Ithilien, Part III

Grass is creeping over the burnt scars of the war. The hills of Emyn Arnen are loud with more than birdsong; they ring with voices, human and elvish, with the blows of chisel on stone and axe on wood. Ithilien is a garden again, tended and blooming. Last year's cider pressing was justly famed, and already the Elves are coaxing wine from the long-abandoned vineyards to the south.

Yet sometimes Faramir recalls the taste of wild apples, or the silence that a raven's call fell into like a stone, and remembers the days he was a ranger, not a gardener.

[for fileg, her favourite character]