After what seems like an eternity but truly is only a little more than a year I am back home in Celondim. While everyone was looking at me with astonishment, I had not time to stop and talk. I ran straight up the stairs to where I knew I would find Lendaellin – and there she was. How her eyes widened when she looked up from her work and discovered me! She jumped up with a scream and hugged me, and she did not let go of me for quite some time. I am afraid the filigree ornament she was carving at the very moment is broken now. But she could not stop smiling.
Later we were sitting at home, talking, laughing, storytelling… After all this time in the Lone-lands, dust and heat and fights and blood, it is unbelievably lovely to be back here where the air is fresh and clean, full of flowery scents. And back with Lendaellin, my mother, who feels even more like a sister now than she did before I left. She was overjoyed the whole evening, made my favourite food for me and gave me a wonderful new dress. And of course she had to accompany me for my evening walk and my visits at our friends. They all looked the same – but naturally they all are elves and do not change as fast as I do. And I did. Some realised that with astonishment and seemed to remember only now that I was not Landaellin’s born daughter. We also went down to the harbour, and the memory hit me like it did every time after that memorable day. A pair of eyes of a strange ice-bay blue colour. It seems I have not forgotten this elf, and I would still recognise him. Of course I would. The day I met him has changed my life so much.
And now I have time to sit down in peace and write some more lines into my diary that was abandoned because of my letters to Lendaellin. But I had to let her know about every detail of my life in the foreign lands. I had written her I felt strong enough now to go to my true homeland, to Forochel. What I had not told her was that I would come for a visit before that. I am looking forward to some quiet weeks with her, maybe learning some new carving techniques and letting the life flow by slowly as it does here in Celondim.
