having intense teleporno brainrot right now so enjoy this little ficlet set in the immediate aftermath of the kinslaying at doriath and loss of elured and elurin 🙃
Celeborn stands in the cowering forest and watches the dull glow of his simmering, sinking Doriath. To observe such a tragedy is a privilege, he knows. To look downwards is a blessing. The ground will be bare, he thinks vaguely, ashen after such devastation. The heather may grow again one day but the grasses are gone entirely, half-buildings standing in the dirt like the jutting teeth of a dried-out carcass. And what of the flowers? Would niphredil grow around Doriath if Doriath grew no more?
At his feet sits failure: thin air shaped like babes in the wood. He tries to hope. Convince himself that the lack of bodies might mean that they have, in some way survived, even if captured, even if taken away and held for ransom. The soldiers, after all, are kin to his beloved. He knows of the frightening resilience of children, the way green branches and saplings bend and twist in winds that would shatter a towering oak. Somehow, this does not reassure Celeborn, who last saw them against the backdrop of a roaring blaze. Resilience did not guarantee immortality.
Could the little princes truly be living? Could he truly believe that every single child in Doriath has escaped as unscathed as the three year old princess heading the refugee column, smuggled out in a damned vase? Do earthquakes still at nursery doors? Are swords less sharp when the skulls are soft? Does floodwater withdraw when cradles float? Are saplings spared when the forest is set ablaze? Do little fingers thaw when the spring sky weeps? And what of the flowers?
When the left-behind horses start to scream, thinly like torn linen in the wind, Celeborn wonders whether it is fear alone that makes them cry, or the anticipation of a world which no longer has the strength to bear a Doriath. Or perhaps it is the betrayal that unseats their sanity: the horrifying realisation that the men who set the city ablaze swung their swords from horseback. He stands silently among the trees, unable to move, and thinks, this world will not end in Dagor Dagorath. This world will fade as the Eldar fade and the horses scream, with the slow understanding that trust given to kin is trust misgiven. The horses are screaming. The horses are screaming and the children are dead.
