Elf Salon ~ featured elf
The Elf Salon spotlights different elves from the Gallery and tells the stories of my encounters with them. It will be updated periodically, so please check back the next time you're in the neighborhood. The Salon is now featuring:
Bru'um
"Bru’um always be free!"
The face on the page looks like it is pressed against a window pane. It peers in, pushes against the glass, drawn by curiosity. When I stare back, equally curious, it cowers away, covering its face with its hands. "No, no no!" it protests, "Don’t look, Big indoorsy, you can’t see me!"
Puzzled, but not wanting to cause further distress, I look away. The moment my back is turned, the face reappears in the window. On the periphery of my vision I can see peering eyes darting left and right, up and down, taking in as much as they can see. I sense his readiness to run away, to hide again at the first hint that he is observed, so I pretend not to be aware of him. I carefully look away, puttering about, sneaking cautious peeks out of the corners of my eyes.
Agile and quick, he eyes the doorframe mistrustfully, then scoots beneath it, darting rapidly about, trying to comprehend something so strange as to be completely beyond all comprehension.
"What is it that is so strange to him?’ I wonder, looking around at my basement studio, seeing a homey, everyday sort of place.
"Big indoorsness." he mutters, shaking his head. He touches a table, then a bit of wall, each time pulling his hand back hurriedly as though he might be burned. "Build indoorsness. Dead wood piled on stone, made to hold in? To keep out? Why?"
"It’s the house!" I realize as I listen. "It’s like he’s never seen one before."
He creeps cautiously into a corner ~ walls on either side ~ and then scuttles out quickly, hopping across the cement floor on long bare feet. "Make why?" He mutters again.
"Why indeed?" I think quickly and carefully toss my ideas into the space between us where he can pick them up, or not, as he chooses.
"For shelter and protection. For Comfort. To hold our belongings. To create an ordered environment." I offer.
At the edges of my vision, I see him fold himself under my work table, looking up at the surface above him. "Protect them? " He asks, shaking his head. "Not do. Trap them here. No place to run indoorsy."
I realize that he’s responding to my ideas in his own way, with unambiguous disapproval.
He creeps across to the battered, overstuffed chair and carefully crawls onto it. He jumps up again quickly. "Too soft-soft." He grumbles, "Swallows you up. All dead things."
He walks past the wall of my drawings, peering, touching. "Make how I like indoorsness?" He asks himself.
I see a picture of a clean swept hollow of soft, dry ground canopied above by leaf and branch and at the side by bracken and bramble. A few drops of water glisten on the thorny stems. "Nice. Pretty." he approves this picture.
Well, he gets the idea, at least. And so do I. It’s clearly a matter of taste.
Investigation completed, he sidles towards the door. "No sense to Big Indoorsness." he decides. "Bruum live in sun and dirt with rain and stars and trees. Bru’um stay outsy now, Bru’um always be free!"