Conversations with a Ranger

I sat down next to Anarion, who was sitting next to the fire, ignoring Vila in a quite unsisterly fashion as I did so. “Thank you for rescuing me,” I said shyly, looking up at him through my eyelashes. He smiled at me. “It was my pleasure,” he assured me.After a brief pause, while I tried to think of something intelligent to say, to make up for acting so childish earlier, he said, “Have we met before? You look familiar.”I told him who I was, and he instantly burst out laughing. “I remember now,” he gasped out, while I stared, puzzled, at him. “We met, years ago. You found riding my horse quite exhilarating.” I remembered now, and my face turned bright red. Oh well, so much for acting dignified and intelligent.“I assure you, my skill with horses has improved since then,” I said quickly, still blushing. I could not imagine why I had not recognized him before, but it had been years. He was older now, and I realized he was quite handsome, something I had been to young to appreciate before. He had come to Minas Tirith for some reason, which I could not remember, and I had seen him from a distance riding his horse. It was the horse I had paid most attention to, not him, a striking bay stallion with a blaze running down its forehead, and beautiful, smooth gaits. From the instant I had seen the stallion, I had wanted to ride him, and all it took was Vila daring me to play an unspecified prank on the ranger for me to fulfill my wish. (She left it up to my imagination.) My plan was this. Vila, being the older, would follow him without him seeing, and if he showed any wish to check on his horse, she would show herself, and distract him. (By which, I knew she meant to flirt with him. Quite shocking! )In the meantime, I would steal his horse, and take it out for a ride.We carried out our plan, and at first, it seemed to be going perfectly. No one who saw me with the ranger’s horse thought I was doing something I should not have been—fortunately, no one who would have known what I was up to instantly saw me—and so the first part of my plan was successful.It was only when I had “escaped” safely with the horse, and tried to ride it at anything faster then a walk that I begin to have problems. For one thing, I knew very little about horses, and therefore, once I asked the horse to go faster, he broke into a wild gallop. That was, at first, exciting and exhilarating, but then, when I had no idea how to slow him down, my idea suddenly seemed not so good.Meanwhile, as Vila later told me, her part had so far been successful, until our mother saw her flirting with a ranger, and, shocked, dragged her away. Then the ranger remembered what he had been going to do, and found his horse gone, and some fool told him that a young elf-maiden had been lingering around the horse’s stall (I had been waiting for him to leave, actually, and petting the horse) and told him who I was. He went to see our mother, who, knowing me very well, told him where I most likely would have gone, and went to find Vila to see what part she had in this infamous deed. Vila, however, had most fortunately climbed out a window and gone to warn me, so she was not found. The ranger, however, had hurriedly followed my mother’s advice, and arrived just in time to witness his horse stopping dead in his tracks at the sigh of his master, and rearing. Quite stunned at the sudden sight of the ranger, who had arrived ahead of Vila, I lost my balance and fell off, to my embarrassment.And, to complete my humiliation, he laughed.Like he was doing right now. Vila looked quite annoyed. “I was about to tell you that I recognized him,” she told me crossly, glaring at me. I blushed harder, wishing I could sink straight into the ground, or fall into a well like Elena. Well, not a well, because then I would have to be rescued again. But if I sunk into the ground, would they try to rescue me? Most likely.Anarion, noticing my extreme embarrassment, checked his laughter.“If you wish to ride my horse again, please inform me first,” he said gravely, with a hint of laughter in his voice, and I laughed, rather relieved that he was not angry at me.“I will,” I answered, the color of my face subsiding to a more usual color.