Music for this Chapter:
I spoke very little, as we traveled the Mirkwood Forest, for grief pressed so heavily upon me, it was as a great weight, pinning me down numbly so that I would not fly apart.
It felt vaguely as if I were not in my body, but off somewhere else, floating in water.
I knew that I was in shock, and though Tauriel would speak to me every once in a while, her words to me were muffled.
"... if you need some water, My Lady?"
"What?" I heard some of her query. "No," I said.
But she watched me often. She had tried gathering an idea of what had happened, why, suddenly, her king was sending their Healer away. She had asked me timid questions.
But I could not speak of it. I could not. I could not bear to say it.
"I cannot say," I told her blankly, and she had frowned, but did not inquire further. Every once in a while, she would look to Feren and they would exchange worried glances.
If I were in a normal state, I would have felt sorry for their confusion and concern. But I was overcome by muted dread.
The idea of being so far away from him felt to me, now, as a death, as the withholding of my own breath.
My love. My only love. He had sent me away from him. He had banished me from his world, even though he and his people had become mine.
My mind comprehended why... only my heart refused to accept it.
It occurred to me that my cheeks were wet with tears, falling steadily as I sat upon my horse, saying nothing. Yet I did not feel myself weeping, I did not make a sound. My face felt as empty as a blank scroll. Yet tears fell there just the same.
Tauriel said something about stopping and "allowing her a moment's rest," then someone took the reigns of my horse and stopped him.
I turned to look at Feren, who had steadied my animal and was now standing upon the ground with his arm out to help me down. "Please, My Lady. We will have some water and bread."
I wanted no food. But my throat was dry and it ached, and so I would have some water.
While they fetched refreshment, I looked upon the river through the trees and was pulled towards it, so I walked off the road and into the woods a little, sitting down upon the rocky banks and staring at the river's babbling water.
The rush of it quieted my spirit and cleared my mind. Water would always be a balm for me.
Tauriel approached through the trees at the road and sat down warily beside me, handing me a water cup. "It is not safe to go off the path alone here, My Lady," she said softly, and she laid a gentle hand upon my back.
I felt its warmth, and with the rushing of the water, something snapped inside of me and my shoulders shook. "Tauriel," I said, and I began to sob.
"Oh, My Lady." She pulled me close to her at once, and held me tightly as I cried. "I do not know what has happened, but I am sorry for it. I am so very sorry, My Lady, " she said.
I did not resound, only allowed myself the comfort of her embrace.
Then the moment was jarringly broken at the sound of Feren's shouts from the road.
