It was not hard to reach Gwingris. The roads are well guarded around Imladris and not once I noticed a silhouette with the well known turquoise and black star cloak of the Warband or the swan wings of the Vanimarian uniform on a rock or riding passed me, a salute and a smile. I rode slow, gathering courage and enjoying freedom and my own.. bravery. I would laugh alone. Much bravery for a elf to ride alone in the guarded surroundings of one of the strongest settlements standing. But is a first step and I allow myself to enjoy it.
Eregion is surprising. The feeling I have in front of its landscapes is overwhelming. Is not a memory.. but is familiar. The red blossoms everywhere and their perfume and the wind. Do I only wish again to find a past, so much as I imagine I found my home, just as I did imagining my life there, on the shores of the lake Evendim, a life that proved to be another’s?
I look at each face hoping for a look of surprise, for a name cried with joy and disbelief. For a curtain of shadow to fall at that name and a past to uncover. For a father, or brother, or someone else who had loved me to recognize me and.. give me my past back. Will it be today and here, will it be tomorrow, will it ever happen?
And then it came the surprise... To find again Anordill waiting for me, when I returned from wandering around Gwingris. With a severe word for my “foolishness” and more decided than ever not to leave me alone. I am overwhelmed and do not dare to refuse again help so fullheartly offered. He will be my shadow if he so wishes. To refuse and send him away it would be ungrateful and insulting.
I tell him of my feeling that Eregion is part of my past, that I have a feeling it is not the first time I walk beneath the red blossom branches and stone embroidery arches. And he tells me of a place in the south where some archives of the past survived and some elves returned to search them. Be it papers or faces perhaps it is there something that I will remember. And we decide to ride south first, instead of east towards Moria and Eregion.
As we ride I remember again my hopes shattered in Tinnudir. The disappointment on the Ranger’s face when discovering I am not the one he waited, the deep overwhelming sadness and anger and frustration in the only words I heard when he stormed out of the room. It is not her.. Is it anywhere anyone that still awaits me like this, with hope or not, with love and a story? Or I am truly alone, meant to build myself a life from nothing.. to fill this empty shell. I have not yet the power to do so, so I will hang on to my hopes as long as I can..
