[piosenniel]

Endamir had recovered himself for the most part. He shook his head a little, in an effort to clear the last of the dark, clingy cobwebs that had trapped his thoughts, instilling in them a venomous fear and uncertainty. Almost as quickly as the bleak, hopeless thoughts had come, they receded, as mist does before a sudden breeze.

‘I’ve got to face the past,' he heard a voice say, tinged with misery, 'but I can’t. Not yet.’ Lómwë’s words cut through the last traces of Endamir’s oppressive thought.

‘My friend,’ Endamir began, nodding at Lómwë, ‘too well do I understand the depth of feeling that underlies your words.’ Though not the specific reason you say them he thought to himself. ‘But do you not also feel some foul purpose here in this place that seeks to take those feelings and distort them? That is not to gainsay your feelings, your concerns. But, just now, I felt some malicious will unstick itself from my thoughts, drawback . . . and with it take the complete hopelessness it had brought with it.’

Endamir narrowed his eyes, gazing into the distance at the ruins of the fortress. ‘We should be on guard; don’t you think? Don’t you feel it?’ He adjusted his focus, bringing it back to Lómwë. ‘We are in danger, I sense, we who carry those deep wounds that have not healed.