I cannot breathe. My chest feels like it’s going to cave in on itself. In a nightmare, I am falling - but it’s right into Gondolin again. I can taste the heat of flames and I know what happens in this moment - this is the moment I dive in front of Mallossel and take the brunt of the dragon’s fire from her. But just as I move to do so, as I did those thousands of years ago, my arms wrap around nothing, and ash fades from my grasp.
I turn to face the beast and find myself at the battle of Dagorlad; rather the end of it, though where I should now be arguing with my sister about which path we shall take, there is no one there save a corpse on the ground that looks like her, a gaunt spear through her chest and eyes staring into the blank nothingness.
And then I dream of frigid winds and the cold, where she perished on the slopes of the Misty Mountains. I am trying to run through the snow to her, but I am not fast enough. I am never fast enough. I see her turn to me, her eyes wide and afraid, and I hear her scream,
“Amathlan!”
I finally surge forward to dig her from the snow, but a skeletal arm reaches out and pulls me down with it.
I wake up with a start. I’m gasping for breath, heaving, and I can feel sweat all over my skin. It is dark, and cold, and I cannot stop shaking. Instinctively I throw myself to the side to see where Ithilwe is - he’s here he’s here he has to be here he can’t be gone where did he go who’s taken him where - but he is still with me, asleep by my side. His journal is haphazardly strewn out of his bag, and I wonder for a moment if he was writing ere his sleep.
I can feel myself beginning to cry, and I almost want to wrap my arms around him in that moment like a frightened child. But I do not. I reluctantly lower myself back down on the ground, with my back to him, as I silently regain my composure. By the time I am calmed down and about to sleep, I see the first sliver of dawn poke over the distant mountain-line.
Loosely inspired by this song.
