(Mossy Flet Dinlom Talan)
The faint light of the new moon is not strong enough to pierce the canopy of leaves above this flet; even with the help of the stars. And so, all is dark inside. To the eyes of the first-born, however, a single occupant can easily be seen even though dimness shrouds his motionless figure. Goerhim is sitting with his back against the tree trunk, one leg drawn up and the other twisted oddly in front of him. Nearby, a wooden crutch lays across the mossy floor. Tossed there, or dropped carelessly; it is neither near enough to be reached effortlessly nor far enough away to be ignored. Lank red hair hangs limply reaching to the forester's shoulders and framing his face. Empty eyes are fixed uncaringly on the air in the middle of the flet.
Elven rope-bridges do not give sound when the lithe feet of an elf does dance along them, but still, a rumor might be heard now in the sound of leather or cloth shifting. A lissom elleth-form can be seen along the passage from the main flet, and Caelwen, the earthy smell of clay lingering about her, dashes toward the wounded edhel. "Goerhim!" she speaks, and then drops to a kneel beside him when she is near. Her voice comes then, low but excited, "Goerhim, I've been looking for you." The shape of a smile does sculpt her features in the darkness.
Goerhim might not have even heard the faint sounds presaging Caelwen's appearance, so little evidence does he give of noticing her. But eventually, his long pale face turns slightly. "Why?"
Caelwen's smile falls, and her brows draw up and together in an anxious expression. "I've spent this past week making gifts for you. Will you come? They're in the sun flet." She bites her lip briefly, and peers worriedly at her kin. "I think you'll like them."
Again a long silence drags on, until Georhim seems to feel he should make some sort of effort to respond. "Gifts?" His voice is dull, lifeless. But after a moment, thinking maybe this isn't enough, he says a few more words. "For me?"
"Aye, aye..." comes Caelwen's quick answer, her sudden distress at Goerhim's sorrow making the Silvan maid almost babble. "I think they might lift some of your burden and bring you some happiness. Will you come, cousin?" Her hand reaches for his as her anxious watch yet continues.
Goerhim's gaze drifts back to empty air. The effort of even thinking about moving seems too great, much less actually getting up. But some memory of the regard he holds his fair cousin in prompts him to make an attempt. And reaching out, he feels hesitantly for his crutch.
Caelwen scuttles forward in her liberating potter's clothes after his crutch, and she sends it back to lie beside him. Up she bounces, motions all over-hasty and a bit jerky. She stands beside her cousin and offers her hand to him again, to help him up. "Come on, mellon. I'll help you."
Incuriously, Goerhim takes the crutch that has materialized under his hand, letting it lie there limply before Caelwen's next words remind him what he was doing. Oh yes. Stand up. Bracing the end of the crutch against the floor, and his back against the tree, he laboriously pulls himself upright. Blank green eyes turn towards his cousin and from some place far away, he finds some more words. "Where are we going?"
Caelwen's slim hands hover near her cousin in his laborous ascent, never landing and unsure of what their task should be. "To the sun flet," she replies to him. "I said that once already." Her eyes peer through the darkness toward the lower, main talan, and then look back to the wounded edhel. "Need you my help to get there? Tell me what I must do."
Goerhim hitches his injured leg forward, leaning heavily on the crutch and takes a lurching step, then another. When he reaches the swaying bridge, he stops. At last he answers her question. Sort of. "I cannot cross the bridge."
Caelwen's night-darkened brows draw together in brief confusion. "But.." she beings helplessly. Her face then relaxes, and turns to him, "How did you get /here/, then?"
"I..." Struggling to remember, an expression finally creeps onto the forester's hitherto bleak face. His eyebrows pinch together and two small lines appear between them. "I crawled?" Uncertainly, he looks down at his crutch and then at the swinging bridge.
Caelwen looks down to the bridge, then up to her cousin. "Shall I carry your crutch for you?" she questions. Her lip she nibbles, and then she ventures in a hushed voice, "Surely you have not been in this very flet since you returned to the city. You are of the Galadrhim... I imagine you'll need to cross many rope-bridges yet in your life."
Bitterness fills Goerhim's voice. "Do you think I do not know this?" Gesturing towards his useless leg he goes on in a derisive, self-mocking voice. "I can do nothing. I cannot care for my trees. I cannot cross a bridge on my own unless I crawl. I sit here like a worthless slug and people come to stare and me." The caustic scorn in his voice is not pleasant to hear, but perhaps it is better than his previous lifeless visage? "I can push it. Will you baby me all my life now? If you call this 'life'!"
The young Cennan ducks her chin toward her chest, eyes half-filling with unseen tears as she looks uncertainly upon her younger cousin. A swallow, and the tears are gone. "Fine, then," she replies. "I won't baby you." Nimble as most of her kind are, she picks her way along the rope bridge. Halfway there, she pauses, and turns, looking back to him. "I really do hope that my gift to you will bring some pleasure back into your life, good cousin." Two steps she takes back toward him, swaying slightly in the breeze. She pleads him, "I beg you to come. 'Twill lighten my fea greatly if you do." Her brows raise above glittering eyes.
Goerhim bends his good leg carefully, holding the crutch with white-knuckled hands. When he has crouched as far as he can, he lets go, landing with a soft thud. The crutch is shoved ahead of him, out of the way. Wiggling around, pulling and pushing the bum leg, he drags himself across the bridge. At the far end, he struggles back to his feet and leans on the crutch for a minute, swaying. His face is white and sweat-beaded. "I am coming," he says shortly.
Ahead of him Caelwen slips, and watches Goerhim from while dancing impatiently on her toes. She steps quickly toward the sun flet's ladder, but glances back. And back again she turns, hurrying to her cousin's side. "Would you rest a moment, Goer? You can sit on a pillow...I'll bring you some wine..." Her hands flutter toward him.
"No." Goerhim begins at once to limp towards the rope ladder leading upwards. His crutch thumps rhythmically on the wooden floor. At the foot of the ladder, he stops again, his face drawn with pain. Unwillingly, he says, "You could take it up with you. If you would." Thinking he might have been unclear, he adds, "My crutch."
Caelwen trails after him nervously, and nods at his request. The crutch she grips and slides away from him, and, with another glance to her kin, she ascends the rope ladder quickly. Her pale face can be seen peering down.
Goerhim takes a deep breath and latches both hands around a head-high rung. Hanging from the ladder, he lifts his good leg to the first rung and balances on it while transferring his hands to the next higher. Over and over again, he does this until finally he is laying half in the sun flet and half out. Feeling about on the slippery wooden floor for a grip, he finally manages to lever himself the remainder of the way into the room.
Caelwen steps back from the edge and offers the crutch to her prone cousin. "Nearly there, nearly there.." she murmers, in what is probably intended to be a comforting tone. "They're all at the edge of the flet." Her white hand gestures in the darkness across the way, but the small flowerpots and benches obscure whatever is there. Awkward, she asks, "Do you...need help to stand?"
Despite his anger and frustration with the situation he has found himself in, Goerhim manages not to snap at his cousin this time. In fact, something that is almost a smile, bitter and twisted though it be, crosses his face. One hand reaches out for the crutch and the other raises towards Caelwen. "Thank you," he says abruptly. And then, hesitating and suddenly shy, "I am ... sorry. I ..." Flushing he looks away.
Caelwen grips his hand with both of hers, bracing her booted feet against the floor. Lighter is this flet, more open as the sun and stars peer down, and a blush can be seen on her face. She takes refuge in her natural cheerfullness, replying, "Oh, you've naught to be sorry for, mellon." She grins at him, "You are my kin. We all do love you and will do whate'er you wish us to."
Red-faced, Goerhim doesn't look at the potter as she helps hoist him to his feet. The light is brighter here, falling on all kinds of potted plants, and a spasm of anguish contorts his face at the reminder of all he has lost. "Where?" he says gruffly, wavering despite the support of his crutch.
Caelwen drops his hand, and steps quickly away, unmindful of his slower pace. "Over here!" she calls, dancing around a plant-stand and a bench.
On the other side, near the edge of the boards, are more pots. These aren't small flower-pots alike to those in the rest of the flet, but great pots. Huge and wide, some stand half the height of an adult Quende, and others are low things with massive, gaping mouths. All are filled to the brim with dark, crumbled soil, and shining down on all of them is hope's star, Gil-Estel.
Caelwen stands beside, hands fiddling anxiously over her waist. "If you like them, I can make more, in whatever shape you need. I sang growing-songs into the clay of these..."
Limping heavily behind Caelwen, it is a few minutes more before the forester reaches the pots she is speaking of. And then, he simply stares at them blankly. Exhausted from the constant ache of his leg, as well as the sapping deadness of depression, he can make no sense of what sits before him. "What... what are they?"
Caelwen's face falls, descending into melancholy. Her disappointed voice speaks, "They are pots for your trees. You can take care of them at home now. Don't you have seeds from the Vale? I can probably ask Hyardoel for other seeds, too..." Her lip catches in her teeth.
"My trees?" Utterly bewildered, the forester looks from the earth-filled pot to his cousin's face and then back again. Uncertainly, he says, "I had seeds, I think..." Green eyes go back to the pots measuring them instinctively, and almost despite himself a little tendril of hope begins to sprout. "I could plant them...?"
"Aye, aye!" Caelwen replies, the smile growing on her face anew. "Are the pots big enough? Should I make more? I'll make as many as you need..." She dances on her toes and allows herself a giggle. "Do you have your seeds with you? Shall I fetch them for you?" Words tumble from her parted lips as she steps toward a bench. This bench she then drags roughly toward the pots, and leaves it to rest within arm's reach of them. "What kind of seeds should I ask Hyardoel for?"
Caelwen's rush of questions coming on top of unlooked-for possibilites where before he had seen nothing but an empty futile future are too much for Goerhim. Completely unable to respond, he just stands there gaping at the pots until his maimed leg starts to give way. A sideways lurch takes him to the bench and he half falls onto its support. "My seeds," he repeats.
Caelwen gasps and darts forward, hands gone around his shoulders as she would half-catch her cousin. She quickly releases him and kneels beside the bench. "Are you well?" she questions fretfully, then adds, "Aye, your seeds...where do you keep them?"
Varying emotions flicker across Goerhim's white face. The return of hope is well-nigh as hard to cope with as its loss was. "My seeds," he says, yet a third time, almost reverently. Then he seems to remember he is not alone. "Oh. They... they are somewhere about. I do not remember." This inconsequential request is brushed away for the moment, for just the thought of once again tending growing trees takes up all his thought.
A delighted laugh burbles from Cennan's smiling mouth. She moves closer, on her knees beside him, and wraps her arms around his shoulders in a fond embrace. "Are you well? You seem happier to my eye." She pulls half-back and peers at his face, a grin still on hers.
Dazed, Goerhim replies, "Well? I ... I hardly know." A look that has long been absent from his face begins to kindle in the depths of leaf-green eyes as he looks at Caelwen wonderingly. "You ... I ..." Shaking his head, he starts to smile. A genuine look of cheer, the first for many days. And throwing his own arms around his benefactor and beloved cousin, he hugs her tightly.
A new laugh, giddy, springs from the Cennan's lithe form, and she but tightens her arms. After a moment of shaking with it, she leans back again and drops her hands to her lap. "I'm sorry I didn't get it to you sooner. I was going to bring you a pot at the hospital, but where I had to bring Rhibi, I thought my hands were full enough." She ducks her head and peers up at him, "Need you aught else? Really, I think I will still ask a forester to come see you." Up she springs to her feet, and her slim hand ruffles his hair, as though she were much older than him, instead of the bare decade or so that she had. She giggles, and her eyes twinkle happily..
"No one has come to see me," Goerhim replies. A faint pout mars his expression, but is gone seconds later as the all-engrossing subject of trees reclaims his attention. Muttering to himself, he would be moving busily about his pots (if he was able to walk more easily). As it is, he contents himself with darting glances between them. "That one is big enough for... No. Yes. I think I want it over... maybe..." Absently he smooths his hair back down again. "Yes, send someone. Perhaps they will move my pots for me. I think I would like them..." and he is off again.
Caelwen but smiles fondly down at him. A moment of hesitation, and she turns away, slipping around the plants and down the rope ladder, silent.