mildwynn

You never needed any of those words.

Even when you wept, even when shame snowed you under. The days you fell apart, you never needed any of the words, Winnie.

You didn't need me either, darlin'.

When I saw you again, that is the word that arrived. Need. 

But did you know I needed you from the first day? All of your raw need was a cheeky disguise for how much strength you gave me, and our friends, instead. How much did I learn, all begun from you?

Khaki was the colour of Bree-land. Green, the colour for sleep or delusion, and beige yellows, dulled, sedately corrupted passions.

It was the type of place to lull those who stayed too long into a sense of trouble despite their luxury and wellbeing. People invented trouble here, and sometimes willed it into harmful reality. A side-effect of so much peace and, Ryheric figured, boredom.

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.

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.

---White Mountains, Rohan. Many months earlier---

No sooner had Ryheric made a day long journey to return to Winnie's village, than he was approached by Tarsorel and Winnie's father.

Click here to listen.

When Ryheric played Winnie's song, it was to the count of five. Sweet melodies were held aloft as the music urged on, only to stumble and cut itself off. Confusion, quiet overwhelm. The tune would forge ahead to a different section. Or, it would change to chords. Urgent relaxation, breaths between surges of earnest energy. Lovely, unfinished, and sometimes lost.

He saw teal when he looked at her, and this music was for her.