[Marileangorifurnimaluim]

**** Harad/Umbar - in Nurn ****

The message arrived in the middle of the night, the knock at the farmhouse door waking the entire family. "Go back to bed!" The father spoke gently, but there was tightness and urgency in his voice that kept his three children up, listening to the visitor's voice. But the visitor whispered, and they could hear nothing but their father's final reply.

"Yes. Of course! I support you absolutely. There is not much I can do, I am a poor man, but he can stay in the cellar."

So someone was going to live in the cellar with the roots and the onions? Who would want to do that? The door closed and they dove under the covers, pretending to be asleep. Their father poked his head in the room. "Go to sleep now, there's nothing to worry about." He always knew. Their mother stood in the hallway in her nightgown, holding the candle. She looked worried, but if she said anything it wasn't in front of the children.

Several days passed, and no one came to live in the house or the cellar. Life was as normal as it had been since the coming of the men with the shiney black uniforms, and all the orcs. You had to be respectful of the black uniforms, and even the orcs, even though orcs smelled bad and were nasty. The orcs were gone now, and you weren't supposed to mention the Red Eye anymore. Before it was 'the Red Eye this' and 'the Red Eye that' about everything. But the black uniforms were still in charge. They didn't need the Red Eye anymore, and the children wondered if the black uniforms had made the Red Eye up just so they could boss people around.

The children played their games, one of them pretending to be the slavemaster, capturing the others. The 'captured' two had to work in the fields until they dropped from lack of food and decided to run away. They pretended to run away to their father, or Al-karech who used to be the mayor before the black uniforms came. Then they joined Gramil's trade caravan and went to the land in the sun, far south. He could only take so many, but they pretended they were among the lucky few. That was the usual game. Their mother didn't like it, so they played it out of earshot.

Then the soldiers came. The kids had been taught to hide whenever soldiers came, especially if their blades were drawn, so they opened the window and then dove under the bed. The window had to be open. If things got very dangerous, they were to go out the window and run into the woods, else they might be taken away as slaves. They had done that many times over the last few years.

Fortunately this time they didn't have to sit in wet leaves, shivering, waiting for their parents to come and get them. These soldiers their father let in, quickly closing the door. The soldiers were looking all around, scared, knives and swords drawn, protecting someone in the middle. They were dirty, and some had blood on them. And on their swords.

Their mother made a big pot of soup even though it was late at night. The soldiers ate it like wolves, talking anxiously, though it was was hard to understand what was going on. But they were really nice, thanking their mother a lot for the soup and for letting them come. Soldiers weren't usually like that. Usually they came and took what they wanted, and broke things.

Their youngest sister dropped a spoon on the floor and they all jumped up, one had his sword out in a flash, so fast. The man who was in the middle told them to sit down, but their little sister started crying anyways she was so scared. Their mother picked her up, and the man in the middle got up, talked softly to little sis, and made his glove into a dancing puppet. She buried her face into her mother's shoulder away from him, but she did stop crying.

As the sky started to lighten to a pre-dawn grey the soldiers left, thanking their mother and father as though soup in the middle of the night had saved their lives.

But the man in the middle stayed. Their mother put a bed in the cellar. She even used their best linen. His name, they learned, was Al-Gareth.

[ October 06, 2002: Message edited by: Marileangorifurnimaluim ]