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Spring has come to Milliways, in full warmth. The grass is greening, and the trees are in bud, and so forth. There are even trees in the mountains that are covered in pink flowers.

Were they there last year? Were they, in fact, there last week? Enjolras is not entirely certain on either count.

On the other hand: Milliways. He'll ask Bahorel, or Combeferre or Joly, if he thinks to bother, but he may not.

At any rate, he's sitting at the base of one of the pink trees, on a convenient flat rock. He has a book with him, as usual, but he's currently ignoring it in favor of an abstraction of thought.

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[OOC: Slowtime's good with me! Sleep well. :)]

"It seems like they appeared all at once."

He's a little bemused by that, but mostly just making friendly small talk back.

Edited 2016-03-28 21:18 (UTC)

"Blooms and trees both," Elrond agrees.
"Strange as it sounds."
He lifts a hand, palm up, and delicate, pink petals flutter down to rest upon it.

"Yes."

He doesn't put a hand up likewise, but he does direct a wry, bemused look at one of the nearby trees.

"I'm not aware of any harm in it. But the whole thing's quite mysterious."

Ah, Miliways.

"There may be no greater meaning to it, but I find it beautiful all the same," Elrond says with a small smile.
"Heartening in a way."

Enjolras glances at him curiously.

"Oh?"

Elrond glances back at him.

"I have seen much sorrow and much pain throughout the ages, but every time I see the new leaves unfurl, every time I see the gentle petals scatter in the breeze, I know that life continues. That there is still beauty in the world. And hope."

Edited 2016-03-30 19:31 (UTC)

Enjolras listens. And his face brightens as he does, with a kind of shared and sober joy that's less a smile than a warmth in the eyes, a quiet glow.

Nature has never had much of a hold in Enjolras's heart. But sincerity, and hope -- yes, that, always.

"Very well said, monsieur."

He touches a fallen blossom lightly. It's a flower to him, that's all; but he can follow Elrond's vision and see it as something more, a little.

"Life continues; and there is always hope."

Elrond nods.

"Yes," he says. "And at times, there are no flowers and no sunlight and no stars. And then we still hope, because at those times, hope will only survive sheltered in our hearts."

He dislodges a petal with a finger and for the briefest moment it stays in the air, floating. Weightless.
And then it tumbles to the ground.

"The brightest dawn is always that of the future. Carried within our hearts, and built by people every day, with every choice."

Humanity, he would once have said, and still almost did, but Milliways has taught him to amend his speech somewhat. He means all sentient beings, anyone who can understand the concepts of freedom and fraternity; it's only the habits of a lifetime where person and human (and man) were interchangeable.

"And at the darkest times, as you say, that hope still shines. And so does that dawn, however far off."

Elrond's smile is warm if small.

"Yes," he says. "Just that."

He looks up at the sky, his long hair moving in the wind.
"Even when you cannot see the stars, you can believe in them. And in the dawn."

Enjolras laces his fingers together on his knee. He's bareheaded, as he often is at Milliways if the weather allows; no longer bothering with a hat is the one aspect of his era's dress code that he's relaxed. His hair is much shorter than Elrond's, a tousle of blond curls, but long enough to lift slightly in the occasional stronger gust of breeze that pushes at the cherry blossoms and tugs at Elrond's robes.

"I've never given much thought to stars or flowers for their own sakes. A flaw of mine, perhaps." Not one he sounds too worried about, if so, but he's willing to admit to the possibility. "Certainly I have dear friends who feel otherwise. But the hope in human hearts -- in all people's hearts -- the hope, and the goodness, and the faith that we can have in their triumph, all of that matters a great deal. They're among the most important things in the world."

Elrond nods, his face serious.

"Yes," he agrees. "And the knowledge that not only great heroes have the power to turn the tide and overturn evil; that all might find the courage within themselves."

The unlikeliest of heroes.

A few petals settle in his hair, nestled against the circlet.

"Of course."

"It's a poisonous lie, the idea that only great heroes can do such things -- that only certain people can be great heroes. A fallacy that tells people to sit back and accept powerlessness, and wait for someone else to step forward."

There's a certain quiet fierceness in his voice. This is an idea that Enjolras has raged against for a long time.

The fact that someone of his society and a poetic turn of mind might say he looks like a hero of antiquity as he says it -- noble profile, golden wind-tossed hair, a slim muscular youth with a quiet intensity of fierce passion -- does not change his feelings on it in the least. If anything, it redoubles them.

Elrond would not be surprised by this. He has known quite a few heroes, most of them reluctant.

"And most tales become almost fictoues in the end, making battle and slaughter seem like grand experiences, making the hero so far removed from reality that it becomes even harder to see heroic acts as doable by others."

It's not so much that Enjolras is a reluctant hero. It's that he feels everyone else is equally likely and worthy to be one; it's that he's from a time and a place where the prevailing cultural narrative goes rather against that. (And it's that he hates getting attention for his looks no matter what, but hates some kinds of attention more than others.)

"But that's wrong. Utterly so. It's backwards. Heroism ought to be used to inspire everyone. We're all heirs to the deeds of the past, both the great triumphs and the shameful mistakes."

"I think," Elrond says slowly, "that the stories veer off course when the hero becomes more important than the cause. When the struggle becomes the center of the tale, when it should focus on the why. When we fought at Dagorlad, we did it for a reason and that reason should not be forgotten because sunlight reflected in steel and brave banners streaming in the wind makes a prettier picture."

"Yes. Yes, absolutely."

"Without the reason for the fight, the glory -- I don't say there's none. Courage, steadfastness, those do matter. It's not empty. But it's diminished. Glory for a name, glory for its own sake, what is that beside the glory of a noble cause? And not only battle, that's another falsehood. Anything done justly and for the right cause can be heroic."

He means both halves of that: justly, as well as for the right cause. The ends may necessitate the means, to Enjolras's absolutist mind, but they can't justify it.

"But even the just fight might leave those behind with wounds that will not heal," Elrond says quietly.
"It is easy to ask people to die for a cause. Asking them to kill for it - that changes them forever. It is a heavy and bitter burden and a necessary one at times as well. Much as we would wish it wasn't so."

The dead at least know peace.

Enjolras regards him soberly.

"It's true."

"Necessity is a monster of an unjust world. To kill another person, no matter how just the cause and how pressing the need, taints the one who serves that monstrous necessity."

He's speaking as someone who has killed, and has condemned himself for it, and would kill again if the circumstances demanded it. It's clear that Elrond is too.

"That is true," Elrond agrees.

"It is a hard fate, but if that is how it is-"
A small, eloquent shrug.

"And that all makes cherry blossoms and the first leaves of spring all the more important."

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