A celebrated day in Bree

She cleans the floor thoroughly, not a speck of dust is allowed to remain. She's on her knee's, scrubbing until even her callused hands feel the pain. It doesn't matter, her son is supposed to return home for a few days, and everything must be perfect. When she's done with the floor she looks around, everything is neat, clean and in it's own place. Dinner is done, it's just her son that's missing now. She walks to the fireplace, looks up at the painted portrait of her deceased husband. He's been dead for several long years, but she can't bring herself to take down the portrait. She sits down on a chair and knitts while she waits, her knitting is her sole income, it's not much, but she survives. Time goes on, she waits faithfully, what else can she do? He's the only one she has left. Her prescious son, an angel in her eyes. Sure, he fell in with a somewhat odd and bad crowd when he was twelve, but that was because his father died. He's a grown man now, not yet married, but she's still hoping for grandchildren before she dies. What else can she do? She waits. She wakes up earlier than anyone else in Bree, like usual. The dinner is overcooked, uneatable, but warm. She moves it from the fireplace and eats some hurriedly before throwing on a shawl and hurrying out to search for her son. She walks by the wanted posters, more than she can count, but doesn't look at them. She can't read them anyway. She doesn't stop until she's inside the jail's door. The guard on the graveyard shift wakes up and looks at her; a tiny frail woman bent with age. She begs him to search for her son, but he looks at her then takes her out to a wheelbarrow outside. He takes a blanket of the wheelbarrow and shows her the contents; her son's broken and mangled body. He's been killed by some hero who killed him to get to his boss. She cries and tries to cling to the guard to keep herself upright, but he takes no pity on her and simply shakes her off and walks inside. She lies on the ground and cries until she can't cry anymore. When she can finally get up the streets are bustling with people. She has to be parted from her last few copper coins to get someone to help her get her son's body back to her little cottage. It takes the remaining day and the whole night, but she finally buries him, while enduring the cheers and jubilation of people as the entire town celebrates the death of the criminals and his minions. The hero is celebrated, even though he killed indiscriminatly, killed her son who's worst crime was that he was friends with the wrong people and happened to be in their camp. She walks inside, but does not go to sleep on the blanket she uses as a bed. She simply sits in her chair and knits. She waits, but not for her son, or for revenge. She waits for death, for she knows no one cares about her, or her son. She knows the murder of her son will forever be unpunished. She'll be found when her corpse stinks enough to disturb the neighbours, no one will shed a tear for her or her son, no one will care. They are just the people in the background, the misfortunate that must be sacrificed for the hero's glory and fame. For what does it really matter, two more or less regular people of Bree?