Folks, here is an angsty Anomen elfling ficlet. Keep your handkerchiefs handy.

Beta Reader: Dragonfly

Blind Fate: Chapter 1

It is a truth universally acknowledged that an elfling in possession of spare time must be in want of a companion. One morning Anomen had so pleased Erestor by marching through his lessons with nary an error that the tutor had set him at liberty. You would think that the lad would have been happy, but instead he was wandering restlessly through the Hall. His fellow sufferers Elrohir and Elladan, not having performed in as exemplary a fashion, were still trapped in the library, and Anomen did not know what to do with himself. At length, however, he bethought himself of Gandalf and went in search of the wizard. It would not take him long to find the Maia. The wizard had come to Rivendell for the express purpose of consulting a tome about the final days of the Last Alliance, and he had visited the library that morning in search of that volume. Having found it, he had borne it away to read in peace, away from wriggling, whispering elflings. Anomen guessed he would have gone to the Hall of Fire, which would be deserted, or very nearly so, at that time of day. Off Anomen scampered to that chamber, heedless of the fact that he was one of the reasons Gandalf had retreated to that room in the first place.

Sure enough, there was Gandalf, ensconced in a comfortable chair by the fire and deeply absorbed in his book. Anomen went to stand by him and peered over his arm. The page the wizard was studying featured a picture of a charred finger encircled by a ring. Anomen shivered a little.

"That is a scary picture, Mithrandir."

"Mmhuh."

"Aren't you bothered by it?"

"Uhuh."

"Is the story so very interesting?"

"Mmhuh."

"That story is about something that happened long ago, isn't it?"

"Mmhuh."

"Are there any dragons in it?"

"Uhuh."

"Trolls?"

Gandalf muttered something in a language Anomen did not understand, and the elfling suddenly found himself suspended in the air—although not by any magical means. The wizard had grasped him by the neck of his tunic, as if the lad were no more substantial than a newborn kitten, and in that fashion carried him to the door of the Hall of Fire, where he deposited him none too gently.

"Anomen," the wizard huffed, "I am engaged in an important quest. Begone and trouble me no more!"

This was of course merely a wizardly way of speaking, but we all know that telling Anomen to 'begone' was a Very Bad Idea because the elfling's preferred mode of dealing with disappointments and vexations was in fact to make himself scarce—very scarce, as in running-away-from-home scarce. Fortunately and unfortunately, however, the elfling was still recovering from his latest episode of making himself scarce. Fortunately, because at the moment he had no particular desire to run away. Unfortunately, because, next to running away, hiding was something the elfling was very good at indeed, and that was what he now set out to do.

The little Elf moped his way to the garden, looking for a likely place to curl up. Ai! It was warm and sunny, and many Elves had repaired to that pleasant place. It would provide no sanctuary that day. Anomen walked on, out the gate and into the forest. He did not mean to go far, of course, and in fact, he didn't, merely wandering until he found a particularly welcoming looking tree. Thus, if this had been an ordinary day, he would have returned to the Hall for the noon meal. This was not, however, to be an ordinary day.

As Anomen rested on a tree limb high above the ground, something was happening in the far-off land of Mordor. Orodruin—Mount Doom—had been sleeping for centuries. Some force, however, was about to summon it back to wakefulness. Once aroused, its power would reverberate throughout Middle-earth and shake the councils of the Wise. But first it would shake Anomen's world.

As the elfling lay upon the tree limb, at the outset all he felt was a gentle vibration within the bough. Then the branch began to sway back and forth. Next it began to jounce up and down as well. As Anomen clung tightly to the branch, all about him trees were groaning and gyrating as the ground beneath them trembled. Orodruin had roared back to life, accompanied by an earthquake so mighty that it shattered buildings and downed trees in all lands, no matter how many leagues distant. From Northern Mirkwood in the east to the Grey Havens in the west, bewildered denizens of Middle-earth frantically clutched at whatever stood handy as the ground beneath their feet, seemingly so solid only minutes before, heaved and cracked.

Desperately Anomen clung to the tree, but it bucked so wildly that at last he slid off his branch and dangled from it, clutching it with his hands and kicking his legs in a futile attempt to climb back on top of the wildly whiplashing limb. At last a particularly violent shake caused him to lose his grip altogether. The tree made a desperate grab for him, but so violently was it being buffeted that it missed its mark, the branches merely brushing Anomen as he plummeted past each grasping bough. Fortunately, when his hurtling body struck the ground, he landed upon a bed of moss that absorbed some of the force of his fall. Still, the blow knocked the lad unconscious, and so he remained for several hours.

When Anomen awoke, he groaned and opened his eyes and then blinked several times to assure himself that his eyes were indeed open. For all about him was darkness. Had he been lying unconscious so long that night had fallen? But, no, he felt the warmth of the sun upon his face, and he heard the singing of birds who would have fallen silent at dusk. He held up a hand before his face. Even on cloudy moonless nights, he had been able to see his hand! Why could he not see it now, when the sun shone!? His eyes had stopped working! In a panic, Anomen staggered to his feet and literally began to run blindly throughout the forest.

In Rivendell, Elladan and Elrohir were still doing lessons in the library with Erestor when the Hall began to shake, and the tutor had seized each of the elflings and pushed them underneath a table and then crawled beneath it himself. All about them books were leaping from shelves, and several bookcases fell over, one of them crashing into the chairs where Elladan and Elrohir had perched only moments earlier. The shaking seemed to go on for several minutes, and when it was over, the tutor and his pupils were quite blocked in by books and furniture. They were, however, unharmed, and Erestor began to push aside books until they were able to squeeze out from under the table. They then discovered that the door was blocked as well, and Erestor decided that they had better climb out the window into the garden. He well knew that one earthquake was very often followed by others which, although they were usually not as strong as the first one, could nonetheless do considerable damage. It would be best to get out of the building as quickly as possible, even if that required the sort of unorthodox behavior that Erestor usually frowned upon. So it was that a worried Elrond, who was holding Arwen tightly by the hand and counting heads in the garden, saw his sons issuing forth from the Hall—two of them, anyway.

"Where is Anomen?" he said anxiously.

"He was not in the library," Erestor replied. "I dismissed him early because he did so well at his lessons."

Gandalf was standing nearby, and he suddenly looked uneasy.

"He was in the Hall of Fire earlier, but I sent him away."

"Sent him away? To where did you send him?"

"Nowhere in particular. Just—away."

Now Gandalf looked more than uneasy—he looked guilty. If he had permitted Anomen to remain with him in the Hall of Fire, he knew that he would have been able to convey the elfling to safely.

"As he is clearly not in the garden," suggested Elrond, "perhaps he went to his chamber. Sometimes he reads there by himself. He thinks I am ignorant of the fact that he filches volumes of fairy-tales from the library, but I know that he does!"

Leaving Arwen in the care of Elladan and Elrohir, Elrond hurried to the chamber Anomen shared with twins. He was accompanied not only by Gandalf and Erestor but also by Glorfindel, who had just now hastened back from the training fields to check on the well-being of the residents of the Hall. When they arrived at the elflings' chamber, at first they could not open the door. At length, with their combined strength, they were able to force the door open enough for Elrond to stick his head through the opening and peer about. What he saw appalled him. They had been unable to open the door because it had been blocked by debris from a collapsed ceiling. Amongst the disorder, a beam had come to rest on top of a pile of broken masonry and stone. Elrond suddenly realized that the rubble rested precisely where Anomen's bed had once stood, and he felt an unaccustomed sickness surge throughout his body. Gandalf seized him as he swayed.

"Elrond, is it Anomen you see!?" the wizard cried out in great fear.

"I do not see him," replied Elrond, and Gandalf looked relieved, but not for long. In a low voice, Elrond explained that Anomen's bed was covered by rubble, and that some of the pieces were very large.

Erestor suddenly shoved Elrond aside and poked his head in.

"Anomen," he shouted. "Anomen!"

There was no answer, and Erestor turned quite pale. With amazing gentleness, Glorfindel moved the tutor aside and began to grimly fish out pieces of rubble that might fit through the narrow opening. One after another, he handed off pieces of brick and wood to the others. At last enough had been removed so that the door could be pushed open just enough for the Elves and the wizard to squeeze into the room. They made straight for the bed and began to remove the rubble. First they lifted and threw aside the beam, and then, their hands bleeding in their heedlessness, they heaved aside stone after stone. The bed had collapsed under the weight of the rubble, and it was only after they had quite removed all the fragments of stone and sorted through the disheveled bed clothes that they realized that Anomen had not in fact been in the bed. Erestor muttered "drat the dust" and rubbed his eyes with his sleeve, and Gandalf, likewise blaming the dust, daubed at his nose. Elrond and Glorfindel, however, looked at each other with concern. Anomen had not run to the garden with the other Elves, and he wasn't in his room. Where then could he be?

As the two elf-lords gazed worriedly at each other, a panicked Anomen, breathless and battered from careening wildly about the woods, tripped over a fallen branch and crashed against a tree trunk. Sobbing, he slid down to the base of the tree and curled up into a ball. He could not use his eyes to see, but he could still weep.