Broken

 

She knew when first she came that it would not be easy
Nothing ever to be easy again
She sensed before she saw what they had done to him
And then she had only her days to remember
Gently come to new-plighted troth, he had loved her
She wandered with him through fields of singing wildflowers
And held his face in wonder in the silver dew of Isil's light
But as children they were
Foolish, playing
Unheeding of the wild, uncaring of the dangers
A rush of steel sounds, blood tastes, was all she remembered
His blood? Her own? She knew not
Then the dark
Never had there been dark like this
Not even when Eru went out to the Void
For the Void was pregnant with opportunity
This darkness was the weight of the grief of Arda
A pit of sorrow with no joy, suffering without end
And she learned to hate

She hated the red eyes that blinked slowly out of the darkness
She hated the black spirit within them
She hated the shrieks she could not place to bodies
And she hated Them

First there was only darkness
Blackness to undo the mind, deaden the senses, weaken the fëa
But not so weak as to loose it from the bonds of life
Oh no, never that - suffering was the purpose
After, there was fear
Glowing eyes in the darkness, wet touches on the body, whispers of something along the ground
Fear that unravelled the last vestiges of hope and ravaged sanity
Fear that tasted of blood
And then came Pain

Who or what came to bring it, at first she did not know
But she heard him scream
For long now she had not heard his voice
Yet, she knew it through the throbbing notes of raw agony
Speech was stolen from them, images stripped from their minds
But love they still held, although unsure of what to call it
So she screamed with him, and They came to her
Eyes leering, rough hands pinning her down
And Pain, a real thing, with shape and force
She could never have known, would not have guessed

She felt them marring her face, cutting, shaping, slicing
Then her body was broken and held to heal in broken posture
She wept in garbled sorrow - They laughed
And then she saw him
They brought him to her and gave them light that they might look on each other
Through watery eyes burning with hatred for the feeble glimmer
She saw what They had done to his body, his gentle face
But his eyes were his own, the eyes of her people
He reached toward her with misshapen arms
Howling and screeching, but she understood and rushed to him
Their bodies came together roughly, painfully
Her arms, elongated, went around him too far
Her body was twisted and fit his no longer
Dimly she remembered a different embrace
He was weeping on her face and They laughed, mocked
How she hated Them
But They were not finished

Together they were kept
He taken out and used for hunting
She was given blood to drink, and
Threw it against the wall - there was Pain
She got nothing, for days he ate what he killed in front of her
They brought back the blood and she drank it all
She did not remember Manwë, she did not remember Light
Her memory was leached out of her like a painful, whining screech,
Slowly, hurtfully, with care for the Darkness that would replace it

They had no language, no salvaging thoughts
No prayers or shredded hopes
They were beasts, with minds unmade
They were mated, for Darkness cannot make, only mock
They were made to give offspring like animals
And she knew this was wrong
It remained at her core that her people made children only out of love
Although she no longer knew that she had a people
Or that she had love
She hated the creatures They made her give Them
Those that were weak, they were forced to eat
He did it willingly, she hated him for that

He was useful to them, could be trained
And given the new language of the Dark
He had forgotten everything
No tingle of starlight on windy nights remained
Bright lights in the eyes of his people forgotten
Darkness only there was and sneering hatred for everything
So They gave him language and taught him to fight
She was dross, useless now even for breeding
They destroyed her body, fed it to Their wolves
And some of it to him

Her saddened, weak fëa watched his horrific feast
It remembered
She turned to the West, felt immeasurable pity and compassion
Grief for her that would last beyond the undoing of the earth
But they could not save her, she was ruined
Mandos could not claim her essence, it was putrid
And she knew then, the fullness of Morgoth's hate
To undo in shame and depravity what Eru had wrought in grace
To deny the Firstborn fëa even a breath's solace in Aman
She heard her name uttered on the breath of Manwë
Then she sighed and was lost forever
 

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