December of TA 3018. It had been a long journey west for Halfaeron, Ranger of the North. He sought to see his father again for the first time in many months. Ortheldir was known to patrol the Weather Hills, north and south of the ruined watchtower of Amon Sûl, down into old Cardolan and occasionally Minhiriath. Halfaeron had not seen any sign of his father during his sojourn into Tharbad and Cardolan, but dearly wished to inform his father that he had passed Master Faeron's tests and even helped Rhona on Mithrendan’s behalf, which he hoped would be no small source of pride for his father’s part.
Halfaeron, like most of his people, was given to wander on foot for many leagues but something about this particular day prompted a nap. A long nap, so long in fact that it became sleep. He dreamt of cheese made by the farmers in Bree-land, and then of preserved Barrow-cheese kept since the fall of Cardolan a thousand years before his time. The forbidden cheese, deadly to all who would dare to eat it, for it had long been corrupted by the Witch-King of Angmar's fell sorcery. The wights seemed a mere nuisance, really, for it must have been the Captain of the Nine's chief aim to corrupt Arnor's cheese and bring that vaunted kingdom low thereby.
Wait, no. The cheese was apparently tangential. The dream moved on to something inexplicable, like a rolling pin flattening fish. The young man awoke in the night just as things were getting strange and interesting; he had the howling of wargs to thank for that. He silently shook his fist in the dark and tried to go back to sleep.
No dice, and no winks either. He had no choice but to get up and go for a walk and perhaps tire himself out before returning to sleep. He had been reasonably sure that the little nook he camped in was safe, but why not check to see if wargs were about? Even if said wargs had better noses, better ears, and could see better in the dark than he.
Off he went, circumventing the cold southern slopes of Amon Sûl when he spied a figure in the darkness, silhouetted by the moonlight and a long cloak. He watched quietly, trying to discern who this might be when the figure suddenly took flight a short way to the east. He might have let the figure go, but curiosity got the better of him. Would this stranger perhaps know the secret of old Arnor's cheese?
He followed carefully behind when the figure came to a stop beneath the branches of a withered tree. He stayed behind a shrub and peered out, watching, when he saw the shimmer of silk by the wisp of pale moonlight. Few travelers bore silk in those rough lone-lands, and he had seen neither hide nor hair of ruffians about. Halfaeron decided then that he should approach, and if needed he would simply run and vanish back into the night if fortune turned ill against him. He hailed the traveler, and the voice of a woman greeted him and bade him to approach.
As he came closer, his foot caught on a thick root, or a burrow in the ground, and he tripped face first into a puff of snow, a thin layer of which had accumulated over the evening and would not stay through the next day. Surely it was a terribly intimidating first impression. When he found the courage to lift his snow-covered face up from the ground, he beheld the pale face of a woman who had offered a hand to help him up. He took it and was taken aback by what turned out to be a lone Elf-maiden bearing a circlet of gems on her brow. She threw down her hood and revealed herself. Her features were not unlike that of the Dúnedain: black hair, grey eyes, and pale, but she seemed naturally far more beautiful even than the women of his folk in Tornhad, and she held a radiance that only her kind ever could.
The young Ranger had met Elves before in Imladris at the behest of his mother, Iruieth. Therdis, his aberrant companion to Tharbad and longtime neighbor had told Iruieth of his apprehensions about the Elves camping outside of Ost-in-Edhil, and thus deemed it beneficial and necessary that Halfaeron should meet them at long last. It was on they whom he cut his teeth. By now he had mostly overcome his mild fear of these ancient and powerful beings, heroes by the reckoning of the tales of the Faithful Númenóreans. Here he only stumbled because of this Elf's presence about four or five times, and at last found his joyful humor once again, and knew how to take it back to Imladris too.
As it turned out, this Elf-maiden had been separated from her party by a pack of Orc-riding wolves. No wait, wolf-riding Orcs. Some variety of alliance between Orcs and wolves. Either way, this traveler needed help and it was his sworn duty to give her aid, and so he took her back to his camp and saw to the dressing and treatment of the wound on her arm. She was a Very Serious sort of Elf whose laughter was reserved to only two of his jokes, but a kind and earnest one.
At some point she had mentioned that the Enemy had many servants and spies including the beasts of the wild, and not a moment later a strange bunny-rabbit hopped near the fire and watched them. Halfaeron could not shoo it away, and so wondered for the course of the night whether Sauron was indeed hearing his jokes, and whether indeed the old foe was laughing, or even had any sense of humor at all.
And the Elf began singing. Halfaeron never really knew what to do when anyone started singing; was he supposed to join in? Sing in the background or hum? Do a choreographed yet somehow spontaneous dance in unison with the singers? But it was a very beautiful song, full of the sort of wistfulness yet appreciation of the goodness of the world common to Elvish folk.
Gilfuin of Celondim, as it turned out her name was, told him about Elbereth and the Elvish love of the stars, the Valar given their governorship and power over the world by the One, Iluvatar, who shared with them in love the co-creation of Arda and beyond. The Dúnedain learned of the divine, yes, but only in the most abstract sense, beheld over a great, unbridgeable chasm. Their faith endured the Akallabêth, Atalantë in the old Elvish tongue but grew wearier with each passing year that Númenor, old Yôzâyan, the Land of Gift and its hallowed Meneltarma was gone. It breathed its last with the end of the priest-kingships of the Realms-in-Exile and fading of the line of Elros, whose last ember dwelt in Aragorn, Halfaeron’s chieftain. This dying faith received gratefully the Elvish maiden’s kindling, a wonder in the man’s heart in which the unconscious stirring of the desire for the divine dwelt. It was perhaps more profound than the memory of the smell of a delicious pie on a Mossward windowsill.
But though the night was passing into the early light of foredawn, his duty was still to help this traveler find her way back to her people, and so he would need to endure a sleepless night and range a little further afield the next day.
