[Elora]

Vanwe was frozen were she stood as a voice she recognised and another she didn't floated up from below. Lespheria sounded grim and displeased, but it was not that which set an icy column of dread in her stomach. The man's voice, and that which she sensed from him, was as if the very voice of doom. It rolled through her head as she stood in the darkness of the stable loft, still as a statue and pale as marble.

He had her name. Vanwe pressed a clammy hand over her mouth and shrank to the floorboards so as not to make a sound in her fear. He recognised her and he had a name. It was not the first time she had encountered this. Memories of what had unfolded in another place, where she had been recognised and her name known whirled like autumn leaves on the wind, scattering through her. The image of the rope at Kaldir's belt flared in her mind's eye. She would be lucky, this time, if all he did was throw her in a cell.

She could not stay where she was. In the loft she was trapped if he found her. Nor could she flee into the isolation of the lands around her, alone with noone to see. Perhaps he did not yet know what her name meant, and would cast her aside. It was possible, she desperately thought. He could only recognise her name if he was a mercenary familiar with the South, and those fled from it.

It would not be the first time they had sent a mercenary to fetch her back. Vanwe weighed her decision. She could flee, and abandon any hope of a home such that she had here at the inn. Or she could remain, face the risk that Kaldir was a mercenary and endure life hiding from who and what she was. Certainly, once news that the daughter of Naiore Dannan came to the knowledge of those at the inn, the stable loft would no longer be hers and Derufin would not smile upon her. Noone could, once they knew and noone had.

It had been a few short, and often bewildering days at the inn, but it had been the closest thing to safety that she had come to. Noone had ever intervened on her behalf before either, like Lespheria presently was. Vanwe was baffled as to why she did so now, but the fact remained that she felt a warmth in that knowledge that flight into the wilderness could not provide. Her decision made, Vanwe slowly stood.

Having spent her life up until now trying to avoid even being seen or heard by those around her, Vanwe had developed remarkable abilities to walk and indeed run silently and swiftly. She negotiated the boards of the stable loft carefully, distributing her weight as she moved so as to not set off a creak. Equally slowly, Vanwe crept down the ladder. The sound of Kaldir and Lespheria's conversation grew louder, and her heart thudded all the more faster.

Contending now with the straw, dry and capable of betraying her presence no matter how careful she was, Vanwe ghosted across that with the barest of rustling as she made her way to the door at the back of the stable. Guiltily she crept through where Derufin lodged, feeling the intruder pushed by need into a place she had no right to be. In the stalls, the horses were restless, smelling her as she passed.

"Your chicken is safe," Kaldir was saying. Chickens did not live long, as Vanwe well knew. Her life depended on getting out of the stables. Should she be returned to the village, she knew with a certainty that she would die one way or another. Her heart ached at the very prospect. Almost lightheaded with her desperation, Vanwe extended a hand towards the back door and pushed it open.

She half expected Kaldir to magically appear beyond the threshold, but she could hear him make for his horse instead. Vanwe put on a burst of speed as she darted out the door and ran headlong away from the stables. For the second time that night, she almost collided with Lespheria.

"Inside," she panted in a voice drenched with pleading. Lespheria turned a worried face back to the stables, as Vanwe pulled at her arm. When the Elven woman at last conceeded, Vanwe all but dragged her up the stairs to the inn and through the door. The light and warmth of the room hit her face in a shock, leaving her somewhat dazed.

"This time," said Lespheria as she placed a firm hand on Vanwe's shoulder, "you will tell me what is going on." She fixed Vanwe with a stern glance, and Vanwe nodded mutely. She allowed herself to be drawn away from the door, but looked back over her shoulder. At some point, she would have to go back, if only for the braid, for she could not sleep in the kitchens. Kaldir was still there. It was to that room Lespheria towed her now, and found it quiet. Cook and Aman and Buttercup, for starters, were absent.

Lespheria sat Vanwe on a stool, drew one for herself, and regarded the other's face steadily. Vanwe's eyes held a bright gleam, sharply blue and lit by fear and something else. Her skin was pale, cheeks flushed, and she watched the maiden hurridley clench hands in her lap, noting their tremor.

Vanwe opened her mouth only to find Lespheria held up a hand to forestall her.
"This time, the whole truth mark you. What, in the name of Elbereth the Fair, is going on Vanwe?"

Vanwe's mouth closed, and her head drooped a little. The gleam of tears caught the kitchen's light.

"Please, Lady Lespheria, you cannot tell anyone," Vanwe begged. Shame and something far deeper than fear swirled in her face as she spoke. Vanwe waited for Lespheria to nod her assent, warily, and decided to trust that rather than her chances in the wild with pursuit hot after her.

"I am a runaway, from Harad," she began. Slowly, in a voice that halted when the telling became heavy and difficult, Vanwe admitted to what she could. She told of how she was to remain in Harad, never to leave, and how she had left because of the hardships of living amongst people who feared and reviled you, without kin or parents, in the harsh Haradian Waste. She told of her life, of the brutality that comes from hatred.

Yet whilst Vanwe was in the telling, there were some things she did not, could not release. The name of her mother, was one, and that of her father, for Lespheria may know of either one. Nor could she go into express detail of her day to day life. Carrying the memories was hard enough. She gave sparse details about village life for her, yet what lingered behind the words was not missed by Lespheria'a perceptive mind.

"But who are your parents," she asked when Vanwe fell silent. Vanwe shook her head.

"That I cannot know, yet," she replied. It was in one sense true. She did not truly know who Naiore and Menecin were, aside from names and half-remembered tales of two Ages since passed. Lespheria fixed Vanwe with a stern glare.

"I know only that I am of Finarfin's kin, but not what such things mean. It is just a name," Vanwe offered, honestly, to placate Lespheria.

"And what of him, the ranger," Lespheria asked. Vanwe instinctively looked in the direction of the stables, as if she would see through walls if she could.

"I do not know him, but I have learnt to be cautious and wary of most things and people, even my own kindred. Fear is never more than a hair's breadth away. I hate it," Vanwe said in a whisper. She met Lespheria's gaze in a flash of fire.

"But I will not run! I will stand now. I am sorry to have been so difficult and wearisome, Lady Lespheria, and I thank you solemnly for all you have done. I must face my fear, and you have shown me much in how to go about it," Vanwe said. She did not relish what her words meant. She had to stand and face Kaldir, and anyone else, if she was to claim this place as her home. She had to tightly wrap the very things she had been desperate enough to run away in order to find, bury them deep. Though Vanwe did not know it, her hope was perhaps in vain for the past could never be hidden and she would in time have to face that as surely as she had to face Kaldir. But the painful lessons of the past could not yet be shaken. Vanwe knew what Naiore Dannan's name did.

"I am sorry to have brought you trouble, Lady Lespheria," Vanwe said softly. Telling of the whole truth would only bring that and more upon those at the inn.

Lespheria, Aman, Derufin, Cook and so many others had been untouched by the poison of Naiore Dannan. Vanwe would not willingly change that, especially after Lespheria's defence. She owed her at least that much. Vanwe felt a wave of fatigue wash over her, and lifted a hand to push her hair back from her face so that she could meet Lespheria's gaze. She would not run and she would not harm those so generous to her. Her shame was hers alone and she had borne it alone all her life. It was heavy, but there was little she could do about the realities of life.