Daily Drabble--"The Price of Succor"

[dawn_felagund]

succor \SUH-kuhr\, noun:

1. 1. Aid; help; assistance; especially, assistance that relieves and delivers from difficulty, want, or distress.


2. 2. The person or thing that brings relief.

transitive verb:

1. 1. To help or relieve when in difficulty, want, or distress; to assist and deliver from suffering; to relieve.

Examples
"In Asakusa, a crowd sought succor around an old and lovely Buddhist temple, dedicated to Kannon, goddess of mercy."
-Richard B. Frank, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire

"Ever since I was five, I have inserted myself into every movie I've seen and gratefully, humbly found succor there."
-Laurie Fox, My Sister from the Black Lagoon

"There was some talk about the perils of the sea, and a landsman delivered himself of the customary nonsense about the poor mariner wandering in far oceans, tempest-tossed, pursued by dangers, every storm blast and thunderbolt in the home skies moving the friends by snug firesides to compassion for that poor mariner, and prayers for his succor."
-Mark Twain, "Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion," The Atlantic, November 1877

"He honors the old, succors the infirm, raises the downtrodden, destroys fanaticism."
-Alan Jolis, Love and Terror

Etymology
Succor derives from Latin succurrere, "to run under, to run or hasten to the aid or assistance of someone," from sub-, "under" + currere, "to run."


"The Price of Succor" goes with the notion from The Silmarillion that the Noldor helped to build the Telerin city of Alqualondë. Fëanor uses this as his rationale for asking for the Telerin ships. In Felak!verse, Olwë has a son who is killed in the Kinslaying.

The Price of Succor
He'd stood just in this place: Finwë, the King of the Noldor.

“I asked not for this succor!” I’d laughed, spinning amid my splendid city, upon a square iridescent as with pearl. “I can never repay this.”

“Think not of it that way,” said Finwë, hand on my arm.

He’d stood just in this place, where now lays the body of my son, with bloodied footprints tracing a path to our ships.

“One does not repay the gift of a friend.”

So he’d said; the footprints of his son, of Fëanaro, say otherwise.

I’d made my reparation, in the end.