Monday

Thanks to Mairon's parting words, I expected to see him again, though I will admit I didn't expect it to be when I was up to my knees in a river.

My apartment complex was doing a little get together slash I'm not sure what, but they had rented a small park next to the nearby river. My roommate and I were both rather excited for it, me because there was going to be a fire and I would possibly get to go wading in the river, and her because there were going to be single guys there.

Remember when I said that one of the reasons the Plushies had to leave before she got back was so she wouldn't flirt with them?

Anyway, the fire turned out to be charcoal briquettes with a few pine logs scattered on top: hardly my idea of a proper fire. So when I saw a few girls slipping down the bank of the river, I leapt at my chance and followed.

I had spent several summers as a child playing with a friend who had an open canal running through her property, and we had always played it in, so I had a good amount of experience with streams. It turned out that thanks to the extremely dry weather we'd had, the river was running only as high as my knees. Normally, it would be at least up to my waist, and above my head in spring runoff season.

So me and the two other girls left shoes and phones on the bank, rolled up our jeans, found some good sticks to help keep our balance on the rocks slick with algae, and headed out into the freezing cold water, having way too much fun. The stress of the past week and a half was completely gone, as I had to focus on keeping my feet on the slippery rocks as well as on my companions.

"Well, I do admit, this is not where I expected to find you," a musical voice hailed me. I turned to find Mairon on the bank with an eyebrow raised. I laughed.

"Come on in!" I invited. "We're heading to that little bank up there." I pointed with the six and a half foot stick I held. Mairon's other eyebrow raised at that, but he shucked his shoes, and without bothering to roll up his pants, waded in.

"Are you not cold?" he demanded as he did so. "This water is freezing." I shrugged.

"My feet and legs have gone numb," I said cheerfully. "I can't feel it at all."

The Maia shot me an incredulous look at that statement. I couldn't blame him. This was a side to my personality he had never seen.

"I feel like we're on a quest," laughed my short-haired companion. "Traipsing across the land, fording rivers…"

"We wouldn't be wading lengthwise if we were!" I retorted with a grin.

"Alright, no we wouldn't," she agreed. "But I still feel we're on a quest. You could be an Elf." I had to laugh at that. It was decided that our red-haired companion was a Hobbit, and my short-haired companion was a human. But when they tried to make Mairon an Elf too, I couldn't resist.

"Nah, he's a Wizard," I said, winking at the Maia, who snorted. "Inside joke," I explained to my new-found friends, whom I was wondering why I hadn't met before this.

"Alright then," my short-haired companion said. "We have a Wizard, an Elf, a Hobbit, and a Human. We're doing well!"

"Just keep an eye out for any Rings," I said dryly.

"Oh my gosh, if Gollum grabbed my ankle, I swear I would scream," my red-haired companion immediately said, again leaving me wondering why I had not met these two before now. It was such a pity I was moving in two weeks.

We continued to make our slow way up the river, heading for the small gravel bank we had decided to make for. I was in the lead, Mairon somewhat to the side, with my short-haired companion next, followed by my red-haired friend. As such, I was the first to spot it: a small, dead, duckling lying washed up on the bank.

"Ah, there's a dead duckling," I called.

"Ew!" my red-haired companion immediately responded, turning around and heading back downstream. But Mairon and my short-haired friend followed me up onto the bank to get a closer look.

"It can't have been dead long," I said. "There's no sign of decomposition. We should build it a cairn." My short-haired friend agreed, and we made short work of taking the large stones that littered the bank and building a small cairn for the poor dead duckling. When we had finished, we turned around and headed back downstream, following our red-haired friend.

"What?" I asked Mairon quietly, as he was looking at me with an odd expression on his face.

"Why did you do that?" he asked me. I shrugged.

"I don't know," I responded. "It just seemed wrong to leave it there unburied. Besides, it didn't take that long to do."

"I suppose not," he replied.

By the time we had gotten back to where we had left our shoes and our phones, it was getting dark. We all climbed out of the river; I kept my stick, though the other two girls left theirs, and Mairon hadn't had one to begin with. My short-haired companion had to go, and we bid her farewell, as we wandered over to the fire. We were getting a bit cold, as we were wet. I used the wet end of my stick to rake the poorly constructed fire together, and raided a nearby bin full of pine logs to build it up to a respectable size, grumbling about how it had been created.

"You seem to know what you're doing," Mairon commented. I grinned at him.

"I like fire," I admitted. "I'm not the best at starting them, but I've learned how to tend them quite well."

We sat their quietly for a time, enjoying the heat of the flames as people began to roast marshmallows, and I stared into the flames, enthralled as always. Eventually, I roasted a few of the gooey treats myself, burning some as I lacked the patience to let them slowly turn a golden-brown. Mairon had more patience than me, and his turned out beautifully.

People slowly began to leave, but I didn't until the fire had burned down and it was fully dark. My roommate wandered over when they were putting out the fire. She spoke to me a bit, flirted with Mairon, then asked if we wanted to hitch along with the ride she'd gotten. Normally I would have taken it, but tonight I declined.

Mairon and I walked back to my apartment slowly, me still with my stick in hand. It was quite a nice stick, and I figured a little work on it would make it even better.

"Well, this is the end," Mairon said quietly. "I suppose you'll be thankful to get back to your life."

"I don't know," I said honestly. "This week was hard and confusing…but it was also a lot of fun."

"Well, that's good," Mairon said. "I suppose it seems like just a crazy dream."

"Not really," I said with a slow smile, the ending of the Lord of the Rings coming to mind as I glanced up at the star-strewn heavens.

"I feel like I'm falling asleep again."

And I'm done! Namárië to all my readers, and I'll see you in 18 months!