View Single Post
Old 07-11-2004, 07:37 PM   #268
Ealasaide
Shadow of Tyrn Gorthad
 
Ealasaide's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: The Fencing Lyst
Posts: 810
Ealasaide has just left Hobbiton.
Kaldir

“But we have not yet finished what we set out to do,” Kaldir said under his breath. Across from him, Rauthain nodded and the two men fell into silence, each absorbed in his own thoughts. Kaldir closed his eyes again, letting the sunshine caress his upturned face. The pain and latent chill in the scarred muscle of his cheek were finally beginning to subside under the sun’s warmth, which put him into a slightly better frame of mind than he had been in only a few moments earlier. He let out a long breath as the faces of two women, each the polar opposite of the other, floated before his closed eyes, each of them pulling at his soul with equal force and in opposite directions: one of them elven, one mortal; one fair, one dark; one hated, one beloved, both of them with hands on his destiny. He opened his eyes and cast a sideways glance at Rauthain.

“Are you suggesting, then, that I marry?” he asked dryly. “I believe that is what my father and I quarreled about, though the memory is hazy. So many of them are.”

Rauthain shrugged. “It might do you good to embrace life for a change.”

Kaldir laughed softly. “And what makes you think me capable of such a thing, I wonder, if I am indeed a dead man walking.” He said it with sarcasm, but as he did so, he remembered his own words to Dúlrain on that deserted side street back in Bree, when Dúlrain had offered to return him his grandfather’s sword. Do not offer such a thing to a ghost, he had said. At that same moment in Bree, even as he rebuffed the hand of friendship offered to him by Dúlrain, Kaldir remembered noticing the bright spark of pleasure it had given him to claim Benia Nightshade as his wife, even as false as the claim had been. Maybe it really was time he embraced life again. His thoughts had most certainly been moving in that direction of late. “And what makes you think Miss Nightshade would have me?” he added abruptly.

The older ranger shrugged. “And what makes you think that she wouldn’t?” he countered the question with another question. “Anyone with eyes can see that you care for her. She seems fond of you.”

“Fond but not enamored,” mused Kaldir, thinking of the way Benia looked at Dúlrain. “But then, who would be enamored of me?" He ruefully smiled his one-sided smile. "I am not a handsome man, though I might have been considered reasonably attractive at one time.”

“I’m sure you have other qualities to recommend you,” suggested Rauthain. “Miss Nightshade, though she is from the south, seems to have good head on her shoulders. I’m sure she can see your better aspects.”

“Like forthrightness and the inability to forgive?”

“Like forthrightness, patience,” rejoined Rauthain with a smile. “And a masterful command of sarcasm.”

Kaldir laughed. “Yes, that would come in handy when one is courting a woman.”

Rauthain’s smile widened to a grin as the two fell into silence once again, but this time it was a more companionable silence. Finally Kaldir rose to his feet and flexed his stiff shoulder.

“Well, my friend,” he said to the older Ranger. “I hear that a counsel will be called tonight for all those who pursue Naiore. I’m assuming that you will be there.”

“Of course.”

“Then I will see you tonight. In the meantime, I need to get busy and secure myself a horse and some supplies for the upcoming journey. My charger seems to have gone missing, though I do have a mare in the stables I could use in a pinch. Miss Nightshade will be staying behind and will not have a need of a horse, I hope, until I return.”

“Till the evening then,” said Rauthain, rising from the stone he had taken a seat upon and beginning to move again down the path toward the stable.

Kaldir watched his retreating back for a moment, then called after him, “Thank you for being a friend to my father in his last years. I had no idea. I will think about your advice.” With that, he turned and walked back toward the main hall, feeling markedly better both in his head and his heart. He would give Rauthain’s words some thought. Serious thought.
Ealasaide is offline