Bone of My Bone
There was a time for hatred.
A time for looking to kill, a place for drawing steel. There was that that deserved it.
Not always, sometimes not often. There had been decades where it had gone unthought and unfelt. Then the tragedy would show itself once more. It was darkness too vile to explore. Sparsely known definites laced with the speculation of those who told him not to contemplate it.
Still, sometimes he would wonder, and layer his own possibilities onto the blessedly little known facts. The ruined race had once shared blood that might as well have been his. Did they still? Was the heart that beat in the breast of a Yrch once the heart that had lived within a Sindarin child? The details of how that black existence came to be would twist speculatively before him.
Their lives only became uglier with scrutiny. Was it a ceaseless existence, or one that raised and slaughtered new beings? Did the immortality that sustained them as Elves still dwell in their twisted forms? Stretching them thinner and farther from the beginning of their bright birth? Or had they all been born in darkness?
The brutish resemblance to beasts could only last so long, because they still had fingers and hands, and speech. Perhaps some were the result of dark breeding, but perhaps most were simply still there. Continuing from the first time the chains and irons were removed from their bodies when Morgoth knew there was no escape.
Was there anything but darkness for those souls? Had there ever been any hope for those captured lives? What if his own had been among the shackled? Were there any that just died? Would he strive to live at all costs? Or would he strive to cling to light and hold onto it until his body could no longer hold on to him, and his soul would cross the sea and behold the shining Valar and the radiance of Illuvator for the first time?
The depravity of the deeds of the Yrch inspired revulsion, but not just for themselves. They unveiled the deplorable life that could be drawn out of his own being. His spirit would shake at the thought of how close his own downfall might be.
With horrified consideration, he looked on the lives that fled from the sun. That loved darkness not because it showed stars in their glory or draped trees in shadowy garments, but so that deeds and hands could be hidden. Slithering through blackness to seize and draw deep for endless appetites.
As if it was an actual dream, he would wake, blinking away the clinging despair of what he was not. Breathing, watching the sun through closed eyes as his heart beat with red joy. He ran in freedom, and the delight of his heart was in wind in green leaves.
There would be times he would not think of it, but he could never forget. He was still close, he knew them as he would know his own body. The weaknesses and strengths, no one knew the Yrch better than the Elves. So he would stalk evil, cornering, felling, extinguishing, and never lying about the death he would deliver.
He knew that an arrow through the throat was not ensured to immediately halt a charge unless it severed the spine. Even if the heart was pierced, the body would be able to continue a good hundred feet or more. What was needed was something to solicit a complete fall, a reaction that could not be combated.
Steel between the shoulder and neck would produce agony that would stagger, and he felt the ghost of it as the arrow sank deep into the putrid flesh of his one time kin. He saw the falter and thought of how it would skitter like knives across the web of nerves throughout his body. He considered how an Elf might refuse to fall and saw how the Yrch didn't either.
He fired again, knowing the burn would intensify and that there would only be room for one thought. One thought where it would become clear if one's own survival was utmost or or completing the task that had been set.
The Yrch, torch clutched, stumbled on and then all was fire and darkness and pain.
No time to think but pain, pain, confusion, and pain.
He was on his feet, struck by debris that spread blossoming pools of blood under his skin. Ahead there was the darkness of the past, rushing, grasping, dragging back to the pit. His arms ached as he notched an arrow, but his legs didn't shake as he stepped forward.
A/N: Honestly, I feel like it's almost disrespectful for me to make any attempt at Tolkien. Fortunately, good as they are, the films kind of render all the material a little more accessible, and if I go at it from that angle I feel a little more comfortable dabbling in it. This didn't flow as well as I envisioned, but at least I hit a lot of what I wanted to.
My very first submission for this year's Twelve Shots of Summer, complete with official forum and archive!