Title: Shadow-Shot
Fandom: The Silmarillion
Challenge: Jam
Other prompt: Fingon, Cliff, 'I think I may have had too many shots'
Rating: G
Length: 525
Content notes: N/A
Author notes: Thanks go to Runa for prompts, encouragement & sanity-checking.
Summary: Fingon drew breath, tasting bitter-dust, ice, wood-ash, iron.


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Fingon was out of arrows. He couldn't even tell if any of them had hit anything useful, though the gray shapes had stopped attempting to swarm up the broken stone that made up the cliff below the narrow ledge that was his perch, so whether they had hit or not they seemed to have done some good. He hoped he would be able to retrieve them, at least the arrow-points, assuming he managed to get down safely, and the disquieting, wrong-feeling shapes did not return. No telling at this point. He looked up at the top of the cliff-face, from whence he had (apparently, inadvertently) slithered, landing fortuitously on the ledge. Much to far to reach, especially without any hand- or toe-holds to help. Down was not much better. And there were the shadow-things. Possibly Shadow-Things even, though they didn't feel quite that wrong. Getting there perhaps, but not there yet. And the virtue-forged arrowheads had apparently been enough to send them off.

He jammed the end of the bow-stave into a crack in the rock. Without arrows it wasn't likely to be much use at the moment, though it would serve as a fighting-staff in a pinch. He very much hoped it would not come to that. This ledge would be a wretched place for a fight of that kind. He didn't seem to have a sword, which was odd in itself, and the gray shadow shapes persisted in his head, as if they were just beyond where he could see. But they couldn't be. Nothing in Beleriand, or on the Ice, had been like them. Though there had been things that felt like them. Grims, the spoor of things that weren't quite dragons, the bitter smell of a balrog whip-crack.

He shuddered, hard. The odd, misty light went dim as remembered lines of fire traced the air, sparked along ghost-nerves. This was not that battlefield. Not that foe. This was something else: not memory, (of which he had considerable quantity, enough to know, for all that there were elements here that drew on memory), nor Sight (of which he had none at all, and was much too old to be discovering now), not an illusion of fever or poison or thrice-distilled spirits. The ledge under his feet was slipping, crumbling, his toes trying to cling to the now-unstable surface, the bow-stave become a slender tree with writhing roots clinging tight to the iron-rust cliff-face. He reached for the trunk, feeling both bark and the worked smoothness of the grip. Dream. But of Lorien or Morgoth? And did it matter?

Fingon drew breath, tasting bitter-dust, ice, wood-ash, iron. There was a warm rumble under his breastbone, a deep note, and he breathed it out, wordless, Song unshaped.

The world tilted, righted itself. The cat on his chest butted his chin as he startled awake, then settled again. Moonlight filtered in through the gauzy curtains, making silvery puddles on the wood-and-stone pattern of the floor. The faint breeze was salt-sweet.

In one of the pools of light were seven red-bronze arrowheads, sharp and intricate, gleaming, reflecting more than moonlight. Not just a dream. He wondered what it meant.