Freed by daughterofshadows

I free myself

This was written as 6 individual ficlets, but since they have an overarching theme, I've decided to post them in one chapter.

Excuse the switch in tenses half-way, it was intentional, but doesn't work as well when the pieces are read in one go.

Read I free myself

The tunnels under Angband were seemingly endless. They had been trapped down here for what felt like centuries but was likely not even decades. After all, they had not yet succumbed, their spirits twisted into something Other.

Erferiel knew no pain like staring into the eyes of a friend and seeing the monster that had replaced them. Not mindless, but no longer the mind she once knew.

But even in the unending dark, hope could be found in the midst of decay.

They had all heard the song, the faint echo reverberating, the rumour that a prisoner, THE prisoner, had been freed.

And if Morgoth’s most precious captive could escape this hell, perhaps they could as well.

Erferiel was not gifted with foresight. She did not know whether this venture would succeed. But they would try. They owed it to those who would never escape the dark.

 

---

 

They got out. Against the odds, they escaped. Their survival was not yet assured, the whips of their jailors still too close for comfort, but stars glistened above them.

Erferiel could not remember the last time she had seen stars.

They took turns carrying those too weak to walk themselves, stumbling ever forward towards dawn.

They did not dare to make camp, but the joy of walking under trees instead of stone, and the fear of being captured again kept them going beyond the point of exhaustion.

When the sun rose, Erferiel swallowed back tears of relief.

She looked around at those who had escaped with her.

At demon-eyed Rog, and sharp-witted Amathlos, at Haedirn who sang to them when the guards were out of earshot and Aewen who hid sharp claws under a soft-spoken façade.

She would keep all of them in her heart for the rest of her life.

 

---

 

They were back in the forest of her youth.

The settlement she had grown up in had long been destroyed. Those who had not been captured, had fled, scattered to the winds like leaves in autumn.

But the trees were still here. There was the oak where she had first kissed her wife. The maple whose sap her brother collected, inevitably coming home with sticky fingers, that would make her mother despair.

Even the song in the willow stooped low over the creek still sounded the same.

It was Erferiel that had become the stranger.

“Wait,” she whispered, kneeling down next to the oak tree. “I… I need to see whether anyone is still here.”

They gathered around her in silence. Haedirn gave her an encouraging smile.

Erferiel intoned the first few notes of a song older than herself.

Somewhere deeper in the woods, a rumbling answer arose.

 

---

 

Erferiel jumped to her feet, new strength invigorating her.

“Come,” she said to her companions, darting off into the forest, easily weaving her way through the labyrinth of roots and branches.

It was both strange and familiar at once.

The paths had changed, but the song was the same, guiding her ever forward.

They followed her, not quite understanding, but trusting all the same.

At last the chase came to an end.

A clearing of dappled in sunlight laid before them. Butterflies danced to a melody unheard.

And in the centre, he stood. The shepherd of these woods.

“Welcome home, little one,” he rumbled.

Erferiel cried.

 

---

---

 

They stay with the Onodrim for a while, resting in their shadow. The wounds of their body slowly heal, but the wounds of the spirit remain.

It is a time marked by silence. What need is there for voices when you have survived the unspeakable, when your nightmares cannot be put into words?

In the forests of her childhood, Erferiel says goodbye to the past. She grieves her family, her home, the possibilities forever lost to time.

And when her companions press onward, still searching for their own homes, she follows.

They have come so far together; it would be faithless to abandon them now.

There is nothing left for her in these woods of silence anyway.

 

---

 

They reach the sea.

Erferiel has never seen the ocean before. The vast expanse is staggering, endless in a way nothing in her life has ever been before. It is terrifying.

They stand in the surf, icy water lapping at their feet.

The cold is so different from the heat of Angband.

They slip under the waves.

The water washes them clean, sweeps away the filth and the exhaustion of their flight, their captivity, their past.

From the waves they emerge renewed.

On the shores of Nevrast, Erferiel remakes herself from the pieces left behind by the water, stronger than before, because she knows now that she can survive the breaking.

Erferiel does not know what the future will bring, but she is ready to face it.