#i also realized i have no developed beornings lol so

[aurore-parle-de-ses-idees]

18? literally or beornically?

18- bear hug

hi. i am easily distracted

The bridge to the island is painted in brilliant pinks and oranges as the sun falls behind the distant mountains. The Twilight Hills are quiet, ruined estates casting long shadows over the lakeshore. A lonely owl cries in the distance, but nothing answers it.

Helegdir isn’t sure if owls usually do that anyway. He’s no wild-speaker.

Even Tinnudir is silent, the fires dark and the keep still. Helegdir watches the last sunlight play on the green stone until a faint footfall catches his ear on the bridge behind him. He knows without turning who it is.

“It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”

“I wasn’t sure we would see you again.” He still hasn’t turned around. Hasn’t seen.

The other man says: “We all come home, in the end.” And that isn’t like Lendrain at all, but fifteen years is a long, long time, especially in their line of work. “I missed you,” he says quietly, and ah, that is more like him, has been since they were children, since Helegdir began patrols two years before Lendrain, and at last Helegdir turns.

He looks the same. All this time and Lendrain looks no different than he had when he had seen Helegdir off in exchange for a promise that he would make it to Lendrain’s oath-taking, to welcome him into the ranks of the Rangers. Helegdir closes the distance in two long strides and crushes Lendrain to him, and Lendrain chuckles into his chest but he doesn’t try to duck away from the great bear hug and Helegdir is content to stay here as long as he will allow.

But he has had this dream before.

“Please, come back,” Helegdir whispers into Lendrain’s shoulder, and does not care that his voice comes out a broken thing, or that Lendrain sighs deeply against him.

“You know I can’t do that,” he says, and his voice rumbles from his chest and through Helegdir’s, tickling his ribs. 

“You said we all come home-”

“Helegdir.”

“You are nearly here already,” he says, and he doesn’t care- he knows, he knows, he’s had this dream before, but he never wishes less desperately for it to be real. “Just cross the bridge with me.” As if they can walk right out of here and into the world of the waking hand in hand. As if it will ever be so simple.

But Lendrain’s breath whispers past his ear, and he says: “Alright. I will walk with you.” And Helegdir doesn’t care, doesn’t care that the man he knew would not give in so easily, that it won’t last. He only slowly unwraps himself from around Lendrain’s shoulders, and slowly takes his hand. They step onto the sand of Tinnudir, and then Helegdir is awake, gasping at the terrible ache in his chest whose cause he only slowly recalls.

It’s been three years since he last had this dream. Stars, he thought he might have seen the end of it, that after all this time he might not feel so keenly an old friend’s departure, but it isn’t so. Most days, perhaps, it is only one more loss in a line of them, but nights like this it comes to him and he can do nothing but wrap his cloak around himself and linger on old memories, watching the distant stars in the cold wind that comes through the Ram Dúath out of Angmar until he has light enough to travel.