He was somewhere else.
He could feel it. A strangeness had been bestowed upon his psyche – his mind present and ablaze and yet his body felt so far away. An insurmountable distance between the warmth of his current abode and the cold, callous carving beneath the oak tree he had found himself within not too long ago. Darkness surrounded him. A veil of uncertainty; and yet, an ease spread through his chest. Lungs and veins pulsing slowly and steadily to the beat of an omnipotent drumming. He could feel his vision open, his eyelids slow to blink. His every motion slowed, as if he was treading water. Looking downwards towards his body, he saw himself there – bare of clothes and shame. A pale sparkle amidst an endless sea of clouded midnight. His protection, his armour, long since unencumbered and forgotten to the realms of mortal men.
He was dreaming.
He had been in this place before; a youth filled with the delights of liquor and herbs allowing an ecstatic mind to explode into realms a grounded individual may never hope to imagine. Alone, he floated on through the abyss. His fingers dancing across his painted surroundings like the delicate strings of a harp. How he had truly missed this feeling. The complete absence of weight and burdens; the calmness in the eye of an ever swirling story. It had been a significant age since he had felt stillness to his bones quite like this. His mind ever active, refusing to allow him the deepest sleeps he would require to properly heal from the many escapades he would find himself in. A constant fear that one night, one quiet kip, would be his last should he allow his enemies forth upon him unopposed. And yet, away out here, all of those worries would be absent. Even in their briefest presence in his racing thoughts, they troubled him not. Here, he was free to float to his heart’s desire. A glinting fire in a darkened sky. But where was here?
He was nowhere.
And yet, he was everywhere. A dot against a chequered history of violence and debauchery. Flashes of which had begun to pulse around him – shadows and memories brought to the forefront of his mind as each would find their way past his prone body. Past scars. Past masks. Past loves. A beautiful cascade of colour and emotion that would light up the dark clouds around him in an instant, scenes that would cast tears from rock and yet still his chest remained. That ever present calmness not soon leaving him, even in the face of such blinding ecstasy. The history of his life presented proudly to him in a winding tapestry flowing in the non-existent wind, woven with yarns of joy and despair in equal measure. The faces of his friends, his lovers, his wives, his children, all presented perfectly upon the glowing cloth. It was these very features, bringing forth an unavoidable tangle of emotions spilling through him, which would finally cause him to stir from the encompassing calmness of his dreaming state.
He was far from home.
His nostrils would flare. A snore to adorn his displeasure. It had been so long since he had seen his children, his wife. Their return from Gondor holding a distinct anticipation in his mind and his heart. He had travelled ahead of the caravan, as he always did, with the initial intention of providing an advanced reconnaissance for the main party – an aide he tried to offer his weary mind to stave off the crippling boredom a wanderer could suffer from slow, domesticated travel. A consequence of his speed to wander the lands of his adopted home alone, waiting for the rest of his companions to finally arrive. He did not know when they would. Only that they would. He did not know when he would see his son again, or his daughter. His wife, his Raven. His sole purposes to keep going in life - the foundations of a future which he had wrought forth through bloody rains to build a life upon. Pride and love swelling through his accomplishments. Just as quickly as their faces had appeared before him, the embers of a roaring fire would rip through the clouds. An overwhelming blaze of crimson banded across his eyes as he held out a hand to them; desperate to feel their touch once more. His will would not suffice to save them from dissipating from his view.
He was lost.
The tapestry weaved; his most recent events brought forwards to him. An unmistakeable pattering of rain fell from above him, extinguishing the flames and returning him into the darkness from which he had come. Followed soon thereafter by further recollections of times just passed. The ring, the brigands, the hearth. His boots slugging through the damp moss of underbrush he could never hope to locate on a map. The spattering of mud onto his armour and scabbard. The soothing feeling of a leather hilt against his palm. The oak tree loomed ahead of him, towering over him like the peaks of Hithaeglir. His vision focused upon its opening, a buzz collecting in his ears that allowed him to focus on naught else. A trance broken only by a flash of a shadow to his side. Red clouded his vision once more. A certain chill soon followed, whatever heat his dreams had brought him flushed from his body. The hairs on his neck prickled. Anxiety overwhelming him.
He was not alone.
The shadow drew nearer to the opening of the tree. Two boots apparated from the void – he could see himself now, his body twitching ever so slightly in his slumber. A feeling of danger overwhelmed his senses, his arms reaching out towards the darkness. He willed himself to move with all the might of the gods yet he would move no quicker than before. Was this it? His mind alerting him to the presence of a real danger, his subconscious remaining alert even when his mind wandered elsewhere? Or was it all a trick? An illusion played by his deepest insecurities that something was happening half the world away that he was powerless to stop? Had he wandered these dreams for too long that he had alerted the presence of another? Such questions burned a painful lesson into his head and, yet, he knew not. Slowly, but surely, he lurched for his body – he had to return home. To the fox’s lair. To her.
…
“N-Narys?”
