Title: Both Eyes
Author: LegolasLover2003 aka Ashley
Category: Book - "The Hobbit"
Genre: Drama
Rating: T
Disclaimer: I do not own any right to The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit. I just adore them to pieces.
Author's Note: Originally written for the June/July 2020 Teitho challenge "Vision"... but after I wrote it I hated it and never submitted it. My thanks to Nyx Thranduilion for inspiring me to go ahead and type it up... and put it here at the very least. I'll explain why I hated it in the ending Author's Note. ;)
Both Eyes
Have you ever felt blind?
Wait... perhaps I should rephrase that...
Have you ever been in a place so dark, that the tips of your fingers before your very eyes were indecipherable from the black abyss that surrounded you?
No?
I have.
A darkness so heavy, so oppressive, that your very body seems to shrink before it. Every ounce of your being screaming warnings within your mind and the desire to run or to hide or simply to cower where you stand blares through your head like a great trumpet. It is in your very ears... an absence of sound then, and you start to feel as if the world around you, which you cannot see, will crush the very life from your heart...
It is hardly a pleasant feeling.
It is an emotion... but a physical affliction all the same.
For me... it is sheer terror and dread... and a herald of my own death.
Why, you ask?
Such is simple... for I have seen death and it covers all in ash, blocking out the light... stealing your very breath... a darkness so deep, you an never escape. I have felt death's sting, a bite more powerful than any serpent, which melts skin and muscle and bone until all that is left is a hollow shell... if anything at all. I have heard death's roar that shakes the very foundations of the earth and causes all before it to recoil in abject horror. Warriors cowering and shaking, their weapons dropping from their trembling fingers, hands over their ears to try and blot out the screams... their own screams...
When it came for me, I was not alone. I stood upon the field, blades in my hands, my armor soaked in the blood of my enemies... Our people were alone but not I... no... in my heart I felt confident, for our warriors were beyond compare... so used to the darkness now. I could smell that blood... the ground thick with the rancor of it's stench. Bodies hewn haphazardly as wave after wave of the filth swarmed our lines. But still we fought... to the last breath... to the last warrior we would stand. Retreat was no option here.
Then I felt it... the ground beneath my boots shivered as if pounded with hammers so great, they could have cleaved a mountain in two. Over and over that sensation assaulted me, each time growing in intensity... before it simply stopped. I could hear it first... a spark or a sizzle that seemed to come from the very sky above... and then, through the smoke and the dust, came a great cloud of flame. Hotter than a forge's fire, it burned across the landscape, incinerating anything in it's path. Such devastation left nothing in it's wake but ash and embers and the charred bodies of my fallen kin. The very smell on such heavy air was nauseating... but there was no time to mourn those losses as our ranks spread out, continuing to pound the enemy with blade and bow and shield. The wind shifted suddenly, a sign that it was coming about once more. I had narrowly escaped the flames the first time...
And I saw it... the molten fires burning along the ground, that great plume coming ever closer to my king. Swift were my feet as I dashed along the broken ground, across the bodies of the dead, my hand outstretched...
I felt it then... a jerk upon my armor... a hand pulling me away... but it was too late. As the flame consumed my sire, it's biting heat struck my face, ripping skin from bone and tearing muscle. An excruciating pain the likes of which I have never felt before seared through my body and I knew not if I was falling... if someone were there to catch me... The light of the world was stolen from my sight by dragon fire. I can still remember the screams... my own screams... of rage and agony, torn between saving the father I could not reach... and allowing myself to be consumed by my own physical pain.
I suppose I should ask again...
Have you ever felt blind?
I have.
With one eye I can see the world... and with the other, I remember only the darkness.
With one eye I can watch my son grow into the prince, the warrior, he was destined to become... and with the other I remember the pain of the loss of one held so dear to my own heart.
With one eye I can look upon the beauty of my wood... and with the other I remember the desolation in those once fertile plains to the south.
But with both eyes... I can, and will, find the strength to face this world and all the joys and perils that lay within it.
END
Author's Note #2: Okay so... I hated it for one simple reason. The premise was fantastic and I loved how in-depth I could do into Thranduil's mind with these thoughts, almost like an entry into a journal. But it was the VOICE of these thoughts that I hated. See, I'd just come off the season finale of "Loki"... and when I read this a few times after the initial writing... I realized it SOUNDED like Loki talking and not like Thranduil talking. I showed it to a friend who always proof-reads my stuff and she said the voice sounded off. I asked, "It sounds like Loki, doesn't it?" and she was like, "Exactly like Loki." Now keep in mind she still thought it was good and I still thought it was good but I just didn't feel like I should enter it into a competition for LOTR writing when it wasn't Thranduil's voice in my head talking. So that is why it never made it to Teitho, which Nyx Thranduilion told me she was the only entry that month... so that made me feel bad because I didn't enter it (competing against her is so much fun!)... and thus why it has appeared here in it's original form, unaltered (except for one verb ending, lol). So I hope you enjoy.