Snippets of Writing

10.

Evenstar

She held the red hair ribbon close to her heart with increasingly weak hands. She was dying, she knew it, and she would rather do it with her husband's first gift to her. Frail fingers stroked the smooth satin. She would welcome death, if only to be reunited with her dear husband again.

She was old now, older than any mortal on Middle-earth. Once-raven hair had turned pure white, once-unblemished skin was wrinkled, and once-steady hands were frail and shaking. But her eyes, stormy grey eyes, still shone brightly.

She took a rattling breath. This is how she'd die- alone in a cottage that she built in the Golden Wood. A cottage built from grief and despair. A cottage built from loss and heartbreak.

Two centuries ago, she'd never thought of what it would be like to die. Never contemplated the idea. Why should she? She was an elf, immortal, wisest, and fairest of all beings. An elf that would see civilizations rise and fall, one that would live to see the world razed.

But she'd given all that up, given it up for her husband. Her lips twitched into a smile. She still remembered him the way he was when he was young- when they first met. A man of twenty summers, bubbling with excitement about his heritage. He had changed so much, her Estel, and given so much.

And now she would join him on the other side of the Sundering Seas, reunited forever.

Her breathing slowed. "I go to the halls of my fathers," she rasped. "I go to the halls of my mothers."

The ribbon fell from her hands and fluttered to the ground, a streak of red in the dull interior of the hut. A splash of colour in the darkness. It reminded her of blood.

A cloaked figure stretched out his hand to her. "Undomiel," he said. "Undomiel. Your time has come." His voice was the richest she'd heard, smooth as a glassy river. Slowly, she turned her head to him.

The world turned hazy to her eyes as she slowly raised her hand. The moment it touched the cloaked man's finger, she was gone.

No body was left in the cottage. The last that remained of Arwen Undomiel was a red ribbon, lost to the shadows of the night and the sands of time.

short story/one-shot based on 'the lord of the rings'
written for a competition and originally published elsewhere.