[littlemanpoet]

While the others saw to the needs of Mellonin, or whomever she now was, Ædegard went over to Leafa. Jorje joined them, pushing his head under Ædegard's good hand, who scratched the dog's ears absently.

"I can't imagine it, Leafa," he said. "Raefindan? It makes no sense. He wouldn't kill Aeron. There must be some mistake."

"Might Aeron have provoked him?" she asked, shaking her head to counter her own suggestion.

Ædegard smiled in spite of himself. "Not since his sister's death. He was mischievous, I am told, before that, but was greatly subdued afterward. Her death changed him. It is almost as if he perhaps welcomed it." But that did not sit well either. "Nay, I cannot believe that our friends lie. But if Raefindan did this deed, he cannot have been in his right mind."

Liornung stood nearby. "Did you hear your last words, Ædegard? Perhaps he was not in his right mind. Did not Tharonwë work such mischief before?"

"Yes, but then how is it that these three think nothing of that?"

"I do not know," Liornung replied

"Maybe," Leafa tentatively offered, "we should ask them?"

"If," Liornung ventured, "Tharonwë did something to their thinking, would they even know?"

Ædegard held his head between his hand and stump and shook his head violently, overcome with the complexity of such thinking. "I say we start off as soon as we may and catch them up, and see Raefindan for ourselves."

"'Tis a fair plan," Liornung said lightly. "And I feel inspired to sing, even in this cold wasteland. My fiddle cannot be kept tuned, so you must bear my voice unmatched by my fiddle."

With that he started singing a song of heat and sun and grass and fields of grain ripening ot harvest.