Winterlights by Elleth

Litany

For prompt #24: Snowball fight. Aredhel mourns Elenwë. (Character death.)

Elenwë is gone, is gone, is gone, the litany steams from Írissë’s breath into the raging storm, and no past moment of the Crossing can match her rage and grief, can match her wish to set the ice ablaze, to recover her, burn heat and life back into Elenwë’s body, bury the memory of her vanishing beneath falling ice, change how Helcaraxë changes and then takes one after the other after the other. Instead she’s kneeling, hurling clumps of snow as though to tear the Grinding Ice to pieces, but for all her curses there is, will never be, returning.