Beneath Starlit Skies

4

She stares with wide, hazy, and unseeing eyes. There is a glaze of shock and hurt coating them in a thin layer of unshed tears. She stares at him—or rather, she stares past him, blinking twice.

A wounded noise throbs from her throat and she feels a sudden pang of deep, deep, loss.

An emptiness—a void—unfillable.

She has lost something. She knows she has lost something. Something she can never reclaim again. She just cannot remember what it is.

She takes a deep calming breath and dries her tears.

(Avec courage... a memory whispers)

With courage... she thinks again, translating the strange language of her forgotten memories into another. Not the time for weakness.

The man—-Mairon looks uncomfortable and uncertain what to do with a crying child. He is even more uncertain of the reason why she cries.

(He does not, in fact, know what to do with crying children.)

Awkwardly, she sniffles, then dries her tears feeling embarrassed.

She has just cried in front of a complete stranger. A part of her is mortified. The other is already scrambling to collect the fragmented pieces of her dignity.

She feels she should explain but lacks the words to do so.

"Mairon" she points to him and then points to herself and shakes her head.

He understands, somehow, and she is so thankful for it.

She doesn't have a name.

Hastily, she finishes treating his wounds. Then pulls away and with one last uncertain glance, flees into the shadows of the pines.

He stares after her.

(Curiouser and curiouser...)

::

She retreats to the river, emotions swirling inside her distantly, like a faint echo. She needs time. She needs space. She needs—-to remember, to know, to understand—-something. So many thoughts and feelings were consuming her and building almost like a dam. And then it broke and all her pent up stress and sadness came gushing out, leaving her feeling exhausted and drained.

But it was her inability to remember her name that finally pushed her over the edge.

She throws a stone into the river and watches how droplets shoot up into the sky as it splashes. The silhouette of the small fish are chased away by the ripples made by the stone.

She reflects.

She has no idea how she got here or who she was before.

Memories evade her, leaving her only with vague, abstract, imprints and feelings.

Who am I? She thinks desperately, Who was I?

The river gives no answers other than it's quiet gurgle.

She cannot see her reflection.

::

She doesn't have a name.

Names are curious things. They hold power: to terrify, to persuade, to hold loyalty and bind people together or bring them apart.

The odds of him finding a nameless elven child are slim but not nothing, he supposes. An elven mother could have passed on mid-journey home but the odds of that happening are next to nothing. Elves only bear children on rare occasions—once in a blue moon, some might say. He knows conception among the Eldar is much more rare. They cherish their children and guard them fiercely, like dragons protecting their hoard.