The winter night was drawing late - the Sun had long set beneath the azure horizon, and the Moon had risen high and bright into the dark and cloudless sky - but within the Scholar's Stair Archive in Bree, time beyond its walls went utterly unheeded by the unlikely pair that spoke earnestly together beside the blazing hearth, each completely engrossed with the other's company. Not often had an adan boy from Bree met with an edhel boy from Mithlond, but they found as much in common with each other as their particular races were diverse.
The Bree-boy, at sixteen summers of age, was yet young enough to feel nothing but unprejudiced curiosity towards his new companion; the elf-child, though some three decades his elder, felt wholly likewise. For both were, in the eyes of their respective kin, not full-grown and thus often unworthy of serious consideration; still mere children yet awaiting their stark initiation into adulthood. Thus, though drawing the occasional side-long glance from the resident scholars, they were left completely uninterrupted by those grey-beards; envious though they might be, perhaps, to have been denied such an opportunity in their own distant youth, but grateful indeed to bear witness upon such a meeting of young souls in these latter days of the Third Age.
Wine was forbidden in those archives of lore, and yet there was an air of quiet but inebriated celebration around the fireside, rising and falling with the bright sparks and fervent flames within; an exhilaration that caught the old men up in its youthful intoxication, but which they, for all their ancient wisdom, could not recognise as the unadulterated exuberance of the springtide of life in both elf and man; of joy and hope, and the assured confidence of youth untainted by the bleak despondency of age, nor by the dark Shadow that over-clouded Middle-earth more and more each passing day.
Though for all their innocence in age, the pair spoke long of Arda Marred and the taint of Morgoth upon the essence of the world; and in the blissful optimism of youth they pledged themselves to Arda Healed and to friendship eternal. Now these hot words struck deep into the warm hearts of the listening elder scholars as sure as any blade of cold steel, for they alone recognised the hollowness of such an oath between immortal elf and mortal man.
