searching

It was time to depart the small island remnant of Beleriand.

The Black Steel are in Garth Agarwen, at an area with a large, raised stone dais and surrounded by knee deep, blood red water. They have just fought a strange wight, that echoed their words and wouldn’t seem to go do despite being hit repeatedly. Yet after taking many blows at once, it exploded into many pieces.

Waking up in a unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar guest bedroom, with the smell of an extensive hobbit breakfast being prepared in the background, it took me some moments to realize where I was. Slowly it all dawned to me again: I had met Yola's brother, Peppy, in Bramblebury. It was the best find in my search so far.

Bramblebury, a lovely and friendly neighbourhood, is special in many ways. They even have their own newspaper! Yet, when I first visited, I was not feeling comfortable or at ease at all. My first visit started with another disappointment: Someone else lived in my mother Yola's house. Where was I to look now? But then I met someone who changed everything for me.

The sign on the door, deep down in Michel Delving’s Town-hole read: “Free Peoples Army. Division of Reconnaissance and Intelligence Gathering.” I was put on a chair near this door and was told to wait. I felt uneasy. It was like eyes were watching me. Literally, as I was sure that the eyes of the portrait on the wall blinked at some point. I got up and walked about a bit.

Dreams haunted me that night I slept in the Green Dragon. I saw my mother Yola being captured by awful and ugly warriors of a relentless, cruel enemy. I screamed in horror, but she looked at me and smiled, like she smiled in the picture I had found of her in an old newspaper. I reached out to her, but I could not reach her. She waved at me and then vanished in a puff of smoke.

They will always be Pa and Ma to me, I told them. And I took it upon me to come back home to them as soon as I could. For this place where I grew up, it was still my home and the two kind, sweet, caring hobbits that I grew up with: I’ll always be their child and they’ll always be my special parents, even if they did not conceive me.