North Ithilien; winter; pre-dawn
“Can you not bear to let a man die in peace, elf?” Maerondil coughs weakly, bringing a hand up to brace against his chest. The scout’s body convulses harshly as the pain overtakes him, shuddering against the rock upon which he is propped upright. “Better that I die nobly by the sword, than ignobly in some treacherous trap sprung by orcs.”
“Better still that you should hope you do not die at all,” Mallosson counters softly. The patient hands of the elf had worked all night to stop the bleeding of the southron man’s many wounds, but his companion has lost much blood, and is growing weaker with the passing moments. “Do the men of your noble city have no faith in their healers?”
“You are a fool to think that this will not be the end of me,” the scout sighs, able to still himself for a few moments more. He is already draped in the ruined fabric of Mallosson’s dark cloak, having run out of bandages to staunch bleeding injuries days prior. Maerondil braces his hand against his side, warm and sticky beneath the thick leathers of his armor--they had not been enough to stop the passing of orcish blades. As he winces, Mallosson turns his face away.
“You are the most stubborn Man that I have had the misfortune to be assigned with, Maerondil,” the elf says as he busies himself with digging through his open satchel. Although the pack had once been filled with herbs and athelas, and other supplies suitable for healing, he now finds himself bare of anything further that he could use to tend to the injuries. “I have my doubts that this night shall take you. You are true of heart and strong of body, mellon, and your people await your triumphant return with news of what we have discovered.”
“Then they shall be waiting forever,” Maerondil exhales, another gentle cough bubbling beneath his breath. His breath is almost drowned out by the roar of the rushing river nearby. If Mallosson had only been faster; the elf laments silently to himself as he seeks, in vain, for something more that he could do to save the man. Mallosson was not quick enough to intercept the blow from the orc that had crept up behind Maerondil while the scout was busy with another--for that, they both now suffer dearly.
“Do you hear that?” Maerondil murmurs, and the slurring of his words throws Mallosson into a silent frenzy--the elf’s eyes fall upon the man in concealed concern. “The river; beneath the blasted shadow of this rock, I see it not. I wish to see the falls once more.”
Mallosson’s lips twitch into a frown beneath his helm; his mouth being the only visible part of his face to Maerondil, and had been for their weeks of travel. “I don’t think--”
“Please,” the other scout pleads. “Were you a Man you would have given up on me at the height of darkness and already stripped my body of armor to return me to the company. You are more a stubborn fool than I, elf, and so I beg of you one last favor--walk with me to the falls. You should see Ithilien in all of its beauty at sunrise. This could be your last chance.”
Mallosson lets his silence fade beneath the rushing river before he lets out a gentle sigh of his own. “Very well. Can you walk?” He reaches out to help the man up, but he is brushed away as Maerondil braces himself up against the side of the stone and drags himself to his feet. When he is not able to take even a step before stumbling, Mallosson rushes forward to help.
“Do not be a greater fool than you are already,” the elf chides, putting one arm around the man and draping Maerondil’s arm around his shoulder; as they walk, it is less of a shared effort and more so Mallosson dragging his companion along the riverbank. They pass beneath a great arch of a building now abandoned, reclaimed by the wilds and by the destruction of passing armies.
Mallosson can feel the tall grasses and the wildflowers of the hillside brushing against his legs as they amble slowly; ahead, he can already hear the roar of the waterfall as it pours down the steep cliff face. Beside him, all he can hear is Maerondil’s strained breathing as the man braces his free hand against one of his greater wounds, on his abdomen; he had left his sword behind at the rock.
“Can you smell that?” Maerondil coughs once they have walked for some distance, still ever so slow. “The wildflowers. I thought they would have all been killed off now by frost, but some still remain. It’s a sweet scent, isn’t it? Bittersweet?”
“It is a sweet scent,” Mallosson agrees in a gentle tone of voice; a lie, for all he can smell is the rotten and bitter stench of mortal death, ripe like wormwood on his tongue but twice as vile. “You seem familiar with these lands, perhaps more than most. Is that why you were sent to accompany me?”
“I was raised in these wilds. I never thought they would betray me.” Maerondil lifts his head as the white and foaming water of the falls come into view, and he smiles a tepid smile at the sigh. “Help me up onto the rocks--and don’t slip--and we shall share in the dawn to come.”
Mallosson does as he is instructed, helping to hoist the ailing man up onto the rocks that overlook the sheer drop of the sheets of water, plummeting to the ground far below in a cascade soon to be lit by the amber light of the sun. Mallosson climbs up alongside him, hesitating for a moment before sitting down as well. While Maerondil looks out on the dark horizon, growing lighter by the minute, his elven companion removes the mask that had concealed his face for so long.
“I should laugh,” Maerondil says with a pained chuckle; Mallosson opens one languid lid of his eyes to see what he is laughing about. “You don’t look so much older than me. Comelier, maybe, but not the shadow of a beard yet… boyish. Yet you have seen things that I could not see in ten lifetimes.”
“You would not want to have seen the things that I have seen in ten mans’ lifetimes,” Mallosson says, brushing back a loose strand of blond hair, dirtied by weeks away in travel. “But you are a Man who is neither old nor young; you have the start of a beard, Maerondil, though your face is not aged by time.”
His companion laughs and shakes his head. “You are wrong, elf. This?” He says, gesturing his hand out over the horizon; Ithilien in all its wild beauty--her rivers and her wildlife, her trees and her flowers dotting the hillside and landscapes, still lush even in the winter, lit up by a golden light of dawn in a dazzling array. “This I could see for ten thousand lifetimes. I will never grow old of this sight.”
“Tell me, elf,” he continues with a sharp inhale. “Will I live to yet see it again?” His dark eyes turn to meet Mallosson’s. For once, in all the bravado that he has come to know the young Gondorian to possess, he sees fear.
“The beauty of this place will live with you forever,” Mallosson answers in a tongue betrayed by a gentle tremor, a trip against his teeth. As he watches the man blink slowly and then look out upon the land spread out beneath them once more, he feels a pain in his chest.
“They say that you are not to ask questions of an elf,” Maerondil says, “that they will answer with both yes and no. I think there are some questions that are yet better left unanswered in such a way.” He closes his eyes. “I have one last favor to ask of you.”
Silence. Mallosson awaits his request.
“Bury me here, Mallosson. Do not take my body back to be burned on a pyre with the rest; bury me here in the wilds, where I belong.”
