I am a Mother now.
Not in the common usage of the word, oh no! It's worse and yet better. I have been asked to sit with the Wise Ones on the Council and partake in guiding and teaching the young and those in need. Now I must be a Mother to them all; the family and those we protect.
My dear Lore warned me it might happen and I shrugged it off. I told her I was to busy and there was no way I would taken seriously by the council as a candidate. I was gone half the time. Serving with the Eagle Guard before it disbanded, then mentoring Rhia until she and her father disappeared. I searched for them too. All the way to Gondor where he came from. No sign of them anywhere. I fear they have been swept into the war there like so many others before and probably more like them to come.
I helped where I could, always asking for information on Rhia and her father while I healed the wounds, soothed the broken and tried to comfort the dying and those they were leaving behind.
Then I returned to Bree and settled in. Karlie was so pleased when I joined her in caring for the inhabitants of the Alley. Her idealism still gives her a glow that makes it easier for everyone around her to feel safer.
Until the Uncles came to my door with the rowan branch and its red ribbon and led me to the Council. Everything changes now. My friends and family all treat me differently. Barliman doesn't even know, yet he see's something and his look is guarded when I visit the Pony.
Oh, there are some advantages to it, mind you. I merely lift a finger and the impossible can happen. The Family goes quiet. The lovable yet rowdy, fractious lot of individualists I grew up around stops and waits for me to speak. Secretly, I enjoy that, but oh my, that is something I can never reveal.
Now I sit with the rest of the Mothers and sometimes the full sitting when the Uncles join and decisions affecting us all are made. That scares me too, but it's got to be done now, as it has for centuries past. There is still chaos all around and much of it spills over onto Bree. We will stand against it as we have since the beginning, even before the Tall King's ship broke on the shore of Forochel and his sons journeyed south.
