I once thought that I would at some point write the traditional BOFA tragic sob-fest, but as it turns out it's been too long now. So I wrote this instead. Today seemed like an appropriate day to finally put it out there.

Remnants

Dís stretches her hands to lift it down from the peg, the dead and faded leaves whispering at her feet. Laying it on the workbench she absentmindedly brushes the dust of the years off. So many years. She never comes down here. Not any more.

The twisted string is coiled around the wood. Unwinding it she stretches it out and decides to try her hand. The bow's still in good condition, still supple, despite its neglect – clearly once well cared for - but it takes all her strength to bend it. It's with no small degree of triumph that she hooks the string over, nice and taut. Not so much different from a fiddle, when all's said and done. She plucks it with her finger, and it sings beneath her touch, a bird's soft cry.

"What are you doing?" The dark shape is silhouetted against the door frame, and Dís nearly drops the bow, startled by its harsh tones. "Do you know whose that is?"

"I was only looking for a spare…" Dís looks into the hard-set eyes and knows the truth. "I… I did not know we had it."

Silence.

She lays it down and caresses it. This had touched his cheek, felt his breath… "I thought…" The fatal words stick in her throat. "…I supposed it to be broken, when they told me…"

"No. This is it." The bow bears their gaze. "I never told you how he died, did I?"

"No."

"Are you ready to hear it?"

"I've known him longer dead than alive." Dís says simply. "It's time I knew."

The bow is placed in revering hands. "I was at the other side of the battlefield. I was too-"

"Just tell me."

"It… it was his own fault as much as anyone's, Dís, in all honesty. He was too bold, too reckless. I should have been by his side…"

Dís waits.

"He tried to take down one of the trolls they brought down. It crushed him. We found his body later. The bow was unbroken on his back."

She strokes it again with one finger. All she has left now. And she did not even know she had this. "It took them four days to get the news to me." She says quietly. "Did I ever tell you that? Four days gone. And I never sent him name-day greetings the sennight before. I left it too late."

"Dís…"

They gaze at it a while, then she moves to put it back on the peg.

"Why did you want it?"

"I… Kíli has broken his."

Thorin straightens and puts it back in her hands. "Then let him have it. It's time it saw the light again." He sighs, softly. "It's been too long, Dís."

She bites her lip as Thorin bends his head to his little brother's bow. "May it serve its new master better than its old."

Dís just nods, and watches him walk away. He's right. It's been too long. The memories become harder to cling onto every time. She's sure she's lost some. She tries, sometimes, to remember the last things they said, the last tune they played together, but it's all slipped away. Only the dreams and the laughter and an unbroken bow. The grief faded to a dull ache years ago, decades. Centuries soon. The guilt at outliving her elder sibling has flared and guttered. The name goes unspoken, first through sorrow, now through unthinking forgetfulness, worn away by the weight of years, until finally it becomes nothing more than a name. The world has moved on, and it had left her Frerín forever on the threshold of adulthood. And there he will always stay, fading more and more with every passing summer, every winter rain, brought back only by the music and the memories, pushed aside a little more each time in favour of the here and now. In favour of those left behind.

In the half-light of this hall of keepsakes she stops for a moment to treasure the memory of sorrow.