PROLOGUE
Looking back, she never should have chosen to go against the foreboding deep in her soul. Such grief could have been avoided, never to have struck all of Arda with its doom - a doom so great, one should not carry alone.
But Indis did. For all of her renowned wisdom, she carried the intuition, the knowledge.
Knowledge…
The sound of soft footfalls of one without shoes broke through the daze she stood in. Her brother's golden head was bare, the light of the sun reflecting off of it so that Indis turned to avoid being blinded.
He was silent, his form still and firm beside her. As much as she appreciated his respect for her brooding ways, Indis wished Ingwe would push her beyond her limits, give her a reason to move from one place to another.
"I know it is wrong," she heard her voice speaking. "But the credit of this darkness I give fully to myself."
"Why?" Ingwe's brow furrowed intensely as he looked down at her.
Indis twisted her hands together in the folds of her dress. "I had always felt that it was wrong for me to marry him. He was not mine, never mine-" the starkness of the words closed up her throat and she refused to go on.
Ingwe did not fully understand, she knew this all too well, but as his arm enveloped her slim shoulders, pulling her against his chest, she merely complied. The comfort he had always offered her, despite the horrors her actions had unleashed on the world, gave her the smallest sense of peace.
"This...darkness," her brother began, his voice low in his chest against her ear. "Is not your doing. It is the result of the actions of others."
"But it is not," Indis protested, weakly. "My selfish love, my imagined desperation, brought about hatred and death and it can never be reversed."
Ingwe's hand rested between her shoulder blades, warm from the sun. His lips pressed quickly to the crown of her head. "Indis...let Nienna mourn the actions and consequences of others. Too long have you labored over the past. Let it go."
"If not for Arafinwe, I would suffer to give up life as Miriel," she stated, hoarsely.
Ingwe pulled back, taking her face in his hands and looking into it earnestly. "No. No, do not dwell on such thoughts. It is not for us to decide when we die. It is not even natural for us to die."
His words struck her as nearly comical and she pulled out of his hold, a strained smile on her lips. "You know very little of hardship, brother," her words fell like slicing spears. "For you did not act against the knowledge of what was right and good in your heart, as I did."
"I don't understand," he brushed a trembling hand over his jaw. "Whatever have you done that was wrong?"
A spark of indignance, a flame deep at the base of her breastbone. She turned and left him silently, but the steely gaze in her eyes was not lost on him.
"Perhaps, you could appeal before Manwe," he called after her. "Ask for him to be restored."
Indis stopped short and whirled. "Do you not remember how he behaved the last time life and death were laid before him? He rejected the choice and gave it to another."
"That's because he loved her, Indis-" Ingwe paused.
A slow, angry smile stretched the corners of her mouth up. "Exactly. I have no claim, no reason to appeal before the Valar other than my own selfish wants. And my selfishness is what began this whole spiral of downward darkness and hatred."
"How? Tell me how in Aman, you could have been the cause of any of this."
Indis swallowed hard and turned her face away, staring over the murals on the walls. The patterns blurred into a swirl of color with her tears. Softly, "Please, Ingwe," she pleaded. "Do not force me to recount the depth of my thought over all these years."
"You have been alone in them long enough," he took her hand in both of his, gripping it so she felt the ridge of his ring digging into her flesh. "Let me share your burden, as we always did. As we once promised we always would…"
Indis lifted her eyes to look at his. They were unchanged, had never lost that warm silver hue he had attainted the first time he had come to Valinor, then returned, joyous and proclaiming the wonders of the world of the Valar… "I don't know how to begin," she whispered. "How I lost control of my thoughts. Or if I ever had control…"
Ingwe pulled her forward, turning and tucking her hand into the crook of his arm. He kept his tones low and gentle as if to avoid any but her hearing. "Tell me how you felt when you met Finwe."
