[Garen LiLorian]

"Not where it ends, my friend." Garen's sword point drooped, and tears glittered bright and unshed in his grey eyes. "Not where it ends. Long I searched for you, following the trail you had left in your haste. Disobeying both the elven scouts and my own father I followed your trail, hoping against hope to bring you back to Lórien. Yet it was not I who found your mother."

Garen closed his eyes in memory, a single tear escaping to flow down his cheek. "Other scouts, fell and wicked, had caught your trail. Wargs they were, a pack of the evil creatures. They came upon her before I could."

"From far off I heard her cry, and a great shadow o'erfell my heart. Quickly I rode to where she was, but not quickly enough. The demon-wolves reached your mother before I did, and she lay motionless on the ground. I drove them off, killing two and maiming a third, though I was not unharmed in the doing, but even then my heart was heavy, for I feared what I would find at battle's end. This which you see," Garen indicated his bad leg with a small gesture, "is the token I retained from that battle, but mine was not the worst hurt."

"Then was I faced with an evil choice. Your mother yet clung to life, though it was by the slenderest of threads. I could not abandon her, so I gave up my chase. I had to hope that you would return on your own, for now there was no chance of catching you, wounded and faint as I was with the life of one so precious in my hands. I returned to Lórien, and delivered her unto the healers. But my toil was in vain." Garen looked up into Telegar's face, and his own was a mirror of the anguish he saw there. "Telegar, my friend, your mother died of a fever three days after we returned. I am sorry."

The two friends stared into each other's eyes, oblivious to the battle still raging in the clearing. Telemar's face had crumpled at Garen's story, but he had one question left. "What of my father?" He asked in a voice thick with grief.

"He is yet with us," Garen replied carefully. "My father defied the will of the Golden Wood, and demanded Lord Linrethil be returned to us. If he had transgressed, then the right of punishment belonged to my father, and not to the Wood. Lord Celeborn agreed with my father, and Linrethil was sentanced to hard labor, but nothing more. He still retains hope that you might return, Telegar." Garen stared hard into those eyes, trying to gauge a reaction. "As do I. Lórien is your home and your house, and I would see you restored to it." He held out a hand.