In agonizing fear, the elf fought his way through the undergrowth that kept him so distant from the love of his life. On the far side of the clearing, just beyond what he was raging to pass through, she lay curled up with her back to him.
"Uruviel!" He called out, her name falling hard on his tongue for some unknown reason. Breaking through the last entangling thicket, he came upon her deathly still frame, pale skin glittering with the vibrant starlight. "Uru…" he whispered, dropping his sword as he ran to the mossy earth that served as her bed.
She didn't answer him. The she-elf made no recognition, no little twitch. Her golden locks spilled out around her face like a curtain, mingling the green forest with her vibrant gold. Haldir slowed his approach to an almost non-existent walk. "Uruviel?" he whispered a third time, dreading the fear that was so harshly gnawing at his heart.
He fell to his knees beside her, already seeing in his mind what his heart could not bear. "Please… look at me." Carefully, he slid one hand under her head and lifted her gently into his arms. The feeling that overcame him in those next few moments, a mixture of pain, nausea, and absolute horror, almost took his mind right then and there.
Lifeless azure eyes stared at him from another world. What once was so pure and pale a face was streaked with crimson lines. He could feel the last vestiges of warmth draining from her already frozen body. Her forest-coloured garments were covered in rusty blots that he had seen far too many times on the battle field. Beneath the exposed slashes on her chest, there was no soft drumbeat; all the world lay silent around and within her.
His sadness was beyond tears; there was no hope for it. "You're not…" he began. "You can't be…" He couldn't even bring himself to whisper the words his mind was screaming at him. "No…"
It may have been minutes or even millennia that he spent staring down at the lifeless frame of his fiancée. Even in death she was the most beautiful elf he had ever lain eyes on, more so than her cousin the Evenstar. Gently pushing strands of gold from her face, he stared into the cosmic blue depths that he knew so well. All that was to be seen now was a blockade of sadness and pain. Even her mouth, the colour of pale roses in a perfect bow shape, was pulled into a tight and harsh, blood-lined grimace.