View Single Post
Old 03-06-2006, 08:21 AM   #99
JennyHallu
The Pearl, The Lily Maid
 
JennyHallu's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: In my luxury Barrow, snuggled up in a pile of satin pillows, eating fresh fruit.
Posts: 1,686
JennyHallu has just left Hobbiton.
Send a message via ICQ to JennyHallu Send a message via AIM to JennyHallu Send a message via MSN to JennyHallu Send a message via Yahoo to JennyHallu
Linduial was young and innocent--but she had been trained in statecraft. She usuall knew when someone lied, but she also knew it was at the very least unpolite to point it out. If Saeryn didn't want to tell her about something, well, they'd only met that day. Her curiousity could wait.

She found a simple wooden quilt-rack in the hall where the rooms were, and snatched an especially warm-looking wrap, crying out in mock triumph. Saeryn grabbed another, and the two girls wrapped themselves up and paraded back down the hall toward the commons room. Linduial wrapped hers around her in a mock-bridal gown and processed down the hall, humming a march, then collapsed in a fit of girlish giggling against a wall. She had never really had a chance to have a friend her own age...

She looked down at herself, suddenly, still wrapped in her mock-cloak, and tried to imagine the bright-colored silks and and exotic linens her father had stored up for her against the day when she would wed. A strand of melancholy thought had twined itself around her, and she spoke before it occurred to her not to.

"I don't mind marrying, someday, and I'll marry someone as befits my House and standing; I've always understood that requirement--but I want it to be to someone that I love, not just some random lad whose father knows my father. Far too many men with sons know my father. But I've never had even a chance at a sweetheart. It's different here, things are so much less formal. At home we would never take our meals in the same room as folk such as are welcome as family here. Even Marenil is, well, a servant. My father's steward, and while his family is proud and old, it's...it's not the same. Here, he could be equal, or more near it. It is a strange difference, one I didn't expect."

Lin was babbling a little, but Saeryn merely sat against the wall beside her and--listened, just listened. Lin had never felt anything so wonderful as this tenuous freedom to tell a friend just what she felt. She hoped fleetingly that she wouldn't regret it in the morning.

"I don't want to marry until--I want to be kissed, and told I'm beautiful (I know it, but I still wouldn't mind being told,) and I want to hold hands with a man and take a walk, in the gloaming, with no one watching to make sure I follow all the rules. I want, for once, not to have a guardian, or if I must have one, for him to be blind and deaf, or willing to be for a little while. I want--" she paused, searching for a word that meant stars, and moonlight, and old ballads, and fairy tales, and impossibility.

"Have you ever been to the Citadel, in Minas Anor? From the Citadel at night, when the stars are out, there is a bench where you can watch the stars fall from behind the branches of the Tree, glimmering in the dark. You can see ghosts of the shadows of the mountains across the land, and there are stars on the ground, nestled campfires and homesteads to match the stars that fill the sky...I snuck out, while we were there, early in the morning, before daybreak. I watched the morning star, I watched the Moon set and the Sun rise...The feeling I had, while I set there, before one of the Queen's elven ladies found me...That's what I want. She knew it, too, just sat there with me until I was ready, said not a word...

"That's what I want. Freedom and the whole world in my eyes, before I return gladly to my tasks."

Lin stopped suddenly, surprised at herself. She had known that that morning on the Tower had affected her deeply, but she hadn't tried to put it into words until this moment. Saeryn beside her was nodding, slowly, as if she'd understood, and Lin was filled with a sense of quiet exultation. Perhaps...perhaps it was not too high a goal.

The two girls sat for a moment in silence, before Lin jumped up and wrapped herself back in the quilt, with a playful, childish light in her eyes. "I wish I had a cloak like the Fellowship had..." (for all their deeds had passed into legend) "I would hide behind rocks where no one could see me, then jump out as people walked by!" She laughed merrily, and led the way back into the common room, wondering anew if she would regret her honesty later.
JennyHallu is offline