EP - tiny!Emcee

[i_am_your_host]

The door works in the strangest of ways.

So when a certain someone is holed up in his room, his younger self, his much, much younger self, enters the bar.

Small and pale and undernourished, the elfin ten-year-old boy (who could be mistaken for even younger than that) is dressed in secondhand school clothes from a distant era: knickerbockers and knee socks, a cardigan and cloth cap. He stares at his surroundings with large brown doe eyes.

Has he been here before? Perhaps in a dream? Why does it feel so familiar, when the door shouldn't have led here at all?

But this is a pub, and the little boy knows pubs. He goes up to the counter, peeking over it on tiptoes, to look for the barman. But there is none. How odd.

Even odder is the glass of milk and the plate of cookies that suddenly appear out of thin air.

This must be a dream.

Comments

[starrydome]

"You can take it," he tells the boy. His voice carries easily across the distance between them.

"It's a gift."

[i_am_your_host]

And it's a voice unlike any he's ever heard.

A gift? For him?

The boy looks from the plate of cookies back to the other child.

If it's a gift, then he can share it. He's never known another child who wasn't also hungry.

"Would you like some?"

[starrydome]

He thinks it over.
Then he nods.

"Yes. Thank you. Do you want to sit here?"
He shifts his stuff around, making space.

[i_am_your_host]

The boy smiles a little, but warmly and with dimpled cheeks and bright eyes, and he nods. He picks up the plate and the glass of milk and goes over to the other child, setting them down carefully, while eyeing the projects on the table.

"My name is Hansel," he says, inwardly excited to be using his new name. "What's yours?"

[starrydome]

"Peredhel. They call me Elrond Peredhel."

He is in turn far less enthused about his new name.

"May the stars shine upon this hour of our meeting."

[i_am_your_host]

"It's nice to meet you, Elrond Peredhel." He says Elrond's name carefully, though it sounds a little different with his own accent.

As he sits down, he smiles again somewhat thoughtfully. It's a lovely saying, like something he might hear in a fairy story.

"Yes. I hope they do."

He nudges the plate of cookies forward. There's shortbread in different shapes, chocolate chip, and gingersnaps.

"What are you doing there?" he asks, nodding at Elrond's work.

[starrydome]

Elrond carefully selects a gingersnap and breaks it cleanly in half, setting one half aside.

"My chores," he answers. "I have some mending and this knife handle that needs sanding. And I have to copy two pages in longhand Tengwar."

Still not enthused.

"The light is much better here than at home."

So that's good.

[i_am_your_host]

Hansel takes a wedge of buttery shortbread and nibbles on it.

"You can read and write?" he asks, impressed.

He knew very few children who could, and now that he's off the streets in a home, he doesn't know any other children at all.

[starrydome]

Elrond looks at him, a little confused.
"Of course," he says. "Can't you?"

[i_am_your_host]

He glances down and shakes his head.

"Nobody taught me," he says, a little sad and ashamed. But he looks up and adds eagerly, "But Mama Lily says she's going to teach me proper when she has more time. She's very busy. But she said so."

[starrydome]

"Nobody?" That seems almost incomprehesible.

But he doesn't want to be rude, so he adds, "But it is good that she will teach you. Mama Lily."

A pause.

"Maglor is teaching us letters. And music."

[i_am_your_host]

He nods just as eagerly, because he wants to learn and make up for the time that he lost.

"Do you go to school? Is it very difficult?"

Mama Lily won't send him to school. He doesn't know why, but he supposes she knows best.

[starrydome]

"What is a school?"

[i_am_your_host]

Now it's Hansel's turn to be surprised.

"Oh, it's a place where children are sent to learn things. Reading and writing, and arithmetic, and history, and art and music, though I think that's for older children. I've-- I've never been. But I did see inside once, through a window. The children sit in big rooms at desks all in straight rows, and there's a teacher at the front who writes on the wall with chalk. And the children all have books to read and write in."

His enthusiasm is only a bit dampened when he realizes what he's just described. "It seems...strict, though. And so very formal. The children didn't look as if they were having fun."

[starrydome]

It does.

Although -

"It's just my brother and I and we don't sit in rows when we have lessons. Sometimes, we are doing other things. Like being wood while Lord Maglor teaches us poetics. He tries to be kind but he can be rather strict as well."

[i_am_your_host]

He giggles at the remark about being wood.

"What sorts of lessons do you enjoy the most?"

[starrydome]

He thinks this over.

"Music. Lord Maglor is one of the greatest singers that have ever lived."

[i_am_your_host]

"He sounds very important," he says, raising his eyebrows. "Do you want to become a great singer like him?"

[starrydome]

"I'm not good enough," the child says without regret.

"I did rather travel I think. And learn new things. There are so many places to see. So much to learn."

[i_am_your_host]

"You get to travel?" Now he is downright envious. But more in a 'let me live vicariously through you' way than anything else. "What kind of places have you visited?"

[starrydome]

"We used to live by the Sea. Now we have travelled across the land, to the keep of the Sons of Feanor. But I should like to see the mountains too. And the old forests."

His voice is soft.

[i_am_your_host]

The way Elrond speaks makes it sound magical.

"I've never seen the sea. Or mountains, or forests. Only in pictures. I've only ever lived in a city. It's not very nice sometimes, but I know it well."

[starrydome]

"Is it a big city?"

Maybe one with more than a hundred houses?

[i_am_your_host]

"Oh, it's a very big city," he says, nodding enthusiastically. "With lots of tall buildings and shops and churches and taverns and there's a river that goes right through it."

[starrydome]

"What's it called? The river? And is it a river you can swim in?"

He likes those the best.