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Éomeléo woke up and immediately realised that Valesseka was gone. She was clearly an early starter. Getting slightly worried, the Gondorian assembled a hasty breakfast and started to jog northwards. If he was going to sleep more than any of the other adventurers (and this was practically a given) then he would need to travel faster than them by day.
It was a pleasant country to run in. Vast plains adorned with all sorts of undergrowth. Éomeléo knew that there were mountains in his future and knew that he would have to get there posthaste to stand a chance in this hunt.
The day passed, and Éomeléo was doing fine, but in the afternoon, the further north he went, the conditions changed. Grey clouds formed and the wind picked up. Pretty soon it was whipping poor Éomeléo like an abused dog and he whimpered pitifully as he jogged. He then slowed down and marched.
He was perked up by a previously unimaginable instance of horror: the wind had stolen his feathered hat, and was carting it off into the distance! Yelping in despair, Éomeléo burst into life and gave chase. The wind was always that little bit faster than him, though. Every time he got near to his hat, the gales cruelly snatched it back. Realising that the Lords of Weather were privy to the workings of harsh twists of fate, Éomeléo attempted to formulate a plan as he ran. At first he thought of shooting the hat with his crossbow, but it is fact that the young Gondorian is not the best shot even in good conditions, and so the success of this method was far from guaranteed.
For about 10 minutes of chasing the hat, Éomeléo could think of no better idea. It was then that he noticed he had entered a particularly busy section of undergrowth. Sensing the presence of numerous animals, Éomeléo paused. Just like that, the hat seemed to pause too. He picked up a small stone and threw it into a very large bush to his left. All this accomplished was to send a single rabbit scuttling away out of sight. There was another way, though; it was something that Éomeléo had often done as a child in the gardens of Gondor. He would enchant them with the music of his ocarina. He had always believed it worked by magic and his parents had never discouraged this belief.
So he played. He played for about a minute, and he even began to think the hat itself could be charmed back, for it seemed to dance about, and move closer to him. Soon enough, the music attracted the presence of several animals. There were rabbits and ground-birds, and a couple of very large hares. One rabbit spied the brightly-coloured hat, and shyly moved towards it. Pretty soon, the hares spotted this, and bounded onto the scene, scaring the rabbit away and catching the hat. They jumped onto the top, crushing it slightly, and then Éomeléo made his move. Silently adjusting his crossbow, he calmly shot the hare, piercing both animal and now-motionless hat.
The animals scarpered, and Éomeléo finally retrieved his hat. Ignoring the suggestion that the hat had been caught in a new swirling wind in the slight dip of the land, Éomeléo praised his magic ocarina, and set about finding some water to wash the hare's blood from his hat.
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