The sun had risen only a couple of hours ago and slowly the shadows shorten as Arien makes her journey across the sky. The little camp nestled in the hills south of town is quiet and a great bay stallion grazes nearby, but the camp is quiet. However, a little fire crackles in the small circle and a pot of tea rests beside it, warming. After a few moments, a man exits one of the greyish-brown tents that blend so well into their surroundings.

He is fairly tall, wide of shoulder and broad of chest. His hair seems black, but when the light glints from it, there are dark burgandy highlights, because for once, he does not wear his cloak. His hair is short and curls on his neck and brow in loose waves, but on his brow is also a golden circlet. He moves to the fire and sits, poking at it and adding another piece of wood.


On the other side of the hill, a little ways up the slope and clad in a still damp cloak from the dawn's rain, a girl is crouched beside a clump of flowers. A basket sits beside her, two rather forlorn blossoms poking out. But her eyes are not on her evident task. Instead they gaze down the road towards Bree and there is an unusual hesitancy to her expression. Two small figures might be seen dwindling into the distance, but at last she stand up, basket in hand and squares her shoulders. "I'm not going back," she says stoutly to herself. "I'm not afraid." She takes several steps away from the road, pauses and then goes on. Slow, but unhesitating now, her feet bring her on a curving path towards the unseen, unimagined fire.


Fealos pours himself a cup of tea and leans back against a log, enjoying the sun and the relative cool of the morning. A light fog still hangs in the air. He sips the tea, his profile to the human collecting flowers on the hill, whom he fails to regard. His eyes are closed and he hums a soft, somewhat sad song to himself, his low voice carrying slightly on the soft breeze.


Tathar stops abruptly as she comes around the crest of the hill and sees the tiny fire, the figure sitting beside it. Astonishment that there really is someone here is written plainly on her face, for despite her evident determination to return, she seems to have convinced herself there would be nothing to find. Her fingers clench about the handle of her basket until they turn white and almost she backs away. A hasty look is cast over one shoulder back towards the road - it is not really /that/ far - and she gathers her courage and calls out. "H-hello?"


Fealos's eyes open and they are instantly upon Tathar. Whatever pleasant daydream he was having, the gentle smile on his face is fully-gone now. His eyes flash brightly, with some strange, unwordly light, and his rugged face is hard and impassive. He just sits still, as if he is unsure what to do now. His cup still held in his hand. He does not move at all.


Dark eyes widen and a lightly-tanned face goes pale in shock. Tathar's gaze darts from those eyes, to the unsmiling mouth, to the golden circle around his head. Her mouth opens and then shuts and then opens again but no sound comes out. Rather like a deer caught by unexpected light, she seems incapable of moving at all.


Fealos's eyes never leave her as he slowly sets his tea down and then stands. His black-burgandy brows push together slightly and he says in a booming bronze voice, "Why have you come?"


If it were possible, Tathar turns even whiter. Sheer terror breaks something of the spell that seems to have held her motionless and she backs a step away, stopping again when she stumbles over an unseen rock. "I... I ... w-we heard s-something and I w-wanted to s-see what w-was here," she stammers at last, her voice high and thin.


Fealos stares at her a while longer, then turns away, blocking from her sight the Valinorin light in his eyes, a light which few mortals have ever seen even in the eyes of Quendi. "Go home, girl," he says more softly, yet still with the strong ring of his voice. "This is no place for you."


Tathar relaxes when he turns. And most of the fear leaves her face and eyes. "Y-yes," she says obediently, only the slightest tremor remaining in her voice, and takes another step backwards, yelping and dropping her basket as she bangs her ankle into the same rock. Whirling to glare down at the unassuming bit of granite, she forgets the last of her fright in fury and pain. "You stupid stone! That hurt!!" With a last muttered imprecation, she limps over to pick up the dropped basket, the scattered flowers.


The yelp makes him turn again, his heart moved by the sound of distress. "You are hurt..." he says, his frown still very much present, but his bronze-bell voice now with concern. He steps toward the hill.


"It is only a scrape," replies Tathar from where she crouches not looking up. Dropping the last flower into her basket, she pulls the hem of her skirt up a little and peers at her ankle. A thin trickle of blood makes its way down a dirty bare foot. "And I think I will have the most enormous bruise."


Fealos stands over her now. He looks at her wound, then says, "Why do you fear me?" He is without his sword, but on close inspection, his clothes are woven with fine silvery filiments, trimmed in velvets and satins, embroidered intricately. His thick hair falls over his ears, and save for the eerie light in his eyes and his strangely fair features, he seems as rugged as any other man of the wood or fields. He is no ghost, that is for certain.


She looks up, a small frown wrinkling her forehead. "I don't know... it was your eyes. And you looked so - so angry or something. I thought..." But the words are spoken absently, she is thinking of something else. "It was you!" she exclaims at last. "In the Pony, wasn't it?" And now she really looks at him, scanning his features (save for the eyes which always her own avoid). "Why did you have on that huge heavy cloak, weren't you horribly hot?"


"Not as hot as I have been in the past," is all he says to this. He kneels and grabs her calf, his fingers thick and strong, yet with a practiced gentleness. He looks at her ankle, pressing on it with his other hand. "It is not broken, but it will hurt for a few days. You should keep from walking on it." He then releases her, a lingering warmth left where his fingers grasped her.


"Ow!" It is more a protest than a noise of true pain. And when he lets go, her hand goes to the place he touched. "I can't not walk on it, I have to get home somehow. And I certainly can't hop the entire way." Tathar giggles a little at the thought. "I'm sure it will be fine." She struggles to her feet, clutching the flower-basket in one hand and winces involuntarily before smiling at him. "See? I can - ouch - walk."


Fealos straightens to standing and looks down at her. "Then stay off of it when you get home. I would help you, but it would be unseemly." FOr him or her, he does not say. Then, he turns from her and starts back toward his camp. "You should be more careful..." Whether he means to be careful of stumbling on stones, or stumbling upon him, it is not known.


Tathar watches after him, the same frown reappearing between dark brown eyebrows. "Who are you, really?" she asks after a moment of silence. "You don't look like anyone I have seen before..." The memory of the great terrifying creature he had seemed to be so little time before, with eyes that glowed of their own accord, makes her shiver a little. But obstinately she waits for an answer.


Fealos stops in his stride, then looks back at her over his shoulder. "A traveller," he answers truthfully, "journeying home to the coast. Nothing more, nothing less. And if you have not seen my like before, perhaps it is merely that you do not open your eyes to see." He smiles slightly then, bringing a certain handsomeness to his face that is absent when a frown mars it.


Tathar blinks a few times as if to make sure. But as if she already knows he will say nothing less vague, she veers to a different topic. "You live by the sea. How long does it take to get there? Will you be here long?" Curiously she peers about, her eyes going past the tents without seeing them. "Are you going by yourself? There are lots of strange people about lately, Mr. Thistlewool says they are dangerous. You should be careful, travelling."


Fealos says softly, "Perhaps he was warning you about me. Perhaps it is others who should be wary of my passing..." Suddenly, it seems he could be very dangerous indeed. "The sea is many footfalls. I will be here until the time comes to leave." He then walks away from her for good, returning to his camp and fetches his cloak from his tent, wrapping himself in it as he returns to the fire, even as the hottest part of the day advances...


And Tathar herself turns away, compelled by what she does not know to leave off her endless questions and go. Limping slowly back down the hill, her basket no fuller, she is half-way to Bree before she stops and turns around to look back. And then her small figure is gone entirely, swallowed up by distance and the town's high wall.