The Dweller in the Dark by Ithilwen

Chapter 1

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The Dweller in the Dark

All greyness, is this place. Greyness, going on forever. I, who once loved the light, hate it here. But I will never leave this place now, and that is by my choice.

For he has already left. Why he should have been offered release before me, I cannot say. Perhaps it is because I long refused to recognize my own faults, preferring to mislabel my willfulness as mere love of freedom, while his flaws, being far greater, could not be so easily disguised, and so he overcame them more quickly than I. Perhaps my latest decision shows I am flawed still, that I should choose to dwell in the Halls forever rather than regaining my hröa and returning to a physical existence, returning to him. He is my husband, after all. That Námo has released him shows that he has been purged of his evil; his fëa is now as unstained and pure as his newly-made form is free of scars. I suppose it is wrong to hold his past against him now.

But I do not care. To choose re-embodiment now is to choose him, for that is the nature of my kind. The marital bond, once formed, cannot be broken. And I will not dwell again with one who imprisoned me during my former life. I will not lie again with one who once pierced me not merely with his member, but with his javelin. I will not resume my life with the man who gave me my death.

I would be free of him. And if the only way I can be free of him is to choose the Halls over Aman, then the Halls I will choose.

Such is my choice. But it is not a free choice. And perhaps it is just another sign of a flaw that still remains within my fëa, but I cannot help but believe that I deserve a better one.

* * * * * * *

How then can a marriage be ended and the union be dissolved? By the law of the nature of the Elves, the neri and the nissi being equal, there can be union only of one with one. Plainly an end can be made only by the ending of the will; and this must proceed from the Dead, or be by doom. By the ending of the will, when the Dead are not willing ever to return to life in the body; by Doom, when they are not permitted to return. For a union that is for the life of Arda is ended, if it cannot be resumed within the life of Arda. ("Laws and Customs among the Eldar", Morgoth's Ring (The History of Middle Earth, volume 10), p. 226)

It is the purpose of the grace of re-birth that the unnatural breach in the continuity of life should be re-dressed; and none of the Dead will be permitted to be re-born until and unless they desire to take up their former life and continue it. ("Laws and Customs among the Eldar", Morgoth's Ring (The History of Middle Earth, volume 10), p. 227)

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Chapter End Notes

The narrator of this sad vignette is of course Aredhel, who was murdered by her husband Eöl; as Jacynthe DeMorae quips in her essay "Questions You Never Actually Asked" (http://jdemorae.slashcity.net/recsrants/qynaa.html), "...if there was ever an Elven couple who deserved a statute and debate among the Valar, it's them. He killed her for cryin' out loud. Surely, she should be allowed to legally tell him to shove it." But if such a debate was ever held, Tolkien does not tell us of it.