"Please just admit we are lost," Hanna pleaded with Taelen, halting her horse to look around. A light drizzle was turning the dirt around them to mud, and a cold fog started to set just ahead of them.
"If I admit we are lost, then what are we going to do?" Taelen sighed, pulling his horse up beside Hanna's.
The map Taelen had stolen - he liked to say borrowed - from Arien's belongings had a simple trail marked from Lothlorien to their destination in the north. Still, for one reason or another, neither Hanna nor Taelen had been able to figure out where on actual Middle Earth that trail was.
"Should we turn back?" Hanna winced at the thought of the reception they were sure to have in Lothlorien if they returned. Rian and Arien would have every right to be furious.
Taelen groaned and slumped forward in his saddle. "We should never have left without the others."
The two of them sat there a moment, Hanna grimacing and Taelen lying forlornly on his horse's neck. Taelen's wet red hair was sticking to his face, and he lazily twirled several small water droplets around in a circle, managing to look graceful and majestic despite the dreary surroundings. Hanna didn't think it would be quite the same if she started twirling balls of mud around.
"Should we try to find someplace dry to set up camp for the night?" She asked him, doubtful there would be any dry place, but it was worth looking if it meant there was someplace they could sleep without damp clothes or bedding.
"Could you not just make a shelter?" Taelen asked, perking up.
Hanna took a second to realize what he was talking about, but when it hit her, she felt foolish.
"Oh, I had never thought to do so. I suppose this is the first time I have been caught out in the rain."
She thought about it another moment. She'd never been stuck in the rain in Mirkwood, and she and Taelen had not encountered any on their journey to Rivendell. They'd always slept beneath the stars with no need for cover.
Taelen rubbed his hands together gleefully and said, "If you could make a shelter, I could probably pull the water out of the covered ground and some wood so we could make a small fire!"
In agreeance, the two of them dismounted their horses and set to work. Hanna made a standing three-walled structure with a stone roof, moving her hands in the mud to strengthen its base. When she finished, Taelen stood in front of it and raised his hands: the water in the ground pulled away from the dirt in a miraculous fashion. He brought the clean water through the air to where Hanna stood, trying to get the mud off her hands and let the water run over them.
"That was a lot easier than I expected," Hanna said, smiling and grabbing her pack off her horse.
"Perhaps we are not so pitiful at surviving in the wilderness!" Talen laughed.
Hanna looked in her pack with dismay while Taelen started drying off several fallen branches and logs.
"We're almost out of food."
"We are going to die out here."
The tone Taelen used was so utterly matter-of-fact that Hanna immediately started laughing. Tears welled up in her eyes: it had been the first time she laughed since before the battle against Thuringwethil. Taelen had tried many times to have a light-hearted conversation with her after they left Caras Galadhon, but fear and worry coated nearly every thought that spawned in her mind.
"I love your laugh," Taelen said with a grin, stacking the dried wood in the center of their stone shelter, "it makes me think of what I always imagined Valinor would look like in Summer."
Hanna shrugged and gave him an awkward half-smile. His compliments always made her heart beat faster, but she never knew how to react.
"Well, yours always makes me think of...uh, grass?" She wished the food had run out several days earlier and she had died before ever having the chance to speak that sentence.
Taelen threw his head back and laughed, "I have achieved the highest compliment I can from you - I have been equated to grass!"
"You know I am not good with words!" Hanna threw a handful of dirt at his boots. "How are we going to light the fire?"
Taelen shrugged, "I gave my matches to Rian. Do you have any in your pack?"
"No, we used mine up on the journey to Rivendell, I told you that."
Taelen looked at her with empty eyes.
"We really are going to die out here."
"I am surprised you are not already dead."
Rian suddenly appeared around the corner of their shelter, her pack casually hanging off one shoulder, and her horse following dutifully behind.
"Rian!" Hanna and Taelen cried in unison. They both rushed to her, knocking her pack to the ground as they flung their arms around her in a simultaneous hug.
"Ugh, have you gone soft?" Rian asked, but she didn't push them away immediately.
"We should never have left you behind," Taelen said, pretending to sob.
Rian let out a laugh, "Damn right, you should not have. Neither of you were there to help me convince Arien she needed to come."
Hanna broke away from the hug, "Arien did not come with you?"
"No," Rian shook her head, "she started going off about a Silmaril being what healed her chest and how she could not risk losing another one. It felt like I was no longer talking to our pragmatic Arien."
The three of them moved to the stone shelter and sat down around the un-lit pile of wood. Taelen looked at Hanna in a way that made her feel guilty, and she blurted out,
"We should go back and get her!"
Rian raised an eyebrow and leaned back against one of the stone walls. "Were you not the one who said the two of you should leave without her - and myself?"
"I, well, yes. But -"
"Yet, you now seem overjoyed to see me - and you want us to go back and convince Arien to leave Lothlorien?"
Hanna drew her knees to her chest and laid her head against it. She assumed Rian had overheard her and Taelen talking in the stables before they left, and Rian had every right to call her out on it. But Hanna still did not want to admit she was wrong.
"We, uh, we were going to come back for you both anyway," Hanna said.
Taelen nodded his head. "Besides, we were out of food. We set up camp and were heading back in the morning."
"It is a good thing I brought extra, then."
Rian tossed her pack toward Taelen, and he pulled out a small loaf of bread.
"There are two more bags as well," Rian said with a yawn, "I figured you had not prepared adequately. How did you end up so far off from our planned trail anyway?"
"Neither of us are very good with maps, it turns out." Taelen shrugged and then shivered, pulling his rain-soaked cloak out of his pack to dry off. "Do you have your matches on you? We use a fire tonight."
"No, I threw them in disgust, remember?" Rian waved her hand casually. Hanna did remember her throwing them on the ground now, and joined Taelen in shivering. He stopped drying off his cloak and started on hers.
"Oh," Hanna said, "Then I suppose we will just have to do without."
Rian rolled her eyes and waved her hand. Flames sprung up on the logs - not just small flames that normally start a large fire, but flames that fully engulfed the wood and immediately filled their shelter with heavy warmth.
"And when did you learn how to do that?" Taelen asked, looking from the fire to Rian in shock.
Rian shrugged. "When did you forget how to read a map?"
"Fair point. How did you find us anyway?"
"You forget I have trained with the Dunedain since I could ride a horse. Your trail was not that hard to follow."
The two of them spent the rest of the evening going over various tracking methods while Hanna pretended to listen. She eventually laid down, feigning sleep. While she was grateful Rian had found them, and they would have returned to her and Arien any way, she would have preferred to still be alone with Taelen. Rian was not an invasive person by any means, but Hanna felt Rian's presence was overwhelming in their small shelter. She hadn't felt that way before, though, so Hanna assumed it was her internal guilt and tried to ignore it.
"Are you alright?" Taelen whispered to her in the middle of the night, nearly startling her off her bedroll.
"Yes, why?" She answered when she had caught her breath.
"All I can see right now is a dreary yellow when I look at you."
"Worry is yellow?" Hanna propped herself up on one elbow, looking at Taelen's outline in the dark. Rian was on watch and had sat on top of their shelter without argument from Taelen or Hanna.
"You are worried? About what?"
"Do you think Arien hates me? Or Rian?"
Taelen sat up and scooted closer to Hanna. "Hate you? Absolutely not. Rian knows how much you wanted to be done with Thuringwethil - and why. And Arien does not have a mean bone in her body. She will probably just be worried about why you felt like you could not talk to her about your emotions."
Hanna both loved and hated when Taelen understood everyone's emotions and motives. It was convenient, of course, but it also made her acutely aware of the fact that she would never be successful in hiding anything from him.
The two of them chatted a few more minutes before Taelen started snoring mid-sentence, and Hanna convinced herself to finally fall fully asleep. Morning came soon after, Rian made sure they took down the shelter and distributed the food she brought amongst their packs.
"How far is Lothlorien from here?" Hanna asked as she mounted her horse.
Rian mounted hers and called over her shoulder as she urged her horse forward, "We are not going back to Lothlorien."
"But, Arien -"
"Made it clear she did not want to join us on this part of our mission. If she wants to follow us, I am sure she can find the way north."
Hanna looked at Taelen, but he shook his head and mouthed something is not right before following Rian out of their campsite.
They trudged through mud most of the day before coming to higher ground. Rian told them that while they had not followed the planned route - at all - they had managed to make decent progress north, but still had about two weeks of riding before they would reach the Ice Bay of Forochel. Hanna had not thought their journey would be so long, and her heart sank at the thought of not being able to resolve everything with Arien for a month.
Several days passed like this. Plodding through mud, making a shelter at night, and waking up to do the same thing again. Rian did not speak much, and Taelen told Hanna one night after Rian had taken over the watch that he thought he was getting closer to finding out what was going on.
"She has not spoken more than a few sentences since her first night with us," Hanna whispered, rolling over on her bedroll. "Do you think she regrets coming to find us?"
"No," Taelen reached out into the dark and grabbed Hanna's hand. This was certainly not the first time he had done this, but Hanna could immediately feel her hand start to sweat. Regardless, he didn't let go. "No, I think she is grieving."
"Grief?"
"She is a dark, saturated blue right now - and has been other than her first few hours with us."
Hanna sat up quickly. "Do you think Arien died, and that is why she would not let us return to get her? Do you think she is lying to keep us going?"
"No, Hanna," Taelen sighed, "She is not lying about Arien. Rian may be closed off, but she is not so closed off that she would lie to us about our companion for the sake of a mission I am not sure she believes in."
"She does not believe in saving Middle Earth?"
Taelen shook his head, "I am not sure she believes in the importance of the Valar."
"What makes you say that?"
"She mentioned it once or twice in practice, and I do not think she has moved past processing that. I had hoped we would eventually meet up with Gandalf again, who I think she might listen to, but -"
"Gandalf died."
Rian stepped into the shelter and rolled her bedroll out beside the dying fire.
"He - oh, I am so sorry, Rian." Hanna let go of Taelen's hand, placing both her hands over her chest.
"Do not worry about me," Rian said, laying down and throwing her cloak over herself like a blanket before turning over to face away from the other two. "Taelen is right though, I do not understand why the Valar, I mean, even after meeting my father…"
Her voice trailed off, and Taelen moved to sit by her, giving Hanna a wide-eyed glance. He gently placed a hand on her back, and Hanna was surprised when Rian did not move away.
"It is good to feel your grief," Taelen said, "Gandalf meant a lot to you."
He cocked his head toward the door, and Hanna nodded, grabbing his cloak and dagger before stepping out into the night to take her watch. Her head spun as she heard Rian's voice in her head say "after meeting my father" again. Had one of the Valar really been on Middle Earth?
She could still hear Taelen comforting Rian, who suddenly seemed unable to complete a full sentence, but she tried to tune it out so Rian could have her privacy. There were many conversations Taelen had had with Hanna that she would not have appreciated Rian or Arien listening to.
"I have to admit I am not used to constant company," Hanna said as she and Taelen sat under a canopy of towering Oak trees. They'd left Lothlorien two days previously, and Taelen had teased her when they stopped to eat that they had not spent much time alone since the first time they left Lothlorien together.
"Because of growing up with Radagast often gone." Taelen finished her thought for her.
She nodded her head and nibbled at the food in her hand.
"I do not mind, though," she said, "I have never found it hard to be around you."
Taelen chuckled. "Well, that is a relief, I must say. Rumil often told me I was an insufferable know-it-all."
"You?" Hanna nearly choked. "You told me you have never read a full book in your life."
Taelen shook his head, "Wrong kind of know-it-all. I am certainly no Arien. But rather, I always knew what others were feeling. Rumil hated when I could tell he was feeling particularly attracted to his wife."
Hanna's cheeks burned. Taelen had told her all about his ability to read the emotions of others and help to heal those hurting. He had often helped her feel calm without her having to explain herself, something she appreciated more than she could express. But she had never thought he would be able to tell how attracted to him she was.
"I am sure he felt positively violated," she said indignantly, setting her unfinished lunch back in her pack before standing up and carrying it back over to her horse.
"Hanna, wait," Taelen rushed after her, catching her bag before she could strap it back onto her saddle. "I'm sorry, I did not mean to upset you."
Hanna stood frozen, looking at his hand on hers on her bag. She wanted to ignore it and tell him something else was bothering her - like she remembered something Arien did that made her feel insignificant like Taelen usually helped her work through - but the words got caught in her throat.
"Hanna," Taelen said softly, taking a step closer to her.
She wanted to reach out and brush the loose strands of hair away from his face, but she also did not want to move her hand from under his, so she just stood there staring at him with what she was sure was an unintelligent look.
"I am sorry I never told you," Taelen took a deep breath, "but I was worried you would not let me be close to you, and… and I so desperately want to be close to you."
In one tender movement, Taelen took Hanna in his arms and pressed his lips to her forehead. She reached her free hand up to touch his face, unconsciously stroking his cheek. She had never been this close with someone, physically or emotionally, and she wished the moment would last forever.
Hanna felt selfish for absorbing herself in the memory of Taelen's affection while Rian suffered the loss of Gandalf, but Hanna didn't know how to stop herself from feeling jittery and excited about what was to come with Taelen if they made it out of this alive. When she pictured her life before she'd never imagined falling in love with anyone, though that might have been because she never met anyone to fall in love with.
"She's asleep." Taelen's whisper floated to Hanna through the dark, and she turned around to see him walking toward her. "Gandalf was killed by a Balrog in Moria, she found out the morning we left Rivendell."
"I cannot believe it. I am sure Rian is having a hard time."
"It is certainly not easy for her, but I think she will be able to move forward alright." Taelen hesitated before continuing. "She told me something I have a hard time understanding, though."
Hanna felt uneasy as Taelen's tone changed.
"What is it?"
"She said her father visited her in Lothlorien, and that he gave her peace and somehow helped her with her powers."
Hanna looked at him sharply. "Her father, right, she mentioned that... But how? Can the Valar really travel to Middle Earth at-will?"
Taelen shrugged, taking a deep breath and exhaling loudly. "They have not since the first battle with Melkor. It is said that Ulmo was the last to travel to Middle Earth through its waters, but now the Valar watch from Valinor, removed from the doings of those here. But perhaps it was a special enough circumstance?"
"Why would he visit her alone? Why would the Valar not visit us all?" Hanna knew it sounded selfish, but it upset her that Rian had somehow earned a visit after losing Gandalf. Why had Aulë or Yavannah not visited her when Mer and Dan were killed and Hanna spent months at a time alone in Mirkwood? Why had they not visited all of them after Thuringwethil took the Silmaril? If they could visit Middle Earth why had they sent their children here to do their bidding?
"I am not sure," Taelen said thoughtfully, "and though Rian seemed to feel peace at the memory, hearing about it made me uneasy."
Hanna didn't sleep well when she let Taelen convince her to have him take the rest of her watch. She had absorbed his unease, and found herself tossing and turning with images of Arien crying, Gandalf dying, and a mysterious dark figure laughing flying through her mind. She was grateful when morning came, and the monotony of riding behind Rian freed her of any conscious thought, other than that never-ending wish that Arien was with them.
.