[Elora]

Vanwe took up Léspheria's hand, unsure of the proper manner of greeting and added her own name to the score.

"Vanwe am I, and I hail from... Harad," she said with the slightest of hesitation towards the end. " I am very pleased to meet you." Léspheria's brows only rose a little as she named Harad.

Derufin rose to get the day's work underway, bestowing more tea for them to enjoy. It seemed that his earlier pensiveness and sadness had never been. Vanwe struggled to keep up with her newly found and unpredictable companions. Yet before he could leave, Silvanis arrived and spoke of Southern Star.

Vanwe shot up in her chair as he arrived, sapphire eyes widening in her face. He seemed relaxed and confident, but he held a wariness in him that Vanwe knew well. Such wariness was in hunters, warriors, the men she grew up with and now many men she had been forced to elude on her long road into the north.

In the brighter light of the inn, she had a better chance to observe his face as he spoke with Derufin. A distant memory came to her of a night in her village. The fire leapt high into a clear, bejewled desert sky. Women sang and a voluptous music drifted in the air. Vanwe was not at that gathering of the village, that feast, but she watched because of the music. Closer she had crept, between the small houses and huts and through the yard that the livestock were kept in at night. A stranger had sat at that feast, admist the laughter. Some trading was occuring.

Vanwe remembered a joke about trading the village's Elf, made by a man she had always had a strong dislike for. She had crouched behind the fence of the yard and peered at him through the firelight. His companion added that they would pay the visitor, both for taking their weak northern Elf and for being so gullible as to accept an Elf left to rot in the desert by her own kin. They had laughed but Vanwe well remembered a hot anger and shame rising within her.

It had taken her from the yard to the hut where the food was being prepared. She took an earthenware dish, made her alterations and whisked it from the kitchens before those within could protest her very presence. Straight to the laughing pair she took it, head bowed and covered by her rough veil. They barely paid her any attention, helped themselves and pushed her on around the circle. Vanwe obliging had served the others, but a hint of her actual identity had been let slip by the time she reached the stranger at the feast that night.

A strand of hair had slipped free then as it still did now, and delicate gold shone in the firelight. She caught sight of it as she bowed before the stranged before which she had been humiliated, and startled had looked up. His face, the man who sat at the table now, had studied her own. She knew he understood who stood before him. One word would have had her strung up and beaten for showing her face. She was not to attend such gatherings. Her hair marked her stranger, just as her eyes and all else hidden behind her veil had then. And he had remained silent, allowing her to scurry back to the kitchen and then flee back to where she should have stayed.

The result was that the stranger had avoided her tampered food, the jokers had spent an uncomfortable night, and she had indeed been strung up and beaten when those in the kitchen reported her presence at the feast so as to avoid the beating themselves. Still, despite the consequences, Vanwe retained two things. The sense of satisfaction as she heard the men retch and groan, and the memory of the stranger's face.

She glanced back at Léspheria who was intently watching what unfolded at the table with a smooth expression most unlike Vanwe's own demonstrative one. Again her hair had slipped free and she tucked it back. She'd need to tie it back for the day. Yet as her fingers moved, Silvanis seemed to study it. Did he recognise her, she wondered... the look he had given her on that distant night was one of appraisal with his cool blue eyes. Yet, rather than flee the room in blind panic, she remained where she was, watching intently.

She would not run, not now, and she would have her notes back again even if she did have to steal them back. She glanced around the room as Silvanis and Derufin spoke.

Her heart skudded as all relaxation faded from her body. Vanwe's mind frantically scrabbled over her long flight. She had been as careful as she could as she trudged through the arduous desert and found a trade route leading north. Prior attempts to leave had been met with sound beatings and she was determined not to be brought back this time.

Silvanis, who had her notes, also shared memory and with that her identity. Was it all about to be taken away again and the hot sands swallow her once more? She realised her hands were slightly trembling and she clasped them tightly in her lap to still them. She drew a breath deep into her lungs. If it was about to end, this brief bright moment, then it would end in a manner she chose.

Iron purpose held her spine straight, and more like her kindred she could not be though she knew it not at that moment. Finarfin himself would have identified her as she sat in that inn, straight and proud, with her chin raised and eyes like bright, hard sapphires, deep with colour and strong with will.

She glanced back at Silvanis. It was unlikely her poor village had sent such a man after her. They'd have to sell their own sons to afford him, Vanwe noted, and no matter the deal they had struck with her mother they would not do that to get her back. Compared to Léspheria she was far from the "Fair Folk" as she could be, yet in her veins ran the true blood of House Finarfin that had been lost in shadow, grief and years uncountered and sundered far from her kin.

Yet her mind wheeled with all their agility. Silvanis was not sent to haul her back, but he could send rumour of her presence to those who would. If she was to emerge from this, she would need all her wits about her. Fleeing in blind panic would achieve nothing. Instead, Vanwe remained where she was, patiently waiting for her opportunity to speak to Silvanis without drawing too much attention to herself with suspicious oddities in behaviour, such as leaping through a window in escape.

She watched with Léspheria, as Derufin spoke with Silvanis and then departed whistling cheerfully to gather wood and tools.

"I should go ready myself," she said to Léspheria, as she indicated her loose hair. "I do not wish to delay Derufin as we have a full day of work ahead of us. It was a pleasure to meet you, Léspheria."

Vanwe smiled through her tension at the elven woman, wishing fervently she had some of the composure and elegance of her kindred. She stood, looking at Silvanis as she commented, "I will be in the laundry, washing my hands."

There was an unspoken plea in her eyes, much like the night of the feast. Her statement, though, was not artiface. She needed to clean her hands and comb her hair back and so, with a long glance at Silvanis, Vanwe walked as calmly as she could to the laundry to begin to prepare. Yet as she wove the delicate golden strands into a long gleaming braid, and plucked straw and blanket hairs from the fabric of her dress, her mind circled around whether Silvanis would treat with her, what he would ask in return and whether she'd simply find herself tied to a horse, again, on her way south before the day was out.

Through this all wound the music of that night she had poisoned the food in an impotent display of helpless anger and isolation. It faintly filled the laundry as she hummed the sweet, swaying, undulating melody in that unmistakeable southern minor key.

~~~~~~~

My apologies to Benia's writer, whom I both misplaced and misdescribed.
[ May 27, 2003: Message edited by: Elora ]

[ May 28, 2003: Message edited by: Elora ]