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Old 12-03-2008, 11:28 PM   #29
Arry
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
 
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Join Date: Jan 2004
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Arry has just left Hobbiton.
Vitr raised his brow as Lys tipped back yet another mug of ale – one from her own cask this time. He wondered if she’d restocked their medicine box, if there were a good supply of white willow bark to put a damper on the raging headache he could see brewing on the horizon of the coming day.

Ah, let her have her fun, man. he chided himself, reining in the inclination to warn her off drinking so much so fast. She’d been a little down of late, or so he thought. Though when asked she’d said it was just some little chill she couldn’t seem to shake.

That worried him some; it wasn’t like her. His own Gran had had a bit of the ‘sight’, or so his mother called it . . . the knack of seeing into shadows, somehow knowing when something hurtful were coming. The one time, though, she’d had a chill as she described it, it was a dogged feeling of doom that she could not shake nor pinpoint as to its cause. ‘Feels like some cold wind from somewhere’s blowing cross my neck.’ In her last days Gran had talked about her heart going pitter-pat in her chest for no reason along with the wicked chill that raised the hairs at the nape of her neck and crept down her spine. ‘Some big, old hairy legged rock beetle just skittered over my grave,’ she’d say with a flick of her hand as if to pass it off as nothing.

It hadn’t been nothing, though. Death had come for her . . .

Vitr shrugged his shoulders in an effort to throw off his unpleasant thoughts. This was a day of celebration, he reminded himself. Durin’s Day and the day of his son and daughter’s birth.

As he raised his own mug with the others, Vitr put his free hand at the small of his wife’s back, wanting to make concrete the affection he felt for her. He only sipped at the brew, looking often at her face from the corners of his eyes. A smile curved his lips. Her cheeks were quite pink, from the heat of the crowded hall, he thought, as well as the ale she’d drunk, and no doubt from the sheer pleasure of being out and about with no tasks to be taken care of. Her brown eyes glittered merrily it seemed in the highly lit room, and as merry was her laugh at something someone had said. There against her near cheek lay a coppery tendril of hair having escaped from her thick, neat braid he noted, resisting the impulse to draw it back behind her ear. Seventeen years together, he smiled and, so far, more filled with sweetness than with sorrow.

By chance, or mayhap some uncanny design, a small, stray breeze curled its chilly finger down the collar of his tunic. Perhaps from one of the ventilation shafts that drew the outside air into the caverns. He shivered, taking his hand from Lys’ back to rub at the nape of his neck.

‘Mahal, be between us and harm,’ he murmured quickly, an old oath of protection coming readily to his lips. ‘And protect us from all baneful foes and their workings.’

And as quickly, his arm went round about his wife’s waist, drawing her close against him. His gaze flew round the room, seeking out the figures of his son and daughter.
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