"How precarious," Benia murmured. "Perhaps she and I have more in common than I would have guessed. I hope she will be careful out there in the darkness."
“And so do I, walking on a knife’s edge is best done in daylight! Do you think that she means to leave?”
“Leave to go where? I fear she is as rootless as I am.”
“Miss Benia,” Gilly began after a few moments. “I am so very upset that your visit has resulted in this unfortunate twist, if you’ll pardon the expression.” The hobbit lowered her eyes. “ I feel as if I am the cause of it all really. If you’d had been lodged at my home, as you should have, you’d have been safer I’ll wager, though a mite cramped. Now you have elves, dwarves and all manner of folk seeing you in this lamentable condition, and who knows where chance news of you will spread…Bree, West along the road, even South past Sarn Ford.” Gilly’s shoulders drooped at the thought. She began picking at a rough spot in the pine table, while inwardly enumerating how things could have been vastly different, uncomfortable perhaps but safer.
Benia’s expression was softened with understanding when Gilly looked up again. The desert woman reached over and with a graceful tattooed hand and took the hobbit’s in hers, gently regarding her friend with amber eyes.
“Dear Gilly! Please don’t hold yourself accountable for this misfortune. These complexities have dogged my footsteps whichever road I am on, or place I choose to lodge in for many years now. And as you yourself said wherever I go, that is where I intended to be” She paused to gage her friend’s reaction. “Besides, you don’t seriously think you can hide someone like me in your cozy Bywater alley?” As she spoke the fine chain of tiny silver coins swayed slightly. “Times have changed since we were children, and it is no longer unthinkable that foreigners might be abroad in the Shire, even a wolf, and your neighbors will be watching for them. No, I could not have hidden myself there. Be at ease. I would not have.”
“I imagine then we must deal with the problems at hand, such as supper!” Gilly said brightening. “You’ve got to keep up your strength. If you have to resort to Old Jack’s sword you should be able to lift it at least!”
[ July 06, 2003: Message edited by: Hilde Bracegirdle ]
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