Vanimar

Content of note slid under the door of Arrow Hall:

I am as intrigued by your wager and your offer of diversion as much as your bold attempt at stealth and the placement of your missive. I admit for a moment that I believed a serpent had nestled its way into my boot!

I doubt not your prowess with a bow; and am eager to see it firsthand. I am of a mind to let you bring down our quarry as to leave such matters to me and my hammer would result in overly-tenderized meat.

As you have correctly observed, it would be impossible for us to soon forget the cheese.

Branalph was startled to find this note in his boot, wrapped around a chunk of rock too big to overlook. 

Aiya, hammer-wielder!

There is a feast upcoming, and I fear your quartermaster has prepared strangely -- where there ought to be meat, there is only cheese. Bloody great heaps of it.

Arradril worked alone, as she normally preferred. Tonight's project was a sheath for her favorite boot dagger. The single-edged weapon was not her largest, nor her longest, nor yet was it her oldest -- so it was no painful reminder of fair Ondolindë. It was not even balanced for throwing; given the alarming upward curve of the blade, and the solid hiltward weighting, Arradril reckoned that any attempt to fling it would end in a loud thud.

Manadhlaer sighed, not for the first time that day, or that hour. She dipped her quill and made another attempt:

It has been widely known since the Elder Days that the sap of an unopened poppy...

Instantly she stopped and put a line through her words. "If it has been widely known," she said aloud, "why write it at all?" One of her delicate silken slippers, as light as an Elfling's first breath, had already gone. She kicked the other against the far wall of her office and began again.

"...Since then I have wandered much. Something in my blood, mayhap, from the days after the Nirnaeth Arnoediad?”

“I have never been one to wander. Not without cause. Yet it seems you travel far. For what purpose, and why alone?” Estarfin stated.

The poem, written at the Poetry Improvisation Game at the Spire of Meetings, received word to use was "Lady".

***

I sit in tavern, noisy one.

Which goblet am I drinking?

The sun goes down, day is done...

About her I'm thinking.

The Lady enters, full of grace,

And walks among the drunkards.

Can't get my eyes off faultless face...

Alas, I am below her standards.

***