discarded by Fernstrike

discarded

Celebrimbor found himself curled on the hard floor, wedged between his desk and the stumpy legs of his low stool, staring at a scrunched up wad of paper, discarded on the stone floor. 
 
His nerves still felt like they were thrumming with lightning - liquid fear, coursing round and round through his veins with each shuddering, horrified breath. Something cool was slipping down his cheek. He watched as the new-spilled ink from his inkwell pooled around the dark locks of his hair. He tried to focus on that, tried to ground himself in this moment in time. He could hardly manage it, not after being struck as though by a war-hammer from his seat, plummeting down and out of his conscious sight, falling into the glowing heart of magma and pumice and the smell of sulfur and the glimmering of gold, and the eyes - eyes he knew - eyes bright with the memory of him - eyes that shone with contempt and rebuked his caution and the gap of mistrust he had allowed to grow between them. 
 
He fixed his gaze on the scrunched up wad of paper, and remembered in that moment what it meant to be cast aside for failing to live in someone else's image.