A Day in the Life of Firnelin, the Elven Brother

By Pippin

It's not that I don't enjoy their company. On the contrary, their comradeship when we are in separate conversations is something I value a great deal. It is when they, as a whole inn of many people, are in one large combined group that they are so loud, and I find that I can't function in such a large spectrum of persons at a time. I need space, the clarity that comes with pauses in conversations instead of the dull roar that comes when one tries to interact in the common room, for example. Indeed, I have treasured the haven for us that we have built further away, our Erynlond. Here, there is time for peace and quiet away from the constant hustling that goes on, all of them at the same time. Here, amidst the trees, where the woods sway and breathe with a life of their own, I sink into a more comfortable state.

As I leave the dreams of night, I let my consciousness adjust itself to the waking world where the sun gleams through the tall arches windows, winding her way in to slice through the shadows. It is the season of Norui now, and the warm air tingles in the early morning hours, telling of even more hot weather later on. I'm sure the small hobbits back at the inn's kitchen are already planning and preparing their summertime desserts – the strawberries and cream, sweet cakes with other fruits piled on top and beside, apple pie and the like. All of these are good, but I am hoping they will need other foods – specifically, meats – in the pantry as well.

This is my love now. I live for the hunt, and even as I rise, I think of it, smelling the air and sensing that the weather and wind are right. The sudden storms of the earlier seasons have passed and the humidity does not tell of lightning anymore, lightning that no one would want to be caught out in while hunting in deep forests.

Deep forests, ah, even the thought causes me to smile as I walk towards the inn. As I near it, I am greeted with the homey clattering of dishes clinking together and the cheerful chatter of the hobbit mistresses as they prepare this morning's first breakfast. Camellia perches on a tall stool to peel apples in one corner of the kitchen while Meri stands near to the opposite end of the room. As she's closer, I go to her.

"Mae govannen, Meri," I say, and she turns with her cheeks dimpling as she smiles up at me.

"Firnelin! What brings you here so early?" she asks, though from the twinkle in her blue-green eyes I can tell she knows the answer.

"Does the pantry need re-stocking, by any chance?" I ask, leaning slightly towards it to see that indeed it looks like it might benefit from more meat hanging by the back wall.

"And if I said it didn't, you'd surely go out and return with a buck ready to be skinned anyway!" the hobbit lass teases. I laugh, I know she is right.

After several more words, I leave, raising my eyes to the sky and noticing the minute changes in the wind and listening as I race back towards Erynlond to where my bow, full quiver, vambraces and knife lay ever at the ready. This is The Troll and we've all learned what to expect, but they also wait for the call that always hangs in the air to beckon me to the hunt. That whisper which draws me out to race through uninhabited forests and through cool streams surrounded by dark ferns and over the rocky crevices that slowly begin to show life in what once was only dead land killed by the Dark Lord.

As I strap on one vambrace over and above my wrist, the thought of the Dark Lord is a darker shadow in my mind. He killed – and tried to kill, subdue, torment, enthrall – more than just the land. Aye, even one of the brothers of my heart, Carcharien. Even now the effects of what happened linger on. Perhaps in the rest of us just as much as in him, though we could not let him see this. He has suffered enough already with what knowledge he has, there is no need to say more. What good would it do? It would only cause him more grief to know the ache we still all share, and I cannot let myself say that he deserves it.

The sharp memory of loss is quick, a flash of lightning pain that both has and has not dulled over the many years that have passed. As I slip my bow over my shoulder to my back, I let my feet carry me out behind the sloping archways of Erynlond, down several small hills where I feel myself pick up speed. My feet know the familiar paths and jutting rocks enough so that I don't have to think about it, which is both a blessing and a curse. If my mind does not think of where my feet fall, then it lingers on the past, on both events and people. The unattainable always seems to be what my mind loves to try and grasp at – such a foolish thing, but nothing I can help.

To say that it should be enough that I will see them in Valinor someday is not enough – this much I can admit to myself when I am not speaking to one such as Anbarad. He knows this in his heart as well, I believe, but saying it out-loud, well, what more could one say after that? Nothing at all, and so we leave it as it is, with the hope that there will be a reunion with those who are lost to us – but the waiting…how long must we linger here in a land where many have already gone into the west?

This inn is a comfort in that respect. It is a way to pass the time, I suppose. I confess that the thought of living in the same inn as orcs first disgusted me. I wasn't sure whether to feel ashamed that we were allowing ourselves to stoop to their level after all they had done, or whether we should simply forget past grievances. To me, considering such acts as mere grievances is more than difficult. Perhaps it has been through watching the others interact with them that has helped us to cope – though now I no longer consider it coping, instead a part of living. The Eldar, Celebsul, has made it easiest for us to adjust our normal perceptions. Though I do not know many of his tales, I suspect that his life has hardly been without grief of its own – all who still live after the recent wars of the last 1000 years have endured scarring trials. His acceptance of these orcs as his friends has made it easier, at least.

I continue to run, not even hunting yet, instead letting my feet take their course while I think. I always run before I begin the real hunt, and why not? I have as much time as I could ever desire…

But it is not even the orcs, I decide, that trouble me from day to day. Instead it is the deep inner knowledge that this hunting is what I hold dear now. It is almost the only thing, save my brothers and this inn. This is what troubles me. I know this inn will turn to dust, and unless we are killed before that happens, we will still be here after the mortals – our cheerful hobbit lasses, our Warg, rangers, even the orcs – are buried. It is a harsh way of looking at it, but it is the truth and the truth, I have discovered, is not always kind. We will still be here after they have all gone, with yet more losses to grieve over, and I wonder sometimes if it is really worth it. To lose still more and to live every day knowing that their lives are short, so very short. Wouldn't it be better to live outside of them, to instead hunt all day, every day? There would be no more inevitable mourning, only the thrill of the hunt, the endless rush of wind in my hair as I race through woods until I slow, instead to creep unnoticed, invisible.

I pause my thinking as I stop in a shrouded grove of bent trees, my senses pricking to the minute change in the wind, the sound of wings. Small wings, not as fast as a bee's, not as large as a thrush's. Very small, fast but not beating furiously. I glance about, immediately noticing the bright yellow and orange spotted butterfly that flutters on the leaf of a branch, barely bending it downwards because of its feather-light weight. So small and fragile. I make no sound as I move closer to it, keeping my gaze firmly fixed on its small softly-fuzzy antenna that twitch back and forth. I lean closer, trying not to let my breath scare it – an easy task for me after many years of practice – and watch as it sits and stares back at me, obsidian-black eyes the size of the smallest bead possible meeting mine. After several minutes, it flies on and I stand up, watching it disappear eventually through the thicker branches above.

There for an instant, gone just as quickly, I muse. But nevertheless, something to be enjoyed in the moment. Perhaps this is how The Troll is; something to be enjoyed in the moment.

With that thought in mind, I let my thoughts move on to other things. Standing still for a moment, I allow my eyes to wander over the trees. The sun is still in the beginning of her daylight journey, telling me that I have not been gone for that long. My feet make the decision for me that hunting may wait a while longer – running for now is a cleansing ordeal, something that cannot occur back at The Troll where too many people are around to let a mind find peace to think. I hold the inn dear, but the space to run freely and think that I find here is better sometimes, better than even the friends and brothers I know I could talk to back there. Talking is behind me for this. There are some things better left un-discussed.

Images in my mind flash back as if being relived: smoke, fire, the crumpled empty shells that were once those I loved, those we all loved, shock, dead silence…after so many years, it is still too vivid to live with peacefully. I am not angry, but this is a lie even to myself. How could I not be angry at losing those who I held dear? My grieving is over, but the memories linger and I can only wish sometimes that things had been different. A petty wish, a futile one, but a wish that I suspect everyone wishes at some point in their life, no matter who they are.

I slow down, coming to a walk and crouch to let my fingers trace the small hoof-print of a deer.

The hunt has begun, and with that beginning comes the end of introspection. What good does it do? I chide myself. There is a rush in my brain, a compelling force that overrides everything else, churning with my awakened love of the hunt. I am propelled into it, I dive into it as if it was some deep cool cleansing pool so icy that it numbs even the most painful of wounds.

This is what I live for now, the feeling of nothing as I glide silently through the underbrush to follow the tracks, my mind bent on only the hunt. Nothing else exists for the moment.

By the time the sky has darkened and the first stars begin to pierce through the thick tree-tops, I have found my quarry and now carry him draped over my shoulders. There is naught else to do but return to the inn, a prospect that both triggers a longing to be hunting once again, and a simultaneous warm glow at the thought of the hobbits' delight at the addition of more venison for the pantry soon. Perhaps they will give me some of their toffeed nuts as a "reward"; I chuckle despite myself. As if I needed a reward, some sort of incentive, to hunt!

Eventually the glowing lights from The Troll appear away in the distance before me. High above, the moon casts silver threads of shimmering light down to the ground, throwing soft shadows under my feet. Depositing my burden outside behind the kitchen for the time being, I turn to find Anbarad standing beside the pump where I go to wash my hands. He listens to the speech of young leaves that sway to the distant music of stars, the fall of his hair full of the night's darkness and his eyes brimming with Earendil's light. The silence of his exultation strikes my heart a wound more deadly than the blow my own hand delivered this night. I cannot look upon his veiled beauty and I drop to my knees, wanting only the splash of water from the pump and its chill flow over the earth that draws out the musk of deep forests untouched by sentient thought.

After letting the biting cold water spill through my fingers to the ground, I look up at him and rise.

"Did you enjoy the hunt, gwador nin?" he asks, a more serious note in his voice than the one I hear more often when we are in larger groups, and certainly more serious that his facetious air than comes to him when sparring. The voice I know better.

"As always, brother," I reply, catching his eye for a moment, a quick locked understanding behind the draw of roughness of the forest's skin beneath our palms, the whisper of trees above our heads, the startled flight of the doe and the rush of our breath as we follow.

"Care to share a drink with me?" he asks with a tilt of his head in the direction of the common room and the slightest hint of amusement in the corner of his eyes.

Behind the window-panes, I can catch a glimpse of Dimereg resting his head on Meri's lap, amber and fire playing along the strands of his hair as the somber elf tilts his head to wink at the halfling lass, who laughs at him in return. Esgallyg sits across from Belegalda, eyes half lidded in concentration. Few others but I, his elder brother, would know that the quiet healer's patience is being sorely tested with what looks to be another recitation of our friend's epic poems.

"As always, yes," I say through silent laughter, following him into the light that pours out through the open doorway of home. A strange home it is, one that I never would have expected to call such, but home nonetheless. And while I still yearn for the hunt, for the home I once loved, I can wait a while longer until that time comes again.

Warg nudges my hand with her cold wet nose, snuffling at the iron smell of water and the hunt, and I stare down at her as I wait for whatever she means to say.

"So you're back, eh? Didn't kill all the deer, I hope. Gotta save some for later, some for me too."

"No," I reply with a smile and run fingertips through the rough hair of that shaggy head. Indulgent, she peers up at me, all panting tongue and wolfish smile, and allows me to scratch behind her ear.

"There are plenty for later, rest assured. Enough for a lifetime of hunting."

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