Bone-deep by Agelast

Chapter 1

Maglor had been wandering along the mouth of a river when he saw it. A huddled shape washed upon the shore. Later, he would compare it to a dead swan or something else that was appropriately poetic. But at that moment, he saw it for what it was -- a body.

He came nearer to see more. It had once been a woman, and though the water had bloated her face into a hideous sight, he could tell that once, she had been a great beauty. Or else, he imagined it so. A slain beauty was more poetic than a plain victim.

He leaned down, holding his nose at the smell of rotting flesh long in water. She seemed to have been wealthy too, for her dress was silk, and there was still a gold ring on her finger. Since whoever had killed her had not removed the ring, Maglor supposed that it was her beauty (perhaps) that had doomed her.

He looked at her for a while, before an idea came upon him. He had been without a harp for some years now -- his last had been destroyed by time, more than anything else, and he lacked the money to buy the right material for a new one.

Maglor pulled back and looked critically at his raw materials for a moment.

Then he went on to desecrate the corpse.

*

The harp, once made, has its own ideas of what it wished to sing. Maglor was hardly surprised by this, and heeded when it began to sing of love, sisters, and betrayal. The sound was cold, clear, and high and somehow unlike the scraping of bone against bone, and the twang of plucked hair.

The harp did not care about his own sad tale, his guilt. Instead, it told him what to do, where to go. Maglor, for the first time in many years, had a mission. He smiled to himself as he walked down the country lane, as the harp sang to itself in his arms. Onward, to the place where blood had been spilt, to where a kinslayer dwelt.

Revenge was sweet, though justice would do as well.

Chapter End Notes

Thanks, Sath, for looking it over. All remaining mistakes & etc.