Candle Stub

by Elgarain

"Because fighting to keep burning is harder than shining as a memory in the annals of glory, but that doesn't mean it's less of a story. Or battle." In 3013 T.A., entropy grips the once glorious lands of Eorl, and none can see it happening as clearly as the one trapped within the very heart yet unable to change a thing.

1. Chapter 1

I am Eowyn. Scratching lines while Meduseld sleeps and a door is permitted against Wormtongue, burning stolen candle-ends so none know that sleep finds me not as they see the long wax sticks that will stay unlit as unchanging players in the lie that life has become.

The flame touches my finger as I tip the stub more upright, and I stare as the sensation drags across my skin, distant as all the rest, the pain glossing past the dull bubble that I float in, never breaking.

The bubble scares me.

I always thought myself stronger than Mother, but here I am, exactly as she did. Eomer notices. "Stay angry, sister," he slurred last Yule when I caught he and Theodred drinking. That is how dark it becomes, that those two seek drunken oblivion. I cuffed them both and kicked their rumps towards bed, and my brother gave a dying smile and said "Keep fighting." How grim is this advent of disaster, when the shieldmaiden must be told to fight?

As I remember it now, I wonder just how drunk he was for such words of deep fear to unravel.

And I try.

But alone there seems no point, and I am falling silent, I know. Like Eomer fears. Like the Worm wants. Like Mother.

And the deeper I fall the more unlikely the return.