Her gaze, she had been told, was bold, especially for someone so young. When she had been a maiden of no more than twenty years of age, a certain Lord Handrynhad had found it so.
"Your eyes, they are like water icing up in the North. I fear they may weep or freeze me to death in turn," he had said all those years ago. She had thought little of it at the time. She was vainglorious and proud as a peacock then. When she had found his attentions, it made her feel less the farm girl and more the sophisticated woman of Dol Amroth.
And so she had reinvented herself as such, with her bold gaze, her icy glare, her smiling, smirking lips which had been called sweet as strawberries, red as roses, and other such nonsense. In Dol Amroth, Lothiriel may have been princess, but in some senses, Isulril felt she was its queen.
Isulril remembered these times, this past with a sense of nostalgia and regret. When she walked into the inn of the Prancing Pony, she found herself among strangers. Even her boldest gaze could do nothing to remedy that. And so now she kept that bold gaze often affixed to the floor, or off into nothing. The move had changed her, had softened her in ways that she did not like. Time spent alone had turned the woman from a careless maiden into a woman of more mature years. At seven-and-twenty, she felt the pangs of middle age nearing, and the blossom of youth dying. She cursed the former and longed for the latter.
She thought much of the past few days. Indeed, so much had happened since. She thought of the women she had met at the inn, of the one red of hair and bitter of wit, as apt to query as to bite. She thought of the snow-haired woman who had given her a fine wine to drink, and who had been so kind to her. She thought of the other women there at that table, and how she had already forgotten their names.
She sighed, allowing her hand to caress the wood of the table, now that the inn was empty at an early hour. Certain letters had been carved into it, whether by dinner knife or by dagger was unclear. She thought of how crowded it had been, and how little she felt she had contributed to the raucous environment. The stuffy Gondorian. Ice Maiden.
As she sat at the table, alone but for her journal, she thought of another table, so long ago, of Handrynhad, who had spoken to her. It was a table nearly as big as that at the Pony, but far grander. The two had been sat there, and conversed intimately for hours.
"I would I had not married her," he had whispered lowly to her. "I would things were different. But as it stands, you know the situation." She had cried then. She felt foolish, crying in front of the mountains of food between them, sobbing into his chest, dampening his tunic. He had held her. He was warm and much bigger than her, and it seemed natural that he should hold her thus.
Isulril shook her head as though bidding away the thought, as though willing it to fly from her ears. She sat and dipped her pen into the inkwell.
I am yet a stranger here. In such a group of women, I felt a fool. I felt so utterly different, so strange. I never felt so alone. Not even...
She frowned. She should have smiled, she knew, because finally, she had opened the door, she was all the closer to making friends, if she would but extend herself. She felt, however, that she was being stretched uncomfortably.
The last evening had brought her into the acquaintance of a woman who claimed Gondorian heritage as well. She had seemed so familiar, so...she could not place it. And from Dol Amroth too. She wondered, after, if the other woman, currently in the physician's employ, had ever known of her in Dol Amroth. Had they ever moved in the same circles? Had her infamy been papered across the city like so many flyers for a grand performance?
And then there was the matter of the physician himself. She set her pen down, frowning. She recalled her conversation with him, her verbal missteps, and she replayed it in her mind over and over. She was confused, as she had been previously. What about him intrigued her so? Why did she desire to know everything, to uncover his characteristics and flaws like a connoisseur might uncork a bottle of wine. She wrinkled her nose. No. It was not like that.
She thought then of how she had parted from Handrynhad. It had been a spring day, and the scent of the ocean was keen on the wind. She remembered the tears in her eyes, remembered how she cried, though they were not the same tears she had wept into his chest. No. She had thrown a small lamp at him, had stormed from his rooms on bare feet. She remembered her bare feet, unshod and bleeding a little from the glass shards she had created. She had told him she hated him. She had told him he had used her. It was time to leave.
He had stood there, nonplussed, and had said nothing, had let her go.
The contrasts startled her. The grandeur of Dol Amroth, the relative simplicity of Bree. Her surety of her feelings, of her friends, of her love, of her hatred. And the confusion, oh, the confusion. It made her head ache.
She packed up her things. In passing, the innkeep furrowed his brows, concern etching his jovial features as he moved on to offer another patron his drink.
"Have a good evening, Mr. Butterbur. I am going home." Home. For the first time, it felt as though she were going home.
