Graveyard Endeavor
Suffolks
Osgiliath: Citadel of the Host of Stars. This is the meaning of Osgiliath in Sindarin, the language of the Elves. As I was walked along the riverbank one day I saw it in the distance. Never having been there, I decided that today was going to be an adventure and that I would explore the haunted ruins. It was broad daylight, after all. How many ghosts come out in the day?
I entered the ruins on a road that must have once been the causeway through the City of Kings. I wandered for an hour and, not finding anything of interest, decided to head home. It was on my way back to the causeway that I heard a dreadful moaning, weeping sound. Spooked, I froze, my gaze darting around to find the source of this noise. I summoned my courage and crept around the side of a crumbling wall and saw the saddest sight I had ever laid eyes on. An Endeavor, one of the dragons that fought to the death to defend the city in its last stand against the darkness, knelt on the stones, staring at the sky. It was obviously crying. How a creature of metal could cry, I do not know, but cry it certainly did. A quick movement caught my eye and I saw a small Chihiro scrubbing dutifully away at the rust on the Endeavor's armor. He scurried up the Endeavor's leg and quickly tucked a few wires back into its knee, using his tiny nimble paws to reach inside and refasten them. 'This Endeavor has been here a long time.' I thought sadly, moving towards it. "Endeavor, what's your name?" I asked once I was by its side. It whipped its giant head around suddenly and stared at me through red eyes. Startled at first, I oddly noticed its horn was crooked. I reached up in an unthinking gesture and turned it back into place and then went back to staring at its eyes. It didn't move at first but once I fixed its horn, it blinked slowly and spoke in a voice that was rusty with disuse "Osgiliath." Even raspy, it was a distinctly male sound. He continued starting into my eyes and spoke again. "My city, Osgiliath. My brethren, dead and gone forever. Never again to fly the cobalt skies together with my brothers in arms. Slaughtered. Mercilessly slaughtered." He blinked slowly again and turned his head towards the sky.
I sat down next to him after watching the Chihiro scrub some more rust off. No matter how hard it scrubbed, there was always more. Luckily, it seemed to be the pinnacle of the small rodent's life to clean another spot. The sun was starting to set in the west before the Endeavor moved again. He curled his head down to look me in the eye and sat down on all four limbs. "Would you like to fly with me?" he asked, his giant red eyes no longer aggressive but slightly curious. I had noticed that his tears stopped as soon as I was sitting next to him and he had spent the rest of the time with a look of deep concentration. I guess this had been what he was thinking about. "If you will have me, then yes." I said, standing and brushing off my numb rear. He nodded slowly, never taking his eyes off me, and lowered himself to the ground. I looked at the Chihiro, who was squeaking and bouncing around like an overly caffeinated child at my feet, picked him up, and tucked him into my jacket. He quickly situated himself and stuck his little head out under mine with a satisfied squeak. I clambered aboard the broad back of the Endeavor and wedged myself between his spines, legs just forward of his arms and wings. Luckily the spike in front of me was bent and broken or it would have impaled my face. The rodent squiggled happily in my shirt, sniffing my chin and trying to reach a dirty spot with his tiny arms. "You are Scrub, little mister, because that's all you do." I told him, putting his hands back so he wouldn't fall out. "And you, you sad soul, are Osgiliath, named for the city of your fallen brothers." I said, patting the shoulder of the huge beast I was perched on. Osgiliath, who had been watching the whole time, looked straight ahead for a moment and nodded, saying "Osgiliath shall be my name." Then his whole body vibrated. It was strange because my body didn't move at all but the thing I was sitting on was shaking so violently I thought he was falling apart. Rust and dirt shimmered down from every crack and crevice in his huge body and I heard old mechanics smoothly spin to life again. He experimentally flapped his wings once, listening to the screech of unused joints. He flapped again and the screech was much quieter. Two more flaps had the joints moving smoothly against one another again. 'There must be an oil system of some sort that works when he moves.' I thought. His body, previously a creaking hulk, was moving in sync and the sockets were sliding against each other like the day they were made. Osgiliath, clearly pleased, managed a small, grim smile and looked towards the setting sun, readjusting himself for takeoff. Suddenly we were launching into the air, propelled by the mechanical prowess of Osgiliath's hind end.
Scrub screeched with delight as he was thrown against my neck. I almost choked at the unexpected movement before stuffing him back into my jacket and clutching onto the broken spine in front of me. Osgiliath the city was quickly falling below us as Osgiliath the Endeavor's mighty wings pumped us into the darkening sky. I laughed and looked over his shoulder to the plains below us. The river that split the city shone brightly in the fading sunlight like a silver gash in the landscape, disappearing into the distance to meet with the faraway sea. We leveled out just before the air got drastically thinner and coasted on a warm updraft from the south. Scrub was unable to control himself any longer. He rocketed out of my jacket and scuttled up to Osgiliath's head, seating himself just behind his horn. He squeaked rapidly and smoothed a small piece of bent metal back into place. I, for one, was enjoying the view immensely. Osgiliath then swooped and arched into a nosedive. It was like being on a runaway roller coaster. My heart was way past my throat and probably lodged somewhere in my brain as we fell like a rock towards the earth. Osgiliath pulled up at the last instant and corkscrewed away from the ground. I was only able to keep my seat through gripping hard to the spine and years of horseback riding. We twirled and spun in the air like a giant graceful bird. Osgiliath even managed to laugh, the sound wrenched from his throat on a particularly spectacular maneuver. I laughed with him. Scrub was long since back in my jacket due to the high winds and chill of the now-night air. We flew the skies long into the night. It was almost midnight when a tired Osgiliath landed safely in the ruins we had left.
"Thank you, Osgiliath. That was amazing, to say the least." I said, my voice now hoarse from screaming like a banshee. He nudged his hard nose into my front and said "Nothing to worry about. It is time you headed back to your home now, though. I will be fine." My heart dropped like a stone. I had had some wild notion running about in my head of Osgiliath returning with me to my pet-empty home and staying to be friends. It would certainly have been better than sitting in the ruins of a long-dead city for another thousand years until he rotted away. I looked at him with tears in my eyes at the thought of the pain he surely went through every day. He was still staring at me and noticed the tears right away, even though I tried to hide them. He slowly reached a claw up and wiped a tear away, surprisingly gently for such a large metal beast. I realized for the first time that he wasn't cold like metal at all, but warm and solid. "Are these tears for me?" he asked, watching the droplet slide down his claw and to the ground. "Yes." I responded, starting to cry in earnest now. "Why do you cry for a dead soul?" He wrapped his claws around me and easily lifted me from the ground and set me in his lap. Startled, I gripped his arms and gasped. He wiped another tear away. "You're so lonely all by yourself in this place. Nobody comes to visit you and all you have is Scrub to keep you company." The rodent was asleep on the floor, upside down and smiling. "You spend every day mourning and no time taking care of yourself. You deserve a better life than this. Your brothers didn't die to see you sit motionless for hours on their graves." Osgiliath looked thoughtfully at me. It was some time before he said "Maybe you're right. But I do deserve this. I wasted my time when I should have been practicing fighting. Then when the time came I wasn't good enough to save them. I'm only alive because everyone took me for dead after the battle and let me be." I cried even harder. "There was nothing anyone could have done to stop that army. You fought and killed your share before they knocked you out of the fight. Your kind's bravery turned the tide of the war, which was the best they could've ever hoped to do. It's not your fault." He closed his eyes and thought for a good long time. I cried myself out and then snuggled into his warm lap and was starting to fall asleep when he spoke again. "I have nowhere else to go." was his quiet, heartbroken statement. I laughed and wrapped my arms around his neck. "You can come live with me." I said. "My house is big and lonely too. I have no other pets and it's a little too quiet for my tastes." Osgiliath hugged me back stiffly and picked me up to look me seriously in the eyes. "Are you certain? I may not be in the house all the time." I giggled. "Of course. You can come and go as you wish. It's in the middle of a forest with nobody around for miles so you can do whatever you want as long and you don't wreck the place." He sat back again and sighed. "Very well. I will come to live at your home as a guest." Laughing, I said "You're not a guest. You're a family member!"
I led the way back to my house after tucking a still-sleeping Scrub back into my jacket and taking Osgiliath's hand. It was a long walk but I was fairly certain that no predators, animal or human, would try to mess with me tonight. When the lights of the house came into view, I showed Osgiliath how to open the gate with his claws by pushing a button in the wall. He was fascinated by it and spent five minutes opening and closing the gate before I pulled him away. Even though he was easily bigger than three horses combined he fit right into the huge double doors of my home. It was a very spacious not-so-humble abode that I had built with my own money, designed to eventually comfortably accommodate large creatures such as Osgiliath. There was a huge fireplace in the living room that I started up to fight off the night's chill and I pulled a massive cushion out of the attic with Osgiliath's help. It had been a housewarming gift from some distant neighbors that assumed I must have a very large pet to have such a huge house. I had luckily saved it just in case. I told Osgiliath that he had a room to sleep in if he wanted to, but seeing as he was comfortable curled on the cushion watching the fire crackle I left him to his own devices. I ate something and brought a slab of cooked meat to Osgiliath and showed Scrub the bowl of nuts I kept to eat while reading a book. They both dug in, Osgiliath hesitantly at first but then with great gusto. Scrub stuck almost all of the nuts in his mouth and hid them somewhere. I'm sure I'll find a small treasure trove of decomposing nuts one of these days and have to clean them up.
I soon learned of Osgiliath's habit of spending his days mourning in the woods and his nights beside the fireplace, watching the flames with me in his lap. His sad songs attracted a young Antlephore one day who was also running from his past. They became as close to being friends as two bereft creatures can be and Osgiliath brought him home to live with us. Osgiliath took me flying a few more times, Scrub squeaking his little heart out in excitement every time. Osgiliath sometimes tells me stories of his life before the battle, but those are few and far between. If I give him something, such as a small toy or trinket that made me think of him, he hoards it away in his room in a chest, sometimes taking it out just to look at it. He seems to have taken a special liking to plushies and other soft things; I think he likes the feel of them. Scrub is slowly but surely scrubbing away all the rust from Osgiliath's body and repairing all the small details. It is apparent that Osgiliath was once a privileged creature, having intricate patterns of gold still evident around his eyes and on his chestplate, but long years in the sun and weather have eroded most of them away. His body underneath his helmet and chestplate were fairly undamaged once Scrub managed to get them off and now Scrub's working to polish them back to their original state. We sit by the fire every night and I read him books on every subject. He is very intelligent and sometimes tells me stories he has picked up over the years. I know that he will never truly forgive himself for whatever it is he did to cause the death of his brothers, but the red in his eyes is paling to a soft tan now and his soul is seeming to find some sort of rest in the cool forests and warm hearth of my home.
