Finrod: 30-Day Character Study - Writings by cuarthol

Is This The Journey's End?

For day 8. The Mirror Cliché. Authors are often discouraged from describing their characters by having them look at their reflection in a mirror (or a pool, or a puddle, or whatever). For this one exercise, we want you to embrace the mirror cliché! Write a scene where your character sees their reflection. What do they see? What do they feel as they see it?

Finrod poured the last bucket of heated water into the tub, little more than a barrel lined with linen cloth.  Bundles of herbs steeped in the water, scenting the steam that roiled about the small room.

It felt strange to be in a building, of all things.  It felt strange to now dwell in the settlement his cousins had built.  It felt strange, most of all, to strip off his clothes and prepare to wash.  He had not done so since they had first stepped foot upon Helcaraxë. 

They had seen death, battle, the very gates of Angband.  After all that, the very idea of having a bath felt jarringly incongruent.  He wondered that his clothes even existed beneath the grime and blood.  Unable to undo the ties of his breeches, he simply cut them.  Piece by piece, the coverings of his body fell to the stone floor until there was nothing left to remove but the dirt.

He turned to the tub.  The water had stilled and the white linen created a near mirror effect in the depths.  Except it did not feel like looking in a mirror, because it did not feel at all like he was looking at himself.  It took actually a great deal of time for it to even register he was looking at himself 

No part of the image in the water felt familiar.  Where once his eyes had been bright and clear, they now stared dark and dull back at him from what felt like leagues distant.  Where his face had once been fair it now looked gaunt and gray.  Where gold hair had once crowned his head and draped down his back, he saw a head covered with stubble like scrub-grass, the color of dead wheat.

He looked so diametric to the memory he held of himself it took him a while to even conjure up any thoughts or feelings about the image before him, except to think that it looked, in a way, like all the many faces of those who had walked with him across the ice.  His brothers' faces.  His sister's face. 

Not until he had ruled out the face belonging to anyone else did it really settle upon him that it was his own.  Several emotions hit him all at once, then.  He wanted to laugh, and weep, and scream.  He sent his hand into the water, fracturing the reflection into a storm of ripples and waves.

Finrod looked back at the heap of filth that he’d stripped off his body, looked down at his body - his bones and joints bulbous, as if overly large for what remained of him.

His breath hitched slightly as he stepped carefully over the edge of the tub into the warm water.  He sank as deep as he could, curling his legs against his chest, before leaning into his knees and sobbing.