[Lhunardawen]

"What is your real name? And why was it changed?"

There was a moment of hesitation for Tilionwen as the hobbit - whose name, she realized, she did not yet know - asked her this, and she gently reminded herself that she had already decided to trust her. Besides, she felt more and more comfortable with her as the seconds pass.

"To be completely honest with you," Tilionwen started, "I don't remember my real name." She paused for a moment, then continued, "I guess it's best to start from the beginning." The hobbit folded her hands together and looked at her with an expression of polite curiosity.

"I remember being a young lady from Arnor. My mother died when I was very young, much to the grief of my father. And as if to compensate for her loss, my father loved us very deeply, me and my younger, only, sister. He was a little overprotective of us, but we competelely understood him. Surely he wouldn't want to lose any one of us; that would probably kill him. And as for my sister, we were just inseparable. After all, we only have each other to hang on in our mother's absence."

Tilionwen continued her tale as her mind drew back to those times long past, and in her mind's eye the events once again began to unfold...

------------------------------------------

It was a beautiful morning. The sun shone brightly, but not too much, and a soft breeze blew throughout the entire countryside. Tilionwen and her sister thought it would be a good day for a walk in the woods, and so they asked their father.

"So long as you take care of yourselves, and be home before nightfall!" The sisters smiled excitedly at each other and took leave of their father.

Before long they were enjoying the shade of the trees and the sight of all the animals that crossed their path, but suddenly dark clouds began to gather in the previously clear blue sky. Worried that the rain might fall while they're still there, they started to make their way back home. The sky grew darker and darker as they did, until at last the rain fell. Eventually the sisters could no longer see their way, so they sat under a big tree in the freezing rain and waited for the storm to pass, keeping each other entertained with reminiscences of their childhood. They stayed there patiently until at last the night came, but the relentless rain continued pouring. They thought of their father who was assuredly sick with worry back at their home, but there was nothing they could do to let him know that they were fine.

After some time Tilionwen began feeling drowsy, and her sister told her to lie on her lap. So she lay there, listening to her sister's beautiful voice humming the lullabies their mother once sang to them...and she gave in to slumber.

She awoke later in the evening, when the rain had already stopped. She was dazed for a moment, and rubbing the sleep off her eyes, she looked towards her sister. She found that she, too, had already succumbed to the night. Her sister was leaning on the tree trunk; a peaceful smile was on her face. Tilionwen did not want to bother her, but she was anxious to get back home to their father, so she stood and began rousing her. She shook her a little, and there was no response. With increasing fear she continued to shake her sister's slender body, more and more violently with each passing moment of silence. And then she saw a glint of reflected moonlight a little to her sister's right. She looked closely and found a blade - one her sister always carried with her, at her father's insistence, wherever she went; Tilionwen had one as well. But she saw that this one was stained with blood...with a snake lying nearby, its body cloven in two.

A shriek of both horror and despair escaped Tilionwen's lips as she kneeled next to her sister and searched her right arm. She found two puncture wounds on her forearm, large enough to be seen under the moonlight. Upon seeing them her sanity completely left her. She looked up towards the Moon and she screamed from the depths of her heart, a scream of anguish and pain.

------------------------------------------

Tilionwen reeled from her reverie and found herself looking once again towards the moon. Yet ironic as it was, Astilwen noted, this time a tranquil softness was on her face. "And so began my spirit's slavery under the moon," Tilionwen barely whispered. "He never left me alone, and time and time again he reminded me of that fateful night, and of my father to whom I have never returned. How could I come back to him with that news, even were I sane?" Tilionwen looked down and faced Astilwen with a smile. "And to answer your question, the people who found me wandering in my lunacy gave me the name Tilionwen because they always found me speaking to the moon." She laughed gently, finding mirth in her statement and in Astilwen's expressed enlightenment. "Eventually the name stuck to me as if it is the name I was given at my birth. I never recalled my real name; perhaps I lost it under the moon's spell."

She found nothing more to say at the moment and fell into silence, giving the hobbit a chance to satisfy her curiosity. She breathed deeply once more, and felt all the heaviness within her escape as she exhaled.