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Early Autumn. Year 3013 of the Third Age.
Somewhere in Dunland.
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Wreca, they had named her. Exile - wretch. For a citizen of the Riddermark, it was a punishment deemed worse than death. Yet Lheuwen had ceased to feel alive some time before then.
The rain hammered down all around her as she huddled in her cloak inside her makeshift bivouac of fallen wood, shivering with cold. Her breath turned to mist before her eyes. She could only guess how long the weather would hold. No way of lighting a fire, no way of looking for a better shelter without getting drenched - no way to get dry if she did. She just had to wait it out.
The Gravenwood was an unforgiving country for anyone to survive alone. Hunger and want showed starkly in her face: there was a pallor beneath her light olive skin, its usual warmth gone; and her cheekbones now jutted out over her hollowed cheeks like crumbling sea-cliffs.
Yet... in many months, the forest was the only place that had offered her shelter. She had left Rohan in the hope that her mother's kin in Dunland might take her in; but everywhere she went, word of her supposed crime had already spread before her. The ancient laws of hospitality did not apply to a kinslayer, presumed possessed by some demon or cuthraul. Most were afraid, hiding at the sight of her, making the sign against evil to ward her off; some drove her away with stones or arrows.
Two or three had provided food - but all were wary. Not one dared risk inviting her under their roof - not even her mother's family; the last kin now remaining to Lheuwen.
Bitterness renewed swept over Lheuwen in a sudden wave. She screwed her eyes shut to hold back the useless tears, biting her lip hard. She dug deeper into her mind, desperate to find again that numbness which sometimes came to her, making everything bearable.
Gradually, the nothingness came.
She opened her eyes, and stopped rocking. Hers was a wakeful oblivion - severed, her connection to the surroundings which she yet observed; insensible to the hardships of a world drained of all colour, all sensation. She had chased all feeling into the deepest, darkest crevasse of her mind, and buried it there, deep under rock.
She could no longer feel the cold, the hunger, or her sorrows. Had only to wait for the rain to stop.
Then she could look for a new shelter.
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