Drink to Your Unhealth

From gifted soldier to drunken maniac...

After the wars against Morgoth, betrayal of her lover, and the ruin of Beleriand, Aurthiel was devastated. Still unwilling to return to Valinor, a distant paradise, she was left broke in Middle Earth. That was where the addiction began. Unable to figure out how all these elves, elves who also lost home, were able to rebuild in this Lindon, she retreated into isolation. In isolation, she found no warmth. Her friends came for her, but she pushed them out. She grew bitter. How could her best friend Mythrenniel and cousin Orotasarin marry when they knew Aurthiel's own lover abandoned her? How could all these elves not grieve, instead building in the skeletal remains of Ossiriand like nothing had happened? What was wrong with these people, carrying on when suffering was all she felt? How dare they!

She could only turn to one thing to bring her comfort. One thing could, even if temporarily, take it away.

The bottle.

Still, the more she drank her sorrows away, the more they came back tenfold in the morning. And the more she was drunk, the more of a fool she became outside the solitude of her little shack. So drunk and angry was she, she even accused Orotasarin and Mythrenniel on their very wedding day, on the floor of their wedding ceremony. And thus, even that deep bond was severed. The more she looked back, the more she wept. The more she remembered her idiotic actions while drunk, the more she became drunk to forget them. She was shunned by the elves in her small town in Lindon, even her old friends. She was completely alone, in a fortress of solitude. Nothing could comfort her but the very things that grieved her even more every day. That bottle…

Eventually, she would begin to heal. Eventually, she would reforge her friendships and clean herself up. Yet, just when she thought she pulled herself out of the ancient habit of drinking, something would cause her to fall back in again. Even within the Third Age, she struggles to control her drinking habits. Still, at least she never got as bad as she was in the early Second Age. She is slowly healing.