EARTHBOUND | the lord of the rings

07 | ON THE ACCOUNT OF GREAT EVIL

Mags breezed by the halls of Rivendell. She passed by open galleries of rich, waterfall shores lying just beyond the lush, autumn flora. Pleasant melodies of songbirds serenaded this haven and soothing whistles of the afternoon breeze teased her hair. However, nothing seemed to enchant the girl's attention away from the floor. She mindlessly followed wherever her feet led as she allowed her racing thoughts to do the same.

Mags arrived at the archway of the library. Unlike most of Rivendell's grottos, the library was shielded from the elements, save for a glass-domed ceiling to welcome golden sunlight in. Carvings of vines decorated each wall that housed engraved bookshelves. The same pattern adorned grand pillars of stone and iron railings with stairs that led up to three floors of novels, poems, archives, records, and stories galore. Lounges were arranged neatly in every corner, with wooden tables by the shelves to bear any weight a passerby might have.

Though Mags studied under Elrond for a year, she was never proficient in learning Quenya, the language of Rivendell. She knew the alphabet, sure, but she struggled when it came to everything beyond that. There were too many meanings for one prefix to keep track of and pronunciations were too complicated to roll off the tongue. Quenya was a beautiful language, satisfying both the ears of the listener and the tongue of the speaker. If only Mags could read and utter its elegance, then she wouldn't feel as antsy as she did at the moment. Imagine the girl's frustration when she couldn't find a single passage to read in the Common Tongue.

Mags took it upon herself to grab a thick dictionary to translate the pile of books she gathered. They possessed the most alluring covers one could ever imagine. Some of them displayed her image with polished, gold-plated covers, while others varied in bright velvet linens or saturated mahogany that reflected their vibrancy on her skin. Whatever contents these books promised, Mags felt determined to translate each page, word for word, and for as long as she could to pass the time.

The girl rested on a lounge and set the thick dictionary down on a table. She opened a crimson book to the first page, and instantly, her eyes strained at the foreign black script that looked too elaborate for her to comprehend. As Mags' vision adjusted, she couldn't help but admire the elegance of the language. Flows of long stems and curved strokes filled unsoiled pages and flecks of punctuation settled above and beneath the words. It seemed very likely that each word was written with much care, as the quality of the handwriting was consistent with precision and purpose. Not surprising for the elven race.

"Alright," Mags whispered to herself. She journeyed through pages of the dictionary to enter a long, tedious process of deciphering the text.

Sheer force of will pushed the girl to carry on after an hour of putting together a gibberish mess of a paragraph. Consonants succeeded a string of multiple vowels, forming a made-up word. Others resulted in letters in a rare combination. Mags scratched her head with ink-stained hands as she jabbed her quill onto a blotted sheet of paper. She tried to utter the words on the page to make sense of it, but nothing helped. It truly was a wonder that she hadn't put her pen down in defeat. She merely took a breath, closed her eyes, and breathed for a moment to freshen her mind. When Mags fluttered herself awake, she was pleasantly surprised to find a stranger clad in copper at the mouth of the archway.

The stranger's ivory locks flowed as his copper cloak waltzed with each step. He glided with much confidence in his presence; a poise so enchanting that Mags refused to glance away. As he walked under the sunlight, his fair hair transformed to a glorious silver that complimented a warm, golden glow on his skin. Mags prayed that the feverish midday sun would be a believable excuse for her flushed cheeks, but when she looked at her reflection on the gold-plated book, it was obvious that cry would be far from the truth.