Author’s Note: This piece was shaped with a little help from AI. It provided assistance on things like the structuring, some names, shortening some verbose language/ideas as I'd written, and gave me the odd turn of phrase here and there. The heart and shape of the story are my own, but I realise it is important to be transparent about my use of AI support in producing it ultimately.
Diary of Naridalis
By the shores of Nen Harn, Bree-land
There is a silence that takes hold before journeys begin…. not the hush of trees at dusk, nor the stillness of deep water, but something stranger…. a tension that gathers in the air, in the set of one’s shoulders, in the soft moments between words. A pause… before breath becomes motion. Before the world changes. I felt it today.
We gathered at dawn outside the kin house. Word had been posted; a call for companions on a venture north… for relics whispered of in frostbitten ruins, of coin to be found in the bones of Forochel’s icy wastes. I did not join them for treasure. I came because I needed to step away from what Bree had become. From the weight of memory that clung too tightly to the Company’s business there. From the voices of the past that still echoed loudly and painfully in my mind when I return there.
They are strangers to me, mostly. A woman named Ivy seemed to speak with the confidence of one accustomed to being listened to. Her cart was laden with provisions, her gaze already northward. She would be going whether accompanied or not, that much was clear. Wise beyond her years, especially for one so young of the race of Men. I watched her as one might a fire in a distant hearth; familiar in shape, but far from warmth. There is steadiness in her, I think. But steadiness can be a mask as much as a strength.
A halfling joined us too, trailing a scent of sweetgrass and lavender, with a club at her side and cheer in her step. Caramip, she said. Cara as we agreed. I had not met her before, but she made introductions easy. Her joy was a storm - unpredictable, unrelenting, and oddly disarming; like a child’s laughter in the aftermath of battle. Not a Company woman, but there was something sharp beneath her brightness, a wit too honed to be dismissed as a simple stranger. Even so, her laughter stirred something forgotten in me. She reminded me that not all wounds wear shadows.
Then there was Vaedhral… or Vae as I’ve shortened it. An elf, his voice bore the cadence of our speech of old, and his step carried the stillness of one not yet wearied by the world. I watched him, not out of suspicion, but recognition. There was something familiar in his bearing, though not in the way of kin. Rather... it was as though he stood in the place I once might have, had I chosen differently. Had I stayed within the Golden Wood. Had I not stepped into the wilds and let the dust of Men cling to my boots.
Tayschren, Tay… arrived not long after. Of them all, he was the one I knew… though not well. It was I who first spoke for him when he sought to join the Company. I recognised something in him then… beyond skill or certainty… a longing. A wish to belong, to prove himself, to place his steps in a cause greater than his grief.
He is very young, for one of my kin, barely past the reckoning of youth by our people’s measure. And yet, he carries sorrow as though it were an heirloom. His beloved is gone, that I know; sailed west into the Undying Lands. I fear he does not yet understand how long grief lingers when you are not permitted to follow. I have learned, very recently, that grief lingers deeply indeed.
There is a fragility to him now, masked in pride and fine manners. He speaks with care, dresses with formality, but his eyes do not rest. He scans the horizon like one hunted by memory. I have seen warriors thrice his age break more gently than he holds himself.
I watch him with quiet concern. I do not know how much of his strength is real, and how much is stubbornness. I hope he finds steadier ground in this journey. If I have done wrong in bringing him into our fold, I would see it mended.
There is still light in him. But it flickers.
And others too joined the expedition, still whose names I have not yet marked. We were not a fellowship, not yet. Just pieces of different stories, bound together by rumour and need from the Company, and from elsewhere too. And yet... I’ve seen stranger gatherings find purpose.
When we finally set out, the roads beyond Bree were touched with the warmth of early summer. The weight I had been carrying, the tension in my shoulders, loosened with each step. Not vanished… only eased. And that is no small thing.
That night, beneath open stars and a fire newly built by the lakeside, I spoke.
I hadn’t meant to. I hadn’t intended to unearth the old wounds, not here, not among those who did not yet know what the Company had endured… what I had endured. But the words came.
Of Deorla. Of her betrayal. Of the trust she broke, the kin she wounded, the mask she wore even as we followed her into the dark. I did not name her with venom. I did not speak to accuse. Only to acknowledge that we had been burned, that I had been burned… and that the ash still clung close.
I spoke of the Company, and the trust in us that had been shattered. I had not meant to speak so plainly… so emotively. I had carried the words in ink, in dreams, in letters never sent. But tonight they passed my lips. Quietly. Not at the kin gatherings where voices rose and arguments bloomed like storm-clouds had I given my feelings on the betrayal. No. Just here, beneath stars and firelight, among those who still walk forward despite all that’s been lost did I share my thoughts.
There was quiet when I finished. Not discomfort. Something closer to understanding. No one turned away. No one asked me to soften the shape of what I’d said.
I think… they knew already. Or had guessed. Or had felt it in the marrow of their own wounds.
And then the talk shifted, as it often does around firelight. Ivy spoke of roads and maps. Tay of Mirkwood’s long shadows. And Cara, Valar bless her, asked if Lembas could be toasted. I nearly laughed aloud. Imagine it, sacred Elven bread, crisped like campfire fare. There are worse fates I suppose.
But even that laughter, even that silliness, it helped. Because grief does not leave us untouched, but nor does it get to rule every breath. We are more than what we’ve lost.
… tonight, perhaps for the first time since my passing the black pool before Moria’s doors, I remembered Lothlórien.
Not as duty, but as memory. My father’s voice… cold, proud. My mother’s song…. soft, and gone. The bargain I made to bring aid to the Company… and the price I promised to pay, and didn’t.
But the road lies ahead now. And for the first time in moons, I feel ready to walk it… not to run from what came before, but to carry it onward.
With marshmallows.
With grief.
With them.
Let the snow and frost and dangers come when they will. I am not alone.
—N.
---
As Naridalis writes her diary entry before taking rest, something murmurs within her…
It listens.
It watches.
It waits.
Drifting behind her thoughts like silt in a riverbed, it stirs. The sliver remains…. small, unseen, but nestled deep where even self-awareness does not reach. Her grief made the opening. Her pain keeps it connected. She names her wounds aloud now... but never all of them. Not yet. The firelight flickers in her eyes, and it watches through them…. faint and patient. The north calls to her. She thinks it is for fellowship, for duty, for mystery, for treasure…. a clean road away from the ashes of her memories. But the ice is old in the north. The ice remembers.
Beneath Forochel’s crust, beneath the false silence of snow… other things sleep. Not lost relics. Not wayward caravans. Not fleeing orcs or the frozen bodies of greedy treasure-hunters…. But remnants... doors… thresholds to the deep places of the world. It once reached far from stone and black water... it will do so again.
The grey between light and dark still suits her. And when she falters next, it will be waiting. Whispering. Calling. It does not rush. It does not hunger. It waits, because she is walking toward it, and does not yet know.
And now she brings others to consume as well…
