Disclaimer: I own my cat. She's nuzzling into the keyboard and prevents me from typing. I don't own "Lord of the Rings". It's nuzzling into my imagination and prevents me from sleeping.
Author's note: Before criticizing me too harshly look into the Author's note referring to the Prologue once more. May be there's something to discharge me. Thanks everyone who reviewed. You make my day. :o)
HyperSquishy: Well, if that's depressing I wonder what you might say about the continuation. :o))
Ara Goddess of the Broken: It's OK, I'm not touchy. Almost. :o) You are actually right, it was the middle of the story about the girl that falls … etc. You all know the beginning – so why should I encumber myself, as for the end – this girl was not so lucky. :o) Read on, there will be explanations.
Name1: I hope I'll manage to keep it that way. :o))) Thank you for encouraging me.
x-jacqui-x: How could you doubt in it? (shaking my head) :o))) As for the arms … well, he will… yet I'm uncertain about the point of consolation.
Waving my hand to Zelinia and sending a huge smile to Faerlas!
And here is the epigraph that is meant for the whole story. I committed a crime and translated it from Russian, but for those who understand my language I also give the original.
If you are death, tell me why you are crying, my lass?
If you are joy, I believe in no joys such as you…
A. Akhmatova
Если ты смерть, отчего же ты плачешь сама?
Если ты радость, то радость такой не бывает…
Анна Ахматова.
Chapter 1.
And the dead will rise.
October was calmly living the rest of its days, smiling at the blessed marches of Rivendell. The radiating boat of the Sun was gliding along the sky depth. Life was going on, though almost every living being had left this land.
But he was there, a flower in his hand, like he had been there each October for many a year before.
Touching the banisters of the bridge there where her palms touched it that day.
Listening to the purl of the waterfall like she did it then.
And each year he kissed the brought flower and put in on the ground where her blood was shed.
A hundred of flowers. A hundred of poor apologies.
She appeared in Rivendell from nowhere. The words "another world" were an empty sound for him. So, she appeared from nowhere with the ridiculous announcement, that all he had known before was just a fairy-tale story from a fairy-tale book. Moreover, that the end of this story was not a mystery for her. She wanted to part with the Fellowship, she said. She was to help, she said. And she doomed herself as she said that. She was too persuasive.
The wisest decided that there was no place for her in the fate of the Middle Earth. That she was dangerous. Her single interference seemed to them more fatal than all the obstacles put by Sauron and his stooges.
The wisest were not to be fought against. And no one did fight them. Probably because no one knew, that her death was something more than a deplorable fortuity. Those who had managed to get to know her mourned over it, but not too long. There were enough of things to bewail in their past, present and future.
The path was traveled, the war was over, and the world was safe again. Only Gwirith had stayed behind, lying in the soft earth of Rivendell, and the grass, which had grown on her grave, was hushfully singing lullabies for her sleeping soul.
Her wound didn't torture her.
And his was still burning with incessant pain, as an arrow-head, left in the gash and skinned over, remaining in his body forever.
It was not the pain of having lost love. Now, looking back, he understood that he probably never loved her. And if he did, the feeling didn't have time to absorb him fully. He was just overwhelmed with pity and regret, like if he was forced to tread on the bud, which promised to become a rare flower. This self-protecting thought was of comfort for him, though minor, yet still a chance not to be the monster he had named himself before. He wouldn't be poetized like the elf who killed his love because he was too weak to battle for her life.
He didn't kill his love.
But he couldn't think of himself like of the heroic saviour either. To stab the knife in the heart of the girl he was kissing was not heroic at all. It was mean and detestable. He was detestable.
He hadn't believed that Gwirith had told them the truth up to the day of Boromir's departure. He had been ready to accept even that she had been mad…a poor mad maiden obsessed by her folly.
Standing near the dead body of Gondor warrior for the first time he realized that all she had said hadn't been caused by the insanity. He remembered all the moments, when her smile got dim at the sight of Boromir, all the moments, when she escaped to share the warrior's company, as her eyes acquired a sparkle, which could be given only by unshed tears.
And when he was singing the farewell song to their perished fellow, only one thought plagued the elf's mind. One plea…"Take care of her there…Wherever go you, mortals… Take care of her…"
And the shadow of death over Boromir's solemn face looked so painfully similar to that over the sharpened features of Gwirith the day he saw her last that his soul was tearing apart with mute moans of endless sorrow…
"Take care of her…"
Everything else was devoured by the swirl of running, and fighting, and hanging on the edge of dark nothing. Only sometimes in the strained stillness of the night he winced at how much the pale starlight reminded of her skin, so smooth under his treacherous fingers. And the campfire flames seemed to mock at him, drawing her slender frame against the inky air.
All in the past.
It was time to go away just to return the next year and live through it again and again, helpless to change anything, but unable to let it go either.
Having looked up, the elf found out that the sky, so bright and limpid before, had got completely overcast. It seemed as if the day was coming to its end, though Legolas understood very well, that it couldn't have been more than two or three o'clock… He couldn't have spent here so much time, could he?
His heart missed a bit – he subconsciously pulled the edges of his cloak closer around him. His breath was coming out of his mouth in small white clouds.
The air got prickly and biting. The birds became silent. The sun withered.
Glacial tongues of the wind licked his ears, and he grew terrified, because its whispered speech was nothing but a constant reiteration of a creepy call from nowhere.
Legolas…Legolas…Legolas…
He backed away, driven by the natural desire to leave. But as soon as he approached his horse, the murmur swelled, getting almost unbearable.
Legolas…Legolas…Legolas-s-s-s-save…
Weightless voices subsided, as though their owners lent their ears to the one, who wistfully breathed out a terribly distinct word into the face of the stunned elf.
Cold…
The sound swept over the ground, reverberated in the air, crisp and wheezing… The flower on the bridge slowly blackened and fell into dust. Chill penetrated into Legolas's bones, into his brain…
Cold… Why…So…Cold…Why…
"Who are you?" cried he, looking around, because he began to recognize the voice. He hadn't heard it for an endless century, "Where are you?" whispered he, "Show yourself."
Hurts-s-s-s-so cold…
"Show up!"
Icy squall tore leaves off the moaning trees, swirling them in the small vortex, which was dancing at the banisters of the bridge. And then the leaves dropped, revealing a diaphanous figure of a pale girl in a green dress.
Legolas staggered. His hand grabbed the bridle of the stallion to keep him standing.
Her face was hidden by the hood. All he could see was a completely white mouth with a thin streak of dark clotted blood, coming down from its corner. And more blood stained the dress there, where the fabric was supposed to cover a beating heart.
Pallid lips moved, letting out another husky complaint…
Slew…Why…
"Gwirith," tears were flowing down his face, but he didn't wipe them away. His hands had grown so heavy, that he just couldn't raise them, "Please, forgive me…"
Save…
"If only I could."
Save…
The ghost held out its gauzy hand and beckoned him to come near. Unseeing, he obeyed, step by step getting closer… The smile transmuted the bloody streak on the girl's chin into a squiggly line. Her fingers were moving, inviting him to touch visibly stark skin…
Come…
His palm brushed against hers.
White and sharp teeth glistened between instantly reddened lips… The hood was blown off her head, and two rapacious hazelly deeps glared at him from under the whip-like eye-lashes. Legolas was deafened by the sinister laugh. At the same moment the ghost vanished, having spilt with dead leaves, from which it had appeared so unexpectedly and redoubtably. They blocked his path, whirling around him so fast that everything was dancing before his eyes. He rather felt than understood that his body was falling apart, turning into the flakes of ash, into nothing…
If that was to die, he had been an utter fool not to be afraid of it…
It was his last thought before the chasm closed down him and he ceased living.
A/n: Reviews are welcome. :o) Stay with me.
Yours, Adamanta.