Sorry this chapter is so short. It is basically a reason why Nadia has such a yearning for the horns of Rohan. I will try to update as soon as i can.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything from the lotr universe. All the credit goes to Tolkien. Only Nadia and her uncanny thirst for knowledge is my own creation.
Horns
of the North
Now, Middle Earth is a place of growing turmoil and fear. From where my father's house is in the third circle I can see the black land of Mordor, the land I read about in the books I bound, the land which gave me nightmares as a little girl. Orodruin would ever be spewing forth the black somke which would cover all our lands in darkness.
Sometimes I would wake up screaming from hearing the cry of the Nazgul in my dreams, and my mother would come and sing an old Gondorian lullaby to soothe me and put me to sleep.
But being so close to the Black Lands, how could I sleep?
Because of the tales I read about Mordor, nightmares plagued my nights, when I would slip off my mask of courage and melt into the terror of those dreams. Yes, they haunted me by day too.
Sometimes I feared the dreams more than the blackness of the night. If I did not sleep, the orcs would not come for me. Yet, I would inevitably succumb to weariness, and not only did I have a bad night's sleep, but I had the memory of those horrors freshly imprinted in my mind once again when I thought all was over.
The dark dreams came constantly, but not every night. Only when my life reached a downside would they come back with a vengeance, their malicious, yellow eyes and terrible voices.
Sometimes I would dream of the orcs burning the White City, killing my family, my friends, burning, pillaging no end…
Sometimes it would be the Nazgul coming for me, on account of all I knew about them. It was a silly thought, but still…
At times I would at times curse my hunger for knowledge. There was a royal library up in the fifth circle, and the admission fee was very high, too high for even my father's thriving business to pay. So I begged the guard to let me in, I exchange for my "exceptional bookbinding skills" as he put it. So, under the alias of Sabine, the studious daughter of the noble Lord Hayden, I, Nadia, would quench my thirst for information. Now do I bitterly rue it, for now that knowledge gave me my nightmares, my own demons to chase after me.
Now that I think of it, the reason why the horns fascinated me so much was the promise of restful nights. I read that the sound of the horns of the Rohirrhim were able to instill fear into the hearts of their enemies, to render them immobile so as to slay them with a sweep of their long, shining swords.
It was during these times that I would thank Eru for giving me the hunger for knowledge.
Now, I knew that these terrors of my dreams could be defeated. I could finally stand in their presence in the darkness of the night, and I cried out less frequently. I was not able to laugh them in the face; to defy them like a true woman of Gondor should, as they still had a blanket of fear over me, though it was less stifling and heavy.
Therefore I longed for the liberation that only the horns of the North could give me.