A hand comes down over the sheet I am working on, startling me. Wordlessly, Condir pulls it towards himself, frowning at what he sees.
After a moment that frown turns into his familiar wry smirk, although he says only, “This is not entirely what I expected.”
I hang my head, acknowledging his mild rebuke. Instead of the description of the processes for supplying Mirobel which he asked for, a pair of dragon eyes stares out from the blank page, and a small sketched map of Mirobel itself.
Condir examines it for a moment more silently, before his smirk becomes teasing, and he remarks “Besides, the scale of this is wrong. You have made the ruins too small, and the approach on the Western side is too large, and therefore not steep enough.”
I cannot prevent the frustrated sigh that escapes from me at his words, and I reach out to take the sheet back from him. But he shakes his head at me reprovingly, tucking it away among his papers. We have had little contact before now – he tells me that he was associated with Tingruviel's house before joining House Vanimar, when I was still a member of that house, but he travelled with them only for a while, when I was in Lorien. Since then he has returned to his scholarship in Elrond's library. His passion is tactics, and the mechanics of warfare, although he frowns and will not say if he has been involved in the wars of the past. One of the librarians sent me to him when he asked for information on the recent expedition to Mirobel, and since then I have been assigned to helping his research efforts. He is charming enough, I suppose, but I find his formal, courtly manners intimidating, and I do not understand his way of speaking to others – he is always polite, always amusing, yet never sincere. I find my eyes drifting to the window as I wait for his comment, and give another small sigh at the sight of the still-early morning light on the other side.
Now he takes a seat at the table beside me, still regarding me with that half mocking, half quizzical look. I force myself to meet his gaze steadily, and he suddenly smiles, leaning forward so that he can speak softly without being overheard.
“Just go, Rainith. For today, at least. No one will come looking for you here – and if you wish, I will say you are elsewhere in the valley and will return soon. Besides, at the moment you are utterly useless to anyone here, and more than a little distracting.” He gives me another slightly mocking smirk as he speaks, but I do not care. The part of me who once lived nameless in a forest has heard the call of spring – and now I will answer. Condir only raises an eyebrow at me, as if wondering what more I am waiting for, before nodding a dismissal and settling down to go through his seemingly endless notes.
I go to the Hall first, but Galdorion is not there, and Fingwen does not know where he is or when he will return. I pause to write a note for him, explaining where I have gone so that he may follow if he returns, and only give it to Fingwen after she promises not to show it to anyone else. Perhaps there is no one who would care, now, but I prize my brief freedom too highly to risk it. Galdorion is not by the river, either, and I can only assume that he is working on his excavation somewhere. I linger for a while on the riverbank, waiting to see if he appears suddenly, but all is quiet, and eventually I make my way to the stables.
A young elf working there grins at my arrival, saying only, “We wondered if you'd come by – she's been raring to go all morning. Something in the air, I suppose.”
My horse whickers in recognition at the sight of me, and as I mount she dances sideways in her eagerness to be moving. I am no less eager – it is barely a moment before we are making our way up the mountain path towards the pass from the valley, and then finally into the wide openness of the moors. We race the spring breeze, my hair whipping back from my face in the speed, the mare's swift hooves making little of the distance.
I go no further than the river – I do not know how far the trust in our newly sworn oaths will extend, and even now I fear the anger of the house I must call my own. But in the afternoon sunlight, this is enough, for now. I turn my horse loose to graze, and sit on a sun-warmed rock, feet dangling just above the surface of the rushing water, so that the spray leaps up against them. The wind brushes through the trees nearby, dislodging showers of blossom which meet the river and are swept away in its current. Face upturned to the sun, I close my eyes, letting the silence and the light fill me. Here there are no pressing voices, no eyes watching me, demanding anything of me. The birds sing and the trees whisper to one another, and all is peaceful. The scent of spring hangs in the air – the smell of hope, and of joy.
As dusk finally begins to fall, I collect my horse and return. I am reluctant to leave the quiet peace of the riverbank, but perhaps not as reluctant as I once would have been. The spring still calls to me, and perhaps always will. I answer when I can, but something else ties me to the place I have finally learnt to call home – something infinitely more precious. My thoughts as I press my horse to greater speed are on firelight reflecting from golden hair, on blue eyes and a smile filled with joy and excitement, made all the sweeter because it is a smile for me alone.
