Elenwë

One step.
Frozen snow crunches beneath her foot, a crisp, white sound she has never heard before, filling her empty mind with dim echoes.
One step.
The sky is black overhead, and stars keep falling, feathery flakes floating gently down. Their cool kiss as they brush her cheeks is the only caress she can recall.
One step.
Silence coats her, smothering her thoughts. Her mind is a dark and empty place, but for patterns of falling snow.
One step.
There is a loud creaking sound, and she sinks within her own cold darkness, as the water rises to claim her.

Idril

When the king stops walking, so do they all. Meagre fires are built, like candles in a storm. Food is handed around, and half-asleep children are coaxed into eating, while their hard-eyed parents measure their scarce provisions.
Her father tells her stories then. He speaks of a faraway land, warm and golden ; of the bliss that reigned there. He says they used to live there, long ago.
She finds his tale beautiful, though she cannot believe him. She knows there is naught in the world but wastelands stretching white and cold beneath a dark sky, and they must walk forever.

He walks alone with his daughter. Behind him, his father carries a nameless, orphaned child. He used to do such things, in the beginning – as a prince should do for his people perhaps. But no more. The Ice has made them all alike – lords and peasants, smiths and princesses, all turned into silent, hard creatures with dead eyes.
He knows he is not an elf anymore. He knows it since Idril stumbled upon the road, and he could not recognise her, and shook angrily that dead weight off his hand.
Yet he walks on, and swears revenge with bleeding lips.