Nearly two months since my last writing. Summer has rushed by, as it always does. My favorite season, I think. The fields are filled with foals and calves and lambs, the evenings are long and lazy and twilit, the garden is overflowing with flowers, and the lake calls me to take a swim every time I pass by.
I find it difficult to put my thoughts to paper today. My mind has been a perplexing place lately. I seem to be doing well. I get up each morning and do my chores and my work, I come home and eat and rest and go to bed. I smile at friends and greet the people I know around the village or in Bree.
But something is still wrong with me.
I wonder if there always will be. If the cracks that formed when I was broken will always remain there. Even though I seem to be whole again, I am functional, I live and breathe and move. I am yet broken.
I received a message from Tothrandir earlier in the summer. How odd it is to see these words written by my hand now! I had thought him dead. I had been told that he was dead. I can't imagine that someone would play a cruel joke and pretend otherwise. Does he therefore live? I know nothing else, beyond that he is supposedly alive...somewhere.
And then a message from Penlard. He is being cared for by Hamadryt, who seems a very kind and pleasant fellow in his own right. I do wish to see my old friend again, even though we now share a terrible and unjust grief between us. It has been far too long since we met face to face.
Next, a letter from home. My father's brother is in failing health, and not expected to remain in the world much longer. They bid me come home to pay my respects and so I can attend the funeral when it occurs. I won't deny that I have little wish to see my parents, yet such a thought always feels uncomfortably selfish. I scarcely recall my uncle. I remember him as a fleeting presence on the farm, sometimes accompanied by his adopted son, Théo, who I knew better.
And yet, perhaps I should go. I am bewildered that I can find so little peace when I live in such a peaceful place. We are far from the wars in the south, here in Bree. Hookworth is a quiet and idyllic place. By all rights, I should be happy.
Yet, people continue to come and go. They arrive, they find a place in my heart, and they drift away again. Or they seek closeness with me, and I shy away, too afraid of letting anyone near this shattered soul. Yet I seem to remain. An odd and peculiar little figure in a cottage by a lake. With a wound that refuses to heal. Perhaps it is not meant to heal. Perhaps it never will.
I wish I knew where I am supposed to be. And if there is any place in this world where I might feel at rest. I wonder if I will ever again feel the absolute peace that I once knew in my husband's arms.
