Yayness!! Ready to shift gears again
Mar. 22nd, 2003 01:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
capri0mniWell, I finished my second bit of fiction of the year, and here it is, middling longish, presented for Doctor Who fans in general, and "hoedown" fans in particular:
HANGING QUESTIONS: A HOEDOWN INTERLUDE
Eloise, the little green troll, made her way through the TARDIS corridors, counting her steps and the corners she had turned, trying desperately not to get lost -- again. This ship had been her home, and her comapnion, for years, after materializing, alone and exhausted, beside her bridge one day. Eloise hadn't known what a TARDIS was, back then, hadn't known of any world outside her own, and especially not of Gallifrey. She didn't know of Timelords, or that TARDISes were supposed to have pilots. So the fact that the mysterious silver cube appeared alone was no stranger than the fact that it appeared at all. But somehow, she had recognized a mind within the machine -- a potential friend. And as time went on, and the mysterious ship regained its strength and memory, she taught Eloise to be her pilot, and accepted the name "Sweetheart" from her.
All of that happened long ago -- or, at, least, it seemed that way, now. Now, through a string of events that still sent an icy shiver down her spine every time she thought about it, Sweetheart's original pilot, the true pilot -- Florestan -- was back, and Eloise's telepathic link with the ship was gone. "Sweetheart" now answered to the name "Beloved" from her pilot -- though Eloise didn't feel right calling her that. The TARDIS would always be "Sweetheart" to her.
Eloise caught herself going in circles and doubled back. She sighed -- couldn't help feeling a slight pang every time she made a mistake like that. It's not that she felt unwelcome ... exactly ... In fact, she was more grateful than she could have imagined to have someone to actually talk with, to have someone to break bread with at the end of the day. As much as she loved Sweetheart, and High-Five (the poodle she and her friends had rescued from a very dark circus indeed), telepathic links and wagging tails can never replace true conversation. But it still felt odd. The TARDIS no longer responded to Eloise's mind, but to Florestan's.
And Florestan's mind was... "eccentric" was far too mild a word. Somber and austere one minute, he was ready to crack a dozen jokes in succession the next. He jumped from subject to subject like a grasshopper on a bed of coals, using non-sequitors the way others used nouns and verbs ... until you realized, sometimes hours later, that he'd really been acting like a spider, connecting each idea with long, strong threads until they were all united into one beautifully complex web. That made even a simple chat with him something of an adventure. But since the corridors of the TARDIS were now modeled after the workings of his mind, it also made getting from one room to the next rather bemusing, especially since it made Eloise realize that she'd never actually bothered to learn her way around before, but simply went by feel.
She turned the corner and there was -- the library -- again. Eloise ducked her head and hurried past the doorway as though she were trying to avoid the glance of someone on the street. She'd been avoiding the library ever since they'd returned from her homeworld with The Book. But sometimes she wondered if, even without telepathy, Sweetheart kept moving that room into her path on purpose.
The Book, or, more precisely: The Chronicles of the Troll Clans of Radoffiwad was from Walter Duncan, an older troll who had helped with the cooking at her last two Hoedown open houses. It was during the latest Hoedown that Florestan returned, and everything changed.
Florestan and she had only been planning on getting Walter, and Ruthie, Walter's young cousin, home after the party. But then Florestan suggested they stay awhile -- said he wanted to explore a planet without having to negoiate with smugglers, or smile flatteringly while a government official rattled on. And so, while he explored, Eloise set to work repairing and cleaning her home. In the years she had been away, it had gone from being a cozy nest to something resembling an abandoned muskrat den -- with 'abandoned' being the key word.
One warm dry day, Walter and Ruthie showed up with mops and brushes and buckets of paint to help her put on the finishing touches, and the three of them worked in near silence as they put a fresh coat of whitewash on her bridge, and painted the trim around her windows and door.
But eventually, as it did with swelling buds of trees and spreading ferns, the warmth of the sun teased a long-buried question out of her. "Walter," she asked, slowly stirring a pot of fuschia paint to just the right shade, "you have any idea why a family of Warrior Trolls* would, well ... ?"
She saw Walter, out of the corner of her eye, lower his brush and regard her for a moment. "... Adopt a Joyful Troll like you?" he finished for her.
Eloise nodded. "My 'mother'," she said, her mouth tightening around the word, as if she were biting a lemon, "never let me forget that they bothered to raise me, at great sacrifice to themselves, 'for the pride of clan.' But they were never very proud of me. I'd always assumed that she was my real mother, and that I was just a mutant, or something... But then, I met you, and Ruthie, and others, and learned that there were whole families of our kind -- whole clans. But I never thought I could be from a such a clan, too."
"Until just now?" Ruthie asked, wide eyed.
"Well..." Eloise almost told them about how Florestan touched her shoulder, that time, to get her attention, and stop her from completing her 'good-bye' speech to him. That's all it was -- a simple touch, with no great meaning to it. But it brought back an impossible memory from her childhood -- or earlier -- impossible because no one in the family she knew ever touched each other, except in anger, and never so lightly. So there must have been a family she didn't know. She almost told them this, but didn't. The emotions tied up with that moment were still too strong and too new for her to trust herself with them. "Well," she started again, trying to stay within the truth, "when I thought I had to come back here to live, I was afraid of what might happen if my family tried to look for me, or found me ... and I've been wondering."
"Hmmm." Walter tapped his chin with the handle of his brush, absentmindedly adding yet another spot of color to his face. "I must admit I've never heard of such a thing before. But there might be some precedent for it mentioned in The Chronicles."
"The what?"
"The Chronicles of the Troll Clans of Radoffiwad -- a mix of legend, history, geneology, and ... odds and ends. Most families have a copy, handed down from generation to generation -- most Joyful Troll families, anyway..."
"But if my family had a copy, they wouldn't have trusted me with it," Eloise said.
"Well, you were rather young when you ran away. Maybe..."
Eloise shook her head.
"No, I suppose not," Walter consented.
"I know!" Ruthie said, enthusiastically, "Walter has his family's copy! We could look in there, and tell you what we find at the next Hoedown! Maybe you're my cousin, too! I hope so!"
Eloise was about say she couldn't promise that there would be a 'next Hoedown' -- now that Florestan was back, that was really his decision -- when she was interupted by the sound of the Timelord's footfall on the bridge.
"Careful of the railing," Walter said quickly, "it might still be wet."
"Noted," Florestan said. "Is there any work left for me to do?"
"We were talking about researching Eloise's family in Walter's copy of The Chronicles!" Ruthie said, as if that answered his question, "and letting her know what we find next year!"
Florestan raised an eyebrow. "That sounds intriguing," he said. "Anything I can do to help in that regard, I'd be glad to."
Eloise felt herself blush to the tips of her ears. "You don't have to..."
The Timelord chuckled. "I know I don't have to, but I spent years studying to be an exo-mythologist," he said, " -- a specialist in the myths of alien cultures. I decided to focus on Earth myths early on, and while I came across legends about trolls, my studies took me in a different direction; it never occurred to me that the trolls themselves would have histories."
"Oh. All right, then," Eloise said quietly. There was a lot to take in, in the last five minutes. She supposed that was something she ought to get used to, now that Florestan was back.
"Of course I understand," he went on, as if reading her thoughts, "that deciding to take up a line of research can be a big responsibility, and it really is your decision." He turned to Walter. "If you don't mind lending your copy, for an hour or two" he said, "Beloved can create a replica, and we -- ahem... -- Eloise can start researching whenever she's ready."
And so it was that The Book was now in Sweetheart's library, waiting, like some patient-yet-hovering schoolmaster, for whenever she was ready. The problem was, Eloise wasn't sure she'd ever be ready. Once she opened that great red cover, and started turning those pages, whatever she learned about what might have been, or even, perhaps, should have been, could never be unlearned. And so, ever since, she'd been trying to get around the library, and not get lost -- and failing in both things.
Still, she had gotten very good at finding other things that needed her attention, instead. Right now, for example, she was trying to find the music room... There was a fiddle tune she wanted to practice, and then, it would be time to take High-Five for her walk...
She turned the corner ... and found herself just outside Florestan's study. She paused, instinctively, to listen for his pressence within -- and heard it. But he was silent -- not talking or humming to himself, and she could tell, by the rustle of his tweed jacket, that he was moving slowly. That meant he was in a somber mood, and feeling the weight of his Timelord-ly existance. Decorum was called for.
"Greetings, Lord Florestan," she said in measured tones, as she walked by the door.
"Eloise."
When he acknowledged her by name like that, in his current mood, it meant he wanted her attention. She trotted quietly to his side and waited.
He stood there, quite still, for a long time, the fingertips of both hands resting on the desktop, staring at a half-written letter before him (at least, it looked like a letter -- Eloise couldn't read the language. She assumed it was Old High Gallifreyan).
Since Florestan wouldn't speak, she stared at the letter, too. And the longer she did so, the more certain she was that she had seen it before. Then, she remembered: in those first frantic hours after his regeneration, when Sweetheart's corridors were rearranging themselves, Eloise had gone off in a panicked search for High-Five, certain that her dog had gotten lost -- or worse. It was during that search that she stumbled upon this room, and this desk was here -- and that letter was on this desk, just as it was now.
"Why?" he asked in a hoarse voice, at last, breaking the silence. "Why, Beloved, of all the minutiae of our former life, do you recreate this?" And he picked up the paper and shook it for emphesis.
"My lord?" Eloise asked, confused and concerned.
He sighed. "It's a letter I was writing to my old professor at the University of Gallifrey, telling him that my quest for the Myth Engine had been successful, and to prepare for my return. But I was interupted when Xaos broke through Beloved's sheilds, and --" Florestan fell silent, staring at some deep inner space only he could see.
"and you had to go fight him," Eloise prompted, that old familiar shiver running down her spine again.
He snapped back to the present, and nodded. "The fight that ended my life -- or would have, if the Myth Engine hadn't been there to absorb me." He drew a long, shuddering breath. "Beloved knows -- she knows -- better than anyone, that I cannot deliver this letter. To do so would tear the fabric of space-time beyond healing or repair. So why is it here, whenever I turn around, waiting for me to finish it?"
At first, Eloise thought this was a rhetorical question, but then realized he was staring at her, waiting for an answer. "M-maybe," she said, quietly, "she means you should deliver it to someone else -- someone in the present -- or the future. I-I don't know."
"Perhaps," he said, quietly, regarding her with that gaze he had that seemed to pin her to the floor. Then, he shook himself as if dropping a heavy cloak from his shoulders, and grinned ear to ear. "So -- where were you off to?" he asked.
"I was trying to find the music room," Eloise said. "There's a particularly tricky fiddle tune I want to get down."
"It's this way," he said. "I'll walk with you." And then he asked: "Will you play it at this year's celebration?"
"I -- oh! I don't know... Are you sure you want to hold one?"
"Considering all that your friends accomplished at the last gathering, why wouldn't I?"
Eloise couldn't help grinning now, either, and realized this was one more worry gone from her mind. "So, what kind of celebration shall it be?"
"That's a very good question."
---
* We call them "Nasty" trolls, but, naturally, they call themselves by a more noble-sounding title.
---
Genre: "Pro-Fun Hoedown" spin-off. A series of interludes following on the events of the Third Annual Pro-Fun Troll Hoedown: Goodnight, Sweetheart.
Summary: a TARDIS patiently nudges her crew to face some diffecult questions.
Copyright notices: Timelords, Gallifrey and TARDIS are the intellectual property of the BBC; this story was written solely for private amusement and no copyright infringement is intended. Florestan is the creation of Igenlode and Ann Magill. Eloise, Ruthie, Walter, High-Five, and "The Chronicles of the Troll Clans of Radoffiwad" are the creation of Ann Magill.
Took only a few days to write, once I actually wrote it. But it's been playing in my head as a series of daydreams since the last Hoedown ended, in November...
HANGING QUESTIONS: A HOEDOWN INTERLUDE
Eloise, the little green troll, made her way through the TARDIS corridors, counting her steps and the corners she had turned, trying desperately not to get lost -- again. This ship had been her home, and her comapnion, for years, after materializing, alone and exhausted, beside her bridge one day. Eloise hadn't known what a TARDIS was, back then, hadn't known of any world outside her own, and especially not of Gallifrey. She didn't know of Timelords, or that TARDISes were supposed to have pilots. So the fact that the mysterious silver cube appeared alone was no stranger than the fact that it appeared at all. But somehow, she had recognized a mind within the machine -- a potential friend. And as time went on, and the mysterious ship regained its strength and memory, she taught Eloise to be her pilot, and accepted the name "Sweetheart" from her.
All of that happened long ago -- or, at, least, it seemed that way, now. Now, through a string of events that still sent an icy shiver down her spine every time she thought about it, Sweetheart's original pilot, the true pilot -- Florestan -- was back, and Eloise's telepathic link with the ship was gone. "Sweetheart" now answered to the name "Beloved" from her pilot -- though Eloise didn't feel right calling her that. The TARDIS would always be "Sweetheart" to her.
Eloise caught herself going in circles and doubled back. She sighed -- couldn't help feeling a slight pang every time she made a mistake like that. It's not that she felt unwelcome ... exactly ... In fact, she was more grateful than she could have imagined to have someone to actually talk with, to have someone to break bread with at the end of the day. As much as she loved Sweetheart, and High-Five (the poodle she and her friends had rescued from a very dark circus indeed), telepathic links and wagging tails can never replace true conversation. But it still felt odd. The TARDIS no longer responded to Eloise's mind, but to Florestan's.
And Florestan's mind was... "eccentric" was far too mild a word. Somber and austere one minute, he was ready to crack a dozen jokes in succession the next. He jumped from subject to subject like a grasshopper on a bed of coals, using non-sequitors the way others used nouns and verbs ... until you realized, sometimes hours later, that he'd really been acting like a spider, connecting each idea with long, strong threads until they were all united into one beautifully complex web. That made even a simple chat with him something of an adventure. But since the corridors of the TARDIS were now modeled after the workings of his mind, it also made getting from one room to the next rather bemusing, especially since it made Eloise realize that she'd never actually bothered to learn her way around before, but simply went by feel.
She turned the corner and there was -- the library -- again. Eloise ducked her head and hurried past the doorway as though she were trying to avoid the glance of someone on the street. She'd been avoiding the library ever since they'd returned from her homeworld with The Book. But sometimes she wondered if, even without telepathy, Sweetheart kept moving that room into her path on purpose.
The Book, or, more precisely: The Chronicles of the Troll Clans of Radoffiwad was from Walter Duncan, an older troll who had helped with the cooking at her last two Hoedown open houses. It was during the latest Hoedown that Florestan returned, and everything changed.
Florestan and she had only been planning on getting Walter, and Ruthie, Walter's young cousin, home after the party. But then Florestan suggested they stay awhile -- said he wanted to explore a planet without having to negoiate with smugglers, or smile flatteringly while a government official rattled on. And so, while he explored, Eloise set to work repairing and cleaning her home. In the years she had been away, it had gone from being a cozy nest to something resembling an abandoned muskrat den -- with 'abandoned' being the key word.
One warm dry day, Walter and Ruthie showed up with mops and brushes and buckets of paint to help her put on the finishing touches, and the three of them worked in near silence as they put a fresh coat of whitewash on her bridge, and painted the trim around her windows and door.
But eventually, as it did with swelling buds of trees and spreading ferns, the warmth of the sun teased a long-buried question out of her. "Walter," she asked, slowly stirring a pot of fuschia paint to just the right shade, "you have any idea why a family of Warrior Trolls* would, well ... ?"
She saw Walter, out of the corner of her eye, lower his brush and regard her for a moment. "... Adopt a Joyful Troll like you?" he finished for her.
Eloise nodded. "My 'mother'," she said, her mouth tightening around the word, as if she were biting a lemon, "never let me forget that they bothered to raise me, at great sacrifice to themselves, 'for the pride of clan.' But they were never very proud of me. I'd always assumed that she was my real mother, and that I was just a mutant, or something... But then, I met you, and Ruthie, and others, and learned that there were whole families of our kind -- whole clans. But I never thought I could be from a such a clan, too."
"Until just now?" Ruthie asked, wide eyed.
"Well..." Eloise almost told them about how Florestan touched her shoulder, that time, to get her attention, and stop her from completing her 'good-bye' speech to him. That's all it was -- a simple touch, with no great meaning to it. But it brought back an impossible memory from her childhood -- or earlier -- impossible because no one in the family she knew ever touched each other, except in anger, and never so lightly. So there must have been a family she didn't know. She almost told them this, but didn't. The emotions tied up with that moment were still too strong and too new for her to trust herself with them. "Well," she started again, trying to stay within the truth, "when I thought I had to come back here to live, I was afraid of what might happen if my family tried to look for me, or found me ... and I've been wondering."
"Hmmm." Walter tapped his chin with the handle of his brush, absentmindedly adding yet another spot of color to his face. "I must admit I've never heard of such a thing before. But there might be some precedent for it mentioned in The Chronicles."
"The what?"
"The Chronicles of the Troll Clans of Radoffiwad -- a mix of legend, history, geneology, and ... odds and ends. Most families have a copy, handed down from generation to generation -- most Joyful Troll families, anyway..."
"But if my family had a copy, they wouldn't have trusted me with it," Eloise said.
"Well, you were rather young when you ran away. Maybe..."
Eloise shook her head.
"No, I suppose not," Walter consented.
"I know!" Ruthie said, enthusiastically, "Walter has his family's copy! We could look in there, and tell you what we find at the next Hoedown! Maybe you're my cousin, too! I hope so!"
Eloise was about say she couldn't promise that there would be a 'next Hoedown' -- now that Florestan was back, that was really his decision -- when she was interupted by the sound of the Timelord's footfall on the bridge.
"Careful of the railing," Walter said quickly, "it might still be wet."
"Noted," Florestan said. "Is there any work left for me to do?"
"We were talking about researching Eloise's family in Walter's copy of The Chronicles!" Ruthie said, as if that answered his question, "and letting her know what we find next year!"
Florestan raised an eyebrow. "That sounds intriguing," he said. "Anything I can do to help in that regard, I'd be glad to."
Eloise felt herself blush to the tips of her ears. "You don't have to..."
The Timelord chuckled. "I know I don't have to, but I spent years studying to be an exo-mythologist," he said, " -- a specialist in the myths of alien cultures. I decided to focus on Earth myths early on, and while I came across legends about trolls, my studies took me in a different direction; it never occurred to me that the trolls themselves would have histories."
"Oh. All right, then," Eloise said quietly. There was a lot to take in, in the last five minutes. She supposed that was something she ought to get used to, now that Florestan was back.
"Of course I understand," he went on, as if reading her thoughts, "that deciding to take up a line of research can be a big responsibility, and it really is your decision." He turned to Walter. "If you don't mind lending your copy, for an hour or two" he said, "Beloved can create a replica, and we -- ahem... -- Eloise can start researching whenever she's ready."
And so it was that The Book was now in Sweetheart's library, waiting, like some patient-yet-hovering schoolmaster, for whenever she was ready. The problem was, Eloise wasn't sure she'd ever be ready. Once she opened that great red cover, and started turning those pages, whatever she learned about what might have been, or even, perhaps, should have been, could never be unlearned. And so, ever since, she'd been trying to get around the library, and not get lost -- and failing in both things.
Still, she had gotten very good at finding other things that needed her attention, instead. Right now, for example, she was trying to find the music room... There was a fiddle tune she wanted to practice, and then, it would be time to take High-Five for her walk...
She turned the corner ... and found herself just outside Florestan's study. She paused, instinctively, to listen for his pressence within -- and heard it. But he was silent -- not talking or humming to himself, and she could tell, by the rustle of his tweed jacket, that he was moving slowly. That meant he was in a somber mood, and feeling the weight of his Timelord-ly existance. Decorum was called for.
"Greetings, Lord Florestan," she said in measured tones, as she walked by the door.
"Eloise."
When he acknowledged her by name like that, in his current mood, it meant he wanted her attention. She trotted quietly to his side and waited.
He stood there, quite still, for a long time, the fingertips of both hands resting on the desktop, staring at a half-written letter before him (at least, it looked like a letter -- Eloise couldn't read the language. She assumed it was Old High Gallifreyan).
Since Florestan wouldn't speak, she stared at the letter, too. And the longer she did so, the more certain she was that she had seen it before. Then, she remembered: in those first frantic hours after his regeneration, when Sweetheart's corridors were rearranging themselves, Eloise had gone off in a panicked search for High-Five, certain that her dog had gotten lost -- or worse. It was during that search that she stumbled upon this room, and this desk was here -- and that letter was on this desk, just as it was now.
"Why?" he asked in a hoarse voice, at last, breaking the silence. "Why, Beloved, of all the minutiae of our former life, do you recreate this?" And he picked up the paper and shook it for emphesis.
"My lord?" Eloise asked, confused and concerned.
He sighed. "It's a letter I was writing to my old professor at the University of Gallifrey, telling him that my quest for the Myth Engine had been successful, and to prepare for my return. But I was interupted when Xaos broke through Beloved's sheilds, and --" Florestan fell silent, staring at some deep inner space only he could see.
"and you had to go fight him," Eloise prompted, that old familiar shiver running down her spine again.
He snapped back to the present, and nodded. "The fight that ended my life -- or would have, if the Myth Engine hadn't been there to absorb me." He drew a long, shuddering breath. "Beloved knows -- she knows -- better than anyone, that I cannot deliver this letter. To do so would tear the fabric of space-time beyond healing or repair. So why is it here, whenever I turn around, waiting for me to finish it?"
At first, Eloise thought this was a rhetorical question, but then realized he was staring at her, waiting for an answer. "M-maybe," she said, quietly, "she means you should deliver it to someone else -- someone in the present -- or the future. I-I don't know."
"Perhaps," he said, quietly, regarding her with that gaze he had that seemed to pin her to the floor. Then, he shook himself as if dropping a heavy cloak from his shoulders, and grinned ear to ear. "So -- where were you off to?" he asked.
"I was trying to find the music room," Eloise said. "There's a particularly tricky fiddle tune I want to get down."
"It's this way," he said. "I'll walk with you." And then he asked: "Will you play it at this year's celebration?"
"I -- oh! I don't know... Are you sure you want to hold one?"
"Considering all that your friends accomplished at the last gathering, why wouldn't I?"
Eloise couldn't help grinning now, either, and realized this was one more worry gone from her mind. "So, what kind of celebration shall it be?"
"That's a very good question."
---
* We call them "Nasty" trolls, but, naturally, they call themselves by a more noble-sounding title.
---
Genre: "Pro-Fun Hoedown" spin-off. A series of interludes following on the events of the Third Annual Pro-Fun Troll Hoedown: Goodnight, Sweetheart.
Summary: a TARDIS patiently nudges her crew to face some diffecult questions.
Copyright notices: Timelords, Gallifrey and TARDIS are the intellectual property of the BBC; this story was written solely for private amusement and no copyright infringement is intended. Florestan is the creation of Igenlode and Ann Magill. Eloise, Ruthie, Walter, High-Five, and "The Chronicles of the Troll Clans of Radoffiwad" are the creation of Ann Magill.
Took only a few days to write, once I actually wrote it. But it's been playing in my head as a series of daydreams since the last Hoedown ended, in November...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-03-22 07:45 am (UTC)oh, Mod
no subject
Date: 2003-03-23 03:30 pm (UTC)For some reason, imagining Silence and Eloise sitting down away from everyone else and having a good, long chat about faintly remembered families. (Silence at least has always *known* she had a "real" family, but was only a couple of years old when she was taken away from them, so doesn't have anything other than the occasional little memory of them) She does at least know her real name, the one given to her by her parents, but chooses not to use it...at least for now.
no subject
Date: 2003-03-23 07:18 pm (UTC)[Silence] does at least know her real name, the one given to her by her parents, but chooses not to use it...at least for now.
Hmmm. I really, really don't want The Chronicles to play any sort of major role in the plot of the fourth Hoedown (or whatever sort of celebration it turns out to be). Eloise is my alter-ego, and, in a sense, my companion, and I want to have control over her biography and destiny. That won't happen if a dozen or so round robin authors with notoriously whacky senses of humor get a hold of her (and I imagine you feel the same about Silence -- I noticed that it was Silence, and not Yokoi, whom you got lost with in the bits that you wrote last year).
However, it might be all right if getting through whatever crisis arises this year gives Eloise the courage at the end to go into the library and open the book... Maybe (just maybe, mind, it's totally up to you) Silence could tell someone her real name.
Just a thought.
Another thought: When Eloise popped into existance (before she was "Eloise"), she was as 2-dimensional as a Warner-Brothers' cartoon, and so small, she had to sit on my lap to read the newsgroup messages. But the more I lived with her, the bigger and more filled out she became. Now, the top of her head is level with my shoulder when I'm sitting in my motor chair, and she has shed the rings on her fingers and bells on her toes, too (but her vest is still embroidered with gold and red).
Doncha just love when that happens?
no subject
Date: 2003-03-24 04:43 am (UTC)Re: Eloise and Silence chat
Well, this is why I said a nice chat somewhere away form everyone else, (even me and you!) as I don't think it's something that actually needs to be written, I can just imagine them having a good long chitchat with each other. :)
Much longer reply to other bits coming later.
no subject
Date: 2003-03-24 04:14 pm (UTC)Now, I've only just started doing research into "real" trolls (i.e., trolls as they appear in the original folktales of their countries of origin, and not as they're reimagined in modern fantasy fiction [like Tolkien] or mass-media culture [like those little plastic "good luck trolls"])... and by "just started" I mean I've read about three or four different stories.
But even so, I'm starting to see a pattern of Troll culture and behavior:
The trolls in stories about farmers and more of ambiveliant "goodness" -- they can and will bestow great blessings if they are respected, but the punishments meted out on those who disrespect them are downright brutal (in one story, they trick an alchoholic who curses them into shooting his own baby... then give him the means to drink himself to death -- never, ever, curse a tribe of trolls, especially where they can hear you). The trolls in farmers' stories hate dishonesty, miserliness, carelessness, and taking blessings for granted. Even though the trappings of Christianity (the sound of church bells, holy water, the Lord's Prayer, for example), can keep them at a distance, they will cooperate with Christians -- trading with them, and hiring them to do work, etc. .... until a Christian starts disrespecting his or her own faith, and then all the blessings of the trolls vanish. Their attitude seems to be: "It's not my belief system, but if it's yours, you'd better honor it!"
Now, in the one story I read where the sympathetic characters were merchants (the "main" characters of the story were farmers, but the only thing they had to do in the story provide transportation into town for visiting dignitaries), the trolls were portrayed as tricksters who kidnap humans, make them forget who they are, and force them to steal from the merchants so they won't make any profit.
Methinks there's some socio-economic conflict underlying these legends, no?
---
In any case, there's precedent in that last story for the trolls who kidnap to "brainwash" their victims (modern concept, that, and not entirely fitting to the context of the story itself), and wipe their memories... In which case, Eloise may not have much to say, compared to Silence, in this imagined chat of yours....