Home! Home at last!
Time is a funny thing. I think it must have moved quicker while Tairy and I was away. Or we stayed longer than we meant to. Do the days go more swift in the elven lands? It were still a bit chilly from winter when we left, and now spring is half-gone and summer will be here before we know it.
We had a visitor to the Boarding House last evening! I shouldn't be so surprised. Even though we're just returned from our trip to the Sea, it is late spring and folk are taking to the roads left and right. When I opened the door and saw a short little fellow, I got excited for a moment, thinking it might be Master Maurr or one of his friends. But it were a dwarf named Master Frimsi Gembeard. (What a name! Dwarves are always so polite when introducing themselves!) He said he were from the "lonely mountain", but he went on to say hullo to Tairy, and then they started chattering, and I had to go grab the kettle and some vittles for our visitor, so I didn't get to ask why this mountain is called lonely. It isn't the first time I've heard a dwarf talk of it.
Master Frimsi stayed for supper, and it felt so nice to have a body sitting at the table again. I mean, besides the usual bodies of Tairy and Master Tumunir! And Pumpkin, when she's feeling ornery...
At one point, Master Frimsi asked Tairy if he was in Bree because he'd fled the wars in the south. I took a quick look at Tairy's face, but he kept it as calm and cool as anything. It were only later I realized that if someone asked me the same question about him, I might not have a whole answer to give. I know bits and pieces. I've never sat him down and made him look me in the eye and asked him outright, why he left. And what the scars on his wrists and his back have to do with it. Because I know they have something to do with it.
I know I've been waiting and waiting and waiting to ask him these things. Waiting for the right moment. I feel like it's close. I don't want to ask at the wrong time, because I know the story isn't likely to be a nice one, and to make him feel even the tiniest smidge of pain or sadness will wring my heart. It's the last thing I want to do. But even more than not wanting to make him tell a sad tale, I want to know it. I need to know it. It's got to be so much of who he is, and as the woman who loves him and will be with him until one or both of us leaves this world, I have to know.
Never mind that part of me has thought that once I find out who put the lash to my Tairy's back, I intend to put their name in my mind and I won't forget it.
