Light Under the Shadow of Black Wings

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟏

Deora had often been told by the other city folk on her slanted, Gondorian street that she bore a striking resemblance to the Dúnedain of old. A long-forgotten legacy of Kings that once ruled their shining city. They were said to have been tall and fair, with dark locks, and the most powerful gray eyes, that were rumored to be able to see into both the distant and near future. Their expressions had always been painted with a pride and strength that bent all who looked upon them to their will.

Standing in front of a crooked mirror in her small, shoddy room, Deora would often glare harshly at the sight of her dark hair and crystal gray eyes. Wondering why she had been given the physicalities of a King, but none of that confidence or power.

She had spent years withstanding her father's harsh glares, icy words, and fierce beatings, and wondered each time why she looked like a King, but was not treated like one.

The only source of comfort in the world that she had ever been privy to, were the arms of her mother. The woman would often hold her for hours, telling her ad nauseum that she was beautiful, that she was kind, that her soul was pure. That she was like a flower in a field, emerging from the earth in order to bring people joy simply by existing.

But even as young as she was, Deora knew that something was wrong.

She would gratefully accept the physical affection that her mother gave her, sitting in her lap and allowing the woman to run her fingers repeatedly through her hair whenever she needed to escape her father's rants and raves over not being given the heir that he needed. But the words that her mother spoke had never truly reached her ears, as she would often incoherently ramble off into infinity.

Her mother's sickness had arrived long before she was even conceived. And it was the reason that her father forced the woman to remain indoors for all hours of the day. For if the neighborhood, or city for that matter, knew that his wife's mind was slowly devolving, his already small scrap of status in society would surely vanish.

Even with seemingly all the odds in Middle Earth stacked against her, Deora was never one to back down from the challenges that she would come across throughout her life. She knew that physically, she was strong. As she had been doing most of the manual housework on her own since the age of four. On top of that, she had a fairly wild, unfettered imagination, the only kind of escape that she truly had from the horrors of the house that she was being raised in. Those two traits together had given birth to a very strong goal and conviction, one that she had dared to finally speak about out loud to her father when she had turned ten years old.

"Stop coming to me with such foolish- nonsense!" her father had immediately shouted back at her, before she had even gotten completely through her first sentence.

Deora shrunk back slightly.

"It is not foolish!" she fired back. "If I had training, I could be just as good as any man!"

"But you are not a man!" her father's voice boomed as he finally rose from his chair in order to loom over her smaller frame. "You are an imbecile to think they would ever let a woman join the ranks of Gondor's soldiers! And you would be disgracing me to try!"

Deora's fists clenched tightly at her sides, her eyes beginning to burn with hot and angry tears.

"You are cruel!" she spat before finally turning to sprint out of the room entirely.

"Yes, take your tears to your mother! At least she will understand your delusions!"

Running straight for the older woman's bedroom, Deora had immediately slammed the wooden door shut behind her, muffling the sound of her father's continuous angry shouting.