I feel my days are nearing an end now, and there is yet much that I have never spoken to you of. Though time and shadow conspire against us speaking again, I am writing these words in the hope that one day they will find you. May they find you well, burn-hand of the shadows. May they ease your heart, Eldandil Tyarassicam. May they settle the difference between us, one whom I call Son and Brother, Shadowbow of the horselands.
The night air held an almost desperate cling to all things as the faint light of the dawn began to fill the eastern skies. The woodland under foot fall rang with an even soft sound as I approached the southern fringe of the forest. It was then that the sense of unease began to be something more than a thought. Growing from seemingly nothing, my sense of unrest grew stronger, until at last, leaning against the last great tree upon the ridge overlooking the river Anduin the pale shadow of night was swept aside by the warmth of morning sun and my sight could reach south to pierce the edges of the Wold. At first it fell upon my ears as if it were the cry of Craban, but there was something more to this sound, something akin to the cry of a child, a child not of my kin. Swift footfalls came easily through the short wind-beaten grasses, and the absence of beast and bird was at first strange to my heart, but the reason I could smell from many paces away. Burning flesh has no scent alike with any other smell, and carried upon the northern breeze it gave a simple trail to follow. With arrow knocked and silent steps I crested the final rise between myself and the source of both cries and stench. The sight laid before me upon the small road below was nothing strange to my eyes, for war and ruin they have seen in plenty. A cart of quite elaborate quality laid shattered, its wares and cargo strewn around. But a few paces from it was the pile of smouldering bodies, the bodies not of my kind, but of Men. The sound, the cries, they were shorter now, dulled by the waking of fatigue and the fading of hope it would seem. Tracks that even a blind-one could follow led away from the cart, away south, and it had been some time since they were laid upon the grass. All about was still, save for the faint hiss of the smouldering flesh and the soft sound of breathing. It was then, beneath the shattered remains of the cart that my sight fell upon the movement. Pulling aside a splintered length of the cart, the wood half eaten by the ravages of fire revealed a half burned swaddling and blanket. The tarnished and charred cloth was not of common kind, wrought with fine silver threads depicting horses running free upon rolling fields, horses depicted without mane. Within that cloth lay a child now all but silent and still. It’s hands burned and red, it’s face blackened by the smoke. There seemed no chance of life for this child of man. A survivor of a skirmish it surely did not look for. What little I know of healing could not save this little one… Until the child opened its eyes I was unsure of what path I might take with the life I now held in my arms as a knelt within the wreckage. The eyes that looked out through such a blackened face struck my heart with a fierceness I think not possible from even my own kin. Such piercing blue, such focus and such will I had not seen in any other; and in that moment my heart was taken for all time until the ends of my days, and my legs could not carry me swift enough back. For all I was worth, I ran. The woodland edge came quickly, the trees streaming beside me as I carried this child. And that is how you came to be within the realm of Greenwood the Great. Your life among men would have to wait for many of your years. Of the time between then and your passing across the river I shall write another time, for now I grow weary. I do so hope in my heart that these words will one day find you, for word tells me of the man you have become. But how I long for you, Shadowbow, to tread silently through the forest once more beside me.
