History abandons us by AdmirableMonster

History abandons us

A rare thing happens.

In the stillness of the cellar beneath the estate of Roderick Burgess, the quality of the air changes.  Dream lifts his head, very slightly.  A light foot on the stair heralds a new visitor, who carries with him something of the heavy drowsiness of a summer evening.  He is dressed like any other human of the time period, in a three piece suit of light seersucker, with a flat cap on his head, though he is wearing a blue-black half mask in the shape of a butterfly.  It is not quite accurate to say that flowers spring up where he walks, but one or two hardy dandelions do put down roots and squeeze their way up through cracks in the stone, keeping well back from the god in his clear glass prison.

“Humans do keep the strangest things in their cellars,” says the visitor.  Somewhere at slight right angles where the aforementioned humans will not be able to see it, there is a crown upon his head, made of brambles with blowsy roses dripping down his forehead.

Dream watches him, but does not speak.

“I thought I felt a presence here,” continues the crowned figure.  “I do not think I have ever seen your face, O great Vala.  How amusing.  Or would that be embarrassing?”

He is no longer fully anchored to this place.  Dream can see the patchwork ways the lines of him flicker in and out, the ways he has put down roots to hold himself, but even those roots have begun to tear with the passage of the years.  

“Why are you here, Firstborn?” he asks now.  “This is not your time or place.”

“Well, one might argue it isn’t yours either.”  A languid shrug.  He takes off the mask, twirling it with one hand, revealing a pale and ageless face, with a wrinkling at the corners of the face that recalls the brown bark of a staid old oak.  “Roderick’s a good chap, throws some splendid parties.”  Fey eyes glitter in the dim illumination, but the only spark in them is reflected.  These are eyes that have never kindled with the brilliance of the first light.  

“You should have sailed away long ago,” Dream persists morosely.

“What a very silly thing to say to someone who might free you.”

Dream has already taken his measure.  “You will not free me.”

A light laugh.  “You are very certain.”  

To this, Dream does not reply.

“You are, I think, correct,” the apparition says, after a moment.  “But you should not be so sure about it.  I considered scuffing out the circle for you.  I don’t like to see a creature trapped.”

“You want me to ask you why,” Dream prompts him, after a moment.  He is forced to admit that even this is a respite, but he does not know what to do with it, not really.

“Do you know why?” counters his visitor.

Dream remains silent.

“No, why would you.”  There is a frustrated, ancient bitterness lurking in those eyes, papered over with a thin veneer of carelessness and a thicker layer of time-induced madness.  “Here you are, trapped by yet another one of the Secondborn who wishes to refuse the Gift of Men, and you’re just as good at understanding any of us as ever.”  

There is a cracking noise as a wayward sapling spears its way up from beneath the bottom wooden step.  Thin and pale and meager, it still has a wiry strength to it.  The scent of summer pollen in the air intensifies.

“Once I had a friend who was called kind as summer,” says the visitor.  “He sailed away long ago, but I never understood what sorts of summers had brought that to mind.”

“You would have lost fewer things if you had left when you were supposed to.”

This time he does reach out and put a hand flat against the crystal.  Tiny droplets of water form a foggy outline, condensing on exterior of the clear glass.  Not enough to break the circle.  “If I had abandoned this land, would it have meant my spouse’s safety?  They were long dead by the time my son left with his lover.”  A twisted grin.  “Or perhaps you mean I ought to have left when all of you called us the first time.  I was not born then, but if my people had gone, I know well enough what tragedies we would have witnessed, what darkness would have filled the land around us.”

He has a point.  Dream is silent.

“Why won’t I free you?”  Silently, bunches of mauve-leaved creeping charlie with its tiny violet flowers take root around him.  A bumblebee trundles clumsily out of apparently nowhere and begins to climb up his pant leg.  “I want you to know what it is to be abandoned.  I will leave you as you left us, stripped and defenseless before an enemy you cannot fight.”

He is trembling.  Two thorns emerge from the side of his face, just beneath his eye, and a blink later, a rose blossoms in the socket, forcing its greedy way past the eyeball.  He winces and puts a hand to his face, roughly shoving the thorns back into his flesh.  He plucks the rose with an ugly tearing sound and lets it drop, just outside the circle.

“Farewell, proud Irmo.  We will not meet again.”

Turning on his heel, he strides back to the downward stairs.

“Farewell, Thranduil,” murmurs Dream.  “I hope someday you allow yourself to be released.”  The only appearance the Elf gives of having heard him is a tiny spasm in his right hand, but he climbs away and out of sight.

The plants wither and dissipate to dust.  The bumblebee keeps Dream company for several more hours before buzzing away into the darkness.