the ice in the paragon by queerofthedagger  

Argon

Arakáno knows they are doomed long before Námo’s voice echoes across the barren plains. Knows that nothing good can come of it—no way forward, no way back.

And yet, he is as eager as his siblings to leave, to push on, to meet their fate with eyes wide open. He makes it a point to keep threading them together—his now quiet father, his grim-faced sister; Findekáno with his determined guilt, and Turukáno with his restlessness.

Never underestimate the power of a kind hand, his mother used to say; in the face of looming darkness, Arakáno keeps her close.

No way forward, no way back. And yet they keep walking; keep reaching for each other, despite the ice doing its best to draw lines between them.

Arakáno refuses to let it. Rises early with Findekáno and Írissë to help prepare the food; sits late with his father to keep watch.

“You need to rest,” his father tells him, each night. Each night, Arakáno smiles, and leans against him.

“I am resting,” he says. Says not how the fire of youth burns within him; how he is itching, always, to push on, to find what is waiting for them beyond.

At the sight of land, of Telperion’s light reborn, Arakáno cannot help but laugh.

Doomed they may be, all their dreams brittle before they can form, but there is yet joy to be stolen like forbidden fruit, even in the face of such ruin.

At the head of their train, Arakáno is one of the first to see the host of Orcs. He plunges ahead, still laughing; thinks, what can Doom bring, in the face of this? What in the face of such perseverance?

Arakáno plunges. His father screams. On swift feet, well-worn Doom curls its fingers around his throat.