Disclaimer: I am
not, and do not claim to be, at all associated with Tolkien, the author of the
brilliant Lord of the Rings, whose characters I am borrowing temporarily.
*
Writhing violently, she clutched at the fine linen that once stretched neatly across her mattress. A silken sheet wafted to the floor, quickly crushed by a pillow dashed downward with a cry.
Dark hair tumbled about her face and wrapped itself about her middle, tangling around her thin gown as she tossed to each side. She stretched out a languid arm, investing little energy in the motion, knowing it to be futile. Soon her fingertips smoothed over the edge of the bed-frame, no broad shoulders or reclining figure to block their wandering course.
The empty space engulfed her, swallowing her small form until she gasped for breath and clung to the bedpost for stability. Rising and wandering would lead her into circles of memory she sought to escape. Too often she slipped into the idle practice of numb recall, the splintering pain now a dull ache that tore at her heart even as it shrouded waking moment in a gray haze.
The siren call of slumber urged her to abandon the struggle and succumb to the rest she so relentlessly eluded. Still she endured, the losing battle a familiar one.
Light from a sinking sun dripped onto her walls, casting crimson shadows against the pale ivory. She shivered. Sliced skin and jagged wounds, blades whistling through air thick with the cries of those injured. Grass strewn with clay-fleshed corpses. Only a few remaining to survey the loss, each as powerless to escape his fate as his fallen comrades had been.
Even throughout her many years, she had witnessed only a handful of battles, and those were small in scale and generally mild in consequence. Secluded amidst sheltering trees and encircling walls, her pursuits had been domestic in nature. Yet the safe havens that welcomed her kind were few and dangerously far between. Winding trails and narrow paths, unknown to most, nevertheless fell prey to prowling bands of enemies, and such conflicts as had arisen between such predators and her escorts were all that comprised her personal experience with warfare. True, she had assisted her father as he performed his duties as a healer, but generally he shielded her from the more gruesome of injuries from battle.
Yet still these images plagued her, fierce and excruciatingly vivid, shoving themselves past her mind's defenses and mutating there into agonizing nightmare, panicking her until she was mad with fear and woke screaming his name.
Dreams, she told herself, cruel imaginings your mind has contrived in its anxiety. Were you to speak with him, he would tell you as much...
Would he, though, truly? Her spirit, hope sparking for a moment, quickly dimmed. Years she had waited, lingered behind as he strode off in courage, determined to face the unknown to which he had had to acclimate himself after a period of seclusion similar to her own. Yet, never, through all the nights she had felt abandoned, through months of silence that had shaken her heart, through years spent languishing in the knowledge that he was miles away from any protection her home could offer, never had her fear so chillingly manifested itself.
Strange, so strange that the months for which he had been gone seemed a collection of days stretched to their capacity, days that so often seemed an age themselves, when once the time may have passed like the blink of an eye it took for the sun to disappear over the horizon at dusk. Such a mortal perspective, her father would express, with as much heartache as disdain, perhaps. Yet she treasured the notion, and tucked it close to her heart as piercing evidence of the change he had wrought upon her.
At a sudden shout from across the sweeping courtyard, somewhere below her room's balcony, she started, her heart fluttering sickeningly in her breast and her body shuddering. Laughter soon echoed through her open window, yet even as she relaxed her tense form, her thoughts swirled, and she grew more lightheaded by the moment.
A voice circled in her head, vicious, taunting…Foresight…You know your father's gift. Might your vision too be a sign of things to come? Or perhaps already it has come to pass?
She whimpered into the still air of the silent room, but soon heartened. Had the worst of her dreams, entertained in the darkest nights when her heart nearly despaired, when she saw him, crumpled and limp on the blood-stained ground, her name the last on his lips…Had this of all visions come to pass, she would know, as surely as she breathed.
He lived still.
But for how long?
Stirring from her lifeless sprawl upon her quilt, she rose, the voice sounding in her mind, but her heart steady. Calm infused her movements as she stepped toward the window and gazed out onto the rolling gardens below, her fingers no longer shaking as she lightly touched the drape.
She breathed deeply of the sweet air, tingling and fresh with the scent of buds still hid beneath a mild frost.
It mattered not. Faith she would grasp for as long as he needed, as they had for so long, when the separation was hardly to be endured. For even as the thought of his fall pulled her breath from her chest and knocked her to her knees, hope tugged her up once more, as she knew it sustained him.
A moment of quiet contemplation passed, her gaze unfocused. She inhaled a ragged breath, bowing her head slightly, her hand atremble.
O, Valar protect him.
*
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