Alfýkin: The Last of the Elves

To Feel

Illeandir stood on the sun-warmed balcony with his feet and chest bare and hair blowing loosely in the breeze. Below him was a small garden normally filled with healing patients. A hawk circled high above the plain stretching for miles across Eastern Gondor. He watched it for a while until distance his the hawk from sight.

Eleven days had passed since Eldarion's death, eleven days since the White City began mourning for it's longtime king, eleven days that Illeandir had been bedridden, unable to leave the confines of the small bed. Only that morning had he woken with enough strength to leave the room.

He had walked to the balcony just as the sun rose to hear the birds singing. The city still slept, occasionally a sound could be heard as an early riser prepared for the day or a late night drinker off to bed stumbled across an obstacle.

Suddenly the door to the balcony had burst open and Ithilwen stormed through. Illeandir braced himself against the railing should he need to throw himself over into the garden not ten feet below. He relaxed slightly when he realized it was his caretaker and jailer for the past eleven days.

Ithilwen grabbed his arm and marched him back inside before pushing him back onto his bed and ordering him to lay down. Illeandir sat down but stubbornly did not lay. She ordered him to stay and strode off, fury radiating off her body. Illeandir sat with his legs crossed in the middle of his bed contentedly braiding and unbraiding his tangled hair.

When Ithilwen had returned he quickly raked his fingers through his hair, wincing when his hand snagged and ripped free. Ithilwen didn't notice. Illeandir smiled at her jerky movements that indicated she was angry. She cut a strip of cloth and yelped quietly when her finger slipped. Sucking on the pad of her thumb she motioned for his hand.

Illeandir held out his bandaged hand he had cut open the night before thrashing as a dream took control of his body. The bedstand had since been removed of the bedside.

"You might need that more than me." Illeandir said, indicating the white cloth. Ithilwen scowled. Illeandir grinned and she rolled her eyes.

"You seem lively," she commented dryly. Illeandir conceded, she was right. He felt far more alive than he had ever felt the past two hundred years. He felt more... connected with the world, as if before he hadn't been a part of it but now he was. Maybe it was his near death experience, or that he wasn't the last elf on Middle Earth, or that his lifelong friend, Zaharias, was still alive. Perhaps all three.

When Ithilwen finished with his hand she instructed him to stay on the bed. Illeandir quietly picked up a book he had been reading to keep his mind off being stuck in one place. She left only slightly less angry with the young elf for she could not stay angry at him.

As soon as Illeandir felt she was gone for at least a while longer he abandoned his book and went back to the balcony. He didn't even bother to put on his shirt, so eager was he to get outside under the vastness of the sky.

That was where he stood now, lost in thought but staying far from memory. A brightly colored butterfly flitted past his head and over the roof. A wild impulse struck him, borne out of the need to do something. Illeandir reached up and grasped the edge of the roof and pulled himself up onto the slippery shingles with only a little difficulty.

He was up there for nearly an hour listening to and watching the mourning city. Occasionally a lament of the late king rose up and brushed past his sensitive ears. He did not understand these people. Why did they mourn death? It is a gift. A chance to move past this life and into the Blessed Realm. But what did he know of man's cursed gift? He knew not where their spirits went after death.

A person walked into the gardens distracted him from his musings as he tracked their movement across the grass. They stopped in the center of the garden, out of sight from the balcony but not from the roof. Another person followed, clad in fine robes. Seven more people followed the first two until nine stood in a circle in the middle of the garden. Illeandir froze and, despite the warm sun, he felt suddenly cold.