Isolation

Canon compliant AU.  I heard somewhere that Mithrellas ran off and left he family behind.  It sounds horrible, but strangely understandable.  No Quenya names, though they are not all Sindarin.  In fact, none of them are Sindarin this time either.  Directly related to "Untouchable".  You could, I guess, call this one of the parts of their story.  Takes place in Dol Amroth (in Gondor) in the late-ish Third Age.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Unfinished Tales

Pairings: Imrazôr x Mithrellas

Characters: Mithrellas (mentions Imrazôr, Galador, Gilmith, unnamed grandchildren, slight hinting at Nimrodel)

Warning: canon compliant AU, canon pairings, elf-mortal relationships, depression, canonical character death

Song: Wingless Angel

Words: 1,257
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
isolation (noun): the action of isolating or condition of being isolated
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/isolation

It was not that she had not loved her husband or his people.  Not that at all.

She loved the man she married, old and gray though he had become in his final years.  And she loved her son and daughter, both fully grown with families of their own before their first century had turned.  She loved even the lowly servants of the kitchens and the cheerful sentinels of the palace gates.  The men who dutifully guarded the city and drank and made merry off duty.  The women who gathered together to sew in the afternoon and exchange gossip and the young girls spending their days blushing at the young men from their modest windowsills.

Mithrellas loved these people, fleeting though they might be.

So very fleeting.

Until she one day looked at her husband and realized he was old.  Not in the way of years as she, but in the way of the body and mind.  Content with the expanse of his years and the wisdom gathered within his heart.  Ready to move on and join his ancestors...

And here she stood, contradictory and paradoxical, still the same untouchable creature of the stars that she had been all those years ago when first he had pulled her from her reverie and despair, carrying her away from the heights and down to the earth.  The same wistful remembrance still cold as ice remained, settled like a blade forever embedded in the throbbing flesh of her heart.  Stagnant.

Her eyes looked out over the people again.  The maids once young and fair when first she had joined their sewing and spinning were now old and gray, wrinkles at the corners of their eyes and grandchildren clutching at the hems of their skirts.  The guardians once young and playful, wrestling in the courtyard and joking with one another over tankards now were becoming frail of form and their beards going white and wispy.

The little ones--the children who had once stared at her in such awe as only a young, sweet soul might possess--now looked older than she.  And their children were above her waist and growing taller seemingly by the moment.

Her own daughter... Her own son...

To one of the race of Men, they looked the father or the mother and she the daughter.

Frozen in time like a statue.

And this, more than anything, Mithrellas came to mourn and despise.  It never left her mind, not when she pressed herself against her husband's chest and listened to the beat of his heart.  Not when she gathered her daughter close and admired the growing swell of a third child.  Not when she stretched upon her tiptoes to press a kiss to her son's weathered cheek in greeting.

Not for a moment did she forget.  But she turned aside and pushed away the awareness, knowing it would bring her only pain and disillusionment.

Until the day came when her husband did not wake from his slumber, his face peaceful and restful but his body empty of all brilliance and spirit.  Gone like the flash of sparks in the darkness, and to her it seemed to have been naught but a year since they had first met.  Naught but a shallow breath swallowed within the recesses of time.

They were leaving her behind.  Everywhere she turned, they moved on around her, the river parting for the cutting edge of a jagged rock.  Always moving and moving.  Changing and changing.  Leaving her behind.

Never before had she felt such pain.  Such isolation.

Amongst her people, the old did not pass beyond the edges of the world and children did not become adult until their hundredth year.

Her beloved Imrazôr had lived only to the age of one-hundred and twenty-six.  Hardly more than a babe to the many ages that she felt writhing beneath her pale, seemingly newly fallen skin.  And, within another century, her children would be dead.  All those young maids and boisterous warriors naught but dust decaying and disintegrating beneath several feet of earth, little more than a grave marker to tell those who walked past their final beds of dirt that they had even existed for such a short moment of time.

If even that.

All too soon, she would wake up one day and see no familiar faces.  All of them, dead.

Such was the curse of an elf amongst mortal creatures.  A folly she had never realized she possessed until it was far too late to turn back.  Far too late to throw away her love and attachment.

Far too late to let go.

But, as she stood on that cliff overlooking the pearl of a city below, her home now for many a year, she felt that bond beginning to fray at the edges, being torn apart by clawing fingers of dread and terror.

She would blink and they would be gone.  As though they had never been true in the first place, only an illusion of pleasure and paradise.

And she did not know that she could stand the pain.  Not even the thought.  Going on and on and on for endless generations, each yielding a new yet familiar face that was not the face for which her eyes searched so desperately.  Each bringing back sharply the bitter knowledge that, in the end, she could not hope to grasp those missing spirits and pull them to her bosom and embrace them close.

For they were of the Edain.  And she was of the Quendi.  Their fates were apart, their tragedy begun as soon as their hands entwined and their love was forged.

Always she had been standing upon this distant cliff alone.  But blind to ravages of its apathy.  Blind to the growing shadow of its misery.

Blind to the dark cloud lingering upon the edge of the horizon, yielding turmoil and discontent.

But blind no more was Mithrellas.  Looking down upon the place that had been more a home and hearth to her spirit than ever had been the golden boughs and eaves of Lothlórien, she felt the dimming of her thrumming spirit beneath her ribs.  The longing like a mithril thread pulling her back towards that distant whiteness rising from the edge of the sea.  More than anything she wished to turn back.

To embrace her son and kiss her daughter.  To hold her grandchildren tight and never let go.

And yet she turned away.  Like being shot with an arrow was the sudden separation.  The sudden disconnection.  For now she turned away from the city and the ocean where she had held bliss within the cup of her palms.  Instead, she looked to the mountains rising in the distance, their dripping fangs offering little comfort and assurance.  Only past regrets and failures.

There were two paths to tragedy, and Mithrellas thought she would go with the kinder.

To let go now and be forever sundered from those for whom she cared.  Because to linger and slowly die day-by-day in an endless cycle of doomed love was a cruel fate indeed.  A brand of isolation more addictive and more devastating than merely standing alone, it was, to be alone amongst a crowd of strangers, unable to find the way home and yet entrapped in the net of venomous hope.

If she had to choose her cruel fate, let it be the lesser and the quicker.  And maybe there might be happiness yet left to clutch in the aftermath.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One step further toward the intersection of two or three separate arcs.  I still am in contention over the fates of Amroth and Nimrodel.  Nimrodel is, for certain, going to live (despite "Journey"), but I have yet to decide if Amroth will actually survive or not.  I'm tempted in both directions, of the happy reunion and the tragic realization.  Such I dork I have become.

In any case, I have plans for Mithrellas.  Poor girl.  The thing that drives me crazy is that, except for Elrond's line, all half-and-half cases are born "mortal".  And that means living less than 150 years, not 400 or so like Elros Tar-Minyatar.  Of course, you could debate that Imrazôr only lived as long as he did because of a very distant relation to the Númenóreans.  Granted, it still strikes me as quite strange, but then, at 87 Aragorn still looks pretty young (but he lives to 210... maybe more of the Númenórean blood?).

But enough of my theories.  Today's song is Wingless Angel, sung by the Vocaloid Hatsune Miku.  I honestly don't know why I like this song, but I do.  Very much so.  For some reason it just caught my fancy and refused to go away, and I couldn't even tell you what it's actually about!  So here it is.

Enjoy, and sorry about yesterday's story.  I honestly thought that I had uploaded it!