Island of Sorrow RPG

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

Tasa balanced precariously on Endamir's booted toe, beginning to slip. Dust still stinging her eyes, she kept them closed as tears freely flowed beneath her lids, trying to wash them clear. Endamir held her close with one arm as he gripped the wall with all of his strength with the other. She tucked herself against her old friend's body, trying to shift her weight and distribute it evenly. Blinded, she worked by every other sense.

She smelled the salt tang of the sea, and the old dust of forgotten stones, disturbed by the storm of the day before. Tasa noted Endamir's scent as she helplessly held tight to him: sweet and musty as an ancient book, opened for the first time in ages. Bird cries disoriented her as they dipped on the breezes that plucked at her clothes and Malris' voice cried a prayer as well known as any from above. She nearly felt the air part for the good bit of Lindon rope to pass.

Endamir spoke quietly into her ear. "I am going to release you for just a moment, Tasa... hold tight." She tightened her already firm grip around his chest and for a moment, nearly panicked when she felt his strong arm pull away. All that held her now from a fall she had resigned herself to were her own bleeding fingers and a small foothold she could not open her eyes to see. Endamir wrapped his arm around her again, working one handed. "Tasa, the rope is in my hand. You must let go of me and take it. I will not let you fall." Eyes still closed, she loosened her grip, comforted by his steady hold. She snaked one arm from around him to fumble for his hand. He passed her the loop. "Tasa, can you fit it around yourself?" He helped her to slide the rope over her head and under her arms, working slowly. Any false moves would doubtlessly not be conducive to a painless journey. With the rope firmly wrapped around Tasa, she released Endamir. Her weight was entirely trusted to Malris.

Endamir called up to their leader and found his own holds again. Tasa felt herself being gently pulled upward.

[Anguirel]

The gulls were starting to disperse now, and Malris called down a curt affirmation that he had Tasa held safely. He braced his slight, wiry frame for the increased weight on the rope; Tasa's adjustment was slow, and his physical preparation proved quite enough for the change. The rope now in both of his hands, he murmured "loke" again into the wind; the line glided through his fists, caressing rather than burning, and coiled easily around his waist, securing itself absolutely.

"Tasa," he shouted downwards towards where he could see the bobbing of her golden head, "Tasa? I've bound myself to you. You'll be safe."

The phrase called back an unbidden-apparently unbidden-memory...a starrying evening...his friends and comrades gathered on the Great Southern Balcony of Himring...a voice, the mightiest voice of the Eldar, speaking...

"In this way Malris has bound himself to Giledhel...and while this fortress stands, an everpresent defiance and reproach to the Dark Enemy of the World, they shall be as content as any of our kind have ever been, and their union will flourish!"

A widespread cheer. Tasa in the crowd, shimmering happiness, nostalgia, sorrow caught in the globes of her eyes. Lomwe and his wife, some months pregnant, smiling widely. Maedhros, armoured as ever, laughing uproariously as he clapped his remaining hand on his breastplate, shaking his fiery head...Curufin teasing his musician brother...

Maglor, harp in hands, extatic, yes, but with solemnity in those eyes. How much did he see, Maglor the Harper? How much did he guess? He strikes up a rhythm now...and the memory fades.

[Envinyatar]

Often Orëmir had ridden out from Imladris, into the foothills of the Hithaeglir to try his strength and skills against those of the granite and basalt bones of the mountains. It was good medicine for his time spent as a healer in the Rangers’ enclave. Suffering and death and the thought processes needed to hold them at bay could be put aside. Just the rock . . . the often tricksy rock, keeping its secrets from the climber. Just the rock and the fingers and feet and the narrow focus of one’s mind.

Orëmir looked up at the sounds of the commotion happening above. A frown creased his brow seeing the precarious rescue of Tasa by his brother and Malris. Old habits kicked in and he scurried up the slope as if he were an old rock lizard. ‘What a fool I was to let you go haring up here by yourself,’ he said in a breathless voice, half tinged with aggravation half with concern. ‘Let me look at those fingers of yours, you great ninny! And step back here, where the ledge is wider.’

Endamir gave his brother an abashed grin, offering his bruised and bleeding fingers up for inspection. ‘What did you think you were doing?’ Orëmir said through gritted teeth. ‘You might have fallen off the slope yourself . . .’ His words trailed off as he glanced from fingers to his brother’s raised brow at the little tirade. ‘Yes, I know I would have done the same,’ Orëmir said reluctantly. ‘BUT . . . I would have know exactly what I was doing . . . not just trusted to the slim hope of a narrowed crevice to hold me up.’ He shook his head, laughing in relief. ‘You’ve always been lucky, you know . . . graced by some special circumstance.’ He nodded up to the top where the others were now gathering, indicating his brother should start back up. ‘By the One, please don’t push past the limits of that luck of yours.’

When they reached the top, Orëmir opened his pack and took out his chest of remedies. He saw to his brother’s fingers and to Tasa’s scrapes and bruises. For the most part they were superficial and would heal quickly. Still he shivered a little in the sunlight as a fleeting thought rose in his mind that perhaps he and his companions were not welcome here. Once done he tucked the chest back in his pack and standing, noted Lindir hunkered down in a patch of tall grass. His pack was off his back and clasped closely to him.

‘Are you ill, my friend?’ Orëmir asked, seeing the odd look on Lindir’s face. ‘Is there something I can do for you?’

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

Within a few short moments, Tasa was beside Malris, seated almost comfortably on a rock. Her eyes still watered as she fumbled at the ties of her pack, searching for clear water to rinse the grit away that her tears had missed. Malris took the bag from her lap, swiftly opening it and removing her waterskin. She took it from him with quiet thanks and rinsed first her scratched and stinging eyes, and then her lightly bleeding fingers. In seconds, she could see again. She examined her hands, noting a torn fingernail with sluggish blood welling from beneath it, many scratches, and a deep gouge in her right palm. Malris took her hand in his and picked a small stone carefully from the cut, tossing it aside.

She looked from her seat out to the sea, taking in the quiet clouds that brushed the horizen. A soft breeze picked at her; she ignored it. She sat quietly as Orëmir, now beside them, lightly cleaned her cuts and she began to hum a distant tune thoughtlessly. It was only after Orëmir finished dabbing her scraped up hands with fresh smelling and nastily stinging liquids that Tasa looked up and realized her singing had an accompaniment: Malris' melodious voice took up the refrain as Endamir's boot tapped to the rhythm. It was a well known song of old, but Tasa had not noticed herself singing until it was over. She smiled, looking at her clean and blood-free hands, and then frowned, shivering. The friendly breeze of before felt colder; more forbidding.

"Does anybody," she put forth quietly, "feel as unwelcome here as I?"

[Child of the 7th Age]

Lindir said nothing for the longest time, watching in silence as Oremir tended Tasa's wounds. The haunting lyrics of the song that now filled the air enveloped his fea with a grim sense of foreboding. Glancing over again at Oremir, he finally responded, "Ill? No, I am not ill, at least with any affliction of the body. But this place.....I do not like it."

The Elf's fingers slid over the curved rim of the helmet as he gazed out towards the Sea. He still could not bring himself to put the thing down. With a sigh, he added, "Too many memories, and too much desire." Oremir could barely hear Lindir's whispered words and, of what memories his friend was thinking, no one could even say.

[Anguirel]

The memory of his wedding receding for the moment, Malris indulged in a reassuring spell of thoughtless action, swimming in the warm sea of rest, (so unlike the ocean surrounding them here...) and attending to the needs of the others in general and Tasa in particular.

It did not take him long to realise that he had forgotten about the waybread he'd removed from his satchel while searching for the rope; it was probably even now being ingested by the gulls of Himling. He did not object to this; the lembas Tasa and Lomwe had brought was, in any case, far superior, and plentiful, while he still carried some salt meat, a few Mannish rolls filled with the remains of the salmon, several apples, his flask of water, and a bottle of cool, glistening white wine. He speedily unpacked these refreshments, and the rest of the company pooled their provisions as well; it was now late in the afternoon, almost twilight, but this repast would make up for their lost lunch.

Still idly setting about this business, he joined Oremir in seeing to Tasa's bruises, and particularly the gouge that looked as if it might scar on her arm; leaning over, he plucked out a pebble Oremir had passed by...and shivered, not from fear or even from the cold. The tips of his fingers were lightly layered with Tasa's crimson blood, so bright against the pale skin...

Giledhel was dead, dead on Endor, live on the Undying Lands, whither they would shortly be departing on Cirdan's craft. No; it must be the same answer he had always given in relation to Tasa, ever since the race. But this, he realised, was the first time he felt himself regretting that fact. He shrunk from thought again, the shadow of doubt and complexity that burdened him, and idly joined in Tasa's tune.

When it came to an end, she looked querulously from Oremir to him.

"Is anyone here feeling as unwelcome as I?"

She was quivering in the cold; her lips-a little darker than her blood-trembling. Malris set all his attention upon it now, even as he passed her a glass of wine. It was not merely the wind that had given Himring its name. It was the same chill he had felt the night before.

"Not entirely," he said finally. "I feel much like one who has returned from a long journey to find his house in the hands of strangers."

The air about began to twist, whistle, almost snarl. All six of the Elves now huddled together, though most were still unprepared for danger, with bread and wine, not weapons, in their hands...

[Envinyatar]

The Orcs and the Lady

‘Hinya! That bird - I think it means to make some mischief with my weaving.’

Ashukh hurried to where the Lady sat, looking up at some great black bird perched on the crumbling masonry of the fireplace. It hopped along the jagged edges of the broken stone and peered down with a calculating stare into the remains of the room below. The breezes fluttered the edges of the Lady’s as yet unfinished project, seeming to pique the intruder’s interest.

Though his hands bore neither strength nor substance, still he patted the tattered cloth and spoke as gently as he might. ‘Feather brained burzdug be gone soon enough, Lady. Not come back neither. Zlog take care that sneakin’ bird. Him be left to rot with t’other of his friends what was crushed against the rocks.

A loud, strangled squawk, cut off in mid protest echoed on the other side of the Lady’s bedroom. Through a large crack in the lower part of the wall a faint wisp of breeze seemed to stir along the cracked, chipped stones that paved the floor. It bore upon it a lone, black feather, bent nearly in two.

‘Oh that were fun!’ Zlog hunkered down near Ashukh, grinning widely. ‘Grabbed him, I did. Made him take old Zlog out a ways then turn around. Yes! Turn around we did and him flying as fast as I could make him.’ With a nearly soundless CLAP!, save for the sighing of the small bit of air displaced, Zlog described how the bird had rammed himself into the wall. ‘Slid down them rocks lika sticky glob a spit down a troll’s leg.’ He too reached out and patted the weaving. ‘Won’t be botherin’ ya no more, Lady.’

From the topmost stones of the fireplace another voice called down to them. ‘Be my turn, Lady, for bird-watch. No need worry. Gorgu be keeping you safe now . . . yes, he be doing that for sure . . . yes, he do . . .’ He went on like that for a space of time, his words weaving a sing-song assurance of security; a refuge inviolate.

For their part, Ashukh and Zlog were quiet as they sank restfully into the stones upon which rested the Lady’s cloth; their passage leaving undisturbed the rusty faded stains of long ago.

----------

hinya – my child (Quenyan)
burzdug – black-filth (Orcish/Black Speech)

[piosenniel]

His brother, he noted, had gone off to speak with Lindir. The man looked pale and disconcerted as he sat on the grass, his knees drawn up, his arms resting on his close stowed pack . . . almost, it seemed, in a protective way. What’s this? he wondered to himself. ‘Lindir looks as if he’s seen some ghost. Some unpleasant ghost, too, by the looks of it,’ Endamir murmured aloud.

Lómwë was standing near him, taking in the little tableaux. He was hardly winded from the climb, Endamir had observed when he’d reached the top at last. His gaze swept over the man’s lithely muscled form. Kept himself in good shape, I see, there among the golden trees. Unlike yourself . . . he chided himself mentally. Endamir shook his head at the image of himself, sitting comfortable in his chair in the great library of Imladris. And an assistant to fetch things to boot! What a lazy git you are!

Tasa’s question disturbed his further remonstrance of past folly.

‘Does anybody," she put forth quietly, ‘feel as unwelcome here as I?’

Malris’ reply fell into the anticipating silence that had gathered about the plateau.

‘Not entirely," he said finally. ‘I feel much like one who has returned from a long journey to find his house in the hands of strangers.’

And was greeted with a rising wind that whipped about the companions, ringing them in like a noose. Endamir pulled his cloak from his pack and drawing it about him, huddled in closer to the others. From the corner of his eye, in the space between light and shadow that gathered near a tumble of rocks he thought he saw something pass. It was gone as he looked more closely. ‘Some trick of the wind and the dust it stirs,’ he said, talking aloud to himself. He frowned, feeling disquieted.

‘What say you, Lómwë? I think Tasa may have the right of it. And Malris, too, in his own way. This place belongs to others now. And not just some figments of our memories.’ He shivered in the folds of his cloak. ‘Even the rocks seem haunted . . . and the wind . . . perhaps we should leave them be . . .’