OOC - Author's Note:
This entry follows on from a series of live events which culminated in the death of a character, who is/was quite important to Lonoric. With events having moved so quickly, I’ve not yet written much about the two character’s first meeting as of yet, so stayed tuned for that as I work with the character’s author in due course.
The relevant summary of the key event is excellently provided by Bethrelfin, here.
Additionally: This piece was shaped with a little help from AI. It helped on things like the structuring, some names, shortening some verbose language/ideas as I'd written them in the first instance, and it also gave me the odd turn of phrase here and there while editing. The heart and shape of the story are my own, but I realise it is important to be transparent about my use of AI assistance in its production.
‘Turning Point’
Image Credit: StockCake.com
From the journals of Lonoric, Archivist Third-Class
-Company of the East Road kin house, Bree-
I write tonight with steady hands, though my heart keeps missing its step, as if it has forgotten the tune it once knew. It has taken several months to recuperate after what happened, though my injuries were not so grave as others… The Shire looks the same as ever, green and flowery and oh so certain of its ‘peace’; but I have learned that such things can indeed deceive, and deceive fatally.
Mervedis taught me that, long ago, in Bree, back at the Company’s kin house where we had first met. I did not understand the life lesson then, and I hate that I have come to understand it better now…
To see her fall, struck down by a plot wrapped in trickery and stolen pies, is a hurt I do not yet know how to express. I was never an innocent hobbit, not truly, not like others I knew living quiet lives… but I was a hopeful one. That part of me feels smaller now with her passing.. her murder.
Feeling better for travel, I ventured all the way past Michel Delving to Bethrelfin’s cottage and arrived only this morning, thinking the sound of her voice or the purr of Dumpling might steady me.
Instead, I found stillness.
The place which had been so carefully mended and tended to after its long years of ruin, stood neglected again. Silent. Cold.
The garden lay untended, the planters empty, the very beds where Malethion once perfected his craft left bare to the Yule time weather.
They are gone, then.
I think he has taken her eastward, perhaps back toward Mirkwood, away from this sorrow. I cannot fault him for it. I only hope it is but for a time, and not a leaving altogether. For I know how they both found joy being in the Shire… at least… they had once found joy here.
If ever I should wander so far myself, I wonder if our paths might cross again, and whether we would know each other as we were, or what we have become…
What troubles me most is not only grief, though it sits heavy enough in me to make me feel as if I carry a sack of potatoes on my back at all times, but a certain strange ‘heat’ boiling beneath my skin.
Firebryn is dead, she has slain Mervedis, completed her mission, and so there can be no simple settling of accounts. No justice for Mervedis… not even vengeance…
… And yet the order came from Deorla, the one known as the Shadowflame, once of ‘us’, the former leader of the Company! That thought does not rest well with me. Though before my time, the events I had only started to learn from Mervedis point to a betrayal of the Company, for what it stood for, and for what it ought to be.
But this… this was worse. If Deorla could seek vengeance against us, then why can’t I seek it of her?
Tonight I will write to the Company’s housekeeper, asking him to meet me at midnight by the stables, for I have timed my arrival accordingly to avoid the notice of others.
I shall ask of him to bring all of Mervedis’ recent notes. I know she was tracking rumours, threads, half-seen signs of where Deorla had fled.
I will keep this to myself. No more lives need be put at risk for what I intend. What I will do with such knowledge, I cannot yet say, only that Deorla must answer. Whether by justice or by my own hand, I do not know.
But I will see it done.
I will see it done for Mervedis.
This story has a connection with this one: 'A Strange Letter'
