My footsteps echo the solemn strokes of the clock chiming midnight, so reminiscent of a passing bell tolling, as I hurry alone to the cemetery on the first level of the city.
Nobody else would dare to come here at midnight on Hriwdú and it was easy for me to dismiss my guards, steeped as they are in the ancient superstitions of Gondor.
I reach the graveyard as the final stoke falls and wrap myself in my cloak, while I wait, leaning against a mossy tombstone.
Slowly, one by one they come, rising from the ground, from simple graves with plain headstones, from ornate ones with marble statues and from carved mausoleums; from graves lovingly tended, from graves freshly dug and still bearing withered garlands, from old graves fallen into disrepair, for those who would have cared are gone and forgotten themselves. They all come, united by death, no distinction now between high or low, rich or poor, good or bad. They are compelled to come on this night and dance in the moonlight.
They circle eerily in formation to a music only they can hear, bare skeletons, with bones rattling, those with remnants of tattered shrouds still clinging to their rotting flesh and most heartrendingly of all, the newly dead, now travesties of their living, breathing former selves.
‘Tis a sight to chill the blood, but my blood is warm and pulsing as I watch and wait.
I am rewarded, for out of the mist emerges a familiar figure, showing no signs of decay, even though I lost him more than ten years ago. He smiles and raises a gauntleted hand in greeting. Passing through the dancers, he steps up to me and I open my arms and my cloak for him to enter.
We embrace and for this one night each year, we take pleasure in each other with our own dance, where every movement speaks of love and passion and we need no music, but our own harsh breathing and cries of joy and pain.
The dance goes on until the cock crows and calls all back to the grave. We take our silent farewells of each other and as the dancers sink back into the earth, he returns whence I know not, walking backwards, so that we can see each other right until he fades completely from my sight in the first golden rays of the sun.
Summary: Hriwdú (Winternight) is the ancient Gondorian Festival akin to Halloween, when the curtain between this world and the next is thin.
Rated: PG-13
Categories: LOTR FPS Pairing: Aragorn/Boromir
Warnings: NoneChallenges:
Series: NoneChapters: 1 Completed: Yes
Word count: 401 Read: 809
Published: 13 Nov 2010 Updated: 13 Nov 2010