Beyond Grief

Chapter One

It was the only nice thing he had ever said to her, she couldn't help thinking, as she watched him stride elegantly away, his long ice blonde hair dancing behind him. And now. .. she didn't have an ending to the sentence that had started forming in her mind. Now, nothing. Nothing at all. The unthinkable target of the whole of her love had been slain, she'd been banished from her people trying to save him and aid his companions, and now she had nothing. Nowhere to go, no one to go home to, and no home with whence to go. All that was left was her own battle-damaged body, that was as lifeless as kili's in spirit. Feeling completely defeated for the first time in her spirited, young (for an elf) life, Tauriel dropped her eyes back to the small, stout man lying beneath her on the ice cold mountain rock. His hair curled in black ringlets, lying loosely around his handsome (for a dwarf) face. His blue eyes, that had always looked at her with such dazzling enchantment, were now closed, and his warm, heart-skipping smile had finally left his blood-drained face. Everything she had loved was still here, yet it was all gone as well. She briefly considered the paradox, and even laughed lightly to herself once, before being incapacitated by the impossibly huge wave of grief and loss she felt toward the love that she had never even had the permission to feel.