I can make my journey neither swift nor easy without maps or a trusted guide, yet these are the conditions under which I left Imladris and thus I am granted only the promise of ill adventure. Too swift did I make my escape that I had no time to pack travelling clothes or any provisions; and wore only a thin cloak to disguise my face inside the crowd of riders that left the vale in pursuit of Lady Malliel, oh poor lady! Alas, she might yet be saved and returned safely to the vale if I am to trust in the abilities of those closest to her, alas, my plight is that of the friendless! Since my leaving was under such secrecy, I should wager it will be long before I am even noticed missing, by which time my trail will be cold, exactly as I wish it; excepting that I am forced to traverse these deep vales and rugged cliffs of the Trollshaws in too fine a dress and silk slippers! All my wants now focus upon a well trodden path in this crude clime, yet constant lack of one leaves my steps fraught upon broken ridges and loose escarpments strewn with crumbling rocks not only thwarting my safe passage until it is the pace of a snail, but forcing me to send my horse homeward, lest she tumble down some precipice, or worse, take me with her!
Lo, I wend this ungovernable region without a single device! All objects of aid are but fiction in my fate: I do not even own a compass in hand whilst my eye is denied starlit maps of night that are so well known to mariners and scholars alike. An insatiable thirst upon this land draws dense clouds to it at such frequent intervals that the landscape is oft drenched, and I with it! Such a thin cloak as mine has only aesthetic quality whilst this environment yields streams of mud from the very stones with such grim effect that I discover every dip and trough along my course to make a mire! The wet earth clings to me with such wicked want that my constant condition is to be drowned or caked! And when the storm is drying out, I resemble some scaled anathema whose eyes wince at the cruel morning sun and all too quickly runs for cover!
Lo, I must hug clefts in the rock face, harbour under fallen trees or steal away in some long forgotten trench that dips beyond the reach of the sun, as though all my graces and civility are gone from me. What brings me to this behaviour you ask?...well, indeed you might be curious to the facts when you are cosy beside a roaring hearth where song and wine flow forth, and I would reply forthright, let me see you walk these lands of fell beast and unnatural creatures by day! I am being hunted, and it is far from the game of hide and seek that I play! Do not mock the blind, when your open eyes pay no attention! And sleep well in your beds of feather and down, for though I hide by daylight hours, I know no rest.
Oh! How my heart wrenches upon recent events to burden my mind with all manner of foul conclusions. Lord Anglachelm has displayed the intellect of a bucket...and one with a hole in the bottom since all his commanding was entirely without consideration of the facts! What empty headed musing could possibly convince him that Lord Mittanyaro was best at my side? Did he have no mind to consider the consequences that I had already spelt out so very plainly? And several times over! Is the High Lord deaf to a lady’s desires, or just to mine? Commanding Lord Mittanyaro to guard me was not just a flagrant abuse of my senses all the while my sworn protector was near, but could only prove me right in my foretelling when he did vanish some hours before I left, and leave me only the foulest of conclusions in regard to the High Lord Anglachelm: that he wagers with the lives of his kindred!
Oh! On my life I am beside myself with fury; and weep silently upon the loss of he, the finest of elves, the halest guardian, and most noble of Eldar, Lord Mittanyaro, who I shall never set eyes upon again! Thus, am I fully bent upon reaching the Lady Galadriel’s mirror...more so than before! Without reclamation of those things now lost to me, I cling vaguely to the hope of unravelling the mystery of my bewitchment, for the preservation of my mind alone perhaps...since my heart is too far gone to ever be repaired!
As I stand upon my solitary perch, the rise and fall of this unforgiving land carves bitter-brown waves into my journey, and if I am to survive that trek, what then? There is a jagged blue mist upon my horizon that shall solidify into a great and terrifying range of mountains... and I can only wonder to which path this lady shall take in her bid to reach home: high or low?
