As she ran, she wept.

The trees that had felt comforting before loomed black and threatening now, reaching out to snag at her nightgown and tear her clothing and then her skin, but she didn't slow, didn't stop, her path lit by the blue gleam of the jewel on her chest.

The jewel her father had died for.

Elwing could still hear the screaming, the sounds of battle behind her, not so far. She paused to look back and could see the orange glow of fire through the trees, her breath catching in her throat. Doriath was burning.

The tears blurred her vision. There'd been no time. Her mother shook her awake, dragged her out of bed, shoved her through the hallways, her voice spilling out so the words tripped and dragged over each other – "Find your brothers, get out through the secret door, run, run as far as you can and as fast as you can, get away, Elwing, sweet-"

And then they had been at the door, and her father had shoved the Nauglamir at her, already drawing his sword. "Run," he told her, briefly, "Don't let them-" But she would never know how his sentence was meant to be finished, because the door burst open and a tall and dark-haired Elf ran her mother through without pausing.

Elwing screamed, then, and turned and ran, no longer thinking, darting through the hallways, ducking away from everyone she saw until without even realizing where she was going, she burst out into the night and found herself alone.

She didn't think before starting to run. She hadn't stopped until now.

Her little brothers. Élured. Élurin. They would have been sleeping in the bed they shared because even now they refused to be parted. And when the sons of Fëanor found them – her sweet, small brothers –

Perhaps they would have mercy. Even such monsters could not harm such young children. Could they? Could they?

Elwing remembered the bleak grey eyes of the one who'd killed her mother and felt her hope slip away. The flood of tears started anew.

The cries were dying away. The weight of the necklace around her neck felt strangling, and she felt a sudden, fierce urge to fling the thing away. Her father hadn't wanted to give it away, had refused to give it away, and that was why they had come. That was why Doriath was burning now. Even so young, she could understand that.

But her father had died rather than let the Fëanorians take it back. Her father had died, and her mother had died, and her small brothers had died.

And now what?

Run, run as far as you can and as fast as you can…

The fires leapt higher and the trees reached out to snatch and hold her. Elwing turned, her feet bare and white where they were not bleeding, and ran again. The wind blew away her tears and blew the smoke away.

She didn't want the Silmaril; didn't want the damned thing and the doom it would bring with it. But that no longer mattered. She would die before letting that monstrous, evil family have it either. She would run right into the sea to keep it from them.

She ran; and as she ran, she wept, bitter, bitter tears, that this cold jewel was all that was left of the family she knew, the family she loved.