A log.
Haeneth |A single fire burned at the abandoned millsite, coughing smoke up into the trees. Guarding it sat a woman, hair and features washed pale in the firelight. Where a company of many might speak stories or sing songs to warm their campfire, this one sat alone, her stores already eaten and put away, staring out into the wilderness. It wasn’t like her to wait three evenings at the same camp, or to even risk a fire if she could rather keep warm buried in her cloaks and brush, but she had hoped the fire burning that long would draw survivors out from the woods. After three nights feeding the flames, she realized there would be none.
Her features were pensive but resigned. She wouldn’t dwell long on a reality with which she was familiar. It wasn’t the first un-walled settlement she had stumbled on and buried the dead that some other visitor, days before, had left behind. Her freckles had doubled over the years, but they couldn’t bring back the youth that had been crumpled by age. Nights upon nights over years upon years spent in tears or laughter had carved circles around her eyes. They were still the same green, though, still deep and alert. She watched for whatever was lurking in the trees.
Agamaran watched Haneth from a distance that night, as he had done so the two previous nights. He was waiting--not for whoever she was waiting for, but waiting for when he would decide to reveal himself to her. It had been many years since they last saw one another. To Agamaran, the wear of time was not any more apparent across his face than it was before. He still maintained his weather-worn disposition and his steely-eyed gaze. He decided, however, that three nights waiting may as well have been fifteen years. He moved quietly from among the bushes. He did not step as lightly as he could, but he did not saunter in noisily either. To a trained ear, they would hear the crickets quieting as he made his way toward her.
Haeneth indicated she heard the change with the slightest glance towards the approaching void. The folk of the north who called her Emelin—yellow bird—for her pale hair were not strangers now, this far south from Esteldín. She had never fully abandoned them, even when she had vowed to restore her daughter to the seat of her thanedom. What she learned as she scouted the wilds of Rohan and the mead-halls of its ruling class was valuable to the silent sentries who watched the peace from their ruins and shadows. She wondered why this one did not leave a sign for her, nor why he waited three days if he had been eager for her news.
Agamaran peered through the brush at Haneth. Her eyes were still the same--still strong, still demanding. He would not wait any longer for this. He stepped out plainly from the brush and onto the road, turning sideways to look at her half-way from underneath his hood.
Haeneth widened her eyes to soak up what light fell on him. Her gaze searched him for an insignia—some badge of rank or family crest, any indication who or what he was—when she chanced to glance under his hood. The tautness of focus left her features.
Agamaran turned to her fully, standing tall. He slowly pulled back his hood. His curls were longer than when she last saw him, but beside that, he had remained unchanged by the years. He lowered his gray eyes at her, saying nothing.
Haeneth stared at him, and for a moment her face was filled will all the colors it used to brew—feelings churning like the waves in a sea she had never seen. She stood slowly to her feet as if the movement might scare away his ghost.
Agamaran took one step forward. He was not sure how, as he was not commanding his feet to move, but they did so all the same. He took step after step until he was five paces from her. He could see her freckled face clearly now as the fire flickered across it. His stone-faced expression could not hide the softness of his eyes as he looked at her.
Haeneth |The same impulse forced her to shake her head, slowly, then strongly, even as she crossed the fire and closed the gap. Just before she reached him, she stopped, still, afraid she had conjured him. She lifted her hand, but it hovered before she drew the courage to lay it on his chest.
Agamaran | With one touch, the fifteen years of his rough emotionless wall was brought down yet again by her. His face softened and he looked down at her hand before looking back up to her. His lungs gave away to his feelings as his breath quickened and his heart began to pace. Still, he said nothing.
Haeneth didn’t need him to say anything. She followed her hand with the rest of her and lay against his chest, her arms slipping around the tall pine of a man. She closed her eyes.
Agamaran let himself be embraced by Haneth. He kept his arms at his sides at first, but slowly he brought them up to envelop her. He had missed this. A moment of happiness.
Haeneth held onto that moment for as long as he would let her. She was stronger than she’d been, her muscles packed thick under her leather and maille. Her skin had been roughened by hard winters and wilder woods than the Chet. But she was alive.
Agamaran quietly cleared his throat, trying to slowly pull himself away from her. He did not find the attempt to clear his mind that convincing, so he cleared his throat a second time, this time with more confidence. "Although I never swore an oath," he said to her softly, "I have come to...help."
Haeneth winced as the mention invoked the ghosts of other oaths, long unspoken. She knew what it meant for him to return now, what that must have taken. “Thank you,” she muttered, her voice more steady than he had ever heard it.
Agamaran almost smiled at her. "You have changed," he said with a hint of an approving tone.
Haeneth looked up at him then. “Not wholly for the better,” she confessed, but it didn’t weigh on her as the admission might once have. “Though, I’ve tried. And you?” She reached up, brushed his crown of curls back by his brow. “Have you changed?”
Agamaran looked down at his gloved hands, looking them over. "You cannot teach an old dog new tricks, or so the Hobbits tell me," he said, weighing the words on his mind. He looked up to her. "I was already well into my years when we first met. And now," he looked down at her boots for a moment as he considered his next words. "Now, I am more or less the same man." He sighed slightly. "Such is the fate of all Dunedain, I believe."
Haeneth ‘s eyes followed his ambling gaze. “Good,” she said kindly. “I would not want to think I did not know you anymore.” Her smile was soft and quicker to loosen.
Agamaran nodded slowly. "I..." He train of thought almost left him as he focused on her neck. "I did not want to return until I sought you out first." He cleared his throat again. "I understand some things have...changed in your life."
Haeneth |A wisp of sadness slipped into her smile. “Things were bound to, weren’t they?”
Agamaran nodded wistfully. "I would not have preferred it any other way." He looked down at her neck again. "I am glad you found your happiness."
Haeneth watched him, patient for his gaze to return to hers. “Happiness is not something we find…to keep or to lose. It’s always there, in new memories…and old.”
Agamaran considered her words, nodding to them before looking back up to her. "Wisdom, however, is cultivated. I am hoping that you have done enough harvesting for yourself and for Thorvall." Agamaran was not much for jests, but he felt something stir in him as he stood in her presence.
Haeneth ‘s smile peeled through her freckles. He wasn’t a phantom now. How could she have ever doubted that he was dead, that that was the only thing that could keep them apart, now that he was alive and before her? Looking at him, it was hard to remember a decade and a half had passed. “Not enough. Never enough,” she teased. “Too many hard hits to the helm, for him at least.”
Agamaran chuckled softly. "Well, he was always blessed with a thick skull." His small smile left quickly. "And there are still many years ahead yet."
Haeneth lay her hand on his shoulder. “I know, but enough of your grim warnings. Will you sit with me?”
Agamaran nodded at her invitation. "Of course." He stepped his long legs over the stool before sitting down upon it. "Tell me everything that has happened."
