There was a seed of truth deep inside the boy’s heart. He stared into the campfire hoping the crackling flames would illuminate it, give it a shape for which he could find words. Acrid wood smoke distracted him, and he leaned back, waving it away from his stinging, squinting eyes. He jammed a cut switch into the coals, searching for clues in the jumping embers.
“Just say it, Danny”, his father murmured at him from across the fire. Cutch’s low, soothing timber calmed him, as he had often seen it calm his mother and sister.
“I shouldn’t have said those things, Ada”, Ardanion replied quietly, his voice trembling. He loudly cleared his throat, denying the approaching tears.
Cutch let the fire’s dancing light and warmth fill the silence, like a comforting blanket, before agreeing. “Some things need to be more fully known before being said, that’s true. The Mortal in you is an anxious thing, like mine, sometimes in a rush. That’s when we stumble.”
Danny looked across the fire at his father who stared into the flames, following his own memories. “You never seem to stumble, Ada. How did you tame your Mortal?”
His father looked up, a surprised smile showing. “Oh, you can’t tame him, Danny. You just try to point him towards patience and growing up. There are times when swift action is needed, but not when looking at the long view. Your mother has had millennia to master that.”
“Is that it, Ada? Is she occupied with her long view?”
“Yes, Danny, and can you blame Her? For thousands of years Her mother’s ending has been a haunted mystery to Her. I cannot imagine what that must be like, can you? Is it wrong for us to serve Her in Her need to solve that mystery, in any way She might need?”
Ardanion silently pondered that. “No, Ada, it is not. It’s that sometimes she just….”
“…shines like no Mortal can?”, Cutch offered. “She is the flame that warms Her House, our home. Everyone who has joined Her there is drawn to Her, just as I have been, and just as Her children are. And because She is Immortal, Her light and warmth will be an invitation for time longer than you and I can imagine.”
Both father and son retreated to their own thoughts as they looked into the campfire. “What of my long view Ada?”, Danny finally asked. “When do I attend to that?”
Cutch glanced up at him. “You see your path leading to Annuminas? Serving the new king? Raising the old House?”
Danny nodded, unwaveringly looking into his father’s eye. Cutch knew he could not let his son do that alone, not at first. Ardanion would need his father for a time. “Can it wait until we see your mother through this mystery?”
The young man frowned, sighed, and offed his father a resigned shrug before stretching out before the fire. He wrapped himself in a blanket, laid his head on a folded cloak, and allowed the campfire to warm his back against the deepening night.
Cutch watched his son for a while, then returned his own thoughts to the fire. Danny was growing up and would soon leave to find his own life. Cutch had done the same thing at his age, but as a leaf blowing in the wind, accountable to only himself. Danny, however, was determined to leap into the restoration of a kingdom, facing the expectations and suspicions of the Northern Dunedain’s notables. Cutch could not let him do that alone. He hoped his Wife and daughter would understand his absences could be frequent and long. He would miss them terribly, he knew.
The campfire reminded him of his Wife, and specifically a night not unlike this when they managed to see each other across a long distance through the smoke. He was young, then, and the magic between them was fresh and new. He still felt that magic for Her, and over the years it had only deepened. But there was a sadness, too, one that grew in his heart as he aged. His Wife would be eternally young and vital, whereas his graying hair foretold his advancing years, and the ever more evident truth that She could never grow old with him.
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