It was funny, the dark-haired woman thought, how only a day could change everything. She sat upon the stool of her dressing table, looking into the mirror as she brushed her hair. It fell past her shoulders, down to her waist, in thick, raven waves. It had been a celebrated head of hair when she had lived in Dol Amroth. She had been known for brushing it with a hundred strokes of the hairbrush each night, causing it to shine perfectly. She still kept to this task, each night running the brush down her tresses in rhythmic patterns. She no longer needed to count. She knew when such a thing was at an end.
She examined her face as she continued the brush's strokes. Her countenance was rather round, her features soft, though her nose held the aquiline features of Gondor, giving her a noble appearance, though none had claimed her a part of the nobility back in the city. Her eyes were large, and shone a soft blue, capable of dulling with boredom and shining with interest, as well as flashing with disdain, disapproval, and displeasure. Her gaze was bold, when it took to a person, sometimes penetrating through the heart in its intensity. Her lips were a color akin to red, and sensual in nature, often pursing in thought or pressing together in irritation. She needed no cosmetic to make them that color, though many had questioned it before. She possessed a pale countenance, with elegantly-quirked brows, arching to indicate curiosity or dislike. It was, she thought, altogether a satisfying face, insomuch as she was concerned.
She continued the strokes of the brush, losing count, but never losing count. She still had some of the vanity of her earlier youth. She knew her beauty, and had used it to her advantage in the past, but it seemed those days were over. She was just another woman in Bree-town, a beautiful and oddly elegant one, but a woman nonetheless. This caused a frown from her, though it soon turned to a smile.
How different things can be within the space of a day, she thought to herself.
It was better, she thought, when she only took tea at the inn. She was less moody and more inclined to be sociable. Something had slowly been changing in her. She was becoming more extroverted, less apt to sulk in a corner.
She recalled the kindness of the barmaid, whose bodice, she thought, was very fashionable. She regretted having been unthinkingly rude to her in the past, and how she might mend that rudeness. She thought, also, of how the woman had admired her dress the other day. So many new faces, and names. She was terrible with names.
The blonde Rohirric woman had briefly greeted her, but was soon called away. The man from the other evening invited her to chatter with him while he mended a chair. She had watched with interest.
Indeed, the man, evidently a Bree-lander--she could not quite grasp him. She tried to compare him to others she had known during her time there, and she could not find a similar person. He was kind, and his kindness flowed freely from him like the water flowed from the fountain in the courtyard of the inn.
She had been suspicious of the man at first, as she was used to doing with everyone else of late. She did not like that he wished to help her talk about Lord Handrynhad and his passing. She had been so gloomy, had been so utterly despondent that she found it difficult to wish to speak to him at all, much less on her source of grief. To speak of her lord would be to tell another about her past, and that was not something she wished to provoke.
She had, eventually, relented to him, and told him of her current predicament, that she risked losing her occupation because of her mistakes. She thought again of what that woman had said, the other day, warning her. And then it occurred to her that the warning had perhaps not been for her at all. The man had cheerfully suggested that she talk to her employer on the matter, and win back her position, indeed, had suggested vouching for her. She had left him, then, somewhat cheered and remembering his words, reverberating in her head: "A barrel will only hold so much water 'til it starts to leak."
As she sat at the mirror, she wondered to herself if he had not been correct in that assessment. She had been leaking in many senses of the word, from the uncontrolled emotion to the tears, to the being sick thereafter. She had not been herself, when she had faced the prospect of so much of herself rotting away inside: the untold secrets, the unacknowledged feelings, as well as those which she had acknowledged but decided to hide.
She then decided to make a visit to the physician, to tell him her mistake, that she did wish for the gardening job back. It took but a few words and she had been granted her wish, much to her relief.
At the dressing table, Isulril stared into the mirror again, but she did not see herself. Instead she saw herself and the physician speaking on the matter of her admiration...for someone. She had both hoped and feared that he would guess to whom she was referring, friendless as she was. But he did not. Little mattered to him in regards to what had happened, how she had made a mistake with the strange Gondorian, to rid her thoughts of precisely the man who had been seated before her.
In her heart she knew there was something wrong in asking him these things, in putting it in hypotheticals, theoreticals, vagaries and the like. But the last thing she would do, the last thing she would ever do, would be to tell him that he was the object of her admiration. She had received enough hurt when he rejected her as a friend. No, she would not do that to him or, more importantly, herself.
She shook her head, pausing in her brushstrokes, remembering that she had asked him if there was a cure for heart-sickness. He had said there was not, but was hopeful of there being one in the future. She pondered now what such a thing would look like, and if it would be of use. Thirty or so more strokes, she told herself, continuing with the process. He had recommended, more or less, that she find a more empathetic interlocutor with whom to speak on such matters. He had recommended, even, the same person with whom she spoke earlier that day. She put him out of her mind, temporarily.
She had walked back towards the inn that night, and had found the flower-puller with the man from earlier, and his near-silent friend. She asked to speak to her in private, and as the two walked, she examined the other woman. The two could not have been more different. While Isulril was voluptuous, the other was thin. While Isulril's features were soft, the other's were sharp and angular. She was small and perhaps a little rough around the edges, but Isulril admired those things about her, admittedly.
The woman, short of temper, had spoken with her about the plant, which had been taken from the physician's garden and then replaced. They discoursed on how to treat each other in future, and the woman suggested that she use violence as a solution to conflict. At first Isulril balked at the thought, but then she was reminded when she had thrown the lamp at her lord, and how satisfying it had been, though she had walked out with bloody feet.
She found she could empathize, to some extent, with the brawler's tendency toward violence, with her anger, with her humor.
She ended up walking back with the woman, returning to that woman's friends, and they had bantered a great deal. But the most important thing, to Isulril, was that she felt a weight had lifted from her back, that a burden had been eased off her shoulders. For once she felt she could relax rather than stiffen in anxious thought.
Isulril stopped her hair brushing, setting the brush neatly to the side. She gave herself a final look in the mirror, and smiled. Earlier she had baked two oddly ornate apple pies. She took them to the Prancing Pony, handing them to Barliman along with a note addressed to a certain person. Folded, it read on the outside: "Concerning Noodles."
Isulril's smile widened at the thought. Brighter days, she thought, were ahead.
