Gondor

"I love you." It was simple enough yet complicated to say, and so when it came from Isulril's mouth, she found herself shocked. "I love you," she had insisted.

She remembered the day as though it were yesterday, when her lord had come to the apartments he had kept for her, when he was sitting in his study there, looking through some documents. He had looked up at her, apparently somewhat stunned by the admission.

Standing by the fire, the pale woman was clad only in her chemise, her feet bare, long black locks falling to her waist. She looked into the embers, and thought of the previous evening, standing by the fire in the common room of the Prancing Pony.

She knew nothing of suffering. She was excessively rich, for a woman of Bree. She dressed too lavishly. She relied too much on her moods and was bad at hiding them. She should live on the streets with the working women, selling herself for coin.

All of these thoughts came to her in the days following the events of the previous days. They were not originally her own thoughts, but rather, things that had been said to and of her over the past week, and even before that. Flashes of what had happened over those days came to her, and she clenched the fist of her uninjured hand.

The crowd clapped uproariously. Usually the approbation of the crowd was more subtle, dimmed down by the soft sounds of the harp. But tonight, at the Harpers Court, the harpists were not there at all. Instead, it was a band of merry fiddle players, playing the score for a small opera, which was performed by a few women in rather profuse costume makeup, as well as some gentlemen in excessive robes.

Gondor. How it loomed in the distance. She frantically took step after step away from it, but somehow each step seemed to take her closer to her homeland.
It was not that she hated her homeland. Nay, it was quite the opposite for her. However, now, Gondor simply was associated, to her, with danger itself.

It had been many years since Anorieldis had taken up the studies of lore, herbalism and painting. The first two had been deemed proper by her parents. The last was of her choosing, having had the propensity toward art during the majority of her sixteen years. She spent most of her time in the Houses of Lore, studying little and great things by candlelight, in the darkened rooms of those vast libraries.

Isulril stood in her near-empty home, staring into the fire in the grate. The furniture had been covered in white sheets, and dusty. But there was not much of it. The home had not been used in some time, when she had arrived several months ago.

She thought about Handrynhad, who had spent part of his life in Bree-land, though much of it in Gondor. He was a minor noble, who had his hand in trade more than politics. He bred hounds, and made much gold off the selling of them.

A cry of a gull. The crashing of waves against weathered stone. The pit-pattering of rain. The sounds of her homeland accompanied her as she departed the shining city of Dol Amroth.

"Come on, strong friend. Carry me swiftly and do not falter," she whispers to the black stallion that would take her far across the lands of the world.