B2MEM 2012, Poetic Forms card, O67 - Sonnet
Challenge: O67, Poetic Forms - Sonnet
Author: Azalais
Title: Ties that Bind
Characters: Elrond
Rating: PG
Warnings: passing mention of trauma and despair
Summary: He may never know whether any of the letters reach her. He writes, all the same...
Ties that Bind
With infinite care, Elrond drew his quill across the parchment into the final tengwa, and let out a long breath. He turned for a moment away from the writing-desk, blinking hard; no sense in smudging the painstakingly-inscribed final version. The many drafts scattered across the table, after all, were stained enough.
Alagarn would carry the scroll faithfully for him, he knew, to the Havens and over the Sea. Whether it could reach Celebrían in Aman - whether any of the letters he had sent with every ship over the yéni had reached her, or whether instead Mandos’ Halls had claimed her as she sank under the trauma and despair he had been powerless to relieve - he could not know. Might never know. Yet he wrote, as he always did; because not to do so would be to admit that she was lost…
He scattered fine sand across the parchment and blew it away; rolled the scroll; sealed and tied it carefully, before lifting it, just for a moment, to his lips. Then he rose from his great carved chair, and went to see the message on its way.
If my poor words could cleave the Sundering Seas
These lines of verse should draw me straight to thee;
The ocean cold as Helcarax’ I’d freeze
To walk barefoot, if will as heart were free.
But Elves and Men, our children born and found,
Look to the Wise to fight for Endor’s fate;
Thus I who’d fain for love be Aman-bound
Am bound by love and duty here to wait.
I cannot know thou read’st what’s here enscrolled -
The Road is straight, but only West doth run;
Thou art a silver queen, no flower of gold
To sail once more out of the setting sun.
I could not heal thee, love; I can but pray
I may yet see thee whole once more, one day.
~~~
Notes:
Silver queen; the literal meaning of Celebrían.
no flower of gold; Glorfindel, who if you accept the theory that the First and Third Age Glorfindels are the same is the only Elf we know to have returned eastward from Valinor after the Change of the World, was (in the First Age) the Lord of the House of the Golden Flower.
Author: Azalais
Title: Ties that Bind
Characters: Elrond
Rating: PG
Warnings: passing mention of trauma and despair
Summary: He may never know whether any of the letters reach her. He writes, all the same...
Ties that Bind
With infinite care, Elrond drew his quill across the parchment into the final tengwa, and let out a long breath. He turned for a moment away from the writing-desk, blinking hard; no sense in smudging the painstakingly-inscribed final version. The many drafts scattered across the table, after all, were stained enough.
Alagarn would carry the scroll faithfully for him, he knew, to the Havens and over the Sea. Whether it could reach Celebrían in Aman - whether any of the letters he had sent with every ship over the yéni had reached her, or whether instead Mandos’ Halls had claimed her as she sank under the trauma and despair he had been powerless to relieve - he could not know. Might never know. Yet he wrote, as he always did; because not to do so would be to admit that she was lost…
He scattered fine sand across the parchment and blew it away; rolled the scroll; sealed and tied it carefully, before lifting it, just for a moment, to his lips. Then he rose from his great carved chair, and went to see the message on its way.
If my poor words could cleave the Sundering Seas
These lines of verse should draw me straight to thee;
The ocean cold as Helcarax’ I’d freeze
To walk barefoot, if will as heart were free.
But Elves and Men, our children born and found,
Look to the Wise to fight for Endor’s fate;
Thus I who’d fain for love be Aman-bound
Am bound by love and duty here to wait.
I cannot know thou read’st what’s here enscrolled -
The Road is straight, but only West doth run;
Thou art a silver queen, no flower of gold
To sail once more out of the setting sun.
I could not heal thee, love; I can but pray
I may yet see thee whole once more, one day.
~~~
Notes:
Silver queen; the literal meaning of Celebrían.
no flower of gold; Glorfindel, who if you accept the theory that the First and Third Age Glorfindels are the same is the only Elf we know to have returned eastward from Valinor after the Change of the World, was (in the First Age) the Lord of the House of the Golden Flower.