A Forgotten Garden and a Parents Love
Two years prior
Velka loved her child, for that was what Estîç was: her precious child. She played with him and sung him songs. She adored him with every fiber of her being.
Her love grew stronger with every innocent smile and musical giggle, and with it her need to protect and keep safe the child she had coveted for so long. That need to protect slowly grew into a deep seeded need to protect her child from any harm, and that need to keep safe grew into a need to keep her child.
Her paranoia grew like weeds in a beautiful garden.
What if the neighbors noticed that Estîç is growing too fast? What if the people in town noticed that Estîç is an elfling and they tell the elves about him? What if the elves come and take Estîç away?
She blamed the elves for her fear: If the elves wouldn’t take her child away then she wouldn’t have to worry. She feared that someone would discover that Estîç was an elf, so she hid everything that identified him as an elf. She made him wrap up his ears and wear a hood in public. She scolded him for humming or singing, and when he began to speak it was not in western that he spoke, but in Sindarin. She had forced him to learn the western tongue, for she would not have an elf for a son.
She hid everything elf-ish about Estîç, and yet her paranoia grew. It grew like weeds in a now neglected garden. Her paranoia grew to engulf her son. She told him that she was the only one he could trust and that there were mean people outside. She tried to turn him against everyone outside of their little home, and yet her little son was still innocent enough to want to go outside. She couldn’t help but think that her son was thinking of abandoning her to go live with the elves. She wouldn’t let her son leave her!
So she permanently nailed down every single window in their home. She locked him up every single night and only let him out during the day. She would lock him in the house every time she went to the market to sell things.
…And along the way she forgot that the thing she coveted was a living being…
He rebelled of course, learned to pick locks and slip out of the house. She had found dirt on his bare feet and had slapped him for going against her rules. She had believed that the punishment had deterred him from trying again. She had been wrong. Her little son had simply become more sneaky about it.
Then that horrible day came, when she had come home to an empty house. She had searched the house for her son and had not found him. She had panicked, believing that the elves had come and taken her child away. And then, she looked out of the window and spotted her wayward child near the forest. She could feel as all of her fear and worry morphed into a blazing ball of flaming anger. How dare he!?! How dare he go against her rules!
That anger had guided her as she rushed out of the house and began making her way to her son.
That anger paused for a moment when she saw the snake that was right next to her son. Her emotions quickly turned into horror. Her son could have damaged his precious skin if he had been bitten by a snake! She could have lost her son if the snake had been venomous!
But just as fast as that horror comes it is gone. If her son had just listened to her and stayed inside the house then he wouldn’t be risking his life with snakes! The anger intensified and grew louder her son looked back at her.
She had to get rid of it before it either hurt her son or her son got attached to it. She didn’t want him to have a reason to break her rules in the future.
So she crushed it under her foot, felt every single one of its bones break under her weight. The snake's life didn’t matter, because it wasn’t useful to her.
She turned to her son with burning rage in her eyes. Her hand shot out like a wip and grabbed onto his wrist. She could hear his choked off sob as he dragged him away. She didn’t care that she was hurting him, leaving purple bruises like shackles on his wrists, or that he couldn’t keep up with her strides. All she cared about was getting her son inside where it was safe, not realizing that the biggest threat to her son was herself.
When they finally found themselves in the kitchen she let go of his wrist and spun around to slap him. She watched with rage filled eyes as he toppled to the kitchen floor, wrist pressed protectively against his chest.
“One rule! I gave you one rule, don’t leave the house, and you couldn’t even follow it! What do you have to say for yourself,” she screams at him.
She watched as tears pricked at his eyes and his chest rose in rapid succession. His eyes were wide and frantic as he looked for a way out.
He opens his mouth probably to beg for forgiveness like all the times before. But instead of the western that she had beaten into him, It was Sinderian that slipped past his lips. That reminds of the elves, the very thing that pushed her paranoia, was the last straw that broke the camel’s back.
She declared with a voice of finality, "If you're going to talk in that disgusting language then you’re not going to talk at all!”
She wanted him to stop talking in that despicable language! She wanted him to be normal! She charged at him, hands reaching for his throat, he tried to get out of her grip but he was pinned down by her body weight.
Her left hand grabbed his neck, her other one reached onto the table in a blind search for the knife she kept there. When she finally grasped the knife’s handle she wasted no time. She plunged the blade into her son’s neck, right where she thought his vocal cords were.
She didn’t know if her son would survive his vocal cords being ripped out of his throat but she didn’t care. All she wanted was for him to be quiet and he could be quiet in death as well.
She watched as her sons once wide pleading eyes were painted with shock and then pain, as he reached a hand up to touch the bloody wound. He then brought his hand down to investigate the blood before his body realized that it couldn’t get any oxygen. She watched as her son coughed on the kitchen floor, as he suffocated on his own blood.
He deserves it for going against her rules. She turned to him as he lay dying and said, “now you can’t speak that disgusting tongue.”
That was when she looked at him, truly looked, and she realized that her son’s chest wasn’t moving. She lent over her child to force his eyes open with her fingers. His green eyes were clouded by death’s fog and his once bright eyes were now nothing more than a hazy green.
And in the face of her own dead child, she laughed: hysterical giggles slipped past her tongue and burst from her lips. She laughed at the hypocrisy of her own actions, for she had just destroyed the very thing that she had coveted so feverishly for so long. The most precious thing she could ever own, her child. She laughed because even in death her need to squirrel her child away and never let another soul see him was still alive. She could feel the mania clouding her mind, the sweet taste of obsession tainted her soul. She wanted to dress him up in an adorable outfit, carve the tips of his ears into rounded ends, and sit him down at her table until his corpse rotted from the inside out. He would be such a lovely doll.
The fog in her son's once lovely green eyes was what brought her out of her delusions. Her giggles turned into sobs as she came to the sudden realization of what she had just done. She had killed her son, the most precious thing she could ever have. She weeped and cried as her son’s blood coated her hands.
But in the end she never mourned for a person, she mourned for a possession, for her heart was too tainted to even truly see her son as anything else.
By dinner time her tears were dried. And by nightfall her son was forgotten, like a toy in a garden; left behind and forgotten.
—
In the early hours of the morning, when the orangey light of the sun was painted watercolors in the sky, a fire broke out. The fire burned with the rage of a father, refusing to be put out until the entire village was rubble and burned husks of homes. Despite the fire, few people were hurt or lost their lives. In fact the only life taken was that of a single woman who lived on the village’s outskirts.
—
Death was created at the beginning of everything. It was both the creation and destruction of everything, for life is meaningless without death. For eternity it had watched its sibling create, and had helped them in some creations along the way, but that was it. Where time had its lords and destiny had its designs, Death had nothing.
That was not to say that Death didn’t at least try to follow in its siblings’ footsteps. It had tried to follow Magic in blessing humanity with gifts, in the form of necromancers, but many were hunted and the few that weren’t killed hid their craft well. Death held no interest in weaving ornate stories like Fate. It had dabbled in creating objects that interacted with its domain, like time and his timeturners, but the deathly hallows brought no joy to its gray existence.
None of its siblings' suggestions felt… right. For they brought nothing but temporary entertainment or interest. Death had long grown bored of existence, for it had long learnt everything it could from the souls it collected. For many years it had managed to endure the eternities of boredom with the few interesting souls that came from the many universes, but soon it grew tired of even that.
That was when its sister had come to it and suggested that death watch one of her many stories. She had foreseen that the hero of her story would greet Death many times throughout the years and she had come to make a deal. She wanted her hero to return to the land of the living every time he died, until her story was done, and in return death would be able to watch the story she would create. She promised a short reprieve from its boredom and the destruction of one who had tried to cheat it. Death takes the deal without any more negotiation, anything to relieve the boredom.
The first time that Death had seen Harry Potter’s soul it was nothing more than little embers in a sea of darkness. But, with every visit and every moment spent with the little boy that ember grew brighter. The child wasn’t afraid of it; no, instead it was a comfort to the child. Death had long grown wary of the fear, disdain, distress, or on the rare occasions, relief it brought. It didn’t blame the souls that had just gone through something traumatic, but it had grown saddened by the reactions.
The deity’s fondness for the child grew stronger with each passing year as it watched the child grow and develop. It loved the little quirks that the child did: like sticking his tongue out while writing when he thinks he’s alone, or the little nose wrinkle that he does whenever he’s thinking about his relatives. It watched the child and it rooted for him.
And then the child had asked for it, the embodiment of Death, to be its family and the deity had paused. The little flame of fondness flickered. “You would want me to be your family,” the deity had asked. It felt like all of the breath had left its lungs. Which was funny because it had never needed to breathe before, and it wasn’t even 100% sure that it had lungs.
The child had looked up at Death with eyes the color of freshly blooming leaves and a smile of innocent happiness. His hair was untidy waves of black ink, and for a moment Death saw a resemblance to some of his depictions in other worlds. If he just grew it out a little bit then he would look like the depiction’s son.
“I want no one other than you to be my family.” That little flame of fondness exploded; filling the darkened sea with warm glowing light. Death's once gray world was filled with color. The light illuminated its surroundings, showing things that it could never see from the darkness.
Curiosity bubbled inside of it for the first time in millennia and it asked its question with a giddiness it hadn’t felt since its creation, “but you don’t even remember me?” It didn’t matter what the child said, for Death was never letting go of the child who wished for it to be family.
“But you have left an impression on my soul, you are the only one I feel safe with, and the only one who has not left me,” the child answered innocently.
The child’s innocence in the face of the world’s cruelty broke something in Death. To the Deity who had seen the truest depravities of the world, that innocence was like sweet candy. It was something to be cherished and protected, and yet it was something addicting. That pure innocence and love was a high that the deity couldn’t get enough of.
And in that light, in a place unseen before because of the shadows that hide it, was an obsession so deep and cavernous that it couldn’t possibly be filled. The fondness for the child had lit the flames of love, and it had also revealed the cavernous darkness underneath, the darkness of obsession.
A man who has always longed for the light will never wish to traverse in darkness ever again.
——
Arda has changed a lot since Death had last visited it. He had hoped that it would be a better place for his precious son than it was. But if it really came down to it, he could always wipe Arda off the face of the universe and start over again in a different universe. His little soul wouldn’t even have to remember Arda, or any of the pain inflicted on him there.
In the end he allows Arda to stay, so long as his little son expresses a desire to stay.
—
He loves his son more than anything else in the entirety of existence! He has lived since the beginning of time itself and yet he has never seen anything as cute and wonderful as his newborn elven son! His cheeks are so soft and fat that he constantly looks like he’s pouting! And his eyes are the same shade as emeralds, or maybe newly sprouting life. He very nearly squeals when he notices that his ears wiggle when he’s drinking milk, like a kitten!
Death takes so many pictures, and his siblings are forced to see all of them.
Arda could stay, so long as it’s not a threat to his son.
—-
When his child comes to him, with tears pricking at his eyes and a wobble in his voice, Death is already on guard. Because who the fuck messed with his child! He swears he just wants to talk. That wasn’t true, he wanted to lock their souls up in the deepest layers of hell where only the worst of the worst dwell. He wanted to rip them apart piece by bloody piece so they had no chance of getting reincarnated.
“Adar, are my ears ugly?” His child asked him with tears in his eyes.
Something broke in his chest. Because how could his child, his sweet, innocent, beautiful child, ever believe that any part of him was ugly? His son was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen after all the years of being. His precious light in the darkness of existence.
He gathered his child into his lap as he cupped his precious child’s face. He watched as the tears fell from those emerald eyes, and he wiped them away with his thumbs. “I think that your ears are beautiful beyond words,” he cooed to his little son. He waited in silence for the child to open his glossy eyes. He could hear his sweet child whisper, “Then why did mommy say that they were ugly?”
Death felt like he had been punched in the stomach. How do you tell a child that the person he saw as a mother hated his heritage because of a paranoid dilution of him being taken away? He couldn’t, not without breaking the child’s heart. He should have taken the human's life the moment she didn’t take the elfling to Rivendell, but she had seemed to truly love his child, and now it was too late. His child would be devastated if his mother died now, maybe he could get away with it if he forced an elf to take him away before killing his mom. No, that could get ugly really quick and he didn’t want to have his little one see that.
He kept a closer watch on his child after that.
That was why he noticed the restricting unfair rules. That was why he took it upon himself to show his little one the wonders of Arda. For the mind of his child was not confined by the walls of a simple house. So he showed him the peacefulness of the forest and the gentle nature of the animals that lived there. He taught him both Sinderian and the Western tongue, for his child should not be stunted by bigotry or paranoia. He taught his son the songs of the elves and the stories of the world. He indulged in every question and satisfied every interest, for his son should never not be comfortable asking him a question. And if his child was ever fascinated with a particular subject matter or field of study, then he indulged him with the knowledge of all the souls that had ever passed through his veil.
Then one day his curious child decided to take a nap. And because it was still day all around middle earth, his child had practically begged him to take him to a man-made village; because his mother never brought him into town anymore. He had been delighted by his son’s curiosity, like he always was, and had taken it upon himself to teach his son how to interact with humanity.
His child had taken great delight in watching him, in his human designs, haggle prices for supplies. He had managed to finish the transaction when a tug to his cloak caught his attention. When he looked down at his son his son was looking up at him with his illegal puppy eyes and pointed to a small sign saying that a sparring tournament would be going on soon. He had rejected the idea at first, his son was far too young to even consider going in there. But then his son had given him the strongest puppy eyes he could muster, and he had caved like warm butter.
Damn those adorable green puppies eyes, that pouty lower lip and the soft twitches of the ears.
That was how Death found himself sitting in the stands of a sparring match with his invisible son right next to him. He had feared that his child would be scared of the fighting, but his child had actually been really fascinated with the fight. His little one had watched the entire spare with ruptured green eyes.
The moment that the fight was finally finished his little one had been insatiable. He wanted to know about every aspect of fighting, every detail of combat. And when death had said that he would teach him combat when he was older, he had become fascinated with the weapons. He wanted to know every type of weapon that was out there and how they were created and used. He had placated his child by drawing and showing him every weapon that had been invented in middle earth and a few that had been created in different universes. Death had believed that this fascination would last a few weeks at most, like all the interests before. But it did, in fact it got stronger, until he was scrambling to find anything that would interest his child that wasn’t weapons or combat. That was when Death had told his little light an edited version of the Ranger’s that traveled Middle Earth in order to protect it.
…Telling his son about the rangers turned out to be a terrible idea for it only made his son idealize weapons and combat more. He was practically begging for Death to teach him, puppy eyes and all, but Death stood firm.
It was only after Death secured a promise, with frets of a permanent ban on weapons, that he would not fight anything he did not absolutely have to. He could go look for danger, and he couldn’t jump into unnecessary dangerous situations. He could only fight if or when, because Death was muttering about dreaded Potter luck when he said this, he got into trouble. Death promised to teach him so long as this promise was kept, and if it wasn’t he had promised to vaporize any and every weapon in his hands.
And so his son had learned how to wield weapons.
It started off simple, sword fighting, but his son was a good learner. Death taught his son to fight in the dream scape, they would practice all night, and then his little child would wake up and wait for his mother to leave before sneaking out to the forest to practice in the woods. Before long his little elfling’s dedication paid off and he could efficiently wield a sword. Before long his little light came to him wanting to learn dagger throwing, and he indulged the child.
His child was… too dedicated for how young he was. This was to say that his little son was kind of odd for a elfling, too mature for his age. That wasn’t to say that he didn’t play, he had played plenty of games with his little light, but he played infrequently and sporadically. He loved his son no matter what he acted like, but sometimes the way he acted concerned Death.
The child could not get harmed while on his dream explorations with his father, but sometimes he acted like he was invincible in real life. Like he had no self preservation and only thought about others instead of himself.
Worry ate at his mind. He had literally lived since the beginning of the universe, but this was his first time raising a child. He had tried to follow the dead souls teachings, but it didn’t seem to be working that well. He still had absolutely no idea what he was doing.
… He sometimes wondered if his little light knew what he did. Did he know that Adar's job was to put people to sleep forever, or did his child not realize that he was standing beside the embodiment of Death.