The surprise… How much I longed for it and how I hoped one name will rend the veil that hides my past from me. How I only imagined the voice saying it to be that of a father or brother or lover, someone who waited for me and hoped for my return. How different it was..
Our questions and search found the answer of indulgent disbelief and polite words of discouraging. It was insane. We looked for records –already incomplete and broken, recovered with blood price at times, from ruins now infested with foes- on Eregion searching a family line without a name or a year. I blushed and Anordill turned sad to preparing to ride again the next day. He asked me to rest as the road would be less comfortable the next days as we were to head towards Lothlorien trough the underground former realm of the naugrim, now home to few of its formers masters and many more foes. I suspected he more wanted me out of the way and I respected his wish.
I joined the group around the fire in the tower of Mirobel and I was staring into the dancing flames when I felt I am being watched intensely. I raised my eyes and met indeed those of a blonde elf with blue eyes and few raindrops still shining on the metallic decorations of his elegant blue tunic. I had not seen him before. He had the sharp features that I usually saw at the dark haired Noldor elves, and was very slender, that made him look very young for our kin, somewhat childish. He was looking at me intently and waited some time, as for giving me time. I blushed and looked at him in return curious. I was –as soo many times before already- analyzing each of my feelings and heartbeats and trying to dig in my mind for a moment I met him before, somewhere in that veiled past. Nothing happened.
He finaly asked –no, no enthusiasm, or great joy of seeing me, or even sure that he is talking to the right person!- with the disbelief of one meeting something that should not be tehre: “Lothluin?” And again nothing happened. No shattered walls, no severed veils of darkness. I wanted him to be right and still..
“I.. do not know.” He looked at me in disbelief and most around us stopped talking among each other and turned their attention to us. I blushed lots and told him my story in short. He listened and nodded.
“Well.. if you are indeed who I think you are.. you were a child when I saw you several times but you look so much like that young girl and like her father.” He studies me with attention and looking in his eyes for so long I realize he is old, so very very older than he appears. Is only his eyes that look –no, not old!- but like they saw many many things.
“He was no lover of my craft and I doubt I saw him in my audience two times.. and I always was a wanderer.. I rarely stayed more than a few days to sing my songs then left again to discover other songs. First time I met him at his wedding.. your mother was far relative to mines and she asked me to bring my lute and my song to that happy day of her life. And a second time I visited him at his forges. He was of the old travelers from the west and their skill was famous. I wanted a knife of such noble making and style and someone sent me to him. He was crafting with difficulty – he lacked his right hand and the wound was longtime healed when he came with his lord in this lands- but he was passionate about it and managed to develop his own technique and tools. He also had an apprentice.. I cannot remember his name, if I ever knew it.
"His young daughter was there, and looked so much like him. I noticed her several times before in the city with her mother and older sister. While the older sister had the gold hair of the mother the young one had the unusual dark reddish hair of her father, with ample curls and waist length long and her features were so similar to his.. and to yours. He called me Isillind in the old tongue all the time and there was a hint of discontent in his voice.. and he was –unlike your mother- calling you in the same language, but with infinite kindness and and sweetness in his voice.. Lohtilindë..”
The name sounded so sweet to me.. the musicality of the old tongue gave such beauty to the name. But I remembered nothing coherent, even the name was echoing in my ears again and again, that I lost some of Ithilinn’s tale, imagining the flames before me belonged to a forge, where a one-handed elf, with waistlong curled reddish hair was hitting -with a hammer kept in his left hand- the red metal held in a device he had placed on a stone block and was pressing with the remaining length of his forearm in order not to move, while a Ithillinn looking the same as today was waiting patiently further behind this scene, safely away from the flame and shards..
