One hundred long years ago, on this very day, Ernest Thornhill and Albert Davies took part in one of the most futile attacks in the history of modern warfare. Over 20,000 men lost their lives on the 1st of July, 1916. 'At the going down of the sun/ and in the morning/ we will remember them.'

The infirmary had been quiet lately. Rain pattered down outside, leaving Osgariel's roost warm and dry by comparison. Rising from a stool inside the store-cupboard, where she had been mending a bedsheet, Osgariel surveyed each of the beds in turn. Not that there was any need — all of them were unoccupied, and the linen was crisp and pristine, waiting to be sullied by blood and effluvia. There was no telling when the company of the sons of Elrond would return; it was a gamble as to whether one of them would be wounded severely enough to require a stay here. Thus the ten beds were kept in a state of constant readiness, should an emergency come unlooked for.

Someone strode in just as Osgariel bent over to smoothe a tiny crease from the counterpane of the bed in the far corner. The steps were uncommonly heavy for one of the Elves: perhaps the sons of Elrond had returned? She turned, bracing herself for news of grievous injury, only to find an open-faced young man of stature shorter than herself in front of her.

"What brings you here?" she inquired, mystified as to why he felt the need to break the peace; she did not notice that he held a scrap of cloth to his cheek.

"I have cut myself. It is much bleeding. You have a thing for it?" The young man took his hand from the cheek, displaying a cut placed strangely, as though he had ran a knife there deliberately. The blood began its way downwards, making to drip off his chin.

"What sort of a 'thing' do you mean?"

"A — a —" the man's brow furrowed "wrapping. Dressing! That is it."

"Wash it first; then I will be able to assess it." Osgariel swept outside to the pump and soaked another cloth in the water, wringing it until it was merely damp. Coming back in, she directed the man to sit on one of the beds and cleaned his wound (could she call it a wound? It was so small—) until she could see the incision clearly. It was neither long nor short, and was straight as the path of a well-shot arrow.

"I was cutting my—" He hesitated. "I can't remember what you call it. What grows on your face. In men."

"Beard."

"My beard. The knife slipped."

"I see. It is no grave injury; it will sting for a day or two more, but it should heal in time. Apply pressure to your cut until the bleeding stops."

The man looked confused.

"Do you understand me?"

"Not entirely, truth be told. Your tongue is still a foreign tongue to me."

Taking another cloth from the bed, she placed it into the young man's hand. "Put this to the cut. Press hard. Until the bleeding stops." He obeyed her readily, sitting still and holding the white linen to his cheek. It was a good sign that Osgariel did not see small blossoms of blood blooming through the cloth right away. There was a long silence, punctuated by the rain outside — a gentle roar that could have almost been the sea.

The young man took the cloth from his cheek, and the blood had mostly clotted. "I also came to ask you — I wish to cut my hair."

Osgariel was nonplussed. Hair was cut only by the edhellen by reasons of practicality, such as in the event of war or in preparation for a long journey, rather than on the slightest whim. Yet this was one of the Edain before her, and their ways were strange. Groping about in her cupboard for what seemed to be the umpteenth time that day, she procured a pair of shears and offered them to the adan; it occurred to her now that his face was quite familiar, though where she had seen it had long faded into the back of her mind. He took the shears and had scarce lopped off one lock when she stayed his hand. "Here." Osgariel turned him round. Parting his hair twice, she twisted it into a thick plait. "Now it will be easier for you."

It was not without a little dismay that the healer watched him slice cruelly into the thick rope of hair, severing it in three snips, and throw it on the floor with an air of mild disgust. It was wavy — close to gold, though many times duller and coarser — and the man's disregard for it was quite foreign, it seemed to Osgariel.

"Would you like a looking-glass?" she inquired, before he could so much as open his mouth.

"Thank you."

To her surprise, he took one look at his reflection and lifted the shears up once more. Shaking her head, Osgariel took them and demanded that he keep hold of the mirror. "Tell me when I ought to stop cutting, adan."

"Thank you — again. As short as possible, if you please." The young man chuckled to himself.

"As you wish." She began to trim away the ragged ends where the plait of hair had once been, leaving curls of sandy brown scattered thickly onto what was once a pristine counterpane. Snipping all the small ends was hard work, she discovered; she had not had to do this ever since one of the Dúnedain had been delivered with a severe head-wound — he had been clubbed by a troll.

Meanwhile, the head of the man was beginning to look quite like a partially-shorn sheep, with curly ends sticking up and sideways haphazardly. He told Osgariel to stop after a while, satisfied, and thanked her profusely for the shearing. It was then that she realised who he was, the image swimming back into her mind: he was the man in the queer clothes who had been sent in, fever-dazed and in considerable pain, with an infected wound in the leg. Of course — he'd spoken a strange language, too, and she bade him be quiet. He had vomited upon awakening. Whether it was because of the fever, the sleeping draught she gave him or the sight of his leg Osgariel did not know, but he had been visibly agitated.

And here he was, and she had cut his hair.

The man left the room now. Hairs covered the bed where he had sat; hairs were distributed finely on the floor. Sighing heavily, Osgariel took a broom from the corner, swept them into a pile — dark, a heap no larger than a mole-hill — and returned to the torn bedsheet in the store-cupboard. The hair-cut was small respite from the monotony of the infirmary, though she would miss it when it was gone. At least the rain had stopped.

Davies caught himself humming one of those strange Elvish melodies as he scrubbed at his braies in the washroom, scrubbing until he was sure even that sturdy linen had ripped. He caught himself just in time, marveling at how he had managed to pick up such intricate lines of music; it was music he'd never heard before landing in this place. The closest he had come to highfalutin music was Elgar — two weeks before his marriage, Davies had taken his then-fiancée to a concert of his, and had enjoyed it. Elvish music was not Elgar — far from it. And it was jarring, after over two years hearing rousing music hall songs and bawdy ditties (courtesy of the privates in his platoon), for these haunting phrases to enter his ears.

Of course, he understood most of the words now. Many songs were ballads: laments for edhellen long dead, or lays of praise for those who had done great deeds. Some were older than Master Elrond, such as the Noldo-lantay, snatches of which were occasionally sung in the hall with the great fire in the centre. The title was in a different Elvish tongue. High-Elven, Himelon called it. Most in Imladris did not know any of this tongue, though some — such as Elrond, his sons and the most excellent loremasters — spoke it almost fluently.

But to him, it was gibberish — even if some notes soared and wailed, making his heart flutter and his throat ache with the sadness.

A woman smiled at him as she walked past with a basket of dried clothes, and Davies heard her lift her voice into song as she went out of the door. It was the same song he had been humming. Wringing the braies out, he placed them on a pile with other clothes already washed, and began on a pair of breeches. The soapy water was by now rather murky; Davies doubted it would do much to properly clean those trousers.

"Hullo —"

Davies stopped short, and his eyebrows felt as though they had shot off his face. "That is you, isn't it —" he shook his head "sir?"

Ernest grinned, flushing a little. "I do look rather like my old self again, don't I?"

"Blimey, Ernest. I've got myself so used to you with that long hair, and you go and chop it off again! Is there method to the madness?"

"Can't say there is, I'm afraid."

"What a pity." Davies took hold of a slippery bar of soap and worked up a lather onto the cotton. "You look neater with the cropped hair. It does look strange with the robes, though. Got some washing to do?"

"Yes." He held up a bundle of khaki. "The old uniform. It was beginning to stink something horrendous."

"I should imagine so, it brewing in dried blood and mud and all sorts of sh—"

"Steady on there, chum!" Both men threw their heads back and howled with laughter, despite the lack of a real joke in the exchange. A few of the edhellen stared at them bemusedly, smiles tugging at the corners of their mouths also, before turning back to work.

After he had recovered, Thornhill began to ladle water from a steaming barrel in the corner into a tub, until it was nearly full to the brim. It was clean — had a whiff of freshness to it without even smelling of anything. The thought of dipping his tunic into that made him sigh inwardly. However, he did so anyway, gulping back a squirt of bile as the stench of war clogged his nostrils.

The water turned black within seconds.

After a few half-hearted swishes here and there to clean away the dirt on the surface, Thornhill lifted the dripping tunic out of the tub and laid it on the floor, pouring the remaining sludge out of the low window intended for such drainage. And he filled the tub with a fresh load of water, scrubbing more stuff out of the tunic, black water, drain, fill, lug, scrub, drain, fill, lug, scrub — the sickening scent never went away really, even as the water took longer to dirty — even as the tunic looked cleaner —

Shuddering, he thought he caught a hint of phosgene gas; the cloying scent made him want to be violently sick, and he swallowed painfully again, unaware that his face had gone rather sweaty and pasty in the process —

"Having trouble, Ernest?" He glanced up to see a bearded face staring concernedly at him. Coming to himself again, Thornhill then realised that he was shaking all over, cold sweat running down his back.

"Just — just had a funny turn, that's all. I'm all right now," he replied, dragging a sleeve across his face and giving a small, staccato cough.

"You don't look too well."

"I'm all right now," repeated Thornhill testily. "Let me do my washing."

"If you say so." Bertie didn't look too convinced, however, and did not turn away without a nervous glimpse behind him.

The rest of the tunic-cleaning was completed without a hitch, and Thornhill began on the trousers, again scrubbing away as much of the dirt as was humanly possible. His hands were becoming red and raw with the soap — soft as it was, his hands did not tolerate excessive exposure. After the trousers came the shirt: dark, just as the army regulations liked it. An acrid whiff of sweat radiated from the armpits, ripened with age. And then the tie — puttees had been discarded; they had been caked with nastiness from Thornhill's leg-wound.

After what seemed like an age and a half, tunic, trousers, shirt and tie were stretched out upon the floor — soaking, but clean. All they smelled of now was the faint sweetness of the soap of the edhellen. He began to wring the shirt into the tub, regretting that he could not press his uniform. Thornhill doubted severely the availability of a flatiron in Imladris.

He rolled his neck and his shoulders about, gritting his teeth at the clicks — he was only twenty — wait, no — had he turned twenty-one? What month was it? Everybody else had left the washroom now. Exhaling heavily, Thornhill hung the articles of clothing on the poles about the washroom. He could disperse them freely; they were so unlike the various sets of tunics, breeches, hose and kirtles that he would be able to tell which was his at first glance. His stomach growled and burned — time for lunch, he thought vaguely, deciding that he was not feeling particularly hungry, though he would eat anyway so as to avoid an ignominious collapse.

Emptying the wash-tub for the final time, Thornhill shunted it into a corner somewhere and limped out of the laundry (he was still awfully stiff), finding his way out into the yard. Dust had been stirred to a sludgy, red-brown mud, and rain still fell from a heavy, dismal sky. The breeze was a shock to his shorn head, and he rumpled it with one hand, remembering the neat side-part that had once lived there. A wet comb had been the only way to tame the unruly waves of his sandy hair.

The dining-hall was a reasonable way away from the laundry, deep in the heart of Elrond's house. What had seemed so idyllic in the autumn when Thornhill had first arrived now seemed cold and real, drowned in the fathoms of a February noon.

He could not hear any voices singing as he crossed the yard; they were sequestered where there was no rain. Gaping loneliness gnawed inside his stomach, combining with its bitter juices, and Thornhill indulged in it, leaning against a wall as the rain began to pour and plaster his hair to his head. I'm alone, and there is nobody here. Alone. The threat of tears rose in his throat, and the feeling exalted him. I can cry with the sky.

But a laugh came instead of a sob at the unexpected rhyme, and the young man shook his head at his sentimentality and wandered inside, dripping onto the tiles.

He caught up with the smell of the midday meal soon enough; it must have been roast beef or something of the like. The bright, bustling atmosphere of the dining hall set Thornhill's stomach to growling again, and he sat himself down beside a dark-haired ellon and fairly shoveled food onto his plate — it was indeed a roast, with plenty of bread and butter, and carrots and parsnips in a thick gravy. Reminds me of England, thought Thornhill absently, gulping down a large mouthful. Mother's gravy was always top-hole.

The man sitting next to him gave him a sidelong look, faint approval in his eyes. Evidently he had noticed the fervour with which Thornhill ate. "Forgive me; I am hungry," said the young man, grinning sheepishly.

"It is of no consequence," returned the ellon graciously. "It is a good meal, is it not?"

"Very good!"

"I will not disturb your meal any further, then." He turned away to converse with a friend opposite him, leaving Thornhill to his own devices.

Chatter buzzed about the hall as usual, and once he was satisfied, the young man began to look about him, wondering if Bertie was anywhere. He would have to arrange with him the date and time of leaving Imladris. Of course, Bertie was a silly old fart and would want to hold off the journey until he'd said goodbye to every inch of comfort that this place had offered. Secretly, he had planned to leave that night — when everybody was asleep and nobody would question his slipping away. Fat chance getting that past Bertie.

Elrond sat at the head of the table on the dais as usual, flanked by that blond Elf and the beautiful lady that was his daughter. He did not speak, and sat sipping at a wooden goblet, a morose expression on his face. Whether that was because of recent events or not Thornhill could not guess; all the edhellen seemed to have this sorrowful look about them. He had finally reckoned that the older an Elf got, the sadder he would look. Perhaps that was their way of aging.

Thornhill had no intention of living the rest of his life in a place where he would be continuously be burdened with sorrow. He wouldn't be able to stand it — the dreams, the memories — they all came back when he was idle.

Whatever those yrch were — he was sure that they wouldn't be as much danger as the toch-emmas.

"You mean — you are not coming back, melloneg?"

"I may, though that is uncertain." Himelon hung his leather apron upon a nail in the wall. The fire in the furnace warmed the smithy, even unto the darkest corner, and he had begun to sweat in the mugginess of it.

"That is a great shame; I will have nobody to speak to in the forge!"

"All the better to concentrate upon your work, then," retorted Himelon. He realised too late the severity of the reply, and stalked out of the door, leaving Iúlchon gaping. The possibility of an apology was long gone.

Flattening a few stray strands of silver hair, he made his way across the yard, into Elrond's house and onto the porch. Here was quiet. In Hithaeglir loomed up before him, the snow tinged pink by the setting sun. True to their name, the mountains held about their tops a thick, unsettling mist, through which even Himelon's keen eyes could not penetrate. Lower down was a collection of black dots — orcs, thought the ellon with a shudder. These he would have to face.

But he would face them, Himelon decided: it was his fate, and it would do him little good to avoid it.

Later that night, Nibeniel found him stuffing various items into a haversack, and wanted to know why.

"It does not concern you, nethig." He sat down upon his bed, wondering where he could find a flint and steel.

"I fear for you, Himelon. What will I tell adar when he returns?"

"You will tell him nothing." His sister placed herself beside him on the bed, taking his hand. Involuntarily, Himelon found himself leaning on her shoulder, and he sighed heavily. "Nethig —"

"Hanareg?"

"I do not want to go."

"Why — where are you going, brother mine?"

"Away, with the two Men — Thonel and Béti."

"Why do they go?"

"Thonel goes because he has tired of Imladris, and Béti to keep him company. I go — because —"

"Why do you go, hanareg?"

"I feel I must, Nibeniel. Because I feel I must." Himelon felt his sister's shoulders rise and fall with a quivering breath, and took his head away. There was no comfort he could offer her; he could barely comfort himself. He could only press her hand and hang his head as Nibeniel attempted to stifle her tears.

For a while, there was only the moon and Nibeniel's wet breaths and thronging silence, before she took her hand away from his and dried her eyes with her sleeve. "You —"

Her voice was still raw and tight.

"Do not breathe a word to our father. I fear his anger; he fears I will perish. Please."

"For your own good, Himelon —"

"—stay." But Himelon could not, now. He had made his decision.

Author's Note:

Melloneg - my friend

This chapter was published today for a reason. Happy reading, friends.

Cheers,

A.B.C.