Title: Vigil
Prompt: 003. a place between sleep and awake; end of innocence, unending masquerade
Author's Notes: Not my characters. We're not given much information about the Evil Breath, but it came from the north (ie. Angband) and was seen as a curse sent by Morgoth. Tolkien calls it 'pestilent', and I see it as influenza or another nasty strain of the common cold. Morwen seems to get angstier every time I write her.
'Ever will some new evil be hatched in Angband beyond the guess of Elves and Men,' they said. And in the autumn of that year, to point their words, there came an ill wind from the North under leaden skies. The Evil Breath it was called, for it was pestilent; and many sickened and died in the fall of that year in the northern lands that bordered on the Anfauglith, and they were for the most part the children or the rising youth in the houses of Men.
- Unfinished Tales
She had managed to convince herself – again – that her children were simply tired, that this was just another version of the colds that came to Dor-lómin every year as the summer waned. She wished that she was a better liar.
At least they were sleeping soundly tonight – Túrin was old enough to sleep undisturbed until the morning, but Lalaith had always been a restless sleeper. Morwen would normally have been grateful for a night of undisturbed sleep, but her daughter had been uncharacteristically quiet that evening, and had gone to bed without any complaints – and now the house seemed too silent, when she could only hear her breath and her thoughts and her own beating heart.
Lalaith gave life – laughter – to a house that would otherwise have been swallowed in the silence of her mother and brother – and now, to be so quiet!
Powers of the world, do not let her be silenced! Do not let her sicken!
She did not want to be alone with her thoughts. Noise, or sleep, might drive them away, but she had neither, and could only endure as they echoed louder and louder, spectres turning her mind into a tempest in which every logical thought was lost.
The news from a northern village of a disease harsher and more resilient than the common colds of winter. News coming from villages further and further south as time went on, bringing word of a disease striking down the children and the youths of Dor-lómin, carried on the air…
Húrin, of course, had defied the messages, and advised her to act as though it was nothing. Already it looked to be a harsh winter, and news of a disease would only make the people more afraid. It will weaken as it moves further south, he had said. Illnesses such as these always do. But he was not there – and the illness was coming ever closer to their home.
You have left me! Morwen screamed silently into the dark. You have all left me!
They had left her to fight an enemy as intangible as mist with only her bare hands. I cannot do this. He will take everything away, and there is nothing that I can do to stop him. The room was so dark, so silent – had the void swallowed them, house and all, already? Would Húrin return to find the house and village abandoned? She wished that she could send word to him: I have failed you. I am sorry.
The noise was slight, and she almost did not heed it. When it was repeated, though, it sounded like a roar in the silence, and she was almost instantly striding to its source, her daughter's cot. The candlelight turned Lalaith golden, sharply etching the lines on her face as she looked at her mother blearily, and began to whimper again. Morwen picked her up and paced gently back and forward, revelling in the ambient light, the solid weight against her shoulder, and the radiant warmth. She was almost disappointed when Lalaith had become sleepy enough to put back to bed, but it was a relief to see her breathe easily as she slept, with no hint of a cough or a sneeze. She did not sleep again that night, but neither did the night terrors menace her, as she remembered the glow of the room.
I will not fail.
I will not lose you, Lalaith.
And I will never let you go.