3 Lothron (May), Third Age 2552
The forest was never silent—not truly. Even in stillness, it breathed, whispered, and stirred with countless voices that most would never notice. It was during one of my earliest seasons under Radagast’s tutelage that I learned to truly listen. Not simply with ears, but with intent.
We had ventured beyond the garden at Rhosgobel that morning, following a faint path skirting the banks of a clear stream flanked by alder and willow. Radagast, as usual, was already speaking softly to a squirrel perched atop his staff, as though the creature’s rapid chattering was perfectly legible.
“You do not listen to what they say,” he told me as we paused near a grove thick with ivy and moss. “You listen to how they say it. That is where the truth is.”
He pointed upward, and I followed his gaze. A chorus of wrens darted in and out of a bramble nest. Their song seemed cheerful at first, light and rapid—but something about their rhythm was irregular. Nervous.
“Watch their flight,” Radagast said. “They are not foraging. They are warning.”
Moments later, the underbrush quivered and a fox burst forth, startled by our presence. The birds’ tension had been no less articulate than words.
Over the next few weeks, I learned to read more than just the calls and songs. I studied posture, movement, stillness. When the sparrows fell silent all at once, it meant something had entered their realm. When a jay screeched from a high perch but didn’t fly, it meant defiance—or protection.
Radagast never corrected me with harshness. Only with stories. Sometimes they were about past apprentices; sometimes they were about birds themselves. He treated every creature as kin. He asked nothing of them he wouldn’t give himself.
In time, I too began to sense the meaning behind the music. I understood the difference between contentment and alarm in a robin’s warble, the sharp edge of warning in a blackbird’s cry. These sounds would later save me in the darkened woods of Mirkwood, guide me near the cliffs of Enedwaith, and lead me to safety more times than I can count.
This lesson was not grand. It was not magic in the fiery sense. But it shaped the way I walk through the world. I owe much to Radagast, not least the ears to hear what so many overlook.
And even now, when I walk among trees and the forest murmurs around me, I find myself smiling. For I know I am never truly alone.