A ficlet for @tolkiengenweek, Day 1
If any had asked of him, in that other life ere the Burning, which were those things that formed his life, the answer would have been quick and certain: his fatherâs guidance or his motherâs wisdom, his sisterâs wry warmth, the solemnity of the gathered elders.
And it was true, of course. These had been his mainstays for as long as he could recall and there was no balm for the ache of their absence.
But as Beren lay hidden within the gorse, looking out over Ladros that was, he found his ears strained rather for the sound of Emeldirâs hammer, undoing as it had each spring the winterâs toll on the Hall, or for his fatherâs quiet humming as he pruned the garden herbs, rubbed down the newborn lambs with straw.
Sleepless on the scorched heath, it was Andrethâs voice that he sought, weathered as those fingers which in childhood had traced slow patterns along his hands, both soothing him into slumber.
Hirilâs shriek of laughter called to him from the icy springs when he drank. The little river beside the fell had held a similar chill and he would haul her after him whenever they fought, where any squabble would eventually wind its way to laughter within its waters.
Where was the bellow of his uncleâs voice? The bickering of his cousins?
No hammer could undo this toll, nor any song coax the thyme and hyssop from the soil or draw the bleating lambs back from the ashes. The chatter of the stream was choked, the water fouled as all the valley below him. His uncle was dead and burned. The cairn above his cousinsâ broken bodies was raised by his own hands.
Bitter was this learning and bitter still the admission: it had been the unnoticed things his heart could not do without, the lost mundane that tangled grief within his breast.
