Quick (I swear) author's note: Ok, sorry it takes me forever to post my chapters, but those freaky gremlin things have taken over my computer, and only let me type if I honor them and give them sugar and coffee. Also, please try to ignore my non-existant spelling mechanics. In stead let yourself be captivated by my incredible choice of syntax. Oh yeah.

P.S. Dear eokat, Gollum won, by Smeagol may come back for revenge.

*

White eyes twinkled in their innocence, like an infant’s. They glittered in the silver-emerald waves of the grass, the white Evermind. The windy sky was ashen grey, but the rain refused to fall. Like a curtain, with the rush of a storm, sweeping away the sorrows. Breaking the tension. Crying for them.

A woman sang with her hair bound up, weeping for the world, and for the maiden. How could the funeral prayer be sung? How could their be any chants for the dead, any wishes for the afterlife? How could there be any word spoken for the solemn dead, who ever died so young? So young! Those who were her sisters, those who were her friends, and those who loved her for her wealth, and hated her for her pride. All saw the Queen in her fair raminent of fair velvet forest green, girt with gold, and adorned with gold and with a sword in her stiff hands. The only life was on her sand-colored hair, her waves of deep golden-brown, crowned with a circlet of Evermind. Odin’s shield-maiden, Epona’s faery.

Her eyes were not seen, for they were orbs of twisted terror and sorrow, and Saruman himself hath never gazed into any orb harboring more visions of dread. And those who’s duty it was to sew closed the clammy wan eyelids over those eyes of glass had their image branded on their souls for eternity. Death was on her pallid face, colder than a child lost in the snow.

The candlelight flickered last on her face, ‘ere she was laid to sleep beneath the cold still earth, without a sound. Elfhild, queen of Rohan, his love, his bride. Theoden sang a solemn hymn for the blessed one who died. But that was long ago, so long ago.

Now Elfhild was dust and bone, weighed down by gold the dead use not. But no frost touched her earthy braids. Shriveled, dead. And beside her slept her son, her only child, her doom. Theodred, whom she had given her life to, had died. A warrior-- not so old-- had gone down in a flash of steel and glory, made immortal by the many songs that would tell of his deeds. There would be lads who would aspire to be like him. But now his father thought that it was cruel to rejoice in slaying and war.

He had lost the only people he loved. In his impatience he had surely caused Elfhild to choose her fate–her terrible fate–and now, in the sickness of his mind, he had unknowingly sent his only, precious child into war, and lost him. Lost the child Elfhild died to give him. Theoden stood upon the mounds and sang a hymn of old days, before his voice was given over utterly to weeping; the sound was lost with the wind. He had no life now. No desire but to die, and go to whatever appointed end, following the sun in his last dying blazes beyond all roads and highways. To see her again. He prayed that she wait for him; he would not fail to meet her in that dim vale.

* * *