[Feanor of the Peredhil]

They all knew. They could no longer deny her renewed - her deadly - role in their lives. They could do nothing... only pray, and only play along. They heard her whisper once again upon the wind, the whisper of insanity, a desperate artist, a sweet, sensual, maniacally disturbed and nightly composing the lives of her subjects as those within a play, murmuring softly to herself in the moonlight that her world, the world of these fated villagers, the world of these poor souls, was nothing more than a stage, with them nothing but players, each with a role to carry out, a part to play, and an exit to be written and performed. The long despairing village tried their level best to discount her... she was there... it would help nothing to dwell on her madness, yet others saw there could yet be method to it. They could not fall to endless tears... not yet... there was time. The Dark Lady had not yet won... so long as a single innocent soul survived, she could not win.

They reasoned, or tried. The friendships of a lifetime crumbled as accusations were slipped like silver daggers through the air and into innocent and guilty backs alike.

One name, just one, was spoken with great surety, and he that bore it tried, oh how he tried, and his words were beautiful, and his fight glorious, and his death utterly tragic.

"Traveller, you are new to us," spoke a man. "You met us with the evening and left us with the dawn, only to return again."

"I left," he responded, voice in dream, "to see my lady love."

"Is that so?" The village was afraid. Short-tempered. Uncertain. Cruel.

"Yes." He spat at their feet, glaring eye to eye, standing tall in the late afternoon shadows, and his skin burned gold in the sun.

"And where did you go, to see so fine a lady?" Merciless. He was finished. This had no meaning. Merely play. Torment. What answers would he give? What could he say to tell them what next they should do? Who amongst them would no longer be, once dawn broke the horizon and slowed the power of the Lady in the Tower? Could his next words have meaning? They wondered, and they prayed, and they knew they could not be certain.

He stood and shivered slightly, and his eyes became distant and he was silent 'til a stone flew through the air, whistling in the silence, and kissed his forehead with crimson affection. He glared, feeling no pain, and his dark eyes now glowed brilliantly in the twilight of evening.

"You would dare to doubt me my affections! Weak fools, you all," he seemed to grow suddenly in stature, and they withdrew in fear. "You would wilt in her presence, in her gaze, in her dark gaze, for my mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun. Her hair is midnight and her skin moonlight, and all I have is hers and she has me."

He rose, madness in his eyes, and attacked with bare claws, with wild abandon to defend himself from their hatred.

The single string music of a bow, the whistle of the arrow, the dull drum thud of impact, and he fell. HIs blood pooled around him and his lips parted, and once more, for the last time, he spoke, and it was with endless sadness as his last strength drained from him, and his eyes saw clear again, and he tried only to explain, to apologize, to ask them to understand. "My only love," he begged with final breath, "sprung from my only hate."

As her slave lay dying, the Dark Lady, high in her chambers, laughed to the sky.