Fields of gold

The gentle lady

Shadow and flame. His precious city, burnt to the ground by Morgoth's creatures. Cries of distress, pain, despair for his men bleeding into the merry summer ground. And he, falling to his death as the Balrog yanked upon his hair. Burnt it in its malevolent fist, the will to vanquish his opponent stronger than that to live.

The sickening noise of bones cracking upon impact, of his skull meeting the harsh, sharp rocks of Gondolin's cliffside, cries and yells of his brethren fleeing the dark wave of destruction. And the eagles circling, sharp squeaks rising to the heavens as he died.

Beeeeeeeeeeeep !

Glorfindel started in bed, eyes frantic as he searched for the shadow. Sharp pain ran down his back, irradiating to both skull and hip. The elf groaned, crippled by pulsating agony. Several set of footsteps echoed in the corridor, harsh to his ears. Nurses burst into his room, hands gripping him to twist him back. Pain, pain, more pain digging into his back, like an overwhelming wave of anguish.

Suddenly, warmth infused his veins and the pain lessened.

"There you go, you'll be fine, young man."

Glorfindel opened bleary eyes, finding an older woman with a sincere smile and a syringue in her hand. Fine. This was a word he understood now. Fine, and good. She said more things, flared that blasted light in his eyes once more before she patted his forearm and tucked him into bed again. Glorfindel took a long, shuddering inhale and closed his eyes anew.

A nightmare. Just a nightmare.

But for a second, he was quite sure he had died.

The door eventually closed, leaving him in relative peace despite the incessant buzzing and beeping of hospital machines and vehicles in the street. He longed for the silence of winter nights, when a blanket of snow covered every white cobblestone of his fair city. Prayed for those peaceful days when he and Echtelion shared dinner, and his dearest friend would sometimes grace him with a piece with his flute.

Echtelion...

Tears slipped down his cheeks, hot trails of despair. If the Valar had seen fit to send him into this nightmarish world, he was quite sure that Echtelion had not been revived by strange machinery. For he'd seen with his very eyes the broken and burnt body of his best friend, flung into the very fountain that gave him his title. The King's square, battered and slick with the blood of their troops. And even more than the loss of Ondolindë – Gondolin in Sindarin, the city which music came from the waters springing from its rocks, he could not reconcile with the end of that friendship.

Centuries shared in companionship, defending their city at day, and creating beauty at night. Poems and songs burnt to the ground with its inevitable fall. How many of their house, massacred in the assault ?

Elves were no stranger to change. Arda itself changed before their very eyes, season after season, rivers carved their path, seas shaped the lands, mountains levelled when others rose, while they remained mostly unblemished by time. But to witness such destruction... To see his beautiful home crumble to dust, his inhabitants scattered and terrified. It reminded him all too well of the destruction of the trees in Aman.

The scars of that event, preceding the fall of Gondolin by thousands of years, were embedded deep in his feä. Scars gouged once more by the battle of Unnumbered tears.

But, back then, elvish medicine had closed frayed edged of skin and knitted his soul together. Young to his people, he still found merriment in the world, his light bright and carefree. The memories of death and destruction still existed, soothed away by the beauty of the world. Arda, itself, pulsed its life into the elves, transferring its strength and happiness into the firstborns.