i love your writings so much!!! your círdan ones are my favorite. he doesn't have enough writing for him so i love when i find a story or two. i was wondering if you could write a piece where the reader is having a really bad panic attack due to stress from a bunch of responsibilities. they're overwhelmed and their muscles are tense and they finally break- but círdan is there to calm them and be a steady presence.
if you don't feel comfortable writing this. feel free to ignore! thank you
-🍊
Círdan version below.
🌊 𝓬í𝓻𝓭𝓪𝓷
The weight has been pressing down for so long that you’ve stopped noticing it—until now. Until it becomes unbearable. It starts as a twinge, a whisper of unease that coils around your ribs, tightening, squeezing. Then, all at once, it crashes into you. Your chest constricts, each breath shallow and ragged, as if the air has turned to molasses. The harder you try to inhale, the more your lungs rebel, rejecting the air like a foreign thing. Your heart hammers—too fast, too hard—each beat a violent drum against your ribs. It hurts. A dull, aching pressure, then a sharp pang as panic grips your body with an iron fist.
Your hands tremble. First a small, involuntary twitch, then full-blown shaking. You clench them into fists, nails digging into your palms deep enough to leave crescents in your skin, but it doesn’t stop. The tremors spread up your arms, seizing your shoulders, making them lock so tight they ache. You can’t move. You can’t control it.
The room warps. The edges blur, twisting and pulsing like a mirage, the colors too bright, too sharp. Every sound stretches and distorts, voices blending into a low, incomprehensible hum. Someone calls your name, but it’s distant, hollow. The words slip past you, unreachable. The only thing you hear clearly is the pounding in your skull, the rush of blood in your ears, and the uneven, gasping rhythm of your own breath.
You tell yourself to keep it together. You always do. Just breathe. Just push through. You try to count, to ground yourself, to grip onto something—anything—to anchor yourself. But your fingers won’t listen, won’t unclench, and your mind is spiraling, spinning out of reach. Then—something small. A tiny, insignificant failure. A missed deadline. An unanswered message. A single task forgotten in the avalanche of everything else. It shatters you.
The dam breaks, and suddenly, you are drowning in it. A sob claws its way up your throat, but it sticks, choking you. You lurch forward, body folding in on itself, arms wrapping around your middle in a desperate attempt to hold yourself together. But it doesn’t work. You’re unraveling, breaking apart in pieces too jagged to catch.
The walls press closer. The air thickens, suffocating. Your head spins, a dizzy, sickening sensation that makes your stomach clench. The floor tilts beneath you. You squeeze your eyes shut, but the darkness only makes it worse. You can’t move. You can’t think. You can’t breathe.
The panic is everything now, crashing over you in waves, sweeping you under. Your body is no longer yours, hijacked by something stronger, something relentless. Tears burn down your cheeks, but you don’t remember when they started falling. A sob wracks through you, your chest convulsing, but it only makes the air harder to find.
Somewhere, a voice cuts through the storm—a quiet, steady sound. A hand touches your shoulder. The contact is grounding, but it feels distant, like you’re floating just beyond your own skin. You try to hold onto it, to latch onto something real. But you are still lost, still gasping, still fighting against the invisible force that won’t let you go. And for a moment, you wonder if it ever will.
A voice—low, ancient, carrying the weight of centuries—cuts through the storm. Not sharply, not forcefully, but like the pull of the tide, steady and inevitable. “Y/N” A hand rests on your shoulder—light, warm, impossibly steady. It doesn’t jolt you or demand your attention, but its presence is undeniable, anchoring you when everything else feels like it’s slipping away. Círdan.
You don’t see him at first. The room is still warping, your vision still swimming, your body still locked in the iron grip of panic. But he is there. Unmoving. Unshaken. And somehow, you know he will not leave. The weight on your shoulder shifts, not pressing, just present. The gentle warmth of his touch seeps through the storm raging beneath your skin, quiet but firm against the tremors racking your frame. A silent reassurance.
“Breathe.” Not a command. Not an expectation. An offering. A reminder, as simple and constant as the waves against the shore. You try. The breath comes shallow, ragged, unsteady. Your chest still feels like it’s caving in. But Círdan does not rush you. He kneels beside you, moving with the slow grace of the tide, his presence vast but never overwhelming. His robes whisper softly against the floor as he settles in, as if he has all the time in the world to sit here with you. “The sea is never still,” he murmurs, voice as deep as the ocean, as soft as the wind over open waters. “Yet it does not fight the tide. Do not fight this, child. Let it pass through you.”
His words slip past the noise in your mind, threading through the panic with the patience of one who has seen ages pass. There is no urgency in his tone, no expectation that you must master yourself this instant. Only quiet understanding. Your hands are still clenched into fists, nails biting deep into your palms. He notices. Slowly, carefully, he reaches for one of them. His touch is impossibly gentle, as if he understands exactly how fragile you feel in this moment.
“Here,” he says, guiding your fingers to unfurl with the same patience he has for the shifting tides. His palm is warm against yours, his grasp neither firm nor weak—just steady. Just there. You don’t even realize you’ve exhaled until he nods slightly, as though acknowledging the small victory of that single breath. Then, with the same quiet patience, he lifts his hand from yours and brings it to your face.
The roughened pads of his fingers brush against your cheek, steady and sure, as if grounding you further in the present. His thumb catches the damp trail of tears, smoothing them away without a word. You flinch at the touch—not in fear, but in surprise at the sheer gentleness of it. He does not pull away. Instead, his fingers move with the lightest pressure, tucking a stray strand of hair behind your ear, brushing it back from your face as if to remind you that you are still here. That you are not lost.
“The worst of it will pass,” he says, quiet but sure. “Not at once. But it will.” Your breathing is still uneven, your body still wracked with tension, but—he’s right. The crushing weight hasn’t lifted, but it has loosened, if only by the smallest degree. He does not tell you to stop shaking. He does not tell you to be strong. He only stays, hands warm against your skin, letting you feel the solid warmth of his presence.
“I have seen tempests rage across the sea,” he murmurs, voice like the hush of waves on the shore. “I have watched them churn and crash with fury, relentless and wild. But no storm lasts forever.” His thumb traces one last soothing line across your cheek before his hand falls away, but his presence does not lessen. If anything, it deepens.
“You are not lost.” The words are spoken with certainty, like a truth as old as the world. Something in you unravels—not in the way you were breaking earlier, but in the way tightly bound ropes loosen after years of strain. The room is still too bright. Your body is still too tense. But Círdan remains beside you, unwavering, patient. He does not pull you to your feet, does not ask you to move before you are ready. He is simply there. And slowly, breath by breath, the storm inside you begins to ebb.
The storm has not fully passed, but its grip loosens, retreating in slow, weary waves. Your breaths are no longer sharp gasps but uneven, trembling inhales. It is still too much—your limbs are heavy, your chest aches, and exhaustion clings to you like sea mist after a storm. But you are no longer drowning. Círdan does not move away. He does not pry, does not demand explanations you cannot yet give. He only watches, steady and patient, with the quiet understanding of one who has seen tempests rise and fall a thousand times over.
“You bear much,” he says at last, his voice a low murmur, deep as the tide. “But you are not alone in this burden.” The words settle over you, not with the weight of expectation, but with a quiet certainty that does not require a response. It is not pity, nor is it empty reassurance. It is simply truth—offered gently, freely, like the sea meeting the shore. A shudder runs through you, though whether from lingering fear or sheer exhaustion, you do not know. Your body is too tense, too tightly wound, like a rope pulled to its limit. The weight of everything still lingers, pressing at the edges of your mind. But then—
Warmth. Círdan’s hand moves, slow and careful, running through your hair in a soothing motion, his fingers threading through the strands with practiced ease. The touch is light, deliberate—not to restrain, not to control, but to comfort. To remind you that you are still here. Still breathing. Still held. The motion is hypnotic, steady as the lapping waves. Your body sags under the quiet reassurance, the tension in your shoulders easing, little by little. He does not rush you, does not pull you away from the last echoes of your fear. He only stays, grounding you with the quiet weight of his presence.
Then, carefully, his arm shifts. The change is subtle, almost imperceptible—until you feel the warmth of his embrace, solid and unwavering. He does not force it upon you, does not demand you take solace in it. But he offers, and when you do not resist, he draws you closer. The motion is slow, deliberate, as if he understands how fragile you still feel. His arms are strong, steady, cradling you against him—not as something broken, but as something precious. He holds you as one would hold something long lost and newly found, with a patience that does not waver, a quiet presence that speaks of lifetimes of understanding.
Your forehead rests against the fabric of his robes, the scent of salt and wind wrapping around you like a distant memory. His hand continues its slow path through your hair, a quiet, ceaseless rhythm that grounds you, anchors you. “The sea is patient,” he murmurs, his voice a lull in the stillness. “It wears down stone, reshapes the land. But it does not rush.” You do not know if he speaks of the tides or of you. Perhaps both.
Your body is still weary, your mind still frayed at the edges. But for the first time in what feels like an eternity, you do not feel like you are drowning alone. Círdan does not offer easy answers. He does not tell you the burden will vanish, nor does he promise that the storms will never return. But he stays. And perhaps that is enough. “Rest,” he says, quiet and sure. And this time, you listen.