Uninvited

Prologue

'When I am laid, am laid in earth, May my wrongs create
No trouble, no trouble in thy breast;
Remember me, remember me, but ah! forget my fate.
Remember me, but ah! forget my fate.'

       --"Dido's Lament" by Henry Purcell

Year One of the Third Age

The arrow had pierced her side, just a little shy of her ribs and as the hot spring of blood spilled down her leg, she knew she was dead. Dead, now, at her zenith. Dead, now, from fate's cruel humor. Dead where she stood, as her life drained away drip by solemn drip, puddling onto the ground beneath her booted feet.

Alone on the Great East Road, so desperate, so panicked and yet so hopeful to make it to the Havens, she had not seen her attacker when the fatal shot was loosed. Did not see him now, as he had disappeared back into the twilit forest. Would never know--if only there was a way to be certain--

Before her strength waned, before the inevitable decline (yes decline, how she hated the word!) could begin, she swung her sword wildly to the right, taking off the shaft of the arrow with a satisfying swipe. The arrow fell and so did she, onto the sweet springtime grass, alone for the most intimate moment of her life. Sky and soil. Sun and stone. Her mind grappled with time, struggling to hold each moment, each painful stab of breath as her lungs struggled to expand.

With her hands splayed out on the ground before her, she saw the broken shaft again and felt fear poke its way through the haze of pain and delirium. The sun was passing towards the west and the sky becoming leeched of color, but even through the shadows she could make out some of the more obvious details of the arrow's fletching. Peacock feathers. Golden twine. Deliberate yet neat knife marks near the nock. How easy it was for her to recognize these things, these impressions of her people. She knew for certain now. The arrow wasn't Orc craft or even from the realm of Men. It was Elven.

For an instant, her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she thought she might lose consciousness.But not now. Not when she needed to know.

If her death could be accepted in this sliver of a moment, she would accept it on the condition that she would die having realized, once and for all and forever, that she had been right.

Time was short, the light low. She would need to work very quickly.

Weakly, she touched the wound in her side and the remnants of the broken arrow, its head still stiff in her belly. There was no way to prepare herself. Her cold fingers closed against the splintered shaft and pulled. She screamed. There was a bright ribbon of blood and a sudden heady rush of release as her stomach gave way and she lay there like an animal with her guts spread out on the earth, alone there, at the very end of things. Alone and dying, shamed by the ignominy of it all.

Her thoughts were soft and malleable, shifting into sights and sounds and the strange taste of bile at the back of her throat. The immediacy of it all pressed against her and she tried to remember how she had prepared herself for this time, time that now slithered through her desperately cupped hands like water. Salt water. The spray on her face. Her father's smile. Her mother's touch. As if by instinct she curled her body into a prone crescent, and, ignoring the wound in her abdomen, smelled the thawing earth around her, still chilled with the last of winter's frost. With each precious second passing she began to forget where she was and why, who she had been and how, what she had loved and lost. She called his name, only to find her voice pulled away by the wind. His face blurred in her mind's eye as a new, impenetrable darkness encroached, so different from the velvety folds of the night, so all encompassing and devouring that she panicked and began to choke on her own tears.

And as her labored breathing slowed, as her body began to cool, she felt a final stirring of sadness, for the great futility of it all and the hopelessness of the end, of her final end, which would come now, ignored and unnoticed on a spring night nearly empty of stars.

There was no one with her when she died, in the chaos of the Wild. There was no one to soothe her in her last flailing moments of dark agony. There was no one there to close her eyes as her life ebbed from them, leaving only the reflection of the scudding clouds in her dilated pupils. There was no one to find her body for months, when only her rusting sword remained and she had long returned to the earth, picked apart by scavengers and other, less savory creatures.

A corner of the moon, a hint of a yellowed tusk, poked through the black, briefly illuminating the sky and the ground and the small forest clearing that would be her tomb. And in that light she picked up the end of the arrow she had pulled from her side and held it up to the moon. The arrowhead, still wet with her blood, glittered blackly. But she saw it, at the very last. Amanthoniel saw what she had hoped, had prayed and Valar, had feared she would see before death clamped down on her with its hungry maw. She recognized the subtle curves of the arrowhead and knew, at once, where it had come from. Lothlorien. Her home.

Author's Note: Thanks to much for reading! If you have a free moment, please leave a comment and/or vote. The next chapter is currently being edited and will be posted soon. Until then, be well!

*Image credited to JR Korpa at Unsplash