Forochel

Every year of my youth I would help with the harvest. Though the work was hard, the break from our routine came like a holiday to my sister and me. Our hands and arms pungent with the scent of the plucked oranges, a mid day meal in the pools of cool shade that were cast by the dusty pines. Olives from our own estate, fresh bread, wine from our own vines. My grandfather's wealth tangible, edible.

How did I, oathbound, come to this? His mouth searches out mine under the grass-green sky. The pink and green ribbons of light arc above our heads; silent, impassive beauty. The ice in the ink black water flushes pale mint and rose. It seems to me that a different dawn rises over a grassy land far across the bay.

Awakening in the Whiteness of Forochel

Do not die…

Not here, not now…

I walk beside him through the snow by day and I lie alongside him by night. We are seperate, yet in this extremity we become one thing. One hand cares for the other, as the old saying goes.

Another day's toil is done, watching my back, and now he is sleeping. The sound of Amlarad's deep breathing is as familiar to me as my own. In this small hide-covered shelter we are as close as twins in the womb. We are entwined by air. His outbreath becomes my inbreath. We pass the shuttle of breathing between each other, weaving an intangible cloth of ourselves.

*The letter is in fine dwarven runes, written with a steady and elegant, yet somewhat unpractised hand.*
To Dwalin, lord of Thorin's Halls.

Status:

The settlement of Zigilgund is functioning well, and all crucial supplies are in stock or available through trade or hunt. The dwarves are in good health and better spirit, and are coping well with the cold.

The new mine has yet to strike the motherlode, but current excavations are showing signs of precious metals, and some refinement has been commenced.