Thursday, October 25, 2012

When the Chaos Dies

Aragorn plunges his scarred hands into the sink, searching for a plate. Leathery, tan, and roped with bulging veins, his left fumbles with a sponge, while his right grips a plate.
The bubbles swirl around his hairy, muscled forearms, calloused and rough from spending years among the trees and beasts and earth. A shimmering globe of suds drifts near a long, pale, ropy scar, caressing and lingering on the old wound.
He grits his teeth, face pale and cold despite the rising vapor from the steaming, foamy sink. His hands tremble, adrenaline beginning to pump through them.
Screams of men and roars of hellish beasts echo, mingling with the laughter of his children and his wife.
He lifts the plate, seemingly attempting to bore a hole in it with his gaze. A laughing orc's face fills it.
He snarls and scrubs away at the grime on the plate, porcelain squealing from the pressure.
His knees begin to shake.
He calmly set the scratched plate to the side and strode to an old chest, locked and covered in dust, hidden among various other items in his chambers.

Bounding off into the night, clothed in filthy, earth-tinged, blood-stained, wind-whipped cloth and leather, tonight he is not Aragorn the Father, Husband, or King. He is Aragorn, flitting from tree to rock in silence.

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