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In the winter, Rían came to the Mithrim Elves, and in the spring, she left them, her mouth painted with slim, brittle smiles, her voice high with too-light notes, her ears full of the wind. She did not strain her ears to listen for the suggestion of Tuor’s cries. Realizing that she wasn’t listening for him filled her chest with something she could not name, but it mattered little, even when it threatened to stop her heart beating. There was little that could be made to matter, these days.
She stared over the desolate gray wilderness, wondering if Orcs would jump out at her from the shadows, or if Gilrin would come tearing after her, trying one last time to convince her not to leave. This was hardly the first time Rían had had to make such a journey, and all the other times, she had been filled with such panic, as had not abated until she reached a safe haven, and each haven seeming less safe than the last. She had thought of nothing but reaching safety when she did not have it. Of living long enough to reach safety.
Now?
Now, there was no such urgency rooted in her breast. Beleriand was more dangerous a place than ever, and Rían felt nothing. She had no particular destination in mind, beyond the faint dream of finding the site of Huor’s death. It occurred to her briefly to try Dor-lómin, to try to convince Morwen and Aerin to flee, but the thought drifted away from her, too tenuous to catch hold of again. Dor-lómin must surely be under occupation by now, and most likely, Rían would never reach them to deliver any pleas.
(They were not like her, too rooted to the place in which they lived to ever think of leaving it. They were stronger than her, Rían supposed, strong enough to weather a storm without bolting, but there was no helping it, now.)
The strength of the Ñoldor and the Edain was broken, and now was the heyday of the Enemy and his Orcs, and Rían felt none of the fear she had known before. No panic, no trepidation or even watchfulness. She walked slowly through the gray wilderness of Mithrim, and did not look back.
-0-0-0-
“The battle will go well, or so we hope.”
Huor was already more solemn a man than his brother—indeed, more solemn a man than most of the Men of the House of Hador. He was good-natured, one of the gentlest men Rían had ever known, but he spoke always with seriousness, and rarely would you hear him laugh. He was rather like his nephew in this—indeed, Huor and Túrin got on famously, perhaps because Huor spoke to the boy just as he spoke to any adult, with complete seriousness.
Though Rían had found that seriousness a touch daunting when they had first met, never before has she thought it laden with worry, or doubt. Now, however…
“But you are not certain,” Rían supplied, reaching out and clasping his hand in hers.
He smiled half-heartedly. “It’s not enough to justify changing our plans, or postponing them. But I… I just feel things, at times.” He stared off into the distance, his eyes glazed and troubled. “And I dislike the idea of leaving you here alone, in your condition.”
At that, Rían couldn’t help but smile. “I’m hardly alone.” She gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “And I think the battle will go well, if you only believe it will.”
-0-0-0-
Rían’s meandering path took her through lands burned during the aftermath of the battle, when the Enemy’s forces, giddy with victory, must have grown enthusiastic in their celebrations. She passed burned farmsteads, broken, blackened shells that shivered in the wind. She passed fields gone fallow, fields burned in the old year that were just now putting up shoots in the new. All the Edain were gone from this place, carried off to Angband as slaves, or killed, perhaps, though Rían saw no bodies.
Neither did Rían see any livestock, nor game animals she could have caught, so the knife the Elves had given her when she left them was put to use digging out and cutting roots from the cold, hard earth. Those she could still find, though not in abundance, and rarely much larger than the length and width of one of her fingers. There was nothing else in this dim, gray world.
She couldn’t name the plants the roots came from. It occurred to Rían, vaguely, that she should have been able to—she had been able to tell at a glance that they were edible. But the names she had known all her life slipped out of her mind, even when they were the names of plants she had tended in her garden in Dor-lómin. It mattered not. She would never have her garden again. The afternoons she had spent there with Aerin and Húrin would never come again. It did not matter at all.
(The nameless thing was in her chest again, battering on her ribs, insisting on being heard. Rían heard it—she could not help but hear it—but she sighed heavily rather than respond. It couldn’t make her respond. Not yet.)
She ate without joy under rock and rain, under twisted, broken tree and under rolling banks of woolen fog. Rían never could pin down the taste of the roots she ate, if they were bitter or sweet, metallic or earthen. They were rough and hard, and it took long, slow chewing to render them a mush that was as ash in her mouth, and felt like a rock in her throat. It satisfied hunger, and no more.
Memory reached back for the dim islands that were Ladros. Of when she had sat down to eat with her family—mother and father, aunt and uncle, Morwen and Beren; even Andreth could at times be persuaded to leave her home and join them. What they had eaten together escaped Rían. Its flavor and aroma, these things were overlaid by the choking smoke that had descended upon Ladros ere they fled. But the savor of companionship, that Rían remembered all too clearly. It cut into her like the edge of a sword when she had to sit out under open sky, alone.
-0-0-0-
Spring had come at last, the trees decked out in their fresh, tender leaves, birds returning home from balmy southern haunts, and the ground thawed enough that you could actually dig into the earth with your hands, rather than fear you’d break your shovel’s blade. Of that, Rían was glad. In winter, it seemed as though all the world was dying. She was grateful for spring to come again, and assure her it was not.
“Now, Lalaith, can you tell me what this animal is?”
Morwen and Húrin needed their children away from their home for a few hours. Being at loose ends, Rían was the first person they would have looked to to mind Túrin and Lalaith, and Rían hardly minded having an excuse to be out of doors for a few hours. With Túrin expressing no desire to play, Rían had taken them to a spot in the copse just outside the settlement, where the grass gave way to a smooth patch of dirt. Rían knew a few ways for them to spend their time.
“Bird!” Lalaith exclaimed, squirming in Rían’s lap and twisting around to look expectantly up at her.
Rían nodded and smiled down at her. “That’s right; it is a bird.” She pointed to the shape she had drawn in the dir. “Can you tell me what kind of bird it is?”
Lalaith turned back to scrutinizing the etching, her face hidden from Rían’s sight by her flaxen curls. The tiny girl had never seen this particular sort of bird before, though she had had it described to her at least once Rían could recall. Hopefully, she would be able to remember the name now; wouldn’t that be something to tell Morwen?
But Túrin, leaning heavily into Rían’s side as he was, seemed ill-pleased with his sister’s progress. “It’s a barn owl,” he muttered. “Isn’t it, Aunt Rían?”
“Shh.” Rían put a finger to her lips in chastisement, and fortunately, Lalaith did not seem to hear.
-0-0-0-
The land was empty. The days and weeks drew slowly by, and the land was empty, but for her. Rían saw no Elves, no Orcs, no Man either of Edain or Incomer stock. Rían scarcely saw any animals, catching sight only of the occasional hart at dawn or twilight, and the skittish things would run from her as though running from a hunter. No birdsong reached Rían’s ears. Even the flow of the water in such streams as she passed seemed muffled in sound. Only she passed through the shadowed land, and met no other traveler.
Perhaps there was no one else left. Perhaps the battle had claimed so many that Rían could wander through empty Beleriand and never find another living soul. Perhaps the forces of the Ñoldor and the Edain had not just been broken, but utterly eradicated, and they had somehow succeeded in doing the same to their enemies. Perhaps she would never see another living person, not as long as she lived.
No one to hinder her.
No one to fill her ears with talk.
No one to hold her in their arms.
No one to stop her.
She ought to have felt something to accompany these thoughts. Rían supposed she ought to have wept or screamed, rent her clothing or ripped her hair out at the roots. Certainly, that nameless thing inside her was growing louder with each passing day, its howls both ear-splitting and voiceless. But Rían felt weightless, insubstantial, far too light. It was as though someone had scooped out everything inside her that mattered, everything that might have rooted her to the ground, and sewn her skin shut over dry, hollow bones. It did not matter. Her home was occupied by their enemies. All was lost, and it did not matter. She could not bring herself to make it matter.
Rían’s weary feet carried her ever onwards.
-0-0-0-
It was summer in Ladros, and memory failed Rían in most respects but for recollection of golden sunlight shooting through trees, and Morwen walking besides her down a narrow, winding trail.
“A story!” Rían begged her cousin, tugging gently at her pale hand. “Won’t you tell me a story?”
Morwen shook her hand away, but did not frown as she answered, “I haven’t any stories you’d like. Go ask Beren.”
This had not satisfied little Rían, who kept trailing after her cousin, staring imploringly up at her. “But Andreth’s been teaching you stories. You must know more stories than Beren if she’s teaching you.”
Morwen had stopped, and sighed lightly. She went and sat down by a tall tree, and stared expectantly at the younger girl. “Well? Come here, and I’ll tell you a story you’ve not heard before. But only a short one; Mother wants me at home.”
-0-0-0-
Rían had passed into a brown, ruined land many days ago, where she could find no food and hunger clawed at her like a ravening beast, until it too receded and left her only emptiness. There were no trees in this brown land, only the empty expanse, and bitter winds choked with dust assaulted her at all times. Though she clutched her tattered cloak close about her, the wind still beat on her back and shoulders, and the dust clogged in her mouth and nose. It had a foul, bitter taste, and a reek that made Rían’s eyes water whenever she was made to smell it.
All of Beleriand will be like this, soon, she thought to herself, blinking the noisome dust from her eyes. Our Enemy delights in taking all that is good and green and twisting it to be a reflection of his own mind. Morwen said that. When… did she say that…
There’s no one left to stop him.
She slept, when weariness took her, under open sky. There was nothing here that could shelter her—no trees, no burned-out shells of homesteads, no bushes, no rocks or caves. The Moon was hidden from Rían’s sight. The stars were veiled.
One day, something green rose out of the wasteland, an island in a sea of dust.
Rían drew near to it, stood in its shadow, and her breath caught in her throat. It was a hill, a massive green hill, large enough to swallow whole the house of the Lord of Dor-lómin; its shadow drew on seemingly forever. It rose over flatlands, and with one glance, Rían knew what it was.
When so many died at once, graves were not dug for each man that had fallen. They rested together, with the earth their shield from prying eyes. But oh, who had taken the time to make the grave…
(The nameless thing in Rían’s chest went silent, dead silent.)
Here was the last hope of the Edain, crushed, broken, consigned to the earth. Here was the sum of Rían’s life: a green mound in a brown land where her kin had been laid to rest, her husband among them, perhaps, but who could say for sure? They would never fight again. There would be no new day for Men, not now.
Rían collapsed against the mound, sheltered by its shadow, breathing in the smell of the grass. Sweet, so sweet, and yet the noisome stench of the dust was such that she could hardly make it out. She fumbled the knife the Elves had given her in her hands, turning it over and again, wincing at the watery flashes of light that came when the keen blade caught the weak Sun. And when night fell, she let sleep take her.