A shadow lies on Thranduil and his forest, and only a power stronger than the darkness of old can save them.
Grief and loss have turned him into a king with a heart of ice, and if he is ever to find redemption, the chains of guilt and remorse holdin...
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How our bodies, born to heal Become so prone to die? (Sleeping At Last: Mars)
Anna stared at the door through which the wizard had left, her hands reaching for the table behind her to give her balance when her world was falling apart. Her head was spinning and her legs were like jelly. This couldn't be happening. It had to be a bad dream, a nightmare. As if realising she had died and recovering her past hadn't been jarring enough, it turned out that she had been a pawn in Gandalf's games of political intrigue all along. Who was to know that such an unassuming elderly fellow was nothing but a cold and heartless engineer, the survival of Middle-earth his main concern? Of course, in the grand scheme of things the life of one single human didn't matter, especially not when that person had literally died already. She shouldn't even have gotten her hopes up to avoid such bitter disappointment.
Anger welled up inside her and she gripped her teacup and smashed it against the wall where it shattered with a satisfying crunch, black rivulets of tea trickling down and forming a small puddle on the floor. Aradan looked up at her, and she could have sworn that he was eyeing her with nothing short of a reproachful glare.
"What? Can't I be upset now? This whole life here," she waved her arms around the room, "it's not for me. It never has been. I've just allowed myself to be tricked into actually believing that I might have a place here."
Aradan angled his head and wagged his stubby tail.
"Of course, you wouldn't understand. How could you? You are a creature of Mirkwood, born in the forest." She scratched him behind his ears, and he looked at her wide-eyed. "You will have to promise me to be a good boy and behave yourself when I'm gone, or else Thranduil will exile you from the palace without batting an eyelid."
The sudden image of Thranduil alone, his hopes of finding love shattered into a million pieces, brought tears to her eyes. As if sacrificing her own life wasn't bad enough, what this trickery meant for the broken Elvenking further fuelled her anger at Gandalf. Like her, Thranduil had been fed half-truths by the cunning wizard. He was probably under the impression that Gandalf had both their personal happiness at heart, when in truth everything was just a clever charade.
She needed to make a plan on how to proceed. She couldn't let Thranduil know about what Gandalf had told her, that much was clear. He needed his soul to be whole again and she would face whatever risk would await her, but she wanted to at least leave something behind for him, in case things went awry. Perhaps she would write him a letter that would explain everything and where she would beg his forgiveness for having kept one final secret from him.
She strode towards her writing desk, ignoring the pounding in her head that had joined the waves of cold sweat crawling over her skin. Her body was telling her that she faced exhaustion, and that she should better rest, but first she needed to get those words on paper. She sat down and massaged her temples with her fingers, watching absentmindedly as Aradan stalked to the pool. He lapped eagerly at the water, splashing around with an innocent enthusiasm that made her smile despite her dreary mood. She pulled out a parchment from the drawer and placed it in front of her, flattening it with her hand, when a sudden sharp pain lanced through her body, blurring her vision. She held on to the edge of the desk, trying to focus on the parchment in front of her, but the dull throbbing that spread from her lower back made it difficult to keep her attention on anything but the pain that felt too familiar.
