Leoffrith

We been keeping away from the cities of the Mark considering on what the Thane told me, that my welcome ain't what it were, now I'm no longer a Man of the Mark. Probably it would be fine, on account the lands are not at war, and we're peaceable visitors. The one éored we come upon didn't even stop us. Still, we thunk it were best not to test it. But when we come to Harwick, not stopping didn't seem possible, because we had to inquire after any news since we left.

I've noticed, when on a journey more than a few hours, how the way back goes much quicker, but feels much, much longer.

So it turns out the Sea does look just like a big lake, or leastwise, that's what it were like when we first saw it. That's on account our first glimpse, a couple days out of Mundburg near a city they call Pelargir what's at the mouth of the Great River, is in the narrowest part of the Bay of Belfalas, so you can see the other side easy enough. During the next few days of riding, we followed the shore, and the Bay got wider and wider. Couldn't see the other side fair soon, and it got to looking like a vasty, threateningly wide bit of wet nothing.

Tales I heard of Gondor always made it seem like it'd be city after city with roads and people everywhere, to make the Mark and all other places seem like nowhere by comparison. Maybe that's just on account of Mundburg, because that city, what the locals call Minas Tirith, feels that way. Least the bits we got to see. We're not allowed to climb too much into it. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I feel like I ought to be glowering, grim, maybe angry, or at least upset, so I can't explain the spring in my step and the laugh comes so easy to my lips. Truth is I feel like I been carrying a great heavy stone and I only just realized and set it down. Which is funny, or leastwise in the mood I am now it feels funny, because now I am, in fact, carrying a heavy stone.

Aelfwyn, heavy with her fourth child, met us in the rain just outside the Mead Hall afore we could barely start on the ride to the family's croft, so by time we reached there I knew as they were expecting us. Word had spread through the town.

Adriellyn seems to think she's not speaking Rohirric so well, and she apologized about it after we left our camp in the Westfold, but seems to me she speaks it better than I speak Westron, and it's only been a couple months. Slower, sure, but that's to be expected. I don't doubt that when we get to the croft later this morning to see the family, she's going to be all manner of lost in how many of them is talking and how fast they do it.

There's a place where the land slopes down from the Wold, through a bit of woods, and comes round a steep hillside just afore you come down into the Norcrofts, where all of a moment you see the whole plain as far as the eye can see. There's farms everywhere, as the name would suggest, on account these fields are the best farmland in the whole of the Mark, and the grass here is the most green, more so even than the fields near Beoda's family farm.

The Mark's not my home no more, but I lived here most my life, and I reckon it'll be long years afore it don't make my heart beat all the swifter at the sight of it. Now we're finally here, that keeps going through my thoughts, and it's all manner of confusing and full of guilt. What I found here ain't in the Mark. It's something in my own heart, a lump of selfishness like a stone that weighs me down, one I didn't know were there, and I don't know what to do about it.

After two days in the company of Ingarthael, Mírien, and Istwë, I knew the way to their workshop, so when dawn roused me, I started to make my way on the paths to that tree, only to find Trevadiel awaiting me just outside the pavilion. "Leoffrith, son of Leoffler," she said -- she'd only used my proper name, never calling me Peace-Lover -- "I have received word that you have been most helpful to Ingarthael, and she has bade us to offer you thanks. She writes that, should her research discover anything of interest to you, a letter will be sent to you."