Prompt #37
But my dreams they aren't as empty As my conscious seems to be I have hours, only lonely My love is vengeance That's never free - The Who (Behind Blue Eyes)
My love is vengeance, that's never free. Indeed. I have no will over love, only in how I react to it, but it pierces as sharp as vengeance. And scars. Or did, when I was young. There was so much vengeance in the years leading up to my death, so much vengeance bleeding from everything that I loved. All of it, tying it up in iron chains not even bound to Thangorodrim, but in hatred between kindreds and distrust. Maybe that's why I hid so often in the quiet places. I had enough of war. My love was never free. Love of father, or of siblings, or lover, or children, or people. None of that was love I could give the way I wanted, it was all too bound up and strained by vengeance. I may have been unable to truly be there for the end, but I am glad there was an end.
I have hours, only lonely. I have all the time in the world, as I am, to experience the ways of being alone; I can only consider it a lesson in something never considered before. But I should not think myself entirely lonely, with friends and memory. Believing that I die if I am alone, is foolish, and something I learned otherwise of a very long time ago. You can live without some kinds of love, though anyone might wish it was different. You can keep moving through the world without it. I think my dreams are more empty than my conscious, I dream so little these days, and I am so awake.
These lyrics, they make me think of Nelyafinwe when I first brought him from Angband. He was so empty, so much just a shell, that we seemed to have to start all over again in making him quende once more. Making him belong to each name. With nightmares when we ran out of things to aid his sleep, and a blank stare as empty as a cat.
I wonder why everything always comes down to Maitimo. Maybe one day I can consider something without him being bound up in it, but I can only doubt. He was too much of when I lived, as I was. Was everything, that I was. Yet, until, the Nirnaeth. I think. There are some things that even a first-born will only shrug and refuse to speak of. Those few years around the end of my life, not even to my ennobled writer.