Úalassie (foshpickle~greenleaf)
Though she has tried hard to forget, the times before she was Úalassie weighs heavily on her mind, and she longs for the understanding and love she had so long ago.
As she approached her one hundredth birthday, she had much to be thankful for- a family that loved her, many friends, and fiancée who was to become her husband on the day of her birthday. She lived in Mirkwood, and things seemed happy enough. The orcs that plagued the rest of the world hadn’t yet begun their assault anywhere near her home, and her name was Alasse, which means Joy.
But it seemed her sadness was already assured- a band of gypsies came through her town one night and she became friends with a young girl. They were playing together, the girl showing her her dolls, when she suddenly looked into the elf’s eyes with an expression of sorrow.
“This is not to be your life. You will lose everyone you love, and not find happiness for long after,” she said before going back to her game. Though Alasse pondered this, she paid it little mind.
However, three days before she was to be wed, her home was attacked. She didn’t live near the king, rather, her family and several others made up a small village just southeast of the palaces. She and her fiancée were taking a walk together near a creek as the orcs raided the small settlement. Eventually they were found, and ambushed. Although her husband-to-be had his bow, it did him little good as the numbers surrounding them were too great. Before the battle began he had pushed her into the hollow of the roots of a giant old tree, as they hadn’t seen her, telling her to wait there and not to move. But they killed him, and he fell before her. She never forgot the image of him falling to the earth, his throat cruelly slit, his face turning towards her with an expression that was a mixture of despair and anguish. Her face was spattered with his blood as he fell.
To afraid to move for fear the orcs would return, she sat in the hollow, staring into the empty eyes of her dead love. The blood dripped from his wound onto the wood below, making a steady, thick dripping noise for hours on end.
Eventually she heard voices- though by then she had nearly gone insane and every noise sounded like the orcs coming back for her. She had her own dagger, and she could reach her fiancée’s quiver from where she sat, though his bow had been broken by the orcs before they left. Taking her blade and several arrows, she pushed past the body and out of the hole and ambushed the newcomers by the fading evening light. She then fell to the earth, exhausted, and didn’t wake until late the next day.
It was only then that she realized the “orcs” that had come back for her were really her mother, father, and sister. She knew not where her brother was, but going back to the village later she found his body in the doorway of a burning home. No one was left alive, and those that had been had fled long ago. She followed their example, grabbing her things that had not been destroyed and going to find a new life elsewhere.
Tormented and ashamed by what she had done in her moment of insanity, she felt as though everyone watched her. She felt their eyes upon her back, her skin constantly tingled with the thought of thousands of eyes upon her until she could stand it no more. It was then that she decided to don her mask and change her name to Úalassie- meaning unjoyful. She always wore the mask in public, and her choice color of clothing became red- the same deep crimson color as her love’s blood that had covered her, his body hiding her from sight as the orcs passed; a last gruesome act of his love for her.
She began to settle down on the outskirts of villages, always in some small hut or cottage. She wasn’t unfriendly, but stayed mostly in seclusion, her horse Earine becoming her one companion. But she found after a time she grew restless in one village, and thus after spending time there she had to move to the next, and the next, and so forth.