''Bree-town''

It had been something of a relief to know that he had known. She had, after all this time, admired how he had kept it to himself. How long had he known? she wondered. In truth, she knew him so very little, and it was so obvious that she had had what he had called, rather scathingly, she thought, an "infatuation." 

She breathed out, having arrived home. She took off her shoes and stockings, and pulled her skirts up her legs a bit, dipping her feet into the water of the stream behind her house. For the first time in a long time, she relaxed.

It was funny, the dark-haired woman thought, how only a day could change everything. She sat upon the stool of her dressing table, looking into the mirror as she brushed her hair. It fell past her shoulders, down to her waist, in thick, raven waves. It had been a celebrated head of hair when she had lived in Dol Amroth. She had been known for brushing it with a hundred strokes of the hairbrush each night, causing it to shine perfectly. She still kept to this task, each night running the brush down her tresses in rhythmic patterns. She no longer needed to count.

In the back foyer of the Prancing Pony, Isulril sat, nursing a pathetic goblet of wine. It had been her third, and she was feeling more than a little tipsy, as she had imbibed so little since her arrival to Bree-land all those months ago. She hoarded the stuff, hopeful, perhaps, of guests. But she had been used, for some time, to taking tea. 

The patter of the rain hit the roof with a relaxing, soothing sound. Isulril sat, once more, at work on a text. These Breelanders, she thought, They do not understand the grammar in Sindarin, nor the particularly Gondorian manner of grammar. She sighed to herself. Even a scholar in Bree was, she thought, not truly a scholar--at least, not to her mind. But then, she had come from a city where grand libraries were quite a sight to behold, and had a wealth of knowledge at her fingertips.

Her gaze, she had been told, was bold, especially for someone so young. When she had been a maiden of no more than twenty years of age, a certain Lord Handrynhad had found it so.

"Your eyes, they are like water icing up in the North. I fear they may weep or freeze me to death in turn," he had said all those years ago. She had thought little of it at the time. She was vainglorious and proud as a peacock then. When she had found his attentions, it made her feel less the farm girl and more the sophisticated woman of Dol Amroth.

Isulril looked at her finger. It had been hours since she had pricked it with the thorn of one of the roses that she had been arranging earlier that day. It did not bleed. It barely even looked like a wound. Indeed, it scarce felt like a wound, she thought. But she remembered it well.

She had been speaking with the physician, and felt the prick of the thorn at her finger. She had seen the blood well out of the tip of her finger, and had found herself perplexed, at first, that her own blood had, on such a tiny level, spilled before her. 

Isulril sat by the small river. Indeed, when she thought of it, she considered it more a stream than a river. After all, a river needed swimming. The stream she could wade into, should she desire such a thing. The cattails occasionally caressed her cheek as she contemplated, closing her eyes and ridding herself of the world.

It had been a rough night for Furley. It had pained him, and he'd been battered and bruised, and he'd merely only had a couple of sips of ale from the tankard he had purchased in the Prancing Pony. Now, he found himself in the Bree-Town Jail, and he wasn't in the least bit amused. 

Anguish passed over Isulril's face. She thought about what had occurred the other evening. He had long since gone, as he had always done since their first encounter in his home. 

It was a strange relationship indeed. She recalled her moods, his distaste for them, how she had disdained him for a time, but then became more and more pliant as the brief span of time went by.

"It's all 'ung up, ma'am!" exclaimed the young boy, no older than ten. He smiled with glee as the woman put a few silver in his hand. She had found him at the edge of the Mud Gate, and he was looking for work, so she gave him an occupation. Anorieldis was a philanthropist in that way. She walked down the roads of Bree-town and admired the notices, all created in her elegant yet legible hand.