XXXVI: Varda Elbereth

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I recommend listening to this song while reading the part from Thranduil's POV (ooooh!) The lovely floranocturna said I should listen to it because it reminded her of Elena, the fallen star :)

Thranduil's POV

A sudden flame knocks me and everything around me down to the ground. The orcs fall together as a visible shock wave flattens them, and do not rise again. Gathering my wits, I sit up to face the source of the magic, but she's not there.

Elena is gone.

Just like that, I've lost her.  She's gone just as quickly as she had appeared that night, when a blazing white fire had fallen right into my line of sight.  I was only going for a ride that night, with no intention but to escape the suffocating confines of my kingdom, yet what I did when she was in my arms is unspeakable.  No excuses, no apologies could justify my actions, and somehow she still managed to love me. 

But now she's gone.  She's gone, because I wasn't quick enough.  I cannot explain the level of magic that took her away from me, for I never saw Menelion depart all those years ago, but it was something evidently too strong for Elena to combat.

Why did I have to hesitate?  I wasn't afraid... was I?  Afraid to touch her when she was burning with starlight fire?  My fear has cost her her life, and lost me her love.  Ilúvatar knows where she is now.

The night suddenly closes in around me, forcing my head to my knees, where the reeking remnants of the orc that was crushing Elena are still leaking black blood into the soil. I do not hear any of the clamour erupting from all sides, the elves running in from all directions and their footsteps thundering on the ground. I can only stay here, paralysed, immobilised, breathing in the pungent scent of orc mingled with the sweetness of the beds of lissuin and niphredil. My own breathing fills my ears, long and deep, joining the pounding of my heart which is now suffering its last break. This is the last thing. Legolas barely cares for me at all—I have my own stupidity to thank for that—and the one person who does has been taken away from me.

This is what I had feared. This, this anguish... I have felt it countless times, and I swore to never have to feel it again, not while I could protect Elena from the fate that befell all others who were close to me. They all left me in one way or another, and I told her this, I told her that it was a risk to be near me, I told her I would put her in danger—but she told me it was alright.  She told me I would never lose her, yet it seems I have broken my vow.  Broken my vow, my heart, and the kingdom.  She was the hope that I was clinging to, and now darkness descends in place of her light.

There have been tears before, tears for my mother and my father and Ellerian, tears when I was forced to run away from Fínegel, tears when Legolas chose to leave for Imladris for the first time... tears when I cut Elena away from me. But now... there's nothing left. Nothing. 

I cannot find the strength to weep now.  Of all the times in the endless millennia of my life, this is the worst.  And I know it.  Not only is there guilt, a sense that I could have done something to save her, but there is the knowledge that Elena attacked that orc because it was going to attack me.  And above all that, it was Elena whom I loved the most, Elena who melted my heart as though she was a fire and—and my heart was ice.

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