Returning Home
"Why did I even bother coming back?" Roseth muttered as she took in the burnt timbers and scattered stones that were all that was left of her home of twenty-five years.
Shivering as the early spring breeze tugged at her skirt hem and loose strands of her greying red hair, she stepped carefully over the broken stile and crossed the trampled ground that was once her kitchen garden. Weeds had already taken over the small section she'd managed to plant before they were forced to evacuate the farmstead.
She rubbed her suddenly stinging eyes, belatedly wrapped her headscarf to cover her mouth and nose, and wondered if it were worth checking on the barn and livestock. "They probably slaughtered them all," she reminded herself as she made her way to the house's empty doorway. A single glance told her there was nothing left here for her.
In the end she looked about the ruined barn and unashamedly wept at what she found. Coming back was a mistake. She should have listened to her sister and brother-in-law and stayed in the City. "Oh, Caenir, this would be so much easier to bear if you were here."
Even the well was befouled, so she decided to drink from the stream that ran through the property before starting on the long walk back to the City and her sole remaining family. The banks were crumbled and noisome, the water muddy when she reached it.
She turned and picked her way upstream along the bank and up into the dell where her sons had played as boys, splashing in the pool behind the small weir she and Caenir had built together shortly after their marriage. She was surprised to find the weir intact, but knelt, catching some of the clear cold water that spilled over the stones in her hand.
As she drank, she heard an urgent bleating behind her. Rising to her feet Roseth followed the noise until in a small thicket on the edge of the dell she found a ewe and its newborn lamb.
Hours later, tired but optimistic for the first time since returning from the mountain refuge and learning of the deaths of her husband and sons, she walked back towards Minas Tirith already making plans for rebuilding and restoring the farm. The first thing she would build would be a sheepfold.