The Host Palantine

The pounding of her feet resounds like the drums of war resounds like the beat of her heart burning in her breast. Smoke and ash chokes out the sky above and holds it in wretched darkness. Not even the slender rays of silver moonlight break through the thick clouds to offer the favor of the Valar upon the sight of this war, where fair fey fall and fairer are sundered.

Gondolin, First Age

“Mind how much wine you drink,” Amathlan frets over her in a low tone as they approach the large hall of the House of The Heavenly Arch. “And we are only staying as long as I shall be performing!” 

“Why are you a healer?” I ask Nestorion one afternoon as he treats the wound on my abdomen with the given grace and learned skill to be expected from the elves. He raises his gaze to meet mine, staying silent until he is through with his work.

“Greaves, to make your step undaunted.” 

“Gauntlets, so that your hands know no bite save that of your own weapon.” 

“The Cuirass, to shield your heart from weariness.” 

“The Mantle, to carry the burden of The Thousand.” 

“The Helm, so that the Enemy knows whom to fear.” 

“You are wrath, and you are ruin. You are The Spear and The Shield. A torch carried at midnight. You are war made manifest. Duty unto death.” 

Cardanith stood in a vast sea of grey. The sand underneath his feet gave way, shifting under his weight, his boot sinking in the ground. A bloodied spear looms tall in his hand, this point of silver, tainted by crimson. No mantle adorns his shoulders, and a faint yearning, a calling beckons him to the foulest of places. To Iron and stone. To a place where all withers, and where, bound in rusted chain, awaits an oath sworn long ago. 

“Daughter of mine, will you ever marry?” Her father asks her one day beneath the weeping willow tree; a dried-up creek-bed ran beside their feet, the current still alive with crickets and toads and the stagnant rainwater of a world that had not yet washed the sins of the first away with its rushing flood. 

"I was a deadly thing, was I not?" A pause, the first of many. "But I… I was not whole. I was broken.”

The lyrics contained within the entry are from "Achilles Come Down" by Gang of Youths

The self is not so weightless