Last Star I See by phyncke

Last Star I See

Last Star I See

He lay back on the cold, packed snow, gazing up at the sky, which was a perpetual night now that the light was gone. He could not feel the cold anymore, but as he gazed up at the stars so welcoming and bright, he felt a comfort take him. Varda’s lights had gotten them this far, she would not forsake him now.  The Vala of the stars or Elentári, as some named her, would never turn her back on an elf in need. She was their strength and their guiding light, but there was no aid she could bring him now.  His body was failing.

“My lady, I am sorry…”

His words were for her alone, and he imagined that one star shone brighter than the rest, as if in answer, as his heartbeat and his blood flow slowed, finally stopping. He expelled his last breath there in the frozen wasteland and lay staring blindly up into the infinite night sky, sightless while the snow swirled around his lifeless form.

/---/

“How many will we lose?” Aegnor asked as he let his pick axe fall, sending ice shards scattering along the ground. He raised it repeatedly, swinging hard to break the frozen ground. This was hard work but necessary.

“There is no way to tell.” Finrod aided his brother as Galadriel stood not too far off, in reflection over the body of their fallen comrade.  She wished for the elf to receive guidance from the Valar to Mandos and sang a song of comfort, her breath visible in the cold air.  She closed his eyes as was seemly.

“Too many,” Aegnor muttered as he kept working, digging deeper with each impact of tool. There were creatures out here in the ice and they wanted to bury the elf deep enough that the body would not be discovered by the scavengers desperate for food in the wasteland.

Later, as they packed snow over the shrouded form, encasing him in an icy tomb with his meager possessions and weapons at his side, the three siblings hurried along to follow the host of Fingolfin. They knew that to stop for too long was to court certain death, as this elf had. They must keep moving were they to survive.

/--/

Varda’s stars maintained their silent, sparkling vigil over the fallen elf, the Vala a presence as his spirit departed for the Halls of Waiting. He suffered no more, his struggle ended for now. The wind picked up, and blew the snow off the mound which covered him.

There would be many burial plots littering the icy trail across the Helcaraxë. Such was their lot and legacy.  Many elves were left along the frozen road, left to their deaths, succumbing to the elements or lost in the icy landscape having wandered off, disoriented, unable to find their host again due to a sudden storm. They say that Fingolfin’s number was much reduced when finally he came to Middle Earth with the first moonrise, though he was still a force to be contended with. The cost was high to cross at such peril and these tales are seldom told, of those lost along the way.

The End