[Elora]

Naiore, should she have wished it, could have easily set her hands upon her daughter by now. She watched Vanwe sit up and scan behind her tree belatedly. How the girl had ever managed to elude the village and get this far north in one piece was remarkable. Her lips twitched in a smile that faded a little as the brilliance of her daughter's eyes caught sunlight before she turned her face away. She remembered Vanwe's eyes from her birth, the same as her fathers, yet it had not prepared her for the striking similarity all these years later.

How the fools in the South mistook her for her daughter on that basis alone brought a derisive expression to Naiore's face as she settled in to wait for her bait to draw the other out. Still, few survived to explain details such as eye colour, and those that did usually were intent on escape and not getting a closer look. As Vanwe settled back against her tree, buckets lying empty nearby on the grass, Naiore watched for the man.

Kaldir had been both unremarkable and unique, she recalled. A Man and prone as most Men to particular interrogation methods. Still, he had proved resilient, and admist the pain that soaked his every thought and sensation at the time, through the acrid smoke that sometimes brought that pain, Naiore sensed something deeper and darker. It was then that she realised that so much more could be achieved if he lived.

His rage would make him a powerful tool, though he would not know he served. A fallen Ranger, one of Numenor's descendants who found his own dark path once she showed him where and how to look for it. He cursed her, wished her dead, but all the while she was teaching him. It was more than amusing that he had become so effective at spreading the darkness that she served with his now cruel ways, aimed that once he once served and protected. Such corruption of what once had been so strong, into something more fearsome and powerful than those blinded by their shallow facades of "good" and "right" could ever fathom, until it dealt them their ends.

Years spent in hiding, a fugitive hunted after the War, devoid of the power she once had through Sauron, had probed difficult for Naiore. So, she sat savouring her work in Kaldir, waiting for him to draw closer in hunt of Vanwe. Such rewards had been hard to come by of late. Perhaps she would teach Kaldir more, scream and bellow as he would. Certainly Vanwe would be dealt with, and then the village that had failed to hold her.

Then, perhaps she could start on other Rangers, and her own kin. Let the hunters become the prey. She could wait a long time in this northern backwater for that delight. Vanwe, who had nearly startled herself out her wits when an afternoon shadow moved at the edges of her vision, tried to smooth her breathing. She closed her eyes against half glimpsed imaginary shadows, breathing deeply and hands relaxing by her side as the leaves swayed over her head. As she fell further into dozing, a thought winnowed through her awareness like a small silver fish in the shallows. Silvanis said he would be back, but where had he gone and when would he return? And, where was Benia? She had not seen her all day. And when would Amandur grow impatience with her answers to his questions and press harder? They always did, until you told them.

Stand, do not flee came the drowsy reminder. Lulled by the peace of the afternoon, the breeze in the trees, Vanwe drifted in a fog of sleep.