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The mood as they returned to The Sea-Spirit was somber. The crew who had remained on the vessel rejoiced at first that the search party had been brought safely back to the ship. But word soon spread among the Elves and Lossoth that lives had been lost. The entrance to the cavern had been blocked. An unfortunate landslide it was said.
Carandû and his brother had retired to their cabin once all had been brought aboard. Galhardir and Rodhal had gone to the galley for something to eat and to talk with the other Lossoth. Carandû had pulled the small fossil he’d found in the cave from his pouch and laid it carefully on the boy’s bunk.
‘Small comfort, brother,’ said Annû, taking his quiver of arrows off the peg by his bed. ‘Small comfort for one who has lost a kinsman.’ He took the small whetstone from his pack and began sharpening the edges of the arrow heads. Carandû sighed heavily, and sat down wearily on his own bunk. ‘I heard what Rôg said when he returned from trying to get out to find aid,’ Annû continued, bent over his work. ‘You remember – the two vague figures who scurried away.’
‘Hardly a definitive sighting,’ said Carandû. ‘He saw them as a bat, didn’t he? Which means, really, that he couldn’t see anything clearly, if at all.’ He scratched his head absent-mindedly as he watched his brother hone the arrowheads carefully, one after the next. ‘Still, don’t you find it odd that there was a “landslide” – and yet we felt no tremors in the caverns.’
Annû’s grey eyes met those of his brother. ‘I do indeed find it odd. And I wonder if those rocks had a little “help” in finding their way to the area in front of the cavern’s entrance.’ Carandû pulled out his sword from beneath his bunk and unsheathed it with a practiced hand. He turned it this way and that, sighting down the sharp edge of the blade, as he held it to the light. He fished about in his own pack for his whetstone and began to run it down each side of the edge.
Silence filled the small room, save for the swish-swish as the arrow heads and sword edge grew sharp. Old habits are not easily put aside. The practice of making ready ones’ weapons against the threat of attack had been ingrained in the two Elves those many years they had served as warriors in Imladris. Their hands recalled the familiar disciplined movements as their minds began to consider the possibilities of how the deaths of their two search companions might have come about.
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