[*Varda*]

Poppy turned and wandered back into the dining room, not answering Menelduliniel’s question. The odour of the lilacs was overpowering her, as she wondered how they could be so strong.

“There must be something interesting around here,” she murmured to herself. “It can’t be that empty” Her eyes glanced up to the top of the fireplace, which seemed to hold nothing but a few ornaments, gold, and valuable surely, but nothing worth looking at. Not that she was able to reach that high, anyway. The two elves stood in the doorway and watched her, as she sighed.

“Well, there doesn’t seem to be anything here,” she said, gesturing around the room. “And unless there’s some way out of the sitting room, which there doesn’t seem to be, I suppose we’re back where we started. Should we try upstairs?”

Seeing nothing else of interest in the two rooms, and feeling only a strange chill in both rooms, the elves and Poppy walked out into the Great Hall once more, shutting the door behind them. Poppy took the key and locked it.

“I don’t like the idea of leaving it unlocked…” she said to the elves. “We don’t want to show the ghosts everywhere we’ve been, in case we’ve been somewhere we shouldn’t.” Nervously she rubbed her hands together, feeling the cold in the large hall, and looked around. “Where should we go now?”

There was plenty of choice. Two staircases went upstairs, and two open doorways, nothing but heavy darkness beyond them, lay open to them. Poppy looked at the elves, waiting for some signal, some response. Both seemed to be looking to the northwest staircase.

“Perhaps we should try up there,” Menelduliniel offered her opinion. “We are finding nothing down here.” Poppy nodded, and they went up the staircase, the hall lying vast and empty behind them, and uncertainty before them.