Imladris ; Late afternoon
“Will you not ride with me?” Arrvelas questions with his lips drawn downward in a frown. His hand is outstretched towards Alphaear, who stands a mere breath away from his steed. The brisk autumn breeze stirs her hair as she adjusts the strap of her satchel over her shoulder. With a shake of her head, she says,
“That truly will not be necessary, hir Arrvelas. I told you on our way to the stables that I am well enough to walk alongside you!” The elleth sighs, raising her head to glare up at the ellon upon his horse. With both steed and rider draped in red, she is sure that she will not lose sight of the pair underneath the shining sun.
“Your loss,” Arrvelas replies, withdrawing his hand to gently pet the neck of the steed. “Tell me when you tire of walking. Alarca is strong, and he can carry us both.” The ellon leans back in the saddle. As he does so, Alphaear reaches up and places her hand on the horse’s neck. Alarca appears not to be bothered by her, and so there she stays.
She says to Arrvelas, “I trust your word regarding your horse’s strength. Regardless, I have made my choice and I assure you that I am most capable of walking. We should make haste lest we lose more daylight.” Alphaear is not ready to admit that until she was sure Alarca was not prone to throwing his riders would she even dare to consider riding him, and she would be keeping a very firm distance even then because horses could be unpredictable, and the road may still be crawling with threats foreseen and hidden alike.
The ellon only nods to her words, and he leans down to murmur something to the horse. Without any further prompting, Alarca lurches into motion, trotting along at a brisk pace and leaving Alphaear jogging to catch up. “Try not to fall too far behind, hiril!” Arrvelas calls out as they continue on. She scowls; even if she cannot see his face as she lingers just behind Alarca, she can envision his twisting smirk in her mind’s eye.
“As I said, hir,” Alphaear grumbles as she places a hand out to rest it on Alarca’s side. “I am very capable of walking alongside you and your great steed.” Whether or not her words are genuine — she intentionally coats them in sarcasm — goes unnoticed by her companion. In fact, Arrvelas only laughs at her tone.
“That, hiril,” he chuckles, “remains to be seen… or heard, I would suppose.”
All that elicits from Alphaear is a mocking laugh, mimicking his own. She turns her head slightly to look at Arrvelas as they make their way further from the stables of Imladris. “Do you think that you’re clever?”
“I do,” he replies just as quickly, spurring Alarca on at just enough of a faster speed to cause Alphaear to have to jog once more. “Many people thought me clever as a child, so there is no need to further affirm things that I already know.”
Alphaear laughs. “Ha! And you sound mighty proud of yourself for it, too.” Although, her laughter fades as she notices that the ellon is causing her to have to move faster to keep up with him, and a sour look falls across her face.
Arrvelas turns his head to his best estimate as to where she is walking, the ghost of a smirk lingering on his lips. “Perhaps I am proud of it! But enough of this; your tarrying will keep us from leaving Imladris before sunset… although I suppose it would only truly affect your vision,” he adds in a jest. Nevertheless, it causes Alphaear to scrunch her nose up and scowl before she marches ahead of him and Alarca, leading the way up the slopes of Imladris where they would then leave the Valley.
High Moor ; Evening
At Alphaear’s insistence, once the sun sets and the dappled light between the leaves of the Trollshaws fades, the pair of elves set up camp a few paces from the road in the High Moor, on a bluff overlooking the steep descent to the Bruinen Ford. By the time they tether Alarca to a nearby tree, and Alphaear fetches an adequate amount of timber for a campfire and gets it lit, the sun has set behind the long tree-line of the forest and the moon has begun to spread her slender tendrils of light around the mountainside.
While Alphaear is finally brushing her hands free of wood chips and their fire has begun to burn, Arrvelas has made himself comfortable by leaning back on a large log of wood that he has turned into a makeshift pillow. “Ah…” he sighs. “Is not the air so… fresh, here? And is this place not much more peaceful than in the Valley?”
Alphaear steps away from the camp-fire once it is burning heartily and without her help. She shoots a glare towards the resting ellon, even though she knows it will have little effect in changing his behavior, for it is not as if he can see her attempt at chastisement. “Peaceful?” She repeats. “I suppose so if you find boars and moor-cats peaceful.”
“Ah, but see,” Arrvelas says through a mouthful of lembas bread that he had fetched out of his pack while she was glaring at him. “The boars of the moor have uses.” He gestures towards her with the bread. “Can you say the same for those who drink themselves into a stupor in the Hall of Fire?” He tosses the lembas to Alphaear, who scrambles to grasp it in her hands before she answers his coy questioning.
“I suppose,” she begins, holding the bread away from her mouth so she does not tempt a bite in the middle of her sentence, “they provide entertainment.”
Arrvelas takes another small bite of the lembas — though he pauses to listen to make sure that she does the same. “They do! That is true. But, I think that there is better entertainment to be found.” Alphaear raises an eyebrow towards him at this, waiting for him to expand on the statement before she remembers that she must make herself known verbally. With a mouthful of lembas, she offers a hm of acknowledgment and only then does the ellon continue. “Such as reading books in the library,” he says, “or at least so for you. As for myself, I truly do enjoy playing music on the flute.”
“Will you play for me now?” Asks the younger elleth without thinking, the question falling from her lips like the crumb of the way-bread that will certainly become lunch for a horde of hungry ants once the day breaks again on the hills. Her companion lets out a short sigh and begins to reach for his pack, but he stops and lets his arm fall limply over himself.
“Perhaps another night, hiril,” he says, “for I am lacking the energy for such a thing. Perhaps you can present something entertaining… tell a story or something of the like? You read often.”
“A story?” Alphaear echoes breathlessly, finally adjusting her position to sit down next to him on the log so that he would not be hogging all of the sparse and makeshift comforts that they could find in the wilds of the Trollshaws. “What? Do you think I simply have them crafted on a whim for moments such as these?”
“No, no, you misunderstand me,” sighs Arrvelas as he sets aside the rest of his way-bread for another time. “Not a story that you must make up, or craft, as you so eloquently put it. Tell me something about your life. What do you soldiers frequently discuss on journeys like this?”
She cannot help but laugh at the way he expresses his perspective of their position — as though they were warriors marching off into battle, though she does not correct him. “Just as you said. Stories about our lives, I suppose. What is it exactly that you would like to know?”
Arrvelas ponders her question before responding to it with a question of his own. “Will you tell me about the most exciting battle in which you have fought?”
She blinks in surprise, taken aback by his request. “I… do not quite know that you would truly want to hear about that. Perhaps we can discuss something else for a time before I tell stories…” she trails off in thought, scrambling for something that she could use as conversation. “Well, I have been a wanderer for many years, though I settled in Imladris after the encroachment of the Shadow upon Taur-Nu-Fuin. What of you?”
He chuckles at her deflection of his own topic, though he does not press it upon her to answer this eve. “Just as I told you before, I wandered as well; though for many more years than you, and in search of my dear cousin. I went nowhere special and found nothing special. Yet, somehow, the two of us both have made our way to the refuge of Imladris. Is that not an interesting thing to think of?”
“It is,” she replies in an airy tone, as though her mind is lost in distant thought. “And how long have you been here in the Valley?”
The only answer she is given from Arrvelas is, “A short time, in the eyes of our kind. I know Ithilwe has been here. There is proof, but there is little proof of where he is now.” Once he finishes speaking, Alphaear slides off of the log to sit next to him. She settles the satchel between them in the dirt.
