Thranduil shivered as he stared out the window, curling his knees closer to his stomach as the cold moonlight spilled on the floor when his curtains fluttered. He bunched his hands into fists.

"Thranduil?"

Harune's warmth came up behind him and pulled him away from the edge of the bed. "I know you are worried about Hyrondal," Harune said.

"I hope he is still alive," Thranduil whispered.

Harune passed a hand over his eyes. "Sleep, Thranduil. Your worries help no one."

Thranduil pressed his back against Harune. "Goodnight, ada."

Elsewhere under the full moon, Hyrondal had no one to say goodnight to. Wolves howled at his back. One minute they seemed to breathe down his neck and the next they were far away, noses lifted to the stable window where Jailil slept alone.

Hyrondal whooshed his breath out onto his hands and sat up. He pulled his cloak to him and stood. In the night, the trees were shadows casting patches of darkness across the forest floor. Hyrondal walked straight, knowing he could only go straight until he tripped over a rock and scraped his hands.

Hyrondal drew his feet back and discovered a skull around his ankle. He gripped it and pulled it free only to find his fingers grasping the weeping skeletal face of an elf. He shrieked and flung it away. The skull hit a tree and cracked before bouncing out of sight.

Hyrondal rested his forehead on his knees and drew in deep breaths as the wolves stopped howling. When his heart stopped fluttering, he searched on his hands and knees until he found the rest of the smooth elven bones. The skeleton's clothing has long since joined the earth, but Hyrondal found an old blade. He shivered as he gripped the handle and discovered it was not the elf's blade but the blade that had killed the elf.

As Hyrondal continued to squint at it, he realized it was even less a blade and more of a sharp, long orc claw fastened to a flat piece of wood.

"You did not die well," Hyrondal said. He found the elf's skull and placed it back at the top of the skeleton. He knelt, unable to move as the wolves resumed howling and let two tears slide down his cheeks. "I do not want to die badly."

Going back was impossible, but his late nights spent carving the challenge wand now made his memory clench. Slowly Hyrondal stood and kept walking. He kept the improvised blade tight in his fist, but fear of stumbling over kore then a skull made him find an alcove between two fat tree roots and sleep.

Dawn broke over the rugged land, leaving a crick between Hyrondal's shoulder blades. He rubbed his eyes open and blinked out the grains. His stomach growled, but it seemed impossible for anything to thrive when even the trees waved scraggy leaves.

Wolves. If there were wolves, there must be food, if only small game.

Hyrondal tied up his loose hair into an angry knot and put his first foot forward, walking between sticks as he searched for signs of life with a rock clenched in his right hand. A flicker of movement made his head swivel and he glimpsed the rabbit. The rabbit's ears twitched and stopped twitching as Hyrondal threw his rock into its skull. He pounced upon the dazed animal and twisted its neck.

Hyrondal winced at the snap, thinking that was what orcs did to elves. He crafted a small fire between two rocks and disguised the smoke under a sieve of leaves. Only a thin trickle of grey went up.

Leaving behind bones, Hyrondal wondered if he could find water as he walked on. The ground turned to marsh and the mud slogged up to his ankles as he squished through it, wrinkling his nose at the smell of the broken swamp leaves and the slimy wood, where it sprouted black mushrooms. His sweat attracted flies that died in the perspiration on his forehead as he waved at the cloud gathering around his head. By midday, the blazing sun made his head light and only the painful insect bites nibbling his arms kept him from fainting.

Sloshed with mud and putrid slime, Hyrondal's leg jolted when it touched solid ground. And the ground was hard and dry.

Hyrondal sat down and wiped his arm across his forehead. He gulped for water, but there was none. Hazily, he thought Jailil had said something about swamp mushrooms. Bulbous fungi. Slimy knots of guck that could clear his head.

Despite the spots dancing in front of his eyes, Hyrondal found a handful of the black mushrooms. They oozed and dripped between his fingers as he rubbed them on his arms and neck and face. As he sat, the black puddles of water in the swamp tempted him to drink until his insect bites stopped stinging under the magic of the mushroom gel.

Hyrondal stared into the swamp, frowning as a shadow fell over him and two red eyes popped open. Almost too late, he rolled away and the orc's clumsy blade fell shy of his back.

Hyrondal rolled to his feet and swallowed as he came up only to the orc's stomach. Murky green swamp weed clung to the creature's dark olive skin and long claws stained yellowed and rusty red jutted from its knuckles. With thick limbs and a round face, it snarled at him.

Hyrondal heard sticks breaking; orcs travelled in packs. With only swamp behind him, Hyrondal glanced at the creature blocking his way to freedom.

The orc swung its blade at him; a broken claw laced to a wooden handle. Hyrondal jumped away but slipped on a patch of mud. As the orc's blade sent chunks of earth flying up around him, Hyrondal swung his legs over his head and landed inches from the orc's stomach. He slashed his sword at the same time paint swept through his arm.

Gutted, the orc collapsed and Hyrondal fled past it, holding his injured arm. Sticks and thorns whipped his ankles but fear of the orcs close at his heels kept him moving. He knew by the smell they must almost be upon him, yet he fled until he could no longer find breathe and he skidded to his knees struggling for air.

Hyrondal hunched his shoulders, afraid to look back and see his death looming out of the brush but, when he found the courage to look back, he was alone.

As air flooded his chest and cleared his mind, he realized orc guts clung to him and the smell was his own. Before he could relax, the pain in his upper arm brought tears to his eyes.

Looking at his arm, Hyrondal gulped at the sheer amount of blood coating his arm and his hand clasped to the wound. A single jagged slash and a smaller one below it where the orc's hand had cut him pulsed blood. Without water, he cleaned it as best he could and bound it in the cleanest scrap of his cloak.

That night Hyrondal slept ten feet off the ground, lodged between two branches and a stiff tree trunk.

Hyrondal's journey has begun. I have done my best to share his feelings through my writing.

Thank you kindly for reading; your suggestions and comments are graciously welcomed!

Next Chapter: Hyrondal glimpses some skulls . . .