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Old 01-15-2004, 05:50 PM   #198
Elora
Shade of Carn Dûm
 
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Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: Kalrienmar
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Elora has just left Hobbiton.
Sting

Vanwe


The daylight's hold over the trees faded, submitting to the press of oncoming night. She walked in twilight, half-awake and half-asleep, the trees thinning around her. Elsewhere was the hue and din of battle. Terrible creatures screamed death and blood, but that was elsewhere. The compulsion was within her, beating with her heart. Each step forward made it stronger. Any attempt to step back brought howling agony upon her. Vanwe had learnt that herself, hunched and shuddering in the pine needles on the occassions she had thought to turn aside.

Now, she was blank, empty of all but the compulsion to walk on. In time, the trees surrendered to gardens, perfect artistry of tree, flower and grass. Even water heeded the aethestic demands of the gardens around her. Her kindred lived here, something that should have filled her with a fear great enough to send her back into the safety of the trees. Her arms hung by her side as she walked through the outter gardens of Imladris, into the heart of the Last Homely House of the West. Into the heart of those who had left her to rot in the South.

That sense of abandonment, rejection only fed the compulsion. Her mother had used all her subtle talents in its making. She had sensed her daughter's feelings of betrayal by kin and family she had never met, and so Vanwe only walked on, past the fountains and gardens.

Her feet found smooth, wide and shallow stone steps that led up to another terrace. The music of water danced nearby. Imladris was empty, she dimly thought. Noone was here. She stood by the first building she had seen, a small cottage with intricate trellis work over the window and turned about. Surely a guard, a sentinel, a watcher should have seen her by now. At a loss as to where to go and the compulsion building, Vanwe glanced up at the stars with a trembling gasp.

Menecin

She was here. He had heard the comings and goings of Elves all day. She was here. She was coming. This was no nightmare, no phantasm of his broken mind. She was here. Menecin sat on the floor, his back against the wall, weary and cowed beneath the weight of this reality. The locks had rattled into place an hour ago, precautions. Against what? That he would get out, or she in?

There would be no rest, no safety, nothing whilst she lived. Menecin drew his hands over his wan face and pushed his sagging frame upright. On hand against the wall to support his weight, he staggered to the window, tripping over the wreckage of his room, heeding not the ruin of furniture about his feet.

With a moan of despair, he leant his brow against the glass of one of the panes of his window, one of the few unbroken panels of glass. Dusk had come to Imladris, and the night that would follow would be eternal. He dragged his eyes up from the floor to gaze upon the benign peace of Imladris. It sometimes soothed the trouble of his mind and dreams.

A strangled yell, hoarse, tore free from his throat as he looked upon what stood in his gardens. The fall of silken pale hair, unearthly gold turned silvery with the fading light. She was here. Here!

Menecin reached through the jagged gaps in the window for the trellis, wrapping his bleeding fingers around it, shouting wordlessly. She turned, at the sound of his voice, and looked in his direction. His keepers leapt up in confusion beyond his door, and one started out.

Menecin's alarm also drew the attention of a passing cadre of Elves, who swerved in their path to come to his cottage. She stared at his window, as though she could see through the trellis to him and Menecin felt his voice constrict in his throat.

He watched a the cadre of archers hail her, and she turned towards them. The profile of her face was clear now. So like hers, and yet something else, something more that was not. He watched her spin in alarm, like a fluttering bird seeing a cage come towards it. She spun into the care of one of his keepers. Menecin watched her being taken away, unwilling and twisting back to stare at his window.

He remained silent, tears coursing down his face. She had come, but not the one he had expected.

"Oh, my daughter," he grieved as he watched her escorted away, dragging now at the hold of her guards, fighting, shaking her head, until he could see no more. Menecin spun, hurtled across his room and crashed into his door.

"It's not her! It's not her!" He raged into the wood, thrashing wildly. "It's not her!" His remaining warden opened the journal and added his notes whilst the other sought Elladan urgently.
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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
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