milliways_bar | (no subject)

After some time, he could notice a man watching him. A somewhat somber man, with hair as black and skin as fair as the Goth, though even taller and broader of shoulders. He is clad in clothing that would seem to Teja almost familiar in shape, if not style or heraldry. Fine, but sturdy clothes, as if for a travelling nobleman.

The man remains silent, just watching Teja practice, his own sword sheathed and a rounded shield, similar in shape to the ones the Vikings use, but made of metal, slung across his left shoulder.

Teja notices the watcher and, after a while, turned to greet the stranger.

A man that might be, by the looks of him, from his own time, or near it.

"Greetings!"

Boromir nods in response, his face serious, grave, but is looks natural on him, rather than an expression of displeasure.

"Greetings to you as well, sir. I hope not to have disturbed you by my presence. I am Boromir, son of Denethor." Another nod, deeper this time, but still within the boundaries of the greeting bade to an equal.

Not names a language that feels familiar at all -- but who knows, he might be one of the wild Alani that had come sweeping into the Roman empire in the wake of the Huns?

"You have not," Teja says. "I am Teja, son of Tagila."

Name and patronymic -- a familiar, even reassuring, pattern.

A familiarity which is reassuring for the Son of Denethor too, even though the names are as unfamiliar to him as his and his father's are to Teja. And though he looks somewhat like a Dúnadan, the axe he wields is like those used only by the Variags of Khand. Which has Boromir intrigued.

"I would ask, unless it is a question you do not wish to answer... Where do you hail from, Teja son of Tagila? You could be a man from my own home, yet your name sounds strangely foreign to me."

"I am an Ostrogoth," Teja says. "One of King Theodoric's people."

The last of his successors, in fact.

"And I might say the same about you, and your name -- I have never heard such! Are you one of the Alani, then?"

"I have never heard such peoples named before, and the city of Minas Tirith where I hail from holds vast knowledge about the wide world, though my brother always paid more attention to our preceptors than I did in our youth."

A brief pause, and then

"I am a Man of Gondor, of the line of the Dúnedain of Númenor, though alas, we are hardly the likes of the men that our ancestors were. I am the son of Denethor, of the line of Ecthelion, Seneschal of the Kingdom of Gondor, in the North and West of the land that is called Endor, the Middle Earth."

"None of these names, I have ever heard," Teja says. "I am from the land called Italy, in the Middle Sea, where we settled, from the time of Theodoric onwards. You never heard of our kings? Unhappy Athalaric? Theodahat? Witichis? Totila? No?"

Pause.

"I was the last of those," Teja finally says. "I fell in battle, on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius in southern Italy, n the year 552 of Christian reckoning."

Boromir shakes his head slowly, but then, one of the names Teja speaks...

"Theodahat sounds very much like some names of the Rohirrim who live North of my own land. But all those other names, of places and people... No, none of them are familiar to me."

There is, though, a small friendly smile as Boromir continues to speak.

"But your clothing and your speech are more akin to those of my world -to use the expression that I have heard others employ here at Milliways- than anyone else that I have met since I... Arrived." The pause before the last word doesn't come alone, but with a momentary shadow that crosses Boromir's stern features.

"You clothing and speech are more akin to those of my time, and my world, than anyone that I met since I arrived, dead and Bound," Teja says.

Pause. Another shadow of the same true thing, maybe, Boromir's world that is so achingly familiar, so irritatingly different?

"Have you heard of the philosopher Plato?"

A seemingly random question, but the answer is needed before Teja can explain the concept of shadows, different worlds, and the similarity in difference between those.

"You too." The voice is flat, the look not one of pity but understanding. For a moment he ponders the similarities and the little but crucial differences. And then Teja's question snaps his attention back.

"No, but that doesn't really mean much. As I said, my younger brother Faramir was more keen on the teachings of our tutors." A fond, amused little smile "I used to escape to learn from the men at arms their trade."

"You, too," Teja echoes, nodding. He is never reticent about the fact of his death; a dead man is what he is, and when people express their sorrow for it, he always retorts he holds none -- his death has been worth it.

"Plato spoke of what men see, and its limits, in his parable of the cave -- all we men can know resembles the shadows of the branches of a tree, that we but see deep down in a cave, with our backs to the entrance and the light; the branches wave in the sunlight, and the fantastic shadows are what we think is reality."

Pause.

"Now imagine the branches of that tree lit by many different lights -- sun and moon, torches, volcanoes, conflagrations, mighty lights that you and I know nothing of -- on many surface. All those different shadows of the same thing make up the many different worlds. Not just times, worlds. Different realities, in which similar things happened under different circumstances, to similar people. Some worlds have magic, or gods; some worlds hold speaking, thinking creatures beyond mankind; some worlds have incredible gadgetry that for the likes of us is indistinguishable from magic. My world held none of that -- it was a plain, godless world that dealt harsh, random fates to simple men that fought with swords and shields, city walls and rams, rules and creeds that were none of them truer than another. The future, beyond my time, holds firearms and flying machines and new, amazing philosophies -- but nothing I cannot understand. But by this token, those 'Rohirrim' of your world that you mention might well be a shadow of the same universal pattern that my own people were; and who knows, as I thought you an Alanus, your people may yet share some traits with them. The clarity of the pattern of that tree you wear feels very Alanic -- being a people on the move, they had very little, but what they had and made was crafted with the utmost precision and clarity, highly stylised, just so. That stylised tree has that same quality; but that might be where the similarity between your Gondor, and the Alani that I knew, ends."

Boromir listens in silence, nodding occasionally. Then, once Teja finishes with his explanation, he remains silent for a few moments yet. When he speaks his tone is thoughtful, as this is a matter in which he is not too well-versed.

"It is a strange concept, but... I understand the elves in my own world, and a few Men, actually walk and see in two of those different lights. So, strange, but not unheard of to me." Then he smiles thinly once more. "As for those Alani you speak of, my people are very much not nomadic. Maybe it is the Rohirrim and the Alani that are different shadows of the same branch." Yes, he has liked that tree analogy. The Multiverse is but a pale reflection of Gondor, yep, that's a point of view that he likes.

Of course, Random of Amber who had explained the many worlds to Teja in this way, had claimed that only Amber and their adversary of Chaos were real, and all the other worlds but shadows; and Teja, tacitly, found his own world sanest, and most of the others filled with fantastic tales that were hard to believe, even though they were undoubtedly true, as their denizens came to this place.

Thus, most likely, all that came to Milliways would think -- their own world was the most real!

"So the Rohirrim are nomadic?" Teja asks. "My people were not -- they migrated, but desperate for a place to settle in. We thought we had found it in Italy, but were driven out after one lifetime."

Pause.

"But: - elves?"

Boromir could accept that explanation, and of course assume it was Arda that was the most real. After all, hadn't it been made by Ilúvatar himself? There, settled.

"Some of them lead a somewhat nomadic existance, living in the vast fields of the Wold of Rohan. But no, not nomads in the true sense, for they have houses they return to when the Winter is unusually harsh..."

Boromir blinks at Teja's last question. Clearly, he knows the word. Why, then, that questioning tone?

"Yes, elves. Why do you ask?" Even if he never actually met one until his arrival at Imladris, elves are a known and assumed part of his world.

"Among my people, they were myths and tales, not truly believed in any more; as so many things," Teja says. "And in your world, elves exist?"

Pause.

"Sometimes, I suspect there is nothing that does not exist somewhere, and all the tales and legends that are by their very definition not true are merely shadows of things that are, in another world."

Boromir nods, serious. "Not ten days before my death" some day he still feels odd, saying it aloud, but not in the company of this other dead man "I was bidding farewell to one of the few remaining realms of the Elves in my own world. There were few of them left, but they were once one of the great powers of the land."

He pauses, thoughtful, and nods. "Maybe it is so. It would fit with the philosophy you just explained. And once you accept the place we are in... Everything else is easy to accommodate." The very end of the Universe. It's a sobering thought, isn't it?