Anneth has long clung to her dreams, though sorrow has threatened to murder them again and again. There was a time when sorrow made her hopes only sweeter, but as Sauron grows yet stronger in the East, she feels everything she has ever held dear fal...
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.
- I John 4:18
Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.
- Corrie ten Boom
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
The days following Voronen's untimely departure blurred by, and each day was as a year and a short hour all at once. The sting of Voronwe's death had not yet dissipated, bringing about another ache that brought more distress to Anneth's soul. Grief seemed to be the only thing she now could feel, numbed by the loss of two of those she loved most, left grasping for a hope and a comfort.
Those she named as friends around her were at a loss and knew not what to say. Many found it easier to ignore the situation altogether and keep far away from her. A discouraging feeling of loneliness struck her when she wandered the emptier halls and rooms of the house. Where once she might have found her father reading with a pen in hand, jotting down important notes, he was absent. Where she should have seen her jovial brother throwing knives at a nearby tree, nothing was there.
There was comfort in knowing that they had escaped what cruelness endured in the world, and she gratefully accepted that, yet each time she looked to the door, expecting her father to walk in, he came not. Every moment she spent within her family's home was riddled with emptiness, and the familiar crowding in one room just to spend time as family was gone. Her and her sisters easily fit in the sitting room, and Voronen was not there to laugh and ruin the peaceful atmosphere by draping himself over the entire settee and teasing his sisters until they wanted nothing more than to slap him.
But in the end, they were as near as siblings could be, and the times they spent together were treasured dearly. Never once did it cross their minds that it all would be taken from them in such a fleeting moment, stripped from their grasp and lost to them for what seemed to be forever.
They had been the dearest of all friends, for one's family shall always take precedence and be that which is held in the highest regard, and each day was brightened when they spent time in each other's company. In the end, they were near to one another, but when the end came, they were far apart.
There was no anger that had been forged between them, nor had strife poisoned their bonds, no. Yet still they were far apart.
Voronen fell beyond the borders of Imladris, struck by a vile, foul orc, who was made to despise the Children of Iluvatar, of whom they were made in mockery of. His spirit had long passed on unto the Undying Lands when his sisters heard of his death and set their eyes upon the empty shell of a body that he left behind.
Since that dreadful day came, not even a single moment came where Anneth did not envision her brother's ghastly pale face, motionless and dead. She had seen her father give up the ghost before her very eyes, and she easily recalled the piercing grief she felt, but comfort was found in knowing she had seen him before his death. The last she saw of her living brother was his smile before he turned swiftly and left, both she and her brother privy to the heartache that would follow his return, and he had promised himself he would indeed return.
