Compos Mentis [Rávamë's Bane: Book 2]

Part I : Chapter 8 ~ Too Young To Live

A/N: You know what, I'm not even going to try and justify this obscenely long delay. All I can say is that there is a reason (see the A/N at the bottom of the chapter) and that I'm truly sorry for keeping you all waiting! Feel free to throw inanimate objects in my general direction.

Beyond that, I really hope wherever in the world you are you've had a reasonably good few months — 2016 has really kicked my ass, but I'm hoping it hasn't been quite the same story all around for you guys.

This chapter is going to be a little shorter than usual since it was originally part of the next chapter, but I decided to split them after the word count started getting ridiculously high.

Hope you enjoy, and stay tuned for a little bit of surprise news at the end A/N. :)

~ ♕ ~

Funerals are awful.

The last one I'd been to had been my grandfather's, when I'd been barely twenty. He'd been someone whom I'd grown up knowing all through my childhood, loved, and still felt the loss of even now, years after he was gone.

I hadn't known prince Theodred.

I hadn't known what he was like — whether he was kind or cruel, funny or boring. I hadn't known what his smile looked like, or what his laugh sounded like. I wouldn't have even known what his face looked like, if his body hadn't been laid out at the head of the burial precession before us.

Not that his face now was any real representation of the man he had been during life. The body of the king's son was bloodlessly pale, but strangely peaceful in death, adorned in his full battle regalia, and being carried on a raised litter by six men of the court. Men who, from the expressions on their faces, I realised had to have been his close friends. His own sword — a less ornate, but equally well loved version of his father's — had been clasped to his chest along with a small posey of white alfirin* flowers.

I hadn't known him at all.

And yet, it was still a painful sight to watch: that empty shell that had once been a man, being carried and committed to the earth by a people who had so obviously loved him.

Behind him, moving as if drifting through a dream, walked Theoden. He was also garbed in his formal regalia, and while he did look ten times more the strong and capable king than he had that morning, the blank look in his eyes made him seem brittle somehow — as if he might simply shatter if struck at the wrong angle.

Flanking him were a stone-faced Gandalf, Aragorn, and Boromir, keeping a respectful but supporting distance behind the king as he and his guards walked towards us. Legolas and Gimli — both of them obviously unfamiliar with the customs of a mortal funeral, let alone a royal one — had chosen to stand aside with the crowds of people congregated around the path to the city's burial mounds, heads dipped respectfully as they watched. I stood just a few feet away from them at the mouth of the tomb that had been prepared for the fallen prince, surrounded by a dozen quietly weeping women of the court.

With very little time to make ourselves presentable in the chaos following the king's return to his senses, I had been given a simple black and grey gown with tight sleeves and a modest neckline to wear in lieu of my shredded tunic and filthy riding greens. I had also scrubbed as much of the dirt off my face as I could in a bowl of cold water, and pulled my mostly de-tangled hair back into a loose braid that hung over the sides of my face and halfway down my back. Still, I couldn't help but feel disrespectfully unpolished standing there among the mourning women, trying to keep my expression sombre and to avoid meeting anyone's eyes.