Not So Happy Returns

by Soledad

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December 09 – Guidance

He who had once been known as Kundû Endero of the Tatyai, Morwê’s heir in the hidden city of Ramandur, and later called Eöl the Dark Elf by his estranged kindred, turned around and tried to think of a way to get home in his current, disembodied form.

“I shall lead you the way,” a heartbreakingly familiar voice said, speaking in the ancient dialect of the Faithful that he had not heard for yéni, and the slender shape of a raven-haired elleth took form before his very eyes, seemingly out of thin air.

“Erikwê?” he asked, stunned to meet his first bride after all those endless years. “But – but they said you were dead!”

She smiled at him as she had always done.

“I am… and so are you, beloved. I am the Herald of the Dead, entrusted with the task to take home with me those who refuse the summons of Lord Mandostô.”

“I cannot go with you,” he said, ashamed. “I have forsaken you and took a wife; one of the Amanians.”

“Well, I was dead, and you were alive,” she answered reasonably. “I never blamed you for doing so. And you are with me now.”

“But I did not choose to remain here because of you,” he confessed. “I wanted to set my wife free. ‘Twas the least I could do for her, since she died by my own hand, however accidentally.”

“And by that, she saved you from slaying your own son,” she reminded him gently. “I still blame you not. I blame Mbelekôro and his evil for the fate of us all. You are still with me – that is all that counts.”

“I cannot return to you,” he said. “I formed a bond with my wife – though I suspect it might have been one-sided without the enchantment –, a bond that not even death can break, or so they say.”

She smiled at him patiently.

“Endero,” she said. “I have been dead since before the Sun first rose. This is not a true hröa you see – ‘tis but an illusion we create when we talk to the living or the newly dead because it makes it easier for them. But by refusing to go to Mandostô, we forfeited the right to be reborn into a new body ‘til the end of Arda – or beyond. We shan’t be able to be together as spouses, even if we wanted. You shall have a place among us in the Vault of the Dead, though, like everyone else who chooses to remain on these shores.”

“Everyone?” he asked, knowing that his son would also refuse Judgement. The last thing he wanted was to share eternity with that little traitor… for he was quite certain that Maeglin would meet a bad end, too, sooner or later.

“Everyone who is of our blood,” Erikwê clarified. “Those not of the Faithful will have to see how to deal with being disembodied, should they not wish to face the Powers in Judgement. Come now. Your mother and Atar Morwê are anxious to have you back – even if only in spirit form.”

“I do not know how to travel as a houseless spirit,” he admitted reluctantly.

“Just take my hand,” she said.

He reached out tentatively and was shocked how real ghost flesh felt to ghost flesh.  Erikwê grabbed his hand, and then they were soaring in the upper airs together, flying eastward where, nestled and well-hidden among the mountain peaks, the city of the Faithful was waiting for them: Ramandur, the Stone Flower.

~Fin~