8. Dorthonion: Identification with one’s land, country, or culture
a survivor of the Dagor Bragollach
a survivor of the Dagor Bragollach
This was my home—where I was born and bred, where I knew every leaf in the forest? But it is all gone! Only smoking stumps are left of great trees, and less of the village where I danced about the bonfire at midsummer with my Blai!
Did she survive, she and our children? Where will I find them? And my father and his sister—are they still among the living? Or did the great dragons consume them with their fire?
Wait—the cavern in the gully—they must have gone there! I must search and find them, if they managed to make it that far. And even if I find them yet alive, still we must leave this land ere all is overrun indeed by Morgoth’s great goblins.
But where shall we go? Do they have midsummer bonfires elsewhere than in Dorthonion? Will we find the silver trout in other streams that we so love here? Do they make the blood sausages that my little Ari coos to be given? Will they understand our speech? Will they welcome us elsewhere, or seek to turn us away?
Ah—but where shall we call home when all we knew and loved has been destroyed by the Black Enemy’s creatures?