View Single Post
Old 11-03-2003, 02:53 AM   #136
Elora
Shade of Carn Dûm
 
Elora's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: Kalrienmar
Posts: 402
Elora has just left Hobbiton.
Tolkien

Vanwe

They walked for hours, at a rapid pace too. The rigours of the past day rode upon her shoulders. Still, if there was one thing Harad had given her, it was the strength to endure. Her sense of direction was confounded though. She had no idea where they were. It was plainly not the Forsaken Inn, but how she came to be here and leave the only home she had ever had was a mystery to her. A frightening mystery to be sure.

Instead of spooking herself, Vanwe forced her mind to what she did know as they charged on into dusk. The sun was setting on her right, which meant they were roughly making north. They were back in the forest again.... the forest where Maethor and Tallas had died. A chill hollowed her out and she felt her mother's hand take her upper arm and urge her onwards. She picked her slowing feet up and resumed her mental catalogue.

The inn was nowhere in sight. She had found her mother though. She did not know what to make of that. Vanwe took her time to study her mother as she jogged slightly ahead of her. Was she nightmare? Was she simply desperate? She did seem to be hunted. Vanwe could recognise the sense of being quarry, hounded across time and distance as she knew the shape of such things within herself. How long had she been running before she reached the inn? Months? She had lost track, unable to count and remain free.

Behind her, Vanwe could hear the heavier breathing of Barrold and Avanill. That was incentive to keep up her pace. There was a Hobbit also, who studied her sidelong. Naiore noticed Vanwe's attention and shot her a keen glance that broke her attention. Through the dusk and into evening, Vanwe jogged along, struggling with half memories, nightmares and longings that had defined her existence from her earliest memory.

When they stopped it was night proper. Toby collapsed, puffing and rubbing his feet. The Hobbit looked perfectly unhappy, and Vanwe well understand that. Her mother sent Barrold and Avanill off to gather wood.

"Only dry wood and no greenery, mind you." The two men went off, Barrold grumbling about being told how to gather wood when he'd been doing it since he was a child. To Toby, Naiore tossed instructions to gather kindling and remain within sight. The Hobbit heaved a heartfelt sigh and got to his feet. Naiore watched him like a hawk would a mouse. Toby seemed beyond any escape attempts. The danger was too real and he was simply too tired. He listlessly gathered kindling.

Through this, Vanwe had stood very still and quiet. Her arms and legs trembled, but she had learnt that remaining quiet is important if you want to live. Her mother turned, living night herself in the black embrace of her strange leathers. She strode towards Vanwe, long braids swaying. Despite her fatigue, or perhaps because of it, Vanwe had the ridiculous notion that this was the first time she had seen anyone with the same hair as hers. The realisation should have made her heart leap with joy. She'd been searching and enduring hellish torment for years for such a sight. Instead, her heart seemed to pain her.

"You are tired. Will you sit? There is much we must speak of, you and I." Unsure of whether she sat or collapsed, Vanwe nonetheless sank to the ground. She bowed her head, a malestrom of emotions that conflicted and fired within her spinning with giddy speed around and around and around... like a sand storm.... like the ones that howled from the desert like demons... her mother was a demon they said... was she... do demons tend wounds... people make mistakes... did Hanasian err in his warning or had the mistakes been made by her mother.... she was so tired.... and cold... sleep.... curl up and sleep... rest.... don't fight.

"Vanwe, how is it that you come to be here?" Naiore's voice was soft, velvety as she exerted what influence she could over her daughter. Vanwe was a storm, barely contained. The power was breathtaking but still untutored, for her daughter sucuumbed a little. Vanwe felt her head bow further, heavy. Fingers lifted her chin and then hands cupped her cheeks. Her eyes were closed, and her head was spinning... a sand storm.

"I came looking for you," Vanwe whispered with a faint voice. There, there was that aching longing. Naiore smiled a little in the darkness. With a swift graceful move, she gathered Vanwe to her as though she would a child. Vanwe barely knew what was happening. A voice, smooth and musical sang and whispered to her through the whirling storm.

"You have found me, my child, and never shall you loose me again." Vanwe felt the chill of her clammy skin grow, seeping through her as her mother crooned to her a lullaby. Elven it was. Vanwe had never heard such a thing. It was beautiful. It was hers! This is what she had wanted to hear as a child! She shivered and drew closer. No matter how close Vanwe pulled to her mother, the chill would not abate. She was so tired she drifted through it, not knowing the truth would find her in her dreams...

Naiore

She could feel her daughter's body slacken in her arms, but the powerful chaotic tumult of her daughter's emotions and senses barely abated. Naiore eased herself away from Vanwe carefully, wearied by the effort it had taken to contain Vanwe. Far safer to garrot her now, as she slept. Naiore stood looking down at her daughter. She would barely know what happened and were she able to marshall her abilities she cannot possibly stop me. She is too green and raw.

Toby's return with an armfull of kindling intruded on Naiore's thoughts. He set it down and ventured a question. "Who is she?" Toby nodded towards Vanwe's sleeping form.

"My daughter," Naiore replied in an odd voice. My daughter, sent to kill me by my foes. My daughter, whom I will use in my own way without mercy. My daughter, whom I will dispose of by passing her onto that oaf, Barrold. My daughter, who could have been beside me had not I been cheated of my life. And so, I will cheat her of hers, for that is the way it must be. But not before I have taken everything she has to give. Not before I have taught her that the world is unforgiving and cares for nothing and noone.

"I can see the resemblance," Toby replied. Naiore barely heeded him. She turned away from them both, staring at the stars. Those same stars had blindly danced in the sky when it began. They had shone through the horror and the darkness. They had shown no compassion the many times she had begged for release in the wild and forgotten places. There is no release to be granted and her path was before her feet unchanging.

She would use and then effectively kill her own daughter. Barrold would not be kind to Vanwe. Naiore knew that eventually, he would kill her in a fit of drunken rage. Naiore was no orc. Somewhere, in a place she rarely visted and kept walled off, that realisation tore at her. But there was no mercy. She was not released. It was this or death, brought to heel by the rag-tag remnants of her folk and the gangrel mortal realm that now had inflated itself through the lands.

She had not endured years of torment and deprivation for such an end. Toby was left in silence until the two men returned and dropped the gathered wood with the kindling. Avanill organised the branches and kindling and coaxed a fire from it. They sorted through their newly obtain provisions for the evening meal and soon had that underway.

Naiore seemed distant and fey by the firelight. Barrold, Avanill and Toby each watched her warily. There was an ancient light in her eyes, starlight from many many years past. There was pain too, terrible pain. But most of all, there was rage, tightly coiled and twisted around formidible reason. Once their evening meal had been consumed and Toby busied himself by moping up any leftovers in true Hobbit fashion, Barrold broke the silence.

"What's wrong with 'er?" he jerked a thumb to where Vanwe lay in the flickering light, hair spread over the ground and her chest rising and falling evenly in sleep.

"Nothing that is your concern, Ferney. She is not given to you yet." Naiore's rebuke was sharply delivered across the fire. Barrold twitched but held his peace.

"She gave us some trouble today," Avanill said. There was a coldness to his voice, impassive. Naiore recognised it well. Vanwe was no longer a person. Her resistance had changed Avanill's view of her in that regard. She was chattel now, and chattels could be disposed of easily.

"Tell me of the Ranger you killed," Naiore redirected.

"We didn't kill 'im. Avanill knocked 'im out with some goop on a rag. Not before I got a good few in, though," Barrold corrected. He smiled, his lip still swolled and cracked. Evidently, so did the Ranger, Naiore mused to herself. Instead, she turned back to Avanill.

"A receipe of my mother's," he said, refusing to add more.
"Your mother is a wise woman, Avanill. I hope, for your sake, you have a share of that. Mother's are not to be triffled with." Naiore glanced vaguely in Vanwe's direction. Barrold added, "Especially not this one," in what he supposed was a murmur.

Raising his voice, he reached for his pack. Avanill copied his movement. Whilst Avanill reviewed the more exotic goods he had taken from Tallas, Barrold struggled to pull something larger and heavier from his own. Naiore's eyes widened in shock, a single elegant blonde brow arching high in her smooth forehead at the sight of the mithril bound volumes.

"Avanill can tell you what herbs and plants he took from the old man. We found this too. Dunno wot it is, but thought you might wanna take a look at it or somethin'." Having fought it clear of his pack, Barrold tossed one volume across to Naiore as though it were the annual rain records of the Shire. Naiore caught it and shot Barrold a look so severe and replete with promised harm that even Toby scuttled back a measure. Barrold did his best to be more gentle with the second one.

"Were there others?"
"Yeah, but I coulnd't fit 'em all in me pack with all the other stuff you said you wanted." Naiore hissed with displeasure as she ran her hands over the smooth cover of the tome.
"Tallas most certainly is dead then." Barrold paused, scowling in his turn. "I said he was before..... you callin' me a liar?" Avanill paused what he was doing and looked up in time to catch Naiore's expression settle into dangerous serenity.

It was like a mere, deep and mysterious, that expression. A mere that could drown you, pull you under and suffocate the life out of you, never loosing its beauty.

"And if I were, Barrold Ferney, what would you do?" It was almost an invitation. The feyness had doubled. Naiore sat very still, thrumming with the itch to spill Barrold's blood. Release, even so small, would be like freedom of a sorts. Barrold's insticts kicked in then and informed him that he was on the cusp of a plunge from which he would not rise.

Unhappy, but silent, he returned to lifting the second tome free to cooly pass to Naiore. With both volumes in her possession, Naiore struggled to resume control and reason. When she had won, a battle she always did though it was harder now than it ever had been before, she fell into the familiar comfort of commader.

"We will strike West tomorrow. Once we have cleared the Barrow-downs, we will move southeast and use the fringes of the Old Forest for cover. There are many strange things which if we pass through may waylay those who follow.

"Once we're in the Shire, we will move on Buckland. They won't expect us, nor our particular type of war. With Buckland dealt with, we'll be free to move on the Mayor in Hobbiton, by way of Tookland."

"How do we get into the Shire," Avanill asked keenly.

"My daughter," Naiore smoothly replied. The facade of calm was thin tonight.
"Her!" Barrold's disbelief was obvious.
"Of what help will she be?" Avanill was a little more cautious.

"Little enough if you two continue as you have today. She will help me willingly, because I am her mother and some bonds cannot easily be set aside." Avanill, who himself understand such a thing, nodded. "But, should she manage to throw that aside, I have ways to enforce my will."

Barrold nodded at that, for it was something he understood.

"And we have Toby who will prove invaluable, won't you Master Longholes?"

Toby nodded firmly to be sure there was no doubt.

"What war will you make," Avanill asked dubiously. "Five people do not an army make."

"Have you ever heard of a Ravenning, Avanill," Naiore asked mildly, eyes bright with something it was wise not to look at for long. Avanill shivered and Barrold swallowed. "I have little use for armies. They are an encumberance, slow, unweildly, and expensive to feed and arm."

"Then why do you need me," Toby asked. There was a quaver in his voice, and he really would have preferred to be silent or asleep like Vanwe was. Naiore's gaze turned on him and he felt sweat bead his hairline.

"I need those quick of wit and light of feet for information. I have heard there is no better than you for such things. Am I misinformed?"

"No," managed Toby. He breathed in relief when Naiore looked away, catching the glint of brief amusement. Toby struggled to reconcile two images. One was of a mother, holding her child, tenderly, Toby thought, so gently. One was of a... demon. She was like a dragon, beautiful and terrible and deadly.... but she didn't smell like a dragon. Apparently dragons stank. Even if she did, he wouldn't be saying so to her face. Whilst Toby thought of dragons and Ravennors and Elves, Naiore turned back to the two Men who sat across the fire from her.

What she yearned to do was read the volumes. What she yearned to do was run free, unhunted and unhindered. That was not to be. She would have to wait still longer yet. Vanwe stirred in her sleep, breathing something unintelligible before settling once more.

"Avanill, I will need you to help me mix some ungents and infusions that we will require over the coming days. Also I have... reinforcements... waiting for word of our sucess. They will hold off any move from the south to free the Shire from our hold. For now, all we have to contend with are Rangers and the Shire.

"I will take the first watch. You and Avanill can decide who takes the next two."

Naiore ran her fingers in a caress, almost, over the top cover of the books she held in her lap.

"Anything further to discuss," she added.

"Reward," Barrold immediately furnished.

"You may take half the spoils of the Shire upon capture, to divide between you three as you see fit, and anything ongoing is your own to distribute as you wish amongst yourselves," Naiore said listlessly.

"That's.... generous of you, Lady Dannan," Avanill said suspiciously. Naiore levelled a direct gaze at him. He had a sharp mind.

"I have little interest in their spoils, Avanill," she said levelly. What did interest her was unspoken in her clear, grey gaze. Avanill withheld asking her about it. Such things were not discussed at night. "If you wish to see any of your booty, you will do nothing to impede my plans. That includes my daughter. Set a hand to her and I'll take that hand and more in my own turn. Any further questions?"

Barrold shook his head, rubbing the wrist of the hand that he had used to strike Vanwe with during the day. He shot a resentful glare at where she lay now but said nothing. "I'll take second watch," he said. With that, he relaced his pack, drew his coat about him and settled down with his back to the flames.

Naiore studied Avanill and Toby in silence, waiting them out.

[ November 04, 2003: Message edited by: Elora ]
__________________
Characters: Rosmarin: Lady of Cardolan; Lochared: Vagabond of Dunland; Simra: Daughter of Khand; Naiore: Lady of the Sweet Swan; Menecin: Bard of the Singing Seas; Vanwe: Lost Maiden; Ronnan: Lord of Thieves; and, Uien of the Twilight
Elora is offline