Emotions-- A series of vignettes by MisbehavingMaiar

Disgust, Anticipation, Saudade

The mighty are fallen, and those who were loyal mourn; three shades of inevitability and sorrow. 

DISGUST:

He feels the earth quaking above him, rattling the ceiling of his court, shaking the stones free, making the gold floors tremble. He finds himself shivering on his throne. 

The mirrors that surround him endlessly reflect the light of the jewels in his crown, filling his eyes with their constant, throbbing brilliance. As a stalactite crashes down from the cavern roof he jumps and whimpers, catching a glimpse of his frailty in the reflections.

A coward, from all angles; a thorny insect with a crown too heavy for him. He can barely swallow his contempt. 

His lieutenants are fighting his war up above. His armies are scattering. The end is coming, and he knows that this time he will lose everything, everything… 

He is alone but for his reflections. And he takes the crown from his head— holds it aloft and screams, ready to throw its hateful presence from him, to dash the mocking lights that pain him down into the molten depths of his keep. 

“Ruin! You have brought me nothing but ruin!” He howls and grinds his teeth. He raises the iron circle high with palsied claws—

—and slowly, tenderly, places it back upon his brow again, weeping. 

ANTICIPATION: 

"Do you see this, brother Melkor? Do you remember Angainor? It remembers you." 

The fallen one cannot speak; only mouth a syllable, terrified: “no”.

He looks to the monolith of his twin, who looms like a thunderhead and whose eyes pin him down with the fury of suns. “Please. No.”  

But Manwë turns away his head in shame, and Tulkas's smile widens.  

SAUDADE:

 Gone. 
There are two holes in the earth and one in the sea and one where my heart had been. 

He is gone and I can find him in no other. I have searched in the skins of elves and men. I have plundered their love and their bodies to find that pain, that magnitude of heat that could temper me. 

Their love is cool and tame and fragile and worthless. I am seared and captivated by no one.

 All the world-fire is extinguished. It is full of his spirit, and empty of him. 
Smoke and ashes fill my hands and in my heart I clutch at the memory of bright, bright gold. 

He is gone and he will not come again.

Chapter End Notes

SAUDADE: Melancholic longing for something or someone that is absent and beyond retrieval