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middle earth gothic

there are rolling hills of grass in the shire and doors where lives once stood. you hear murmuring on the wind. they say it is the water of the brandywine but you know better. a girl sings a song and the bones of flowers rattle beneath her feet as she hangs wash to a clothesline.

when you find rivendell, it is quiet. the bruinen has cracked its way through the rocks, and moss covers the stacks of books. a bookcase rattles and screams when you come close to it. you put the parchment back. you put the syllabus back. a daughter makes her choice, and chooses rushing tides over the stillness of time. you hunt for a mother’s bone. there are none, there are none, there are none.

moria is a hollow cave and a hollow darkness and a hollow tunnel. there are dead ones wherever you look. a tomb screams of old friends and lost relatives. we cannot get out scrawled in spit tears and blood. when the ancient flame comes, you know your hands will let go and you will not be able to stop the screaming of wind through your bones.

when you enter lothlorien, the trees crackle and whisper and sigh. a witch lives here you hear them say. you do not find a way out, and the trees blindfold you to find the way: you are lost, but you catch glimpses of dead dreams in a pool of hissing water.

fangorn is a forest made of sinew and muscle and bone. the trees throb with poetry that lasts centuries. there is the body of an orc trapped in vines, and it smiles at you with sharp teeth rotting. you understand, for a moment, that death is nothing but the beginning, and then the darkness falls again. you smell water and wood and life. when the trees stare back at you, you do not think you feel safe. 

rohan gallops through time like bristling horses. a white lady looms, pale, behind shut windows as snakes creep over her uncle’s body like worms feasting upon dead flesh. her hands are marked with red, her eyes are empty pools. in all her dreams she drowns.

the white city looms like a stack of old bones. there are charred robes at the bottom of the valley where a grieving father once jumped to his death. at night the dead come walking, their eyes hollow, their hands clutching the heads of those they lost. there is the carcass of a fell beast on the planes before the city of kings and the children play with her bones.

the grey havens smell of saltwater and burning ships. the goodbyes here are final, and bitter, and made by the dead. the ghosts are quiet, for once. to the west, the sun sinks and kisses the sea. you think you hear laughter: you know it is only the wind.