Chapter 4: The Convening at Aelindrath's Eastern Gate

From the journal of Frodo Greyfoot, GF-7742, entries of the eighteenth through twentieth of Afteryule, as recovered from the Aelindrath Archive's eastern annex. The first entry is written in the careful, slightly pressured hand of a young man transcribing while the impression is fresh; the hand of the second entry is identical but slower, as though the writer paused frequently between words; the third entry is not slow but is written in a size incrementally smaller than any preceding entry in the volume, as if the writer were, with each line, unconsciously reducing the space he occupied on the page.

—

Eighteenth of Afteryule. We came to Aelindrath in the hour before the light changed — that interval of the day that in the Mirelands I have always found difficult, when the sky holds a color I have no adequate word for, not grey and not pale but something without precedent in the morning's earlier register, as though the day were drawing a long breath it has not yet decided whether to release. The road had been climbing for two days through hill country that Arathas navigated with a quiet, northward-leaning attention I have learned not to interrupt, and then we came over a rise of pale limestone and Aelindrath was below us, and I stopped walking without deciding to.