memories

I awoke charging through fire.

Bounding and bellowing through the smoke and flames, calling out to my friends, but all I can hear are pained cries and foul chattering. The sound of metal slicing flesh and chopping bone plagues my ears, while the sounds of clicking and hissing drive me to near madness. I had come back hoping to be greeted with warmth and kinship, but instead, I am left with the sounds of pain, torture and doom.

"There you are!" she called aloud, sitting up straight, as she spotted a trim young lad, no older than seventeen with hair the color of tree bark and freckles aplenty, running up the hill to meet her. "I was beginnin' to think your Pa was gonna keep you all day long."

In the flickering light of a single candle, Tuilérie admires an old map of Eregion. It was old, yet the artwork was without a doubt well-preserved. With her finger she traced the old roads, following them to near and far off places where she had once traveled.

   Eclad moves to the stables, his head pounding and his eyes beyond sore. He curls up in the piles of dry dusty hay and rests his arm over his eyes. A few tears ran down along his freckled cheeks as he did his best to take deep breaths, willing the headache to leave and go back to whatever pit it came from. Each sound around him was a new needle pressed into his scalp, each flicker of a lamp caused his eyes to scream. He was not a drunkard nor injured, no this was just how life was. The days of pain came and went.

It is black, just as the nights in which the moon itself hides, and the stars blot from a mass of clouds. At first perhaps that is all it is, just the night sky and air. Perhaps its closed eyelids. Yet, a flame hovers in the far off, and a figure next to it, indiscernible at distance. Stitches tuts his tongue as he stares at the shape the orange light outlines, and steps closer, carefully, as he feels the ceiling may be close to his head. After a long blink, he himself holds a torch in hand, and it lights his surroundings, including him on the secret of where he is.

The village of Hookworth was quiet and peaceful. The trees were covered with the green leaves of a fresh spring, slowly rustling in a gentle breeze. Flowers swayed among the grass, the bright yellow daffodils, pink and white magnolias, and the small bluebells were all blooming now, bringing a sense of cheer to the small Breeland homestead.

(read this story first to understand better)

Present days, along the coast of Forlindon