Mountains Cold, Shadows Shimmering by Laura Elizabeth

Chapter 2

How I stumble out of the grey and sickening shadows of the mountains I do not know. Where I am, what I am doing here, are mysteries. I wander on with only the animal instinct to find something that I need.

A forest looms up before me and I enter it. It is green here. Green, cool, softly shadowed. Birds sing high above me. Breezes sway the light grasses beside a small stream. I stoop and bathe my face. Drink from the water. Slowly I remember who I am. But with sanity comes sorrowing remembrance. I take out my father's ring and press it to my lips. This is all we have for our defiance of Morgoth. Nothing. I go on into the forest. I do not lie down to sleep. Sleep would bring memories best left buried. The air of the forest is like a kind of sleep, too. I feel no weariness nor any urgency.

Then I walk into a vision. A clearing, a glade, open to the night sky, screened all about by hemlocks. From the glade I hear a sound, as of lark singing with human tongue. There is starlight in the glade. I push aside the leaves and ivy and see her dancing with arms upraised to the heavens: a woman half-made of starlight, and half of shadows. She is singing. Clear and pure as running water is her voice. Dark is her hair and yet it shimmers in the light that gleams about her and from her.

I stand transfixed. All that I have suffered is not lessened by this sight, but it is made clear. I know that I would endure a thousand crossings of those mountains for this one vision. And in the light of its memory I will go on.