Estarfin

I reached out, even though what was left to me of clear thought told me he could not be there. Caranthir was long since in the Halls of Mandos. But something about ‘seeing’ him stoked up my spirit. Would he have ever given in, that cousin of mine? 

This Angmar place was not growing on me one bit. Covering me in dust, yes, and making me cough and sneeze like I really didn’t want to. I didn’t like it. Any of it. Oh, how I longed fer me own bed, be that in me Ma an Pa’s house in Glenwood, in me burrow near Michel Delving, or me new room at The Bent Elbow. A proper bed, with pillows and blankets and a fluffy down cover. Ah, that be the life. 

Henepa looked apologetically at the elves. They were not unmoved by her predicament, her ragged and filthy clothes and her pain shadowed eyes, but they had their own quest, their own folk to rescue urgently. 

The Captain nodded at the water skin. “Keep it,” he said to her.

Estarfin halted beside the bodies of the other Men. Dismounting briefly, he took up two half-filled water skins and a handful of gold coins from the corpses. He took a cautious sip from one water-skin then, with a look of unexpected surprise, drank a mouthful or two. He held the skin out to the others. 

The storm of the previous night had been fierce, almost as if foreshadowing a mighty clash of arms. Rain had struck the roofs of the fortress and the surrounding ground like the arrows of an attacking army; trees as strong as any senchenal were battered, their limbs ripped from them, some even fell under the continued assault. In my room in the tower I had felt like hiding away under the bed, I had wanted to hide, but it just would not do.

"I don't like wolves." Lithea Glenwood. 

Estarfin nodded as the houses behind him went up in flames. The village of dry wood would burn until nothing was left but a pile of ashes, and perhaps a poisonous haze.

Estarfin turned and began to carefully scramble down the rocks. His hair and armour were covered in a fine dust, his expression set and determined. 

“We find them,” he said, as if it were an irrefutable outcome. 

Estarfin….beloved...I saw you for a moment, I heard your voice, calling to me. I hear it still in thought and I reach out to you. 

But I could not answer you in words. I knew what would happen if I did.