Disclaimer: Barring the household staff and random townsfolk, the main characters of this story are property of J.R.R Tolkien. I have simply borrowed them for a bit. I would like to say no harm was done, but well… This story is not very kind to them.
What started out as an intent to write a short story to get back into the world of fanfiction has turned into an utter monster. One hundred and one pages of monster. The story is finished, but I am going through some edits for it so it will be posted as they are (hopefully) polished. Enjoy!
I also wish to state this story was inspired by a documentary on the tsunami in the Indian Ocean during December of 2004. You can find it on youtube. It's called Tsunami Caught on Camera.
Last but not least, I will also say that I was greatly inspired by some of my favorite LOTR fanfiction authors on here including Thundera Tiger, Lamiel, Cassidy, and Siobhan. So though they may never see this I would like to unofficially dedicate this to them.
Prologue:
Always his father had told him tales of the sea when he was small. The sea was no one's servant to bend to their will or demands, nor some lovely maiden reaching to them with embracing arms.
The sea was its own master and it was more wild and free than any stallion of Rohan. To live with the sea was to learn to respect it. For as bountiful and beautiful as it was and as much as it gave them life so too could it be just as merciless and take everything back.
Imrahil had been eight years old when he had first come to understand that lesson.
"Imrahil! Imrahil slow down!"
Heedless, the dark haired child bolted down the beach with a big bouncing gate that splashed up sea water with every step. Not far behind, Finduilas ran after him, her skirts soaked with sea spray. The heavy weight of them slowed her as she reached out to grasp the child that always kept just out of reach.
The stern tone of her words was bellied by her smile and laughter. "Hey! Get back here!"
"You have to catch me!" The young Prince spun and then tumbled back into the water with a yelp as the retreating wave slipped sand out from beneath his foot. Immediately his sister pounced upon him.
"Ah ha!" Ruthlessly the thirteen year old girl tickled her brother who tried valiantly to scramble away with protests and laughter on his lips. It cut off in a sputter as the sea came rolling back in splashing his face and soaking them both.
With a final shove Imrahil managed to squeeze out from under Finduilas and scramble to safety. Pleased with her brother's disheveled and sandy appearance, she let him go. She could hear the huff of his nursemaid up on the steps down from the palace. Neither child showed any remorse at the fact that she would be the one left to scrub the sand out of Imrahil's clothes, and most likely his hair too.
"Aren't you supposed to be in lessons?" the small boy asked distractedly as he nudged a small ghost crab with a stick of drift wood. He missed the pursing of his sister's lips.
"It matters not. Those lessons are dull. I know how to be a Lady just fine. I do not need Lady Edweith to teach me how best to hold a spoon." Her nose wrinkled in distaste and Imrahil grinned. Heartily he approved of his sister's disobedience. The more often she escaped her maid and tutor the more often they got to run about on the beach.
From crab to sand, Imrahil began sketching lines on the beach. He smiled as the lapping sea water would sweep in and wipe everything clean each time so he could start anew. The shift of sand under his feet brought back memories of the morning.
He looked up at his sister with large eyes. "Did you feel the shaking this morning?"
Carefully balanced steps guided Finduilas along the sea wall made of stone and mortar that was pressed into patterns with shells from the sea. Under the sand calloused soles of her feet she could feel the press of the smooth shells. "No, I felt no shaking. It must have been your imagination." She spun in a sharp motion that twirled her soaked skirts and started back along the wall. "See? I can balance just fine. Why Edweith insists that I must practice walking with a book on my head is beyond me."
Her complaint went unheeded as her brother frowned up at her. "It was not my imagination! I felt it! It rattled my figures and sent one right off the shelf!" His expression crumpled sadly at the memory. "It broke."
It was a shudder that had awoken Imrahil. Blearily the child had sat up in his bed as it shivered under him. "Finduilas? Irviniel? Are you shaking my bed? It's not funny." Still the bed trembled and with a huff Imrahil began to shove off his blankets when the whole room gave a mighty jerk. Startled he gasped and tugged his covers back to him.
All around the room things quivered and shook. His furniture rattled violently and he huddled down nervously. Wide silver-gray eyes watched as little figures of sea creatures made from shell, driftwood, and sea glass shivered and quaked high up on their shelf. Slowly a little seahorse made of seashell painstakingly worn into shape by rubbed sand inched closer and closer to the edge of the shelf and then tumbled off.
With a cry of dismay Imrahil leant forward and crawled across his covers to peer down at the shards of broken shell that rattled on the floor.
A carving of wood fell and then the empty shell of a horseshoe crab. With each he cringed and clutched harder at his covers as he lay on his bed and prayed fervently for the shaking to stop. Then slowly, it did. Shakes ebbed to trembles and then there was a last shiver and jerk before things grew still. It had lasted hardly more than two minutes, but it had felt like an age to the child.
One last look of cautious suspicion around the room and then Imrahil scrambled off the bed to go scoop up the shattered pieces of his most favorite sea figure.
Careful of the shattered pieces, Imrahil crouched down to gather them. He stared at the tiny broke shards in his hands with a childish pout. Careful, he set the delicate shards on a small table just beneath the shelf where the little statues and figures had begun to trickle down onto it as his collection expanded with each of his father's expeditions.
Next he fingered the empty shell of a horseshoe crab before he picked it up and turned it over in his hands, wrinkling his nose at the memory it brought. He had been four when his father had gifted it to him. His nurse maid had fretted at such a hideous thing in a child's room, but her disapproval only managed to make him want it more despite his trepidation of it.
Hesitantly he had taken it from his father who laughed at the small Prince's nervousness. "Do not worry. It is only a shell. That poor creature is no longer here."
So it had joined his tiny collection and when two years later he ran to the sea's edge to greet his father back from a short voyage, he had had no trepidation picking up the horseshoe crab shell that had tumbled out from the nets.
Only, it was not just a shell.
Quite suddenly the thing had come to life, tiny claw like legs scrabbling at the air to get free. With a rather undignified shriek the six year old Prince had flung the shell away back into the water as his father roared with laughter. It was his sisters' snickers that made him flush with embarrassment.
"Oh brave Sir Imrahil! Save me from the vicious sea monsters!" Ivriniel, only fourteen at the time, swooned dramatically.
With a scowl Imrahil sunk into a crouch. He traced patterns in the sand with his finger as he tried to hide the embarrassed flush of his face. Sometimes he hated being the baby in the family.
Ivriniel had found it less funny when she awoke the next morning to Imrahil's shell on her pillow beside her face. In her fury she nearly broke it into pieces before he could scamper in and save it from his shrieking angry sister.
His father had tried to be stern when he had called Imrahil into his study for a lecture, but the Prince of Dol Amroth could not keep a straight face and ended up in laughter as his son eagerly recounted the tale of his sister's fury. Ivriniel had been less than pleased when Imrahil managed to escape the whole ordeal with only a stern shake of a finger and a warning not to repeat the events.
The memory did little to cheer the young Prince as he set the shell aside onto the table beside the drift wood and tried to fit the broken pieces of the seahorse figure back together. A call from his nurse maid Merina that it was time to join the family and break his fast called him away.
At the table he had presented the broken figure to his father and the older man tutted. "A shame too."
"It was my favorite!" The boy lamented.
Weathered fingers traced over the tiny brittle pieces. "Do not lose hope quite yet. It might still be possible to fix it, though it will not be the same."
Imrahil's eyes had grown wide. "Promise?"
Adrahil smiled. "I cannot promise that it will be fixable, but I can promise to try my best."
It was good enough and happily he had squeezed his father and rushed through the morning meal to scamper off to the beach; Finduilas hot on his heels with a shouted promise to watch him. Imrahil knew it was just an excuse for his sister to get out of her lessons, and no doubt Adrahil knew as well, but he indulged his children.
That was how they had ended up on the beach that morning hardly less than a half hour later, Imrahil remembered. He sent another wish to Eru that his father would be able to fix the seahorse as he crept up behind Finduilas.
She had moved further down the sea wall now where the water had risen mostly up the wall with the incoming tide. The splash and rush of the water covered her brother's not so quiet creeping steps.
"Well if it is not your imagination than it is a dream then!" She threw her hands into the air dramatically.
It was in that position that she broke into a frantic pinwheel as Imrahil pushed her and she shrieked as she toppled off the sea wall with a splash into the water. In a second she broke the surface sputtering angrily as Imrahil took off down the beach with a cheeky laugh and smile.
"Imrahil!" She growled and jolted to her feet. "You little imp!" With plunging steps she struggled out of the water and took off down the beach after her brother as Merina tutted behind them and shouted for them to not run so far.
Neither child heard her as they pelted head long up the beach.