A/N: Written for the Diversity Challenge at the Basket of Books Challenge Forum (link's in profile), A64 – write about a minor character.


the fire was already burning

The fire was already burning.

They didn't need the oil. They didn't need the wood. All that wood they were piling high. Like water, drowning his son's body.

Why wasn't that wood catching light? The fire was already burning. They didn't need that torch coming. The fire was already lit. Why wasn't the wood catching on? Why weren't the people catching on?

Blubbering fools stumbling about as if caught in a flood's currents. So slow. So blind.

Couldn't anyone else see his son's burning body?

…well, it didn't matter. He needed no-one else. They needed no-one else. It was enough that he, Denethor, could see the pyre burning, could see the tomb forming beneath the slowly forming ash and the flickering flame. He could see the pouring sweat drying, evaporating…

That was no fever of hope; just tears of death.

And the fire, the fire that would cremate him, burning. Already burning.

They didn't need the flame he held in his hand. The flame he dropped from it.

The fire…had long since been burning.