It felt more like a hallucination than a memory. Something not far off from a daydream.
“Adia! Come see who is here.” She’d awoken to the sound of her youngest brother’s excited voice as he eagerly pulled her out of the darkness of her hut and into the gentle morning light.
Still half asleep, Adia could hardly distinguish the various shapes of people and buildings as she was led through the slow-waking village. Footsteps felt like air, was she even walking? Certainly she must have been, for she had soon found herself looking into the eyes of two strangely clad men at the village centre.
Of course she recognised them, though their faces were now worn with age. They wore robes of a colour much too blue and spoke in a language she did not understand whilst her brother frantically translated. His words fell on deaf ears as one of them handed Adia a small parchment. On it was written a short letter, in her own tongue, and she felt her heart sinking as she recognised the handwriting.
Surely it must have been a dream. Adia wished it was that beautiful lie, that she would not have to leave once again, but who knew if she could ever come back home?
Her pack was already full, bed already made, as if the higher powers were taunting her with the idea that she could have led a simple life. She couldn’t help but lean against the entrance of her hut, a bittersweet euphoria gently pulling at her arm, coaxing her out beyond her village into the great beyond.
Make no mistake, Adia was not unhappy to go (her heart was always eager for adventure) it was the poignantly penned contents of that letter that filled her with a certain melancholy.
‘A promise is a promise.’ She held the parchment to her chest and turned away.
Adia stood a few metres away from the forest clearing, it had been weeks since the letter was given to her but that sense of grief had never quite left, nor did she believe it would at any point in the near future.
The trees around her had already began their metamorphosis: once verdant, now covered in a fiery culmination of many golden hues. What colour would they be by the time she arrived? Her eyes would appear even brighter under their leaves, had they not been darkened by the weight of the new task that was set before her.
She exhaled gently, and one might have mistaken it for the breeze.
‘Will you accept my return, dear friends?’
Her feet carried her forwards and began to close the gap between her and the inevitable.
‘Time has kept us apart for too long, I wish it had not been so.’
Did she even have the strength to see it through? Would she be capable enough to keep her word?
‘There is someone of great importance to me whom I must recover...
Their path has led me back to you,’
Her eyes cast backwards one last time and she knew that Adia would not return.
‘I hope to see you soon.
Your quiet friend,
Melyrn.’
Melyrn will return to Middle Earth- 2021
