Day 13:

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

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Black Eyes

Between blinding light and red darkness, there was a place of silence. He didn't want to leave that place and find out it was no dream. But what was a dream? Maybe he didn't want to find out it was just a dream? There were two pictures in his mind, two names. There were the green woods where he was Aragorn, and there was the picture of a hot, merciless desert that Thorongil walked. There was pain, and thirst, and deadly danger in the second picture… Oh Elbereth, please, let it be a dream…

Ah yes. Heat, too… The greenery of the forest faded to make place for the harsh reality. It was no dream. He was lying in the sand of the desert, and his hands and feet were firmly bound with a rough rope.

Someone called worlds in a strange language, which his mind identified as Haradhrim only a few moments later. "He is waking," were the words.

There was no point in pretending to be unconscious, so he slowly opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was the point of a dagger.

"One movement, and you will feed the jackals," a voice hissed from somewhere behind, clearly belonging to the owner of the dagger. Thorongil found it unwise to investigate more, for it would involve movement. The voice was as cold as steel, and just as deadly serious.

Beyond the dagger he could see just the cloudless sky like the reflection of spilled blood in a broken mirror. The sun was setting, the day dying.

His thoughts were broken as he was jerked upright, and found himself looking into a pair of dark, glistening eyes. The dagger moved to his throat.

"Just kill him already…" another voice said somewhere nearby, its accent strange even for this part of Harad, like the hissing of a snake. "That's what my master paid you for."

"No! This is not your master's business anymore! He killed my sister!"

What? His sister? – Thorongil wanted to ask, to say that he didn't kill anybody, but as he opened his mouth, the attention of the black eyes turned to him again, and the point of the dagger pressed more firmly on his throat. He could feel a drop of blood running down his neck.

Indeed, the sun was setting, he noted subconsciously as his mind feverishly struggled to find out what the black eyes are talking about.

Suddenly, as the rays of the day's fiery death reflected in those eyes, he was reminded of another fire. Eyes like burning coals and lips like red wine and molten copper. Cinnamon and jasmine.

Pieces fell into each other. He was her brother…