((When last we left Guradan, he had just been bandaged up and splinted after being attacked by orcs outside Ost Guruth.  The event left him angrier than usual, but surprisingly - for him - a little thoughtful.))

“Your bandages need changing.”  The healer’s assistant looked like she had been crying again, but her voice was steady.  The woman did not have a pleasant voice, nor name, nor aspect.  Raima?  It meant nothing as a name.  She looked half-starved, her skin stretched far too tightly over what was once probably a robust frame.  Sallow-skinned, sunken-eyed.  There were too many like her here.  Too many hungry.  He managed to nod at the woman, and she bent to work.

The next hour was a painful blur.  The woman Raima did not handle him gently, but he smelled no infection when she unwrapped his wounds, and that was good enough.  At home, his stepmother would have sent for a healer from the Halls, would have remained by his side day and night so she could give word to his father when his fever broke.  Here, he had a rough, ugly, crying woman, and he counted himself fortunate for it.

He kept watching the woman as she once again twisted a rough cloth in water to rid it of dried blood.  One of the cuts across his chest had split when he’d dreamed of battle, thanks to the healer’s poor stitchery.  Raima had restitched it, slow and careful, the work even enough that he knew she was used to sewing cloth, if not Men.  “What happened to you?” he heard himself ask, his own voice raspy from thirst.

She did not answer for a long moment, not until she’d rinsed the cloth as well as the murky water allowed and once again swabbed the newly sewn wound.  “Someone died,” she finally answered.

Someone is always dying, he almost said, suddenly furious at the woman for thinking death to be such a rarity.  Did the skies darken to the east in this land?  No.

His sister’s voice, cool as well-water, arose in his thoughts, faintly mocking.  Do you go home to a ruin, brother?  Do you ever hunger?  Do you dirty your hands to heal foreigners who will ride away and be glad to see you no more? It was an odd thing, this tone Suleth used in his thoughts.  She would not have spoken this way before.

Raima was talking again.  Guradan snapped his attention back to the exhausted woman.  “I wanted to wed,” she was saying, mournfully.  “I wanted to be his wife, for however long.”

Guradan forced a question to his lips, though he suddenly wished he’d never opened his mouth in the first place.  Who was he, to ask this woman to unburden herself?  He would ride away, and he would be glad to turn his back.  “He died before promises could be made?”

The woman shook her head as she sat back on her heels, her duties done.  “He told me he could make no promises.  That this is not a time for oath-making.”

He could not stop himself, he could not keep quiet.  This time, his father’s voice swam into his thoughts, and he let the man’s words cut through the cool night air.  “Oaths are all that bind men.”  Raima flinched as if struck, clutching the damp cloth in her fist.

“Then,” she said quietly, “I suppose we were not bound.”  She stood abruptly and left without another word, her leather shoes rasping on the pavestones.  Guradan hissed a curse and let his head fall back against the rough stone wall that supported him.

Out of my head, sister.  Out of my head, Father.  Begone all of you, and let me be. It was not an oath, but a whispered petition.  Let me just come home.

OOC:

Hiya!  Just wanted to give my Landroval friends a heads up - my rp kin, The Broken Cask, will be celebrating its anniversary with a shindig on Saturday, August 15th, from 8PM EST - midnight.  We’re located at 5 Long Street in Durrow in the Bree-land Homesteads, and all rp’ers (I’m looking at you, rp’ing members of the Scribes of Eriador!) are absolutely welcome!

See our forum post here, and if you have any questions, shoot my chars a tell or me a PM.  Thanks!

IC:

Desmira Bell put her hand to her hip and looked out over the freshly tidied tavern.  Perfect.  Swept floors, polished woodwork, fresh flowers.  The smell of baking bread wafted over from the kitchen, followed by other, more subtle scents.  The tarts for after supper.  The roasting vegetables.  People bustled in and out, staff and patrons both, and to each, she offered a smile and a few quick questions.  This, this was the satisfying bit.  The moments of calm before the night’s chaos.  The conversation with guests from lands she’d never see.  In a few moments, she’d tie an apron around her waist and begin filling pitchers with ale.  Tomorrow, she’d repeat every step, every duty.  One year.  Could it be?  She laughed, well-satisfied, and went about her business.

Dear Mother,

Eregion is all sadness and quiet, a still, beautiful land.  Grave.  All the buildings are ruins, all the trees gnarled together in clumps of holly and shadow.  Some of the trees…nay, you will not believe this, and so I will not say it.  But it is a haunting place, this land, and not just because it was here Eolhelm abandoned me.

He lingers here, in the air, in my thoughts.  Such bright hair, such a shy smile, such conviction - and that is still what tears me asunder, that he had such conviction about me.  And I, with my conviction about Gondor, about how my future will play out - am I any more committed than he turned out to be?  Am I any more able to predict the days to come?  Sometimes, I am staggered by my arrogance.

We sleep in a tall white tower tonight, some remnant of Elven vigilance.  I can see all of Eregion spread below me like an unrolled carpet, all dotted with red holly-groves and white ruined stone.  Rohan in the far distance.  Mountains like jagged teeth pushing up from the stony ground.  Cynewynne asked if it reminded Arion and I of Minas Tirith, and we both answered:  yes, much like.  Seeing so far, seeing so much, so small.  She said our words revealed much about Gondorians, and while she immediately slipped back into her and Arion’s constant banter, I will think upon her words.

Black and white, she said.  That is how we see the world.  I do not know that; I do not truly understand.  She mocked both Arion and I for our colourless garments, for our dark cloaks and silver armour, and while I found it amusing for the most part, and undeniable in its base truth, I wanted to bring her home with me in that moment.  She would see my mother’s rose-tinged wardrobe, and the heat of the forge my family has used for so long.  Fiery embers, sparks where hammer meets blade.  Worn leather aprons, brown and creased with age.  So much more than she sees, looking upon one valiant warrior and one small woman who would not dare take on either “valiant” or “warrior” or as a title.

But tonight, I should not think upon Gondor, when Eregion itself is laid out before me like a green and waving map.  It deserves my attention, even as fatigue takes me.

Your devoted daughter,
Suleth

Dear Arth,

Home again!  I’m finally home.  My mother and father and Borran and Ermenlinde and I all sat and talked and ate and it was like I was just a girl and I’d never left.  I wonder if it’s always like that, coming home.  I’m six years past twenty, and I still feel, when I’m around my father especially, like I’m still a tiny child.  Borran would say that’s because I am still a tiny child, but ha, he’s sleeping alone tonight, so he can say all he likes.

Mother and Father love Ermenlinde, just like I knew they would.  Everyone should love her.  She’s smart, and she’s pretty, and even my own brother says she’s a better healer than he is.  I think I’ll like having a sister very much.  I wonder if you have brothers or sisters, somewhere way back where eagles are, and you don’t even know.  That can be good or bad - can you understand that?  A brother knows you and a brother knows you.

Oh, before I forget!  Here’s my sketch of the Trestlespan, though it’s not terribly good.  All the lines are straight, but the trees look like big sticks, and I couldn’t get the town to look far away enough.  The gorge is much wider than I made it look!  Anyway!  Here’s the sketch, and hopefully you’ll like it.  Borran included another one, and of course it’s better.  Because it’s his.

((Consider the following screenshot a hastily, but carefully made sketch, with a few lines gone far wide.))

((The second sketch included is far more precise, though it lacks some of the exuberance of the first drawing.  It portrays the bridge from the far safer Trestlebridge side.))

Of course, I got in trouble with the guards for heading over to the Greenway side to sketch mine, while Borran sat under an awning on the safe side.  But you truly can’t get a good view of the bridge from the Trestlebridge side.

When I was a girl, I wanted to climb on top of the bridge.  I remember trying, and crawling halfway up the outside, and then I heard a scream that split the air.  It wasn’t my mother.  My mother would have crawled up on the thing herself to get me.  It was another lady, one I didn’t like, and I turned around and gave her the biggest grin I have ever given in my life.  I wasn’t afraid!  I didn’t care!  I was so happy.  And then Father came, and one stare turned my guts to mush, and I crawled back after the guards pried a board free and came for me.

So I think I understand a little bit about the eagles.  It must be beautiful to fly.

Norabel

((The letter Guradan sent home:))

Father,

I have been unexpectedly delayed in the lands east of Bree.  I make for Gondor with due haste, and will return as soon as I am able, my sister at my side.  Do not fear; I will keep to the task you have set me.

Guradan

____

((And the truth of the matter; or:  meanwhile, in Ost Guruth…))

Everything hurt.  Everything.  He’d been hurt before, of course.  Everyone had, in training or in skirmishes, not that he’d ever faced an organized foe.  Beasts.  Dark creatures who approached him on the road, or thought to make a meal of him at his camp at night.  He’d been swept off his horse, his shoulder run through; he’d come close, in fact, to having his head lopped off by a troll in some marshy ground southeast of Bree.

And yet.  He’d never had quite this array of injuries.  The orcs had managed to drag him off his horse; that was the first offense, and the one that caused the worst pain.  The sound of his thighbone snapping had been like the crack of dry wood split from a tree.  He didn’t scream, though he wondered idly about that later.  Why did it matter if an orc heard him shriek?  But he kept his teeth ground tight the entire time, and only the next day did his jaw ache as if it wanted to flee his skull.

The beating was an irritant next to the leg, and the hit to his left ear a minor thing.  The world finally stopped ringing after two days, and now, after a week, he could face his healer - ha, healer - without tilting the right side of his head toward her.  Guradan wished he’d had the foresight to pack Suleth’s healer along with his provisions; maybe the Mirkwood woman would have been able to knit bones together correctly.  He looked at the limb - twisted still - and despaired.  The healers back in Minas Tirith would have to re-break it; stars, what pain that would be.

He thought pain, and the word had a face.  Suleth’s face.  Guradan gritted his teeth again, and winced at the immediate ache.  Damn her.  Damn her.  One duty.  She was given one duty.  Come home with her brother.  Come home to the safety of hearth and forge and parental guidance.  What did she do instead?  Ride in the same direction Guradan was headed, probably along the same road, but defy him - defy Father - at every turn.  It galled, oh how it galled.

Thoughts of his father’s command in no way softened Guradan’s ire.  He shifted on his bedroll, laid over rough stone.  The motion brought a hiss of pain from his mouth, along with a steady stream of barely audible curses.  He should be home.  He should be on the high, white walls of Minas Tirith, his keen eyes searching the fields, his bow at the ready.  He should be joking in the barracks with the other guardsmen when his time on the wall was done, and he should be - futile.  It was all futile.  Father and Suleth had ruined everything.  Everything.

The healers had brought him food earlier:  a bit of bread, a bit of unidentified meat.  Some water, in a stoneware cup.  Guradan peered at it, remembering feasts at home, all his family gathered around the long stone table.  Eluwen radiant in her soft pinks, Father tall and strong, his siblings garbed in black and grey and sitting with dignity among their riches - damn her - and he picked up the cup and hurled it at the nearest wall with all his strength.  It shattered, bringing the healer and her assistant at a run.  They looked at him without speaking, and the assistant bent to begin picking up the shards.

Guradan’s eyelids slid shut in sudden exhaustion.  His head throbbed.  His leg throbbed.  Shame swept over him in a dull red flush.  They had no cups here to spare.  They had nothing here to spare, here in this hated ruin.  And he took their medicines, their water, their time…  He would make this right, he would not let shame tinge his House.  But stars and moon above, he was ready to be home.

Mother,

The Hall of Fire is the grandest thing I have ever seen in my life.  Grander than the city, grander than …oh, there are no words.  Imagine a hearth the size of a forge, surrounded with precious metals, precious jewels, great draped fabric, and oh, the Elves who tend it are stunning, one and all.  They look carved as well, from pale wood, pale stone:  so alive, so graceful, so poised.  I find myself trying to stand taller when they pass us by.

I was here before with Eolhelm - in Imladris, not this hall - since the mission I undertook then was enough to grant us passage.  While the valley dazzled my eyes then, I admit, I was so struck by both my duties and my companion that I did not give the land its proper look.  Now unencumbered, I see every stone, every length of drapery, every golden detail - and all of it delights the eye.  All of it warms.  The hearth itself roars, and you can feel its heat on your face from halfway down the hall.  How delightful in winter-time it must be.

Cynewynne managed to feed us a proper breakfast - proper for a soldier three times my size, that is.  She and Arion made short work of a massive amount of food, while I picked and worried at manners.  She is a truly fine cook, and I wish I could learn from her, but there is no time.  There is no time.  We leave soon for the next leg of our journey, for the dark cave into which we cannot take our horses, cannot take our comforts.  I worry already about the pressing, heavy stone.

But no!  Tonight my only worry will be embarrassment over having a very different upbringing than Cynewynne’s, and how she finds mine amusing in every detail.  Or how I have not yet spoken to them about Guradan, though I’m sure by now he has come to his senses and no longer pursues.  We have not seen him on the road, and I keep my cloak tight around my face.  Let my worry be that:  that I have not been entirely, fully honest with those who shelter me.

It was in Imladris that Eolhelm first kissed me, and we worried about propriety.  Now Cynewynne and Arion and I ride to Eregion, where Eolhelm left me, and all my dreams fell to dust.  Stars and all my good ancestors, let me have better fortune this time.

Your devoted duaghter,
Suleth

Mother,

Were I an Elf, I would never leave this place, not by ship or any other means.  Imladris is a delight for every sense:  cascading waterfalls, the scent of mountain flowers, dew cooling my upturned face.  Nothing here is ugly.  Nothing here is not carefully considered.  It is…not an artificial place.  Not a construction.  But I sense, walking these paths, that not one leaf nor one paving-stone has been left to chance.

I happened upon a Man of my acquaintance today, though I will not say his name.  He is a true son of Gondor, a weaponsmith not of our family’s reputation, but of a high quality nevertheless.  He bears no arms that he does not make himself, and that, I think, is high praise.  He and his wife have spent time advising me before, and today, I spoke to him of Guradan’s mission, and my father’s mistrust.  He spoke of duty, and how one must be careful that it not become tyranny.

…and now I know I will never send this, for what sort of daughter sets her mother against her father?  But I will write this, because it will never fall in your hands:  I am done with being - how did Caihad put it? - the pawn of another man’s game.  Oh, Gondor, I miss you.  Minas Tirith, the landscape is empty without your spire.  I cannot see you soon enough.  When I am home, I will give you more than my carving-tools and apron.  I will give you my sword-arm, even when the Guard is loathe to take it.

Mother, I wish I could send you this.  I wish you could see.  Perhaps you would leave your white apartments, your massed stone, and take a step in a direction - any direction!  - under your own power.  I wish that for you, Eluwen of Minas Tirith.  But just because you will never take that step does not mean I must deny it for myself.

Imaladris, shimmering jewel of mountain and water.  I hope I will see you again!

Your daughter,
Suleth

Continued from yesterday!

Fuinheril of Mirkwood is…well, I rarely play her IC these days.  But when she is in character, she and her brother Areyen both assist the scholar Celeveren in her studies of the mortal races.  Whenever the scholar does not need her, Fuinheril is immediately absorbed back into her work as a sculptor and artist.  The world she observes has little relevance to her, except as fodder for her art.

Guradan of Minas Tirith is really annoyed with his sister.  He continues to track her down.

Norabel Graves is in Trestlebridge with her brother Borran and his brother’s betrothed, Ermenlinde.  She has been away for a year, settling personal matters of some delicacy, and now re-dedicates herself to her family’s business.  Her family, knowing her well, does not expect her to stay long.

My little people are scattered throughout the lands, doing all sorts of interesting things.  Here’s a brief status report and a few screenshots so if any of my Landroval blog friends recognize my characters out in the world, they’ll feel free to say hallo.  If my character name is white, I’m always up for roleplay.  These days, I’m far more likely to be online before 4PM EST than later, but my time in game does vary.

Maethild of Esgaroth is primarily in Bree, now that she and her husband Brennath are back from Moria.  While they haven’t had much time to plan out their next goals or adventure, I assume Brennath is resuming his blacksmith and farrier work, and Maethild is keeping their house, cooking way too much food, and talking shyly to anyone she sees.

Suleth of Minas Tirith is on the long road between Bree and Moria, with companions Cynewynne and Arion (though our schedules have kept Suleth’s participation 99% off-screen, sigh!  Moving & selling a house is lousy for rp continuity).  She is eternally gratefully for the healer Ermenlinde’s elixir, which seems to have taken care of the infection plaguing her lungs.  She is recovered again, and seeming stronger of will than ever.

Desmira Bell is in Durrow, as usual, keeping the Broken Cask afloat with the help of her wonderful staff and loyal (though occasionally odd) patrons.  Landrovalians, feel free to meet all the Cask folks every Saturday night from 8PM EST - around midnight (sometimes later) at 5 Long Street, Durrow.  She may be taking an expedition to the Shire soon, at which time she’d love to meet any and all rp hobbits she and her escort stumble upon.

Borran Graves is in Trestlebridge with his betrothed Ermenlinde and his sister Norabel, in hopes of introducing Ermenlinde to his father (and his father’s wife, not that Borran is tremendously fond of Norabel’s mother).  He will most likely return to Bree soon - to the small town of Withburg where he and Ermenlinde hope to live - but Norabel will remain in Trestlebridge to help with the family’s business.

And, I believe we’re only allowed to upload four pictures a day, so that’s it for now.  But please do feel free to meet/send tells to any of these.  I’m looking forward to meeting more of the my.lotro characters someday!

Dear Arth,

I write from the road, ha!  We’re halfway to Trestlebridge, Borran and Ermenlinde and I, and though I draw very badly, I will try to sketch the great bridge for you once I’m settled back in at home.  It’s a huge bridge, spanning a great gorge, and while it needs a few repairs now and then, it’s as solid as a mountain, far as I’m concerned.

Thank you for your company the other day.  I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet the house-builder or his lady, or the lord and lady of the grand hall.  What a building!  I think that when I manage to stumble over a barrel-full of gold in my travels, I will have something much like it.  And a pond out back, and cushions heaped in every room, brightly hued as flowers.

I’m sorry my writing is so jostled - I keep trying to scribe while we’re in motion, and then Borran snipes at me about letting the ink-pot fall over, which I haven’t.  I’m glad Ermenlinde was the one to save you, given that Borran would have nagged you right back into unconsciousness.  Ermenlinde is far nicer.

And now it’s a few hours later, and we’re stopped so the horses can take water.  I’ll finish this quickly.  I hope your toy-making goes well, and that your friend likes her doll.  I hope Darstead is as happy and summery a place as a man has ever enjoyed, and that the rest of your summer sees you well.  I won’t be back for a time - I owe my father and mother the great pleasure of my company - but I will not abandon my brother and sister-to-be from the desolation of never having me visit!

I hope you remember nothing.  I hope you keep getting to be new.  Lucky you!

~Norabel Graves