Swordwhale: Earth, Life, Fandom

But Arondir loved the sun now. He tracked its every motion. When it became shrouded in cloud, he felt his spirit sink into dread and uncertainty, when once he might have taken comfort in the pleasure of a moment of shade. The sun was his ally, his savior, his keeper, and he swore never to forget this fact for the rest of his life, no matter how long that might be. 

It was currently looking to be rather short. 

“Ey!” called an orc, his form swallowed by the shade. There was a scuffle at the mouth of the hooded passage, two orcs jostling with each other for the chance to point their blades at Arondir’s chest. 

“Quit idling,” said the closest. Arondir could see fresh blood licking the edges of his teeth. 

Arondir stiffened and drew his attention back to the dusty earth. He had been watching the sun too closely, pulled in by its whispered promises.

The earth gave him less heart, but it was worthy of observation, too. It held its own beaten beauty. The way the shelves of clay wrinkled and crumbled beneath his bone-pick. The twisted shape of a root clawing out from the soil. The sound of cracking and bleeding as he broke into it. The smell of sap dissolving quickly in the parched air. 

Such was his routine: a rotational observation. Before long, this vigil would sink his spirits even lower. He could not bear to give such attention to his own act of destruction, and he knew this was an inherent weakness of his soul, an enduring failure of his craft. 

All things should be loved, even in their loss. 

He would then turn his work to the orcs — to their faces, the shapes of their bodies, the way they moved and spoke to each other, the small trophies and punishments they passed amongst themselves. He knew them all, individually, to a sharp level of clarity, but he did not give the power of words and meaning to these observations. He let them live in his body instead. This, too, was a failing, for surely even orcs must hold some magic of the earth within themselves, some memory of elven beauty deep behind their eyes. But Arondir could find no evidence of this.  

When every piece of the physical world around him had been exhausted of beauty and meaning, deadened into a veil of gray nothingness from which he could draw no life, he turned to the inner world within his mind. This was always the final resort, allowed only for fleeting moments, for it held too much pleasure and too much pain. Like the sun, he could not allow himself to gaze overlong. 

He could not dwell there without meeting her. 

It was not that he did not wish to think of her — of Bronwyn. He gave himself the pleasure of her name with the same forbearance he was granted water ration. He would drink until his throat swelled with the effort of swallowing, if they would allow him to, and he would do the same with thoughts of her, if he did not control his mind. 

It was always pleasant at first, pleasant as an ache was pleasant in reminding his body of its own being. It was pleasant to remember how it felt when she touched him — how it felt when she looked at him — how it felt the first time he had realized his feelings were not unmatched, but were returned, and the precious, intense forbidden-ness that came with this fact, like an overripe fruit he had to carry everywhere without bruising or breaking its skin. 

But soon the sensation would become overwrought, too intense. He had felt it before — this driving need, this compulsion — a desire to be joined with her that consumed his entire body, so he could do nothing but stand still, like a tree, until it passed. 

But they would not let him stand still, not here, not for more than a moment at a time, and so his blood was forced to churn endlessly, hot and unyielding, until even his skin felt scorched and ashen from its heat. When it had burned clean through him, he became momentarily empty, like a vessel, like a hole in the earth awaiting water, like a silent mouth waiting for words. 

That’s when the fear came. Like the enemy, it took root where all else had been leveled to its most naked form. She was dead, Bronwyn was dead. She was dead or in torment. He had sent her to her death, unthinking, unfeeling, his own intuition failing him at last. She was dead before she ever made it home, and it was his doing, for in 79 years he had done nothing, nothing, not one single thing to protect her. She was dead — 

This feeling — finally — forced him out of his own mind. He emerged in the sunlight, covered in dust, wilting in his own sweat, alive. The world around him became resonant again, almost calming in its cruel reality. From its presence, he could draw some will to live, for it was not fully dead, not like Bronwyn, not yet. 

And the cycle would begin again. 

-------

Arondir’s history was not universally accessible even to his own memory. Through the passage of centuries, time necessarily stretched and turned thin, becoming for long periods like the glassy surface of an untouched sea. 

The great moments of his life seemed instead like islands scattered across this silent ocean. He could visit them in turn, landscapes fixed by some specific point of grief or joy or longing. But between them lay a watery haze, the feeling of wakeful sleep. 

Perhaps this was different for the Eldar. Perhaps they could access their own lives as if they were lore halls, plucking from memory any single moment, reliving whole ages through their resting dreams. It was not so for Arondir. 

He had once asked Médhor how the other elf viewed the passage of his own life. 

“The passage of my life?” retorted Médhor, moving through his ration of food in a matter of breaths, as was his common custom.

Arondir stifled a smile. “Yes. How does it feel to you? To look back upon your own life?”

Médhor chewed thoughtfully for a moment, then spoke as if divulging a deep and secret truth. “Well, I’d say there’ve been a lot of bits that have been just…fine. And then there were a lot of bits that were rather shit.” He looked into the middle distance, watching some invisible world. “But it’s mostly been…fine.” 

Arondir took this as confirmation of his own experience and drew comfort from that knowledge. 

But Médhor was gone now, snuffed out with a single slice of an orc blade, his spirit treading halls where Arondir could not follow. 

He felt stranded, the islands of his past disappearing far, far over the horizon, no longer reachable in his memory. 

The only island that felt accessible anymore was the one that held the last 79 years. 79 years, in this place, at that tower, with those people. He was barricaded in a fortress of his own present and the ships had been burnt, and there was only Ostirith and Médhor and Bronwyn and Tirharad and Devion and Bronwyn, and Bronwyn, and Bronwyn. Was this what it felt like to be human? Perhaps their souls were of greater size than they realized, all their days forgotten but for the short breath of one current life. 79 years, it might last, if they were lucky. 

Perhaps he had already given himself to her.