For Challenge #35
My elements were:
A fantastic animal
A falcon
A scar
Eglantine

A/N: If you are an ardent vegetarian you may end up uncomfortable with this story as it could seem to be a treatise promoting being an omnivore, though that isn’t my intent.

Rated PG13 Some might find some of this unsuitable for younger readers or those of a delicate nature.

The Way of Things

Eglantine sat wearily down, her back against the old stone wall that bordered the road. She could go no further just now. Not to her happy home, for she was far from happy.

“Will it scar, Missus Took? Will it leave a scar?”

It had been all the family seemed concerned about as she had first tended to the gash in their ten year old daughter’s cheek.

“It may,” she had replied, “but I’m more concerned about it festering. That branch cut her raggedly and deep, I’m not sure that I’ve been able to clean it well enough.”

“Yes, yes, Missus. We understand about all of that, but will it leave a scar?”

Eglantine closed her eyes then and she closed them now. Then it had been to keep her patience, now it was from frustration. Frustration and sorrow and anger.

She huffed a bit. Will it scar?

They would never know.

Two days later their lad was at the door of the Took home. He had run to her home, Eglantine rode to theirs. Rode like the wind. Rode as though a troll, or Bilbo’s dragon were behind her. Rode like fear was behind her and might over take her. Which it did.

The lasse’s cheek had turned a honey-brown in color and the flesh wept.

“Have you touched it?” Lanti snapped.

The mother had. She had been the only one in and out of her little lasse’s room.

Eglantine tried everything she knew. She tried things she had only heard about. She had stayed there for fear of taking the sickness home, and she kept the rest of the family out of the room. The mother developed a boil, but it was clearing up nicely. Eglantine had managed to have no ill effects.

The lass had died.

Will it scar?

A tear trickled down Eglantine’s face . . . would that it had left a scar.

But it had. Oh, it had.

A soft growl rose in her throat. Death always leaves it’s mark on the hearts of the ones left behind, no matter how often it pays its calls. And call it did. It called at birthings. How many wee ones had she delivered already dead? How many died before a day, a week or month were passed? How many mothers had breathed their last without seeing their new babe? How many did the childbed fever take? All through life it was there, at any age, at any time, till at last it took them all.

Why, it was everywhere! It had to stop! There had to be someway to make it stop!

She would quit eating meat. It was one thing she could do. Yes, no more killing the chickens, rabbits, pigs, sheep, goats or cows. No more wringing necks or slitting throats. No more fish pulled by a hook from the streams and ponds. That would do it! She would cease to aid death.

Eglantine sighed. Satisfied with her conclusion.

But animals ate other animals. Eglantine frowned. Her not eating animals wouldn’t end the dying. If every hobbit in the Shire quit eating any kind of meat it wouldn’t end the dying. And then she thought, “What of the plants?” If she ate no meat she would still have to eat. Weren’t plants alive as well? They grew and, yes, they died. Wasn’t harvesting them actually killing them? Was wresting a carrot from the ground the same as wringing a chicken’s neck? Was using a spade to dig up taters, severing them from their plants, wasn’t that rather like slitting a pig’s throat? And the animals, many of them ate grass and other plants.

Seeds. She would just eat seeds.

But seeds were what life seemed to spring from. You plant a seed and that lifeless appearing thing would sprout into . . . life.

She would starve.

She would die.

And that would not solve her dilema because it was only giving into death. Death would take her from her loved ones and they would carry its scar.

Tears coursed down her face with the weight of it all, until she heard the call. High above her she heard the screech of a falcon. She opened her eyes, searching the blue depths above her until she spotted it. And it wheeled above her, now higher, now lower, dancing with the wind. It was hunting. Hunting to feed its young, to feed itself. The beast it would eat would have eaten the plants of the earth. Grasses, fruits, nuts and berries. And eventually all would return to the earth that birthed them. Plants die and moulder. The small animals would be eaten or die of old age and either way return to the soil. The falcon would die, falling to the earth from its lofty perch, returning to the earth.

So it was. So it would always be.

Should we give up our living because of the dying, since it seemed most clear that there is no life without death. Even the immortal Elves that Bilbo had met had to eat.

Eglantine stood and watched the falcon. She spread her arms wide and wheeled as the falcon did, soaring and diving and soaring again. And she laughed as a child laughs, playing as a child plays. She had been looking at it all the wrong way around, for death does not win. Oh, as a healer she still needed to fight it. Everything clings to life, and that is also as it should be. But now she understood, death does not win, though it saddens the heart, in the end it only nourishes more life.