Mourning

   Days later, the traveler sat in a field just outside Bree, again. He'd found a patch of wildflowers still clinging to warmth before autumn's first frost obliterates hope, and he crouched centered within them.

   He plucked the blooms one by one, as near to the ground as his fingers could find, so that they retained their long green stems. The stems he tied together, loosely, for he was not a weaver but just a man lost in reverie.

   With each dreaming bond, he saw the same young woman with scarlet hair and wide, curious eyes.

   At day's end, as the sky turned to muted shades of ember, the traveler beside the river's edge sat contemplatively beneath a bowed sapling. Weary, grey-green eyes focused on nothing except those things that were left to memory – so much so, that he took no notice of a doe and her fawn that had come to drink. The wind blew gustily, rustling the heavy hood of his cloak, the faded fabric caressing the sun-darkened cheek of his face.