Mourning

Journal entry, page 1

It's been years since the attack on Hultvis, but the nightmares are coming back stronger. Laegertha told me writing it down would help, granted, that was while I was in mourning. You would think everything that happened in the war it would help me forget.
I'm not kidding anyone when I say I've moved on. I haven't let a shred of it go and it's been eating me away inside this whole time.

The man kicks a pebble down the cobbled street of the market. His frigid, vivid but ancient blue eyes cast their glance over the selling vendors and the eager customers. It had been days, but the hollow and ever growing sadness was becoming all consuming. Like the ringing of a loud and off-key instrument, or a pan clattering in an empty room, it cannot be escaped.

In the valley of eve,

Fell the sun into sorrow.

The silver stars laid low,

Yet by darkling sky ungrieved.

Crimson was the still dawn,

The wind wailed down, the clear lake

Shone red in evil’s wake,

Yet none by the shore did mourn.

O forsaken land, o failing breath,

O fallen kin and cursed waste,

O unhappy fate I would embrace,

Yet by ill fortune scorned by death.

"Just take another step. Sometimes, that's all you can do, my sunshine. Is to just keep stepping."

Bread, Stitches's horse, grunts softly and shakes out his long mane again, freeing it of the pesky drops of water that drizzle from the sky, only to have it dampen and soak once again mere moments later. He trots a hoof on the ground, as though trying to shake the attention of his companion. Stitches had been this way for some time, though it was different at first.

This entry is found scribbled in the margins of Lômizimril's research notes, the neat but rather small Tengwar hand written in slightly smudged ink on one of the various scrolls she carries in a case in her pack. A few lines seem to have neat, straight lines drawn through them, as if they were deliberated and later marked as invalid for one reason or another, like chiseling away the blocky imperfections of a half-finished sculpture. 

The pillars of black smoke funneled together into the sky like a cluster of spears jutting into the earth. As Jonn reached the top of the last rocky hill, he saw where those “spears” converged: the small village where he had stayed peacefully for the past week. At the point where the spears of smoke ended, the fires began, flowing out like blood from a deep wound. Grass, straw, wood, and clay were the primary materials used to build the small group of crude huts making up the village. Everything burned or crumbled under the blazing heat.

 The night was crisp and clear, the skies unobstructed by clouds, allowing the infinite stars above to shine their ethereal light down on those still walking the lowly earth. The traveler recognized a few of the larger constellations known to him, out of habit and with awe at the immensity of the heavens.