pride and prejudice

The breeze seems determined to have this paper from me this evening. There, I see Randir disappearing around the side of the hill, searching again, spying out the safest route. He is fully absorbed in his task though tonight I am distracted, with one thought coming swift on the heels of another. Where is Araenion? What has happened back at the refuge that delays him? To press on without him, trusting to his abilities in the wild to follow our route, or to turn back? I think it might distress my guide to consider that Araenion's skill in the wilderness might match his own. Such a pride rests in him, no humility or simplicity fully masks it. I do not say arrogance, but pride none the less. If pride can be measured in a ragged cloak and a determination to be silent. Sitting alone - here I am in the wilderness that Vallandur taught me to love. Alone without loneliness, a lesson I never thought to learn before. And yet, travelling with this Man, I feel alone. He walls himself in in his solitude, and me out. I see now how Vallandur's solitude enfolds me, the times we sit together at the camp, watching the stars, or the lake. What needs to be said when the world itself lays its stories before us? To Randir, it seems I am just... a duty. For Vallandur, duty is akin to love. In the rush of departing from Imladris I did not tell Araenion of the contents of Anglachelm's letter to me, nor of the white swan-feather that he gifted me on parting. Here it has a soft radiance in the moonlight, this swan feather of Gondolin. There is only one place where it can be kept free from harm, though I am loath to set it there. I do not know what it will weave, this gift of a noldo lord. There is already so much laid upon me. I will not tell him though of Anglachelm's words, or the manner in which they were said.