"Men do not have yrch, Lindir." Elrond rubbed his temples and gave the minstrel a hard look, "You have not been studying."
"That is not a man-dog!" Lindir protested, "Man-dogs are similar to man-wolves, or wargs!"
"This is a type of man-dog." The more aged elf answered, "And should be dubbed �Waterfall.�"
"Oh really?" The minstrel looked doubtful, "Really? Are you sure?"
"Yes, this is a dog," I clipped Elf�s leash back on and tied him to the table leg, far away from Lord Elrond. In the same motion, I stuck a large rawhide bone (you have to travel prepared) into Elf�s jaws, and he bit at it noisily, "This may be a bit better. Less drool."
"Of course. Now, about your man-verse," Elrond walked over to an open-to-air window in the study and happened to catch his attentions on a large pile of ancient scrolls of elven lore. And these, of course, were slightly damp. His brows furrowed again, "Lindir! What is this? Fall spray?"
"YES." Lindir gave me a big wink (which would not cause wrinkles) and side-kicked my dog, "It IS." The elven lord seemed to believe us and Lindir picked up the passport again, flipping through the pages. "Ooh." The elf seemed slightly excited, "What is this?" Between his long and fair bent fingers, he gripped the tiny corner of a photograph I had stuck into the picture, "Man-painting?!"
"Not quite. Man-magic." I decided to win some points, "You see, we have these magical devices which will allow us to capture moments of life on little pieces of shiny man-paper."
"Oh. Man-magic!" Elrond had wandered off and Lindir was poking at my picture interested, "Tell me more about man-magic-paintings!"
"Actually," I heaved a huge sigh, "Photographs are not as amazing as you deem them." The elf was listening and Elf was drooling on the table leg, having dropped the rawhide bone, "I find that there is little meaning in still life, and no matter what type of �magic� were employed, so to speak, a moment can never be captured. Furthermore, only a limited amount of moments can be captured and whatever their subjects, photographs haunt. If they portray happy events, they tempt you to look back into the past, hungrily, and if you do so, how can you be optimistic, and thus, how can the human race survive and look onwards into the future? Likewise, if it was of a poor moment, then, a picture most likely would not have been taken, but if it had, a sense of disparity and hopelessness would be instilled."
"Man-wisdom." Lindir frowned, and drew out a silver flute, running his long fingers along it, "I am still listening."
"You see, most pictures one tends to keep are those of moments of the past they wish to keep always fresh in mind, and to a certain extent, there is a limit to how many moments you can store. What if, then, there are too many fond moments of the past to be stored, and the new ones not as precious? Will the future then be discarded? Or simply ignored?" I pressed, and the elf looked at me blankly, "Time, either in elf terms of in man terms will always continue to move. Photographs simply serve purposes. We have oft heard the terms that from the past, we must learn. Yes, still pictures can allow us to witness events we otherwise would not have, and from these we can learn, and these serve a general more than a personal purpose. For many years, photographs have served as proofs, until the development of alteration techniques."
"Man-minds." Lindir shook his head, "What folly! Even worse than hobbit-stilts!"
"I believe that one should not dwell in the past, with all this sentimental nonsense." Elf stopped drooling and came over for a pat, "We should all be looking forward, and into the future. Sure, fate and destiny seem to shape this, but at least, to a certain degree, I can control what is to happen. These forces are not actually proven to exist, but rather are sensed, similarly to centrifugal forces. Odd, eh?"
"Very." The minstrel placed down his flute, "You have not told me any of this photograph, though. If you do not believe in the past, then why keep this?"
"Oh, this little clip." I fingered the worn edge of a rather aged photograph, seemingly only capturing the afternoon sun filtering through draperies onto my security blanket, one of many, "It just lets me bring my blanket to places I normally would not be able to." Lindir raised an eyebrow, "I also do this with Elf. There is a picture of him somewhere, but I can hardly bring a dog on a week trip overseas. These pictures are used to inspire my imagination, that is, what could possibly happen if the subjects �were� in certain situations."
"I see." Lindir nodded, but then paused, "Actually, maybe not. Elf-vision is failing me."
"Maybe then, you need glasses." I suggested, "When was the last time you had an eye examination?"
"ELF-GLASSES?" The elf roared, laughing, "That�s the worst oxymoron I have ever heard! It ranks up there with elf-shave!"
"I thought it was dwarf-shave which was funny." Lindir shook his head, and I rolled my eyes, "Back to this photograph."
"I feel a man-story coming!" The elf grinned excitedly, remembered about smile-wrinkles and quickly dropped the expression, "You were saying?"
"As I had noted before, the blanket pictured in this photograph is one of many I have previously owned but the only one my parents decided to bring with us to Canada. Quite fondly, I can recall sliding open the bottom drawer (the only one I could reach) in a towering chest of drawers to pull out one of my tan wafer-patterned blankets which I had assumed were magical. Of course, there was always this creature of evil which wanted to harm me (what this was, I never quite figured out), but I would be able to escape on one of my many magical blankets.
"Of course, being toted by a little girl across Hong Kong would not keep a blanket in premium shape for a long period of time, and luckily, there were plenty of replacements for my blankets. At the time, of course, I believed that I only owned one special flying blanket, but today, it seems quite obvious that my parents were secretly �retiring� older blankets and bringing newer ones back. The only time I actually came face-to-face with the loss of one of my blankets was when one of my wafer-receiving blankets was washed, by whom I can not remember.
"At the time, we were going to leave for Canada and were living with my grandparents in high rise apartments and the main way of drying clothing was stringing clotheslines to the opposite high-rise and with a pulley system, retrieve and send out articles of clothing. Two plastic green clothes pins were affixed to my blanket, a life support system, and as the blue twine was pulled in, the rusty pulleys squeaked dreadfully, the thin blanket wavering almost pathetically in the light breeze.
"When we came to pull my blanket back in, though, it was gone! Obviously, no one could climb a ladder up twenty odd stories to steal a blanket, but to my mind at the time, that was surely what had happened. Not uncaringly, but perhaps unknowingly, one of my grown-up relatives who were residing with us at the time thought this to be quite humorous and my suggestion to go down and look for it absurd. Some street-person or perhaps a garbage collector, the relative had suggested, had probably thought that my precious blanket was a piece of trash and had disposed of it! I was horrified that such a thing could happen. Losing articles of clothing to faulty clips was not an uncommon occurrence in Hong Kong, I now realize, but back then, the loss was devastating. It was to be my first brush with the mortality of the human spirit.
"I recall standing on the balcony and glancing down at the darkened but bustling street below me, filled with masses of people and wondering which one of them had stolen my blanket, while in truth, the �culprit� had probably already disappeared into thick crowds so long ago. On the same line, another article of clothing (what I have no recollection of) which was of more importance to the adults was also lost, and there was great fuss about that. All through the sweltering afternoon and chilling nightfall, I remember trying to �will� my blanket to come whizzing up from the darkness and up the twenty stories to where it belonged. That night, my blanket still had not returned and my sleep was riddled with nightmares and images of my blanket piled under some broken boards, amongst shards of forgotten glass.
"The next day, I received a new blanket, which looked exactly the same as the one I had lost, and of course, to my childish mind, it seemed to me that this blanket, was indeed the one that had fallen from the clothesline. It was indeed a wondrous deed and the relative who had discovered it was hailed as my hero for rescuing my blanket from an assured doom. Perhaps this was the last blanket I owned before immigration, though I can not recall for certain.
"Of course, once I reached this shore, my blanket was gone. Again. In the move and the confusion of sea-transport for carton goods, some of my parents� articles were lost or stolen, and as they fumed over the loss of valuable tools, I mourned for the loss of yet another blanket. Once again, the evil monsters had struck and my blanket had fallen into their grasps! Finally, I was presented with one of my last blankets, the one I still have today.
"My new blanket was quite different from all the others, darker in color, and quite furry and thick. Certainly none of that �babyish� wafer patterns! This new blanket actually could transform into an article similar to a jacket with poppers and even a white zipper which made funny noises. To me, it seemed as though my old blanket had returned for a final time, except with a facelift! Gleefully, I accepted this blanket as precious to me as those before it, and I remember crying the first time I found a little hole in it, but this horror was soon repaired.
"Originally, it was a gift from one of my mother�s friends although her identity has now been lost to the winds of time. The zipper soon broke, when I was about seven and I can remember trying to �fly� down the flights of stairs in our home on the blanket. This (obviously) did not work and resulted in another rip. Today, I still have this blanket, and although it does not fly (perhaps I weigh too much), it is a comforting and warm presence which I have taken to school for show-and-tell on numerous occasions.
"Once, my parents threatened to throw out the blanket, but I told them that I would never let them do that while I was there. I even threatened to run away if they harmed my blanket. My mother replied that she would simply throw away the blanket while I was at school. Thus, I brought my blanket to school with me for at least two weeks, but after thinking that this was impractical, I hid it beneath my parents� bed every morning before I left and always checked that it would still be there at lunch and after school. Fortunately, the threat was never carried out and I still have the blanket today.
"It really irks me to think that my parents had deceived me for most of my childhood, switching so many blankets I doubt they even remember how many I went through. One of the memories I can recall, though, is in that lower drawer of that chest, aside from my current blanket, I once found a curious plastic package of blue and clear plastic. Inside, seemed to be even more blankets, but I can not recall quite clearly. One of the family�s servants had found me staring and probably had removed the package as I never saw it again.
"Was that one of my future blankets, or had that one been left behind in Hong Kong after we had left? Instead of being loved by a child, was it tormented and used as a rag? Or perhaps a garbage collector really did have it? And what of the one I surely had lost? Could I travel back to Hong Kong today and find someone who had found a blanket falling from the sky? Was my blanket cherished by a child who had none, or used to whip up after another child�s spills? Was it received as a gift, or a falling piece of garbage?
"Alas, as I have told you before, Lindir, I can not change what has happened, but only what will happen. I still have my last blanket, and I do believe it has not been changed. I am much older now and would recognize the different blankets given to me. After all, these things can not get facelifts all of a sudden, right?"
"I suppose." Lindir answered, looking at his flute in the light, "Ooh, look. How dreadful." He frowned, "There is a finger-smudge on the side of my instrument!" Had he even listened to the story I had just finished telling? I gave the elf a look of pure irritation, but the minstrel whipped out a rather gray and weathered rag and began buffing at his flute, "I believe you have played this instrument as well. Tell me, are man-flutes quite prone to fingerprints as well?"
"Of course. The body secretes amounts of oil onto the skin, say fingertips, and the smooth surface of a flute just retains this especially well." I stared at the gray cloth he was using, and particular at the soft wafer-squares in its surface. Beneath the gray, it seemed that almost in a before-life, the cloth had once been a lighter color. "Where did you get that?" I asked, hopefully in what was a very calm voice.
"Oh, this?" Lindir glanced down at his cloth, "Was traveling through Earth on official business once and found a nice flute-buffing cloth on a clothesline. I thought that men couldn�t appreciate it, anyway, so I decided to take it for my own." He glared, "Why, you like it?"
"You idiotic waste of a pair of pointy ears!" I screeched, "That�s MINE!"
"Does it have your name on it?" The elf looked down, "No."
"You are using my long-lost-one-of-my-very-favorite blankets to BUFF your FLUTE?" I griped, "Give it back!"
"It does a very nice job." Lindir whipped the cloth away again, and held the flute up to the light, "See? The print is all gone. I have had it for a very long time. Many, many man-years."
"Thirteen." I replied.
"Now that you mention it," The elf paused in through, "You are right! Thirteen man-years!"
"It was not very nice, what you did." I replied lightly and Elf came over to drool on Lindir�s fine leather flute case (he did not notice), "Still, I suppose it was for the best, in a way." The minstrel gave me a wary look, "Do you play the lute?"
"Do I play the lute?" The elf�s eyes bulged, "Excuse me? Are you ASKING if I play the lute?" Spitting as he was so insulted, Lindir dropped the flute and clasped both hands over his heart, "How DARE you ask if I play that instrument! I mean, this is the greatest insult I have ever heard in my life! A man-child asking an elven-minstrel if he can play the LUTE! The lute! The greatest of all instruments! Do I play the lute?!"
"Well," I tried again, unfrazzled, "Do you?"
"Um," Lindir wrinkled his nose, "Actually . . . No, not quite." I grinned.