Shortly after the Battle of Tumhalad.
All was cold.
It was wrong. The last thing she remembered was her stifled lungs, her burning body, the heat unbearable. Her right side was a-fire. All was a-fire.
But now only a black chill where she knew her body lay. Her fëa was still tethered to it, though it would take the barest tap of a hammer to send it flying to the West. But her mind wandered in memory and dream.
She saw the days she had just lived—all aflame. The blackened half melted helmet—the marred face, unrecognizable even to her yearning eyes, an empty shell of an Elf already departed to distant halls in the unreachable West.
Cold laughter and the burning rush of flame—would she ever be rid of them.
Hate stronger than her fear pulled her forward until the world again choked black and red in acrid smoke and she screamed for her father.
The echo of screams answered her desperate cry. She tried to remember her father’s voice, calm and reassuring. It would not come to her.
But another voice came to her memory, a voice that had quailed before the battle even came—her mother’s tear choked voice, sorrow-shaken and soft, too soft. Her fingers quivered cold as she plaited Liltare’s hair and tucked it beneath her hauberk. Her eyes pleaded, but she did not form the words to ask her to stay.
Her mother had stood to sing, but her words failed. But then Glirwing stood beside her, and Himdanel and Aeronros, and Inwiste’s soft silver voice at last found strength as she placed the tall helm on her husband’s head. Had she known he would not return?
The words wove around her, and she strained to hear them beneath the horrible laughter of the dragon, beneath the muffling of her fear and the deadness of the cold.
“Light of trees remembered, flowing silver clear,
Light of halls where laughter streams,
With golden lamps a-glimmering.
Forth bright, forth now, spears as silver rays
Forth gleam, forth hope, from dusk to break of day.”
Her heart lifted as she thought of them, but then it seemed she heard a slithering voice in her mind, and dread entombed her. All around her Elves had fallen, fallen, who could remain? Aeronros, brave though he was, he had already been injured. He would not have run—surely now he must dwell houseless beyond the sundering seas.
And Glirwing, her mother, Himdanel? What of Togon and Elmiror, so bright with love and joy? Nothing stood now between them and death. She could not stand between them.
The light of Nargothrond faded and the memory of their muster. But she thought she still heard Glirwing’s voice, clear as the stars. Maybe one of them lived, just one. A Elbereth! Just one.
She tried to picture the halls of Nargothrond and summon to her sight the stars in blazing fire above the shimmering river. Naught but flames, consuming flames filled her mind. But Liltare clung harder to the fragile gossamer thread that tied her to her hroa and strained for the song that the Constrainer’s wiles could not mar.
Poetry credit to Glirwing, Aeronros, and Himdanel.
