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Old 05-01-2008, 02:31 PM   #249
Mithalwen
Pilgrim Soul
 
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Join Date: May 2004
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Mithalwen is lost in the dark paths of Moria.Mithalwen is lost in the dark paths of Moria.Mithalwen is lost in the dark paths of Moria.Mithalwen is lost in the dark paths of Moria.
It seemed to Tathren that his heart rose in his chest stopping his throat from uttering more even if he could: he could hear its pounding as the beat of mighty wings. His dark hair fell about his face as he knelt over his lord's body but it could not conceal that he was weeping; the sobs that broke from him convulsed his slight frame. Though his voice had been quenched by tears, words coursed through his mind, words that every Noldo knew even if they had not been alive to hear them, even if they defied them:

Tears unnumbered ye shall shed;.. not even the echo of your lamentation shall pass over the mountains. On the House of Feanor the wrath of the Valar lieth from the West unto the uttermost East, and upon all that will follow them it shall be laid also. Their Oath shall drive them, and yet betray them, To evil end shall all things turn that they begin well; and by treason of kin unto kin, and the fear of treason, shall this come to pass.

Betrayal, Treason. He thought of Lachrandir's desperate last message as his tears mingled with the blood that had stained the star of Feanor on the elf-lord's breast.

Ye have spilled .. blood .., unrighteously ... For blood ye shall render blood,

He gazed at the vicious wounds on Lachrandir's neck .... what instrument could have done this? The man and woman who had led him away seemed unarmed but perhaps they had concealed some dreadful weapon. Lachrandir's own blade was half drawn but unstained, and so keen-edged were the knives of the Noldor that one stroke would have sufficed. His master's neck had been pierced in many places, yet he with his elven swiftness had been unable to make even a single strike in defence.

He touched the wounds horrified yet fascinated, so much blood ... how could he have relished the prospect of the hunt? Now he knew what death really looked like. Though his father and blood-uncle had been slain at the Dagor Bragollach, their was a remoteness about their deaths that his child's mind had filled with glorious notions of heroism and valour. Never had he imagined that the death of a great warrior, a Companion of Caranthir no less, could be as mundane as slaughtering a beast.

.. ye shall dwell in Death's shadow... slain ye may be, and slain ye shall be: by weapon and by torment and by grief; and your houseless spirits shall come then to Mandos. There long shall ye abide and yearn for your bodies, and find little pity

He wept not only for the lord he had called Uncle and loved more than the one who had held more right to the title - whose conviction that his brother's lad was a milksop would not have been dimmed had he been able to observe him now - but the father he had lost before he really had the chance to know him. A craftsman by choice and a warrior by force he had become an exile through a loyalty to his own brother that the kinslaying had strained but not quite broken, and though guiltless shared his doom. He had passed to his son a greater reverence for the Valar than was held by most of his kindred in Middle Earth. So though he had no expectation that he might be heard on the edges of the world by the one who might offer pity, in his heart he invoked the vala Nienna and made her an offering of his grief, in the hope she would show her compassion to those he loved who were now in Mandos' keeping.

Whether by the intercession of the Lady of Mourning or no, his own tears subsided and he looked up to see the other hunters regarding him with ..... what? He had not yet learnt to read these mortals; but he guessed that they wished to be away from this place of death.

"I'm not leaving him, I did not stay with him and he died" he said at last. "I will not leave him now." . Then, on this occasion able to comprehend the bafflement in their faces he repeated it in a language they understood.

Last edited by Mithalwen; 05-30-2008 at 02:32 PM.
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