Disclaimers: Middle-earth and its occupants, etc, belong to J.R.R. Tolkien and his estate. I own nothing, intend no infringement of copyright, and am making no money from this.

Rating: PG.

Summary: Finrod Felagund, abandoned to darkness and madness.

Thanks to Isis for betaing this.

Reviews are very welcome and will be used to feed my starving muse.

Brave beyond measure - or foolish beyond the telling. Which shall the tales account this, once the days have waned?

Salt-sweet certainty, and a light in this darkness where there is no light. But it burns my poor, blind eyes, this light, and I cannot see. All sight is robbed from me, and all I know is the touch of the chains at my wrists, and the blood at my brow.

Does Olórin walk yet in the fair gardens wherein Nienna weeps? Does the lark still sing at the break of day, and the nightingale at twilight? Are the stars still set in their courses above the western seas? Do Círdan's ships ride the waves with reckless, high-hearted joy? And do the Exiles still yearn for home?

Or was it all a dream born of a thrall's madness? Is the world dark, and the stars gone, and the light of Elven eyes extinguished? Is the fierce, wild music of the Edain silenced, and do the hammers fall no more in dwarven-hall beneath the fell?

Was it never as my failing mind perceives it, and my failing eyes give form? For such failing eyes may conjure phantasms to warm the dungeon's chill. It may be that there stars never were, nor Elbereth to kindle them, nor Lúthien the fair to laugh at their dance. It may be that no golden light ever fell on golden meads in western lands, and no maiden danced therein to the sound of laughter or tears, and that no city was built high upon the hill of Túna.

And I am but a double slave, to Morgoth, and my own dreaming?

What then the laughter? What then the tears? Less than this biting cold, less than the wolves, less than the chains.

Do you trammel the stars of my imaginings, my lord Sauron? Do you smile at the thoughts of passing beauty that fleet through my mind as a fair ship before a following wind, knowing that I must awake horror? Is this the compass of your power, o most foul and renegade of the Maiar? That even my mind is not to be my own?

Or can it be that you scowl, and snarl, and gnash your teeth at my mind's wary wanderings out beyond the darkness into that fearless realm of light which those more wise and foolish than I have called memory? What wonder then must entrap the mind to look upon the stars, and hear the harps of Doriath and Gondolin, or mayhap to stray far from home and hall, from path and plain, until the green hills of Ossiriand enfold you, and the Hithaeglir rises high above the reach of sight, and there sit and speak awhile with those new-come into this old world...

Mayhap, then, there is still healing to be found in the gardens of Lórien, amidst the drowsing poppies. Mayhap the halls of Finarfin stand yet, stone upon stone as they do in my mind - the brash grace of marble, and the weary sigh of silk. It may be that Nienna weeps for the sorrows of the world without, and Olórin weeps also, and fierce hearts deny such sorrow with bold and bitter joy.

It maybe that the Nightingale sings yet in the woods of Doriath, with yearning heart and face upraised.

If these things then are true, then I may hope that this deed of mine is no folly.

The iron creaks, screams - and, with a tearing snap, gives out.