A dream in which Ithilien is still unsullied and holy;
Sweeping through the fields of wildflowers like a sea of blooming colors; a rainbow in the grasses that parts to make way for footsteps light in leather as the figure dances through. A billowing cloak, deep blue like the sea, becomes unhinged from a silver cloak clasp and falls listlessly into the grasses, overwhelmed and taken in by the blooms. He will not come back to retrieve it, not for many years, he thinks.
His hands brush against the very tips of the flowers as he walks in an arrhythmic beat to that of the roaring waters to his right, the river rushing and crashing beside him as his fingers grow sticky with honey and dew. He doesn’t remember how he stumbled his way back into this field, to this river, but he knows better than to protest a good thing when it comes his way. He can feel the tall stalks of grass brushing up against his legs as he continues further on to a distant bluff--one that he swore he would see once more in the setting sun as he had seen it in the dawn.
He trips over a loose stone; ancient and yellow and weathered by the wilds, and he falls. He falls, splayed out into the shallow water in the center of a ring that was once something important, he is sure; that was once something beautiful and meaningful and that nurtured life. As he stands, tilting his head to look up the long shadow of a statue of a king whose name had been eroded from the base of the stone, he wonders if he has gone the same sad way--if his name had been eroded away. He could not remember it now, his first name. The one that came before Mallosson.
He wonders if that name still lives within him. He wonders if that life is still his, years and years and years prior. So many years ago that he cannot count them, for when he tries, they turn to water in the palm of his hand. He is fruitlessly trying to cup the memories, to hold them still so he can study them for one last time, but they stream through the narrow cracks in his fingers and stain the stones beneath him dark with wetness that had not risen over the shallow banks for years.
As he reaches down into the shadow of the statue, his hands seek in vain the stinging bite of a steel sword, but he does not find one. In its place, where it was left, he finds only a cluster of red carnations. As he brings them up, holding them tightly in his hands, their sweet scent overcomes him, and he breathes them in. When he exhales, letting their sweetness leave, he drops them onto the same breeze that stirs his hair and that had stolen his cloak, allowing even the blossoms to land gently in the river.
He follows the outstretched hand of the shadow of the king, running his fingers gently across the smooth and mossy stone as his feet fall into the river--he knows at the end what he will find. The cool shallow waters lap at his ankles and soak his boots all the way through, but for once, it is not harrowing, but refreshing. As the river grows deeper and his waist sinks further and his clothes weigh him down, he wonders how far he can go before the river will take him, too. Before he can find out, he drags himself out onto the muddy banks, instead choosing to act as the line between the rushing waves. Between them and the wildflowers that try to reach out and grab him by his wrist, to hold him and pull him back into their embrace.
When he reaches the end of the river, he drags himself up onto the old rocky outcropping, that same cliff that lets him look out over the beauty of all Ithilien; of all the lands of men and all the lands that the wild still had dominion over. It brings to mind distant memories of the plains of Nargothrond; the sweet flowers that flood his lungs, that leave him feeling as though he will drown on their nectar, and for a moment he considers it. That the bitterness should be left behind and that he should be filled fully with honey and forgiveness.
He blinks, and he is at the bottom of the waterfall. He is floating face-up in the river. Above he can see the cliff he was just standing upon, he can see the water as it comes crashing along the rocks, foaming white in their torrential downpour. He does not remember falling.
As the current carries him away, slowly, he watches the clouds, pink and orange and rosy like the dawn, slowly turn dark and to dusk. Something brushes against his hand and he picks it up; a red carnation, a blackthorn flower. He brings them both up and drinks in their scent, hoping that they can help him cling to the memories, or that they can take the place of the bitterness in his chest. In truth, for him, they do neither; they do little, save reminding him that he cannot live on the precipice forever. Waiting. Watching. Wondering if there is anything beyond what was left on the cliff face.
“Lilóteo,” they seem to say to him. His hair pools around his head like a halo, limned by the golden waters as the sun slips slowly away. “Where will you let this current take you?”
Before he gets the chance to answer their question, he feels something icy and cold grab him by the back of his neck and drag him beneath the waves of the water.
Mallosson throws himself out of the bed with a gasp, his chest heaving. As he falls to his knees on the floor, the wood hard beneath his skin, he coughs and heaves as though he could force out the water that was not really there. Wide-eyed and parsing his tongue against his lips desperately to calm his nerves, he looks up and finds something sitting on his bedside table that had not been there before--a small, red bloom.
