Painted with the maps of newly stolen rivers

by UnnamedElement (Unnamed_Element)

Summary:

The morning after Beleriand sinks into the Sea, Thranduil waits for his father and their missing elves to return.

Notes:

This is the shortest thing I have ever posted as a stand-alone, but I'm not doing anything with it and hate to see it waste away. This was written during an instadrabbling event with the Silmarillion Writer's Guild. The prompt was the set of words miss, mountain, bay, nineteen. At 207 words it is a bit longer than the traditional drabble, but ah well.

Notes on my universe: Per Tolkien's writing/notes, I assume Thranduil was in Doriath and, thus, alive for the Second Kinslaying. I then make the decision to have he and his family evacuate to the Havens of Sirion, as most of the survivors of Doriath do. After the Third Kinslaying at the Havens, I have made the decision to have Oropher and some other survivors of Sirion settle in Ossiriand, as opposed to staying on Balar with Cirdan & co--or some other equally plausible thing--indefinitely. That's why they're chillin in Lindon as the world crumbles at the end of the First Age.

Apologies for this note being as long as the drabble itself.

First Age 587

That the sun rose the morning after the second longest night of his life was almost more of a surprise than the shattering of their world the day before. When the sun had set, there were nineteen missing, but at first dawn light his father went out with a few others, following the rivers that emptied now into a bay—a bay where once their camps had been. 

Thranduil stood beside his mother at the foot of the mountains that were suddenly almost seaside; they plummeted into foothills before dipping and rolling, before flattening into cropped flood plains and then straight into the sea—no silt, no deltas, just canyons of water that ended in waves. 

As the sun continued to rise and his father returned, cresting the hill, the missing elves—one by one—emerged from the gloam behind him. Thranduil stood stiff and watched, counting. 

They were dusted with silt and sand, and as the sun crept higher and they continued to crest, those missing elves shone—the dust on their cheeks was cut through, in places, with long-dried tears.

Eighteen elves, he counted, faces painted with the maps of their newly stolen rivers. Their future stretched out—unknown—before them. 

Thranduil’s mother stirred beside him, and he slipped his hand in hers.