n the last years of the realm of Rhudaur one of its lords built a small, hidden stronghold in the northern part of the Misty Mountains, in a distant area known as Emyn Hithui, the Misty Hills. There he fled with his family, his servants and a contingent of soldiers, to escape the rule of the evil lord of the Hillmen who had taken the realm. Centuries passed, and though Rhudaur had fallen and its people were roaming Eriador homeless, the hidden community of Bar Dholen prospered. After five hundred years the orcs of the Misty Mountains started multiplying, making life in the North ever more perilous. Still Bar Dholen, the Hidden Home, lived on, though its population had diminished. Their best and strongest wandered across the North as Rangers, while the elderly and those less well equipped to fight dwelled safely in the hidden stronghold with a handful of children. Bar Dholen was ever kept a secret, even from most of their own kind, but as the years went by a few of the wandering Dúnedain came to dwell with them, adding new blood to the isolated community.

woman named Edhelvír was a child of such newcomers to Bar Dholen; descended through many generations from chieftain's daughter Aralin, who was the daughter of Arahael and the younger sister of Aranuir. Edhelvír was the midwife and healer of Bar Dholen, skilled in the lore of ages past as well as the lore of healing plants. When she was grown she wedded Bar Dholen Ranger Thoron, and shortly thereafter gave birth to a son. The boy was named Arandil in the hope that he would be as faithful to the rightful King of Gondor and Arnor as the renowned Elendil had been to the Eldar. He grew up brave and strong, and in his twelfth year, in the month of Girithron, he got a little sister, Daelin Thoroniel.

ittle Daelin had a safe childhood, growing up in the old, crumbling castle
of Bar Dholen with its memories of more glorious days gone by. As she grew older, she roamed the hills of Emyn Hithui and among the scattered trees that grew in the mountains, sometimes herding the goats belonging to the hidden community, sometimes just exploring. Summers brought lazy wanderings in sunlit glades and swims in the clear lake; winters brought playing in the sparkling snow and stories by the fireside. She had no age-mates, and as her brother and his friends had already started training to become Rangers by the time she was old enough to leave the cobblestone courtyard, she grew up rather solitary, which in fact seemed to fit her nature well.

few weeks after Daelin's tenth birthday, early in the new year when winter was still holding the mountains in an iron grip, orcs attacked Bar Dholen. The old stronghold was all but defenseless with most of the Rangers gone, and the inhabitants suspected that they had been betrayed. Thoron and Arandil were there, fighting to give the old and feeble and the children a chance to escape through a secret passage into the mountains. Edhelvír, though not a Ranger, chose to fight by her husband's side. This was the last time young Daelin saw her parents. When Arandil saw them off to close the opening of the passage, hiding it from the orcs who were certain to take Bar Dholen in the end, he handed his little sister his dagger, giving it the new name of Beriad, so that it might serve her as protection until he could be with her again. Then, hurriedly, he told the fleeing people to wait for him, hidden in the pine forest within hearing range of the exit of the tunnel.

hough frightened, Daelin heeded her brother, but could do nothing to make the others stay. They panicked and fled in different directions, believing that the farther from the orcs they got, the safer would they be. The long winter night went by and the girl hid in a cave, wrapped in her cloak and shivering. When morning came at last, she was called out into the light by her brother's whispering voice. Their parents were dead, their home of generations back was lost, and together they set out to track the scattered refugees. Choosing at first to track an elderly and senile woman who had fled with a newborn child, they arrived to find the couple beyond all help, frozen to death under the hanging branches of a tree. In the meantime the tracks of the others were covered by snow and Arandil and Daelin had to give up all hope of finding them. Now they had to see to their own survival.

During the spring, summer and autumn of that year Daelin lived on the road with her brother, sharing the hardships and dangers with him. The two siblings were joined in grief over their parents but did not speak much of it, their minds being occupied with surviving. Arandil was feeling guilt because he had failed to save the lives of his parents, and because later he had made the wrong decisions and failed to save the lives of the refugees as well. This left him in a dark and self-destructive mood. During that time Daelin was forced into a role of an equal; she had to fight for survival alongside her brother and act as emotional support as well. Thus her childhood ended rather abruptly.

randil soon realized that, leading the life that he did, he could not keep his little sister safe and give her anything resembling a normal upbringing. Though he loved her above everything else, he knew that he could not take the place of their parents, so he had to find a foster family for her. A couple of months before her eleventh birthday she came to live with Zabathan and Inzil, a farmer couple living in the northern part of Gondor. Though not wealthy, at least they could afford to take in an orphaned girl. The couple already had two children: nine-year-old boy Târik and seven-year-old girl Zimra. Inzil was also pregnant with their third child, a girl who got the name Zâira. At the farm Daelin was put in the role of an older sister to the two girls, and something of a rival to the boy. All of a sudden he no longer was the eldest sibling and the one who knew the most. He resented this instead of taking the opportunity to learn, and adding to his resentment was the fact that he knew she was of Dúnedain blood and " nobler" than him.

he parents did not treat her very differently from the others, except they did not treat her as a child because she was no longer one when she came to them. Maybe it would have been better for her emotional development if she had been allowed to be a child for a few more years, but they did not encourage that because they preferred her as a young woman who took her share of the responsibility. She never called them "mother" and " father", but she was very close to the girls, especially Zâira, and she did refer to them as her sisters. She knew she was an extra mouth to feed and she always tried her hardest not to be a burden. During this period she was reasonably safe and comfortable, at least in the material sense. However, she felt she did not belong; that she was meant to be something else and something more, but at the same time she felt guilty for feeling "superior" since they were supporting her even though she was not theirs. The distance was felt, and maintained, from both sides.

or five years Arandil visited his sister several times a year to continue teaching her hunting, woodslore, survival and self-defense, to impart to her some of his Ranger training, knowledge that she could not get from her foster family. Most of the time he was accompanied by the brothers Belegil and Moríl, his childhood best friends who had been away on a mission when Bar Dholen was attacked, and a strange woman who went by the name of Khelek. Together they went on hunting expeditions, sometimes staying away for days, always bringing back meat and other bounty from the forest. Though there was still a shadow of grief over Arandil, he had started accepting that he had not been "useless", only human, and was more at peace with himself. He and his friends were riding on missions and fighting and he felt he could now make up for his failures before. Their visits became the bright spots in Daelin's daily drudgery, but she knew she could not leave with them, at least not yet.

hen Daelin was seventeen years of age, her brother and his friends had not come by for a whole year, and she had heard no word of their whereabouts. She was getting concerned for his safety. Then one day Moríl and Khelek arrived, bearing bad news. Arandil had gone away on a secret undercover mission to Harad, but they had heard nothing from him in over six months, and now they were riding south to try to find him. Belegil had been killed in battle a few days earlier, and they now brought his horse, a young dapple-grey gelding named Faerhúl, for Daelin too keep.

he asked to be allowed to go with them, concerned as she was about her brother, but was told that the journey would be too dangerous for her since she was no trained fighter, and that there would be nothing she could do. Feeling slighted and treated like a child, she saddled Faerhúl and packed her gear for a long journey, leaving a note for her foster parents on the kitchen table. She tracked her brother's companions for days, but was finally found out and forced to return home. At first she was angry and felt that they had treated her unjustly, but then she realized that they were right: she was too young and untrained for such a perilous mission, and she would have been a burden and perhaps even a danger to them. When this occurred to her she felt ashamed of acting so childishly, trying to manipulate them into taking her even though they had already firmly declined her. In a dark mood of self-loathing she stormed off into the night on her horse, the animal's grief and confusion at having lost its former master echoing her own state of mind, and they tore through the wilderness until she fell off his back from sheer exhaustion. When she awoke in the morning, sore from her fall and an uncomfortable night spent among the roots on the forest floor, Faerhúl was still there, waiting for her.

fter this Daelin felt she could not return to the farm and her foster family. Doing that would be admitting defeat; admitting that she was not good enough to ride with the Rangers, and Târik would mock her misguided pride. She had tried and failed to be something better than she was, and now there was nothing left for her to be. Perhaps, she thought afterwards, this
was a childish thing to do as well, but at that moment she saw no other option. She knew she could take care of herself if she made sure to steer clear of trouble, and she knew she wanted something else than the dull, unfulfilling life of a farmer's wife.

or ten years she roamed the North on the back of her faithful Faerhúl, sometimes riding with the Rangers and aiding them in their missions. She carried messages, tracked down lost people, guarded refugees and helped the poor and defenseless as best she could, but she never became a true Ranger, rarely took part in battle, and found no home to dwell. She gained and she lost, in the end coming away with little but the things she had learned. She would never settle down, always seeming to be searching for something, though none could guess what it was. Nor did she know it herself. For her restless nature she was given the name of Faereniol, Wandering Spirit.

hen rumour reached her that the villages close to her foster family's farm had been subjected to several raids of wandering bands of rogue Easterlings. The main force of the Rangers was away on other business in the tumultuous days after the War of the Ring, and alone she rode back to what was once her home to lend what aid ten years' worth of experience would allow her. Many things had changed during the time she had been away. Her foster father had gotten his legs crushed under a falling tree, and was now a bitter and crippled man. Zimra had married a farmer living south of the Ered Nimrais and was doing rather well, though far away, while Târik, now supposed to be the supporter of the family, was spending more time at the local pub than on the fields of the farm. Zâira, the youngest, was away visiting relatives living close to the border of Rohan. Daelin was grudgingly welcomed by her foster family.

he stayed to aid the village in driving the raiders away and restore peace, and she left Faerhúl with them in place of their old horse, which had died, but found there was not much more she could do to aid them. In the years she had been away they had grown to become strangers, stuck in their narrow-minded villager mentality and resenting the fact that she had not stayed in her "woman's place". The only thing she could have done would have been to stay on the farm, ploughing the fields, slowly growing into an old spinster who was fit neither to be a woman after their fashion, nor a man; always being the stranger who did not belong. In a way she had proved herself to them, but not in a way they could ever appreciate, and for this she would in their eyes only be less than she was when she first left them. The circle was closed; she had now paid them back with the lives of the whole village for taking her in and giving her shelter as a child. Though she still felt a nagging guilt that claimed she could have done more, she again, as ten years previously, packed up her things and left.

fter seeing what had become of her foster family, she decided to finally move to Minas Tirith and see what future in the city would hold for her. For years she had longed to visit the magnificent White City, the capital of the newly restored Reunited Kingdom, to learn from its noble history and marvel at its wonders. Ever since losing her first home of Bar Dholen, she had dreamed of finding there whatever she was searching for to fulfill her life. And now, finally, in her late twenties, she has taken the first steps towards realizing that dream.

eing raised by farmers and spending most of her adult life in the wilderness, Daelin is somewhat intimidated by crowds and city life and nobility, and she is also a bit introverted by nature, but she is fascinated by the bustling life of civilization and ready to try anything new. For years she has saved up what money she could, to be able to move to Minas Tirith and find her future there. Realizing that it was harder than she first expected, finding her place and making her own niche in the competition, especially for a woman not cut out to be a Ranger, she has now managed to get a job as a waitress at an obscure inn situated in a back alley of the First Circle. However, she is not planning to work there for the rest of her life. She is a woman of strong feelings, usually quiet and often serious, but she can also show an almost childish playfulness and curiosity, perhaps compensating for the abrupt ending of her childhood.

er hair is dark, straight and reaches down to the middle of her back and though always clean, it tends to look somewhat unkempt, no matter how often she combs it. Her eyes are blue-grey and her Dúnedain heritage is evident in her features, though she is shorter than what is common for her people and she looks several years younger than she really is. She is slender but reasonably fit.

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