[Elora]

Vanwe let the silence grow as seemed natural. The star named Watcher fulfilled its namesake. Vanwe wondered if a star could be a friend. When she looked back, she saw that Silvanis had stretched out. She was loathe to disrupt his peace. Perhaps he knew where her mother was better than she. She would ask him, if she could do so. It had not been easy to speak of her mother as she had.

In fact, Vanwe had never spoken at such length about her mother. Snipets of tales, told to her by villagers and those she encountered in Rohan ebbed and flowed. Rohan was his mother's land. How she must hate Naiore for what she has done to Rohan. She glanced down at her notes, which she had gripped tightly in her distress and relaxed her fingers.

A price was on her mother's head, and one perhaps on her own. Not only that, the one who may seek to claim Vanwe's gold price had reason to hate her mother also. She remembered the sense of wrongness and suffering that emanated from him with the intensity of a healer's senses. As Silvanis lay on the grass, Vanwe placed the paper back in the pouch and set it to one side. She had no stomach to further ponder such things.

The Elf maiden sighed, quietly so as not to disturb Silvanis, and looked skyward once more. The Watcher winked and gleamed, and she smiled back. A friend...

"How can she cause so much pain," Vanwe asked the Watcher in a quiet voice. "How can that not pass in turn to her daughter?"

It was a question that troubled her. She avoided all weaponry, excluding her belt knife, for that reason more than any penalty that may come from the villagers if she was discovered to be armed. She applied her skills to wood and animals most freely, hesitant indeed to extend them to people, for the same reason. She did not understand her mother's abilities, but she suspected that in some way she had also that capacity within her.

Had Vanwe the benefit of her kin, Galadriel foremost, she would know it is not the skill but the heart that determines what is done with it. But all Vanwe had was a starry sky and at that moment a Ranger who she thought was sleeping. So she whispered to the sky. When no answer came, Vanwe stretched out on her stomach, hands folded beneath her chin on the grass, legs dangling in the air.

A little more of the night passed, and Vanwe was unable to sleep just yet. Her mother weighed on her mind too heavily. So, again quietly, in a soft and sweet voice, she began to hum and then sing to the evening. It was this sort of behaviour that earnt her much condemnation from the villagers. Without them to wave their fists or cuff her, Vanwe found herself falling into song.

It was long before her eyes closed and memory converged upon her. Sleep did find her though, and she curled into it's peace with a sigh, after checking upon Silvanis, her pouch forgotten near one outstretched hand.