[mark12_30]

Cerin Amroth, often so still and calm, lay in the eye of a storm. The white trees lashed each other. The mighty mallorn heaved and creaked in the wind. The rain lashed its golden leaves and turned the silver trunk dark grey. Round Cerin Amroth, the forest was empty, save one.

Upon the high floor he lay facedown, body pressed flat against the talan, wet with rain and tears. The wind moaned, the tree groaned; he tried not to groan, and failed. The tree heard his cry, and shuddered. Torn, shredding mist passed through the great trees and drifted to the hill below, where Niphredil and Elanor trembled and tossed in the tearing winds. Swaying, the mists beckoned to him as they walked among the white and golden blossoms. He raised his sodden, golden head, and then lay back down again, pressing his forehead to the floor.

She has sent me away. Shall I face the ages alone? Would it not be better to cease to be?

The fury of the storm doubled, and the mallorn's cries grew wilder. He felt the floor heaving beneath him; the rain lashed his back, stinging like hail. It roused him; he looked up again. He went to the edge of the flet, and looked west. Her stream; she still sang beside her stream. He thought he could hear her amid the wild winds and lashing rain; how could that be? He gazed into the night, and knew it was true; her falling-silver voice came to him, wringing his heart, breaking him. He wept anew.

Salt... salt on his face, on his lips, in his hair.

The timbers of the ship groaned and cried, sometimes rising to a scream; the deck pitched and tossed beneath him. The sails were too full; the ropes were horribly tight. He stood at the rail.

She was there. He reached out with his mind, his soul, his very heart; she was standing by a stream, singing, lamenting his departure. Faithless! Ah, how faithless he himself had been, to ever leave her side!

"It is too late. We must run with this wind, " cried a nearby elf. Amroth looked at him; a line had snapped and stood out stiff and straight in the wind. The elf fought with it, and with the sail it had abandoned.

Amroth's eyes kindled. "Fool! I will not part with her; do not say that again!"

The elf laughed. "You parted with her long ago. And you will not be king where we are bound, nor are you any longer king in the forest. Your wish is no longer law."

Amroth wasted no more time on this fool, this rebel; he stood on the rail, looked to the shore and prepared to leap.

Mist passed before him, and when it cleared, he shook his head, dazed. He stood on a low threshold of a small cottage, looking into a broad, shallow pool perhaps three feet deep. Green lilypads covered a few parts of the surface near the shore. Green slime dripped off of the few reeds that swayed nearby. In and out of the reeds swam long slender dark fish, and on the far side of the pond was a flock of geese. An eel swam past him and disappeared into the reeds. Repulsed, he looked over at the geese; they swam as if they had not seen him. The air was heavy, woven with scents foul and sickly sweet.

He turned to look into the cottage behind him, and saw an elderly, sorrowful man and woman. The woman sewed; the man gazed into the fire. He asked them where the ship had gone. They did not hear him. He asked again.

"Ship? Nay, my dear. They left on foot," said the old woman to her husband.

"Eh? What's that?" he replied, startled out of his reverie. She shrugged, and his gaze returned to the fire.

Amroth turned and looked out into the dank and stagnant pool, and saw fields beyond, and rolling hills in the far distance. He reached out with his heart looking for Nimrodel. There-- a woman, weeping, wrestling with sorrow, with loss. A woman longing for the return of...

She was gone; or was it, that she was hidden? He reached out again.

A man, hunting, searching for the elf-woman he had loved so dearly; combing the woods and the mountainsides, calling, crying. Hearing his own cries echoed in the man's sorrow, Amroth hastened to the man's side. Putting a hand on the man's shoulder, Amroth willed to strengthen him, to encourage him. The man turned to him, and their eyes met.

Amroth wondered at the red shine of the man's hair, but even as he looked at it again, the man melted away.

Amroth looked around, blinking. Where was the pool? He stood on a riverbank.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw an old, wizened tree; he turned to look at it. Its back was toward him, and it walked to the riverside, and carefully placed its' broad woody toes into the water. Then, reaching down, the ent grasped the water in its branching hands, and lifted it. The water ran through his fingers into the river. The sun shimmered on the water, and the ent was gone.

Nearby stood a slender darkhaired woman, and she held goose-feathers in her hands, reaching to him, beckoning him. "Fly to me, my Dark-love; return to me. Come back to me." She held out the feathers. Amroth reached for her, for the feathers.

They became snakes. The woman was gone, and Amroth was being pulled under the water. His hair drifted in the current, and he felt that this had happened before, and yet-- this was different; the water was not sea-green, but dark, muddy, and he could not see the sun glistening through the water. All he knew was black mud and stinking slime, swampy sucking stifling ... he sank further, his breath bubbling from him, and as if from far away he heard the mocking laughter of the elf on the deck of the ship.

Amroth cried out in anger, and then gave a defiant shout. His spirit kindled and burned. He burst upward, leaving tentacles and slime behind; he was ablaze like Feanor of old, and he stood on the riverbank roaring his rage.

The reedy pools and stinking mud, the dark water, the grassy riversides; the fields and rolling hills beyond-- he stopped, and in a whisper spoke his recognition of the place. "The fingers of Fangorn grasp the Anduin... at the Entwash. The Entwash!"