Above the Roar and the Rush by Isilme_among_the_stars  

There is a folk tale among the Men of Brethil concerning the haunting of Cabed-en-Aras where once a deer took a mighty leap, flying from one bank to the other, and in doing so escaped the hunter, evading its fate. They name the place anew Cabed Naeramarth now, the Leap of Dreadful Doom, and say that on the eastern cliff, where the drop is sheer and pitiless, Turambar’s young bride met her death. They say the spirit of that place became poisoned as dragon’s-breath the moment she leapt. The Taeglin runs swift beneath, its waters churning and white, past rocks standing stark against the stream over which one might ford, if they dare. A brave soul dared, for me.

It is a curious thing that one who has given themselves over to death so wholly and completely might find, at the last, that their instinct cries nay. The heart wishes to keep beating, no matter what the mind decides, and so recruits what it might. There I clung, broken, to a life that I yet believed I wanted not and a pillar of stone in a rushing stream.

She did not die, Turambar’s sister and bride, that ill-fated maiden. For a Drûg woman clambered over slippery stone to take her hand and suffered it not to slip from her fingers ‘til succour came. Her blood painted the bank as she was hauled from the water, for the fall had cracked her bones and pierced her skin. Unnoticed, that harbinger of life washed away with the afternoon rain. ‘Twas only a small sign, when weighed against the testimony of the dragon. Is it any wonder the folk of Brethil heeded it not?

The mystery of the Drûg lies not so much in what other Men call magic as their patience. Not gentle Brandir, moistening my fevered brow, nor the hardy women of Brethil, returning speech to my lips, came close to its match. And if I moaned they chanced not to soothe me as my brother had, but said only that sorrows buried in my bones wanted for release. Long they toiled, coaxing life into the sinews of one who would eschew it, until one day I found life wanted.

The view is fair from this vantage; fair, and terrible. The water roils below as fiercely as it always has. Yet the skies above are blue as often as they are grey, and the quiet that rests tenuously above the roar and rush smacks of peace moreso than oblivion. The tides of fate flow kinder than once they did.

No one comes here any more. None, save I. I suppose one might rightly claim the place haunted, though, as my aching limbs daily remind me, I am not dead.

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