Tolkien Fan Fiction
Tolkien Fan Fiction
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Imhiriel's Drabbles
By:Imhiriel
56
Deliverance

~~~

A mariner has reached the end of his long quest.

MEFAwards 2008: 3rd Place – Races: Men: Gondor Drabbles

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Regaining consciousness, he slowly recognised the place: the goal of his rash, reckless quest for what remained of Númenor.

Painfully, he rose to his knees, then his feet. Sun-burnt skin, cuts and abrasions throbbed and stung as his sore eyes roamed his whereabouts: once most hallowed, now a barren and pitiless isle.

Westwards he gazed then – in vain: no glimpse was vouchsafed him of what lay forever beyond.

So: no hope even at the end.

Then something brushed him, was blown on in a graceful arc: an eagle’s feather.

And far beyond, a white sail appeared on the eastern horizon.

~~~

- “And some there were of the seed of Eärendil that afterwards sought for it [the Isle of Meneltarma], because it was said among loremasters that the far-sighted men of old could see from the Meneltarma a glimmer of the Deathless Land.“ (Silm, Akallabêth)
- “Thus it was that great mariners among them would still search the empty seas, hoping to come upon the Isle of Meneltarma, and there to see a vision of things that were. But they found it not.“ (ibid.) The last sentence is ambiguous, in my opinion: it can refer either to the vision or to the island itself. In the latter case, the drabble is AU.

22.04.08 B-drabble for Elena Tiriel, who requested a drabble about any character, event, place, or object from Tolkien's world that especially fascinates the respective drabble-writer.