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Farael seemed to be agitated, mainly just trying a smile, patting Rían back to his arm. There clearly was something wrong here, but Rían didn’t want to go on pressing the matter further. A man in trouble trying to help another. That would certainly only lead to more trouble... Farael excused himself politely and turned to go. “Take care of yourself, my friend!” Rían called him. Farael nodded.
Rían turned to the desk and ordered two pints of the famous local brew called Qwuinnesh. It was creamy and almost black, and the pouring of it to the pints took a while. Just a good time have some thoughts arranged.
Now that he came to think of it from this perspective, there clearly was something in his childhood that just didn’t sit right. After they had been driven from their home in Mirkwood by the Owl’s eye and his companions, they had lived for a while up north, near the river. He had been too small then to have any clear memories, not to talk of understanding. For instance: who were they living there with? All he remembered, were the shabby conditions, and the old teethless man who smelled terrible and grinned very unamiably. He had feared that man almost as much as he feared the Owl’s eye. He remembered the old man now, pretty vividly. If he were to enter from the door right now, Rían would panic immediately.
Then they had been forced to leave that place too. He didn’t exactly know why. His father had really never given an account on that. But that had been the beginning of their wandering life. They were on the move constantly. As Rían looked at that part of his childhood from this perspective, it seemed, as they were some runaways: always avoiding public places at normal hours, coming in and getting out of towns during the night. And what about the people they lived with those couple of days at the time – or the meetings with all kinds of strangers! That was the time Rían learned to be invisible. He was not wanted anywhere, but his father still carried him with. He was totally ignored by others – and even by his father, when there were heated discussions. He learned to help that ignorance by ceasing to exist for times. That was also the time, he noted, that he wasn’t just one, but that there were a few of him indeed. They had talked about his ability to vanish from the world with his father sometimes at the later years, and he had been quite proud of his boy. But of the second matter he had never talked him about. He hadn’t talked about that to anyone.
Rían got the pints and paid for them. Then he got towards their table. Grimhorn seemed to be deep in his thoughts, puffing the pipe occasionally. How many things there are that I should remember? How much have I forgotten during my adult years as a performer in the southern lands? At least for now, some things from this childhood had appeared to him, come back to him as all that nightmarish stuff and those odd circumstances. It was frightful.
He came to the table and passed the other pint over to Grimhorn. Then he sat down. He raised the pint in the air, as to propose a toast. As Grimhorn reached out for his, Rían said in a low voice, so that just Grimhorn could hear it: “To the memories, even if they are quite painful at times.”
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