Chapter Two: Out of the Shadowlands (III. 3010)
Lómëí squinted against the waning sun, tiny slits of gray fringed with black fluttering eyelashes. Mirages shimmered on the horizon, distorting reality and bending the sights of the sane eyes. Her veil covered her entire head, the only bit of flesh showing was her shockingly pale hands, which gripped cracked, aged reins.
Surrounding her and the furry black beast on which she sat cross-legged, there was sand. Dune after dune of white finely grained sand. Days upon days of sand. A smile crept to her chapped lips as she surveyed the landscape. She gently pressed her calves to the creature's side, urging it on with quiet words. It responded and trotted North; broad, leathery toes sinking only slightly. The Ata had long been a favorite beast of burden to the people of the deep South, where the horses could not tread and the Mûmakil could not exist from lack of water and shade. The large hump on the creatures' back store fat enough to sustain it for seven risings of the sun without food.
She was truly a woman of the Harad, could wield a Khopesh along side the finest warriors. The first thirty years of her life were spent battling with the other children, struggling and eventually earning the respect of the Elders in her tribe. Her fight was not as a female, it was as a half- Southron attempting to make sense of her place in an intrinsically violent environment. Her mother shared stories of the North, of the peaceful but dark forest she was from, and Lómëí eagerly listened. She tried to imagine leaves as her mother described them: made as if of waxen jade, laced through with delicate veins, lining every enormous tree. And hundred of trees made a forest, thousands of leaves, all twinkling in the cool starlight. The Haradrim were distrustful of mother in the first seasons of her marriage to one of the men of the tribe, but after forty years living the nomadic life with them, they were at ease with the presence of a tall, lithe blonde with strange accent and mannerisms. For she had chosen to be one of them. If an elf chose to walk with under the skies of the south, may the sun embrace her as one of them.
As darkness crept forward, Lómëí dismounted and threw her blankets to the sand. She reclined on her back and gazed to the heavens. The Ata sank to its knees and underside, making an unhappy and tired moaning sound before turning its large, kind eyes towards the woman. It was content to rest and chew its cud. She patted the thick hair, idly brushing off some of the sand while speaking kind words.
A simple life was all she wanted in life, and her job provided that. She had traveled from the expansive frozen territory of Forod to the deep South and everywhere in between, from the lost mountains of Orocarni in Rhûn to the shining Great Sea to the west. Some called her a ranger (and mistook her identity as a Dúnedain woman.) Some simply called her a trader, a migratory merchant, a mercenary, a courier. She was whatever people wanted her to be; a half-recalled memory, an enigma, a curiosity. Her mother had taught her that the most important thing in her long life would be knowledge and benevolence. Her father taught her to survive.
Of course, the Elves of Taur e-Ndaedelos had taught her the way of life as it applied the north. but that was after she had thirty years of experience in the desert. It seemed so strange to the young girl when she went to live with her grandparents in those strange woods at the base of the Misty Mountains. She was in awe of the trees, of hills and mountains and snow. Between arrival and coming of age, Lómëí was re-shaped in the image of her mother's people in Lórien and later Mirkwood. Her braids removed from her thick charcoal hair, her dark clothes replaced with silver and green. Yet her accent never diminished, even after twenty years of Sindarin flowed from her tongue. She deeply loved the Elves, for they cared about her and embraced her regardless of her odd habits. Yet she desired to return to the Forests of the Sun; to see the night sky again from the South, to dance beside crackling bonfires that banish the oppressive darkness of the desert, surrounded by smiling faces and to have her mind pummeled with the beating of drums. To feel the solidness of a Khopesh in her small hands and hear metal striking metal. To look again upon white dunes glistening beneath the pale moon.
So it came that when she had fifty years in Middle earth, Lómëí departed Mirkwood and the realm of her grandparents to seek her fortune in the strange and distant lands the Elves seldom, if ever, ventured to.
Lómëí squinted against the waning sun, tiny slits of gray fringed with black fluttering eyelashes. Mirages shimmered on the horizon, distorting reality and bending the sights of the sane eyes. Her veil covered her entire head, the only bit of flesh showing was her shockingly pale hands, which gripped cracked, aged reins.
Surrounding her and the furry black beast on which she sat cross-legged, there was sand. Dune after dune of white finely grained sand. Days upon days of sand. A smile crept to her chapped lips as she surveyed the landscape. She gently pressed her calves to the creature's side, urging it on with quiet words. It responded and trotted North; broad, leathery toes sinking only slightly. The Ata had long been a favorite beast of burden to the people of the deep South, where the horses could not tread and the Mûmakil could not exist from lack of water and shade. The large hump on the creatures' back store fat enough to sustain it for seven risings of the sun without food.
She was truly a woman of the Harad, could wield a Khopesh along side the finest warriors. The first thirty years of her life were spent battling with the other children, struggling and eventually earning the respect of the Elders in her tribe. Her fight was not as a female, it was as a half- Southron attempting to make sense of her place in an intrinsically violent environment. Her mother shared stories of the North, of the peaceful but dark forest she was from, and Lómëí eagerly listened. She tried to imagine leaves as her mother described them: made as if of waxen jade, laced through with delicate veins, lining every enormous tree. And hundred of trees made a forest, thousands of leaves, all twinkling in the cool starlight. The Haradrim were distrustful of mother in the first seasons of her marriage to one of the men of the tribe, but after forty years living the nomadic life with them, they were at ease with the presence of a tall, lithe blonde with strange accent and mannerisms. For she had chosen to be one of them. If an elf chose to walk with under the skies of the south, may the sun embrace her as one of them.
As darkness crept forward, Lómëí dismounted and threw her blankets to the sand. She reclined on her back and gazed to the heavens. The Ata sank to its knees and underside, making an unhappy and tired moaning sound before turning its large, kind eyes towards the woman. It was content to rest and chew its cud. She patted the thick hair, idly brushing off some of the sand while speaking kind words.
A simple life was all she wanted in life, and her job provided that. She had traveled from the expansive frozen territory of Forod to the deep South and everywhere in between, from the lost mountains of Orocarni in Rhûn to the shining Great Sea to the west. Some called her a ranger (and mistook her identity as a Dúnedain woman.) Some simply called her a trader, a migratory merchant, a mercenary, a courier. She was whatever people wanted her to be; a half-recalled memory, an enigma, a curiosity. Her mother had taught her that the most important thing in her long life would be knowledge and benevolence. Her father taught her to survive.
Of course, the Elves of Taur e-Ndaedelos had taught her the way of life as it applied the north. but that was after she had thirty years of experience in the desert. It seemed so strange to the young girl when she went to live with her grandparents in those strange woods at the base of the Misty Mountains. She was in awe of the trees, of hills and mountains and snow. Between arrival and coming of age, Lómëí was re-shaped in the image of her mother's people in Lórien and later Mirkwood. Her braids removed from her thick charcoal hair, her dark clothes replaced with silver and green. Yet her accent never diminished, even after twenty years of Sindarin flowed from her tongue. She deeply loved the Elves, for they cared about her and embraced her regardless of her odd habits. Yet she desired to return to the Forests of the Sun; to see the night sky again from the South, to dance beside crackling bonfires that banish the oppressive darkness of the desert, surrounded by smiling faces and to have her mind pummeled with the beating of drums. To feel the solidness of a Khopesh in her small hands and hear metal striking metal. To look again upon white dunes glistening beneath the pale moon.
So it came that when she had fifty years in Middle earth, Lómëí departed Mirkwood and the realm of her grandparents to seek her fortune in the strange and distant lands the Elves seldom, if ever, ventured to.