Building Ithilien [Legolas] LOTR

Of Love and Grief

Author's note:
The Lord of the Rings touches on the thematic idea of death throughout the novel. You could write an extravagantly long essay on it to be sure. Even more important is how those characters in LOTR react to the deaths of people they love. Grief plays an integral role throughout the trilogy: the fellowship's mourning the loss of Gandalf, the fall of Boromir and Denethor's subsequent demise, Theoden's burial of his son Theodred, the ents' rage over the destruction of their fellow trees by Saruman, the death of Theoden and Eowyn's time in the House of Healing, Frodo's inability to recover his life after the destruction of the ring, Aragorn's eventual death and Arwen's quiet retreat to forgotten Lorien. These are just a few examples that jumped out at me. Grief: the mourning of loss and death, intense anguish and sorrow.

Tolkien alludes to the fact that grief can be a destructive force for elf kind, but he never clearly states this. There are reasons to believe, however, that this is true. For example, Elrond's wife has to sail to Valinor after a horrible orc attack. Arwen 'fades away' in the woods of Lorien after Aragorn dies. There's nothing really clear cut. In Building Ithilien, I have taken the creative stance that grief is fatal for elves. I have fashioned it into a disease, a cancer, of sorts.

Of course, I explain all of this in this chapter, but I just wanted everyone to know that I'm straying (gasp!) from true cannon and using a healthy dose of imagination for what grief might be like for the elves of Middle Earth.

Light played across the room in quiet angles. She could hear the gentle drop of rain through leaves and tree branches, from the eaves of the flet. She found no succor in the firm weight of the blankets across her bed, no warmth. They were oppressive, bearing down, confining, and despite the many layers upon her, she still shivered as grief's icy fingers squeezed her heart and set upon her flesh, feeling 'cold' as mortals say. The pain was immense; the sensation, unbearable. So this was mortality—an absence of warmth.

All felt dull. All felt heavy- her head, arms, legs, not even her fingers could she suffer to lift, and the walls seemed to press around her. The days ran into nights, but the restful dreams of her kind had forsaken her. Neither peace, nor comfort did she find in sleep. Time ticked by, and each second seemed an agony, an eternity as her spirit dwindled to naught, for the light in her eyes had nigh extinguished.

Nearly a fortnight had passed since the news of Annariel's death. Eledhel stayed by her side, from the very moment she had fallen in hearing the reports of the dead. No tears had she cried that day. Still none had been shed. It seemed to him that her soul had fallen asleep, and none of his pleading or prayers could wake her. He had begged leave from his position within the Guard, so that he might stay with her.

On the tenth day, he sat with her as he had before, holding her cold hand and talking to her with the hope that she still might hear him.

"Miredhel?" he asked softly, rubbing her hand to warm it. "Will you eat some of this broth? Lady Limaer brought it for you earlier."