Sarnai

Sarnai sat down and put her feet up on a root after a long day's work, leaning against the barrel of her equine companion. It was spring again, and her injuries from the summer before had long since healed. She reached out to touch a flower sprouting from the tall grass. Its pale petals were tinged in faint, fiery hues from the sunset that bathed the landscape in warm light. 

So much had changed. 

Several months ago...

Sarnai rode home from town, holding her horse’s reins with an iron grip, struggling to sit up straight in the saddle, to look proud despite the filth, the scars, the clumsiness with which she spoke. In her mind’s eye she hardly looked a lady, perhaps instead a girl trying to hold herself together. She remembered Rannulfr.

Many years ago, in the distant land of Rhûn...

Sarnai walked quietly outside her parents' tent, her steps near silent despite the heavy riding boots she wore. She could hear voices, and what sounded very much like utterances of her name- and she hated it when people talked about her behind her back. While eavesdropping was one thing she was always told to refrain from, she had also been raised to talk about people in their presence. Stepping closer to the entry flap of the tent, Sarnai closed her eyes to sharpen her other senses, and listened.

Long ago, in the distant land known in the Sindarin tongue as Rhûn...

Sarnai rode off down the road from Arrowhaven to Netherworth, her new neighborhood. While she had certainly enjoyed her stay in the inn, it had too many mixed memories attached to it, those of nightmares, of blood on the ground.