Ryslig PSL
Sep. 8th, 2022 04:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hobbitsthoBoromir knows what it's like to sleep without dreaming-- it is the way of an exhausted soldier to fall into sleep like falling into a pit and to awaken as though coming up from deep water, knowing time has passed but not how much. This is not like that.
It's more like awakening from a bad dream into a worse one. This, too, he knows well. The dream from which he emerges is a dim sense of noise and chaos, heat and pain, an urgent despair; the dream into which he wakens is a damp, silent world. The smell of earth is the same, though.
He rises. His eyes find the tombstone first. He reads his own name. For many long seconds, he grasps after breath as though he had taken a blow to the chest. (Something intrudes on the thought-- some half-remembered pain in his ribs, something just outside the dream--) He has not won it back when he sees the stone beside it, standing over a grave filled in.
After a long, terrible moment, he shakes his tongue loose. "These are not the tombs of the lords of Gondor," he says, his voice low and frightened. "Who has buried my lord Denethor thus -- who has kept him from sleeping beside his ancestors..?"
An unbearable truth is bearing down on him. He looks to what graves he can see in the darkness-- Finduilas, though this is not her grave, not where she is laid, he knows this-- and beside it, another empty one, bearing his brother's name.
The unbearable truth draws nearer. But first, the sound of heavy footfalls reaches him, and the sound of keys. A lantern light dances in the distance. He reaches for a sword that he only now notices is not there.
"Who goes there?" he calls hoarsely into the darkness.
It's more like awakening from a bad dream into a worse one. This, too, he knows well. The dream from which he emerges is a dim sense of noise and chaos, heat and pain, an urgent despair; the dream into which he wakens is a damp, silent world. The smell of earth is the same, though.
He rises. His eyes find the tombstone first. He reads his own name. For many long seconds, he grasps after breath as though he had taken a blow to the chest. (Something intrudes on the thought-- some half-remembered pain in his ribs, something just outside the dream--) He has not won it back when he sees the stone beside it, standing over a grave filled in.
After a long, terrible moment, he shakes his tongue loose. "These are not the tombs of the lords of Gondor," he says, his voice low and frightened. "Who has buried my lord Denethor thus -- who has kept him from sleeping beside his ancestors..?"
An unbearable truth is bearing down on him. He looks to what graves he can see in the darkness-- Finduilas, though this is not her grave, not where she is laid, he knows this-- and beside it, another empty one, bearing his brother's name.
The unbearable truth draws nearer. But first, the sound of heavy footfalls reaches him, and the sound of keys. A lantern light dances in the distance. He reaches for a sword that he only now notices is not there.
"Who goes there?" he calls hoarsely into the darkness.
