"I care not what they think. Perhaps this new mystery will keep them here for a time, at peace for just a little longer. The winter wears to a close, and soon the mountain passes will be open again, and the hunt will start anew." He sighs, then shakes off the gloom that tries to gather over his mood. "But that is not a tale for now. For now..."

He gets no further, as a snowball launched from the treetops strikes him full in the face.
"You come late, pen valthen!" A merry voice calls. "My brother and I waited for you in vain! Is this fair maid the cause, perhaps? You have been hiding secrets from us, Glorfindel, for shame!" The elf the voice belongs to is lithe and dark-haired, his smoky grey eyes laughing as he sprawls along one of the slender upper branches of the oak he had been hiding in.