Author's note: This relates to background information rather than ingame events, and takes place partially in dreams. Narrators may be less reliable than they appear in the mirror. Not suitable for consumption by those who adhere to an extremely conservative interpretation of Tolkien's lore.
Content note: Contains oblique references to topics that some may find distressing.
***
When I rise again, I am beneath stone. Vine-wrapped columns stretch in sculpted gyres to a ceiling left smooth in places and rough in others, like waves breaking over an unspoiled shore.
I think I hear gulls crying in the distance, but that cannot be right.
I am here to heal, they tell me. Nobody asks where Echuirel and I were travelling back from when the ambush took us, and perhaps this is because they already know. The shame of it burns worse than dying. Sometimes I think I catch the word Naugrim from conversations outside.
Then again, I also hear my sister screaming in the far reaches of the forest, and see the faces of my would-be-murderers in the rugged shadows of the rock, so I have little cause to trust my perceptions this night.
***
This much I know: I am not dead.
Moss lies wet against my cheek. The forest murmurs safety and revival, quiet as a falling leaf. I ache. My body is cold, my legs and arms leagues distant from the directives of my soul - but I am not dead.
I do not yet know whether this is a mercy.
***
"This is an ill thing."
An elvish voice; feminine, unfamiliar. Belatedly, I realise it was a Silvan arrow that pierced my tormentor's throat, and I am grateful it is my own people who found us here. Others might not understand.
Another speaks. "They are both passed, then?"
Someone brushes their fingers against the skin of my throat. I feel bruising there. "No," she says. "The ellon yet breathes, but his life is far from certain."
I close my eyes. My sister's feä is gone. In this moment, I think of how easy it would be to let go and follow her. In this moment, I am finding it hard to remember why I did not want to die.
Someone lays a cloak over me.
"What do we do with him?"
Nobody else speaks for a breath or two. Finally, one of them turns my head, though my eyes cannot focus on her face.
"They say that when our forebears awoke beside the Cuiviénen, they looked upon the night sky, and loved the world for the first time."
Above us, birdsong heralds the last fadings of daylight. Small animals burrow into soft loam, their feet whispering through the fallen leaves. Somewhere in the distance, nothing has happened, and the forest lives on as it has always done, even unto the dark.
My rescuer picks a fragment of something from my hair, wipes a smear of orcish blood from my forehead. Her voice is quiet.
"The canopy is clear up ahead, and we must rest and tend our wounds before we carry on. Lay him there so he can see the stars."
***
Death is not the end, if you believe what the sages say. My kind have little concern for such things, not when there is so much proof around us that life continues regardless of whether we are there to heed it. Mushrooms bloom where wood decays; new leaves grow to replace those which fell the year before. What matters where the soul of a single elf goes, so long as the trees stand to remember us?
Even these ancient halls speak with the hands of the sculptors that wrought them. Long after they are gone, their love for the work will remain, though I know not who will be there to witness it.
They say we all become the forest, in time.
So death is not the end, either way. But I see now that survival, too, is fissiparous. I have not set foot outside since I was brought here, and yet I am scattered to the wind like the fading embers of autumn, like the tail-ends of my braid as it fell.
Perhaps Echuirel died so she would stay whole.
Every night I feel pieces of myself fleeing into the dark.
***
I remember little after they lay me beneath the stars. Someone gives me food and water; someone else murmurs that I might live yet. Eventually, dawn comes, and I walk.
One of the others carries Echuirel in his arms, wrapped in the same cloak they had used to cover me. I cannot look at her. I hope they have at least shaded her eyes. The sunlight is blinding, even through the trees.
My false foot has been retrieved in one piece, though it has seen better days. I am given back my weapons. I have no arrows left, but my knife, at least, is still useful. When my braid brushes between my shoulder-blades and startles me, I cut it off and cast it into a stream. My rescuers pry the blade from my hands before I can start on anything else.
***
Kolbrand writes to me. I ignore his letters. I think perhaps I burn them - or else someone takes them away again. I am not ready to think about him.
Or anyone. My mother and father look upon me with a pity I scarce deserve. Do they not already know this was all my fault?
Sometimes, I move to speak with my sister, to unburden my grief with her as we have so often done for one another in the past. Then I remember she is gone, and mourning washes over me like the tide.
***
I wake slowly.
It is twilight; the sun hangs low above the treetops, casting a golden glow through the canopy. The air smells sweet and green. Around me, the forest stirs and breathes. A hundred different creatures call to each other, and their simple concerns comfort me.
I do not remember how I came here. There is darkness in the distance, creeping in from the long shadows of the trees. I should get up, I think, but there are hands holding me down that I cannot see.
I think I am dreaming. I think I will die here. Both these things are true.
My rescuers stand about me, pale-faced and still. I want to call to them, but the words stop in my throat like a foreign tongue. I scrape my fingers against the soft loam, trying to move.
Nothing happens. I am dying. I am -
- back in the halls of the Elvenking, gasping, and the healer's hand is cool on my forehead. She is kind, despite my transgressions.
“It is not surprising that your dreams should disturb you thus,” she tells me. “Few elves have survived this manner of violence.”
"There was nothing to survive," I say, quickly. "I was saved. It did not happen."
She looks at me with a pity I scarce deserve.
***
My hair is growing long again. I ask Kolbrand for his knife. He refuses to hand it over.
"Don't be a fool," he tells me.
I raise my voice at him, I think. I'm not certain. I might still be dreaming. I do not know why Kolbrand is here, nor do I remember his arrival. A dwarf would not be welcome in these halls. When I tell him so, he is angry.
"Where do you think you are, exactly?" he snaps, and I cannot answer.
***
Terror haunts my nights. I wonder if my feä might depart while I lie resting, but it does not, and I do not yet know whether this is a mercy.
The healers come and go. Sometimes I refuse to acknowledge them. I play my harp to pass the hours between, and to fill the silence with an easier sound. At other times, I tell Echuirel about my dreams. She seems sad. I don't care to remember why.
***
Kolbrand writes to me again. They say he has been asking for me at the borders. He worries for me, but they will not permit him to visit. I fear he will try to venture into the forest alone. It is no place for a dwarf, and so, finally, I write back.
I lie to him. I tell him Echuirel was cut down. Bad enough that he apparently knows about me already. Let her memory stay pristine in the heart of at least one who loved her, for I cannot think of her now without also thinking of her death.
I tell him not to visit me. I tell him I will need time. I am delaying the inevitable; I do not deserve his pity.
I worry that if I see him, I will blame him. But I keep that to myself.
***
I wander the halls. My people have started to call me Rethor - one who remains, who endures. I am sure they believe it to be a compliment, but all it does is serve as a reminder.
They find work for me. There is much to be done in Felegoth, so I delude myself that I can be useful. I fetch and mend and maintain and I speak to nobody if I can help it.
In the evenings, I play my harp, and if anyone listens, I care not.
***
My parents tell me I am beginning to seem more like myself again. I try to remember what that felt like.
My recovery has been slow. I am not certain what I expected. My wounds, the ones I can see, are still raw. They weep in rivulets, seeping black or red or clear into the pillow against my cheek, though the stains are always gone when I wake, and the healers do not seem to notice.
Echuirel’s presence comforts me while I sleep. We speak of our lives, our childhoods. She sings while I play. We share meals, though she never eats anything. She does not seem to realise she is dead, and I decide not to remind her.
***
The forest calls to me. I hear the rustling of leaves in the breeze, and the quiet murmur of animals rising to greet the sun. The scent of sap is heady on the air. Has winter passed already so quickly?
I stay inside. I play my harp. I burn more letters. I limit myself to one bath a day, and set aside the scrubbing-brush. My wounds feel a little better for it, albeit no less visible. Strange that nobody can see when I am bleeding.
I dream of the sea.
***
In midwinter, the sun shines warm on frosted grasses and bare branches. The forest stirs in response to its heat, stretching out as if waking, snatching a brief reprieve from the dark. It whispers to me of the coming spring, of a pity I scarce deserve.
I would venture out and tell my troubles to the birds but they would not understand. I think perhaps I will stay here. I think, perhaps, I will leave the forest and never return. I think that a part of my soul is already gone, a tattered shroud of love lain over where my sister now rests. All of these things are true.
***
I write to Kolbrand. I tell him it is over.
He does not write back for a long time.
***
In twenty years, I will emerge from these halls and pass through the wood one final time, leaving behind my shame in paper and ink. I will tell them where my sister and I had been that day, and of how I once loved someone I never should have loved, and that Echuirel died because of me.
In twenty years, I will set aside the betrothal-bead that I wear about my neck. In twenty years, my hair will grow long again, and a Lorien elf with a sweet smile will pull it from its tie and teach me that there is nothing to fear from love but the leaving of it. In twenty years, a wise, scarred warrior will tell me between words that my sister chose to die, and that perhaps I might have chosen life. In twenty years I will play music without it hurting.
I will not recover the missing pieces I left behind. Part of me will always remain there, beneath the stone, gasping for breath as someone tells me that I am only dreaming, that none of it is real. That the dead do not return, and I am still alive, and some of these things that happened never really happened, and I do not know, I do not think I will ever know, whether this is a mercy or not.
