After so much fear and doubt, how does one confront a near perfect night?
So much seems to have happened of late, but so little in reality. I began to reflect on all of it as I lay in the soft, dewy grass near Bree along the riverbank, but I found that I had not the heart to mar the contentment and grace of that moment, and put it all aside. How could I not? Holding Fille's roughened hand as we lay beneath the bright winter stars, cool river water drying on our flesh as we talked and laughed in low tones, armor and arms and workgarb carefully discarded close at hand, but not too close. The normal cries of the night watch of Bree far in the distance sounding like the call of birds, somehow reassuring in a round-about way.
Once poor Fille had recovered from her maidenly shyness and stopped blushing so adorably, we spoke of many things as we bathed and then lay on the riverbank...of the music lessons of her youth, of my girlhood, sheltered in eternal Imladris. Sweet memories and bitter both blended one into another as we whispered like schoolgirls to one another. It was clear to me Fille was struggling to remember moments of light in her dark, troubled upbringing, which broke my heart for her but I did not press, letting her share what she wished as she wished to, so as to unburden her soul in peace.
After the tension of recent days she was entitled to that peace.
First was that curious Southron woman in the Pony who seemed to know something of Fille from the past, and though her words seemed fair the intent behind them felt foul indeed and unnerved us both and drew her eyes back toward Gondor again.
That uncertainty led me to seek answers regarding Xanir's fate amongst the Goblins, which even now I do not wish to linger upon, unwilling to look too deeply back into that darkness. The one Goblin I brought away from the killing ground in the North Downs was named Buk, as I learned in our conversation. I nailed him to the floor of my room in the Pony and for hours he cursed and threatened and begged in a wretched patois of his own language, orcish, the common tongue spoken in Bree-land and snatches of the Black Speech. It frightened me to think where he may of learned those, or from what.
By the end of our conversation he was missing several fingers and most of his teeth but bit by bit I gained the truth despite his attempts to frighten or deceive me with falsehoods. However his tales of my brother's brutal death and torture, though clearly false, enraged me. As I twisted the arrow in his hip, feeling twisted bones cracking and snapping against the shaft, he gasped out the final answer to my most important question. The elf singer dressed in twilight had indeed escaped their rage he said, after stealing certain things that must have been needed by the local folk of Trestlebridge, then escaped towards Angmar. Xanir then had departed wounded, but unbowed. I felt the truth of that and at last released Buk from his torments, then went to consider all he had said in solitude and pass the knowledge to Xandilif.
That was when I gained fell news from Xandilif concerning the inquiries I had asked her to make in Dol Amroth and left a note for Fille to guard herself and seek me out. Just as Fille feared her father was indeed hunting her. It seemed the hounds were far afield yet, but when I informed her the news was most disturbing to her. She shivered in my arms like a little girl as she considered that the delicate life she had been building for herself here...her work and mentor at the forge, the mysterious swain she is drawn to, even me perhaps...all could be torn asunder by the malice of that man so far away. I eased her mind as much as I could, but I would not nor could I hide the truth from her, that she knew so well. She is indeed vulnerable and we cannot yet know the true shape of this threat.
Beyond my news, it seems when Fille answered my note she was concerned not just for her own safety but for mine as well. Someone at the Pony had overheard my conversation with Buk, and that makes sense as when I had returned to my room Buk had been unnailed from the floor and dragged away. In his place was a note stating my rent had been increased. Someone passed that knowledge to Fille and she was afeared for me. The thought that she should worry for MY safety of all things sparked my tempers of old and I was close to being wroth with her presumption, but looking at the loving fear in her pale eyes dissolved my haughty demeanor like snow before the first light of spring. I must be more careful.
When we returned to the common room of the Pony, things were boisterous and in truth I had not the patience for the normal games and the coming and going so invited Fille to join me in the stretch of river where it had become my custom to bathe. She accepted gratefully and so in time we found ourselves refreshed, stretched out with the winter air chill on our skin as the night sky spread above us and all of the cares I have detailed here melted away.
In due time, as dawn lit the sky, her shyness and the chill wind finally got the better of poor Fille, and we dressed. As she aided me with my armor I felt it was time to ask the question I had held at bay for so long, and enquired of her late mother.
At first she reacted with anger...and then with purest pain as she related that her mother was dead as I had suspected, and that she blamed herself for her death, apparently in childbirth. I explained that any mother would not fault her child to live, even at the cost of their lives and that she was not to blame for fate...but that was not the core of what angered my poor Fille.
She looked at me and at last told me through her tears the secret that I had felt from the first moment I had met her eyes, the thorn that had been bleeding her heart of all the youthful joy she should feel and poisoning her. It seemed she did not truly believe her father's statement that her mother had died giving birth and suspects something far darker behind his lie...and that suspicion has been tearing her apart since girlhood. Here at last was what I had sensed but been unable to name.
Even as I held her and consoled her, my mind raced....how shall we learn the truth of this matter, and in learning it, what will happen to Fille?
We walked together slowly back to Bree and she returned to her forge lest her aged mentor be concerned. She advised me, following a local woman's annoyance with me, that in Bree being seated upon the floor is considered an act of submission and inappropriate for me which I had not realized and I promised to stand as much as possible then lest I give offense. She actually grew angry that any would impugn my motives and appeared ready to defend me against all the gentlefolk of Bree should the need arrive. She is so very dear to me, even writing those words make me smile.
At last I returned to the Pony alone and stood by the fire in thought, my head in a whirl but still suffused with the warm glow of such a lovely night. Why is it ever so that each answer brings two new questions?
