But Maybe That Was The Light Of The Trees by Nekomitsu

Menegroth

In response to the March 5 entry at the B2MeM 2011 challenge.  Write a story or poem or create artwork that will illustrate the consequences of isolation.

The burning pain in his right hand was Maglor's only companion as he wandered the seashore for long and lonely years.  His feet took him North until the sea blocked his path back into the lands he had once known, where he mourned his loss to the standing water, and then South until the stars above his head became new and outlandish.

For a while he carried his small harp in his left hand, even though he could hardly pluck its strings with his damaged fingers.  Its wood decayed.  One morning, Maglor stood from his grieving vigil for all that had been lost and left it behind.

He remembered standing at Maedhros' dreaded tower at Himring and asking for his brother's harp for one reason or another.  "Sorry, brother," Maedhros had said.  "You'll have to ask cousin Findékano.  I gave it to him."

Maglor had frowned.  "Why would you do that?  It was a good instrument."

Maedhros had laughed, and increasingly rare sign by that time.  He had tossed his head in mirth, and his coppery hair had caught the vivid light of the fëanorian lamps on the walls.  "I could hardly expect to be able to play it these days, could I?" he had said, raising the stump of his right hand with grim amusement.  "Besides, his fell from the blasted eagle as he broke me free from my chains.  It was the least I could do."

Maglor wondered what had become of the instrument, and mourned it, and his brother, and his brother's missing laughter.

He ate what little the trees and the ground afforded him along the winding way.  At times he starved, and that was fine too.

No other ever recognised him by who he was.  Elves he saw but a few, and less as time passed by.  Men he encountered no matter where he went, proud sailors with grey eyes and dark-skinned southrons with blinding white smiles.  Every now and then he crossed a party of orcs, and those he slaughtered without hesitation, even though his blade burned in his damaged right hand with every thrust and parry.  He met stranger creatures, short beings with hairy feet and majestic oliphaunts with enraged eyes.  He killed spiders.

Lost in mourning, he didn't care.  The world passed him by.

One afternoon an earthquake shook the lands.  Maglor thought little of it, but a short yen afterwards he found a group of wandering elves and observed them from afar, unseen and unnoticed.  They sat around a merry fire, and they sang about the Enemy's defeat, and about the last High King of the Noldor in Exile, and they toasted to Elrond Half-elven's marriage.  Maglor smiled.

Then one of the elves took to the opening thrills to the Noldolantë, and Maglor fled away in shame.