23. Palantír: Mentors

He remembers Glofindel as he taught him to fight with a sword in Rivendell.

"To learn how to use a sword, one must first master when to use a sword," he told him often.

"Who taught you to use it?" he asked him once.

The golden-haired warrior laughed at that. "I had a lot of time to figure it out myself. I was not a warrior in Aman, but I had to become one in Middle-earth. Me and Ecthelion often sparred together, and gradually we became the best warriors of Gondolin. But you don't have that much time, youngling, so listen to me carefully!"

He just learnt his name. Aragorn. He was not Estel anymore, he was Aragorn. He was not a son of an unknown Dúnadan, but of Arathorn, son of Arador. He was the son of the Dúnedain Chieftain, the direct descendant of Aranarth, who was the first Chieftain after the Northern kingdom was lost to Angmar, a heir of kings. He shook his head in disbelief.

"Are you… earnest?" he asked Elrond first, for he found it hard to believe his words.

But there was pure sincerity in Elrond's eyes as he watched the young man before him, not a child anymore.

The memory of Gilraen, his mother, comes forth, but it is not him who evokes it. Sauron finds it in his mind, and the memory shows only grief and pain: "Onen i-Estel Edain, ú-chebin estel anim".

'I gave Hope to the Dúnedain, I have kept no hope for myself.'" A flower dying, wilting without hope like without water. The time has taken away her youth, her love, her hope. She never saw her son bear the crown. She will never know of the kingdom. In the ice of winter, she never lived to see the spring…

No... not this memory! Quickly away from it, before Sauron can use it...