The story in your eyes

From the first settlement in the Valley to my very last day in it, there have been stories of the other races that lived there. Many peoples of differing origins that planted flags and called the place their home lived, worked, loved and died in the fertile crescent of my home.

The first race, those strange orange people who called themselves The Human Beings who lived with nature as a part of this great blue ship living in harmony with the times and tides of our planet. They were a great people of spirituality who, in the end, met their demise at the hands of people who believed that their single god was the only real god.
The elves and leprechauns, who were thought to be only mythic in their origins, making homes among the tree’s and fauna, their biggest mistake was to befriend a race that in its heart could not trust.

The Elvin race was bread out by those who would greedily seek their power and still turn their backs on the half breeds created by that greed. Cursed with the Elvin longevity, these youths faced a lifetime of hardship and ridicule. My grandmother was a half Elvin woman who lived on the very edge of both societies; it was really the only place for them.
Children scorned by both races for their heritage, pushed into the shadows of both worlds, forgotten byproducts of lust. There were a handful of both races who tried to return their lost brothers and sisters into the fold, however pressure from both sides made any concerted efforts impractical and soon those poor unfortunate souls vanished in the fog of time.

The leprechauns were taught a far less civil lesson. Through years of abuses both physical and mental, what was left of them were so pitiful that in the end, they simply faded away. You see we gave them tobacco and hard drink and let them indulge to their hearts content. We robbed them of their fabled riches and turned them into lesser beings, who became a sort of slave, a second class citizen of the valley and far too soon their numbers dwindles to nothing. They exist now only in legend, proud memories of a degenerated race.

The giants for all their bluster and stamina were eradicated not long after the death of little Chelsea. Vigilantes would bring about the fall of the great men as nightly raids on their mountain homes would prove to be the higher form of justice to our people. I could never reconcile the belief in a god who commanded Thou shalt not kill with the nation of those who would set light to the mountain caves and laugh at the screams of burning children.

The various other races were as well trampled under foot by the loving arms of god’s violent brood. Progress and happiness were the propaganda of the day, all in the name of making lives better. Lives our lives, the lives of those who would come to claim, to tame and to live above the world to be apart from the wonder rather than to be a part of it.
The last of the races, the most gentile and powerful of them all were the last to go, and not by our hands, but of their own. The Stone Gollum’s, those great calamities, those awesome and stirring creations, looked down upon the Valley and despaired. Since the dawn of all creation they sat and looked down upon the Valley watching intently as the encapsulated world they stood guardian over grew, blossomed and finally died under the weight of the weeds that invaded the place. They looked down to see the light of so many lives snuffed to be replaced by the growing scourge of humanity and to this they could only watch. It was only two generations ago when they took action.

The nights in the Village were always silent as a tomb. The shops would close their doors and the Lighters would come out to sing us to sleep. The taverns and houses of improper tastes would only be active for an hour after the songs faded and soon the great veil would fall and we would surrender ourselves to Orpheus and the fairies of the night. You can imagine the shattering disturbance then, the night the Gollum’s lamented.

The house of Dover had finished wrestling in their beds when the song began to ring. It started out low like a storm on the horizon a ringing baritone that shook the foundations of the houses, a terrible precursor to the anguish that would be soon to come.

Slowly, dancing as smoke dances on a gentle breeze the single note split into two tones, one higher one lower and both as low and gravelly as one can bear. The two became four the four became eight and so forth until the all encompassing deep shook the very bones.
The Song of the Gollums tore through people’s souls as scythes through wheat and the Village rocked from the onslaught of anguish pouring from those stoic and awesome creatures. Everyone in the Village shrieked in terror that night. They ran from their homes to stare into the black hills that surrounded our home all in wonder and fear of the terrible chorus that threatened doom to them all.

They held each other and prayed to their god that this great onslaught would end and that their world be saved from whatever wickedness those poor souls had coming for them. The opus grew and spread, the Sea of Despair shook as though someone had dropped a pebble in a pond of water, the boats anchored in the ports banged and strained against their moorings.

Only one of them stood staring with wide eyes and wonder in their heart. She was my grandmother. She stood in joyous brotherhood of their melody. As others panicked and trembled in fear of them, she stood listening, collaborating in their sadness.
Just as the Villagers thought they could endure no more of this unexpected and tremendous outpouring, it stopped. Abruptly and completely the harmony that had shook the very floor of the Valley stopped leaving the frantic cries of the Village echoing in the silence of the night.

When it was all said and done, everyone in the Valley knew beyond all doubt that something had changed and it could not have been for the better. No one slept that night and for the next few days after a very watchful eye was kept on the slopes overhead.
No one spoke of the thought in everyone’s mind, but they all knew that the song was a direct reflection of what they had done to the Valley and its guardians were not pleased with it at all.

Fourteen days to the letter after the song had filled the air, three strangers came into the Village. They were tall and odd looking people. Their skin was grey and leathery, their eyes deep set in their sockets and their features were chiseled and hard.

They wore only a few scraps of clothing, just enough to cover their shame and for their lack of bulk, when they walked their footsteps were heavy and hard on the ground. There was something in their purpose an air of sadness to them as they came into town.

They were met by the leaders of the Village just before they made it into the center of town. The greetings were unsure and awkward. No one had forgotten the events of that night and tensions were high at the sight of anyone who did not belong.

The two male figures spoke in hushed tones to the leaders as the female stood behind them silent and watching. A small knot of people gathered in the center of the Village, but kept their distance as the strangers spoke to the heads of the village.

Not long after their conversation ended and the leaders brought them to the gathering of villagers that had grown to nearly the entire town.
‘These fine people have found themselves in need of a home and work in our Village. And it will be so.” The mayor spoke.

He led them to the village Taylor who made them a fine suit of clothing and then they went to the market for food and drink. Whispers began to spread throughout the village that they were from the other side of the Greater Depression and that the Gollum’s had attacked their party leaving them the only survivors.

Other stories were that they themselves were the Gollum’s, who by the last act of magic had made themselves human so that the Gollum’s could easily take control of the Village and wipe them all out.

When the meal was over and the Mayor had a drag from his pipe he then announced that the strangers could not remember who they were nor where they were from. They had found themselves in an old dwelling that belonged to the giants and made their way down the slopes to the Village in hopes of finding out who they were.

Having no means, nor home it would become the responsibility of the Village to take care of their new found brothers. He then asked the Villagers for volunteers to take them in.
This request was not taken lightly, no one trusted anything out of the ordinary and their arrival coupled with strange events from the mountains frightened them all, save one. My grandmother spoke up. She could not afford to house more than one of them and still she took them in and gave them a place to rest and chores to work until they found proper employ.

For a year the strangers slowly began to become a part of the Village. They worked along side the villagers and ate with them. During the celebration days the strangers took part and seemed to enjoy the lives they were rebuilding for themselves.
The lesser male took the name Charles and had become quite close to my grandmother. The other male was named David and the Female too the name Sheridan. It looked as though they had all found a place for themselves in the Village and soon all the events of their arrival were forgotten.

David and Sheridan took a house in the high steppes of the Village becoming farmers and producing many offspring. Their children spread out through the Village and took jobs and lives and lived ass the rest of the Village.

Charles and my grandmother wed three years after his arrival. He took on the job of key maker and she, the role of mother and housewife. They were a good godlike family and respected in their circles.

My grandmother would tell me stories of their lives together. The very pleasant and steady life, until one day I did something that forced a truth from her that she did not want to speak of.

I was playing with her pup in the yard, as all children and pups do, when I reached out for it. My hands grasped the little creature and it yelped in agony. I let the thing go and stood in shock at the incident.

My grandmother came to the door asking what had happened and when I explained to her the events, she sat me down with a deep sigh. She wrung her hands and I saw her looking far into the hills as she tried to tell me something that should not have been spoken. My grandfather Charles was indeed a Gollum.

On that night when the Gollum’s shook the world, they had expended all of their magic of the earth to transform themselves into the people the village had come to know. All but the three of them were lost in the process.

She told me of how she and Charles had come to meet and to live together and of how he had once caught her in a fall. His grip had nearly broken her wrist and that was when he told her of his secret.

The Gollums had looked down upon the Village and saw what they had done to the Valley. They knew it would only be a matter of time before the Villagers would come for them and so they decided to end their race by becoming a part of ours.

They still had the very hard and stony features of their race and some of their strength. So in times of innocents they would forget themselves and quite by accident do damage to those they did not want to hurt.

She spoke of his wonder and sadness. He could not reconcile that someone could find a creature as hard and rough hewn as he, so attractive. There were many nights when he wished to reach out to her, to hold her tightly in his arms, knowing all the time that even the slightest failure in his guard could cause her serious harm.

It was a malevolent joke a sort of ironic price to pay; it seemed to him, that in becoming human, he would have to stand apart from humanity. He would never know the feeling of a good long hug or the freedom of pure joy.

In the end, the stoic strangers would learn how to love and live like humans all the time standing guard over their great strength and the damage it could do. For all their efforts even their grandchildren would grow to become hard creatures longing to be able to embrace life without the capacity to crush it.

She loved him and he loved her. After they had their children Charles became more and more distant. He saw in his children that which the Gollum’s wanted to be free of. He saw in his children the same unspoken inequity the humans had shown the other races.

There was a place for the children of stone, they would never be of high seat in the village, and though they were accepted, they were not fully a part of the Village. For that it would take many generations of breeding the stone from the bloodline until the houses of David were nothing more and humans after all.

For me, well I took a more pragmatic role in the whole affair. I left the Valley and with me I took only the stories of my heritage and the knowledge that came with them. I have chosen not to breed. I have chosen to end the cycle of muddy lineage and tarnished piety.
The line will go on with the rest of my brothers and sisters. The constant thinning of our genetics will run rampant until the House of Dover is no more a fitting end to the heresy that scars our history. As for my branch of the family tree however, it shall be pruned, no more to scar the human gene pool. It is a poor apology and still it is the only recompense I can muster.
New perspectives

My father was a brutal man. Being half Gollum, he was prone to being sullen and solitary, never truly capable of emoting to anyone his true heart. However, memories are blind to the truth and one needs a new prospective from time to time, to understand the reality of ones youth.
He was an unremarkable man, my father. He achieved nothing noteworthy, nor will anyone remember his name past his grandchildren. He will, as many of us will, be lost in time and obscurity.
I remember though, one day of his life that forever changed mine. He was ailing from the cough that one gets from too many years of the pipe and could no longer manage the upkeep of his home. The news came down to me that he needed help and so I made the journey back to the Village to assist as best I could.

Once there I saw this frail stick of a man hobbling around his yard chasing after his grandchildren smiling and laughing all the way. He was never jovial when I was a child. He was a hard man, a cold man of deep solitary commitment. He was harsh in his judgment and Spartan in his praise and in time I grew to hate the man.
As soon as the cough had caught him, his heart softened a little and we resolved many of the issues that had come between us, becoming tolerable of each other at best. We would talk about the shallow subjects and topics of the day and nothing deeper than his need for air.
I set to the task of painting his house and kept to myself for the most part, listening to music and in some small part angry at the children who received the lion share of my father’s affection. As the day went by and my childishness faded, I took up conversation with the little ones and discovered how unique they were.

From the top of a ladder, as I painted I saw two children at play, being children and a world I had forgotten opened its doors to me once again. You see from the minds of innocents comes the greatness of man.

As they ran and played, they turned the confines of a small yard into a universe I had completely forgotten. There were robots and princesses in flowing white robes. Super hero’s fought villain’s to save the day and at one point a small cardboard box became the most glorious galleon I had ever been permitted to board.

At one point, from my perch, I saw a dying man become young again. I watched the transformation of age and illness to vitality and youth as my father partook of the games his progeny played and for one small moment he was well.

His cough would take over, reminding him of time and tide and he would then become the man he really was, hobbling back into his house to suck on the tube connected to canned air which he desperately needed to survive. I could hear, as far away as I was from him, the disease take him in its grip and force more life from him.

The sun was hot and beating down as I saw his door open. He sat down on the stoop and his grandson came to him. They stared at each other until the child held out his hand. My father took it and again the magic of youth took the man. He picked up the child and hugged him tightly, he told the child he loved more than anyone else and I forced back jealous tears as I finished my task.

When the job was done I sat under the only tree in his yard watching the day pass as I smoked and laughed at my niece and nephew as they played. It was after all a good day.
My father came out to me and sat down beside me. He had a small book in his hands.
I been watching you all day. He said as he handed me the book.

“I’m not jealous. I just never knew the person you are now, ever existed.
Something’s change.” He said.

I leafed through the book. It was a book of photo’s most of them very old and discolored. There he was, as I remembered him hard as the stone that ran through his veins. He was smiling in some and in others he had a child, not very old in his hands.

The photo’s revealed to me that in his youth, my father was an open man. A man of joy as well as duty. This child he carried and lay with and played with had to have been my sister, for she was his pride and joy.

“Where did these come from?” I asked.

“They’ve been in my bedroom for a long time.” He said.

“I won’t be here much longer, and its time you kids got what was yours. So I put all the pictures of each one of you in your own books to give to you. These are me?” I was dumbfounded.

“One day you will discover that being a father, a grandfather, a husband, a friend, all comes with differing responsibilities and needs. There was a time when you and I did the same thing they and I did today. Then that time passed and I had to become your father, it wasn’t easy to give up all the fun for all the pressure but from the look of you now, it was well worth the cost.”

Never in his life did my father ever tell me he loved me. Never in his life did he ever say he was proud of me, but under the tree, as I leafed through the lost mysteries of my childhood, I saw a man, the same man I saw from the heights of my ladder and all things came full circle.

I miss the man. The man I should have known, the man who was not only a devoted husband, but a strong father and gentle grandfather, a man anyone could have loved and been very proud of to this very day.