Arlane

Two stood together at the north gate of Bree on a cold rainy winter morning.  As she watches the ranger preparing his horse to travel, Emmawynn finds her mind flooded with questions.  This was the path fate had set for her, of this she was certain. Yet so much has changed since she left Rohan, and she wonders if perhaps she should be re-evaluating. Yet the feeling does not last long.  The primary reason for the journey has not changed.

It was comical to some, how Ryheric would make food disappear. Uncouth gluttony - now you see it, now you don't.

Some goodbyes felt like they took ongoing tolls. Long after the person was out of sight. Left behind, or gone away on the horizon. Or simply parted ways from. In bad blood, or in the best of circumstances.

Ryheric knew it was more than just a person, or even two people, or three. It was more than fifty.

It was hundreds. What had happened to the people at the Hamlet was a weight for him to carry. The weight went deeper, and further back. Some memories were not yet safe to revisit.

(Drafts of a letter, unsent, in Lane’s journal. A missing page after this indicates the finalized draft may have been sent.)

Haloisi,

There they were, crushed in together at last.

Close proximity in a stolen moment beside the warm furs of the warg -- still warm from the creature's life being fresh taken.

There was pain. There was adrenaline. Both hearts were racing and the hapless warg's heart was brought to a standstill.

Ryheric crushed himself in, vehemently close to his companion, who was crushed by the weight of the huge warg the size of three horses above them. Blanketing them with the assurance of secure deadweight.

Bree, half a lifetime ago

The day her mother died it was sunny. Only eleven years old, she didn’t stop crying for weeks. If the skies were dry, her tears would replace the mourning of rain.