Flying in with the Snow is (winterhawk) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-02-15 15:42:00 |
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Elen síla lumenn’ omentielvo
Who: Chetan Winter / Malcolm Darcy
What: Journal comparisons
Where: MacMullan's Irish Pub
When: End of January.
Midnight,
follows sunset
the darkness descending
until it disappears into
the stars.
Elen síla lumenn’ omentielvo
Leaving the journal open on the table Chay took a quick shower and changed into the aforementioned [and slightly sunbleached] red t-shirt and blue jeans. At least these ones weren’t as threadbare as some of the ones he wore out to the dig site. His hair pulled back into the smallest of ponytails. It was getting so long that he was thinking about getting it cut again. At least it wasn’t long enough to be braided, and the ponytail would keep it from getting in his face. With his wet towel he gave his boots a brief wiping off before he pulled them back onto his feet. He wasn’t going there looking sloppy.
He tugged thoughtfully at the shirt he wore, tucking it down into his jeans, he really should buy some more t-shirts, but red, he said, and red was what he would have to wear this time. Probably he was meeting an executive sort and should have worn a tie. Ah well, hindsight can be the bitch sometimes. He would come as he was, at least the writer on the other side of the journal hadn’t been squeamish about drinking dark beer and scotch whisky.
Slipping his amulet’s pouch around his neck and gave a final tug to the bottom of his jeans to make sure they covered enough of his boots he rose to his feet before snapping closed the open book. Perhaps at the Pub there would be answers to the many questions that were running around his head. and there will be multiple pints, a cheese or fruit tray, and perhaps fish and chips Well. Dinner wasn’t really mentioned but he supposed that Malcolm wouldn’t mind. Don’t forget out pipe and book As if he could. With that laughter still on his lips [and in his head] he drove the half hour east into town.
It generally took a lot to get Malcolm to go further into town when he had a day off. But Legolas was insistent -- bordering on shrill -- and the possibility of someone else knowing the weird language that Legolas had used with Aragorn was one to investigate. Maybe there was more people from those films. Wouldn’t that be a good thing? He hoped so. So he pulled his black coat over his previously-identified blue jumper, shoved the journal in his backpack, told Gemma he’d be back in a little bit, and went to catch the bus. He could drink a pint and meet someone new. It would keep his mind off of worrying about Spencer, and that was important. He’d worry himself to death otherwise, and what use would that be?
Are Men so vulnerable that worry would kill? the Elf asked as they rode along, the lights of Vegas glittering in the cool January night. Or this is another of your exaggerations for emphasis.
“Emphasis,” Malcolm muttered under his breath, trying not to look like the nutter who talked to himself on the bus. The last thing he needed was a psychiatric evaluation. He’d be deported in no time flat.
Chay sat in his truck for a few minutes watching the people entering and exiting the pub.. He had arrived about 7 or 8 minutes earlier than he thought that he would and felt a jumble of nerves twitching around inside. Still how bad could it be really? It wasn’t like he hadn’t done anything like that before. There was always new people from other museums showing up for just a few days at a time at the main dig site. It would be just like that. besides it will be fun meeting someone else At least it sure beat retelling stories from his grandfather at the RV park good stories too, I like the ones about the bear, but not the spider ones, you can start leaving those out while no one but the voice in his head was listening. Maybe he would invest in an audio book next time. After only a few more minutes of wasting time, Chay decided it was time to go in and wait inside. He shoved his way into his jacket and tucked his amulet pouch under the neck of his tee.
He pulled open the door of the Pub and breathed in slightly. The smell of smoke wasn’t overpowering, at least. Some of the casino’s were getting hard to breath in, even for someone who did pipe smoked. Without knowing whether or not his companion for the evening did he found a place that faced the door at the edge of the bar and ordered a Black and Tan. They could move further away the sounds of video poker and a random slot machine shortly.
It wasn’t hard to spot Malcolm when he arrived. And not from the backpack, nor the blue shirt, but by the way his eyes were already searching the room before he even had stepped through the door and Chay rose to his feet and strode confidently towards the other man, his hand outstretched in greeting.
“I could almost have known you anywhere, I’m Chetan Winters.”
Malcolm was startled by the confident greeting. He looked for a moment like a deer in the headlights, completely lost. Then, finally, his manners and brain kicked in, rather all at once. “Yes, hullo, a pleasure, I’m Malcolm. Malcolm Darcy. Blue jumper and all, I suppose,” he said, almost apologetically, returning the handshake without further hesitation. His accent hadn’t thinned at all with his handful of years in the States, still that firmly-learned middle-class London diction, but it matched his boyishly handsome face somehow, all wide dark eyes and lovely dark curls, a charmingly dishevelled mess. “I haven’t kept you waiting terribly long, have I?”
Chay tilted his head slightly towards the bar area. “Nope. Just got here myself and barely had a sip out of my beer.” He was only slightly taken back by the almost pure English accent, as the sound was not so misplaced in the pub. Don’t scare him off Chetan, the accent sounds familiar He refrained from shuffling the boyish curls by tucking his hands into his back pockets and lead the way back to the edge of the bar where he had been standing. “Are you here by way of Great Britain? Or Australia? I can never tell the difference by the accent. Too similar to my ears.” Chay grinned as he leaned on the edge of the bar and waggled a hand at the bartender, Fred, who was at the other end. “The first one is on me, but I have to warn you they go down too easy here.”
“Britain, yes. Lived in London for ages,” Malcolm confirmed. “But here I am, and it’s a long, convoluted story as to how, really. A pint of decent lager would be marvellous though, ta. Cheers.” He nodded the last at the bartender, who set about drawing the pint. He turned his attention back to Chay, an easy kind of smile on his face, perfectly polite. “What about you? You’re ... oh, God, I’m going to bollocks this right up, we don’t get taught the right terms in the UK, I know it. You’re Native American? Is that right?”
“Quite correct. From the Sioux nation peoples in the Dakotas. Though I spent more time traveling with my parents then living on the reservation. They always said I was a Thursday’s child, just happened to be born on the wrong day of the week.” Chay chuckled at his father’s words. Well at least that was an extra thought that was his own, and not tied to the strange one floating around. I don’t float, I reside here, thank you very much. I can’t tell you how much I was looking forward to this meeting with you since we arranged it. The journal is strange enough,but to find someone else that has a different language in theirs too. I know some of what it isn’t. It definitely is not one of the The Tribes, nor a South American countries, nor Russian, though my skill at reading that fails me sometimes.” Chay gathered up his drink as soon as Malcolm’s arrived and motioned toward one of the tables nearer the pubs fireplaces. “Oh.. I must know, do you smoke? I have a pipe, but I will keep it in my pocket if it bothers you.”
“No, go ahead, I’ve had more than a few fags in my time, it’s fine,” Malcolm said, following him gamely enough. He settled down at the table, and shed his coat and backpack, grateful for the fireplace and its warmth. While Nevada winters were gentler than the ones he’d accustomed to as a boy, he still wasn’t much a fan of the cold. “The books are really odd, I give you that, and the language ... the language is strange. If it’s the same. I don’t know how many weird calligraphy scripts there are out there. But this one is weird. It reminds me of some odd combo of Welsh and Russian when it’s spoken aloud. Pretty. But dead odd, really.”
Slipping off his leather coat he settled it onto the chair behind him and pulled out the small black journal. “So you have heard it spoken aloud. That is good then, we might be able to make some headway with that. “ The chair by the fire were really comfortable and a table was set between. Chay tapped out his pipe into the ashtray and made sure it is clean before refilling it and leaving the tobacco bag and journal sitting out and took a sip of his beer before lighting his pipe and holding it up to the eastern side of the room before taking his first thoughtful puffs.
“I should have brought more than one then, I might have some ‘emergency’ papers in the bag though. I have only had my copy of the book for a few days. For someone who makes a life’s work out of studying the ancient past, I have never heard of anything like it. At first I thought it was already written in and tried to return it back to the print shoppe where I got it, but we can’t seem to find that place now, so I guess we’re stuck with it. Though I must admit, having it, seems to have grown on me. Where did you get yours? Maybe that would be a good starting point for trying to figure out the alternate language.”
Malcolm thought about the question for a moment, waving away the offer of papers and a smoke. “The book and key just came to me in the post, actually,” he said. “I thought it was a weird joke at first, but they’re real, very real.” He took a good swallow of his lager, then reached into his bag to pull out his own book. It was a beautiful thing, bound in sage green leather, and the leather was ornately worked with leaves and star-shaped flowers in silver. But the clasp was loveliest of all, a single leaf made of silver and enamel, the colour of the leaf a silvery green. It had seemed strange when Malcolm first received it, but now, after seeing Legolas’ things and the clasp of his cloak, the leaf was infinitely familiar, almost a comfort. “Does it look familiar at all, the leaf?”
“I don’t know anything about a key, just the journal.”
Guessing that “the post” meant that Malcolm received the journal in England, Chay nodded at the rest. “Strange when you receive items in the mail, that you don’t order.” Chay settled his pipe bowl down into the ashtray and wiped his beer dampened fingers onto a napkin as Malcolm brought out the lighter green book. “I am surprised that it isn’t the same style, but then people are different, why should the voices in our heads like the same things. It is very beautiful.”
Chay reached out and took the book in his hand turning it over and studying the flowers embossed into the leather. “They worked the leather with hand tools, or otherwise you would see a continuous line on the border. Here you can see where they stopped their cutting knife and changed direction to make the design. If it had been more recently worked they would have used a stamp machine or a modern swivel knife to cut the border. The flowers I don’t recognize at all, but they aren’t uniform so they aren’t stamped into it and then have the leaves worked around them.” He ran his thumb over the silver and enamel clasp, an entirely excited voice popped into his head, overriding his study of the leather work. That’s a Mallorn leaf. I never thought I would see that again. He tapped on it lightly. “Now.. There.. Malcolm. That, is something he recognizes. He says ‘Mallorn’ but that doesn’t mean anything to me, personally, that plant is not in any of the horticulture or biology books from my college’s, not even Berkley.”
Malcolm smiled. “That’s the name of it. Or so I’ve come to know. It’s a very rare, special tree. And the flowers, they’re undying, much like the trees. There’s a song about them that my bloke knows, I don’t understand it, but the name of the flowers is in it. Alfirin, they’re called. Does that ring a bell? For him, I mean.”
You could just ask who it is, who speaks to him. I thought Men were direct? Or are you determined to be maddening? Legolas said, his tone irritable.
Malcolm resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Instead, he opened the book to a page towards the back, full of elaborate, elegant script. It was completely unlike his normal handwriting, which was all up and down scrawl. This was calligraphy, painstakingly worked and impossibly lovely, and written with a native fluency. “Or maybe this is better,” he said softly.
“Alfirin?” Chay shook his head, no. He opened up his journal to an almost blank page and sketched a fairly accurate drawing of the flowers on the journal and the leaf next to some of the words of an Ogala prayer. ‘West is the spirit of water. It is the direction from which darkness comes. It is the power of change, the place of dreams, introspection and the unknown. The west signifies purity and strength.’ He added the two words next to them.
“The name of the flower doesn’t sound familiar, but ‘undying’ makes sense. It doesn’t really matter what the civilization is, there is always tales of some type of afterlife, that is said to exist. In some cases the spirit is a reincarnation, in some cases the spirit has it's journey to Wakȟáŋ Tȟáŋka." after finishing the drawing Chay looked at the journal entry. "yes, that looks very much like it, except yours is more.. Precise.. Like mine is only an imitation of it." Imitation? Oh now that got the voice in head frustrated and the words were sputtered out Imitation! I learned it properly! Unkle said so. It's just not as fancy as all that. "Hush.. I suppose that was the wrong word.." Chay smiled at Malcolm in apology. "More like it wasn't taught by a direct source if you understand."
Malcolm laughed a little, a soft sound, and he shook his head. The firelight was warm and played pleasantly over the planes of his face and the loops and whorls of his dark curls. “The voices, they’re opinionated. And never hesitate to let you know when they don’t approve, or at least, mine doesn’t,” he said, somewhere between sympathy and familiarity. Maybe it was time for directness. He was rubbish at being direct, but he could practically feel Legolas waiting with that demanding stare, the one that was almost always a prelude to a migraine. “What’s his name? If you don’t mind my asking. Because as near as I can tell, this language only comes from one source, as far as the fictional origins go.”
“Oh you have one of those types too? He’s normally not so quite so loud with his opinions about things. But I don’t mi- -” he paused momentarily.
I think he has an Elf in his head, since the words on his page are in Sindarin. But other’s knew that writing too, and not all of them were our allies at the time. Tell him my name is Frodo, that should be safe enough. But he has to promise first to give us his name after.
Chay’s eyebrows raised slightly at the name. He had read ‘That’ tome, back in a high school British Literature class and there were weeks of discussion during that time about the differences between the trilogy and the movies. Chay tapped lightly on his forehead. “Well he agrees, as long as you tell me who has taken residence inside your head too.” His blush was more apparent as he apologized. “I think this is the first time he has ever been, this cautious.”
Malcolm nodded. “No, of course, I understand,” he said soothingly. It was all awkward, wasn’t it? Awkward and embarrassing, and how well he understood. It wasn’t as if Malcolm enjoyed talking about Elves as real when the rest of the world would clearly have thought him crazy. It tended to make anyone cautious and embarrassed, never mind the rest of it. “It’s all rather tenuous, what’s happening there, or will happen or ... you know, I don’t really have a good grasp of what’s going on through that door. But these things happen, I suppose.” He huffed a little bit of a laugh, his long fingers tracing over the twists and turns of the calligraphy on the page. “His name’s Legolas. I know, I know, the pretty blond bloke who goes skateboarding on a shield, I know. I watched the films about two weeks ago, my memory’s pretty refreshed.”
The sigh of relief in his head was almost visible on Chay’s face. He had recognized the name as the only Elf in the Fellowship from the books and nodded toward the journal. “I remember the words ‘I go to find the sun’, while they were climbing the pass. Probably being from the Dakota’s where the winters are so cold, and waiting for a sunny day can be months long it was something that always stood out for me. And the arrow shooting expertise they showed in the movies. Two at once, wow. That rocked. He said to tell you that his name is Frodo. He hadn’t wanted me to mention the last name until he knew, but I don't think you nor Legolas will need that now. umm.. Mae govannen Legolas “ Chay pronounced it slowly trying to get the feel of the words on his tongue. It sound rightfully like a greeting, he put his folded hand to his chest and inclined his head slightly.
A chuckle slipped out when he lifted his head back up, and held up two fingers towards one of the waiters. “Should actually get something stronger after they deliver these.”
Whenever Legolas was excited, it reminded Malcolm of birdsong, the flurry of sounds and words and gestures, like a songbird in the underbrush leaping for the sky in exultant joy. It was too much to process all at once, but he was smiling. He could all but feel that joy and delight, an unmistakable current, and it was a marvellous thing to have as a counterpoint in his brain. That was really the essence of having someone there with him -- life was a fugue, point and counterpoint, all working in a perfect harmonic cycle, a mobius strip of sound. “I think that was pretty good,” he said. “I’m going to refrain from butchering the language, I was miserable at language classes in school. But he’s really chuffed, I mean, absolutely thrilled. There are others, from their group. Two others.”
Who? Who?
“Chuffed. I like that, describes it almost perfectly.” Chay shifted about in his chair trying to contain the bundle of energy that seemed to want to flow out his pores, he relit his pipe in an effort to keep them busy for the moment and for something to clear his thoughts. “It helped traveling with my parents while I was growing up. Have you meet them.. here.. in Las Vegas, I mean? Or were they in other countries. He seems to consider this to be a place called Eres Sëa and I think I have that accent incorrect for some reason..” WHO Chetan ask who!! and okay, okay.. I will ask.. They can be so insistent at times. He is anxious to know who they are?”
Malcolm chuckled. “No, here in Las Vegas. I’ve only ever met people with these voices and books here,” he clarified. “Legolas has spoken with Sam, the other Hobbit, remember that one? And I know the bloke with Aragorn. I mean, we’ve spoken a bit, he’s a good sort, really. Seems sort of fitting.” Malcolm had to smile a bit at that. Legolas was so impossibly fond of Aragorn that it was hard to think of him, or Jack for that matter, as anything other than the good sort, really. “That should be a comfort for him. They’re all fine. As best I understand it, anyway, they’re all fine.”
My Sam.
Frodo’s smile shone through Chay’s for a moment and he nodded slightly. “This is an awful lot to process after the journal, but perhaps those two doesn’t really surprise me. At least not for Sam, it was said in the appendices that he followed Frodo in the end. And if one would show up, it almost goes to follow that the other would be there.. or here.. This is confusing in two thoughts. You know. And Aragorn.. ” The Black and Tan had arrived and Chay quickly ordered two Jameson’s for them both and almost as an afterthought ordered a plate of Fish and Chips also.
He waited for Malcolm to order and the waiter to leave before he asked “Well Aragorn had elvish in his bloodlines, so I see how he would have made it here too. So I understand how you could talk to Aragorn’s.. keeper?.. I would like to meet him, at least he won’t think I am weird as heck, if you have already spoke to him.. and Frodo would be ecstatic. but how...“ phrasing the question was so tricky. “.. this doesn’t make any sense.. How could Legolas talk to Sam without you being around?”
“Oh!” Malcolm laughed. “Right, that’s the other part, isn’t it? God, I suppose I’m the bloody welcome wagon speech. Sorry I’m not better for it. I had a friend explain this to me when I first started writing in the book, too, so I suppose I was due.” He took a long swallow from the pint that had arrived, finding it remarkably steadying. It was almost like being back in England, save for the part where this was almost too picturesque, really. That, and nothing this weird ever happened to him in London. He settled in to continue, gathering his thoughts. “Right. So. There’s a key that should have come with the book. Mine looks like the clasp on the book, actually. So it opens a door in this old hotel downtown, called Passages. When you go through that door, you ... switch. You’d be riding shotgun for your voice, and he’ll be able to walk about. That’s how I mean. Legolas saw Sam there, through the door.”
But I do not have a key Frodo’s exuberance was brought to a halt at the thought and Chay had to take another drink to cover his unhappiness. Chin up, we can figure this out. “We didn’t get a key with the journal from the Print Shoppe. Just got it and a sketchbook., and if it looked like your clasp that would have surely been remarkable.” Chay lifts the journal by the spine and flips through the pages of the journal searching for something hopefully trapped between. “I think, we have been to that hotel though.. at least, we had explored an abandoned hotel downtown in the same area where we remember the shop being so those two have to be connected. We were able to go through the halls, the first floor, and the basement but the guest doors we tried, were all locked.” His head buzzed slightly as he smeared the circle of water on the table left by his glass in thought trying to piece back together their trip from the theatre to the print shop. He was certain he would have known a key if he had seen it.
“Apparently, they can look like anything, really,” Malcolm said. “Everyone’s is different. Just hunt for it, you might find it. If you can get into the hotel, then you ought to have a key. Some people have key cards, I think, anything that makes sense to their voice, really. See?” He tugged a leather thong out of the neck of his jumper, and there dangling was an intricately tooled key, more silver knotwork than anything else, and all the strands of it flowed into the matching mallorn leaf of enamel and silver at the hilt, the stem forming the loop through which the piece of leather was threaded. The piece of metal and enamel glittered in the firelight, strangely beautiful and organic, as if it had grown on a tree just that way. “It suits him. It’s his key.”
Chay whistled softly under his breath. “That is quite a bit of silver to be used in a key. And it matches perfectly with the journal clasp, there is no denying that the two of them are together. So I just have to find something in common with a plain black snake-skinned journal with blue papers. Would have been easy if it was my pipe, wouldn’t it or the one that we use when I am out at a dig. Except I have had both of them for years.” Chay chuckled at that thought, if there was something he could have equated with Frodo of The Shire folk it was that... not quite and his eyes turned down towards his hands. “hmm.. seems to be a lucky thing we don’t have any shiny golden rings either, thank Wakȟáŋ Tȟáŋka for that.”
Malcolm chuckled. “Yeah, a lack of rings is for the best, I think,” he agreed. “I don’t suppose I’ve been much help on the strange writing front. I can’t really read it or write it, I’m just able to recognise it when I see it. So that’s something, anyway. But it’ll be easy to get in contact with Jack. Aragorn will want to see your chap straight away, most likely. He was pretty desperate to see mine, as it stood.”
And it has been a while since I saw him last, for that matter, Legolas added testily.
Yet again, Malcolm resisted the urge to roll his eyes and sigh. “There’s been some things going on lately, I haven’t made it through very much, but I probably will soon, with stuff getting back to normal. It’s important to try to find a balance. It’s your life, too. He doesn’t get to monopolise it,” he said, echoing advice Spencer had given him.
“Well we really won’t be going anywhere if we don’t figure out this key issue. We were able to enter the hotel so that is a start.” Without realizing what he had been doing on the same page with the sketch of the Mallorn leaf and flowers Chay adds the words ‘Jack/Aragorn’ the page was starting to get cluttered, but at least having it wrote down would remind him what he and Malcolm had discussed. “Well you have definitely been helpful in getting him to tell me who he is. Never thought to just ask, I would have thought myself certifiably crazy.” He downed the rest of his Jameson and considered the script written in both their journals. “I think knowing the origin of the script will help, though the words won’t make sense at least. Would be like trying to read Viking Runes, unless they are trying to spell English words with their letters, the words that are formed won’t make any sense, I think when Mr. Tolkien was writing the books it was with the thought of creating a separate language for his elves..” He drummed his fingers on his desk trying to remember back to his Literature class. “Maybe reading Beowulf would help. I seem to recall something about that having an influence on him.” He chuckled. “I’m sorry, I have gotten caught up in the mystery of it. What is it that you do? I can sort of see how maybe a hobbit would come in contact with the head of an Indian, but how about you an Elf?”
Malcolm shrugged. “I’m a musician. A cellist, mostly. I’ve no idea how I came to have any of this happen to me. I’m not really terribly remarkable at all, honestly. Lucky, in some respects, but not remarkable. I don’t know if it runs in families or anything, though I think it might -- I know of a few people who have siblings with voices and books and all. So maybe it’s got something genetic to it,” he mused. “But there’s nothing about me that’s particularly Elf-like, I don’t think. I think I miss the ocean like he does, but for different reasons. Very different.”
“Tolkien’s elves were always mentioned to be singing in both Lorien and Rivendell. It wouldn’t surprise me if that’s how Legolas made his connection with you. You might want to look at that script that he left in your journal, see if there is some sequences of ‘letters’ that repeat themselves. Maybe it was a song he was writing down. Makes me wonder what would happen if you set a note for each of the letters and played it as music. And that really probably sounds crazy...”
Chay paused as he considered the possibility of genetics. “...As for being a familial or genetic thing, it’s possible. Tales were fairly commonplace among the indians of voices of long gone grandfather’s being heard, even without some of our rituals. I didn’t start hearing Frodo until.. about a week ago while I was digging up the mastodon.. he called it an oliphaunt. I know my younger brother hadn’t mentioned anything of the sort. And my parents, well it really wouldn’t be something that they would discuss with their kids anyways. However, I do know that neither of them had ever been to Vegas for an extended amount of time.”
“Maybe it’s this city, then. Who knows? It’s hard to say. I just feel like I am fantastically ordinary and I’m not entirely sure why this is happening to me. But maybe that’s the point. I’m not so bloody famous or important that my checking out for a day so Legolas can go do ... whatever he needs to do will change the world or anything. I am so singularly unimportant and unremarkable, it hardly matters if my life gets put on pause for a while, really. There are thousands of cellists in the world. I’m just a blip on the proverbial radar,” Malcolm said, and he shrugged. His pint was mostly gone, and he considered the shot of whisky that had arrived with some trepidation. Slowly. If he paced himself slowly, he’d be fine. Wasn’t that what he always said? But it was tempting, and somehow, explaining all of this to someone else left him feeling heavy, worn down. Their lives were run, more or less, by the needs of fictional people, fictional people who lived in really hazardous times and places, because that was the stuff that made for good fiction, not nice days with kittens and ice cream. What happened if Legolas died doing God-knew-what through the door? What would happen to him? Would he die, too? What if something happened to Gemma’s weirdo knight-monk, or to Tim when Spencer was gone? It was a dreadful thing to think about.
In perhaps one of his dumber moves, Malcolm drank the shot, ignoring all of the warnings ever printed on any bottle of prescription pain pills to date.
Chay shakes his head. “Ordinary? No way, I’m impressed that you are a cellist. I could never play an instrument, I don’t have the talent in these fingers to make music, the nearest thing to making music I can do is playing the drum. But that really isn’t much more than keeping a steady beat. Maybe what you need is an Elf to help you make music, he supplying you the notes and you supplying the talent to play. I would love to hear what you both come up with music wise.”
He paused as the basket of fish and chips arrived and Frodo eyed it hungrily. “We all need a ‘check out ‘ day, especially if you enjoy what you do in your work. I don’t take many ‘weekends’ away from my dig site, I take nights off, hard to dig after dark or otherwise I would be out there 24/7, but I do find that when I do take some time off it brings more clarity and energy when I return to it.”
“I don’t get a lot of time off,” Malcolm explained. “And I’ve been burning through what I do have. Music is so competitive, it would be very easy to replace me, and there goes my steady paycheque and health insurance. So I have to keep close to it if I want to keep the job. It just seems like such a small worry in the face of like, fate of the bloody free world and all that.” The food wasn’t even appetizing. He supposed that was probably a warning flag of some sort or another, but he didn’t give it much consideration. “Some lives are just more important, I suppose. Some people do bigger things.”
“Hmmm, yeah my job isn’t that important in the grand scale of things. I am just glad that it isn't restricted to just mining work and writing reports. I am sort of on leave of absence at the moment, but even still I feel the need to let the Exec’s know at our company where they can find a profitable vein while I am working on my mastodon.” Chay couldn’t help but notice Malcolm’s lack of interest in the fish and chips, the other man looked to be just moving them around his plate. He sat down his fork. “Do you and Lego ever get a chance to get out of the city? The canyon’s west of here can be really beautiful in the late afternoons.You just have to make sure you come stocked with a camera, bottled water and a pretty reliable flashlight.. The sun sets awfully quick out there.”
Malcolm shook his head. “Not much, but if my sister gets the wilderness bug, I’ve at least got a suggestion for her, so that’s something,” he said with a softly huffed laugh. “I’ve been fairly urban lately. But that’s a consequence of upbringing. It’s hard to feel at home outside of a city, really.” It hadn’t always been so, but that was life. When could things ever be like they were at university? He had a job to think about, steady employment to keep, work to do, music to write, additional gigs to find, never mind the pressure of the door situation. Nothing was simple anymore, and the space to just wander out into the canyons seemed unfathomable.
“I would make sure she would get the full ‘wilderness’ experience, if she is up for it. Cactus tacos and all, if she went with me. But if the voice in your head is as opinionated as you said, then maybe getting a drive around the desert countrysides would settle him down for a couple hours at least. Might be better than having to be gone for days at a time. The desert can trick you in how beautiful it can be at certain hours a day. Late afternoons and early mornings are best since it isn’t as hot and the sun is that right shade of red. East and mornings are for new beginnings and all.”
He ran his finger along the side of the plate collecting some of the ketchup he had put on the chips and slipped it into his mouth. “I have the opposite problem. Being in the city begins to feel closed in, so I do understand where you’re coming from. I spent a lot of my winter childhood with my uncle on his ranch, while my parents worked. It’s all about the upbringing, I like the feel of my feet in the dirt as opposed to sidewalks. And the brush of wind against the cheeks instead of.. well the stifling heat of the casinos. I suppose that’s why I chose the pub instead of those. It has a more.. comfortable.. feeling.”
“Casinos, God,” Malcolm said, laughing a little and shaking his head. “I work at the Venetian, I play for one of their shows, and they are bloody irritating. The noise and the people and all of it, Christ. Not a fan, not in the least. I mean, I’ve lived some crowded places, I lived in London for fuck’s sake, but there’s just something about casinos that set my teeth right on edge, every time.”
He discovered that he liked the sound of Malcolm’s laughter, and he noticed that even without them hearing the conversation that it brought smiles to some of the other tables near them. “I like people watching, but going to casinos can be rather draining. If I play it’s at one of the gaming tables, and an usually an inexpensive one at that, where my odds are better than shoveling money into a machine.”
“So you play at The Venetian? I think I have been there once, if that is the one with the waterfall in the entranceway? I didn’t stay in there very long. I got some strange looks, like the guests expected that I should be working or something, instead of being a tourist. A couple of them were surprised when I told them I didn’t know where the champagne bar was.” Chay rolled his eyes upwards. “The waterfall was all that I had come to see and.. well.. I wasn’t really as impressed as I suppose they had hoped tourists should be.”
Malcolm huffed and shrugged. “You know, honestly? I don’t even notice the interior anymore. I go in the stage door of the theatre, stick to my green room and the orchestra pit, and try not to get mistaken for a waiter in my tux,” he admitted. “Tourists are really the fucking worst, though. Demanding and completely oblivious to the world around them and they get really bloody huffy if you don’t turn out to be someone willing to kiss their poorly-dressed arses and be glad for the privilege.” He paused. “And I, apparently, have a lot of feelings about this. Sorry, sorry.”
“No apology necessary, Malcolm. I can imagine what having to wear a tux around the casino would be like, yeesh, what a nightmare. I feel your pain, it’s like when tourists come onto the reservations and are surprised we aren’t wearing a full headdress and buckskin all the time. Don’t you ever play for the ‘fun of it’ just for the pure joy of making music that you love? Part of the reason that I left the main dig in Red Rock and went on a search of my own. You can’t hear your own music if it is covered up by the cacophony of sound surrounding you. You have nearly convinced me that I really should make you come with me out to the canyon one day. The quiet and serenity you find is unbelievable. And I won't even put you to work.”
“I don’t think I really could do the work, honestly. But maybe coming out there wouldn’t be a bad thing,” Malcolm said thoughtfully. Everyone was on him lately to take a break from the city, from the madness of it all. Maybe there was some merit to it. He wouldn’t know until he tried, he supposed. Maybe a bit more courage and flexibility was called for. After all, his daily life in Vegas thus far hadn’t been the most exciting and wonderful. Breaking ranks and taking a risk might just help. “Alright, yeah. You’ve got me. I’m not some incredible hiker or anything, mind, but if you promise to take it easy on me, I wouldn’t mind seeing it out there.”
“I think I can arrange keeping hiking to a minimum. I usually ride my motorcycle out to where I am working, but we should be able to get out there with a side x side 4 wheeler. Let me call around for a rental and then you have room to put your cello. And I can toss a cooler of bottled waters into the back. I’ll work on digging out my mastodon, and you can work on your cello or yoga maybe. I heard that was very relaxing.” Chay adds the note to his string of flower-dy text in the journal to include 4-wheel drive rentals. “Just make sure you pack some sunscreen, since even on a cool day you can get burned out there.”
“I think the cello will have to stay home, but yoga’s doable. Extremes of temperature and humidity can ruin the instrument, and she’s an old and temperamental mistress,” Malcolm demurred. “Yoga sounds really great actually, especially in some sunshine. It’s good to just move, honestly.”
“Celebrating in the sun, loosens up both the muscles of the body and the spirit. I usually cook food I find out there, but if you rather have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I can bring those along instead. It’s not really food you have to worry about in the canyon. It’s keeping yourself well hydrated. Being out there..” Chay sighs almost happily. “..there is just no way to describe Maka* properly.”
“I’ll just trust you, shall I?” Malcolm suggested. Granted, a part of his brain suggested, this could all be some kind of horrible plot to get him out in the middle of nowhere and kill him, but that seemed unlikely. That sort of thing only happened in terrible made-for-telly films, and he wasn’t nearly interesting, handsome, or exciting enough to qualify for a film of any calibre, really. He liked Chay well enough, and if it went badly, well. He’d figure out what to do. That was called being resourceful. And he didn’t think it would. Maybe he was too trusting. He supposed Gemma would tell him he was. “You’ve the experience here, so I defer, naturally.”
“Awesomeness, cactus, onion, and cheese tacos it is.” and bacon, you promised Chay’s smile lit across his face. “There is a few trees in the area so that might make your Elf happy for a day or two. They aren’t a large sort, but I could give you and him my GPS unit while you are out there and if he wants to go explore along the canyon you can find your way back at least., no matter how circular the route ends up being.” He drained his pint and considered the thought of getting another when he remembered part of what he had originally called Malcolm up here for. “Do you mind if I copy own your ‘Legolas’ writing in my sketchbook. Maybe I can use it, to figure out the language between the two?”
“Sure, yeah, of course,” Malcolm said, sliding the book across the table to him without a second thought. Some part of his brain kept wondering if he was being too trusting, but that was harsh, and he knew it. The world wasn’t out to get him. He didn’t matter enough for that. “No worries at all. I don’t think it’s anything confidential. I wouldn’t be able to see it if it was, I suppose, if I understand how these things work.”
Chay flipped open a blank page in his sketchbook and began to copy the elvish letters. “So if it’s displayed it’s public knowledge, so there must be a way to send things privately. That might be something worth looking into, not that I do much of anything private. I suppose that’s what cellphones are for.” He concentrated for a moment on a section, before moving on. that letter is wrong you need to add the accent dots across the top. “He did use a lot of creative flourishes in there, didn’t he? I think that is what the differences are in our two scripts. Yours is more practised and free flowing. I can almost ‘feel’ the difference as I write the letters down, it’s like when I went to the Mayan temple with my father and copied some of the pictographs that were said to be their letters. It is never as free flowing as your own writing in your own language.”
“I think ... I think for Elves, a lot of things are art. Including writing,” Malcolm posed thoughtfully, looking at the script himself. Sometimes, it was easy to forget how foreign it was; Legolas accepted the words as absolutely average, and there were days, when the pain was bad and his migraines were at an excruciating pitch, that he felt almost as if the Elf was running the show, or at least had tried to take the wheel to help him along, and everything was happening out of a combination of Legolas’ will and Malcolm’s highly developed sense of autopilot. There was something to be said for playing the same show, twice or thrice daily, five or six days a week. He knew it, inside and out, and it took no further input than muscle memory and some innate sense of musicality which, given how much Legolas sang, the Elf clearly seemed to have. Malcolm appreciated that, as off-putting as it felt. It meant, in the end, that things that ought to have been bizarre, like the writing and the language Legolas spoke, started to feel like an average, commonplace thing. Looking at the script now, however, Malcolm could see it for its beautiful and strange oddity -- the swirls and flourishes, the strange script, the way it flowed like a river of sounds, reflecting the sound of Elvish itself, the musical birdsong of it, the way everything felt sung. There was a kind of magic to that, Malcolm thought, if you were the sort to believe in magic, and lately, he found that he was. How else could any of this be explained, anyway?
“It’s a beautiful thing, regardless. There’s others who can write in it. Aragorn, I think, can use it, too. It seems common there, or at least, widely-known,” Malcolm added at last, cognizant of the fact that he’d just lapsed into awkward, staring-off-into-space silence. Liquor and percodan were not a good combo.
Jack/Aragorn, right. Chay nodded as he rounded out the last of the lettering, he had noted the pause in Malcolm speech pattern and the long silent staring at the lettering. He slid the verde journal back towards Malcolm. “It is a beautiful writing when you really look at it. Not so hard as Viking runes, but those were chiseled so they had to have a lot of hard straight lines...” He closed his own journal and fondly tucked it back into his jacket pocket along with his sketchbook. Their pipe had long since gone out so he tapped the bowl into the ash tray. “Say..this may sound intrusive but, are you okay? You had seemed to have zoned out for well over a minute.”
“Sorry, I’m sorry,” Malcolm apologised immediately. “It’s the liquor, I think, I don’t drink much, I think it hit me rather harder than I anticipated, that’s all.” He shrugged, his cheeks pinking a bit, but he always blushed easily. “It’s also ... I don’t get a lot of time to think about this stuff, and talk about it. It’s kind of this great unspoken thing, the white elephant in the room, you know? But being able to think about it and talk about it, it puts things in perspective. I suppose I just chewed on it all a bit long.”
“Don’t apologize, I have to watch how much I drink too. Fire water and Wild Indians were not quite a good combination back 150 years ago. It is a lot to take in when you start talking about it, not like you can just talk about it to just anybody. I am glad you are indulging me with your experience and insights. It gives me someone to bounce ideas off of without my colleagues from the museum or the mine thinking that white jackets, shots, and happy drugs and all that should be involved.” He ran his finger around the rim of his empty glass thoughtfully. “If you aren’t so use to drinking, do you need a lift to your place? I am staying at an RV park west of here, so I have to drive my truck, anyways.”
“That’d be brilliant. I took the bus, but well, it’s the bus. I try not to drive much if I can avoid it, anyway,” Malcolm said, with genuine appreciation. “Suppose it’s responsible in these sorts of situations. Hadn’t really planned for it that way. But being able to avoid said bus would be marvellous. Once you get into the evening, the nutters come out.” He paused, then smiled ruefully, something sharp and yet playful about it. His floppy hair and young face tended to contribute to the playful. “Of course, book and key and Elvish considered, we might just be those nutters, so I suppose I can’t be too disparaging, really.”
Chay laughed out at that. “Yeah I was thinking the same thing. We are Nutters. Two grown men talking about the voices in their head, and writing down letters to a language, that was only used by characters that existed in a book. It almost sounds like a night with too much peyote smoke, and not enough sleep. We would make a killing around town selling t-shirts that say things like ‘the voices in my head say to go play golf’ or most likely ‘the voice in my head is telling me to drink. heavily’ but then we would have to drop our prices after a week and sell them for 3 for $10 to stay up with the competition of other tourist vendors.”
“You are awfully brave. Bus and Taxi drivers make me nervous around here. They probably take a test that asks them to explain the word ‘yield’ and if they get the definition correct they fail the test. If I go out to the main drag I usually park my truck at one of the hotels and walk the strip instead of driving it. Even at 3 a.m. the traffic pattern is the same nightmare as the one at 3 p.m.”
Malcolm shrugged a little and laughed. “You get used to it. This traffic is nothing compared to London, really,” he said, almost dismissively. “This city was designed for cars, at least. London was designed for ... well, it wasn’t actually designed. It just sort of happened and the Romans left us a bloody terrible legacy of strange streets that successive generations of Britons tried to make even more useless.”
Chay laughed loud enough to turn a couple of heads in their direction. “There is something to be said for the road designers. Somewhere along the way they learned that narrower lanes meant slower speeds or more accidents. So I guess we learned from a few mistakes back in the Henry Ford days. I’m sure the widths of the road probably date back to the size of horse and oxen drawn covered wagons or something. I think I would go crazy without my truck, but then my job takes me all across the midwest and western states. I guess that’s why I never settled down with a house on the reservation. Nutters would be staying in one spot for too long.”
*Maka= mother earth