False and Fair
Disclaimers: Middle-earth, Aman etc. belong to J.R.R. Tolkien and his estate. I own nothing, intend no infringement of copyright, and am making no money by this.
Rating: PG.
Summary: Memory and loss, and the Grinding Ice. Life in exile.
Feedback: is very, very welcome. *looks hopeful*.
And… *drumroll* … thanks to Nemis for betaing this.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
When the ice shattered, 'twas as glass before the hammer, bright under the stars that never had we known before. And we were afraid of the red eye above us, baleful in its guard, and thought it a sign of Morgoth in his workings, never dreaming that 'twas but a token of the Valar, wondrously strange in its scarlet radiance, like the tree-light clouded by a dust storm on a warm day when riders thronged the road from Tirion on Túna to the Sea.
And we wailed and we cried out when our lords broke and ran and screamed before us, and the wind flayed our faces and chapped our lips. Their women-folk lay down among the shimmering, shattering ice, under the black sky of the night that did not end, and died there, and ours with them, score upon score, and the children and sucklings pleaded for the succour that we had not. We left their bodies on the Ice, the wind-shrieks of the hunting birds and the far-off call of the waves ringing in our ears, and stumbled onwards, half-blind, half-dead, uncaring.
The snows opened up before us, thick and soft as drapes in some cozened room abounding with poetry and laughter. There we saw, and wished our eyes blinded yet: the ice gaped in ragged rents like a gashed wound to the pale cadaver in the night. Beneath, between lips of opalescent white, the sea showed blue in our lantern light, blue as the day ere there was ever dawning, blue as the eyes of the maidens lost behind us. More we lost then, more tears could not be shed, for the unforgiving cold, merciless, froze them at their starting.
The howls were nearer now, wild and free across the Ice; friend or foe we could not tell, work of Morgoth or of fairer hands we could not say.
'Twas hard, so very hard, and forgetful bliss our only comfort brought. Forgot the kinder days. Forgot a child's kiss and a lover's caress. Forgot the light lingering in our hair and our eyes as the timeless years turned, piled one upon another. Forgot laughter, and smiles, and wonder. Forgot even the naming of these things, for the Ice was within us, and it mattered not what earlier, higher oaths we had forsaken when the Doom was laid upon us, and our fates foretold in dread voice.
And there was only blood, red upon our hands, and that distant shore and the words like carrion crows encircling our minds, enchaining thought and hope to fell purpose and dusk. Wracked dreams and aching limbs that never again would be Elven-straight, and our songs of woe and wrath, and the eyes of the Deceiver in the night time, soul-searing like lime on tender flesh.
Stone tombs to warm our feet and chill our hearts, hidden in a land that shunned us, beneath a paler light, amid strangers who were not kin, wild fey folk of the forests and glens.
Half-caught glimpses, like moonlight on tumbling water, when the fires burnt low in the hearths and the birds slept silent ere the dawn. When footsteps dimmed and dulled, and heartbeats muffled themselves in clammy chests. When crooked fingers clutched at tumbled sheets and crooked minds in circles ran. Then we saw – or thought we saw – the fleeting flicker of an older life, or dancers beneath the upraised boughs of the mortal Trees.
But daylight came again, unbidden, unwanted, and the tremulous candle we called the sun chased away our dreamings, and we forgot for a while, while the wayward moon waxed and waned in the blinded heavens above us. And the forgetting was stronger yet, and self's loss was but a small price to pay.
Oblivion, kind tyranny of the witless mind; until our life's blood incarnadined the warm earth beneath us, pooling amid the loam and the leaf-mould. And our kinsmen fell before us, back to darkness and hatred's first fruit. Aye, then we remembered, remembered what we were, before we stumbled into legend's shadow and bound our troth to the house of sorrow. We remembered, while our limbs stung, and our hearts soared, and battle's tumult raged about us.
I know not yet whether 'twas better indeed to remember, or to forget.
FINIS
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~