Tag: Learning to hate hope

thelioninmybed:

The Enemy wore his father’s jewels upon his crown, and he took the light for that awhile. 

One would think that the self-claimed Lord of Arda had better things to do than leer at thralls, Maedhros told him and laughed a little. 

But there was only one light and no jibes, no pain greater than that he had already learnt to bear. 

He had seen and dreamt more awful things than a blind, pale eye, opening like a wound in the sky. But the wolves down in the depths began to bay, so he knew it wasn’t his fancy. 

The whole of Thangorodrim heaved with tiny, scuttling bodies like an antheap overturned, and under the howling wolves he could hear screams. Not Morgoth’s light then, unless it was and he did not care that his thralls suffered. Maedhros turned his face up to it and felt no pain himself, save the smarting of eyes gone too long to the dark. 

It was familiar, this light, but he shied from making the comparison. 

In the cold glare of it, whatever it was, the mountain’s jagged flanks were frosted silver. He thought of bones and teeth. Did not look down to where his own bones stretched thin, corpse-white skin. 

It died eventually, as all things seemed to now, choked by coils of smog and sunk beneath the earth. But new light came and no wan corpse-glow, this. The orcs down in the pit cried out in earnest, and Maedhros hid his face. 

A trumpet shrilled. 

It burnt just as the light did, with a familiarity that sunk claws into his chest. The same bright notes that had welcomed them home when they were children and their grandfather was king, before all had gone to ruin. 

That could not be real. 

He screamed anyway, because pride had died long years ago but hope, somehow, had not. 

There was no answer. 

Of course there was no answer. 

Eventually, the noises stopped. The light went away. 

And came again. 

And went.

And came. 

He counted. Ten blinks of light and Morgoth was back to gloat. He was angry, maybe, or afraid, or maybe there was no difference. 

A hundred, and the smog grew thick enough to turn the light’s coming to the merest flicker. 

A thousand, and the music came again.