Holly by Himring

Holly

Tree and leaf––true life.
Tear leaves, tear a life.

*

Celebrimbor set his palm firmly against the trunk of the holly tree.

‘I know that sometimes in the past you have thought that I have too little respect for growth and its timing,’ he said to Celeborn, who stood beside him.

‘It is true that I have been impatient sometimes with the seasons of Middle-earth, and perhaps more than was just. But in my brief glimpse into the Enemy's mind, before I took off my Ring, I saw one who had utterly divorced himself in thought from all natural growth. And I was horrified.

My heart already grieves for this Land of Hollies. Its time of flourishing has not been so long as Doriath’s but I have grown deeply entwined with it.’

*

Later, fleeing through war-ravaged Eregion fom Sauron's armies, Celeborn passed that same holly tree, now felled and trampled by iron boots. Almost without thinking, he stooped to pluck a spiked evergreen leaf from the fallen tree before he led his remaining troops on northwards.

Chapter End Notes

The prompt that month was: leaf and/or tree.

The couplet at the beginning was inspired by the month's formal challenge, which was the Welsh cynghanedd, but it is not an example of cynghanedd; it merely uses sound patterns in a somewhat similar way.