Hardly feels like any time passed since we left the Mark, but it's been a long journey, with many settings of the sun.
Adri and I had spent a lot of the journey being fair quiet, specially after Langhold, but after we left the Mark, we took to talking a lot more, as we rode, and at our camps. Sometimes about things been troubling us. Adri helped me come to realize what it was about leaving the Mark, knowing I'm not a Man of the Mark no more, that bothered me -- that it were all about it not being my choice no more but someone else's -- and that helped me stop gnawing over it. For her trouble, though, weren't so much could be settled by talking about it, so she'd rather find other things to talk on, to keep her mind off it. She wanted me to tell tales of my life, but I found I didn't got much to tell, excepting those things as I already told. So while we traveled, she told me a few of her stories, and I told her what of my journeys I ain't never told her afore, back in Marton, and along the Great River, and into the Dale-lands, and then on to Bree.
We didn't linger anywhere, not even in Dwimordene, where we passed through (in blindfolds, of course) and made our own camp by the river, so as not to lose half a day. A fortunate spot of warm weather made the crossing of Redhorn Pass take only a few days, as we didn't have to haul much firewood; even at the peak of the pass, with Carrot-thras looming over us, we didn't need more fire to sleep than we'd made for cooking.
The fortune of clear skies were just the start, though. As we come down the pass and were just nearing the woods, and made our last camp afore the plains of Hollin, we met a fellow coming up, what we shared our fire and camp and food with. But the odd thing were he come from Hookworth too, and shared news, the most welcome of which were that Miss Brynleigh were doing better, and even that she'd mentioned me, that she missed me -- which makes me hope when I come back it won't be like when I left. He even give me a letter for her. Seems he's off to the Mark for some family business of a tragic sort, but means to come back to Hookworth later in the year, maybe with his sister. It were right odd to meet someone in such a wild place, but maybe good practice for being around folk again. And talking in Westron.
It weren't until I first caught a glimpse of Weathertop, though, that it came to me that we're near to home, and what that means. The road had been dragging itself beneath Kestrel's hooves for so long it had come to feel ordinary, and we'd passed so many uncounted leagues that travel had become near to thoughtless. Like the journey is life, not just a thing that passes to get back to it. Weathertop reminded me that there's an end to it, and it's coming on right soon.
Weathertop made me realize it'd be only part of a day before I'd see the gates of Hookworth afore me, and it'd be time to face the things I been thinking on, wondering about, in some cases worrying on. Would things be as I left them? Would the house have been took for another? Would Miss Brynleigh still want to keep me at a distance? Would Beoda still be waiting for me? Would I still be welcome in Hookworth, welcome in my apprenticeship, on the path I left to take this journey, the only path open to me now that the Mark done closed itself to me? What other things will have changed?
And for that matter, I have changed, the road has changed me, the things what happened on the journey. Will the changes in me, change anything else? How can I know what?
How can coming home, as much as I've wanted it, ached for it, longed for it, also be scaresome?
