2008 Birthday Drabbles
Elena Tiriel's 2008 Birthday Gifts!: 4. Deliverance – Imhiriel
by Imhiriel
Regaining consciousness, he slowly recognised the place: the goal of his rash, reckless quest for what remained of Númenor.
Painfully, he rose on 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.
~*~
A/N:
- “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.
~*~
Imhiriel
