Title: Helpless

Author: Eärillë

Rating: PG-15

Warnings: (Graphic) Character Death, First Draft

Summary:
Curufinwë Atarinkë had never had a cause to hate the sea, but now he did.

Genres: Death-fic, Family, Ficlet, Horror, Stream-of-Consciousness, Tragedy, Vignette

Place and Timeline: the Great Sea, the Darkening

Characters: Celebrimbor, Curufin, Fëanor, OFC Elf

Words (in MS Word): 522

Point of View: First Person, Past Tense and Present Tense

Challenge: Day 13: Balar:
Write a story or poem or create artwork featuring unanswered requests, prayers or pleas.

Story Notes:
Be warned: It is an intense scene depicting hopeless loss at sea, told from the limited point of view of a son of Fëanor after the Kinslaying at Alqualondë.
In this story, Curufin was either talking/thinking to himself about the past, or writing some kind of journal entry about it. (If it was the latter, I doubt he would keep the scribble after writing it.) You will know why.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The sea churned wildly, and so did the wind above it, and the needle-sharp ice-cold rain. I had never feared the sea before, or its powers, but I did then. We were completely under its mercy – which I would say, nonexistent. The ships we had taken from the Late-comers were tossed around violently as if playthings of children in the bath-tub. – The powers, they were all liars, I said to my brothers and father; they did not care if we drowned in these ships, in this storm.

And a few had, in front and beside and behind us. We were spared, somehow. (Was it some twisted game of the Valar?)

Those ships swallowed by the angry waves did not concern me at first, and I considered the loss of people in it as a sad waste. But then it all changed.

My wife and son had refused to partake actively in attempting to secure ships for us to go to Endórë, but they did not leave me even after I had to kill the Late-comers in order to carry out that task. As a result, they boarded a different ship, earlier than we – the securers and defenders.

But just as our ship neared theirs, catching up at last, lightning struck the main mast and toppled it down to the eddying brine. The ship tilted to the side, and just then a big wave came towards the exposed side in a show of inexorable force.

I did not know that I was screaming until Atar shook me roughly, shouting above the din around us for me to stop shrieking. I laughed, then, uncaring of my sore throat or how mad it sounded. I had to save my family! – I fought to get free, doing anything I can to reach the ship before us, to reach my wife and son – their faces a mask of acute horror and realisation, so hopeless and helpless. Yet my brothers and father restrained me, and would not budge for anything.

At last I screamed to the wind and the rain and the wave, yelling for the Valar – any who heard it – to take me in exchange for my family. Grief and pain mingled in my spirit, twisting it, freezing it, burning it.

But the ship capsized, still, and the people in it went down into the morbid embrace of the waves like rubbish into a bin. But my son my wife had hurled away from it moments before she herself went under the mirkky water, and now he was floating – bobbing, tossed around, with tears in his wide, terrified eyes – clinging to a piece of wood just at a stone’s throw away from me.

With power I had not known I had, I shrugged off those who were restraining me, jumped into the water and swam towards my son. I would not let this last survivor of my family be taken from me too, just because of some sentimentality.

And I would never again trust the Valar.

I shall not.

May the sea and all who dwell within hurt for taking those who are mine away from me!