The bright silver moon was slowly sinking towards the treeline and the sky brightening towards the violet of dawn as Xanderian slowly walked along the banks of the Mitheithel. Behind her, the Last Bridge rose as a testament in stone to the tragic kingdom of Arnor, and at it's base her three companions slept around a guttering campfire. Their departure that morning from the Forsaken Inn had been sudden and abrupt and filled with an anxiety to be on the road and avoid the pitfalls of the arid Lone Lands. Cyndwin had ridden ahead before dawn to scout, leaving the quartet to make their way through the desert morning.
As they rode, the Elleth had been disturbed by the degree to which the tribes of orcs huddled along the road like moss along a tree trunk had multiplied and grown strong. Soon the small homesteads of the Midgewater would be in peril again, perhaps the Greenway itself beyond. Truly as the gaze of the West faced the enemy, the shadows multiplied in the small places...and the weak would suffer as they always did.
By the time the sleek bulk of the Last Bridge came into view, the afternoon was waning, for their pace had been slowed. As they had ridden the wound Hawke had suffered while protecting another some months past began to pain him, yet he refused to stop for fear of delaying the company. He remained stoic and cavalier, yet Xanderian felt his pain and was concerned nonetheless as they rode more slowly until finally they made camp at the foot of the bridge.
Once Hawke's old wound had been tended and Mae and Eduwiges caught and prepared a bounty of fish, the evening grew tense and long, with emotions and passions running high in the shadow of Imladris and all parties went to sleep surrounded by words and actions both misunderstood and mistaken. Faced with this situation and her heart aching for it, Xanderian rose and spent the night standing sentry along the river, much as she had done hundred of years before in the service of the House of Elrond.
As she walked the cloudless night, singing softly to herself the lays of her girlhood, from across the brilliant waters of the Mitheithel she felt a gaze upon her, and looking towards the Trollshaws bank she spied two sapphire eyes gazing back at her from the treeline.
The two elves contemplated one another, Xanderian dressed in traveler's robes and cuirass, the other in the simple Hauberk of a River Guard of Imladris. Only the river separated them, yet its distance seemed as broad at that moment as time itself. Once long ago, their roles could have been easily reversed, as Xanderian stood watch over the river, often shadowing travelers who sought, rightly or wrongly, the haven of Rivendell.
The two should have had all the world in common, yet they watched one another in silence and distrust, each wondering what the other was thinking, what they were feeling, how the moonlight felt upon their faces. Neither had answers, for Xanderian was a future the River Guardian could not yet imagine, and the River Guardian was a past Xanderian could not yet face.
On another night, in another season, Xanderian might have hailed the Guardian and they could have swum to the center of the river and spoken of sights seen and songs sung, sharing remembrance like sweet wine. However tonight...the Huntress was filled with bitterness and suspicion, and anxiety over what this Guardian's masters may be saying of her, just as the Guardian seemed filled with fear of the outsider and caution towards the unknown.
And so, the two backed away slowly, their fears and doubts left intact when a few moments of soft speech could have opened a door for them each. As Xanderian made her way slowly back to her friend's camp, dawn growing brighter around her, she looked back to watch the Guardian making her way gingerly back into the thick forest.
"As I am, so will you be....as you are, so once was I..." she whispered like a benediction, an offering to a fallen god...and weeping silently she waited for her companions to wake, and the bittersweet journey into Imladris to continue.
