Nerdanel sat at the potter's wheel, watching it spin. She had been staring at it for some time now, around and around, endlessly and pointless. It was her life.
In the beginning she had simply been selfish. Unable or perhaps unwilling to accept the reality that her life had become. Grieving for the loss of her husband and children, she had shut herself off and locked herself away from the rest of the world. So she could escape the torment of prying and accusing eyes. So she could escape the gaping void that was the absence of her family. She removed everything, clothing, toys, and books, anything that brought back the past.
But the memories still haunted her. All around her the ghosts still played. She could not shut them out. Her children's laughter all around her, their arms about her neck, from youth to young men, they called at her constantly, she could hear them always. She would never dispel them, not least of all Fëanáro. Even in her dreams he returned to torment her, kneeling beside her to whisper in her ear and to kiss her lips, as he had done so many times before. She would reach out and feel her hands tangle in his hair, feel his breath warm and rapid against her skin, she could see his eyes burning with a fire that would kindle a heat within her body that could burn for an eternity, reminding her she lived.
And then she would wake to the cold silent emptiness of her room to start the day all over again, her ghosts trailing behind her as always.
She had begun to imagine what it would be like to simply stop and no longer . . . be. To imagine death taking her piece by piece, the cold coming over her till she no longer felt it. Her skin raising into bumps till she went numb, and her body goes pale and still as stone as if she were carven from marble herself.
But her heart still beats on stubbornly in her chest, and she does not fade.
Her father had refurbished her old studio in his home especially for her upon her return. He had filled it with the most pure white marble, flawless obsidian and stones flecked with gold. And yet her hands are lost and purposeless, and she can find nothing they can do. And now they sit futilely resting upon her knees as she gazes at the mound of clay on the pottery wheel continuously spinning around and around.
She hears the sound of someone entering, but it matters little. Footsteps approach but she does not turn. She does not need to for she knows who it is.
"Yes atar?"