Seronaer leant on her father’s spear, his shield slung across her back as she marched, bent beneath her burdens and her troubles. Long had the march been, over perilous, grinding ice and through bitter, frozen winds. The great hills of ice crashing together as the water beneath them tossed and turned, jolting their host forwards and backwards.
First, she had lost her mother as the ice cracked beneath her feet, sending her plummeting to her death in the water. Her father had pulled her away, so she wouldn’t have to witness her mothers last moments, but she heard the crunching and creaking of the ice as it ground together far beneath their feet with her mother within. She wept with her father, her tears freezing to her cheeks as she screamed for her mother. They had gone on long together then, near the rear of the marching host. She clung to her father, and he had carried her often.
She had grown during that march however, to the point where she was now considered an adolescent. Her father had stopped carrying her, for he had become bent with sorrow and grief. He never told her but Seronaer knew that her father blamed himself for the death of his wife. She had wanted to stay behind but had taken the journey to be with him.
Then her father had died. He had fallen to his knees on the ice one day, and the host marched on past him. Seronaer pulled and pushed his limp form, but he would not move. She struck him and cursed him, ordering him to move but still he would not rise. She knelt beside him and begged, weeping with sorrow yet he would not move still. She left him there on the ice, with his pack and his weapons. She didn’t look back.
Long then she had marched among the stragglers, striving ever to return to the main body of their host, to catch up with her people. She was finally among them when the ice began to turn to solid ground beneath the thick snow. They had reached Middle Earth.
Then the magic happened, away in the East, a great, shining silver orb rose above the horizon, filling the world with it’s pale light. It couldn’t match the light of the trees, but it was a thing of beauty. Perhaps the Valar hadn’t forsaken them after all. She wondered, and heard many others muttering the same. It slowly crossed the sky before setting in the West, and Seronaer felt anxious. Was it gone for good? Had the Valar summoned it to Aman to keep for themselves? Her fear was quelled soon enough, when it rose once again in the East ahead of them. Ithil they named it, and Allabeth had come to love it.
Finally, they came to a wide, barren region, bordered to the East, South, and West by tall mountains, and in the center was a great lake. Seronaer could hardly see through the masses, and wondered what this land would bring them, whether hope or more misery and sorrow. Suddenly, the horns went up, and many blue and silver banners unfurled and then over the heads of the host, she saw it as it lit the world.
Anor they later named it. The sun. How it burned in all it’s golden glory, filling the world with it’s warmth and light. Flowers sprung up about them, and the land was barren no longer, for it became filled with life and colours. For all her sorrows, Seronaer couldn’t help but laugh as she stood straight and looked about with joy.
For sure the Valar had not forgotten them.
