How long had it been?
Dagramir, himself, had lost count of the days he had spent in a self-imposed confinement within his own home. Or was it weeks? The windows purposefully blackened with charcoal so they may not distinguish any life that may have reeked from inside. Or was it months? The door jammed shut, despite any passers-by, potential scoundrels, or perhaps even concerned neighbours and kin clattering on the door to rouse some form of response. Or was it...years?
Nay, not a peep was heard from the little cottage down the hill from the over-arching Dawnhall. The chimney stifled, the grass long due a shorn, the empty whiskey bottles littering the porch peculiarly absent.
Yet within these confines had lay a not-so-young Gondorian aching in some form of pain. From what, he could not establish in his own mind. Perhaps the alcohol had finally took its ravaging toll upon his psyche after all. The demons that laced their tentacles around his very soul had staked their claim and dragged him down to whatever fire and brimstone lay below. Or, perhaps he was simply deprived of the thing he hated to admit he craved?
Attention, that is.
Not quite the attention that the roguishly handsome man never failed to attract at a local tavern, from even more local wenches, nor the attention that the same rogue could never fail to find in the fists of an angry drunkard of whom he had pestered one too many times with his tales of grandeur. He pined for something he may never find again; since he ripped it from his own arms, and stomped the flames of a burning desire til there was naught but dim sparks, and ash-...
Ash.
Fitting that the woman whom he had so foolishly proclaimed his heart belonged to had taken it upon herself to indirectly tear the blackened organ to some respectable amount of shreds. The temptress who had blamed an impotence he just couldn't fathom to exist for the lack of a child he had sworn the moon, and the great sun in the sky itself. So he led himself to believe, in any case. For the truth could not be certain to reach his ears. A man who had once held the secrets of the fair town of Bree right beneath the pad of his thumb, now ached in a ball upon the sheets of his bed, worried that the truth might be worse than he could ever imagine. A truth that only her plump lips could deliver, one way or another. He had left behind a life of wonder, and hope. One single whisper of normality silenced in favour of the screaming emptiness that plagued every waking corner of his unusually barren mind.
He could bare it no longer.
There was answers to be had, and by the light of Ilúvatar, he would find them. At least, that was the plan that finally sparked to life inside his head like a firework being shot off into the sparkling night sky. Kicking the chair out of the way of the door, and twisting the lock open with a key he had vivaciously scrambled to find, he burst outside into the fresh air, and collapsed upon the elongated blades of grass beneath him. His unshorn cheeks caressing the dirt below his body. An unwashed hand crumbling the dirt beneath his nails, dirtying his palms in an off-mauve complexion, he stumbled back to a stand, and meandered his way down towards the lake that lay behind his humble abode. The sight of what he had become almost shocking him to his very core, enough to burn a blaze through the hollow abyss that had become of his thought process, and light something within him. His arguably dashing looks were now hidden by an unkempt, fuzzy sea of black, sprouting obtusely from his jawline, his neck, and upon the top of his head. The only recognizable trace of the man whom had once stood before being the shining glint of azure that danced across the curves of the rippling body of water.
No, no, this was not the image befitting of a man.
Let alone a King of his own creation.
It took precisely whatever time the sun had taken to warm the initial cool tones of amber dancing across the tips of the mountains overlooking the fare village of Towerglan, for him to have completely transformed himself once more. Bathing in the pool of water, afore returning to his cottage to shear into the mess of his beard, even his hair into neat swathes kept loosely tame by a solitary ponytail, and swamping his home clean with soap, water, and a single sponge; in a manner befitting of the finest maiden Gondor had to offer.
All the while, the same thoughts had returned to his mind, easing their way into the void like a cooling salve, one that wasn't entirely unnerving.
Where were the answers he so tirelessly craved?
Better yet, to what questions did he seek answers from?
That, he could not have bluffed a knowledge to anyone, let alone himself. If there was one thing he did know to some avail, is that his life had been one extensive journey of self-discovery, that wasn't quite ending any time soon. If the lessons of splitting from the main party in the harsh cold of Forochel only months before, to find himself lost within cavern after cavern, had taught him anything, then they had reinforced the age old core principle to which his entire personality was built upon. 'Trust nothing but your wit'.
After all, it was his wit that had kept him sane in the wastes, and driven him back south upon his own merit. His wit that had seen him through a flawed marriage, and fatherhood, through to the subsequent loss of loved one, after loved one. Many a defining moment could he slabber off to anyone willing to lend an ear to him as he slowly drunk to oblivion, however it was he, himself, who had kept his mind afloat.
So, his wit would find him his next port of solace, he had decreed. Now the only contention was to find out exactly how. The spark had been found, however, in spite of the presence of ash. He had a feeling his endeavours with the latter were not quite done just yet.
