Joy

(OOC: I read this while listening to this music piece, and as long as you read it somewhat slowly, it works beautifully. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5zFnGRaO0E )

Éadrandr smiled as the shadow of the East Gate passed over him. It was a mixed smile, that at the surface showed a man happy with returning to Bree, but it masked a nervousness. The Northman's hands jostled with the reins as his mount tramped into Bree with a cacophony of clomping hooves on cobbled stones. The steed was new to him, only taken from Viduward in Rhovanion for his return journey West, after his beloved Fleotend had died but a few days short of Éadrandr's home town.

The wind had picked up, warm gentle gusts making their way down Bree’s dusty streets. The rustle and clapping of washing strung from window to window created its own rhythm above her head. Joy leant against the stone wall surrounding the market square, Hjotr nestled against her chest, bound by cloth. That rustling of linen above lulled her into distant memories as she awaited Kip, the grocer, with the parceling up of her goods.

“Oh, I can never be happy again

nor can I ever be a Dad,

thus Death had much to gain.

Am I mad?

Ah, diary, it has been long since I had the sense to write in you, more than a few miserable words. Do forgive me. I have been at work again, a proper creative work: a ballad to record the deeds of hir Themodir. I felt that, should he be found alive, dead, or not at all, it would be well to have a record of his valour.

Bree, maybe this was not so great idea to settle here where eastern practices are so new to this folk. Book of Pleasing, that set up practice of companions and entertainers in Gondor, is largely unknown here. Someone called Maedlyn a wench last night, such disgrace! I can only comfort my little songbird they are ignorant fools, not knowing of what is meaning of our practice of Pleasing.