Morning arrived with a pale grey light that hovered over the rolling fields and filled the dells with thick, cold mists. The sun was obscured by the hazy fog, but the air held a faint, sweet odor, that of green, living things wishing to push upward through soil and sprout wide for the coming spring. The yard in front of the farmhouse was silent save for the soft chirruping of birds in the distant trees, and the occasional clop of a hoof from the two horses who waited, laden with their saddlebags.
She stood beside Jack, a hand resting on his proudly arched neck, and stared into the distance with puckered eyes. There was little feeling of sorrow or wistfulness at this moment of parting with her childhood home and her parents, and certainly not enough to coax her to stay. Her father and mother had looked on her with the solemn disapproval she had expected, though they were never outwardly unkind. They did not speak ill of her departed husband, and wisely so. It would not be impossible to go back inside the house and declare a wish to remain longer, but the idea held little appeal.
Aldwyn asked her in his careful, gentle way, if she had any other wishes to fulfill before they returned north. She told him of her desire to ride onward and see the nearby city, the Golden Hall, the memorial mounds covered with simbelmynë blossoms, perhaps. He gave her a smile filled with warmth, and his green eyes shone with hope that this was a sign that she was recovering at last from her deadly grief. She did not tell him the rest of her thoughts.
The farewells to her parents were polite and brief. They stood on the porch and waved until she and Aldwyn had passed beyond the gate and turned south. She did not look back.
Ahead, the city of Edoras rose from the surrounding land upon a wide, rocky hill, imposing and magnificent. The sun slowly burned away the cold mists, and the day promised to be fair and bright, and her heart felt lighter by the tiniest measure.
If only you could see this, my darling. You should be here. With me. Telling me that you'd never seen anything like it in all of Bree-land.
Her chest ached, and her eyes burned, but she did not weep.
Aldwyn was chattering away beside her, and she suddenly realized she hadn't heard a word of it. She blinked, shook her head, and forced her attention to him.
"We'll stay a night here, if you like, or we can just take a quick look-about and then go on our way," he was saying, his ruddy hair ruffling in the cool breeze that flowed over the fields.
"I don't want to stay the night," she replied softly, frowning a little. "I'd like to get home as quickly as possible. So I can..." Her words were cut off sharply, and she refused to meet his eyes.
Aldwyn was already watching her with his uncanny gaze. "So you can what?" he inquired.
"There's something I must do," she answered in a voice softer still.
As their horses rounded a bend in the road, they passed into the shadows of the great mounds of earth that held the bodies of her long-ago forebears. Statues stood vigil over sealed crypts, and all around, even in winter, the grass was dotted with the tiny, star-like shapes of the evermind blossoms. The air seemed to grow colder, and the sun was blotted out, and she felt a chill racing along her skin. Aldwyn glanced around at the tombs, then paused a moment in contemplation.
"What must you do?" he asked in a voice filled with trepidation.
"Something," was all she would say.
