Pictor Ignotus

Chapter Thirty-Five--Silver in the Dark

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Iorwen POV

For the next two weeks, things were as normal for me as they'd ever been in Middle Earth. Mostly, I helped Lianen around her home, gardening, scrubbing clothes, feeding the animals...it wasn't entirely unlike being back at my grandparents' house for the weekend. I got to know Eorl a little, and realized he was about the same as any boy I might have known back at home. He was pretentious, hasty, and a bit of a know-it-all, so we got along fine. Lianen would send he and I out to gather water, always glancing sadly at her daughter's door as she did so; no doubt wishing Merenwen was of the mind to do it and not I.

The little family was a sad, broken affair that Lianen seemed to be desperately trying to hold together. I could see it straining her. Urol's death coupled with the death of her husband had been like throwing salt into a festering wound. Her face seemed to be becoming more drawn and haggard with each day. She would strive to make good meals when we got together in the evenings and then start some kind of conversation in the hopes it would draw in Merenwen.

"Arhem," she started off one night, "How is the progress on the wall?"

Arhem looked up from his stew looking mildly surprised. "Uh, fine...fine, mother. Harabad anticipates that we need only another week to complete its basic standing. Once finished, wargs shall have to grow wings before they can ever conceive of attacking the village."

Lianen nodded, "Good, good..."

She glanced at Merenwen who was only staring placidly at her bowl as though she was looking into a mirror. Lianen sighed and bit her lip for a moment before begging her daughter to eat. Ever since our return, I hadn't seen Merenwen take a single bite of food. I wasn't sure how she was surviving, but then again, she was hardly doing that. Every day she was thinner, paler, more sickly. I found myself anticipating, on a regular basis, word of her death.

"Merenwen...dear. Will you not eat? You must eat, daughter." Lianen pleaded, practically on the edge of tears.

Merenwen didn't even look up at her mother; simply took up the wooden spoon by her bowl and took a tentative sip. Lianen stared at her daughter with an emotion somewhere between pity and complete horror before turning back to her food, her eyes a little dewier than they had been a moment before. Next to me, Arhem tried to avert his eyes from his mother's hopeless features and ended up looking at me. I gave him a sad glance that I knew did nothing for how he felt and went back to eating.

I would glance periodically at Merenwen, trying to pinpoint what exactly it was in her ghostly facade of a face that reminded him of me. I knew that whatever he saw had to be far less extreme than what was in Merenwen. I would look at her and know deep within me that, despite physical appearance, Merenwen was already dead. There was no need to worry about her committing suicide. There was no use in killing yourself if you were already as stone cold as the grave. And I would have wagered that Merenwen knew this. It was also probably the only reason she wasn't buried rotting next to Urol's corpse already.

It was after one of these depressing, traumatic dinners that I discovered I was missing something from my bag. I was about to fall asleep on the little mattress in the family area that Lianen had set up for me when I noticed I couldn't find the tiny ring I'd had ever since falling into Middle Earth. It was just a slender little silver thing with an "I" on it; the only jewelry I'd been wearing that night when I was taken from Atlanta. It was nothing special; just some cheap, soon-to-turn-my-finger-green ring I'd bought from Claire's one day at the mall because it was only 99 cents. But for a moment, I panicked.

It was just a dumb cheap ring, but it was another small piece of my world and there was no way I was going to part with it easily.

I dumped out my bag on the mattress, searching desperately for it in the bottom and amidst the contents of the stuff Arhem had gathered for me in replace of my men's wear I'd had before. I started to get teary as I threw my clothes around, heart hammering against my ribs like some bird trying to beat its way out of a cage.

"No, no, no," I panted, one the edge of weepy tears. "Fuck--fuck--goddamn, motherfucking...no--no, where in the hell is it?!"

I'd already lost my beloved blanket and my old pajamas when Beriadan had run away. I didn't think I could stand it if another of my normal worldly possessions disappeared. A hopeful thought struck me then, and I glanced doubtfully at Merenwen's door where she had already retreated after dinner. It was the only other place it could be. Arhem had put my bag in there with me after we'd arrived at Ren.

Shuffling slowly over to Merenwen's door, I knocked shyly twice, hoping to any god that was out there that she hadn't fallen asleep yet. As luck would have it, Merenwen hardly ever slept anymore either, and, a moment later, the door creaked open; her thin figure morphing out of the gloom behind her.

"Yes?" she said quietly, and I noticed a small flicker of annoyance in her big doe eyes.

"Um," I stammered, "I didn't mean to bother you, it's just that I'm afraid I might have left a ring of mine in your room from the first night I was here." She stared at me without a word and finally moved aside one step, allowing me to walk in.

Tentatively, I stepped into the room, surprised to find a single candle burning. Apparently, she didn't just sit in her room motionless every night staring at her walls in darkness. Next to it, I could see another drawing in progress, but before I could examine it Merenwen picked up the candle and handed it to me to look for the ring.

"Thank you," I murmured and turned to the bed where I'd first woken up in Ren. The bag had been directly next to it, so I bent down, holding the candle aloft as I did so, searching for the glint of silver in the dark. My heart plummeted as I saw that there was nothing, simply a bare floor with a few mouse droppings and a chewed strip of paper under the mattress. Nothing else.

Fighting back tears, I rose and tried to give Merenwen a grateful smile. "Well, I guess it's not here. Thank you, anyway."

I handed her the candle and made to leave, but Merenwen's soft, bitter voice made me halt mid-step. "Is it the loss of the ring that causes you to weep?" she asked me.

I looked at her in surprise. The flame of the candle did a quick haphazard dance then balanced itself again. The light played off her features and made her already hollow cheeks even deeper and paler. Her haunted eyes terrified me with their sudden, piercing intensity. For the last two weeks, the only real emotion I'd been able to see in Merenwen's eyes was sorrow; a mourning so deep and so awful that not even tears could do it justice. But now, I found I was reminded of Legolas' eyes back in Emyn Muil when his sickness had made him delirious and so terrible to behold. There ailments suddenly seemed one in the same.

"What?" I blurted out stupidly, unable to fully comprehend at first the question from the apparition floating so eerily in front of me.

"The ring," she breathed, which immediately drew me back to the Lord of the Rings books when that word had been the essence of evil; only there was absolutely no connection between these two rings. "Why does its loss upset you so?

The words almost seemed to pain her, and I realized that this was probably the first time I'd ever heard her speak full sentences. "Oh...um, no, it's just that...well, it's the only piece of my home that I have left."

Her dark eyes seemed to flicker and suddenly clear of the abrupt emotion they'd held and she turned slowly, lifting her candle to the walls of her room. I followed the trail of light and almost gasped when I saw that her entire room was now covered in pictures of her dead beloved. Where before there had only been one wall with pictures of miscellaneous things, now the boards were tacked over with one image alone. Now I knew what she'd been doing in here day after day.

"I am afraid that I will forget his face," she said, hand shaking as she did so. The vibrations caused the flame to give an eerie flicker effect to the dozens of Urol portraits. "Just imagine...the loss of your ring--that piece of your homeland...and my loss." She turned to me, and looking upon her I had to wonder if in fact she was truly a ghost. "Urol was my home. Without him I will never be able to laugh, or feel joy, or hatred, or fear... I tell you this because I can see the pity in your eyes every time you look at me. But I want you to know that there is no use in it. I am as dead as a living being can be. And my life no longer holds anything for me. No happiness, no sorrow, no joy, and no disappointment. Do not pity me, for I have loved and lost. Nothing more." She lowered the candle, obscuring Urol's face in the darkness, for which I was glad. "I do not want your pity."

I struggled to un-stick my tongue from the roof of my mouth, "What do you want, Merenwen?"

Her pale lips thinned and she spoke plainly, "To die. I will not commit the act myself, but I do wish it."

It felt evil to ask her, but I had to know. "Why?"

She looked at the walls covered in the portraits of her dead lover wistfully and her answer was not to me but to him. "Because...he would want me to live. He was wonderful like that. I know that if he could speak with me again he would tell me to live. He always thought I had more to offer this world than I actually had."

"Perhaps he was right," I ventured and she gave me a surprised glance.

"Not now," she said, turning away from Urol, "I can do nothing well or good now that I do not have him. He brought out everything good within me."

I could not allow myself to believe that. People were not created in such a way that only one person could make them good or useful. But I didn't want to tell her that. Somehow I didn't think Merenwen would want to hear that. So, I tried a different approach. "But couldn't you at least try...for your family? I mean, they were there before Urol even, right?"

Merenwen looked mildly remorseful as she moved uneasily from her stance near the bed to sit down at her desk. "I am hurting only myself. In time they will stop hoping for my recovery...in time she will stop expecting an answer when she speaks to me."

Hearing these selfish, naive words, I suddenly could no longer muster the pity for Merenwen that I'd held these past few weeks. It wasn't anger that me as I looked at her but something very close to it. I supposed that what she was trying to tell me was that her family didn't need her; that she wasn't important. And as far as I knew it, that was complete and utter crock. I could have told her that, yes, a great wrong had been done to her. But she was no longer mourning her father's death or her lover's death, but rather herself and all the sadness she held. Her life had, in essence, become one big pity party. She had unconsciously decided that she no longer cared how upset she made her family with her "mourning" and then made up the excuse that eventually they would forget her.

But Arhem, Lianen, and Eorl deserved more than that.

Chuckling slightly to myself at her words, I shook my head. Merenwen frowned at me, consternation causing her to eye me oddly over the frail light of the candle. "Why do you laugh?"

I headed to the door, set my hand to the knob and looked back at her with what had turned into a look of pitying and patronizing acknowledgment. "If that is truly what you think then you're in for a rather rude awakening." I paused and opened the door, "Thanks for letting me look. Good night."

The door thudded to a close behind me, and I headed out the front door, knowing that sleep would never be able to find me this night. I walked through the garden slowly and stopped at its edge to sit down. Sighing, I leaned back against one of the post marking the entrance to the garden and looked up at the sky studded with stars with the sudden sense that nothing was under my control in this world. I didn't feel like any single thing I did here made any real impact. Merenwen was probably going to become even more annoyed with my existence than she already was and dismiss my words rather than consider them and, eventually, when I departed from this family and found my own niche in Middle Earth, everyone was destined to forget me. I couldn't have possibly explained it to anyone but Legolas, but for some unknown reason I had the sneaking suspicion that the Aratar had made it so that I would never fully or totally belong here; not after I promised to ignore their rules of the game.

It was just a theory, but I almost felt like they were punishing me now after my little spat with Salmar. It was possible that they didn't trust me anymore; didn't want it to be easy for me to approach this world on my own--this new habitat--in a way that displeased them. And that was anyway that didn't lead directly back to Legolas. It was infuriating in more ways than one. And it occurred to me that, not only were they making my social fingerprint on this world non-lasting, but they were also toying with my emotional state as well. The disappearance of my ring suddenly seemed strangely convenient.

I laughed as I made a mental comparison between myself and all those ancient cultures of Earth that were always creating new gods to blame for every bad or unfortunate thing that happened to them.

"Oh, I suppose the God of Ring Theft made off with another piece of your jewelry, did he, Iorwen?" I mocked myself, then nearly jumped out of my skin when a voice replied. "Is there any particular reason why you are outside, late at night, speaking to yourself?"

I spun to look as Arhem ambled out, a smug look on his face, making me suddenly realize that I was in little more than a shift. Arhem seemed hardly to notice however as he sat down next to me and said, "You are very edgy tonight. I am sorry if I scared you."

"No, no," I assured him, "I was just thinking."

"For everyone to hear..." Arhem replied, finishing my sentence.

I laughed shortly to myself and leaned back against the post, thinking that if Arhem knew everything that went on inside my head, he wouldn't be smiling. "Sort of," I acknowledged.

Arhem sidled over and began to draw inconspicuously in the soil, "I hear you lost something?"

I winced and tried to shrug nonchalantly, "I'll get over it."

Arhem raised his eyebrows, and I realized a moment too late that I'd just used another phrase that revealed my otherworldliness. "I'll be fine," I quickly corrected.

Arhem smiled and took my hand. For a moment I was so surprised that it didn't even register that he'd dropped something in my palm as he pulled his away.

Blinking, I managed to tear my gaze away from his face and look down into my now outstretched palm. My cheap, little ring glimmered back at me in the gloom as though greeting me, telling me it knew it was back where it was supposed to be.

"Arhem," I gasped, "Where--"

"Merenwen mentioned to me that you'd come looking for it. I took it out of your bag when I was transferring your things. It looked so tiny and precious that I thought it best to put it somewhere safe so it would no be lost. Then I just forgot about it. Forgive me. I did not mean to upset you."

I looked back down at the little piece of jewelry, hardly believing it was there after I'd already assumed I'd lost it forever. "It's fine," I replied shakily. I sniffed loudly and waved him off when he made to apologize again. "Thank you. I'm just glad to have it back."

Arhem looked at me guiltily as I tried to hold back my tears. "I did not realize it was so important to you." He said quietly.

I kind of laughed and put the little ring on my finger. "Neither did I."

"Are you all right now, Iorwen?" Arhem ventured and I nodded to him in reassurance. "I think I'll be okay."

You liar, I thought to myself , You'll never be okay so long as you have to keep keeping up this disgusting charade of yours. Just tell him!

Gripping the ring with the two fingers of my other hand, I twisted it madly, thinking about how I'd had everything taken from me. The Valar were trying to force their own life on me and I wasn't going to have it. It was NOT their choice; it was mine. I didn't choose Legolas...but, then, who did I choose?

"I choose..." lifting my head up from where I was staring at the ring to look at Arhem who had been staring all the while at my face, attempting to discern my mood. I stared directly at him, not daring to look away, lest I lose my nerve.

"What?" Arhem asked, "You choose what? What are you talking about?"

"I think..." I gulped and turned to face him, "I think I choose..."

I couldn't get out the rest, but Arhem seemed to have figured out what I was trying to say because a moment later his lips were against mine and we were flat against the ground next to the tomato plants. His legs planted themselves around mine and he gasped against my lips, "Iorwen, I thought you would never think on me."

I looked past his head to the sky above as Arhem began to plant kisses along my neck feverishly. His face suddenly reappeared and he kissed me deeply again, so deeply that for a moment I lost my thoughts completely and the moment they reappeared, all I could see was Legolas' face in my mind.

"Iorwen..."Arhem breathed against my skin, and I shuddered with the sudden wrongness of it.

"Wait, wait..." I scooted out from under Arhem and he sat back in shock, looking hurt.

"What is it?" he asked, looking so pitiful I almost wanted to change my mind, but I couldn't.

"I'm sorry, Arhem, but...this isn't right. I can't..." I trailed off, but his face had already resolved to an answer.

"It is the elf, yes?"

I wanted to shake my head no, but I couldn't even move. My silence was answer enough.

He sighed. "It is all right. I understand. You will need more time." He stood up to leave, "But understand, he is gone and I would have you if you would allow me. Please, remember."

He walked away sadly back to the house, and I fell back against the post, rubbing my temples in a pathetic form of consolation.

"Fuck," I cursed to myself. Not only had they made it impossible to enjoy life here, but now I was never going to be able to consider another man without them dropping Legolas' face into my mental bank.

Mental despair descended like a black-winged bird on my thoughts, sending me tumbling through every emotion that could have followed the encounter with Arhem-- disappointment, confusion, sadness--and dropped me straight into the pit of emotional desperation. I knew immediately that outside of the Aratar's plan, I could never live the way I wished. But there had to be something… There had to be something out there that I could do that they wouldn't expect--that they couldn't control…

I looked back to the house, into the window that had previously glowed with candle light. The answer was suddenly so plain that I wondered to myself why I had never thought of it before. And just why not, Iorwen? the eager little voice whispered. They couldn't possibly expect that.

Standing up, I hardly even shivered as a cold breeze blew my thin shift against my body. I knew now what had to be done. Giving the house one last sad glance, I turned away and walked out of the garden, my feet making only the faintest of padding noises as I left the village of Ren and all conventional thought behind.

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: Have no fear, dear readers! I have returned! After months of all kinds of hullabaloo, things finally calmed down enough for me to get this typed up, and--luckily for you guys--I've nearly finished the next chapter, so the next update will not be so long coming. Oh, and please forgive any grammar and spelling errors, I kind of hastily typed this and read through it, so it's probably riddled with them. Anyway, thanks for reading, and please go forth and review!

-MusicalCharlatan