Evelina read the large and flowing script, a small smile playing at the corners of her lips. She skimmed it quickly, then slowly, concentrating on the words. From a hidden pocket, Evelina extracted a quill and spare parchment and scratched a quick note. She slipped it carefully into a small hole in the side of the wooden building she had leaned against, waiting for the Shire post to arrive. Turning quickly and wrapping her tattered cloak around her, Evelina headed back to her very modest room. She had to prepare. As she crossed the street, a passerby was taken aback by the vicious smile that could not reach her cold eyes.
A bluebird sand into the clear sky. A lone cricket called from a cluster of brambles. A vole scuttered across the forest floor. And Evelina walked soundlessly between the trees. She belonged here; more than the bluebird, the cricket, or the vole. This was her forest and she knew every landmark, from towering oak to frail sapling. Her business demanded that she be familar with the woods. Woods that sheltered her, and became the perfect disguise. But business today did not demand secrecy, and the tall figure dressed in a delicate, pale red dress looked slightly misplaced. Evelina stopped behind a screen of tall reeds, hiding her from the road but a short ways off. She sat on a cold stone to await her companion, idly folding Lobelia's note between her fingers.
Evelina's dark hair was pulled up in an elegant knot at the nape of her neck; the flowing gown hid the sharp curves of her lean body. For a moment, alone, the lady's cold eyes grey soft as she saw some distant memory and the lines of her hard mouth grew full. Should the chattering squirrel nearby have looked up from his cache of nuts, he would have been startled at the change in the woman below. A twig snapped in the woods, not broken by any forest creature, and Evelina jumped up, the moment broken.
[ February 17, 2003: Message edited by: theWhiteLady ]
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