Found:
The man I was looking for!
It's been a while since I was last in Ost Forod.
My previous stay here involved an arrow to the shoulder, an infected wound, an epiphany and several months of recovery time. It was a physically painful time as I recall, though any real recollections are somewhat hazy thanks to that infection and the fever that came with it, but I do know that it was the first time I had ever given any real thought to the notion of settling down.
Eordion. He was such an influence upon my life back then. He was the sole reason I had returned to Bree again and again. Sure, Aevalyn and my whimsical commitment to supplying her shop played a small part and the later addition of the boy Aidennan and my increasing attachment to him was also a factor. But Eordion... he was the first one to pull me back there and the only reason I returned after my recovery.
Things have been fraught between he and I since then. I know that's not how he wanted it to be, but it is how I needed it. The pain he caused me, whether he meant it or not, was too much for me to bear. I see that now. I knew, even back then, that the fault was mainly my own, that had I been more forthcoming with him, had I been more willing to commit instead of taking advantage of his fear of scaring me away, then perhaps things would have turned out very differently. However, by the time I came to the realisation that I was ready to truly give myself over to one man and the life he offered, it was too late. He had tired of waiting.
Two days more. That's all it would have taken. Had I returned only two days earlier, then he would have stayed with me. I think that's what hurt me the most.
Oh, the rejection pained me as sure as the sun rises in the morning. I can't deny that. The man had forced me to open my heart. He had given me someone to love and had convinced me that not only could I be loved, that I was worthy of it and then, for the sake of only forty eight hours, he had taken it all away without a second thought. That one act seemed to prove all that I had been brought up to believe, all that I had been told since I was but a babe in arms. It reinforced the belief that I am not worthy, that I don't deserve love and that I never will.
So much has happened since, for good or for ill, that I begin to wonder - truly and for the first time - if they were wrong, if I was wrong.
Perhaps I have been looking at this entire situation incorrectly. Perhaps I shouldn't have let those past hates, that indoctrinated self-loathing, colour my version of events. Perhaps Eordion wasn't as deserving of my rage as I believed. Perhaps I owe him an apology.
He's not a bad man at heart. That much I know to be true. He didn't set out to cause me such grief. It wasn't intentional. He is still to blame, but then so am I.
I stand here in the crumbled archway of this forsaken pile of rubble and, in the distance, I see the sparkle of the great lake. The project I plan is a big one. My contact draws plans and tallies costs even now, plotting the manpower, time and coin it will require to achieve what I have asked for. It will not be a small or easy undertaking.
I stand here, the wind in my hair, the sun on my skin, and I see beyond the bleakness that will no doubt face me in Rohan. I see through the ravages of my past. I see a future and I want it!
There is, in that distant tomorrow, the shape of a man. He stands beside me. Not behind, not before, but beside; an equal in every way that matters. I can't make out the face, not yet, but it isn't Eordion.
