Passersby ➵ ONC 2021

➵ messages for water spirits

As long as they are to go westward, the tall one insists they will find the place for which they are looking. The cat thinks this is stupid and does not make sense, but the small one says that recently nothing has made any sense at all and they should not question things. So they sail in the direction they can only assume is West because the tall one held up his curved weapon, examined it, and said it was so.

"I shall miss Aragorn like a leaf misses its root," he says, his back flat against the wooden planks as he looks to the sky so large he may as well fall into it.

"He'll be remembered as a brave soul," the small one replies, and the cat says only silence as this is a subject she knows nothing of. "We are lucky to still have one another alive."

"But this isn't at all a surprise, Gimli," the tall one breathes towards the constellations, his face far more cheerful than his words. "I may never die. Death is someone I may never meet; a river I may not sail."

This is one of those things that he does not understand. He has no grasp of what comes after life, as living is all he has been conditioned to know. There's a sorrow to that aspect of immortality. You leave people behind and cannot leave with them. The end of life is an adventure he may never be able to conquer. And he breathes adventure. He wants all of it. Every last summit. Every lone victorious mast.

But Gimli knows death. He knows it like the braids off his own chin. He has seen it, heard it, pondered it for each and every second he has lived, because he knows that one day he will have it. There's nothing uncertain about the fact. So he regards it with great comprehension, as does the cat before him, guiding the steering wheel of the boat with her large gray paw.

"Legolas, I know you wonder where Aragorn has gone," Gimli states openly, leaving no room for rebuttal as it is such a casual fact. "I know you wonder it of all who've expired battling just next to you. You wonder it of every mortal life you've seen taken."

The sea is calm and cool, the air crisp with the smell of silence. The cat looks ahead. Legolas the elf remeasures the stars.

"But I must say," Gimli goes on, lighting a candle in front of him and pulling an extra layer of fabric around his shoulders (dwarves do not like getting cold, but it happens anyway), "that even I do not know fully where they are. All I have is scriptures and man-made beliefs. Never has one lived to tell the true tale of what is after dying. Then it wouldn't count as death."

The cat speaks for the first occasion in nearly a day. Her long, heavy tail droops over the edge of the raised floor like a string off the side of the world.

"My land tells tales of spirits meeting one another under waters like these," she says, her deep green eyes glancing off the glasslike surface of the sleeping ocean. "They speak of them dancing with the beautiful fish and making a palace of shells. They say sometimes when you speak to the water, they can hear you, and sometimes they send a shell to the nearest land as a way to whisper back."

They are all still for a very long time. Spirits. In this very sea, perhaps? It is not impossible. For what other reason would it be so vast, if not to hold the hearts of the many, many fallen?

Legolas leans over the edge of the ship, his fingers touching only the top of the water as they slide through it. He caresses it like he would an elk, or a horse, or a beautiful bird, because the water lives, too. It breathes the same life that will pulse through his fingers for the rest of time.

"Ta naa ilsanya, seeien lle veemaeg veeslate eamin kaimela arilbeien able quenalle," he whispers at the water in a language that Gimli only pretends he does not understand. "Amin nowa enmani lle elea. Mani lle tyava. Amin merna sintmanka lle valina."

Although his skills in the Sindarin language have dwindled with his many years of not uttering a word, Gimli is able to make out the phrases as best he can, jotting them down on a sheet of parchment, though he does not know why.

It reads:

"It is not natural, seeing you as sharp as slate in my dreams and not being able to speak to you.

"I wish to learn what you see. What you feel. I yearn to know if you are happy."

It is quiet, the slight breeze turning the water from glass to sand, tiny indents burrowing into its surface like stones. Legolas pets the sea again. He loves the sea. The boat loves the sea. Even the cat doesn't mind its presence; its expansive consciousness. But Gimli does not like the water, so he focuses on his parchment.

"Amin uma ilsinta manka lle naa listenien," Legolas whispers again, although the sound is tighter, more broken, stiff. "Amin uma ileven sinta manka lle naa eller."

And then he returns fully into the body of the boat, aligning his bow with the stars one more time before closing his eyes and presumably resting; Gimli is not sure if he actually sleeps as an elf. But this does not matter to him. He is preoccupied by translating that last bit of what was said to the water. And when he is finished, the message bites his throat with the discomfort of a sting.

"I do not know if you are listening. I do not even know if you are there."

➵