~Inkwell Series~
Coat
It is stormy.
Grey wind whips through the greyed skeletons of trees sleeping through the frosty season. They are dull and stiff under the elements. But it is temporary.
Maedhros wishes. It is not quite clear what he wishes for in the heaving hurricane that is his thoughts, as is usual.
A tempest broils in the rolling reaches of a pale sky split by even paler frozen branches. His eyes blur with tears from the bite of the cold but he stays his path with the uneven thumping of his too-heavy feet over the frost.
He knows his wish now. He wishes it was all temporary like the slumber of the forest—the war, the tainted past and fated future, the death of those fallen by his hand, even though they would see him dead. Perhaps he wishes that he is temporary too.
A thought flutters into his mind on its own accord to distract him from his storm. It isn't so much of a thought than it is a memory.
Sometimes Maedhros wonders if that is what he is made of: cold memories and the false warmth of bitter liquor.
~Tyelko, stiff and bone-cold, is lying beneath a shriveled tree hovering it's limbs of ice over the elf's small, curled form.
Maedhros had thought him a corpse but for the ragged rise and fall of his chest. Tyelko, Tyelko, always you are running from here to there. You must cease running from me now.
His lips are blue and skin more pale than the ice on the anxious tree above. The limbs creak and groan under the weight in tune to the panic spiraling through Maedhros' chest.
It seems the branches had been sheltering his brother before the chill of the night had stolen over and silenced them both.
'Ai, Tyelko, what have you done now.'
Hungry fingers push against the small throat, feeling the far-off pitter-patter of a pulse for a second reassurance. Tyelko is not so much an elf as he is an elfling. The morbid stillness of his usual vibrancy has Maedhros thinking, the stillness is unnatural and I hate it.
He never wished to see it again...
'Stay with me...'
The tree groans again and a crack shatters the utter silence amidst the weaving howl of the north wind.
The branch will break soon. The tree's frantic care has now become a threat. Much like them. Much like their Oath.~
The memory was cold in every way so he strays from it with yet another thought.
The faces of the twins plague him. Elúred and Elúrin; small from their little booted toes right up to the leaf-curled shell of their elvish ears. They are much younger than the day Tyelko had slipped into a lake and nearly froze. Elflings—nothing more.
The very subject of their abandonment would have made another's heart burn hotly despite the stifling cold. Maedhros wonders despondently when life has come to mean so little to him. Wonders, that perhaps he has become like the frozen branch looming over Turkafinwë's body; once bereft of ill will, now poised to impale.
Perhaps he has frozen to numbness, for he has felt nothing for a long time.
Boots crunch distantly into the gathering snow whirling about his feet. He is surrounded by trees now and cannot help but feel that they are poised to impale him too.
A short bark of humorless laughter splits the restless calm. Unstable and bitter.
"You can try," he tells the threatening limbs, "but I will not feel it."
Another thought filters in. It is welcome, slapping on another layer of numbness. He wishes his fingers would stop tingling so.
(How long can one live—survive even, when all they have become is but a consecutive sequence of distractions from the misery that is their life? The answer is: not very long... Not very long at all...)
Where am I going?
To find the twins... Elúred and Elúrin.
~Maglor's mesmerizing baritone breaks light in the shadows of his slumber.
Maedhros' eyes dart around the moonlit glaze and do not stop for he has lost himself.
'It is the First age. You are Maitimo and I am Makalaurë, your brother. You have six others and they are gone.'
Somehow, Maedhros always remembers at those words.
'They are gone...'~
It has become a habit for both of them now. But Maglor is not here and Maedhros reminds himself.
It is cold...
As must be the young Sindar princes.
Why am I here? They are dead.
Well so are you and yet here we are.
Maedhros laughs again, breath misting like smoke about a dragon's fangs.
They call him insane, they call him unstable.
(But little did they know—unstable is a subtle word for such a horrifying notion. There is no solid ground beneath you, nor are you falling—there is no certain fate. It is unknown and terrifying, but it is also numbing. And it is Maitimo's friend.)
Maedhros agrees with those that call him insane, the fleeting whispers scorning under hunched backs and wary eyes. Just a bit, though.
Sometimes he likes to think that he is not completely numbed; that he still has no ill will and has not already impaled many. So, it is just a bit.
Just a bit insane. Just a bit frozen. Just a bit of a monster.
He is looking for a pair of innocent children, is he not? Yet he owes them nothing. He cannot deny that this venture is for himself also.
Perhaps he is just as selfish as Maglor said he is, not too long ago, in the heat of the moment.
Maedhros realizes that while his thoughts have run pointlessly rampant yet again, his feet have not. Bramble sweeps at the flanks of the sleeping trees, casting a dark shadow about the white of the snow.
He has not realized that the sun has sunken thus far below the horizon. Yes, he had set out late, but he had not anticipated...
(Darkness crept into one's heart much like the slinking of descending twilight. Just a bit of shadow crept in, and you think nothing of it. For it is just a bit. But then the light sinks, little by little, and before another thought can run through your mind, you have been plunged into the utter, inescapable dark...)
Maedhros freezes and a gasp almost escapes his lips. Tentatively, he shoves one foot forward, then another.
The tense storm of his thoughts curl and thrash with an unidentifiable mist, but he chokes it down.
There, lying just under the shadow of a bramble patch—there the twins lie.
A hot coil shoots up his chest and he is vividly thrown back in time to his frozen Tyelko.
The children are beautiful.
Chiseled faces bearing the softness of youth—of an infant, even—still and peaceful. Small, upturned noses set over blue bow-lips. Sweeping eyebrows crowning high foreheads and wispy lashes smattered with snowflakes hovering over gentle cheekbones.
Their hands are clasped together, lithe bodies curled over each other. Frozen tears glitter in the fading moonlight as an adornment to their jawlines.
The turmoil stops abruptly in Maedhros' mind until the terrain of his thoughts is barren. Hardly daring to breathe, he unclasps his heavy fur cloak and shuffles forwards on his knees to the small bundle.
His vision wavers with the memory of Tyelko in all his stillness. He blinks away the tears as he did then and reaches out a yearning hand.
His fingers tremble even as he presses them against the soft flesh of a child's throat, then another.
Time stops and flakes of snow waft uncertainly down to the barren earth. All is still.
All.
—They are dead.
Feeling nothing, Maedhros drapes his cloak over the children.
And rises to his feet.
And walks away.
He doesn't look back.
A snowflake catches on his wet lashes as a thought floats down into the barrenness of his mind.
He felt something for those children, though he has hardly set eyes on them. He felt something.
But now all he can do is cover their corpses with his cloak,
and walk away.
oOoOoOo
A/N: Note!!! NEVER TYPE DIRECTLY INTO THE DOC MANAGER! I did that just one time with this story and it—just—poofed. Ouch. This here is the re-write and it is nothing like what I remember of the original. (Kinda cool if ya think about it actually...)
Hope y'all enjoyed! Please consider taking the time to drop me a review! They really boost morale... :)
Another dear thank you to Scribbles-on-Parchment, my beloved partner in crime (beta). ;)