A/N: I own nothing. They're Tolkien's.
Cages. There are no bars here, no locks, but we have felt them all the same. Walls of stone or sea or stature hem us in. One, whose story I have only heard as it was retold to one now dead by another whose life I never witnessed, felt the sea laughing at her, its waves embracing her beloved as she could not. Another heard this lost sister in the waves, and despised the walls that cut her off from the sound. My mother heard her family's voices all too clearly, but never dared release her own voice from the chilling, gilded container that she had hidden it in. I know another who found her cage in freedom, in the starvation and loneliness of refusing man and money. A queen whose cage was in her immortality embraces her impending death like a lover, now; while one who was contained by her illusions clings to them still, unwilling or unable to release herself from her bonds.
But these cages do not only hold our mothers, aunts, sisters, and daughters. We men must fear them, too. A fiery sphere contained my grandfather's emotions. He had become so good at controlling himself that he dare not let go of his self-made leash, even for my grandmother. Even for my uncle. Never even for my father, or so the tales go. It is most fortunate for my account that Father outlived my grandfather, but it was a close thing, as all have told me. Father's near-death experience atop all the other recent losses finally broke my grandfather's control, his shield, his cage, and with it went his mind.
The physical sphere that represented this cage still remains, gathering dust in the Silent Street. Few dare to look into it, and fewer may use it, for my grandfather still holds sway over it from beyond the grave. I have looked but once: as a child, sneaking a glimspe inside on a dare. The fires within roared to life, falling from heights unknown to those cold, dead hands, only to flare up once more, threatening to engulf me in their hunger. Those droplets of fire, I felt, could consume anything, anything but the hands that held them. Those hands of ice reached for me… And their fires could not warm me at all.
Father found me sometime later, transfixed by the sight within. He said he found me standing as stock still as a bird watching a snake weave back and forth through the grass. He said I had been lucky; I had not seen what had put those pale hands within; I had not seen what the dead hands and their cold, hungry fire protected me from. I never want to. I shall retreat into my cage, and count myself lucky for my bars.