[She had been born in the years of darkness, a swift shadow under starlight. The trees of old Doriath had been not just her home but her teachers, her mentors, they had been the siblings her parents had never given her and the aunts and uncles she had never known. For centuries it was them and the starlight.
When she was a babe she had run between trees, barefoot on dark moss, and when the monsters came (they always came) it was up in the branches of those same trees her parents hid her, holding her tight between them. Mithiel’s mother’s heart had always thundered so loudly against her chest that sometimes she had wondered if the wolves and other beasts might not hear her and find them, but her father was always there too, calm and sweet, talking to them through that family bond, distracting his favourite two people from death that glowered at them from the floor of their beloved but still wild home.
Peace had come when Thingol and Melian wed, the Maiar casting her protection around them all and slowly letting them all bask in a kind of safety that had never existed east of the sea.
Doriath had been Mithiels whole world, her everything. She spent her days studying the trees and tending to them, she catalogued every animal and plant within the girdle, found all the pathways and secret places and sometimes she even visited the city, Menegroth with it’s thousand caves. There she learned the sword and the bow (her parents insisted) but even with the war bubbling and broiling she had felt safe in their little Kingdom, untouched and untouchable.
Until it wasn’t. Until Luthien was gone from them and Thingol chose hubris like so many great elves before him had.
Doriath didn’t fall, it shattered. The host of the Valar came, golden as the first dawning of the sun but far more damning. The details of what happened floated back to her on the wind, words from fleeing elves, travelling mortal men, treacherous dwarves who didn’t see her in the trees high above their pikes.
Her parents died before the ground rumbled, cracking and tilting beneath her and tilting her oldest friends, toppling trees as old as the land on which they had once stood. Melian had long fled away, Thingol was dead, the forest a ruin of what it once was with her and only a few of the elves scrambling to save centuries of knowledge, the arts of their people, the crafts they had laboured long years over.
How could lifetimes of memories and work mean so little? How could she let it all get dragged down into the hell that had once held Morgoth and his twisted creations?
Mithiel had tried, books and art, the fine textiles her mother had woven, all of her fathers maps. Their journals, the marks of their lives that said they were here and that they mattered, they weren’t just elves lost to the shadow like so many before them.
But tumbling dirt and falling trees became thick mud. It wasn’t a deafening roar, it was an insidious creeping. First only in the western woods, closest Sirion and Esdalduin where the ground at first was damp and smelt oddly like salt, but then more and more the brine and mud thickened, and then it was over her ankles, then her knees. Minute by minute, day by day it crept up and stole parts of her beloved home away, a thief who cared not whether it was day or night. Soon it was swamped, the ents had fled and the Huorns and trees that remained were beyond her to save (and always had been, if she could ever admit it to herself), as was much of the works of her people that had already escaped.
She stopped only when she was pulled out by a marchwarden, an elf she had known since childhood, and set on a silver horse, sent after the dwindling caravan of their people who had not been slain in the dark days after the girdle fell.
Her mind went blank. It was too much. All of it. She breathed only because she knew her parents would want her to. Breathe, little petal her father’s voice echoes in her pointed ears as if he is right there, a physical shield for her and her mother against a world that only knew how to be cruel. Distantly, she felt she heard her mother humming. But the world still blurred, time drifted, and for a while Mithiel forgot herself and her troubles.
Perhaps that is why she did not find it so strange when she blinked and found herself sitting on more sand than she had seen in her long life, the sun hotter than she had known as well, beating down on her. She looks around, her features haunted and still as she tries to make sense of it all.
As fast as she knew the east was green and fertile, and hadn’t she been on a horse? She frowns.]
What is this land? [She speaks as if she expects the land itself to answer her as she pushes to her feet, not even making a dent in the sand as she moves over it, never sinking, never disturbing a grain as if she was not even there. She turns around looking for someone, or something. A tree? A person? Her horse? Who could say. She half expects to step back and land in briny mud again, or to wake staring at the torn bodies of her parents, clutching each other in the flower garden her father had so carefully tended, their chests ripped open, reddish-black staining their clothes and small, heavy footprints leading back into the woods.
But she doesn’t. There is no briny mud, no bloody tableau of fear and love staining her childhood home and ripping her heart out as well as they might have if she had been there when they came.
There is just sand. Seemingly endless sand. And someone…]
Hello? I know someone is here. [Though whether or not they know Sindarin, she could not be sure, and if they were dwarves or men–what then? Or orcs? She had no weapons other than the hunting knife on her belt and a few arrows for her bow. It wouldn’t be enough if the likes of what she had seen lately visited her as they had visited her family, and there were no trees to hide herself in either.
And when I chose to live there was no joy – it’s just a line I crossed
When she was a babe she had run between trees, barefoot on dark moss, and when the monsters came (they always came) it was up in the branches of those same trees her parents hid her, holding her tight between them. Mithiel’s mother’s heart had always thundered so loudly against her chest that sometimes she had wondered if the wolves and other beasts might not hear her and find them, but her father was always there too, calm and sweet, talking to them through that family bond, distracting his favourite two people from death that glowered at them from the floor of their beloved but still wild home.
Peace had come when Thingol and Melian wed, the Maiar casting her protection around them all and slowly letting them all bask in a kind of safety that had never existed east of the sea.
Doriath had been Mithiels whole world, her everything. She spent her days studying the trees and tending to them, she catalogued every animal and plant within the girdle, found all the pathways and secret places and sometimes she even visited the city, Menegroth with it’s thousand caves. There she learned the sword and the bow (her parents insisted) but even with the war bubbling and broiling she had felt safe in their little Kingdom, untouched and untouchable.
Until it wasn’t. Until Luthien was gone from them and Thingol chose hubris like so many great elves before him had.
Doriath didn’t fall, it shattered. The host of the Valar came, golden as the first dawning of the sun but far more damning. The details of what happened floated back to her on the wind, words from fleeing elves, travelling mortal men, treacherous dwarves who didn’t see her in the trees high above their pikes.
Her parents died before the ground rumbled, cracking and tilting beneath her and tilting her oldest friends, toppling trees as old as the land on which they had once stood. Melian had long fled away, Thingol was dead, the forest a ruin of what it once was with her and only a few of the elves scrambling to save centuries of knowledge, the arts of their people, the crafts they had laboured long years over.
How could lifetimes of memories and work mean so little? How could she let it all get dragged down into the hell that had once held Morgoth and his twisted creations?
Mithiel had tried, books and art, the fine textiles her mother had woven, all of her fathers maps. Their journals, the marks of their lives that said they were here and that they mattered, they weren’t just elves lost to the shadow like so many before them.
But tumbling dirt and falling trees became thick mud. It wasn’t a deafening roar, it was an insidious creeping. First only in the western woods, closest Sirion and Esdalduin where the ground at first was damp and smelt oddly like salt, but then more and more the brine and mud thickened, and then it was over her ankles, then her knees. Minute by minute, day by day it crept up and stole parts of her beloved home away, a thief who cared not whether it was day or night. Soon it was swamped, the ents had fled and the Huorns and trees that remained were beyond her to save (and always had been, if she could ever admit it to herself), as was much of the works of her people that had already escaped.
She stopped only when she was pulled out by a marchwarden, an elf she had known since childhood, and set on a silver horse, sent after the dwindling caravan of their people who had not been slain in the dark days after the girdle fell.
Her mind went blank. It was too much. All of it. She breathed only because she knew her parents would want her to. Breathe, little petal her father’s voice echoes in her pointed ears as if he is right there, a physical shield for her and her mother against a world that only knew how to be cruel. Distantly, she felt she heard her mother humming. But the world still blurred, time drifted, and for a while Mithiel forgot herself and her troubles.
Perhaps that is why she did not find it so strange when she blinked and found herself sitting on more sand than she had seen in her long life, the sun hotter than she had known as well, beating down on her. She looks around, her features haunted and still as she tries to make sense of it all.
As fast as she knew the east was green and fertile, and hadn’t she been on a horse? She frowns.]
What is this land? [She speaks as if she expects the land itself to answer her as she pushes to her feet, not even making a dent in the sand as she moves over it, never sinking, never disturbing a grain as if she was not even there. She turns around looking for someone, or something. A tree? A person? Her horse? Who could say. She half expects to step back and land in briny mud again, or to wake staring at the torn bodies of her parents, clutching each other in the flower garden her father had so carefully tended, their chests ripped open, reddish-black staining their clothes and small, heavy footprints leading back into the woods.
But she doesn’t. There is no briny mud, no bloody tableau of fear and love staining her childhood home and ripping her heart out as well as they might have if she had been there when they came.
There is just sand. Seemingly endless sand. And someone…]
Hello? I know someone is here. [Though whether or not they know Sindarin, she could not be sure, and if they were dwarves or men–what then? Or orcs? She had no weapons other than the hunting knife on her belt and a few arrows for her bow. It wouldn’t be enough if the likes of what she had seen lately visited her as they had visited her family, and there were no trees to hide herself in either.
Fuck.]