The Fellowship's Silvertongue. Part 2.

Warnings.

I woke up the next morning in a bad mood. I looked outside. No sign of Aragorn, bad. And no sign of Orcs. Good. 

I splashed my face with water then went downstairs. The table was filled with food again, but I wasn't hungry. Instead, I joined Eowyn at a table. 

"Rosa, how have you been?" She looked at me. 

"Alright. I guess. How've you been?" I replied. 

"I'm okay. I just hope that we can leave this place soon." Eowyn said. "By the way, everyone is talking about you and Legolas arguing." 

"Oh, yeah. I think we're keeping our distance for now. I think it's him that needs to cool down." I glanced over to where he sat with Gimli, who was lecturing him. 

Probably about having better manners toward me and apologizing. But I wasn't ready to talk to him yet, he hurt my feelings. 

"How long do you think before leaving?" Eowyn asked.

"I honestly don't know. We might have to stay here forever." I replied. 

"But what about the rest of your journey?" Eowyn questioned.

"Gandalf will be back soon with your brother. Then we'll continue the journey with him, save our two companions, and find the other ones in Mordor. Then I guess that's it." I frowned.  

"I'm going out to help some of the women with sorting supplies," Eowyn said standing up. I nodded and was left alone at the table. 

In the far corner of the room, Theoden sat with others, planning out what to do in the future. I looked down at the duffle bag next to me, reached in, and pulled out Beowulf. This was one that I had not read in a long time but enjoyed very much. I opened the cover and glossed over the first page, remembering that one side was written in Old English, and the other in the modern language. 

One of the strange rules of being a Silvertongue is that it only works when you read in your native language. This gave me a good reason to learn how to read Old English aloud without reading anything out. It would be a tragedy if I were to read out the demon Grendel from this piece of literature. I began to read to myself and as I turned to the second page, my eyes caught a young boy who stood in front of me, staring at the book cover. I smiled lightly and he looked down in embarrassment. 

"Do you like to read?" I asked him. 

The young boy looked back up at me and nodded. "Papa taught me how." 

"Would you like to read this with me?" I held up the book. 

The boy nodded with a smile on his face, then sat criss-crossed on the floor. It had been a while since I had read anything out of a book freely with no worries, and I was excited. I flipped back to the first page and before I began reading, I looked down at the boy. 

"Now, I am going to read this in a different language alright?" I explained. "It rhymes, so you can almost think of it as a song or a poem." 

The boy smiled again, folded his hands in his lap, and looked at me attentively. I cleared my throat, and read the first sentence to myself in a dull whisper to check that my dialect was correct before I began to read aloud. 

"Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon."

My voice echoed through the hall, the words flowed off my tongue like silk, but nothing fell from the sky as it was read out of the book. Nothing emerged from the pages and no one disappeared from the hall. As I read on, slowly more and more children joined the young boy on the floor and watched me and listened to the unknown words that came from my mouth. Even though the children did not understand a word that was said, the expression in my voice gave them some sort of understanding of the tone. It then occurred to me, that my voice was not the only thing that could tell a story.