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]

"The Havens of Sirion. It was very beautiful. But - it was sacked. Everyone was killed. Except for my brother and me."

Everyone.

[i_am_your_host]

Hansel's expression falls, as he presses his fingers to his lips, his eyes widening.

"No," he gasps softly. "That's terrible."

He can't imagine an entire town being massacred. With only two children left.

"Who did it?"

[starrydome]

"The Host of the Sons of Fëanor."

[i_am_your_host]

"But--"

Didn't he say..?

Oh.

"You live with them now?" he asks quietly.

[starrydome]

He nods.
"Yes. We were taken captive as tokens of the wrongs to them."

[i_am_your_host]

Hansel is a deeply empathetic child. And though he doesn't know what to say to that, what he feels for the other boy and his situation is clear on his face.

"How do they treat you? Are you and your brother all right?"

[starrydome]

"They're not cruel," Elrond says quietly. "And we are together. That's more important."

[i_am_your_host]

Hansel nods. "Yes, that's very important."

Not cruel still sounds like cold comfort.

"I don't have brothers or sisters. Or a mother or father. I never knew them."

[starrydome]

Now it is Elrond's turn to reveal a tender heart on his face.

"No one?"

[i_am_your_host]

He purses his lips and shakes his head with a small, sad shrug of his thin shoulders.

"I didn't have a home either," he says, but then he puts on a brave, hopeful face, because all of that is over. "But I do now. It's warm and dry, and I have a bed to sleep in, and Mama Lily feeds me as well as she can afford to. She found me and took me in."

[starrydome]

"She didn't know you? She wasn't kin?" he asks, curiously.

[i_am_your_host]

Hansel shakes his head again.

"I have no kin. Or at least nobody who ever claimed me as kin. She was a stranger. She felt sorry for me, I guess."

In that way, he was lucky, because the streets of Berlin are littered with children to feel sorry for.

"There's a story she told me, about a boy and a girl who got lost in the woods, and the boy's name was Hansel. She gave me that name."

[starrydome]

"They gave us new names too," Elrond says. "But not nice one, like yours. With a story. But never mind. We are still Peredhil, the Half-elven. We will be that always. Till we make our choice."

He sounds fiercely determined at that.

[i_am_your_host]

Hansel frowns with fascination. The importance of a name and an identity is a relatively new concept to him, and though he might not be able to explain it, he understands it.

"What choice must you make?"

[starrydome]

"Whether we want to be counted among Elves or Mortal Men. But I don't think we have to make that choice soon."

Nobody had ever telly explained how it would go.

[i_am_your_host]

"That sounds very serious," he murmurs thoughtfully. He didn't know people could be half elf and half man.

After a pause, he asks, "Which do you think you'd choose?"

[starrydome]

He shrugs a little.
"I don't know. Neither does my brother."

But they will choose the same. He is certain of it.

[i_am_your_host]

"Well, I'm sure you'll both figure it out when the time comes," he says. "It's-- it's probably a grown-up thing."

[starrydome]

"It must be," he agrees, sounding more certain than he actually is.

"Anyway, once we are grown and have our own families we will build a house together. And we will take in children who are alone."

[i_am_your_host]

That makes him smile. "That sounds nice. And you can feed them milk and biscuits and never have to teach them poetics."

[starrydome]

Elrond laughs at this, a bright, glittery laughter.

"That is true. And never porridge for breakfast."