Found:
So, here I am. On the edge. Staring down into the abyss. Well, it's not so much an abyss, really. It's just a gorge, sheer cliffs for the most part and a lot of rushing water far below. It is deep though. It's a long way down.
It took me a while to find the right spot; I didn't exactly see it last time, after all. But here I am, that little ledge below me, and I wonder how I managed to survive. What luck had them throw me exactly here? What fortune saw me not only live through the initial drop but also be rescued from it? Was it luck at all?
I traced my steps back to the campsite I had used so long ago. There's no sign of what happened, no evidence that I had ever been there. Not that I was expecting any. It was so very long ago, after all. Still, if I close my eyes I could almost see them... almost hear them... almost feel it all again...
Peering down into the ravine below, the soft susurration of water on stone, the hiss and whine of the air, it all seems so distant, yet so very close. Like it happened a lifetime ago, but that lifetime was only yesterday. I'm not making any sense...
I could wax lyrical about the fragility of Men's Fate, but why bother? It's there before us every day, every waking hour and, for the most part, we choose to ignore it because we'd not be able to function otherwise. I faced the possibility of meeting my end every day that I lived in Rohan, every day that I traveled Arda, every day that I went poking about in places most sensible people avoid. There's no escaping it. Death comes to us all sooner or later whether it be from age, illness, a knife in an alley or choking on a grape. It is ever present, ever looming, always waiting and as patient as it needs to be.
Of all the times I've come close to it, why does this one bother me the most? Is it because it was beyond my control this time? Is it because it wasn't on my terms? Is it because they were the would-be perpetrators of my demise? Is it because it was here and, as pretty as this part may be, I still have little love for Bree-land as a whole? It's not like I had anything to live for. It's not like I even wanted to live back then. I'd been fighting, and failing, to get myself killed for three years by that point.
So... why?
Because I won't allow anyone to have that much power over me. Not again. Never again.
I swore that to myself so very long ago. The choices that I make, the path that I walk, the things that I do, all of them are mine. All of them chosen by me. My fate is in my hands, no one elses.
Baldvin said I am a loner. Loakee, according to Baldvin, described me as a woman alone in a crowded room. They're not wrong. I love the company, I love the banter, I love the laughter and the light of being with and around people, but through it all I am always alone inside. I don't know how not to be.
And that leads me back here; alone in a place that I would have dearly wished company.
Nothing changes. Not when we don't change it ourselves. Not when we don't know how to.
So I must learn or die alone, as I always knew I would, as I have recently come to realise that I would rather not.
My choices here are clear; North and West to Evendim, where my solitary life upon an island awaits. North and East to Angmar, where the end I once sought still awaits. Or South again to Towerglan where my only real friend continues on with her own life. One path changes nothing. One path leads to certain death - a change, but a pointless one. The last path at least offers possibility.
Maybe I'll just sit here a while longer.
