To Err is Human

To err is human, and requires only as much forgiveness as the harm done.

Trophies

The goblin is dying. One of Legolas's elegant arrows has pierced its gut, and the wound tore further in its vain effort to save its...sister? Friend? Lover? Either way its bony grey fingers clutch helplessly at the wound's lips, as if, should the scraps of ragged flesh align, it might be whole again.


It? He, she, they...when did the rest of the Fellowship get to him, in this brief harried November, to make him think this poor soul it?


It...they, he, it's hard to tell on so gaunt and wiry an armoured figure, the dying goblin...his lips move, soundlessly, as he lies face-up on the stone and his tribesman's corpse. The dead goblin's body is cloven near in half. He remembers that cut. She'd been trying to get to Merry with the wicked little knife now glittering beside her hand.


Stones scrape under his boots as he kneel beside them. He doesn't mind; no sense in startling the dying, he thinks, taking up the knife. Firelight bleeds from its edges. It's very sharp. 

Crocuses

Death's doorstep bloomed white with crocuses. He had expected to die, of course. It is not man's lot to live forever. Neither did it surprise him to die in failure. In forty years (no, forty-one, somewhere in the violent dark of Moria) he'd paid little thought to himself, but at least now he knew his mettle – tarnished, base and brittle.

But he had not expected crocuses.