Amlarad

Amlarad instructs me – 'dig deeper'.

There is a presence in the air since he pulled me from my snowbound tomb. I catch him looking at me sidelong with his steady grey eyes, as though trying to unravel a story. Then I am compelled to look at him, and he shifts quickly away, busying himself with bow or knife or wood.

And it seemed to me that I lay on the edge of an ice-sea, entombed in foam, solid and crystalline. Above me, held in icy abeyance, the waves frozen in the act of breaking. Far above, the night-sky's stars held fixed in their courses, glittering like spray caught in moonlight.
 
And a ship sailed over the unyeilding sea, and and a voice moved over the waters.
 
'Echuio, Elwing ... Echuio!'
 
And the command fed my spirit, and it burst into flame in the chilled space of me.

sleep... forget... and be at peace...

The storm-voice seeps its hypnotic words into my ears. Beneath its snow-blanket I feel - nothing. My fingers and toes, feet, hands are lost to me. I am a disembodied dream, a flickering thought in a forgotten fleshy shell.

I wake just after dawn to a clear sky. The weather has held good since he left yesterday. I busy myself, using precious thread to mend a rent in my shirt. As I sew I glance up from time to time expecting to see Amlarad walking to the fire, some white-furred creature in his grasp, its paws and small ears already beginning to freeze as the warmth seeps from it.

As morning becomes afternoon, he does not come.

 It has been too long. Here in the peace of my surroundings I lay down my thoughts to parchment, and at last muse upon the yield of the waning years the Third age has to offer. I recall in my youth the moment my features were scorned from lack of skill. I recall how my dear cousin would show me the beauty of every root , moss and tree.

Filrean had set up camp for the night, amongst a few trees on an outcrop set above the campsite of the elves below at Eavespires.  Her fire was built and a small area set out for sleeping beside her sword, bow and quiver of arrows, she kept her hunting dagger at her side as always.  As she settled down into a comfortable seating position she watched a boat moving across the water, two passengers both in hooded cloaks, she was not going to sleep yet.

Writing for my lord Steward is a discipline instilled within me. I take the opportunity to do so with Amlarad out to hunt - 'and hunt what?' I asked him, 'I have seen little of beast or bird this far north'. But if any can find some trail, a hidden creature, it is him.

Summat important must be in this fornost place. Now yer would expect that a dead city - full of bone-men, corpse-walkers and shadow-men wouldn't be full of live 'uns like me an' Gyth an' Bawde. But ...

We have lost so much, my family and my people. How is it that I journey to the end of the world, and from a man of silence hear the story of my own name?

Did my grandfather have some premonition? Did he, searching the half-remembered tales he heard as a child, taste the future as he whispered possible names for his first grand-daughter? Olwing ... named for some distant queen, her life and deeds lost to time...

Never trust Gyth ter pick a warrior. I said we should have gone for the leader o' them chetwood lot. He may be as ugly as chewed boot, but he looks like he could last a few years.

But no - Gyth flutters her eyes and waves her hair about, an' picks this bloody lad, face as fair as a maid an' about as effective. Goes by the jaw-cracking wealas name o' Araenion. Or Onion... feh. I dursen't know, by the time we gets to the Bridge Town, whether he's escortin' us north, or whether we'm looking after -him-.