The Ring by Glorfindle
From the Chronicles of Myra Sunveil



...that his father had once bestowed upon his mother, many many years before and stares off over the bay. His head was spinning with a hundred confused thoughts and his heart felt like a lead ball. He still didn't understand the reason for her final cruel act before they parted the night before. He had left his companions as they camped that night, to return to tel'Ruid and see how Myra was doing. She had not been well for some time and he was very worried for her. He had found her in the shop, crying, talking to Dala. With a nod Dala quickly took his leave and left the two of them alone.

She was leaving again, she had said. A personal quest to try and still voices and urges that haunted her regularly. That news had been upsetting enough. He had a feeling he knew what that meant. She would be leaving soon to try and find her mother. She would be going to the Underdark, a trip she most likly wouldn't survive. All his offers to help her had been put aside....she would go alone.

She told him then that there was one thing she had to do before she departed. She slipped her trembling hands away from his. His heart sank immediatly at that. Somehow he knew what was coming, like he had expected it. From the way she was so closed with him recently when they spoke, to the jealosy he had felt at the attentions Ian had showed her, nothing felt right between them as much as she had assured him things were fine. Now his heart sank into the pit of his stomach as she slipped the ring he had given her months before off her finger and closed it into his hand.

Why?

She thought it best, was all she could say to him. His head spun with a hundred questions. He would ask none of them. The anguish crept into him. All he had ever wanted was to be with her and help her through the trials that lay ahead of her. She denied him all that with this last, no doubt difficult, decision she had made. He had been crushed by this final blow.

Then he told her to leave. He stood and stepped away from her. He didn't wish to touch her or even to look at her. We shouldn't draw this out any longer, he had told her. He would return to his companions and they would resume there search for Joylah...and he wouldn't return to tel'Ruid until he knew for certain that she was gone from the glade on what he was sure would be her last insane quest.

Then he tried to fool himself...she swore she loved him and he wanted desperatly to believe that. He was no longer convinced that was true. He told her then that 'if' she managed to return, perhaps the two of them might see what starting over might be like. Inside, he knew that would never happen. He turned from her and made his way to the stares. His ears picked up the last words he heard her say...Amin mela lle.

He nodded to himself and whispered the same in return as he plodded up the stairs of his home, a home he had hoped to share with her. He heard her slip out the front door as he collapsed on his bed. He lay there, quite still for the rest of the night, silent tears formed puddles on either side of his head as he wept. Tears shed both for her and her doomed quest and for the breaking of his heart.

Now he sat on his veranda, watching the sun slowly rise in the East. He knew he should return to his companions and resume the search. He had been spending the last hour in quiet meditation, trying to gather what little strength he had left and focus it on the task. He rose slowly from his chair. In the distance he could hear the sweet notes of an elven harp being played with an experts touch. He sighed and looked at the ring in his hand a last time. Before he departed he had one more thing to do.

His eyes looked across the bay that divided tel'Ruid. 'Never again.' He whispered to the wind. 'Never again.' He threw as hard as he could and watched the ring arc and glint once in the early morning light before it plunged into the bay and vanished. He used his last remaining strength to harden himself. A final lesson in folly learned he deemed. He turned and made ready to rejoin his companions.


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