[Lasbelinion]

His mind drifted to that odd space between waking and dreams. The herbal mixture he’d drunk down had eased the pain in his limb and face. But with the easing came also a haziness to his thoughts, bringing half dreams that lingered just on the edge of real.

Who has done this to you, little one?

Little one . . .

Was that the voice of his mother? He moaned, knowing that it could not be so. She was wrenched from him long ago.

Lithmîrë stifled another moan as he fought his way back to wakefulness. He sat up with a start, forcing his eyes to focus on the area about him. Ready to lash out at any who had drawn near him.

No one. At a distance was the odd tableau gathered about the nosy Elf who had pried into his thoughts. Some trouble had come upon her, it seemed, and an eddy of concern now swirled about her. He shuddered at the thought of all that emotion besieging him were he her.

But he was not.

He stood, dusting himself off as best he could, where a few fallen leaves clung to his cloak. Who had spoken to him? he wondered again. There was no one near he saw turning his gaze about the yard.

A ways away from his eyes caught the neatly laid out rows of a garden. No, two gardens, he could see, narrowing his eyes. One with the first push of spring vegetables; the other more of a jumble of varying plants laid out amid rocks and small paths. Herbs! Perhaps the one in whose garden they were would let him poke about in it and pay for what little he needed to get him to the Havens.

Lithmîrë pulled his cloak closer about him. A moment of light-headedness assailed him and he reached out a hand to steady himself against the trunk of the tree beneath which he’d been resting. The feeling passed as quickly as it had come. He withdrew his hand from the tree’s support; without thinking he murmured some small words of thanks.