3 months ago
“Wretched girl! Did my beatings teach you nothing?” the man’s sharp voice punctured straight through her bones as she stood completely and utterly frozen. Her legs shook as her fingernails wrapped so hard against her mother’s sea blue dress it almost tore against the delicate fabric.
“F-Father- please-“ Fillegedhiel’s voice quivered as she scurried further and further back into the broken dresser.
“Filthy dog! I am the Captain and that is what you shall address me by!” his yell echoed throughout the marble bedchamber as he stomped towards his daughter.
“C-Captain, please, please!” she shrieked when she saw his raised fist. This was not the first time he found her clinging onto to the last remnants of her mother’s spirit, yet each time he bolted the dresser she still managed to find a way of breaking it's locks.
“Are you well? Are you? Answer me!”, he didn’t bother removing his steel scaled gloves but instead outreached his hand and shoved her head into one of the wooden drawers.
“Yes! Yes! I am well!” she shouted back, one hand pulling the dress into her chin whilst the other pushing hard against his armor-clad chest in protest.
“Then tell me why you aspire such a thirst for disobeying my orders!” he grabbed onto the crown of her head and screamed into her ear.
“It is mine! It is mine and you have no right to withhold it from me!” her voice broke slightly as his grip tightened mercilessly against her scalp. He lingered there a moment, simply smiling down in satisfaction as clear agony drenched her tear stained face. He failed to relent even as her screams sailed deep within the Swan Knights halls, attracting the likes of chambermaids and tower guards now awaiting by the door for orders.
“You are welcome to watch but if you wish your children food tonight I suggest you keep your mouths shut!” he snapped his head back to glare at them and relaxed only as they began to fade away. It was then, as the men and woman tore away their frightened eyes for what seemed the millionth time, that Fillegedhiel truly knew she would forever lose this battle.
The Captain saw it. Of course he could, for deep within her eyes was a bottomless pit of desolation and despair as dark and as cold as the earth that covered her mother’s grave. He mockingly laughed in her ear, “Why I have the only right my little bird, for I own you.”
She spat at him and with an unknown spur of energy yanked his hand away from her head, "I wish you dead, dead do you hear me, I wish you dead instead of her!”
The sound of metal against skin ended in seconds as she slumped back against the dresser with a loud thud. Metal was all she could taste as a thick line of blood dribbled slowly down her mouth and onto the dress she still firmly pressed against her chin. She slowly sank, head slumped as her whole body shook violently before stilling motionless. It was as though it had never even happened, the smack across the face, the lowering of her heavy body onto the floor, the sound of scurrying footsteps and the crash of bedroom doors slamming shut.
Hours and hours she lay, whimpering undisturbed. Until finally the chill of the morning air forced her to pry from the floor and crawl to the washroom. She sat, back against the door as the sting of her split lip ached painfully and the dread in her heart cried in desperation, "M-Mother...h-help...me...p-please."
All loss of hope seemed final until a strange glint of light on the washroom floor distracted her attention. She searched around frantically as her eyes landed on a piece of decorative seashell seeming to have come loose from the floors surface, she lent to reach for it and noted how incredibly sharp it's edge seem to be cut. Examining the shell back and forth in her palms, a sudden bolt of lightening shot through her veins and without much thought began searing at her hair. Swiftly, the once long strands began falling into her mother's dress. She looked upon the shells reflective surface one last time and saw someone she did not know, a boy, a soot covered and blooded boy.
Hurriedly she replaced the shell, gathered the hair into the dress and flung herself out of the bedroom and back to the forge for a change of clothes and supplies. Sheer adrenaline moved her through the city as her hooded cloak spun in the air like a whirlwind towards the departing dock. Not caring to ask of the destination, she jumped onto the nearest ship and to her luck the men were so consumed in their haste to leave Dol Amroth that one glance of her short hair, dirty face and swollen jaw, seemed to convince them she were merely nothing more than a poor washer boy. The ship slowly gained speed and gradually, as she stood with her hands gripped tightly along the railings, the city appeared smaller and smaller.
"You shall never own me..."
