Green leaves of an endless variety matched upon sturdy oak and maple started to change into vibrant orange and yellows, reds and browns. The heavy smell of autumn started to waft upon the air and held the heavy distinction of looming and non-stopping winter, or death in the case of the woman who spent her time on the slopes of the Caradas. She was cold and freezing as it was, let alone with the winter’s wind spreading not only from the head but the roots of the windy hills she called her residence. Each day the nights became longer and less forgiving with their chill, the game became more scarce and harder to find. Even when their tracks were so blatantly showing themselves to the woman’s single coal black eye she could not seem to find them. Perhaps it was because they were becoming scarcer, though it was very possible her mind was drowning itself in anguish and hatred. Self-pity even, with a soft but brilliant coat of solitude. The stone she had been sleeping under no longer provided her with an escape from the cool air that flew over the side of the hills like waves do sand. Crashing and peeking under every left crevice to draw out whatever lies underneath. But instead of pebbles and seashells, it was animal and beast alike. Where her prey seemed to become less plentiful her predators seemed to become bolder. Every night she would lie shaking under the sounds of howling and crumbling rock, mountain lions and bears had started their hunt to survive the coming snowfall. Juhryhu was hesitant, fearful even of going back to the shore, afraid those that had guided her away from it would be waiting. Like a cats sharp teeth that snap over the tail of a mouse once it peeks its head from its hole it dug in the ground. Though at this point Juhryhu started to realize she didn’t really care if she died, she figured she would and had come to accept it to some degree. She after all had nothing to live for, no family, no loves or soft thoughts. All she had was a blood eye, a lost beauty and a torn spirit. The sole thing that kept her wishing to continue, kept her wishing to make her way to that shore was the thought that she could be stronger than her husband. The memory of their first meeting pounded into her head with every thought and every blink, bearing its ugly face. She came to realize more than ever that she hated her husband with all of her being, with all of her life. She thought to herself ‘’ Why should he choose me, and be able to take me? Why should he be able to force me against a rock and have his way, then marry me when I bore his child? Why should I have to carry his burdens, when he is the one that brought him about for himself? ‘’. Her crooked mind desperately raced for a single moment of softness she felt for her husband, a single moment of love and not resentment. After enough time of dwindling on it she came to realize that she never did actually love her husband, she loved the thought of what he could be, and she loved the respect she had for him. He was stronger than her, smarter than her; he was her better in every which way. So she respected him, craved him. She needed him, and in turn for her devotion she was a gifted her daughter. Her love and her life. She had now lost that, the only thing that she had left was that thought that she could somehow show her dead husband that she was better than him, show him that she could survive what fate had dealt her and love herself after. She could be happy with her life, she could live on. She believed this would make her husband in his death respect her, make her stronger than any other woman or man could possibly ever aspire to be, or become. It was this sole thought and hope that urged her to head for the shore of the Great River instead of staying behind and facing inevitable death. That need to be better than her husband. That ebbing wish of survival and strength. It could almost even be considered, a lust.
After having made her decision on what to do with herself, Juhryhu started to gather her many furs of different variations, red fox furs, brown beaver hides, silver lynx pelts. She strung them all together by a rope she fashioned from her own hairs, having cut it short enough so that it couldn’t run through her fingers or be grabbed, caught by and twig or bush or wood. The rope was very short, though it was good enough to make a sort of belt on which she could display her many trophies. Once her things were all collected she started on her way down the slopes of her hill, the grass becoming lusher with every step she took, the birds singing clearer and in deeper numbers than the songs of the wailing wind that had kept her company previously while up in the higher ground. Her nostrils started to take in every scent and smell, every berry and fruit, every nut and drop of rain. Every drop of dew that glistened upon seas of ceaseless grass. She had almost forgotten the beauty of nature, the beauty of life. For allowing her to realize it again she thanked her spirits and her idols, or at least she promised herself she would. Once she had made her way south. Gravel and mud crunched and sloshed under her bare, chaliced feet that skittered over the banks of the Great River. Her toes digging through the ground and sands, allowing a few small waves of water from the shore to trail through her toes and across her mud darkened feet. After hours of pause from the simplicities of the running waters in the streams and the glowing sun ahead she started to trace through her mind, more thoughts. She wondered where she would go and who she would try to reach. Though why was that of any matter? She had no one, she had no goal and she had no purpose. She was a fallen leaf from the trees in fall that never hit the ground, only drifting in its spot through every branch and past every drop of water that fell around it. She was truly a lost and open soul, but ironically for the first time in her life, free. After much conflicting ideas and stinging memories she decided to simply drift, allow the water to take her where it wanted to. Wandering down the banks of the river she snapped reeds and river grass from their roots, peeling bark off of the wet trees that had been coming more and more absent of their leaves. Nearly left to a full nudity of colors into simple pillars of a bleak emptiness. The bark would be her floor, once she dried it. The reed would be her walls and the grass would be the cement that kept it all together. She made a tightly woven canoe type contraption and after it sank to the count of seventeen times she finally made it to the proper design so it would float, with her in it even. She searched the sandy riverbank for miles, looking for a perfect sharp stone, though she never found one. Only dull and feeble materials caught her single eye, as her other remained bloody, blind. She settled for a blunt stone she found, as thick as her forearm and as long as her hand. After strapping four thick reeds together she tied the stone to the top of them, looking back on it she wouldn’t really be able to say what she wished to accomplish with such a thing, but at the time it seemed like protection, it seemed like safety.
Juhryhu started off down the river, allowing the current to drive her south, using her sticks and stone as a paddle of sorts, or at least an anchor to stop her from ramming into any stone or shore. She did not quite mind where it was she was going, didn’t quite mind where it was she was going to end up. All she minded was living, surviving and becoming strong. Becoming a lion amongst sheep. Every time the sun started to set in the purple sky and the opaque mass started to rise in its place, she caught herself a salmon, catfish or even frog. Some days eating them raw and some days stopping to cook them. In her conquest to become some unmovable force she was tearing her body apart, the raw fish was eating away at her stomach and the lack of physical labor was making her previously toned body a mere thought of its old self. Even a comical example of what had once been. Juhryhu did not notice much other than tree and grass on the shores for what seemed like months, columns of smoke here or there rising acres away from the trees that grew scattered over the banks and waters edges. Time seemed to move as swiftly as her life was taken away from her, where in reality it stood still, what was to her months were days. Weeks were almost hours. She talked to herself to try and keep entertained, to have some sort of socialization, not even thinking of removing herself from her serenity of the water for a single second. That is until she reached two grey and towering figures over either side of the river, standing as guardians to tell her to stop or be crushed under the waves of a fall that could be distantly heard. The statues put her in a trance, having been larger and more majestic than anything her eyes had ever beheld or probably will ever again. Or at least that is what she believed at the time. She made her way to the shore, her mind now throbbing with more ideas. More fear at what could possibly hide behind every tree and under every stone that she stood on. She was in Rohan, in the place that her life had been taken from her, trying to make a new one. She managed to calm her mind after some hours, laying down upon the shore close to the Rauros as her boat floated to the falls. She slept, slept in the land of her enemies. In the land of her lost dreams and future. She slept alone and empty for the hundredth time, and she slept, not knowing if she would open her eye the next morning to see her own body or to see some fabrication of what she used to be. A skinless corpse she could see from the sky above. She wondered if everything that had been happening was a dream, if she had actually died and was not sparred. If what had happened to her ‘’could’’ be called that. Deep inside of herself, she almost wished she was in fact dead, and that it was all a dream. A soft whisper of freedom, a soft whisper of strength. The strength that she so desperately wished, and the fabricated strength that she thought she had, though was simply weakness. Weakness covered in a crimson red veil, and dressed in gold.
