The Eastern Woman

Passion

Goneril had found a dress of her size in Arwen's wardrobe.

Elrond's daughter was laying in her room, on the green sofa; she was becoming more and more ethereal, her body more and more impalpable. She was waiting to exhale her last breath.

"Thanks, dear." Goneril had murmured with a wicked smile, after having stolen the beautiful blue dress from the wardrobe of the elven woman. Rummaging in the princesses' closets was becoming a habit for her.

Afterwards, she had gone to one of the large fountains of Rivendell, which was still bubbling. She had taken off the old clothes, imbued with sweat and mud, and then she had immersed herself in that granite basin, resisting the freezing water.

She looked at the sky. There were gray and dense clouds that had been extending visibly for days. Those were crucial moments in the history of Middle-earth.

Goneril knew that everything could have changed in a blink of an eye: if the Hobbit had succeeded in throwing the Ring into the fire, the world would have been saved.

But if he had unfortunately failed, in a moment those clouds would have turned black, the Sun would have disappeared and also the Moon. Sauron would have brought with him his infinite darkness.

But what was she supposed to do? She was a thousand miles away from Mordor. At that point, she could only try to wash herself in a freezing fountain. And she didn't even have a damn piece of soap.

She had to organize her future.

Meanwhile, she had to find a way to get rid of Hammon. Long before, the easiest way would have been to kill him. But the cruel warrior was gone forever, and her methods, too.

She had to convince him to go away. For at least a year, she wanted to be alone. Goneril desperately needed solitude, since a new beginning was impossible if she had not forgotten her past.

That was another reason why she couldn't kill Hammon. Of course, it would have been easy to pierce him with the sword and throw his corpse into one of the ravines of that endless valley. But every time she would have looked at that crevasse, she would have remembered her last murder, her last victim. No, she didn't want to be haunted by ghosts even in Rivendell.

But how to send him away? And what did he want from her?

He believed he was in love. That imbecile really believed he was in love. He had denied it, but Goneril had seen that look in his eyes, the look of a man consumed by an obsession. She knew that gaze, because she had seen it in other men.

The fame of her cruelty was equal only to that of her beauty, so sometimes some fool with seduction dreams dared approach the legion, to meet her. She knew that some men had bet they could have taken her to bed easily. Degarre had told her, and she had laughed about it. Bets were always lost, in fact often those fools would go home without their horse, or the coins they brought with them, or their clothes.

She recognized the desire in the eyes of men. Hammon was consumed by it, to the point of defying the risk of getting stabbed just to kiss her.

They were the same age, exactly thirty years old. They had known each other for ten, and Hammon had never shown such interests towards her. How was it possible that he suddenly discovered that passion in him? Why in those days, in the midst of a war that was overwhelming everyone?

She looked around, wondering where he was. Perhaps he had left on his own.

Goneril wished that.

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But Hammon had not left, nor was he going to do it.

He had entered Elrond's old residence, in the hall where the Lord of Rivendell used to make his decisions. A large hall with a huge library. A spiral staircase led to an upper floor, where the private rooms must have been.