.

“I take it you found something?” Louis said, sitting next to Maglor.

“Indeed.”

Admittedly, it had been pure luck. Louis was either going to love it or hate it, but a room was a room. They shared a drink with Ismérie at the tavern, and then left again, Maglor leading Louis to a building that looked like nothing, where he entered by the front door, and led Louis to the top floor… To a large attic room, fully furnished, with an incredible view:

From their apartment, they could see the rooftops of Paris, and the infinite sky over it. The buildings were all different: mismatched giants with slate roofs rising toward the heavens. The sky overhead was reflected in the glasses of windows in surprising little splashes of colour among the dull dirty grey of slightly cracked walls.

“So, the owner warned me that it can get pretty cold in winter, and pretty hot in summer, but rain never enters it, neither does wind, and it’s not going to be invaded by the city guards, and it’s pretty cheap. Also the only thing I actually found available and didn’t cost half our weight in gold.”

“It’s perfect. Also the view’s nice.”

The view was more than nice in Maglor’s opinion, but fine.

“There’s only one bed but there’s also a couch so we can…”

“We can share, Max. I’m pretty happy with sharing.”