Eclipse of Hearts ✔

1. Other Pieces of Life [Alyssae]

"It's time you let it go."

Alyssae looked up, to Raphael's worried face. 

"Everyone worries about you, Alys. Four months have passed since you're back and you have shared your feelings with no one."

"That's not true." She watched the circles her feet caused in the water and sighed. "I don't want to drag up everything."

"We want to be there for you, but that's impossible as long as you keep everything to yourself. We have no idea what's going on in that head of yours."

"It's better that way," she persisted.

Raphael looked shortly at her, then he stood up and walked away dejected. 

Alyssae stayed behind and stared into the water. She had expected that everything would be better when she returned to her family, but they had drifted apart. In the beginning she had felt home - until Kili, Bofur and Nori had returned to Erebor, leaving her alone with the feeling she had lost everything she'd ever loved.

She had sent a messenger with the gems to Mirkwood, but had kept the Arkenstone since that did'nt belong to Thranduil. Alyssae supposed he was satisfied, since she already felt horrible. 

Still he had been wrong. She didn't wish that Thorin had died in his dungeons, as he had predicted. Every day she wished he would knock on the gates of Chyndall, begging for her return, but that obviously wouldn't happen.

At night she had nightmares in which Thranduil's whip tore the skin from his body. Bathing in sweat she woke up, staring in the face of her sister, who wet her heated forehead and whispered calming words.

She had expected that the memories about the dwarfs would fade when she was back with her kin, but nothing was less true. Everything reminded her of them, like the absence of meat during dinner and the modest melodies that were all around her. She knew she had to try harder to move on, but as long as her beloved kept asking what had happened, she shut down, having no longer the lust to perform her tasks. She wanted to be treated like they had treated her before, without whispers that followed her, speculating about the reasons that had made her so introverted. 

She watched two swans that searched their way through the lake together. It made her sad, knowing that her soulmate was not a swan, but a duck. A duck that had found his own way, although she had not the slightest idea where it would lead him.

She stood up and stared to her reflection in the water. It was not only her body that she was looking at. With her fingers she touched her breast, under which Thranduin's heart beat. Tears appeared in her eyes while remembering his offer. She knew she had to undertake a journey to his kingdom to visit his grave, but her father wouldn't let her leave before she had told him the whole story and she wasn't ready to do so yet. Her hands slid down, until they settled on her swollen belly. That also hid a piece of life that was not only hers.