"Exit Pursued By A Bear" by Zopyrus

[zopyrus.livejournal.com]

B2MeM Challenge: “Anything dated from the shores of Cuiviénen to the early days of the march across the mountains to the sea. My favorite possible character would be Beleg…” heartofoshun
Format: Short Story
Genre: Humor
Rating: PG
Warnings: Naked elf-maidens and bears.
Characters: Beleg, Nellas, Enel, Enelyë
Pairings: n/a
Summary: One hundred forty four elves wake up on the shores of Cuiviénen, each of them next to a husband or a wife.  But Beleg and Nellas are a little different from the others…



~~~

Imin, Tata and Enel awoke before their spouses, and the first thing that they saw was the stars, for they woke in the early twilight before dawn.  And the next thing they saw was their destined spouses lying asleep on the green sward beside them. Then they were so enamoured of their beauty that their desire for speech was immediately quickened and they began to ‘think of words’ to speak and sing in.  And being impatient they could not wait but woke up their spouses.  Thus, the Eldar say, the first thing that each elf-woman saw was her spouse, and her love for him was her first love; and her love and reverence for the wonders of Arda came later.

- Quendi and Eldar

~~~

Beleg's first love had strong arms and a regal bearing.  He was so tall that Beleg had to crane his neck to see him properly.

"Ai!" sighed Beleg, longingly.  It was the first word he ever made.  He paused a moment, to admire the sound.

"You are so beautiful," Beleg continued.  The declaration came as naturally as breathing.  "And I really like your shiny belt."

Something growled in the bushes behind him, but Beleg paid it no mind.  He was growing impatient: he wanted his love to speak back.

"What is that you are holding?" he asked.  "A sword? A bow?"  As he said the words, images blossomed in his mind, half-remembered from the time before he was himself.

His love remained silent.  Had Beleg said something wrong?

As he pondered, the growling sound grew louder.  Suddenly, another elf ran up to him, gasping and shouting and waving her arms.  She was a maiden of slight stature, clad only in her hair--and from the way she was looking at Beleg, she clearly thought he was an idiot.

She barked a word at him, but Beleg shook his head, not understanding.  This newcomer could not have been more different than his love--and she was interrupting their moment.

"ARGH," said the maiden, in an annoyed tone.  She grabbed Beleg's hand and tugged on it, pulling him towards her.  He dug in his heels.

"Can't you see we're--" said Beleg, gesturing upwards.  But he stopped short when he saw the enormous furry creature burst out of the bushes, slavering and snarling.

"BEAR," said the maiden, with another grimace.  "RUN."

This time, Beleg didn't need a translation to follow her advice.

"Come with us," he shouted to his love.  The maiden ran off without a backward glance--and Beleg followed.

~~~

Escaping the bear was not too hard.  Beleg followed the elf-maiden up a tree, and they threw pinecones at the creature until it grew bored and wandered off, looking for easier prey.

As soon as they were both sure it was gone, Beleg and the elf-maiden both sighed, then laughed in wordless delight.

“NELLAS,” said the elf-maiden, with an expressive gesture towards her own face.

Beleg mimicked the gesture as best he could.

“BELEG,” he said.  Then he gestured again, to draw her attention to his love.

“And this is Telumehtar.”

Above their heads, Beleg’s love was silent: cold, remote, and glittering,

“Hmm,” said Nellas, frowning politely.  “Actually, I call those…stars?”

Beleg shook his head.

“No, I mean these particular stars.  See, there are his shoulders, and his belt, and his…uh, scabbard.”

Nellas tipped back her head, appraisingly.

“Oh.  Yes, I see him now.”

Both elves lapsed into admiring silence.

“Sorry about the bear,” said Nellas.  “I woke up when a pine cone fell on me.  You were still asleep, so I went exploring.”

“I woke alone,” said Beleg.  The words were a bit redundant, but he said them out loud anyway.  He wanted to hear what they sounded like.

Nellas took his hand.

“From now on, we look out for each other,” she said.

High above them, the stars of Telumehtar twinkled.

~~~

A would-be king was standing, uninvited, in Beleg’s clearing.  He was tall, but not as tall as Beleg; and the crown of leaves he had made for himself looked a little ridiculous.

“Hello there, word-maker,” said Enel, loudly and slowly.  He waggled his finger.  “I choose YOU, to be my companion.”

Beleg blinked.

“Both of you, of course,” added Enelyë, hovering deferentially behind her husband.  “Your wife, too.  You’d better go wake her up.”

Beleg held up his hands to ward them off.

“Uh, you mean Nellas?” he said.  “She’s been awake for ages—much longer than me.”

Beleg glanced around the clearing, but the only people there beside himself were Enel and his strange, ragtag group of followers.  Nellas was nowhere to be seen. 

In the face of monsters, Nellas was as fearless as Beleg—and they both had the bear-sinew accessories to prove it.  But she hated the crowds of newly-woken elves who had been trampling around their patch of woods, breaking branches and scaring away the songbirds.  Most likely, she had gone up a tree to hide until they were gone.

“Impossible!” said Enel, with a magnificent frown.  “Surely—”

“And she’s not my wife,” Beleg continued, raising his voice a little.  “I mean, unless that word means something different for you, but I can kind of sense your thoughts, and—”

“I’m sure you’ll both come around,” said Enelyë, beatifically.  “After all, we love best what we see first.”

Beleg glanced up, superstitiously, at Telumehtar.  No help there, as usual. 

Enelyë was right, in a way.  Beleg loved these woods, and this sky, like they were a part of him; but another, wiser part of him sensed it could not last forever.  And if Enel, with his grating voice and odd ideas, was set on moving in, maybe it was time for Beleg to move out.

“Well?” said Enel.  “How about it?  The three of us who woke first are picking teams, and my rates are very competit—”

Woke first?  Really?  Beleg took a deep breath.

“No thanks,” he said.

~~~

Many leagues west of the lake, Beleg and Nellas stopped to rest.

“I think we’ve lost them for now,” said Beleg.  The sounds of the other Elves wandering about, talking and carousing, had carried some distance; but now he could only hear the chatter of nightingales, the whisper of the wind, and the soft murmur of the stream they were following.

Nellas nodded.  She was curled contentedly against the trunk of a wide, grey tree; and she was scratching in the rich earth with a stick.

“Do you think we’ll ever see them again?”

Nellas glanced up at the sky, thoughtfully.  Telumehtar was her favorite constellation, too—but sometimes she seemed a little worried, when she looked at it.  Beleg had never asked her why.

“I don’t think we’ll be alone forever,” she said.  “There are great deeds to be done in the world, so there must be people who will do them.  But I don’t think we’ll see Enelyë or Enel again.

Beleg didn’t think so either.  They didn’t seem very smart; eventually, they would probably get eaten by bears.  He hadn’t liked them, but that was a sad thought.

Maybe they would find safety in numbers.

“How many of them—us—do you think there are, Nellas?”

Nellas was still scratching with the stick, carefully adding a new row of x’s to her design.  She was making a perfect square.

“Twelve times eleven is one hundred thirty-two,” she muttered, counting up the ‘x’s on her fingers.  “And twelve times twelve…”

“Nellas?” he prompted.

“One gross!” she exclaimed, proudly.  “One hundred forty four.  I made a new word!”

“Gross,” he repeated, shaping the word carefully with his mouth.  It made him smile.  “I like it.”

FIN

Author’s Notes:

0.  Thank you to suzll for the beta, and for suggesting the title!
1.  There is no way to know for sure if Beleg or Nellas were at Cuiviénen, but no one ever says they weren’t—and as Oshun pointed out in her prompt, Beleg is described in canon as “a son of the wilderness who wist no sire,” which might indicate he was one of the first Elves.  (Or it could just mean that his dad was a deadbeat!)
2.  Telumehtar is the older Quenya name for Orion (also called Menelmakar), which according to the Annals of Aman is “a sign of Túrin Turambar, who should come into the world, and a foreshadowing of the Last Battle that shall be at the end of Days.”  In this fic, the Túrin Constellation is meant to be more a foreshadowing of…other things. :P
3.  The bear-sinew accessories are, to my eternal delight, totally canon.