Forget me not

Chapter 17

When I awakened, I was on the back of a horse and someone held me up. I did not know who it was, nor did I care. I fell inside of myself, remembering with terrible vividness the horrible event that had just passed what seemed like moments before. I knew, however, that it must have been hours past, from the feeling of bowlegged awkwardness that I had, which came from being on a horse for the majority of the day.

I moved only to adjust the feeling on my backside, but this gave the person holding onto me the distinct impression that I was awake and wanted to be spoken to, which was not the case.

“Merewen, you have awakened.” He stated. “You have been unconscious for a good part of the day and the night. We worried about you.”

I mumbled unintelligibly and rubbed my face with my hands. Legolas slowed the movement of the stallion but he did not stop nor tell anyone else to slow. He took my arm and turned my face toward him. “Are you all right?”

I nodded and took my hand back from his grasp to face forward again. I closed my eyes and sighed. Legolas touched my shoulder. “Merewen, everything will be okay. You know this, you know everything will be well. We will return to Lorien and you will see Inwe and Elrohir again, and granted, there will be some pain at the loss, but there will be much joy that all of you are well.”

I did not care. I did not say anything to him. I just opened my eyes and looked ahead. I could not bear to think, to look at anything. Nothing was all right. Everything was changed suddenly. I was lost without him. I did not realize how close I had gotten to him in the last little while, but now I knew, there was love between us. There was something so strong that nothing should have been able to break it away from us. We should not have been able to be apart. But we were. We were driven apart, we were ripped from each other, and because of my carelessness, my foolish actions, he was dead. He was gone. He would never shine his light upon this world.

With all my heart, I wished I could be with him now. With all my heart, I wanted him to take me in his arms and kiss me and hold me. I wanted to consummate my love with him. I wanted to bed him and wed him, perhaps not in that order. I wanted to be together for the rest of eternity, I wanted it to be just Elladan and me for the rest of our lives. But there was no “rest of our lives”, there was only “the rest of my life”. I would have to endure without my beloved.

I could not do it. My heart ached, and I felt myself grow thinner, not physically, but emotionally. I could tell everyone around me was tired. They all grieved for Elladan. They grieved for the other lost soldiers, they may have grieved for me, but I could not feel them anymore. I did not want to. I finally found how to lock their emotions out of my heart, I finally figure out how to get a little peace, not have to live with their incessant emotional turmoil boiling and swirling inside of me. But I did not feel better, I felt worse, thinner. I did not care for these people. I did not care for myself. I did not care about anything right now. My world had just collapsed before me. There was nothing left to bring happiness, pain, joy, or sorrow to my life.

*****

There was nothing I could do but watch her as she turned away from me. She barely spoke. She nodded at my words and answered my questions, but she did not speak, she did not care. She did not want anything to do with me right now, or ever. As we rode on, I could tell she was deep in thought. Was she contemplating what had happened? Was she questioning the Valar? Was she considering giving up on everything? I did not know what was going through her mind. All I knew was that her silence was eerie and unnerved me.

As we moved farther through the forest, I noticed that she had fallen asleep again, and this caused me more worry. We were not stopped. She did have reason to be asleep before; she had suffered a traumatic loss and fallen unconscious. She could not have awakened, and I probably could not have roused her had I tried. But now, she was sleeping without warning, without us stopping. She either relied on me too much, or she did not care enough to even move forward. This was a bad sign and I knew it.