Author’s Note: This piece was shaped with a little help from AI. It provided assistance on things like the structuring, some names, shortening some verbose language/ideas as I'd written, and gave me the odd turn of phrase here and there. The heart and shape of the story are my own, but I realise it is important to be transparent about my use of AI support in producing it ultimately.
"Ashes and Oak"
It was just before dawn when Naridalis passed through the gates of the Company’s kin house in the Bree-homesteads, the hush of the world still unbroken. Mist clung low to the ground, softening the angles of stone and wood, and every step she took sounded too loud for such a quiet hour. The birds had not yet begun their morning chorus. In the pale light, the building stood still… shuttered, resting, untouched by the waking day. No smoke yet from the chimney. No stir from the stables or the various profession worktables...
She paused beside a stack of timber located just beyond the threshold. It was a long generously sized stack of fine, pale oak, neatly bound and sheltered beneath a waxed tarpaulin. Her heart gave a faint pull. She reached out, fingertips brushing the grain. Cool. Scented. Lothlórien oak, fine-grained and flawless. Nothing like it within leagues of Bree that would be sure.
There was an insignia on the bindings, the seal of her house, the emblem of Ceneshar, her father. She exhaled slowly, palm resting on the wood. So he sent it, after all.
But the lumber had sat idle, untouched since arrival. No planks moved, no sawdust scattered, no tools left near. Left waiting, as if the kin house no longer knew how to make use of gifts, or perhaps no longer cared to. That, more than anything, unsettled her.
Inside, the stillness deepened. Furniture had shifted slightly… someone had rearranged the common hall… but the hearth was cold, and there was no trace of laughter, no smell of smoke or cooking. No one stirred. Only a faint draught met her as she moved through. There was a cloak left hanging in the corner, but no boots below it. Someone had been by, but not lately.
She found the notice-board by instinct, half-turning as if drawn by something she couldn’t name. And there it was.
Pinned crooked with a dull nail, the paper already curling at the edges. The script was unmistakable: jagged, confident, unforgiving. She read it in silence; her eyes unmoving as the weight of each word settled around her.
Deorla’s words were not written for comfort.
They were fire. A reckoning. Every line dragged the past into the light and left it charred. She said goodbye to no one. She cursed more than she named. She burned what she left. She had chosen her path.
Her eyes narrowed as the words turned from scorched earth to sheer contempt. Each line shed another tie. A deliberate unravelling. A funeral pyre of memory.
Naridalis felt… many things.
Surprise was not one of them.
Anger came first; hot, brief, and sputtering. Then a hollow ache beneath it, the kind left by an old bruise. She had known Deorla could vanish if she ever wanted to, certainly she was highly skilled in such ways…. but this? This felt deliberate. A public show of it… a carpet pulled… a page torn from a book... a tantrum almost.
But then, at the end, the knife twisted differently:
“Thank you Naridalis for making me think deeply…”
Naridalis blinked. Read it again.
The only line in the letter not seemingly sharpened to cause a wound. The only sentence where a name wasn't dragged through hot embers.
Her brow furrowed. ‘Why say that? Why leave that?’
‘What did it mean? A true thanks? A mockery? A slip?’
‘If Deorla had meant to sever everything…. Then why leave even a single thread uncut?’
She didn’t know. And that uncertainty pricked her more deeply than any insult in the letter. For all Deorla's rage and finality, she had left behind a single knot… something almost like recognition. Almost.
Naridalis folded her arms, studying the notice-board, her brow furrowing as other truths surfaced.
Alairif and Guriwen … gone now it seemed, a report of their own banner of kinship having been raised somewhere out in the world. She felt no bitterness in this, only the weight of time's slow turning; she did not like how things had been left… She felt she understood why they chose to leave…. And why they wouldn’t be the only ones to make that same choice either. He had claimed the Company "had failed", that the very enemy in the darkness had been at its core...
So much had changed in her absence.
She paused, and was about to turn away when one last slip of parchment caught her eye… it was the way it was standing out… it seemed a recent addition, firm-penned, and practical:
Signed simply: Tivlyn Locksley
Naridalis read it twice.
It was so plain, so earnest…. there was no poetry in it, no venom or vanity. Just danger, purpose, and a call to act. A far cry from Deorla's bitter farewell, scorched in loathing and ash.
Tivlyn’s words carried something else: a trace of what the Company had once been. Not politics. Not power. But protectors on the road…. quiet sentinels against the darkness.
Despite herself, Naridalis felt a flicker of something old and rooted: the call to serve. To keep the roads clear, to carry hope to those who travelled them. Even now, with bonds frayed and names faded… someone…. still remembered.
Perhaps more than one….
She touched the corner of the note, a small nod of silent approval, and turned away with the thought already fixed…. she would speak with Raspberrien. Today, if she could find her.
If Deorla was truly gone…. and gone with such fire, then someone had to be left standing in the ashes. Raspberrien had always seemed to mean well, but meaning well and leading were not the same thing. In truth, Naridalis did not know her all too well.
And Naridalis needed answers.
‘What had happened with the Company while she was away? Who was still left? What was to be done with the Company now… patched, rebuilt, or scattered to the wind? Who else knew about Deorla and did nothing… who else knew about Deorla… and did “something”?’… and what, if anything, was Raspberrien going to do about it all…
She turned from the notice-board, the quiet of the morning already beginning to shift as the light grew stronger.
Later, there would be talk. There would be plans.
But for now, she climbed the stairs with a shadow on her back and the scent of Lorien oak still clinging to her fingers.
