The Exile's Daughter

A Flame in the Dark

No-one would think to look here, surely. This place was so tiny, so unnoticeable that it looked like a mere shallow crevice in the vast, mountainous area that surrounded it. They could not find me here in this hidden cave.

Steel plunging into soft skin, rancid breath touching pointed ear

I looked down as the long wound in my right shin throbbed. Even weeks afterwards, I was still on edge. It was not healing properly, either, but I had not the supplies I needed to help myself, nor the motivation to bother finding some.  My boots, hastily tugged on in the course of my escape, were thrown against the cave wall on the ledge where I had sat for time uncounted. There was blood on the lining of the right. 

What was the point of worrying, anyway? I had no-one now. 

Grey eyes glassing over

I had barely kept myself alive since that night. There were some things to eat on the slopes of the mountains, just vegetation since I had no weapons for hunting, but this had kept me afloat. Why, I wasn't quite sure. Certainly, death would be preferable to this cruel imitation of life, where my stomach growled from hunger, my throat scratched from thirst and my wound throbbed with ever-increasing violence. Perhaps I was afraid to join them in the Halls of Mandos where, surely, I would find the answers that plagued my mind at all times.

He hadn't even looked surprised

I shook myself mentally and looked up from the ledge in this miniscule place I had made my home. The sun was setting over the rough grasslands west of the Misty Mountains. I could not see them, however, through the slit-like entrance to the cave. I only watched the orange light permeate the usually untouchable shadows. Every other time of the day, I would fix my eyes on those shadows, irrationally afraid of what might spring out of them, but for a few minutes, the whole cave blazed with evening light and I felt safer.

My ledge was about 8 feet off the floor, and it had been a challenge to climb up the ancient steps to it, carved for who knew what purpose, on that night when everything had changed. I hadn't left it for perhaps three days now. It was easy to lose count here. The water supply had seemed so far away, and anyway what was the point of moving for it now? What would I do with my life without them?

Torn white skirt, rough shouting. No one to help. 

I sighed. The nightdress I had escaped in barely looked like the homemade gown it had been before that terrible night. I had been forced to prise the ripped material away from the wound on my leg when I had woken here for the first time. It now sat either side of the wound, sometimes brushing the half-healed gash with its grubby edges.

I'll deal with this one later

Was everything supposed to be so numb? Most things seemed so listless now, so pointless, as I sat on the ledge that was now my bed. I wondered, not for the first time, whether I should just end it now. It would be easy to never step off this ledge again, to let myself slip gradually away. Were it not for the ache in my stomach and the razor in my throat, I might have almost called it romantic.

Just as I had resolved to bear the pain and sit for only a while longer in Middle Earth, the entrance to the cave was blocked. I looked up, jerking away from my heavy thoughts, and found in front of me a figure most unwelcome. There was a glimpse of broad shoulders tickled by scruffy dark waves of hair, and weapons slung practically over a slim back.

I stiffened, stifling a gasp, and edged silently backwards into the ledge. However, its width was small and there wasn't far to go. Pressing myself against the wall, I berated myself internally. I should have left this mortal world long ago – now they had found me again.