I haven’t been this affected by the death of a character ever since Gandalf fell into the abyss in Moria.

I’m trying to think of other literary moments that moved me deeply. There is that scene in Minas Tirith where Merry is half-dead from facing the Lord of the Nazgûl and as he stumbles along, he runs into Pippin, who has to carry him to the Houses of Healing. As Pippin is carrying him, Merry asks him if he is going to bury him.

Miriamele’s despair-filled, cynical, and nihilistic deflowering in Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn has also stuck with me for a decade and a half, ever since I first read that book in 1990.

And finally Lir’s final farewell from the Unicorn in The Last Unicorn always pulls at my heart strings as well.