Memento Mori by Lferion

Memento Mori

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What did they mean, these small, precise assemblages? These four things, arranged together, placed in careful spots of some not immediately understood significance. Always these things, though not always the same type -- the stars could have five points, or four, or six. Once Celegorm had seen eight, and once simply many. The snake, delineated clearly enough to tell if venomous or not, rock-slither or lesser were-worm or garden snake. And the skulls! He did not (yet) know what creatures all the bones belonged to. Some he rather thought he would prefer not to know, product of Angband as they seemed. The bats were different in number, not kind so far as he could tell.

Once he had noticed the first one, the other assemblages and markers were much easier to see. Some of what they meant was clear -- this stream is fouled, that one is still clean, other such warnings in various materials -- but most of them were yet a mystery. They were made by elves, that was apparent, and they had meaning, speaking purpose. When he thought about them as Speech, then they made a terrible sense. They were markers, memorials, to people lost, slain, taken by the Enemy.