Legelion crept soft-footed along the forest path. The unlooked-for appearance of a wounded Woodman some days before, and his tale of following a white stag to his rescue, had aroused the boy's curiosity; now he was determined to seek this rarest of beasts himself.
But the eagerness that had inflamed his heart when he set out in the rising dawn was somewhat lessened, for he had left behind the groves of beech that grew nigh the heart of the Woodland Realm, and this was now the farthest he had ever ventured from his home in all his young life.
It had been raining steadily since before sunrise, and the woods about him glistened wetly in the gloom, and now as far as his eyes could strain in the mirk, the trees were old and strangled with ivy and hung with lichen. Their hearts and thoughts were dark and strange, not wholly evil, but watchful; and deep within he heard in their voices their long held malice for all that walked on two legs, and their suffering under the Nightshade that covered Mirkwood.
The path beneath his feet was cold and wet, and the thick mulch of leaves that covered it oozed between his toes. That the virtue of the Wood-elves kept the path clear of the dark dense cobwebs of the Great Spiders he was grateful, but it kept not the dour voices of the trees at bay. It was reckoned to be fifteen leagues along the path to the bridge that crossed the Enchanted River, and he knew then that he had not the strength of will to complete his quest.
And so there he stood still, listening to the sounds of the dripping leaves above and the slow trickle of water down the trees' gleaming trunks, and of a sudden there came a twinge from his nether regions. Thus it was that he was relieving himself beside the path when he heard the rustling of some unseen beast behind him, and the flow of his small stream quickened in fright!
Slowly he retied his breeches and bent to retrieve his bow leaning against the trunk beside him, and carefully he nocked an arrow to its string. Then swiftly he turned, aiming ahead... and gasped. There beyond his arrow's point he descried the very quarry he had been seeking: the white stag. Stock-still it stood, but in its eyes there gleamed an awareness of capturing its hunter unawares... indeed, it seemed to be glowing with unbridled mirth. And Legelion the hunter was filled too with mirth, and he laughed aloud; but the stag was undaunted and stepped ever closer to the child, until his warm soft muzzle nestled in the palm of the elf-boy's small palm.
And in an instant, Legelion felt the silent power of the wood, its ageless strength and majesty... all the life that had ever burgeoned from nut and acorn into the towering trees, and the green voices within that sang in their growing. From moss and mould and fern to the boughs of the ancient oaks that spread their canopy above him, and the ivy that hung thereupon and all the fragrant herbs; all spoke to him in one voice, but a voice that was not altogether one, but many that were raised in one song from the days aforetime ere Eryn Galen was marred.
And he wept with joy.
* * *
It should be noted that this tale is set in the 2979th year of the Third Age, when Legelion was but fourteen years of age; also that these anecdotes are not in strict chronological order.
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