I swear it’ll be written one of these days.

Baragund once thought his great-aunt the strongest woman he would ever meet, and he still wished to believe so. Yet the flames that died in the wake of the Battle of Sudden Flame were limited not to those purely physical, and to look into his great-aunt Andreth’s eyes was to see a flame extinguished. There was a frailness to his great-aunt that not even her immense age had afflicted upon her. She stood, disdaining still to lean on the cane that their father had gifted her last Midsummer, and argued with Uncle Barahir and Aunt Emeldir over the proper course of action now that the flames had devoured most of Dorthonion. Her voice was as loud and clear as it had been when Baragund had been a boy, but there was a new brittleness to its timbre and a weariness to the set of her shoulders. Uncle Barahir wished to stay and fight, to try to rebuild. Great-Aunt Andreth, a bony arm splayed out to point to the ash-fields that remained of their homes and the oily black clouds that still billowed from the castle to the west, called that hope foolishness. As Wise-woman and eldest kin, Great-aunt Andreth had dispensed advice for the chieftains of Bëor, starting with her father, then brother, and lastly her nephew.

In some ways, his people said, it was Andreth who ruled the People of Bëor, and they nodded at the righteousness of that, for she was wise and firm-willed. Uncle Barahir looked pained to be publicly disagreeing with her.

When the Great Fever swept through Dorthonion, killing many including Chief Boromir and Baragund’s mother, Great-aunt Andreth had been the one to take in Baragund and his brother while their father recovered from the illness and buried their mother. She had been the one to lead her brother, Bregor, through that terrible summer of his first days as chief, to give him strength and hope. She promised the plague would pass, lives be rebuilt, and that Bregor would carry his people successfully through the harvest and winter. Now, her words speak of defeat. In the ashes of the Dagor Bragollach, there was no hope of surviving the coming winter.

A tree, hallowed out by disease and rot, still upright until a high wind would come to topple it, that was Great-Aunt Andreth.

—

“We should not leave before recovering the bones,” Great-Aunt Andreth said in her new brittle voice. “They should be buried, your father’s bones. And theirs, our lords.” Her breath hitched, and if their had been an emptiness where light once shone in her grey eyes, now there was the gaping darkness that the elves spoke of when describing the great monster Ungoliant. “We cannot leave their bones to be gnawed on by the Enemy’s wolves.”

—

His brother, Belegund, cupped his wife and daughter’s cheeks with both hands, one after another, to kiss their foreheads and promise to return.

Rían, almost too heavy to be held in her mother’s arms, reached tearfully for her father. Belegund held her crying cheeks, thumbs rubbing away the tears, and kissed her forehead a second time. Baragund mimicked the gesture with his own daughter. Morwen grimaced and rubbed at her brow after he kissed it, scowling up at him. 

“Worry not for me,” she told him in her most serious voice, desperate to sound like the grown woman she thought she must be. Fourteen years old and stubborn. 

When he first held her in his arms, Baragund had wished with all his heart that his tiny Morwen would grow to become like the woman he most admired. He stared at her and wondered if she too would become hollowed out by grief as Great-aunt Andreth has.

—

The crows and other scavengers had picked the charred flesh off of the bones, and what remained were cracked, fire-darkened armor, charcoal and ash, some bones that still vaguely resembled the outlines of the bodies that had once been, and the smell.

It was impossible to tell which body was his father, or the elven lords. “He was my father,” Baragund cried, “How can I not tell where he lies, which body is his? How will we bury him with honor?”

“You will,” Andreth assured him.

—

“The vows,” Great-Aunt Andreth was whispering to herself, staring forlornly at the bones. “Flesh become one, my heart be yours, your blood be mine. The old wedding vows.” In her grief she had bitten her bottom lip enough to draw blood, and she wiped it with the back of a bony hand. It stood bright red against the pale flesh and gray ash as she sifted through the rubble, gingerly searching for discernible pieces of skeletons. Belegund brought her helmets, searching for one with a familiar crest.

“I was not yours; you were not mine.”