Ashes ⇝Legolas

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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
OLD FRIEND BACK

"It cannot be." Aragorn whispered in disbelief, his words immediately after Nesryn's far quieter as she, however wished to erase and forget the the disbelief, could not do it, for the sudden happening and turn of the tide she did not presume could happen at all. It all came far too sudden, something like a wind whose direction had been turned around and that no more blew in its previous path, yet the newly set one.

By her side, clearly confused and even a partly shaken that such wrong assumption had managed to slip, Legolas dropped to his knee and bowed his head. "Forgive me, I mistook you for Saruman." The Elf pleaded softly, still were his eyes merely focused on the fallen leaves and roots by his feet, other than the carrier of change, the White Wizard who stood at the front.

The Wizard merely smiled, showing no clear signs that the attack had affected him in any way. "I am Saruman, or rather as Saruman should have been." He concluded.

"But you fell." Aragorn uttered quietly yet again, slowly step by step approached the smiling wizard.

"Through fire, and water." Sudden seriousness arose within Gandalf's voice, smile faltered, disappeared as his expression became rather stoic and he froze to the sight up ahead, nothing particular within it, yet it was something the Wizard spied intently. "From the lowest dungeon, to the highest peak, I fought him, the Balrog of Morgoth...until at last I threw down my enemy and smote his ruin upon the mountainside."

"Darkness took me, and I strayed out of thought and time. Stars wheeled overhead and every day was as long as life age of the earth. But it was not the end. I felt light in me. I've been sent back, until my task is done." The Wizard explained, with each sentence Nesryn grew more and more glad that he had returned- was it all too strange for her, a new concept the woman could not accept which began slowly mending the anger, perhaps even fright of the world in her that she began sensing it had changed greatly since the first time she was appointed into the Fellowship. She felt somehow lighter, joyous even perhaps upon Wizard's return yet it was all too soon, for she would not show anything was as drastically different.

"Gandalf." Nesryn repeated, small smile slipping on her parted lips which she erased in another one of simple expressions she carried constantly- a neutral one, neither smile nor sadness.

The Wizard looked at her momentarily confused as if it was that he had forgotten his own name, yet quickly returned with a smile of his own. "Oh yes, that's what they used to call me. Gandalf the Grey. That was my name."

In a short silence that followed, Nesryn looked upon the sight of Wizard again, a smile not able to break the surface of her coldness beneath which it rested as Gandalf spoke again. "I am Gandalf the White, and I come back to you now at the turn of the tide."

The woman gave him a nod, happiness she rarely felt brewing inside of her, yet none did she show in the end. "It is...good you have returned." The Wizard gave Nesryn a smile in return, carefully stepping away from the clearing littered in fallen branches and interwoven with higher trees that hid the sun, made it by far colder and darker, almost that it was by magic that the air and surrounding felt so close, heavy.

"Come we must walk." Gandalf said urgently, beaconed over the four still rather confused travellers that without any complaint or sudden stopping followed after gladly, much less did they ungracefully trip over the roots puncturing through the leafy ground as if the unexpected return had given them some well needed hope not in all the danger they would soon face, would they be alone.

Silence was amongst them, each of the four hunters as if in thought of the Wizard and what massage would they soon receive, which broken by Gandalf himself, pulled them away. "One stage of your journey is over. Another begins. War has come to Rohan. We must ride to Edoras at full speed." The Wizard explained quickly.