Olwë's Mind Grows Troubled

< Previous     AelKennyr Rhiano  Bathed in sweat, Olwe claws his way out of a nightmare and, shaking, sits up on the pallet in the cleric's hall.  The taste of fire and ashes was in his mouth, and his nostrils flareas he opens his mouth and sucks in the sweet air of Sylvahara's, his fair cousin Comet's realm. He sits, his face buried in his hands as he gulps lungfuls of the clean air, droplets of sweat beading down his face.  Shakily, he rises and walks over to a basin of water on a table in the corner of the modest room. Bending down, he splashs his face and scrubs the sweat from it.  Picking up the neatly folded towel, he dabs his face and hands and glances over at the other bed, where the faithful Nole still lies, sleeping.  He lays the towel back down on the table and looks at his own empty cot.  He shakes his head  as he thinks to himself, "No, no, I cannot bear those dreams again. "  He cannot see again, the hacked, torn, broken bodies of elves lifeless about him on a killing field drenched  in blood.  He cannot again be among the last elves standing, blood of nameless enemies and of loved ones drying on his armor, his sword arm growing heavy finally, his eyes fading, as he feels the toll of all the sword cuts, and blows to his body drain his life as his blood flows from countless wounds. Irmo, Lord of Dreams had once seemed such a gentle Vala, but now, Olwe finds his heart fill with fury and pain at these dreams. "Why?" he rages in his mind, thrusting his frustration and pain out, as though to touch the very mind of of the Lord of Dreams.  "Why show me this?  Why torment me?  Am I to die?  To see all my kind laid waste upon a gruesome battlefield?  Why, why tell me?"  His body feels hot, clammy, and he is brought back to himself, and looks, for a moment, disoriented, about the darkened room. Softly, he treads toward the door.  Opening it slowly, so as not to make a sound, he tiptoes out, and then crosses the great room of the hall to open the door to the outside. Stepping out, he closes the door behind him and pauses on the doorstep....feeling his heart beginning to return to his normal rhythm.  He looks around, drinking in the great beauty of his cousin's realm with his senses.  Here, in the wee hours of the morning all was still, all was peaceful...all was...no, wait...that buzz, that insistent buzz, almost like a whisper...so familiar, so unsettling...Olwe whips his head from side to side to pinpoint it.  He steps out and away from the hall and walks a little to one side, his head cocked, listening.... There!  Again, like a swarm of bees in his head....angry bees...but it seems like the buzzing are words just beyond his ability to capture what they are saying. His brow knits as he bends all his concentration upon the noise...He opens his awareness,  consciousness...something he does so rarely now, here in the mortal world.  He clenches his fists and takes another few steps, swinging his head back and forth.  Aha, there! There is where the noise is originating...quickly, he strides toward the location.  But the longer he walks, the more distant seems to be the sound.  And the further he travels in search of the source, the more angered he becomes, his fists clenched, his lips pursed  in determination, his strides long, rushed.  Heedlessly, he pushes through brushes, brambles, lets low hanging, tender young tree branches slap at his face, no attempt to divert them.  Over and over he thinks only of finding the source, making it stop.  Then, then there would be blessed peace. His blood begins to boil.  Memories beat at him.  The long journey to the Shining Lands so long ago.  Both he and his elder brother Elwë, a team.  He followed his brother, leading their people from the Waters of the Awakening, Cuiviénen, westward.  Then in Beleriand, his brother vanishes, taken in fascination with the Maiar Melian, leaving Olwe to search year after year after year, unaware of his brother's fate, utnil the people could not wait longer or else they would disperse.  Again, tears sting his eyes at the memory of leaving his brother behind, and alone, being their leader.  And when he finally learned of what befell his brother...relief and anger and such loneliness.  He never confessed to himself how much he missed Elwë.  It was not until he lost his heart, too, to a Maia of Isil, Tilion, that he could understand, fully, what that love between Elwë and Melian meant for his brother.  And for a second, in his thought of Tilion, his mind cleared, and his heart lept, but the next second, he was pulled back into memories of the time without Tilion, without Elwë, of endless journeys, of sleepless nights, of constant doubts as a young Olwe struggled to fill his brother's shoes.Onward, ever onward, Olwe was urged by the Vala Ulmo.  But each place they stopped on the journey, some Teleri refused to travel further, and with each that he left behind, he more and more grew to doubt his leadership.  As though the centuries had rolled back, he now remembers the doubt, the awful fear that he was leading his people astray comes back.  He was not a king when they left Beleriand, merely the brother of Elwë.  When, at what point, did he begin to grow into kingship?  It feels that mantle has been on his shoulders his entire life.  The smell of a cook fire from some nearby home stops him...the meal long ago cooked and consumed, the fire had been banked for use in the morning.  He feels a longing, so sharp it makes his breath catch...what would be like to awaken in the morning with your beloved, to start a day as any other elf? He nearly turns around then, that thought calming him, but the buzzing roars in his head, and he claps his hands to his ears, a useless gesture.  Inside his head, laughter seems to rise, but that cannot be.  He grits his teeth and whirls back to the direction in which he was headed.  His mind now floods with the kinslaying at Alqualonde, the first of only three battles between the Eldar clans of elves.  The docks and harbor plaza of Alqualonde piled with bodies of Teleri and Noldor alike...blood staining the crystal waters...the swanships taken by force.  Between Fëanor and Fingon, what chance did they have?  Yeeeeesss, a voice seemed to whisper in his mind, above the angry buzz.  What chance, Teleri Lord?  Where were the almighty Valar? His reverie is broken off, then. Suddenly, before him is a walled off area.  He stops.  The voice screams in laughter, and the buzzing rises to a roar, filling his mind, chasing his thoughts.  His hands come away from his ears, bloodied, and he reaches back up to find both ears bleeding.  He clenches his fists and tries not to scream out in pain.  He tilts his head back and closes his eyes, tears squeezing from his eyelids.  He tries to close off this pain, this unbearable searing noise, but instead, he collapses, senseless to the ground, and falls, blissfully unconscious. > Next