The weather was seasonably warm and the windows had been thrown open to let the breeze into the lofty hall, where the students sat attentively at their tables. Eliriael stood at the front, her summer-green robes billowing at her feet and yellow wildflowers tucked neatly into her hair. She had a couple sheafs of parchment that fluttered with the breeze in her delicate hands, as she spoke to the students.
"Be willing to try new duties and listen well to the other healers whom you will help. Oh, and make sure you sign up for a different task each week." She winked as a couple students towards the back released audible groans.
As she walked towards the front row of tables, students noticeably sat upright in their seats, their backs straightening with anticipation. Eliriael laid each parchment down neatly and the moment she turned away towards one of the open windows, chairs screeched against the floor as her students made a dash to get their hands on the lists. After a momentary flurry of arms and bodies scrambling over one another, two dark-haired elleths emerged from the throng with the pages in hand and victorious grins on their faces. They put their strikingly similar heads together and whispered conspiratorially while the other students were forced to wait with held breaths to see which positions would be taken first.
"Aww come on, I wanted that one!"
"Sign up for gardening. I heard the head gardener is a fine-looking ellon."
"You took all the fun jobs!"
The complaining and whining eventually died away as the leaflets moved from hand to hand and the students were left either appeased or resigned to accept the duties to which they had signed their names. The ones who had already finished took up a new topic to whisper over as they sat, waiting for the others.
"Why do you think she is going to Mithlond?" a dreamy-eyed elleth wondered aloud.
"Who will bring us raspberry tarts at mid-day tea?" a small elleth with raven hair piped up.
"Perhaps she is visiting family," the tallest of the students guessed.
"She just returned from the Hithaeglir, though," a blonde-haired ellon drummed his fingers on the table, looking impassive.
"Do you think her House gave her an important errand?"
"But she looks so tired and sad all the time now...and she's always looking like that out the window these days..." the smallest elleth of the group darted a glance toward Eliriael, who kept her place by the window and was now smiling fondly at a potted lily-of-the-valley plant. Her slender fingers caressed one of its leaves before she angled the pot towards the sunlight.
"Is she grieving? What if she is fading? I hear that happens!"
One of the youngest gasped, "What if she is sailing West?" The children began to look panicked as their assumptions grew with their imaginations.
"Do not be so ridiculous."
The whispering elves turned their heads in unison to the dark-haired ellon in the corner, leaning back in his chair. He was the eldest and the others all listened to him as an unspoken rule.
"She goes every summer. And she always comes back. Stop your worrying," he explained. He then held out his hand, palm up, indicating that he wanted the lists, too. The last ellon to sign his name ambled up to him and laid them in his grasp. After a quick look, he scoffed and leaned forward, slapping the parchment onto the table. Pointing to the last blank space, he raised an eyebrow at the other students. "Night duty?"
The huddle of elves cringed. That was the worst one. Not only did you have to stay awake through the night, missing any festivities, the patients were the most irritable at that time and made all sorts of requests...massages to help them sleep, puffing up their pillows...some patients that suffered from chronic nightmares lay in their beds screaming and mumbling incoherent things. But they could not let him do it, which meant one of them had to give up their position and take it.
Finally, after much poking and prodding amongst the group, a small sandy-haired ellon stepped up, his head lowered. "I will do it..." he pouted. Walking over, he scratched his name from its place with a fateful draw of the quill and wrote it in next to the dreaded "Night duty." He hung his head and dragged his feet back towards his seat as if clapped into invisible metal chains. With the list filled, the other students returned quietly to their usual seats as well.
Eliriael turned with a gentle smile then, noticing her students' waiting expressions. "You are dismissed if you have finished. I will expect to hear good things from the other healers."
With a nod, the ellyn and ellith rose, gathering their books and quills and filed out of the hall. The eldest, being the last to leave, stopped at the doorway and glanced back. His teacher stood again beside the window, wisps of hair near her ears coming loose as the wind wafted in. Standing alone in the room, she closed her eyes and tilted her head upwards, soaking in the sun's rays. The thin and airy material of her robes gave her an even more weightless appearance than usual; if the light slanted at just the right angle, he felt that he could almost see through her. He had told the younger ones that Mistress Eliriael always returned from her trips to Mithlond. Yet, even he had never seen her look so delicate and thin, as if the summer wind might just whisk her away before his eyes. After a last look, he stepped beyond the threshold of the class and left her in the room. Even he was not so sure that she would be returning this time.
