The fellowship and the many other friends of the now missing elf had seen the letter and read it for themselves. They all reacted differently: Arwen and Eowyn cried in despair, Faramir and Eomer had search parties arranged and Gimli had left straight away to go and find him on his own.
Aragorn just sat and stared at the letter. He had read the letter hours ago and yet he was still in shock, instead of trying to get out there and find his friend.
But the words persuaded him to not lose hope: 'What if I existed as someone else', he was depressed... but he hadn't done the worst. He could still be found. He could still be healed.
So he stood up and got to work.
"Arod is still with the other horses so if he's left, he can't have gone too far away and no horses have been reported stolen", Faramir reported.
The King smiled for the first time in a long while, "That means he can't have gone too far in a week and if he did run without resting, he would have stopped at the river for water."
Eomer stepped in, accepting the unspoken challenge, "Me and Faramir will gather some troops and search the lands – if he's out there, we'll beat him to the river."
They left, leaving the King to speak with his wife and friend: they had designed some posters to hang around the city – Legolas was well known in Minas Tirith, nobody would want him to come to harm.
"Excuse me?" Eowyn called as she walked into the blacksmith's workroom. A young man came to see her, "Can I help you?"
The brown haired gentleman was covered in ash. His old, worn out clothes were stained black and ripped in several places... and yet, he still looked beautiful.
"My name is Lucas, are you ok Miss?" his voice sounded sore, dry and tired. Judging by the amount of swords that had already been made and the amount of pieces of armour that needed fixing, he had done a lot – and still had a lot to do.
"Oh, I'm sorry to bother you, you seem really busy so I won't take up too much of your time. Would you mind if I hung up this poster. A friend of ours is missing and we need all of the help we can get to find him."
"Sure, I'll hang it up for you."
There was a lot of rustling about but Lucas eventually came back with a hammer and nail. The rhythmic pounding of the hammer slowed down very quickly, "Lucas, are you ok?"
The next weak strike missed the nail as the young man crumbled to the floor...
Eowyn tapped his face, "Lucas? Lucas talk to me. Come on Lucas, say something. Can you hear me?"her calls were eventually heard and his...blue eyes, opened.
Like a terrified rabbit, he shot back up and stumbled behind the table again, "I'm fine, I'm fine – please just leave me be. I'm just tired – you know, from the war and helping clean up afterwards and setting up shop and stuff..." he sat down, holding his head in his hands.
She came around the table to comfort him, "I've never realised how much everyone was suffering. Maybe if Legolas knew he wasn't alone he wouldn't have left."
Lucas wouldn't look her in the eye, but he took her hands, "Maybe he knows he's not alone. He knows others are suffering and he doesn't want to make their lives any worse."
She cupped his chin in her hands but he closed his eyes – not letting her see those blue eyes again.