[piosenniel]

His brother, he noted, had gone off to speak with Lindir. The man looked pale and disconcerted as he sat on the grass, his knees drawn up, his arms resting on his close stowed pack . . . almost, it seemed, in a protective way. What’s this? he wondered to himself. ‘Lindir looks as if he’s seen some ghost. Some unpleasant ghost, too, by the looks of it,’ Endamir murmured aloud.

Lómwë was standing near him, taking in the little tableaux. He was hardly winded from the climb, Endamir had observed when he’d reached the top at last. His gaze swept over the man’s lithely muscled form. Kept himself in good shape, I see, there among the golden trees. Unlike yourself . . . he chided himself mentally. Endamir shook his head at the image of himself, sitting comfortable in his chair in the great library of Imladris. And an assistant to fetch things to boot! What a lazy git you are!

Tasa’s question disturbed his further remonstrance of past folly.

‘Does anybody," she put forth quietly, ‘feel as unwelcome here as I?’

Malris’ reply fell into the anticipating silence that had gathered about the plateau.

‘Not entirely," he said finally. ‘I feel much like one who has returned from a long journey to find his house in the hands of strangers.’

And was greeted with a rising wind that whipped about the companions, ringing them in like a noose. Endamir pulled his cloak from his pack and drawing it about him, huddled in closer to the others. From the corner of his eye, in the space between light and shadow that gathered near a tumble of rocks he thought he saw something pass. It was gone as he looked more closely. ‘Some trick of the wind and the dust it stirs,’ he said, talking aloud to himself. He frowned, feeling disquieted.

‘What say you, Lómwë? I think Tasa may have the right of it. And Malris, too, in his own way. This place belongs to others now. And not just some figments of our memories.’ He shivered in the folds of his cloak. ‘Even the rocks seem haunted . . . and the wind . . . perhaps we should leave them be . . .’