The evening in Herne is lovely. I tried to walk in the town and countryside, to enjoy the crisp fall air. But all it did is remind me that I should be continuing my journey. South, south, to lands unknown. Nearly everyone I have told of my intention to travel into Dunland has looked with pity on the poor young woman who thinks to try such a journey alone. Perhaps they’re right. I am no Ranger.
While on the long miles of the road, I tell myself the stories of old to pass the time, and bolster my courage. Stories I was taught at my grandmother’s knee. Her eyes shone as she spoke of the glory of Old Arnor, of the more recent heroism of countless Dúnedain who, except for the stories kept by the faithful old women, have died forgotten, defending the lands where once our kingdom stood proud.
The one I recite now is the Lay of Leithian. It was my mother who taught me the Elvish tales. Though, the Lay belongs perhaps more to the Edain than to the Elves.
Sometimes it heartens me. The story of courage against overwhelming odds. A touch of grandeur to my sorrow.
Sometimes the tale of the Elvish maid who could tear down fortresses and leave Sauron himself trembling and afraid, who could enchant Morgoth himself with the power of her song, leaves me feeling small, hopelessly small. I am no Luthien.
Sometimes—tonight, I smile at my attempts to tie in my own quest with the great tales of old. Perhaps in the smallest way it may echo them, though I go to Dunland and not to Angband. I seek not the son of Barahir, but a Ranger of the North, though if Luthien could have loved Beren more, it is beyond my mortal capacity to comprehend.
Though my heart chafes at this delay, I shall write the reason for my journey. Not as a great tale to be sung by the lore-keepers, but the simple love of a Dúnedan. I write to distract myself—and to try to imagine that there is a thread of story in my search—for if there is, then there has to be a resolution. My greatest fear is that I shall be wandering, wandering, in hostile lands, and never find whether I be widow or wife. To find Alphdir dead I could accept. He has sworn an oath to protect these lands. There are things worth dying for—and the protection of the innocent is one. I would not seek to make him smaller by denying him that risk.
It was autumn when we married. Some said to wait for spring, and its promise of new life and joy. Yet I married a ranger, and knew that we would face winters of uncertainty. To start our marriage in the abundance of the harvest, yet feeling the chill in the air, to seek together to store up joy and hope amid sorrow seemed fitting somehow.
Yet the river laughed, remembering the time when first we knew we loved each other. Returning from Esteldin, he met me by the river and we spoke long, and he wove the autumn flowers into my hair, more beautiful to me than all the jewels of the Elves.
My mind lived in the past, in the tales and stories of days of old. Those he too loved, and long we spoke of my desires to study and learn more of those days of glory. Yet his eyes lit with fiery passion as he spoke of the present, of the ordinary beauty of the people of the lands he guarded. The halflings with their merry dances and little squabbles, the refugees from the turmoils of Dunland, whose language he had begun to learn. He tuned his lute and played enchanting songs—not of the Dúnedain, but of the indefatigable Lossoth of Forochel.
But my narrative wanders. Though I am a storyteller, it is no easy thing to untangle the threads of my own memory in a coherent fashion.
I wore a dress of Elven make, one that had been in my family for generations, that my grandmother’s mother had worn on her wedding day.
Alphdir stood tall, his dark hair unbraided, his grey eyes gleaming and bright with joy. His lute was never far from his hands that day, as if his unbounded joy could only find an outlet in song. As we prepared to make our vows, he gave to me a crown of flowers, much like the one he had made for me that day several years before.
And that Autumn day, the birds sang as if Spring itself had come again, as if Vána herself danced among us.
