Image credited to Lorenzo Mastroianni.
The erfaron and I know an easy sort of companionship. Often is it that silence between us denotes contentment, conversation never so distant as to be unreachable by either of us, but both enjoying the quiet of a familiar amity.
We met along the Great Road some time ago, the seasons now having melted away into years. Fornost was beset by a malevolence that his kinsmen would not suffer to fester and I had come riding the winds of such ill tidings, bidden by my Lady. Our paths were fate-woven, it seems, insofar as to say I had not traveled from the East with any intention of coming by arms with the Men of Westernesse, but we found ourselves at one another's backs by the end.
I have known many Men in my time, many like him, but his wandering nature was something of a curiosity to me. I must admit that his short years belied a wisdom I'd not expected, though that wasn't what surprised me most. He was named well, the erfaron, the wandering man. So often did wanderlust breed from a youthful expectation of invincibility in the mortal heart, but he seemed to bear no such delusions. Raunhen, I call him, ever-vigilant in his watchfulness. The first time we parted was not the last; he seemed always where he ought to be, wherever and whenever it was.
We've shared long nights, some too short. Companying in merriment, in good wine and draff, in admitted tales of desire and misfortune. We've beheld the beauty of hope, side by side. Truth be told, it is unlike me to want to reveal in myself so much.
When the Morannon fell beneath the weight of Sauron's defeat, I thought to return with him to Gondor and live out what time remains to me here, in a sort of peacefulness that comes along with purpose. To herald the coming of a New Age for the race of Men under Elessar's reign. That did not come to pass, our courses having forked once again, and in that I feel...something.
I care for him. I know of his fate, as every Man shares it, but I am resigned to it because in the end, what choice do I have?
