[Strider]

The golden afternoon had quickly faded into the kind of night eternalized in poems and ballads--the air was warm and sweeter smelling that it had been earlier, and the indigo sky seemed to chime with the twinkling timbre of hundreds of thousands of stars. Inside the Green Dragon, the ellon sat upright and poised upon his rather uncomfortable wooden stool, lithe fingers splayed over the severe drop of his knees.

Grey gaze lay quiescent, yet not altogether heedless or unobservant, upon a freshly doled out bowl of Cook’s stew currently being emptied at an ungodly rate by a random regular. His first thought was disgust, regrettably as is with all the conscious living, for the ways that were not his own. The wisdom he happened to acquire over the better part of the Third Age and then some, however, allowed him to set aside such feelings of revulsion and replace them with an almost childlike fascination for the quaint mannerisms of the Shirefolk.

After watching the same inn guest wash down his supper with a healthy swig from his pint, the elf began to wonder what was keeping his own order from arriving. Lifting an imperial brow in an expression of query, he allowed his eyes to drift across the common room in search of the barmaid who had so warmly welcomed him. It was at this time that he briefly met the gaze of the elf-maiden Larien, awkwardly trailing behind a stout company of kitchen volunteers with a serving dish hanging loosely between her sinuous fingers.

She intrigued, baffled, and disheartened him all at once. The elves were known for the way their pride shone through their every movement, their very presence. The autumn years had induced a certain bittersweet air about their existence, but always was their dignity preserved. Yet this elleth moved without said bearing, though there was some remnant of grace that whispered dark riddles about the past, about what had once been. His curiosity piqued, the elf reallocated his eyes to remove the impression that he was staring (for he was), and made a note to speak to Larien after his hot water came.