B2MeM Challenge: O 65: March 3019: Haradrim in Ithilien
N 41: Deep Thoughts: God
N33: Magic and Real: The Seven Madmen - Roberto Arlt
Format: ficlet
Genre: deathfic
Rating: Teen
Warnings: See genre.
Characters: OMC Southron
Pairings: OMC/Annatar/Melkor
Summary: On loving the unlovable.
N 41: Deep Thoughts: God
N33: Magic and Real: The Seven Madmen - Roberto Arlt
Format: ficlet
Genre: deathfic
Rating: Teen
Warnings: See genre.
Characters: OMC Southron
Pairings: OMC/Annatar/Melkor
Summary: On loving the unlovable.
‘Tis the misfortune of men that they can slay gods, yet they have not blood nor fire enough to atone. So the seven sages, loving-mad with wisdom, say, and thus men suffer from the tear in the world that the death of God the Giver left – from chaos in-seeping to wreak vengeance.
So the Children of Fire march north under blood-burden to revenge, through strange lands, and Nhakinet marches among them. He is a farmer in the dry lands, a husband, a father – and he is afraid.
O God, O Giver, let me love you with all the hours of my life!
He has kept all the ways as well as he can; he has left nothing undone in any graceless moment. He has but this time to pass through, which may end soon – so short a time to sanctify!
But the stifling trees inspire horror: the hour of death draws nigh, and he cannot love it. He cannot, and he fears the death this land will bring, fears the racking of his body that shall rend a soul never made to war, for how can he love with so hateful an hour?
Is that a bird singing in the bush? Memory blurs vision: he sees his children waving to him, and his wife’s tearful face. O God, O Giver, let me love you with all the hours of my life!
Does something move beyond that tree? Flesh cringes, heart quails – one flinches, and memory is blown to dust. He has only the words left, and then not even that – for he sees him then, among the poison green of this place: the Lord of Death, pale as a corpse, his bow drawn and as pitiless as dawn.
They have crossed the bounds, says hopeless understanding; they were dead men from the moment they said farewell to hearth and kin, and all that remains is a loveless dying, as intolerable as inevitable in this place. All is momentum, as everything comes undone. Nhakinet shuts his eyes.
O God, O Giver, let me love you with all the hours of my – !