Of The Beginning of Days


Part One: Hrívë


Chapter One: Cuivië

It was the same as it always was, as it always had been.

She woke to pitch blackness and an unbearable weight pushing ceaselessly down on her. She longed to escape it, but escape was impossible; she could not move her arms or legs. She barely had enough space to shiver from the icy cold that stole over her every limb.

The pain was relentless. It was debilitating, and it was everything she knew. She couldn't escape; all that was left to do was lie there and suffer, every breath of icy air a struggle.

She lay there in torment and waited to lose consciousness.


There were flashes of light behind her eyelids when she lay there asleep. Flashes of the woman who used to inhabit the body that now lay trapped underground. The glimpses of a life before were the only comfort she had in the world.

She was a baby, and everything around her was light and wonder. She was wrapped in blankets that felt soft and warm. There was music around her, someone singing, and she didn't have to work or fight or push or suffer. She just was.

Her mother came, her amya, a face framed by long, golden hair, and the baby reached up with tiny hands. Her mother picked her up and held her. She was speaking, but the baby listened only to the warm, deep sound of the voice, not the words it was saying.

It was a memory of blissful peace, of safety, of warmth and light, and dreaming of it only made her reality hurt more.


It was the same as it always was. She awoke to agony, trapped under the nameless, unbearable weight which she had no choice but to bear.

She hated it. She hated it with every fibre of her tortured body. She didn't know which pain was worse – the weight that slowly crushed her, or her inability to move even an inch. She couldn't open her eyes, couldn't twitch a finger to relieve the shooting pangs of stiffness that shot through her atrophying muscles.

How long had she been here? How many days, months, years? What had she done to merit this eternal torture?

Sometimes, when she managed to think of anything beyond the pain, she wondered how she had come to be there, and what had come before. She couldn't remember anything except the flashes that came in her dreams. She felt like she had a gaping hole in her chest that was supposed to be filled.

She couldn't tell how long she'd been there, but in rare moments of sanity, she felt it must have been years. Perhaps decades.

But those thoughts were fleeting. Every other waking moment she lay in agony, and all she knew was pain. Once or twice, she wondered how long it would be before she was driven insane. She wondered if she already was. She suffered the torture and prayed for sleep.


She dreamed of a city, with white buildings that gleamed in the soft light. The streets glittered, like they were scattered with the dust of diamonds. There were wide walkways that were shadowed only by fluttering flags and banners, emblazoned with a golden sun.

She was standing in a great square, filled with people. There was a great tree in its centre. Its bark and flowers were white, and its leaves a soft silver. A faint perfume emanated from the blossoms.

She looked up and saw a tower, emerging from the city like a needle from a cloth. A light shone from the top, and it dazzled her eyes to look at it. But she did, and she didn't look away. The light was better than the dark.


She awoke again and again. The pain forced itself into her brain, claiming all her energy and attention. She wanted to die, but she couldn't move. She wanted oblivion, and freedom from the ceaseless nightmare. She got neither.

The agony was unbearable, and yet she had no choice but to bear it. It was a vicious, relentless existence. She had no choice but to go on. She woke and slept, suffered and dreamed.

She didn't know how many times she fell in and out of conscience, but every time felt worse than the last. She wished for death.


She was a baby, and she dozed in her mother's arms, her head resting on a shoulder and her tiny hands making fists in golden hair. It was a blissful reprieve.

She could hear voices again, one belonging to her mother and vibrating beneath her. She didn't listen to the words, but she loved the feeling of the sounds rolling around her, interweaving and interchanging.

There was a man's voice that came closer, and it filled her with comfort. It was familiar to her – deep and measured and calm.

Father, she thought. Tatanya.

The voices began sharpening into focus, though she remained curled in her mother's arms.

'…such a beautiful child,' her father was saying.

'And good natured,' her mother replied. It sounded like she was smiling.

'Hair like mine, but eyes like yours.'

'Look, she smiles as she sleeps. She is always smiling.'

'Let me hold her, my love.'

She felt herself lifted gently up from where she had been resting. She yawned toothlessly.

'It is time to wake up, melda,' she heard her mother murmur as she was passed to her father. 'It is time to wake up…'


She sobbed silently when she found herself back in the waking world, hours, days, weeks later. Pain wracked her every limb. She silently begged for death, begged for the weight to finally crush her, for the torture to end. It didn't, and for once, fury cut through the pain.

She screamed. It was a hoarse, ragged, ugly sound, but it was the first she'd heard since she could remember, and it felt like it deafened her. The new kind of pain felt good, and she screamed again and again.

Tears began to trickle from the corners of her eyes, and her limbs began to shake. She couldn't stand it, not for one second more. She couldn't be forced to go on surviving in a soundless, sightless environment where her only reality was cold and pain. She wouldn't.

She screamed until it felt like she was running razors along the inside of her throat, but she didn't stop. She began pushing back at the weight that pushed down on her, using all the strength she had left in her wasted body. She heaved and strained with all her might.

She did it for hours, and if nothing else, it helped her get to sleep more quickly.


She dreamed of a sister. The sister was tall, stretching up to the sky, but that was only because she was a tiny child in the memory. To her, everything was huge. She had dark hair, like her father's, but her sister's hair was long and golden, as though it had been finely woven from the metals of the earth.

They were under the great tree with white flowers and silver leaves. Her sister picked her up and placed her on her knee.

'Where is your smile, little sister?' she asked, placing a kiss on her head.

'I want a flower,' she replied, stretching up her small hands to grab at air.

'Let the blossoms stay on the tree,' her sister said. 'Or else they will wither, and never open their faces to the light again.'

She frowned, the concept of death eluding her, but as she drew breath for questioning, the dream dissolved, and she heard her mother's voice again.

'It is time to wake up, melda.'


She pushed relentlessly, every waking minute. The pain continued, but it felt better to focus on her anger than on her helplessness.

She pushed and pushed, and after days – or perhaps weeks – of effort, she heard something clatter away, and the weight on top of her lessened minutely.

She gasped in a breath of stale air, shocked into stillness. The relief was barely noticeable, but nothing could eclipse her sudden, furious triumph at having made a tiny difference. Only a second ago she'd been listless and despairing, angrily resigned to an eternity of torture. Now… there was hope.

The thought of freedom leant her new strength, and with gritted teeth, she began pushing upwards once more. After a few minutes, there was another small clatter. She seized the opportunity and heaved, and the clatter turned into a landslide. The weight on top of her suddenly decreased, and suddenly there was a glimmer of light.

Without the crushing weight of stones on top of her, she felt as though she was floating. And they were stones; she could make them out now, in the sliver of light that was coming from above. They were smooth, grey, and damp, some the size of her fist and others the size of her head.

Her breaths were coming fast and deep now that there was nothing to stop them. Her eyes hurt from the dim light, and she could hear…

A dull roar, somewhere nearby. It sounded familiar, but she couldn't remember what it was supposed to be. She couldn't remember anything.

'Who am I?' she asked the darkness. Her voice was raspy and whispery from disuse, and she coughed, sending more rocks tumbling away above her.

'Hello?'

It didn't sound much better. She desperately wanted a drink of water, and food with it, but she needed to move first, and she didn't know if she could do that without help.

'Hello? Anybody?'

Her voice sounded deafening, but there was no reply except for the distant roar. She inhaled deeply. If she had the strength to push hundreds of rocks off her while she was lying prostate and trapped, she had the strength to sit up now.

She pushed the rest of the rocks off her body. With nothing obscuring her face, she could see more of where she was. It was some kind of cave – deep, judging by the tiny amount of light inside, but not too far from the outside world. The cave was littered with thousands of rocks, all damp and some of which had been piled on top of her.

Stalactites hung dripping from the ceiling, which was only about as high as she was tall. The air tasted stale and damp and salty. The roaring sound didn't relent. She felt a sudden, clawing need to see the open sky, and she decided it was time to move.

With a momentous effort, she sat upright. Her muscles screamed at the sudden movement, and she groaned through her teeth. Her head swam, and her breaths grew short.

With another grunt of effort, she turned so she was on all fours. She paused while her muscles seized and cramped. How long had she been trapped in the cave? She had no way of knowing, but moving again hurt.

She tried to get to her feet, falling back down on her first few attempts, her arms too weak to break the fall. On her fifth effort, she managed it, grasping the cave walls with shaking hands to steady herself.

'Now,' she whispered aloud. 'One step at a time.'

She walked slowly, her muscles protesting and her joints cracking with every step. It wasn't easy; the ground beneath her feet was made of smooth, moist rocks. It was the first time she could ever remember walking; her dreams were memories of her infancy, and in her reality, she was trapped.

The cave was long, and once or twice it twisted. Every time she turned a corner it got brighter, and the roaring sound grew louder, until she recognised it as the crashing of waves. She could feel a cool breeze that made her shiver, and when the rocks beneath her feet started turning to sand, her heart began to hammer in her chest.

She turned one last corner, and there it was – the mouth of the cave. She walked forward like someone in a trance; the sunlight almost blinded her, the noise was deafening, and the wind felt like needles on her bare arms, but she didn't stop until she stood right at the edge of the cave, the darkness behind her and the light before. The ocean thundered at her, and waves lapped at her bare feet.

After the suffocating closeness of the cave, it felt terrifyingly open. The onslaught on her senses was overwhelming, and for a moment she struggled to breathe. She needed to calm down, she thought; focus on the small things.

It must have been mid-morning, judging by the brightness of the sun. To her right, the waves crashed into towering cliffs. She couldn't go that way. To her left, jagged rocks eventually turned into sand. That was more viable.

She turned to get one last look at the cave. Its mouth looked small, insignificant even standing just a few feet away. She would think nothing of it if she had passed it by any other time. Now, though, she would remember it as a place of horror.

She shook her head and looked back out at the vast blue ocean before her. Her hands stopped shaking. There was nothing for her here but a memory of pain. She wanted fresh water, and perhaps a cloak for warmth, because she was cold…

She glanced down at herself. She was barefoot, and wearing a tattered, torn, faded blue dress. It looked like it had more holes left than dress, but it was held together by a leather belt, to which was buckled –

A sword.

She pulled it from its scabbard carefully. Its metal hadn't rusted at all, and it still looked sharp. The blade was engraved with a swirling pattern as well as small runes near its hilt, which seemed to fit perfectly in her hand. At the top of the hilt was embedded a topaz. She sheathed the sword. Why could she remember nothing? Who was she?

A wave swept in, and she stumbled. Dark hair fell into her face, and she pulled it into her hands. It was long, falling in tangles almost to her knees. Hair like mine, her father's voice whispered.

There was a large golden locket hanging around her neck, resting at her sternum. Engraved on it was a little sun.

Another wave swept in, almost knocking her from her feet, and she decided it was time to move. Weak and exhausted, she began to clamber over the rocks that paved her way to dry land. They were sharp, cutting into her hands and feet, and she was knocked over twice more by incoming waves, but she persevered.

When she finally reached a little cove where the rocks turned into sand, she collapsed with a groan, exhausted. But she was only granted a few seconds of reprieve before she heard a voice.

'Who are you?'

She gasped and forced herself to sit upright. There was a man standing a little way away from her, his face brown and weathered, and a fishing rod grasped in his hands like a weapon.

'Help me,' she croaked. The man's face grew still more suspicious.

'What's your name, then?'

'I don't remember,' she said.

'Are you a witch?'

She stared at him. She didn't know the answer to his question, but she knew she needed help. 'Please – do you have water?'

He stared at her with distrustful brown eyes for a while, then tossed her a water skin. 'Don't ask nothing more of me,' he said. 'These are lean times, and to trust is to be a fool.' He turned to walk away.

'Wait!' she rasped, and he paused. 'Please, can you tell me where I could find people to help me?'

He pursed his lips. 'East,' he said. 'East are the Dwarves, and south-east, at the mouth of the river, you'll find your own people.'

'My own people…' she whispered, her eyes wide. 'Do you know who I am?'

The fisherman's brown face creased into a frown, and he turned and walked away.

She was too thirsty to be disappointed. She unstoppered the waterskin and drank all of it, being careful to avoid spilling anything. Then she struggled to her feet. 'My own people,' she whispered. 'The mouth of the river…'

Then black spots appeared in her vision. She fell to her knees. Let the blossoms stay on the tree, she heard her sister murmur.

'They're all dead,' she croaked. Everything turned to black.


Hello readers! It's nice to be back, this time with my best effort at a romance. As usual, here are a few notices before we dive into the rest of the story:

- This story is under Lord of the Rings on this site, however be aware it does dabble across the timeline of Middle-earth (meaning if Thorin & Co. show up, please don't be too alarmed. They shall soon be gone).

- I am trying to experiment with different writing tropes and techniques, so if there is something in particular that you love or hate, please let me know! All feedback is welcome.

- Rated T for some mature themes.

Chapter Two will be along shortly. I hope you enjoy, and I will see you soon.

Sigebeorn.