[Undómë]

Bregoware

Meghan

In the end it was Meghan who took the last watch ‘til morning. It was not an unfamiliar thing for her to do, for often in the summer when her goats pastured far from home, it was she and her dog who shared the watches. She’d brought her small skin of water and her worn leather case with its cherrywood pipe her brother had carved for her, and the sweet pipeweed that came from far off Bree.

She sat a little ways away from the banked fire and the bodies in their blankets. She could hear Rædwald’s soft snore and she chuckled to herself. They often shared pastures for their small herds, and he would swear up and down he did not snore though she teased him good-naturedly about it often. Some of her present companions slept like logs, barely moving, and some, she noted tossed and turned as if demons from the dark forests of the north pursued them in their dreams. And perhaps they did . . . who could know, save the dreamer . . .

It grew colder as the night waned and she was glad she’d brought her brother's woolen socks and his thick wool breeches to wear. The layers of clothes hid her slender body, and about them all she’d draped a heavy wool cloak. She looked much like a small woolen mountain when she was sitting on the ground, a volcano of sorts, with her little pipe lit and the pipeweed tamped in it giving off a bright orange glow. Her herding pole lay at her side; her bow and arrows near to hand.

Outside the snores and rustling blankets, there was only the occasional soft scurrying of some small animal making its way across the frosty ground to break the night’s natural silence. And so to keep herself awake, she would rise from her sitting position and stamp her feet a bit to bring back the warmth to them and walk about a bit.

She was just thinking of resuming her seat after one such walk-about when her eye caught a hulking figure back lit by the fire’s little glow coming toward her. Her eyes darted to the quilt wrapped figures about the fire, naming each of them. There was one place where the blankets were empty.

‘Sythric! Is that you?’ she called out softly as the tall man approached. Her thick wooden pole she grasped firmly in her hand, as she always did when on guard with her goats. ‘Come closer, man,’ she said, the starlight now making his features more recognizable. ‘Was it you I saw having the bad dream? You tossed and turned like a leaf on a rushing stream. Come sit and talk and smoke a while with me. I’ll have to admit I’m tired and it would be good to hear the sound of another voice to keep me from dropping off.’