Elerrina

Lost

The wind slapped her face wildly, harsh and cold against her skin, throwing her hair in every direction. The longer they ran the heavier and harsher the wind became. Even with her eyelids shut tightly over her deep green eyes, she could see the hollow stares of the corpses as they were slowly washed away by the current. She could not escape the sight, it followed her, haunted her from behind her tightly closed eyelids. They came in fast flashes inundating her mind: glassy blue eyes staring blankly at the sky; mouths still open with the ghost of a last shout; black arrows sticking out of shoulders, backs, heads; and water slowly turning a poisonous bright red.

The wind rang in her ears like a thousand shouts, batting her golden hairs forcefully against her face, neck and shoulders. The sound of the horses as they ran over the ground seemed to have been multiplied infinitely, mixing with the shouting wind and dark images inside her mind. Her heart pounded so hard that she felt she could almost hear it trying to jump in despair out of her chest, and even her blood felt cold and icy running through her veins. She felt choking, cut out of pure air to breathe, her fingers once again holding tightly to the horse's silken mane. Elladan's fast breaths brushed the right side of her face as she felt him inclining forward to ride faster, his arms to either side of her gripping the reins of the horse.

Drawing agitated breaths, she dared to opened her eyes in a failed attempt to liberate herself from the images crossing her previously shut eyelids. She heard another quick interaction of words between the twins in the language she did not know, but assumed, had to be elvish- she did not know what to call it.

Everything was happening so fast. The forest flew past her as her body jumped up and down on the horse. Her thoughts were lost in a labyrinth of dead faces, but the faces were not only floating on the now red river, they were also laying on the ground, covered in blood and dirt. Faces she did not recognize yet somehow remembered, somehow saw them in her head. Distorted images of faces all mixed together between land and water inside her mind. The baker's son face staring at the sky, and then a flash of a pair of mysterious blank green eyes also staring dead at the sky. Flashes of tall elegantly dressed bodies, adorned with twinkling jewels spread on the ground, followed by flashes of floating human bodies. Screams, clashes of metal hitting metal, golden hair, a body floating face down, the three brothers faces, and the blank green eyes again...

She barely felt the horse slow down into a walk before completely stopping. From the corner of her eyes she caught Elrohir stopping next to them, but did not turn to look. Diverting her gaze to what laid ahead of her she saw what she had been desperately dreading, her heart missing a beak as it sunk suddenly, and she felt as if she would be sick, the world starting to spin.

The once green and joyous clearing that was her village was no more than mere memories now. The landscape in front of her was barely recognizable anymore. This was not her home. This could not be her home. The ground was covered in what remained of the once cozy houses: ruins of fallen stone and ashes, burnt wood splattered everywhere, and she could still almost see the flames licking at them, laughing tauntingly, killing, destroying. Bodies laid spread carelessly on the ground, none of them breathing anymore, nearly all of them unrecognizable, covered in mud, dark drying blood and more ashes, the stench of burnt flesh making her already twisted stomach contract painfully, and she had to force herself to breathe deeply. 

A tight knot started to build inside her throat, too tight, constricting. She could not breathe. She was going to suffocate. And she saw green eyes flash inside her mind, blank green eyes, golden hair, and blood.  She suddenly jumped from the horse, almost falling to the ground as the hard surface met her weak, shaky legs, and, without looking back, started to run towards her house, as fast as her feet would go. She needed to find....she needed to know....her heart had stopped beating, and she was sure she had already died and this was nothing but a cruel nightmare, a cruel fragment of her twisted imagination.