Long is the Memory
By Lothr.
She was old. So very old.
Dry, cracked, bleeding, and dying... no. She was long dead.
She could not remember a time when she was not black and burnt and full of death.
Her earth was no longer, but it was satiated with the black blood of abominations to all living things.She was unendingly drenched in hot flows, melting her rock and ash and dirt, breaking apart stone, belching hot fumes over her expanse.
Fetid things crawled over her cracked face, fouling it with their presence, serving the evil that had settled in her borders; evil and black since nearly the beginning of her memory.
She stank of the rank evil that infested her crevices and plains, that dig out her hills, built up strongholds of filth with her bones. It was all she could bear to hold up the spine around her, in vain effort to keep the creatures in.
She quaked and shook, falling in on herself to crush the vermin in her borders, to rebel against the force lodged in her flesh. She burned and festered, she quaked in her agony.
Sometimes, only sometimes, a wind would blow. It was faint, and never for long, but it carried a scent... what could it be?
Did things grow beyond the spine she held against the world? Things that were not black and foul?
She could not know.
This was her doom.
Black and foul was her spewing, the darkness in her grew.
Longer did the fingers reach into her depths, wicked, more evil, hotter, more hateful and full of greed, blacker, and blacker, and blacker still!
But wait...
Something... something small, no... two somethings crept along her defiled crust. They were, not black. Altogether different from anything she remembered...
One carried a great evil, but it was not borne for ill-will. No... this was something else.
Another, once good but now so dark, followed.
The great power in her border was desperate, but it was hateful, if she could rightly tell the difference anymore.
This however, was apart entirely. Deep in her tainted bones, she knew.
They fell, despaired, and laid on the scorched earth. Perhaps to die.
But, what was this? A wetness, not to grow things, but purer than the black stuff that pooled here and there. It was... good.
Her back was opened and filth poured out; it broke.
The little somethings crept into the gaping heat in the mountain, which was once... had it been something good?
But the dark one fell, and the evil screamed! Her bones quaked and broke, they fell, and the evil died. She shook and cracked, and shattered to her core! Into her very deeps she caved, churning up the foulness and burying it in itself.
Her fires erupted and went out, her hotness cooled, filthy smokes filled the sky and were blown away. An East wind blew and carried it all away, and a West wind swept in to sweeten the air again.
She was broken, still wretched, but perhaps not dead entirely.
Beyond her broken stretch, she knew life began again. Good things lived and brought life to the land around her.
Wetness, soft and clean began to fall around her, and on the famished earth. The filth slowly began to wash away.
What was this? Had it fallen before?
It was beyond the memory of the land.
Time marched on, and good things grew around the desolate land.
Light ones with a touch of life worked at her feet, helping new things to grow. Birds flew over her, and storms rolled by. The world changed, and she with it.
Little by little, as the dark land was cleansed, wild things began to venture in. Seeds were carried in by winds and rain and creatures.
The wind carried whispers of life and light, of pure things growing in lands once corrupt.
Green things began to wrote and take root, and it was good.
Then one day, a century later, or was it two? Something else came into those cracked borders, now softened by time.
Not something, but someone. One of the light creatures that had brought new life to the tainted land beyond.
It walked softly and slow, with a sad way. It touched the free things that struggled through the black earth.
Deep within, memory sparked! Quendi!
Those who speak with voices.
That's what this creature was called! This was that which the wind whispered of; bright ones bringing light and life and healing the land!
More bright ones came to her land, caring for her brokenness, making her whole. They brought new life to the barren earth, caring for the timid things poking through to the sunlight.
Slowly, slowly, through the passage of time the cursed land called Mordor was healed.
Finis.