Dearest Sue,
Today I made apple pies and here is one for you. When I went for a walk yesterday night I met some of the new neighbours. A girl who also comes from a Bree farmhouse, like me, was just picking apples - which reminded me that my apple tree was ready for that, too. Here is the result. Hope you will like it.
This weekend was the weekend of the Archet Aid Concert, and again I could not get myself to go there. It was harder this year, because with Granny gone I have no family left at all, and so the loss of my family hurt even more this time. I felt so very much alone - more than ever before. But I am not. Luckily I have good friends who visit me and remember me of that and make me smile - even and especially when I feel sad. I also have the picture my brother painted only a few days before he was killed in Archet. And I have the new house, and somehow Granny is in here with me all the time - sometimes it even feels as if she would BE the house, keeping me warm and giving me shelter from cold and rain.
So, enjoy your apple pie! I will now enjoy mine, and then bring one to Barli later today and look who's in the Pony. And maybe next year I will find the courage to go to Archet, too, and listen to the music there that honours the people we lost and the ones that survived and are determined to rebuild this place.
Your old friend, with a smile,
Malyn
Working on the fields
