I showed her the claw of her enemy before I threw it on the fire, hoping it would give some solace. It was the claw that slew her firstborn, tore him apart as I have seen so often in my long life. The stench was fierce and would help to cement in her mind that her enemy was dead, that she could live, her son’s death revenged. It was important to me that she lived; what point saving an empty land? Her younger children hung to her skirts, ill-fed, unwashed and for a moment I shared her tears for her past and fears for her future. At the side of their humble farm-house stood a table arrayed with his armoury that he had never had the chance to don, to flash brilliant in the sun. I hated this part, the payment, like I was some mercenary, some brigand and I hesitated, not wanting to take anything from this family that had lost so much. I shook my head, a sad refusal, and looked carefully at the sun-baked woman. Her face carried grief, I had never seen her otherwise, but it also carried fear that I would refuse a reward, that I would deny her the chance to contribute to the death of beast that was now ashes. It was almost always like this and so I reached out and took the smaller of two swords from the table. Her shoulders sagged with relief as she took on the knowledge that this beast had died no random callous death, no cavalier wanderer had slain it for sport. It had died because she had paid for it to be so, it had slain her family and now she had slain it; she conveyed it to me with a quickly controlled sob. I saw now that here life had a chance, her children had a chance; troubled lands and troubled times, I was glad I had come here.

When I asked if they needed anything else, she said ‘no’. No was the answer the answer I had been hearing more than expected of late when offering help. Afore me had come the Brethil Company and they had worked mightily to set things to right. It was not the only place I had heard of them. Others too I had heard of, but many who helped treated the land as their playground and oft times would promise to aid, then not return, seeking greater reward elsewhere. Others would help but then strip a person bare of their belongings, always taking the biggest reward, if not all, walking away talking of their riches. Not the Brethil I had heard, they treated those they helped with dignity, as equals. It was what I aspired to, to have the vision to see all the Free Peoples as one. No question of ancient quarrels, no blaming an entire race for the flaws of a single person. It had been a hard and especially long lesson to learn and the scars of my failures lash my mind in the quiet of some nights.

The ‘Brethil Company’ I pondered, perhaps they were all that others said. I would seek them out, not to learn from them their ways, but to walk aside them with common cause. In a tavern in Bree I heard of their leader Rillas, an elf from Mirkwood. In the Shire I heard she had just been through, heading out to Esteldin. In Estledin, that fallen outpost, I found her in the crafting hall and introduced myself. I spoke of myself, from whence I came, of what I wished for the world and in return she asked some hard questions, the questions that a leader would ask. She was assured in her nature, yet neither arrogant nor unfriendly. As we spoke it became clear that I had been working alone where I needn’t have, that hers was a company of like minded folks who could stand aside their egos and remain true to their mission. It became clear I had found a home.

A kaleidoscopic zoo of silhouette animals raced across the forest floor, the result of a setting sun casting its dappled light through the forest eaves. Linduin let his imagination wander with the fantastic shadows. A hart reared up, crying to its mate, and then fled ahead of a chasing boar. A deep glen filled with peacefully lumbering bears shattered by harrying wolves. An intricate spider’s web covered with dark bloated shapes growing ever larger. Linduin sighed at the vision; of late it seemed that even the simplest of sunsets couldn’t provide solace. The quiet of the west lay ahead for him, but for now there were dark times and Linduin felt a debt to the free peoples that were fated to stay behind. The forest could provide shelter from the elements and evil alike, but it could never shelter you from yourself. Linduin shrugged off his introspective mood, shouldered his pack and set out for the first time in nearly two hundred years; his debt was due, and he was ready to pay it.

The dusky reds and pale greens of Lindon leaves in autumn passed by unusually fast as Linduin wandered forest paths. Time in the forest took care of itself, and here Linduin had no care for it. Perhaps a man of Bree might have said he tarried aimlessly but Linduin’s path was anything but aimless. Like so many of his brethren, he had taken to saying farewell to the familiar and beloved places of his life these last few decades; preparing for the inevitable time when he would sail into the west. Lindon had a plethora of glades and valleys, an undulating and everlasting vista of forested hills interspersed with bubbling brooks and dark, wild rivers. He loved it all, the shaded secret places, the warm and drowsy polished flets, the musical caresses of the streams as they tumbled along, seeking out the sea as he one day must also do. Linduin had purpose, but so did Lindon’s forest; it called out to be one with it, to not be a cutter or strider, but to take each season as it came, to find the balance between the danger and the peace and to grow slowly and lay roots deeply. Linduin’s roots were deep, but it was his autumn as well, a time of change. He walked robed in the green of the forest but over the weeks he walked out from the forest, and once again, perhaps for the last time, he left his homeland of Lindon.

In the hot afternoon of the world I was a farmer. Darkness had been banished from our minds by the daring light of a time of peace and we rendered care to the earth and it gave up it’s bounty in return. With a hoe in my hands I wandered slowly through my fields…

I remember walking lightly through the fields as I sang a gentle song of hope; my hand whispering across the top of golden stalks. I wondered of the destiny of my wheat. Some would be milled and made into lembas, to travel into battle and great adventures. Some I would keep for seed to plant next seasons crop, a circle of life that could be traced back to distant ancestors. Was there a first seed, brought into being at the first age? A plant that saw the light of the sun first travel across the sky, that the Valar themselves walked aside? The wheat of Lindon didn’t grow in other lands and seldom did travellers come to our fallen land. All plants I supposed, have come from other plants and each species has honoured and long forgotten relatives who were there at the dawn of time.