Before the Oath

Title: Before the Oath

Type: Vignette

Author: Alyssa

Rating: G

Disclaimer: I own none of Tolkien’s material; I borrow only for the foremost purpose of the reader’s pleasure.

Timeline: Any street in a residential area of the U.S., Halloween (most likely October 31, 2003).

Notes: Our favorite wanderer-elf, Maglor son of Fëanor, reflects on a modern day custom (well, at least a US custom!!). As to how he knows what all these things are… I believe he has lived through them since they were thought of. So the customs evolved around him, and he just went along with the flow.

- Alyssa

**

A sudden gust of moist wind blew the hood of my jacket from my head once again, causing my long, nearly black hair to whip into my face, and then fall limply again to my shoulders. Such is a constant battle on nights like this. But I would want the weather no other way. Not for the children, so much, as the holiday that some go to extremes to celebrate. These dark, ominous clouds and short, teasing gusts of wind seem fitting for All Hallow’s Eve. The holiday that was founded on a day nearly twenty thousand years ago…

As my hair flies back revealing my ears, I reach up almost reflectively to push them under my hood again. That was until I realized that pointed ears, like mine, are not as necessary to be hidden tonight, as they would be any other night of the year. In fact, they are embraced to a certain extent. I can pass for normal on nights like this – I could even say I was a Prince of the Noldor, and would be believed. As to how many people, nowadays, would actually know who a son of Fëanor was… I wouldn’t know.

While I ride my red bicycle (received for services rendered to an elderly woman) down yet one more meagerly lit street, I pass another band of happy, wound-up children. This troop is filled with mostly witches and a few so-called “ninjas,” although I am momentarily surprised to see one pre-adolescent girl in a different type of garment than the others. She wears a dress much like my people would have: long and flowing with an extended torso making the wearer look slender and tall.

The young Lady floats on down the cement sidewalk, oblivious to the world around her. I wonder if she knows she looks like my mother, they both have dark hair and a wise-looking visage. Perhaps she, too, is some distant relation to Mahtan.

The girl’s group of parents and chaperones lags not far behind. Some are dressed for the occasion, while most are not. Upon seeing me looking on, a few parents attempt to hurry the “trick-or-treaters” on to the next residence. But no need; the children hurry enough on their own, wanting only to get to the next source of sweets at a house with artificial gravestones in the front lawn. I still do not see the attraction of such things to this day.

This is not the first such group I have passed in the years I have wandered, nor will it be the last. Just like the last generations of children, these goblins, witches, and various movie characters will grow up and eventually chaperone their own children’s Halloween antics.

Yet again, it is nights like these each year when I see families so detached from their own everyday lives, their own promises – oaths even – that I most rue what I committed myself and my brothers to in the First Age of this world. Now, more than ever, I long for my family in Valinor… before the Oath.

Le Finis.