Sitting in her appointed suite, Isulril regarded her reflection in the glass of a hand mirror. She was much changed from what she was before. A beauty remained with her, but it was different. She had thinned, enough so that her once form-fitting gowns now looked slightly too big for her. Her skin, once a charming ivory, had paled to the point where she sometimes fancied she was a strange sort of spirit, the area beneath her eyes slightly darker than the rest of her face, her once-red lips now a pale pink.
She looked away from the glass. She abhorred her frailness, the way it became a cause for concern among those whom she met. She missed the striking beauty she had possessed, the way it caused heads to turn, and others to regard her with something of awe, and perhaps even fear.
The wasting sickness had tempered her spirit and increased her melancholy, something to which she had always been prone. For a time, she had feared anyone see her in such a state, and so she had kept to herself, not leaving her home in Bree. But at the suggestion of a healer she had sought out, she decided to return to Gondor, all the better to take the warmer climes, and heal.
She had met the man before, on her journey to Minas Tirith. The seeming solitude of her passage had struck him, then, and she had found him courteous but somewhat frightening.
When arrived to the White City itself, the woman took rooms in the Thirsty Seer. There she had met a rather boisterous group of people, and she felt a sense of shame in her fear of them, of their number in particular. She had become exceedingly shy, and she regretted her decision to leave the group, though the fear was there.
She had made her way up the stairs to the wall, the parapet a calming, albeit windy place. Lost in her own reflections, she had scarcely noticed the presence of the man from before, until she heard him speak. She had attempted to disappear from him, but he had caught her spying, and nearly shivering in the chill air.
The conversation that evening was strange, she remembered. She found herself explaining her past to the man, a relative stranger. But the wine had loosened both their tongues. She did not know what to think of him. He could not be pieced together like others of his ilk. Gondorian men she knew, particularly the nobility and those of higher ranks. They were simple to figure out, and easy to manipulate in the right circumstances--were one desirous of doing so.
But this man was different, and she had no desire to manipulate him in any way--what were such powers to her now anyway?
She sat up in her borrowed bed at the tavern, turning to look out the nearby window. The view was exceedingly calm. But she found herself perplexed. She wondered if and when she would see the stranger who now called her friend, a term she was hesitant to take on.
She rose, and began the day, taking out the plait in her hair and beginning the task of brushing it out. At least, she thought, she still had her hair.
