[Orual]

Delia spun a little bundle of flowers by their stems, inhaling deeply. Her mother would use these flowers as potpourri. She would pick them in the late summer, and hang them from the rails of the stairs in their house.

"My mother said that these would help you think better, if you breathed right," she informed Talan. "My father thought it was nonsense, but Momma taught me all the different ways to use wildflowers. And my grandmother said that if you hung these above the doors, it used to mean that guests were welcome." Her eyes lit up. "Of course! That's what we can do with these. Hang them on the top of all the lintels, inside and out. All the interior doors, too. People might not understand, but they're pretty flowers any way you look at it."

Grinning, she began to deftly gather the flowers into small bundles and tie them with small bits of ribbon. "I'm Delia, by the way. I just got here. I'm fourteen, and I was an apprentice healer in Gondor. That's where I came from." She looked down when she saw Talan looking at her. "Sorry. I don't know what came over me that I'm talking so much."