Title: Silent City
Characters: Túrin, Finduilas, Gwindor, Orodreth,
Celegorm, Curufin, Finrod, Beren
Prompt: 24: sound the bugle now – play it just for me; as the
seasons change – remember how I used to be
Summary: As the city crumbles,
Nargothrond remembers.
Author's Notes: looks
rather guiltily at large gap between updates
Ahem – moving on, I liked the idea of writing from a city's point of view, and charting Nargothrond's long history. Apologies for the slight crossover into Of Beren and Luthien, but Nargothrond I was /I involved in that too. There seems to be a fine line between drabble and longer drabble, and I'm not entirely sure what this one is. But I digress. As my first fic under the new fandom Of Turin Turambar, I'm proud of it.
The withered leaves of autumn and the sleet of winter mingled with the bones of the slain in Nargothrond, but the city remembered. The great halls were crumbling with the movements of the dragon and the slow passage of time, leaving dust to fall like snow on the floors, cracked and scorched. Seldom now did the wind find those halls, the air rancid with the stench of death and dragon. Only the river, flowing ever onward, remained unchanged.
Yet the city remembered.
Memories rose like pale smoke as a breath of air swept patterns in the dust. It found the streams and pools where Finduilas had once danced, the parapets where Gwindor had once kept his vigil, the halls where Orodreth held court. It remembered even Beren, and the plottings of Celegorm and Curufin, the rebellion in the fortress. It even remembered Finrod Felagund, hewer and creator.
All memories, lost in the destruction that followed the man whose fate was shadowed, like a blackened train.