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Old 12-02-2008, 01:27 PM   #23
Ilya
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Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: In the cold
Posts: 202
Ilya has just left Hobbiton.
"What a waste of time!" Adela huffed, topping off the pan with the last bit of redcurrant jam. The celebration sounded and resounded against the walls, and by the time the pies were done, she reckoned most who might enjoy them would be rather too spirited to do so. "Should have started earlier," she mumbled, tucking a stray piece hair back behind her ear. As she ladled jam into the open mouth of the dough, it quivered like a piece of wounded flesh. Adela sighed, stoking the fire. Why was it her thoughts of late had touch of darkness in them? She glanced up at couple of the other maids chatting with one of the Ladies and then chuckled quietly, shaking her head. In the process the strand of her hair came loose again, limp from the close contact she'd had with the smoke of the fires since before dawn.

The music began. Adela smiled, closed her eyes for a moment, and pictured the kitchens emptying, leaving her alone with the music, a little put aside piece of meat, and glowing embers of the fire to warm her. The solitude of the dark flagstones, to lean on their strength and let her thoughts cease, would be the reward for all the hustle and bustle of the day. Adela didn't put much other stock in the boasts of the miners, but like any dwarf she could sense the voices of the stones. No small feat that the stone of Khazad Dum had tempered her somewhat these last five years, and she liked waiting for what, if anything, it might say back.

Pushing another pie into another oven, she paused for a moment, feeling a cool updraft strike her back and suddenly being aware of the sheer space in the air around her. Small though the settlement was, the 21st hall still seemed altogether too crowded between the boisterous voices of her fellow dwarves and the somber, brooding stones. And something else, she thought. An echo of an echo she could not name.

Adela shook her head, more hair flying free of the bonds that held it. "An echo of an echo indeed!" She huffed over to where the lasts of the meat was roasting. Most had already been carried into the hall, although the choicest cuts still waited for Lord Balin to return. "There's better trade in raspberries than rhymes, and always take a flagon over fate," she recited a mannish saying, looked about, and then popped a slice of one of the honeyed apples that had been set aside in her mouth. The Lord Balin was not a begrudging fellow, she reasoned. Or else, there are some things he just wouldn't count. She gave a leg a good turn as she finished chewing, the noise from the hall rising higher, as an arrow in flight. Odd, but the apple didn't taste very sweet.

Last edited by Ilya; 12-03-2008 at 05:06 PM.
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