Should I Perish... by Isilme_among_the_stars  

Then Tuor said to Voronwë: ‘Fell is this frost, and death draws near to me, if not to you.’ For they were now in evil case: it was long since they had found any food in the wild, and the waybread was dwindling; and they were cold and weary.
(From "Of Tuor and His Coming to Gondolin" in Unfinished Tales)

White, cursed white. Flurries of snow blurred before Tuor’s eyes. Little colour was there in the world save grey shapes in the mist. Tuor had not felt his toes properly for some days, and yet he trudged on, shivering. If Voronwë told true, they drew closer to their goal with each crossing of Teiglin’s well-streams, and still might they perish in this forsaken winter before ever Gondolin was reached. There was no food to be found. Little shelter was there to shield them from wind and frost. No fire could they make, not even to slake their thirst on melted snow. There was only interminable white and bitter cold. 

Hunger churned nauseatingly in Tuor’s gut as his stomach cried out for impossible nourishment, and his tongue stuck to the roof of his dry mouth. Footfall after footfall he buried in the frigid drifts as his fingers grew ever more numb, silence bloomed into a loud buzz in his ears, and the edges of his sight greyed still more…

“Tuor,” a frantic voice called. “Tuor! Awaken! Thou mayst not sleep upon the snow.”

“I do not sleep,” he protested, yet what explanation was there that he lay crumpled like a sack of potatoes, sunk into the soft powder? How came he to lie down in it? And where was he, exactly? Tuor wondered at these things, feeling dazed. 

“Ai, you are so pale.” The voice — Voronwë’s — was closer now and paired with an embrace that pulled him upright, setting the world a-spin. 

“Why is the air so chill?” he asked through teeth that chattered as he tried to regain a semblance of balance. But the question was soon moot as he recalled, groggily, the purpose that had driven them northward.

“We must rise from this drift lest you freeze. Do you swoon for want of food?” Voronwë asked as he tried, rather awkwardly given how Tuor sat propped against his shoulder, to rub life back into one frigid cheek, which had lain bare against the frozen ground.

“For want of drink, rather,” Tuor guessed. Hunger had not mastered him in all his lonely years in Dor-Lómin, but never had he lacked water so.

“Then you shall have both.” 

Tuor did not protest as Voronwë broke a fragment from the precious, dwindling cake of waybread. He might have, had his thoughts not laboured sluggishly still, though little sense would there be in it for all their rationing would come to nought if he perished now. The dry bread clung uncomfortably to his tongue and throat. A mouthful of water from Voronwë’s diminishing waterskin did he accept also. 

“Take another,” Voronwë urged.

“There is little left,” Tuor warned.

“And yet I sense it is needed for you to journey on. We might replenish ours both when we reach Malduin.” For all his hopeful words, his companion looked as bleak as ever Tuor had seen him. More abject, even, than when first he had found him bedraggled and half-drowned upon the shore. Voronwë’s when might be more rightly understood as an if.

“Take heart,” Tuor cajoled, smiling grimly as he reluctantly complied. “Should I perish, you may claim my share.”

“Nay, Tuor,” Voronwë reproved gently, though the attempt at humour had lightened his demeanour marginally. “We live together, or perish, both.”

“Then let us strive for life.” Feeling weak as a newborn kit, Tuor clambered to his feet. Shivering, he trudged on.

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