5) Tremors Above the River

At some moment during the night a terrible rain began to pour. A dim yellow light lit the room where Thranduil and Elrond conferred by the fire deep into the hours of darkness. Below them the courtyard path led out under the wood arcs to the outskirts, past the gardens, towards the forest - to the side, the bridge.

The long grass was pelted down by the rain and below it the dirt was slowly saturated. Some six feet below all of this, something stirred.

At first, it was naught but a finger – a pinky twitched. It felt mud. Suddenly, the whole hand spasmed. When the hand met with no room to move, no room to be scared, surrounded in mud, the arm became enraged. The other arm agreed that this motionlessness was unacceptable…

Next, the nerves in the feet fired. The toes wiggled in their fine leather boots. A foot moved in its boot and tried kicking.

The dirt was soft, loose. It was not yet hard-packed soil. The four limbs finally decided that there was a chance to do this. With the soil loose, there was a point to doing this.

Two hands and two feet clenched hard and then released. This motion, like the letting go of an arrow, fired electricity through the arterial highways and straight into the heart like gunshot.

The fire ran through the body and met at the centre with a blast. The mouth gasped as the lungs and heart exploded into life. The brain was lit like a lamp in the dark soil. Messages twisted, trying to connect and inform each other.

But the limbs didn't need information or encouragement from the brain before they started struggling. They swam through the earth as though it were the thickest of oceans.

The mind of the elven Prince was not yet coherent enough to be surprised when the limbs began to make progress. Up six feet. After the first four, the brain finally sparked as all of its connections were made and it handed the reins over to self-awareness. The mind encountered a mouthful of dirt and the inability to breathe. Panic-struck, the limbs made haste, lest the claustrophobia take the mind. He swam higher and higher in a great crescendo of strength.

Finally, the hands broke the surface in a spray of mud. They felt a soaking rain. The legs kicked and the arms emerged, the shoulders came next. At long last, the elf's head came out of the earth, spat soil from his mouth and took in a great gasping breath. Waist deep in mud and breathing again, Legolas screamed a great howl of harrowing agony. He pulled himself out of the grave and let his second-hand body flop onto the earth with surrender.

He convulsed for a few moments and then he let fly the monstrous animalistic screech that can only come from someone who has just emerged from their own grave, someone who has defeated death without cause or experience, someone who has just had the thunderous and devastating realization that he was murdered.

Shivering compulsively, the elf eventually found his feet. His brain, though, had not yet mastered the practice of resurrection. He stumbled about, uncontrolled, ever closer to the river, ever closer to remembering whom he was, where he was. The rain poured and the torrent took small rivers of storm water between his feet. His motor skills felt as though they belonged to an infant human.

Confused and spinning, the elf stepped back into shin-deep mud. The foothold eroded right out from under him and he fell backward into the rapid river.

In this present, he felt every sensation with a rawness that only the recently-awoken dead can know. The sensitivity was overwhelming his senses. He did not know what to focus on. He could feel everything and feel it intensely and now he felt the swift-flowing water running past his body, shoving it. He felt the slippery black algae on the stones that prevented him from gripping anything as he flailed about, trying to gain control of himself. He felt the sharp rock edges that his body was banged and carved along. He felt his long hair coating his face as he fought desperately to keep it above water. He felt the roots of his locks at his neck tingle as the current lifted and played with them, reminding him that nothing good could be coming. He felt exquisite pain, as his shoulder was knocked out of its socket in a particularly narrow pass.

And all at once, Legolas felt his body, thrust by the helpful hands of the river, cascading over the waterfall. He gasped as he fell hundreds of feet, sucking in his hair, choking. His helpless body tumbled end over end, a perfect waterwheel of soaked flesh.

And mere feet from the water's surface, he hit a rock. He banged his temple against the jagged surface first. His body quickly followed and added its weight to his neck, which buckled under the weight and broke.

He died instantly. The river committed the woodland elf's body to its pool below where it floated, crooked and cracked and pelted with the ceaseless rain.

TBC