[Amanaduial the archer]

"How did you and your friend get here?"

At first, Raeis thought the question must have been regarding Jordo - after all, she had taken a sort of motherly liking to the childlike being who looked young and acted younger. But as she followed Jordo's gesture to the shadowy being some way away, she looked back at him in surprise. "Morgoroth?"

Zuromor seemed equally confused by the tone of her voice. "Well, yes," he replied, less certainly.

Hai! 'You are an elf, therefore you must know all other elves', the Voice mocked Zuromor's voice nastily then made a harsh, resentful noise that made Raeis flinch inwardly. Ha! Did I not warn you of the ignorance of Men? Yet you would abandon me forthis?!

Raeis ignored Voice, resolutely refusing to listen to it's words against Zuromor. Still, it seemed that it may have been right - was she to be simply classified with Morgoroth because she was of the same species as him? Why, he was the age of her parents...probably...a vague, hazy half-idea of two elves, one with soft, loving grey eyes, dark hair, a gentle voice...and a sword, ornate and flashing as it was wielded by an older man, his grin dangerous and charismatic...

The recollections danced just out of Raeis's reach in her mind and she sighed. What she could remember was fleeting and illusive, nothing firm or strong any more - she knew as little about her parents as she did about any one of her companions.

Zuromor apparently mistook her melancholy sigh and the pause around it for something different however. "You...know him well?" he asked tentatively, picking his words with care. Raeis immediately picked up his possible alterior meaning and her ears pricked up righteously as she glanced sharply at him. The man held up his hands, his green eyes wide and innocent. "What? Oh...no! No, I didn't...sorry," he finished, his voice more subdued as he looked away from Raeis. The elf felt a blush start on her alabastor white cheeks and looked away too, embarassed that she had offended him. Or certainly something along those lines - she wasn't altogether sure. He was a very strange being...

Being is the right word. It's not like his feelings matter - he's little more than an animal. All men are. You know that from the Easterlings. Voice was sulky now, irritated and bitter at being shunned, but Raeis was suddenly struck by how harsh and angry her constant inward companion sounded. So unfriendly...she frowned inwardly at it, then turned back to the matters in hand. She cocked her head to one side like a sparrow and regarded him through her strange flecked eyes. He was unlike anything she had come upon before - dark, dark hair, that contrasted so strongly with those bright green eyes. She had never seen any s vivid, and their colour was brought to life even further by the man's animation, the way his eyes alighted so swiftly upon a subject, and his smile grew underneath them - unrestrained, open, friendly.

Green...As green as the light through the dappled leaves of Mirkwood where I used to play...

The thought was like an arrow through her mind, a sudden flash so vivid and real she could almost feel the warmth of the sun through the trees upon her now-scarred skin. And although the sun's light would never reach this place, and maybe she would never return in this life, the image brought with it...hope. The thought that there was something more than this void of darkness and fear that she had been living in alone for so long.

Hope.

She savoured the word in her mind. Maybe it was that revelation which gave her courage to do what she did next. Tentatively, she reached out one thin, pale arm and, with a touch as faint than a butterfly's sigh, touched his arm. The man jumped as if struck and she quickly pulled back her hand, her fingers clenching in a fist as she looked away again, muttering apologies as her pale skin darkened slightly in the half-light with a blush. But when she looked back a moment later, she saw that Zuromor had not walked off or laughed at her - he was merely watching her with those bright, dappled-leaf eyes, a strange expression on his face. Everything she had been about to say - about Morgoroth, how she didn't know him, had barely exchanged a few words with him - didn't really seem relevant any more - the conversation had moved on, without the inconvenience of words.

"Yah longa ngu."

The series of strange words brought Raeis back to the real place in which they sat and she turned around to see Darash rise, gesturing commandingly at the odd, shifty-looking man who seemed both Northman and Southron at once. The woman's brow creased very faintly for a moment as she summoned words they would understand and tried again, her tone just as commanding. "Hel-up man."

Rising in a fluid motion from where she knelt, Raeis made her way over to where the others were now collecting around Darash and the sick man. She didn't look around, but, after a second, she felt her new subject of curiosity follow.