Thursday, June 8, 2017

Once as He is Who Forgot

These last few nights I have slept without rest.

 In melancholy vision I have sat in conversation with old friends who have long since passed from this earth. We have talked of smoke rings and the trout in good years, and the change of the seasons. We spoke of the days in which we knew, and the days that have since come and gone.

In vivid memory I fight again the battles of the past with new strength and new eyes. I see myself as if from the outside, young and fierce, fighting with all the energy of soul to prove his just cause, vengeance on his brow and blood in his heart.
 No longer. 
I see these battles again before my face and do not distinguish one enemy from another, neither the troll from the dwarf nor the goblin from the brigand. Now, with the understanding of many years, all are alike unto me; sons and daughters, blinded and bound by the devices of the one Enemy to us all.

I have awoken to find myself gazing into the sky as waters rush over me though not hem nor hair be dampened by the wet, and up through the waves I behold the sun.

Many days ago, having been warned in a dream, I went down into the mansions of my fathers of old and sought my wandering son in the dark places of Khazad-Dum. In the depths I found him, stumbling as if in a drunken stupor but seared as with a deadly fever, the icy blood of the mountain upon his feet.
 He did not know me when I came to him and he fought me in great determination, but I prevailed over him and at last laid hold on him that I might administer life back into his body.
As tending I discovered the cause of fever. I learned that he had encountered the infested Globsnaga in the halls. They are creatures bearing a wicked disease of the flesh, conjured by the enemy in the latter Third Age to drive out the dwarves from reclaiming their ancestral home. Its purpose is to work in the body and mind a corruption, to make of a living creature a slave to madness, disease, and pain.
A simple washing after encountering the affliction is know to sufficiently rinse the plague from the body, yet after the fungus has taken root it is all but impossible to remove.

The infection had been introduced by means of a wound which was not tended, thus my son has struggled greatly in body and mind these many days, notwithstanding I have used all the knowledge of lore and herb to remove the infection. I have kept him in a stupor that he may not recall these days of torment, yet he will be wroth to wake and find I have carried him from the halls of my fathers.

His days are not yet done that he shall fall in Moria and be buried, though it was meant for him a greater part on the road ahead, I cannot allow him to return until his mind and spirit are whole once more, so I have set those over him who will watch and turn him away, lest by the same or a different path he again disobey me.
  Whether our work be fated or blessed he will be well in their keeping until the time is again right, and he will have a road left to walk in Moria though ours lead us through a shadowed valley, and if in the end we have laid down our very lives, yet all will be well, and we will see each other again.

Skalithor Mountainzephyr

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