High atop the hill of King Thranduil, a large sheet of rock protrudes, grey-pebbled face sloped gently towards the west. Few spindly trees and twisted pines grow here and there through it, and with her back against a fair-sized boulder left long ago, Eilialhenel sits with her knees drawn up to her chest and grey cloak wrapped around all, gazing through the rain towards where the sun will set.
Winter's rain falls gently but insistently, unceasingly --- and surely it has done naught but fall for hours! -- with the soft rustling that faint rain is wont to make; and it bathes the landscape of this high place in muted grey, and even the myriad colors of life about the canopy of trees seems now sobered.
But there is a sound that rises softly above the patter of the rain -- bells. Faint chimes, a multitude of tiny bells through distance and weather. But they grow in volume; and soon one might note the rhythmic beat of elven hoof that punctuates this chorus of silvery music.
And soon enough the source can be seen: it is a horse, white -- brilliant white -- and his headstall is of gold, gem-studded and flickering. And atop his back is one of the Firstborn, tall and fair, about whose monolithic form and golden hair there musters the only unfading light.
From the east an appirition comes, dark and fair of face, tall and silent, he is Firstborn as well. A silent witness, he gazes on the maiden elf curiousity painted on his face as to what this woman will do now. The bells dance in the air about him and his dark face turns towards them at last. Quietly he looks upon the fair and gem-studded, lordly figure and his brow furrows slightly. Then the shadowy figure leans back against one amongst the sundry beech trees he emerged within and he waits to see what panoply will play itself before him.
How twisted the pine trees are up here; such gnarled, melancholy affairs! Doubtless their limbs would grow straight if given the chance, but each winter blizzard, each summer thunderstorm, each breath of wind that skims the smooth rock-top thwarts any such intentions, marking indelibly each trunk and limb, twig and leaf. Entwined branches, growing up, then back down to the ground, to the side... the ends all overed in dark glossy green - how sadly they droop! How melancholy they seem when seen next to the few slim aspens whose new furled leaves twist and dance gaily with the slightest touch of rain!
And then there is a sound that this rocky outcrop is unused to... the sound of horsehooves and bells jingling in time. Unusual enough that Eilialhenel lifts her chin and turns her head, the hood slipping back as she does. The light spring rain falls upon her grey locks, leaving dark streaks behind. She lifts one hand in greeting to the rider.
The tall horse stays his rhythmic trot, and whether at some command from his rider or not it is unclear; for nary a sound has yet sprung from the golden-haired's lips. But even as the maiden upon the boulder turns her attention back to the twain, rider rides no more, dismounting now with a maneuver swift and routine; and the report of his fall is but the softest of impacts, and then he stands erect beside his mount.
"Ho there, and well met!" comes his voice, rich as aged wine, deep as a valley pool, and flecked with music both joyful and morose. "Eilialhenel, is it not?"
Yet Glorfindel's eyes rest for but a moment upon the elfmaid; for even their glittering blue is at the last drawn by this wide and wondrous view, and the beginning hue of the setting sun.
Bright eyed glance of starlit blue turns aside with a new light -- intrigue, perhaps, or simply merry regard -- at this new arrival and his call; and Glorfindel replies with an airy chuckle. "Stealthy wood-sentry!" he laughs. "What of your name, friend?"
Directly over head, a cloud of singular proportions, a masterwork of billowing bulges and deep crevices, wrought in dark shades of blue and grey, is crying upon the forest. Its western face, however, is lined with pure white, and just beyond, the sky still is blue and streaked with clouds pulled and stretched until they are but thin, flossy things.
The sun slowly, inexorably is falling towards the horizon, and her glow is warm and orange. Far in the distance, hill after hill covered with trees rolls away, and though doubtless they are as grey-stone streaked green as the hill above Thranduil's halls, after a point they grow hazier, bluer, even to elvish eyes fading into the background of the sky. The clouds nearest the sun are tinged rosy and pink underneath, and lavender above, growing progressively darker as they drift on wind-currents away.
"It is," Eilialhenel replies to the query of the golden-haired lord with a smile of recognition and nod to his steed. "Glorfindel," she states. Her voice is muted now, slipping amongst the raindrops. "The sun sets, but the plants are just awakening."
"I am called Rhundornil, for I am a decendent of those who never left the Eastern lands to venture towards the West," is the quiet reply. The tall shadow does not return the merry rider's plain regard with much more than a cool appraisal. Walking in step with Glorfindel, he turns his eyes on Eilialhenel as they approach her and she speaks.
Coifea wends her way up the hill, boots collecting mud with every step. Unprotected from the rain, and thus a little damp, she scarcely seems to notice the weather at all, lost as she is on a point of cadence, and slight amusement at finding such a gathering out in the rain. "Dear me," is her only statement, mostly to the clouds, "Everyone's come out to get watered today."
Glorfindel steps forward; and the soft wind that blows through the rain sends his cloak drifting back fitfully; and lo! molten gold seems the brooch that stands -- proud and vigilant sentry -- upon his breast, the likeness of a flower in the fullness of its bloom: in its face there is now the light of the setting sun, Arien's final flame ere the dawn come again.
A smile thin yet persistent curls his fair lips even as he walks; and his movements are fluidity without softness, force without violence. To Rhundornil he speaks aside for a moment, though his eyes remain westward-cast: "Then I fear your family will be unknown to me; but well met! I am Glorfindel, as the lady --" at this his gaze darts momentarily to Eilialhenel -- "does declare."
Yet his next words are addressed to the maiden on the boulder; and he laughs in a quiet reply. "Indeed he does, even now; and I am late in my purpose."
Great drifts of ruddy pine needles snake across the perfectly upthrust rock upon which Eilialhenel sits; blown by the wind and left behind just as driftwood and debris left by lapping waves upon a sandy shore. The late afternoon light falls obliquely, and each tiny imperfection in the rock, each little pebble and each discarded twig is made larger by the long shadow cast behind it. Waving outlines of sparse dried grass-stalks left standing after winter's raging are traced in gold, and rivulets of water dripping slowly down the rock towards ends in the earth amongst the thirsty spring plant-roots sparkle and flash with brilliant sparks of white.
Eilialhenel breath falls in a gentle sigh, "Ah! The West!" and again her cloak is pulled in close to shed falling water. She asks, though, directly, of Glorfindel, "What is your purpose?"
Rhundornil bows his head in silent reply, little caring for acknowledge. Aloof in the isolation of his people he seems content to cloak himself in quietude. The wind brushes up the rain's wet hiss and in the misty gloom the jewel about his neck glows with an inner light displaying a silver sigil gleaming in its breast. The woods unfold about him and the two he gathers with about the boulder at the mountain's top and he looks upon its vastness, his eyes ever straying North and to the East. As a newcome voice rings out, the black cloak furls in a languid embrace about his fluid figure and Rhundornil looks upon Coifea with curiousity plain upon his haunting, greyish gaze.
Glorfindel's gaze turns in a languid circle; and he give a soft nod to Coifea, a small smile; and his eyes sparkle with the greater light for this fading of day. Soon, though, does his attention return to the westward angle, the boulder, the maid, and the setting Sun over wide wood and distant river.
"No great purpose," says he gently, "but to look upon my path ere it I reach of more diminutive perspective on the morrow, or the next." And then his eyes rise to the boulder's top; and his gaze swirls with a regard more sober -- if transitory in its gravity -- upon Eilialhenel, and he speaks again. "I leave westward and mayhaps south, and soon. A fair haven, the realm of your king; but the Song waits not without for those within, and I worry."
Coifea squelches through the mud, towards and under the relatively sparse protection of tree branches - which have the added advantage of a trunk to lean back on, which she does, returning those gazes upon her with reciprocal interest, when her eyes don't flicker to the sunset. Wrapping her arms about herself in poor compensation for a cloak, she lets her attention wander.
"Westwards and southwards, yet you seem uncertain which. Fair sights to be seen in either direction, though, to be sure. The woods of Lorien to the south, where the mellyrn grow tall and golden, or so I have heard, and to the west - well, to the west lies the sea, and what lies beyond," Eilialhenel states, making no great revalations in her observations. Even lower still now the sun sinks, hovering just above the horizon framed by two trees that grow as is placed there expressly for that purpose. The gray rain continues to fall, and softly the grey silvan breaks into melancholy song,
Fall on me, spring showers,
bathe me with your tears!
For with each passing hour,
my sea-longing grows I fear!
Will I leave these emerald leas
for western havens grey?
And travel cross the frothy seas
though love trees still I may?
Rhundornil closes his eyes for a time as the maiden begins to sing. His head lowered for the duration of two stanzas as the melody drifts off into the grey shadows of Spring's burgening night, he lifts it only after the last notes have tripped their way down the verdant slopes of Amon Thranduil and dispersed amongst the trees that grace His knees. Then, as if wakened from the words just spoken, the elf looks up with eyes that gleam with vernal light. "Noldor Lord," the dark elf starts off quietly, "Have you heard the birds sing rumors of the unquiet matters in the southern wood? They are not happy... But they never seem to sing a single song, all myriad and shiftful is the word they twitter. I have come here to find some reason to the riddle... Yet, I deem that you may be the only one to have heard such answers that I seek." There is some unsaid comment in his voice, echoed in his eyes, a stillness that echoes deeply in the sombre timbre of Rhundornil's voice.
"Ah, Lothlorien!" laughs Glorfindel with a bright gleam to his eye; yet there is a wistfulness to his words, a sadness. "But I think not thither will I roam -- nay! Another fair haven, sanctuary of rest; but thither I cannot go." To the westering glare of the setting Sun does his gaze turn, momentarily, and thence it rises, as Eilialhenel begins to sing. Soft and low comes his reply, like the gentle ululations of a solitary woodwind.
High of mast and white of sail
Swift of passage on eastward journey
'Neath starlit sky waves strong and hale
Swanship fair passes over the sea
But whither goest this fair craft?
'Gainst all thought, it passes alone
Eastward bound with wind-caught mast
But will it again carry me home?
And the elflord's voice trails into but a whisper; and his eyes, flecked gold, deep and dark, brighten, and fix upon Eilialhenel. "Trees there are to love, even in the West, child." And he smiles softly.
But to Rhundornil does the Golden-haired turn his gaze a moment later; and his eyes are yet watery soft; but a light and a strength returns to his glance as he speaks now of voice low and grave. "Birds larger than you might guess have told me of such; and so have others, travellers of noble heart but open mouth. Indeed, something is unquiet; and so I depart." A soft smile -- a reassurance, perhaps -- does he give; and his gaze splits its attention twixt the tall and shadowy elf, and the singing maid.
Somewhere deep and safe in a crevice down below, a lone cricket tests its voice; a high-pitched, stridulant chirping that seems to creak with each inhalation and exhalation the tiny insect makes. Half of a smile creeps onto the corner of Eilialhenel's mouth, but no longer are her features traced with the trembling gold of Arien's firey gaze. The faintest hint of a shrug moves her shoulders as she continues singing. Not remarkable amongst her kindred, her voice, but fair all the same.
When crickets chirp in freshning nights,
and nightengale calls, voice touched with grief
When the moon shows his face silvery bright
and starbeams soft light each new leaf.
When thawing cold swells the streams
who course through fields now lush and fair -
When tadpoles hatch and leaving dreams,
slumbering turtles wake with warming air.
Where birds swoop by with feathery whir
and songs follow where they've flown.
In down-lined beds their nestlings stir
From the west I'll not see them grown!
The willowy maiden falls silent as the sun finally slips away, leaving only a glow of salmon-pink-orange in her wake. "Undoubtedly trees far lovelier than the beeches and the oaks and the firs and the willows of this Mirkwood, but new, and unfamiliar. I am yet loath to leave my home," she shrugs. Her voice grows harder as she now speaks: "Mithrandir had left a message here that we ought find him if certain news reached us... and it seems now it has."
Face as placid as the icy pools that have not yet been touched by Spring's warming touch, Rhundornil merely looks at Eilialhenel as she speaks of Mithrandir. His eyes then turn towards Glorfindel, the echoes of the maiden's song still flittering in the air between the three of them. Sternly, his face reflects the hard thoughts that lie beneath the stoic mask and he wraps himself up in contemplation. He emerges suddenly, like a black bird set to wing, his eyes bright and looking full on Glorfindel, "So, whither will you ride? To the will of Mithrandir?" His last words spoken, he looks on Eilialhenel as if to prompt her to fill in the blanks as to what that will might be.
Glorfindel speaks again; and his voice is possessed of a clarity for all its gentle tone. "Different indeed; but ne'er again will there be trees in the West that set those of your home to shame. Nay -- but they are fair there, as they are fair here; they are fair like the glittering gold lit by star, as those here are fair like the supple shine of silver Sun-lit." He laughs then, suddenly, and adds, looking now to Rhundornil: "But Mithrandir! Indeed, it is him I most would see, if I could. Perhaps I shall find him upon the road."
As springtime's light and warmth doth come,
lighting crevasse, canyon; quelling foul drum,
opening tall way through westerly pass
The time of leaving calls: Come!
When west wind blows displacing north
and airy light sends home cold snow
then errands press with urgent call
And lonely traveller must ride alone.
To Imladris! Rivendell and the roads about! 'Tis blossoming spring within but winter without!
Song fades from the Noldo's lips, and he turns about with but a simple bow, leaping upon the back of his tall steed, who whinnies proudly, tossing his head with an eager snort. "Farewell, friends! May the days find me soon back amongst these peaceful lands and fair-lipped folk; I would it were so!" And then proud elven steed wheels about, and makes its way down rocky hillside with startling speed born of surefooted grace.
