She Takes Flight
She sees him drowning in her dreams.
Swirling in a draught of silvery heights and the darkest nightmares, he appears too fragile. Her heart aches to hold him and kiss the scars on his ageless face.
In every transfiguration, the same golden eyes burn with the pure, holy fire that sparked his existence. He was first called Mairon the Admirable at the beginning of all things.
But there is nothing pure in him anymore, certainly nothing admirable.
Through the smoke and mirrors of every façade, he is a perfumed poison, a destructive beauty that both frightens and thrills her in the long tunnels of those fever dreams.
She flies from that warped seduction. Through the ages, the setting changes. He makes chase, like a hunter tracking his prey. He will never accept that it is finished between them. That glorious love is now hollow, a shell rusting with all his sins and all her shame.
She gives no credence to those dreams as the shadows fade at waking. Though they have followed her for thousands of years, they are nothing to fear.
The dreams become more frantic in the summer of that last year. Before she hears his name again for the first time in centuries, he who has been called by so many other names.
He has always called himself Tar-Mairon, King Excellent, but in the far off Third Age of Middle Earth, he will come to be known as something else.
Sauron.
He comes for her in that strange land to take her home. And it will be the final time.
