Ithilien

How peaceful this place is. I come out here most evenings to look at my country. The river moves in lazy curves through the plain under the setting sun. Beyond it the mountains carve their crisp outlines into the evening sky. Our city is a white speck in the distance. Behind me the rising slopes are crowded with pine, fir and larch. The only sound is the trickling of water. Stretching out in front of me is my new homeland. It is a place of rough pastures and groves of olive trees for the most part, dotted with groups of small wooden houses. Timber is abundant here and the men set to work with their axes almost as soon as we arrived. My cabin is a poor affair compared to my little house in the fifth circle, but I shall make it homely by and by.

It is the same mossy bolder I sit on each time I come here. Here on the edge between the tame and the wild. It used to be the edge between the light and the shadow. Long had that shadow darkened not just our skies, but our hearts. The pride of our people dwindled, as our world shrank to the confines of our city walls. With the shadow gone, all places are ours again. This land will thrive as it did of old.

Even I may thrive again. Long before this war began, my life had gone stale. The world can seem so dead and dreary in a city of stone, when you have no kin. Here the air is filled with the scents and sounds of life. I close my eyes and inhale the sweet smell of thyme and sage, listen to the birdsong. Often I walk with bare feet so I can feel the living land under my soles.

Not many womenfolk came out here with Lord Faramir’s people in the beginning. But very soon the White Lady of Rohan will arrive to marry our Lord Faramir, and then cheer and joy will ring through the hills and woods. Do not blame me for loving these two better than I love our king and his elven queen. I tended to them both for a while, when they were in the Houses of Healing. A lingering tenderness stays with me always for those I have cared for.

So many broken bodies. The Perian recovered swiftly, after the new king had seen to him. But that young lad, one of the riders, how he was crying, when they brought him in. And lucky for him it was, that they brought him quickly; he would have died the way he was bleeding. Lovely lad he was, shame about his leg, poor lamb. He almost cried again, when we parted and he said he had nothing to give me in the way of thanks. All he wanted was to get back home to his mother. And he did. How surprised I was to receive a gift that was brought all the way from Rohan, a headscarf that keeps me cosy on these nippy evenings. Little white flowers his mother has embroidered on the cloth. He will never ride again, but his heart might heal.

There has been neither sickness nor injury in the months since we have come here. My days are busy with building, planting, gathering herbs. The younger women come to me for advice. What wisdom I have, I offer to them. We work together day after day, chatting and laughing. No fields have been tilled yet, but gardens have been made and are green now with the young growth. The olive trees are laden. There will be a harvest in Ithilien this summer.

The world will heal.