And here are some fic recommendations from yours truly!
'Perfect Balance' and 'By Blood' by ScoobySnack. They're pretty awesome, but I haven't gotten all the way through 'By Blood' yet, so I can't say anything on 'Invisible Scars.'
'Eternal Winter' and 'Broken Arrow' by Aulizia. One-shot insight fics, and yet absolutely wonderful at the same time.
There are about a bazillion others, and I just want to feature two authors per part, so check out my fave. stories list and fave. authors list for more. Hehe, now I'm starting to sound like an advertisement.
Anyway, I'm doing my best to cope with my disk problem; I think I've got it sorted so that it won't happen again anytime soon. I certainly hope so... Thanks for being so patient, at any rate!
^*^
The Dark Star
Part Six
Silent Agony
Two days later
Humming and twirling a lock of dark hair around her finger - hair that had since dried back into its typical straightness - Adariel sat before a fire some distance from the rest, fixing breakfast just before the dawn (which would prove to be a disappointing one, as clouds covered the sky). Gil-luin stood merely two yards from her, munching happily of grass that was just barely green, hardly recovered from the chill of Winter.
Her gelding, she was amused to realize, was acting as a sort of lookout. She saw it in the way his ears flicked about, listening for any sign of foes. She also saw that his eyes would dart up occasionally, searching the landscape; every so often, he would raise his head, look about, look back as if to assure himself that the escort was still there, then would return to his grazing.
"Humming again, I see, my Lady," Nimneldor said cheerily.
"Humming again, I *hear,* you dolt," said Culmîr jokingly. Sûlthalion chuckled while Elfalas snorted as all four men sat down around the fire.
Adariel gave them one of her rare, full smiles - which had, however, only been rare as of late; before, it had been more uncommon to see her with a small smile. "Now children," she admonished jestingly. "If we're to travel together for the next week, we must learn to get along."
They laughed and Elfalas said, "Yes Mother."
She served them their breakfast. "If you wish to seem me resemble a mother," she said sternly, "refuse to eat."
None took her up on the challenge. They began to eat as Adariel sighed, filled another three bowls, and stood awkwardly. "I shall return," she said to them. "No bickering."
"Yes Mother!" they all replied, and she made a face at them, smiling herself. The three brothers had stood somewhat apart from the others for quite some time, speaking to each other of... something. But as she approached two - Rúmil and Orophin - nodded to the third and began to walk toward her.
When she met up with them, she handed each a bowl. "Eat, if you please. The others are over there." She waved vaguely toward the other four and continued toward the Marchwarden. The other two hid smiles - clearly the Rivendell-Elf was on a mission: to make Haldir eat - but didn't say anything as they let her continue, her gelding following behind her.
As soon as she approached him, Adariel prodded Haldir in the shoulder. He turned toward her, raising a questioning (and infuriatingly arrogant) brow at her. She thrust the bowl at him.
"If you would, Marchwarden, eat your food?" she said lightly. "I've yet to have anyone collapse on my watch, and you will *not* be the first." Somewhere inside, she didn't understand her somewhat hostile mood; he hadn't refused to eat, so why was she pushing the subject? She didn't care to dwell on it, if she could help it; she would only come up answerless, at best.
"And when, if I may so bold as to ask, did *you* last eat, my Lady?" he demanded.
Adariel scowled. So she hadn't eaten anything since the lembas at the flet when she'd first arrived in Lórien, what did it matter? She hadn't been hungry since then, and had always been taught not to eat anything if she wasn't hungry. "What does it matter?" she asked evasively, clumsily sidestepping the question.
"You haven't had anything but lembas for over a week?" he demanded. A look of extreme disapproval passed over the marchwarden's face and he thrust the bowl back into her hands.
"I'll get my own," he said, and marched away without another word.
Adariel glared at his retreating back. Glowering at him sourly, she plopped down onto the ground as Gil-luin came up to stand just behind her, his nose nearly on her shoulder.
"Stupid Marchwarden," she said halfheartedly, taking a bite of her breakfast, and Gil-luin snorted in response.
^*^
As they continued later on in the day, a silence veiled the party of eight like the clouds that veiled the sun. If they continued at such a steady pace, they would reach the place where the ambush occurred roughly an hour and a half before sundown, if her estimations were correct. At the thought, her anxieties from before returned.
Would those visions - what had they been called? Hallucinations? - return once she saw her brother? Or perhaps, would she be lost in more pleasant memories? Or, other than those two options, would she simply be forced to endure her grief alone and in full consciousness, unable to turn to those who she typically would for fear of scorn and rejection?
Of course, there was another path that could be taken. Perhaps she would simply collapse with grief, never to awaken.
Adariel tugged the Lórien cloak tighter, not just because of the growing cold, and watched the darkening clouds. 'Snow later on, perhaps?' she thought absently, struggling to move her line of thought as she twirled a lock of hair around her finger. It was a trait she and Arwen shared, and was something she'd done for as long as she could remember.
A nudge on her shoulder alerted her to her gelding's insistent presence, and she reached back and stroked his dark mane. Gil-luin pressed closer to her, and she realized with a jolt that he was nervous. 'This cannot be a good omen,' she thought, suddenly anxious herself. She simply continued walking, a worried frown creasing her brow.
She bit her lip and threw all of her concentration into listening to her surroundings. There was, however, a single missing element: there was nothing to listen for. There was only the slight wind waving through the grasses on her right, on the other side of Gil-luin, and the plod of the gelding's hooves. There was a muttering, and looked up to see Haldir and Sûlthalion speaking to each other gravely. Did they feel it too? She could only hope-
Adariel froze. She thought she heard a wind, but there was one problem.
There was no wind.
Sûlthalion ran ahead as Adariel, instead of continuing with walking, went around to Gil-luin's other side, watching the grasses that were interrupted by the occasional copse of trees. Culmîr looked at her oddly, looked in the direction she was, and he came to his own realization. The Elf of Lórien ran over to his commander as Adariel whirled and hurriedly untied her bow and quiver from Gil-luin.
She put an arrow between her teeth as she checked the string for tightness, as she hadn't unstrung it for days on end, the exact opposite of bow-care. Her brother would have reprimanded her strongly.
Putting the thought from her mind, she stationed herself before her gelding - the quiver strapped strategically to his back - realizing that she couldn't assure him protection by letting him go this time. Because of this, Adariel resolved to protect him instead, and she notched her arrow, glaring at the nearest copse, but not drawing.
Up ahead, where she could not see, there was a furious yell and a growling, then a shriek of pain. Sûlthalion came up over the hill.
"Yrch!" he cried, and instantly there was movement.
Movement toward her included, apparently. Before she had time to protest, there was a circle around her and Gil-luin, blocking any attack that might be made toward her, as well as effectively blocking any attack she herself could make. There was a growl from the tree line, and at least a score of orcs launched themselves at the Elven party.
Irritated at being thwarted and knowing that she would never win a verbal battle with the marchwarden *and* his sentinels, she turned, mounted Gil-luin as the Elves launched their arrows at one, and launched an arrow of her own once she was above the others. Realizing with horror that the orcs would surround them because *they* were surrounding *her,* she quickly nudged her gelding, who knew exactly what to do.
Adariel clung to him as Gil-luin reared, screaming, effectively scattering both orcs and Elves. The gelding burst through the strewn line as his rider notched an arrow and let fly. She bit her lip as the movement pulled at her wounded right shoulder. She put it from her mind as there was a yell behind her that she ignored as Gil-luin wheeled and she shot another orc.
Haldir yanked out his blade, and both Elfalas and Nimneldor did the same. Without warning, as Adariel was jerking an arrow from her quiver and aligning the arrow, Gil-luin reared. Squeezing her horse's ribs with her knees she fired, hitting two orcs with the one arrow. The gelding lowered himself back to four feet, and Adariel found that the orcs were all dead.
Dead, yes, but accounting for several wounds on various men. Adariel herself was unscathed, save the old wound on her shoulder that had been reopened, but that was self-inflicted. Several of the men, however, had orc induced wounds, and orc wounds were typically poisoned.
She dismounted and patted her horses sweat-streaked side. Wrinkling her nose in distaste she wiped her hand on her skirt as she turned toward the men to find Haldir looking furious.
He thrust his sword into the ground and took a couple steps toward her. "What, pray, was that?" he snarled.
Her temper flared. "What was what?" she demanded, anger clouding violet-blue eyes.
"We were assigned to protect you, not to let you get yourself killed!"
"Had I wanted, let alone deserved, this protection, I would have informed you!"
"Then why did you say nothing in Lothlórien?"
"Have *you* ever felt the need to argue with the Lady of Light?!"
"You could have, at the very least, let us perform our duties!"
There was something else behind the anger in his eyes, but Adariel couldn't see what it was. Concern, perhaps? She didn't know, and was too angry to care.
Unable to think of a proper response, save hitting him (which would have ended up in nothing but injuries for her as he was clearly *very* strong), she whirled, grabbed her sheathed dagger from Gil-luin's back, then began to march toward the copse.
"Where, exactly, do you think you're going?" he snarled.
She didn't even grace Haldir with a glance back at him. "This way," she snapped.
No one, thankfully, came after her as she marched furiously away from the men. 'Presumptuous, overbearing, stupid Marchwarden!' she thought furiously. 'Can you not see that I am very much, unfortunately, alive and well? What gives you the right to tell me what to do and what not to do? Nothing!'
In her fury, she almost didn't hear the harsh, blood-choked, disgustingly gurgled cry of surprise from her left as she passed. Instinctively she whirled and took a step back, wincing as she pulled at her, newly reopened, shoulder wound. Realizing it was an orc and already outraged, she ripped her dagger its sheath.
"You!" a half-dead thing choked out. "How did you escape?"
She blinked, her fury half-forgotten. "Escape?" she repeated, confused.
"We caught you nearly a week ago, slave! When we ambushed you and your stupid companions!"
Shock forced her back a step, and she had to remind herself to breathe. "T- two companions?" she finally stuttered. "A man and a woman?"
"Yes, you stupid-"
It broke off with a dying hack, coughing up black blood as Adariel stumbled back, numb. A hand was laid on her shoulder. "Lady Adariel?" Rúmil asked, sounding rather concerned.
"There is only one person in the world," she told them shakily, staring wide-eyed at the ground, "that I could possibly be confused with by an orc." Her eyes moved up to look at them, her anger long since forgotten and replaced by stunned numbness. "That person would be my twin; Aradalien."
Stunned silence greeted the revelation, and Adariel, wanting nothing more than to dissolve into tears, realized that she couldn't remember how to breathe. Aradalien was alive? How could she be? Was this orc even telling the truth? Perhaps it was confusing her with someone else? *Was* her sister still alive? It seemed doubtful, but she could not forbear the feeble, guttering light of hope that suddenly lit within her. Who knew that a cruel, filthy, scum-of-the-earth orc would give her a shred of hope?
Her hope was given to her by an orc. What did that say of her?
"Adariel?"
Her eyes, which had unconsciously moved back to the ground, moved back up to Rúmil. Violet-blue orbs moved from him to his brothers, save Haldir, whose eyes she avoided, to the others, and she was reminded that not all of the blood on them was orc blood.
She shook her head to clear her thoughts, struggling with the need to wail in silent agony. "Someone please get my healing bag, and another start a small fire and fill one of the pans with water. As for the rest of you, bring your wounds to me."
Soon Adariel was sitting on her knees near the fire Elfalas had built with her hair tied away from her face. She bent over Sûlthalion's forearm, which bore a deep gash from wrist to elbow from when he'd gone ahead just before the skirmish.
She focused on her task dutifully, struggling with her mind to not let thoughts of her sister in. Sûlthalion didn't say anything, but a feeling of support seemed to radiate from him, and when she was completely through tending to him, he gripped her shoulder comfortingly before sending another over. It was the same way with all of them, up to and including Haldir's brothers, until all she had left to tend to was the marchwarden himself, who stood thirty yards away, leaning on a rock and looking toward the north, as impassive as ever.
Adariel sighed, watching him. It wasn't that she didn't want to heal him; quite the opposite, in fact. But... after her behavior earlier, and what she felt like doing now... It wasn't embarrassing, necessarily, just... shameful, if it was the right word. Or perhaps it *was* embarrassing. She didn't know why she didn't want to approach him. Perhaps it was because she felt emotionally weak, and she didn't want the Marchwarden of Lothlórien to see her weak.
But in the end, her tug of healer-responsibility won out, and before she knew it she held a warm, wet cloth, bandages, and a couple of different salves and was walking toward him. She stopped when she still had five yards to go, and he looked at her.
"I should tend to that," she said, pointing to the cut on his upper right arm. Just above his left brow was a small cut, but other than those two he seemed all in one piece.
He shrugged, turning his eyes back north as if he didn't have the least bit of regard for her healings. She stubbornly took this as consent and approached, crawled up on the rock and sat on it, then grabbed his arm.
With a small blade she cut the stitching from where the sleeve met the shoulder and rolled down the sleeve to his elbow. She wiped the wound, which was short but deep, clean with her cloth, her nose inches from the wound - she always leaned much closer than required, so she wouldn't miss anything.
"I wanted - want - to apologize," she said abruptly. "For my behavior earlier. It was... unbecoming." 'I could say something else not as nice about it,' she thought bitterly.
She glanced up to see Haldir looking down at her, one brow raised skeptically.
"Well, it was!" she said.
"And what of my own behavior?" he asked neutrally.
She paused, then continued her administrations. "Called for. I was unreasonable, and I attempted to deny you your responsibility. It was of the utmost irrationality on my part."
"Denying me responsibility was irrational?"
She looked up, surprised. "I've had times when it was my responsibility alone that kept me going." 'I will not mention that this is one of those times, since it is in no way your fault and because you don't need, nor, more than likely, do you *want* to hear my depressing tale.'
Adariel looked back down as Haldir shook his head. "I shouldn't have yelled, anyway."
She didn't reply, and he didn't continue. The silence was as decipherable as ever; completely *un*decipherable. It was more comfortable, though, and something in her almost smiled at that. She quickly and effectively squashed that something.
She sprinkled an orc-poison antidote, just to be safe, then spread a thin layer of her minty-smelling salve, then bandaged the cut. She looked up. "Orophin!"
"Yes?"
"Get me the needle and thread that's in my pack, if you would," she called. Within a moment he held up a smaller, cloth bag.
"Is it in this?"
"Yes, just bring the whole thing here."
He walked over to them, and she took the bag from the young sentinel. "Thank you."
He grinned. "You're quite welcome, my Lady."
She rolled her eyes and set to pulling out a needle and length of black thread. Once it was threaded she put the needle between her teeth and rolled up the sleeve, then set to work re-sewing it.
After a few more moments of the baffling silence, Haldir asked softly, "Do you think that your sister may yet be alive?"
She glanced up from her stitching, tied off the string, then bit the thread (feeling distinctly idiotic doing this so near the Marchwarden of Lórien's shoulder) and put the things away. She paused.
"I know not," she replied, her voice softer than his. "I don't know what to think."
Adariel shook her head, grabbed the cloth and a salve and crawled around behind him to better reach the scratch above his left brow. She leaned forward, inches from him, and gently cleaned it, doing her best to keep from causing the nasty sting that typically came from these wounds.
"You seem to have contracted one of those vicious cuts that sting incessantly," she murmured absently. She put a bit of the salve on her right index finger and smoothed a very thin layer over the scratch. "As a healer, they are the worst, save mortal injuries. The patient makes more of a fuss over them than they do the multiples of other impairments that they could possibly contrive. They're attracted to children and warriors as wolves are drawn to prey, if that is an appropriate comparison."
She sat back a few more inches to examine her handiwork with a critical eye, but was surprised to meet the icy blue eyes of Haldir instead.
"I take it you've seen them often?"
She swallowed, feeling the inklings of nervousness. "I have." 'Nervous for no apparent reason, Adariel?' an inner voice asked scathingly. 'Stop! No wonder you couldn't stand up to Dimalphion!'
Adariel looked down, realizing that the voice was right. A hand entered her field of vision. Instinctively she took it, and Haldir helped her as she delicately removed herself from the rock. She released his hand and turned to gather her things, struggling with a blend of self-disgust, grief, and hope.
Confused - not knowing what to think - she turned around to find that Haldir had waited for her. This only served to confuse her more; hadn't she been little more than an inconvenience to him from the start?
At that moment, as they were walking back to the rest, she realized that she had done the exact same thing that Avarlammeniel or Nimrómen or Aradalien would have done: she had judged Haldir by his displayed behavior instead of trusting her instinct.
Her instinct had never failed her, though she had ignored it before. And this, being one of those times, had only been the second. She could tell, almost immediately, if she could trust a person, or if they were good hearted, among other things. Adariel had always swore that entire personalities could be seen within the first five minutes of meeting. One's eyes could tell the world everything it wanted to know about one if one wasn't guarded. It wasn't something that her mother, father, or twin had, but her brother was passable. Lord Elrond could do the same, but the trait had not passed to his sons, nor to his daughter.
Forcing Haldir's behavior, instinct, Elrond, and everyone and thing else from her mind, she went to Gil-luin and packed her things and slung them back over the gelding's back. Before she put the salve in her pack, however, she put a bit on the tips of her fingers on her left hand and smoothed it over her shoulder wound, then put the salve away.
Suddenly, for no specific reason whatsoever, she thought of her niece and of the girl's mother. Adariel herself was in horrible shape over her brother's death, which meant that Noviel would be hit with the same pain three-fold. But El... El wouldn't be effected nearly so much, simply because she'd never been given the chance to know her father.
Fighting a nearly overpowering sense to sob into Gil-luin's side, Adariel mounted and raised her hood to hide her face. Without words the small party continued on its journey as snow began to fall.
^*^
The clouds overhead were a cheerless steel gray when they reached the place where she and her siblings had been attacked. The area wasn't really that large, surrounded by the base of the mountain from the west, and smallish rocky hills from the other sides. At the northeast edge was the small group of tall rocks, and but a few yards away stood the lone dead tree, and at its feet, the body of Nurardaion.
Adariel dismounted and walked toward the tree, leaving Gil-luin at the top of the east hill. The eyes of her companions were on her as they followed, but she didn't realize it.
Snow drifted in large flakes around her as she knelt near the body. She reached out to gently brush the snow away, but paused, hesitating, then lightly pushed it away. The cloak covering him was the same russet red as the bow and quiver tied to Gil-luin, and was to Rivendell as the gray-green cloaks were to Lórien. Her hand was trembling, though she didn't notice, as she pulled away the Imladris cloak.
Nurardaion's icy blue eyes, clouded by death, stared blankly at the gray sky above. His face was so uncharacteristically somber that it tore at her heart violently, ripping up what was left of it and then torching it until it was broken beyond repair. She reached out and closed her brother's eyes, then let her hand gently caress his brow. Adariel closed her nearly overflowing eyes, the movement causing a tear to fall down on ivory cheek.
She pulled her hand away and stood, looking down at her brother's dead form, until she could no longer bear the pain. She turned away and walked toward the group of tall stone, and solitude.
The young man that the Lady Adariel revealed to them when she pulled back the Rivendell cloak looked nothing like her. His eyes were icy, not the deep violet-tinted-blue that she bore, and instead of dark locks, his hair was pale blond. His appearance made it clear that he was of Lórien decent, despite the lack thereof in his sister.
She knelt beside him for some time, and it seemed to Haldir that intense grief seemed to radiate from her. But the grief, though understandable to a point, was far more than what should be borne by anyone, let alone Adariel Morelen. It was enough to make even the hard-hearted Marchwarden of the North and West feel concern: That much anguish, felt by a single person, for any period of time, would end in only one way. Death.
The Lady stood, and after a moment left their presence. Perhaps it was concern, perhaps it was lack of trust in Adariel to take care of herself in her current state (as in, maybe he feared suicide on her part), or perhaps it was simply duty, but Haldir turned to meet the eyes of his older brother, and nodded to him just enough to be seen by even Elven eyes.
Rúmil, who seemed to know what was being requested of him, nodded only once and followed the Morelen. Orophin, however, who seemed to have suddenly matured greatly from his typical constantly-joking self, knelt beside the body in Adariel's stead, a thoughtful frown creasing his brow.
"Haldir, look at this," he murmured.
The marchwarden knelt, and saw what his brother wanted him to see: the end of an arrow, the feathers rather mangled, was half protruding from under the body. He frowned.
"Help me turn him over," he said.
Orophin nodded and gently levered the deceased, allowing Haldir to see what he wanted to see, and to pick up the arrow - half arrow - then jerk something out of the Rivendell-Elf's back, feeling somewhat disrespectful toward Nurardaion for doing so. Orophin lowered Nurardaion of Imladris back down and recovered him with the cloak as Haldir examined the things he'd retrieved.
Apparently, they *were* arrows; the same one, in fact, simply broken in half, or so it seemed. The rather frightening thing was, they were arrow of Imladris, not orc arrows.
^*^
Well? And don't forget to check out my recommendations!
'Perfect Balance' and 'By Blood' by ScoobySnack. They're pretty awesome, but I haven't gotten all the way through 'By Blood' yet, so I can't say anything on 'Invisible Scars.'
'Eternal Winter' and 'Broken Arrow' by Aulizia. One-shot insight fics, and yet absolutely wonderful at the same time.
There are about a bazillion others, and I just want to feature two authors per part, so check out my fave. stories list and fave. authors list for more. Hehe, now I'm starting to sound like an advertisement.
Anyway, I'm doing my best to cope with my disk problem; I think I've got it sorted so that it won't happen again anytime soon. I certainly hope so... Thanks for being so patient, at any rate!
^*^
The Dark Star
Part Six
Silent Agony
Two days later
Humming and twirling a lock of dark hair around her finger - hair that had since dried back into its typical straightness - Adariel sat before a fire some distance from the rest, fixing breakfast just before the dawn (which would prove to be a disappointing one, as clouds covered the sky). Gil-luin stood merely two yards from her, munching happily of grass that was just barely green, hardly recovered from the chill of Winter.
Her gelding, she was amused to realize, was acting as a sort of lookout. She saw it in the way his ears flicked about, listening for any sign of foes. She also saw that his eyes would dart up occasionally, searching the landscape; every so often, he would raise his head, look about, look back as if to assure himself that the escort was still there, then would return to his grazing.
"Humming again, I see, my Lady," Nimneldor said cheerily.
"Humming again, I *hear,* you dolt," said Culmîr jokingly. Sûlthalion chuckled while Elfalas snorted as all four men sat down around the fire.
Adariel gave them one of her rare, full smiles - which had, however, only been rare as of late; before, it had been more uncommon to see her with a small smile. "Now children," she admonished jestingly. "If we're to travel together for the next week, we must learn to get along."
They laughed and Elfalas said, "Yes Mother."
She served them their breakfast. "If you wish to seem me resemble a mother," she said sternly, "refuse to eat."
None took her up on the challenge. They began to eat as Adariel sighed, filled another three bowls, and stood awkwardly. "I shall return," she said to them. "No bickering."
"Yes Mother!" they all replied, and she made a face at them, smiling herself. The three brothers had stood somewhat apart from the others for quite some time, speaking to each other of... something. But as she approached two - Rúmil and Orophin - nodded to the third and began to walk toward her.
When she met up with them, she handed each a bowl. "Eat, if you please. The others are over there." She waved vaguely toward the other four and continued toward the Marchwarden. The other two hid smiles - clearly the Rivendell-Elf was on a mission: to make Haldir eat - but didn't say anything as they let her continue, her gelding following behind her.
As soon as she approached him, Adariel prodded Haldir in the shoulder. He turned toward her, raising a questioning (and infuriatingly arrogant) brow at her. She thrust the bowl at him.
"If you would, Marchwarden, eat your food?" she said lightly. "I've yet to have anyone collapse on my watch, and you will *not* be the first." Somewhere inside, she didn't understand her somewhat hostile mood; he hadn't refused to eat, so why was she pushing the subject? She didn't care to dwell on it, if she could help it; she would only come up answerless, at best.
"And when, if I may so bold as to ask, did *you* last eat, my Lady?" he demanded.
Adariel scowled. So she hadn't eaten anything since the lembas at the flet when she'd first arrived in Lórien, what did it matter? She hadn't been hungry since then, and had always been taught not to eat anything if she wasn't hungry. "What does it matter?" she asked evasively, clumsily sidestepping the question.
"You haven't had anything but lembas for over a week?" he demanded. A look of extreme disapproval passed over the marchwarden's face and he thrust the bowl back into her hands.
"I'll get my own," he said, and marched away without another word.
Adariel glared at his retreating back. Glowering at him sourly, she plopped down onto the ground as Gil-luin came up to stand just behind her, his nose nearly on her shoulder.
"Stupid Marchwarden," she said halfheartedly, taking a bite of her breakfast, and Gil-luin snorted in response.
^*^
As they continued later on in the day, a silence veiled the party of eight like the clouds that veiled the sun. If they continued at such a steady pace, they would reach the place where the ambush occurred roughly an hour and a half before sundown, if her estimations were correct. At the thought, her anxieties from before returned.
Would those visions - what had they been called? Hallucinations? - return once she saw her brother? Or perhaps, would she be lost in more pleasant memories? Or, other than those two options, would she simply be forced to endure her grief alone and in full consciousness, unable to turn to those who she typically would for fear of scorn and rejection?
Of course, there was another path that could be taken. Perhaps she would simply collapse with grief, never to awaken.
Adariel tugged the Lórien cloak tighter, not just because of the growing cold, and watched the darkening clouds. 'Snow later on, perhaps?' she thought absently, struggling to move her line of thought as she twirled a lock of hair around her finger. It was a trait she and Arwen shared, and was something she'd done for as long as she could remember.
A nudge on her shoulder alerted her to her gelding's insistent presence, and she reached back and stroked his dark mane. Gil-luin pressed closer to her, and she realized with a jolt that he was nervous. 'This cannot be a good omen,' she thought, suddenly anxious herself. She simply continued walking, a worried frown creasing her brow.
She bit her lip and threw all of her concentration into listening to her surroundings. There was, however, a single missing element: there was nothing to listen for. There was only the slight wind waving through the grasses on her right, on the other side of Gil-luin, and the plod of the gelding's hooves. There was a muttering, and looked up to see Haldir and Sûlthalion speaking to each other gravely. Did they feel it too? She could only hope-
Adariel froze. She thought she heard a wind, but there was one problem.
There was no wind.
Sûlthalion ran ahead as Adariel, instead of continuing with walking, went around to Gil-luin's other side, watching the grasses that were interrupted by the occasional copse of trees. Culmîr looked at her oddly, looked in the direction she was, and he came to his own realization. The Elf of Lórien ran over to his commander as Adariel whirled and hurriedly untied her bow and quiver from Gil-luin.
She put an arrow between her teeth as she checked the string for tightness, as she hadn't unstrung it for days on end, the exact opposite of bow-care. Her brother would have reprimanded her strongly.
Putting the thought from her mind, she stationed herself before her gelding - the quiver strapped strategically to his back - realizing that she couldn't assure him protection by letting him go this time. Because of this, Adariel resolved to protect him instead, and she notched her arrow, glaring at the nearest copse, but not drawing.
Up ahead, where she could not see, there was a furious yell and a growling, then a shriek of pain. Sûlthalion came up over the hill.
"Yrch!" he cried, and instantly there was movement.
Movement toward her included, apparently. Before she had time to protest, there was a circle around her and Gil-luin, blocking any attack that might be made toward her, as well as effectively blocking any attack she herself could make. There was a growl from the tree line, and at least a score of orcs launched themselves at the Elven party.
Irritated at being thwarted and knowing that she would never win a verbal battle with the marchwarden *and* his sentinels, she turned, mounted Gil-luin as the Elves launched their arrows at one, and launched an arrow of her own once she was above the others. Realizing with horror that the orcs would surround them because *they* were surrounding *her,* she quickly nudged her gelding, who knew exactly what to do.
Adariel clung to him as Gil-luin reared, screaming, effectively scattering both orcs and Elves. The gelding burst through the strewn line as his rider notched an arrow and let fly. She bit her lip as the movement pulled at her wounded right shoulder. She put it from her mind as there was a yell behind her that she ignored as Gil-luin wheeled and she shot another orc.
Haldir yanked out his blade, and both Elfalas and Nimneldor did the same. Without warning, as Adariel was jerking an arrow from her quiver and aligning the arrow, Gil-luin reared. Squeezing her horse's ribs with her knees she fired, hitting two orcs with the one arrow. The gelding lowered himself back to four feet, and Adariel found that the orcs were all dead.
Dead, yes, but accounting for several wounds on various men. Adariel herself was unscathed, save the old wound on her shoulder that had been reopened, but that was self-inflicted. Several of the men, however, had orc induced wounds, and orc wounds were typically poisoned.
She dismounted and patted her horses sweat-streaked side. Wrinkling her nose in distaste she wiped her hand on her skirt as she turned toward the men to find Haldir looking furious.
He thrust his sword into the ground and took a couple steps toward her. "What, pray, was that?" he snarled.
Her temper flared. "What was what?" she demanded, anger clouding violet-blue eyes.
"We were assigned to protect you, not to let you get yourself killed!"
"Had I wanted, let alone deserved, this protection, I would have informed you!"
"Then why did you say nothing in Lothlórien?"
"Have *you* ever felt the need to argue with the Lady of Light?!"
"You could have, at the very least, let us perform our duties!"
There was something else behind the anger in his eyes, but Adariel couldn't see what it was. Concern, perhaps? She didn't know, and was too angry to care.
Unable to think of a proper response, save hitting him (which would have ended up in nothing but injuries for her as he was clearly *very* strong), she whirled, grabbed her sheathed dagger from Gil-luin's back, then began to march toward the copse.
"Where, exactly, do you think you're going?" he snarled.
She didn't even grace Haldir with a glance back at him. "This way," she snapped.
No one, thankfully, came after her as she marched furiously away from the men. 'Presumptuous, overbearing, stupid Marchwarden!' she thought furiously. 'Can you not see that I am very much, unfortunately, alive and well? What gives you the right to tell me what to do and what not to do? Nothing!'
In her fury, she almost didn't hear the harsh, blood-choked, disgustingly gurgled cry of surprise from her left as she passed. Instinctively she whirled and took a step back, wincing as she pulled at her, newly reopened, shoulder wound. Realizing it was an orc and already outraged, she ripped her dagger its sheath.
"You!" a half-dead thing choked out. "How did you escape?"
She blinked, her fury half-forgotten. "Escape?" she repeated, confused.
"We caught you nearly a week ago, slave! When we ambushed you and your stupid companions!"
Shock forced her back a step, and she had to remind herself to breathe. "T- two companions?" she finally stuttered. "A man and a woman?"
"Yes, you stupid-"
It broke off with a dying hack, coughing up black blood as Adariel stumbled back, numb. A hand was laid on her shoulder. "Lady Adariel?" Rúmil asked, sounding rather concerned.
"There is only one person in the world," she told them shakily, staring wide-eyed at the ground, "that I could possibly be confused with by an orc." Her eyes moved up to look at them, her anger long since forgotten and replaced by stunned numbness. "That person would be my twin; Aradalien."
Stunned silence greeted the revelation, and Adariel, wanting nothing more than to dissolve into tears, realized that she couldn't remember how to breathe. Aradalien was alive? How could she be? Was this orc even telling the truth? Perhaps it was confusing her with someone else? *Was* her sister still alive? It seemed doubtful, but she could not forbear the feeble, guttering light of hope that suddenly lit within her. Who knew that a cruel, filthy, scum-of-the-earth orc would give her a shred of hope?
Her hope was given to her by an orc. What did that say of her?
"Adariel?"
Her eyes, which had unconsciously moved back to the ground, moved back up to Rúmil. Violet-blue orbs moved from him to his brothers, save Haldir, whose eyes she avoided, to the others, and she was reminded that not all of the blood on them was orc blood.
She shook her head to clear her thoughts, struggling with the need to wail in silent agony. "Someone please get my healing bag, and another start a small fire and fill one of the pans with water. As for the rest of you, bring your wounds to me."
Soon Adariel was sitting on her knees near the fire Elfalas had built with her hair tied away from her face. She bent over Sûlthalion's forearm, which bore a deep gash from wrist to elbow from when he'd gone ahead just before the skirmish.
She focused on her task dutifully, struggling with her mind to not let thoughts of her sister in. Sûlthalion didn't say anything, but a feeling of support seemed to radiate from him, and when she was completely through tending to him, he gripped her shoulder comfortingly before sending another over. It was the same way with all of them, up to and including Haldir's brothers, until all she had left to tend to was the marchwarden himself, who stood thirty yards away, leaning on a rock and looking toward the north, as impassive as ever.
Adariel sighed, watching him. It wasn't that she didn't want to heal him; quite the opposite, in fact. But... after her behavior earlier, and what she felt like doing now... It wasn't embarrassing, necessarily, just... shameful, if it was the right word. Or perhaps it *was* embarrassing. She didn't know why she didn't want to approach him. Perhaps it was because she felt emotionally weak, and she didn't want the Marchwarden of Lothlórien to see her weak.
But in the end, her tug of healer-responsibility won out, and before she knew it she held a warm, wet cloth, bandages, and a couple of different salves and was walking toward him. She stopped when she still had five yards to go, and he looked at her.
"I should tend to that," she said, pointing to the cut on his upper right arm. Just above his left brow was a small cut, but other than those two he seemed all in one piece.
He shrugged, turning his eyes back north as if he didn't have the least bit of regard for her healings. She stubbornly took this as consent and approached, crawled up on the rock and sat on it, then grabbed his arm.
With a small blade she cut the stitching from where the sleeve met the shoulder and rolled down the sleeve to his elbow. She wiped the wound, which was short but deep, clean with her cloth, her nose inches from the wound - she always leaned much closer than required, so she wouldn't miss anything.
"I wanted - want - to apologize," she said abruptly. "For my behavior earlier. It was... unbecoming." 'I could say something else not as nice about it,' she thought bitterly.
She glanced up to see Haldir looking down at her, one brow raised skeptically.
"Well, it was!" she said.
"And what of my own behavior?" he asked neutrally.
She paused, then continued her administrations. "Called for. I was unreasonable, and I attempted to deny you your responsibility. It was of the utmost irrationality on my part."
"Denying me responsibility was irrational?"
She looked up, surprised. "I've had times when it was my responsibility alone that kept me going." 'I will not mention that this is one of those times, since it is in no way your fault and because you don't need, nor, more than likely, do you *want* to hear my depressing tale.'
Adariel looked back down as Haldir shook his head. "I shouldn't have yelled, anyway."
She didn't reply, and he didn't continue. The silence was as decipherable as ever; completely *un*decipherable. It was more comfortable, though, and something in her almost smiled at that. She quickly and effectively squashed that something.
She sprinkled an orc-poison antidote, just to be safe, then spread a thin layer of her minty-smelling salve, then bandaged the cut. She looked up. "Orophin!"
"Yes?"
"Get me the needle and thread that's in my pack, if you would," she called. Within a moment he held up a smaller, cloth bag.
"Is it in this?"
"Yes, just bring the whole thing here."
He walked over to them, and she took the bag from the young sentinel. "Thank you."
He grinned. "You're quite welcome, my Lady."
She rolled her eyes and set to pulling out a needle and length of black thread. Once it was threaded she put the needle between her teeth and rolled up the sleeve, then set to work re-sewing it.
After a few more moments of the baffling silence, Haldir asked softly, "Do you think that your sister may yet be alive?"
She glanced up from her stitching, tied off the string, then bit the thread (feeling distinctly idiotic doing this so near the Marchwarden of Lórien's shoulder) and put the things away. She paused.
"I know not," she replied, her voice softer than his. "I don't know what to think."
Adariel shook her head, grabbed the cloth and a salve and crawled around behind him to better reach the scratch above his left brow. She leaned forward, inches from him, and gently cleaned it, doing her best to keep from causing the nasty sting that typically came from these wounds.
"You seem to have contracted one of those vicious cuts that sting incessantly," she murmured absently. She put a bit of the salve on her right index finger and smoothed a very thin layer over the scratch. "As a healer, they are the worst, save mortal injuries. The patient makes more of a fuss over them than they do the multiples of other impairments that they could possibly contrive. They're attracted to children and warriors as wolves are drawn to prey, if that is an appropriate comparison."
She sat back a few more inches to examine her handiwork with a critical eye, but was surprised to meet the icy blue eyes of Haldir instead.
"I take it you've seen them often?"
She swallowed, feeling the inklings of nervousness. "I have." 'Nervous for no apparent reason, Adariel?' an inner voice asked scathingly. 'Stop! No wonder you couldn't stand up to Dimalphion!'
Adariel looked down, realizing that the voice was right. A hand entered her field of vision. Instinctively she took it, and Haldir helped her as she delicately removed herself from the rock. She released his hand and turned to gather her things, struggling with a blend of self-disgust, grief, and hope.
Confused - not knowing what to think - she turned around to find that Haldir had waited for her. This only served to confuse her more; hadn't she been little more than an inconvenience to him from the start?
At that moment, as they were walking back to the rest, she realized that she had done the exact same thing that Avarlammeniel or Nimrómen or Aradalien would have done: she had judged Haldir by his displayed behavior instead of trusting her instinct.
Her instinct had never failed her, though she had ignored it before. And this, being one of those times, had only been the second. She could tell, almost immediately, if she could trust a person, or if they were good hearted, among other things. Adariel had always swore that entire personalities could be seen within the first five minutes of meeting. One's eyes could tell the world everything it wanted to know about one if one wasn't guarded. It wasn't something that her mother, father, or twin had, but her brother was passable. Lord Elrond could do the same, but the trait had not passed to his sons, nor to his daughter.
Forcing Haldir's behavior, instinct, Elrond, and everyone and thing else from her mind, she went to Gil-luin and packed her things and slung them back over the gelding's back. Before she put the salve in her pack, however, she put a bit on the tips of her fingers on her left hand and smoothed it over her shoulder wound, then put the salve away.
Suddenly, for no specific reason whatsoever, she thought of her niece and of the girl's mother. Adariel herself was in horrible shape over her brother's death, which meant that Noviel would be hit with the same pain three-fold. But El... El wouldn't be effected nearly so much, simply because she'd never been given the chance to know her father.
Fighting a nearly overpowering sense to sob into Gil-luin's side, Adariel mounted and raised her hood to hide her face. Without words the small party continued on its journey as snow began to fall.
^*^
The clouds overhead were a cheerless steel gray when they reached the place where she and her siblings had been attacked. The area wasn't really that large, surrounded by the base of the mountain from the west, and smallish rocky hills from the other sides. At the northeast edge was the small group of tall rocks, and but a few yards away stood the lone dead tree, and at its feet, the body of Nurardaion.
Adariel dismounted and walked toward the tree, leaving Gil-luin at the top of the east hill. The eyes of her companions were on her as they followed, but she didn't realize it.
Snow drifted in large flakes around her as she knelt near the body. She reached out to gently brush the snow away, but paused, hesitating, then lightly pushed it away. The cloak covering him was the same russet red as the bow and quiver tied to Gil-luin, and was to Rivendell as the gray-green cloaks were to Lórien. Her hand was trembling, though she didn't notice, as she pulled away the Imladris cloak.
Nurardaion's icy blue eyes, clouded by death, stared blankly at the gray sky above. His face was so uncharacteristically somber that it tore at her heart violently, ripping up what was left of it and then torching it until it was broken beyond repair. She reached out and closed her brother's eyes, then let her hand gently caress his brow. Adariel closed her nearly overflowing eyes, the movement causing a tear to fall down on ivory cheek.
She pulled her hand away and stood, looking down at her brother's dead form, until she could no longer bear the pain. She turned away and walked toward the group of tall stone, and solitude.
The young man that the Lady Adariel revealed to them when she pulled back the Rivendell cloak looked nothing like her. His eyes were icy, not the deep violet-tinted-blue that she bore, and instead of dark locks, his hair was pale blond. His appearance made it clear that he was of Lórien decent, despite the lack thereof in his sister.
She knelt beside him for some time, and it seemed to Haldir that intense grief seemed to radiate from her. But the grief, though understandable to a point, was far more than what should be borne by anyone, let alone Adariel Morelen. It was enough to make even the hard-hearted Marchwarden of the North and West feel concern: That much anguish, felt by a single person, for any period of time, would end in only one way. Death.
The Lady stood, and after a moment left their presence. Perhaps it was concern, perhaps it was lack of trust in Adariel to take care of herself in her current state (as in, maybe he feared suicide on her part), or perhaps it was simply duty, but Haldir turned to meet the eyes of his older brother, and nodded to him just enough to be seen by even Elven eyes.
Rúmil, who seemed to know what was being requested of him, nodded only once and followed the Morelen. Orophin, however, who seemed to have suddenly matured greatly from his typical constantly-joking self, knelt beside the body in Adariel's stead, a thoughtful frown creasing his brow.
"Haldir, look at this," he murmured.
The marchwarden knelt, and saw what his brother wanted him to see: the end of an arrow, the feathers rather mangled, was half protruding from under the body. He frowned.
"Help me turn him over," he said.
Orophin nodded and gently levered the deceased, allowing Haldir to see what he wanted to see, and to pick up the arrow - half arrow - then jerk something out of the Rivendell-Elf's back, feeling somewhat disrespectful toward Nurardaion for doing so. Orophin lowered Nurardaion of Imladris back down and recovered him with the cloak as Haldir examined the things he'd retrieved.
Apparently, they *were* arrows; the same one, in fact, simply broken in half, or so it seemed. The rather frightening thing was, they were arrow of Imladris, not orc arrows.
^*^
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