[Nuranar]

Nuranar was pacing forth and back, trying to compose a suitable…something…for writing on her brand-spanking-new parchment note cards. To write a note, one must first salute the addressee. But how do you address a web site? This conundrum, unanswerable for the time being, was starting to annoy her, so as usual she decided to skip the introduction. She always maintained that introductions were much easier written last, anyway, because then she knew what it would be introducing.

That was when she started pacing. Looking picturesque and pretty, perched on a tree stump, was all very well, but the creative juices couldn’t flow without being stirred. Pacing kept her mind enough occupied to prevent it from being distracted by the seriously spellbinding scene of a party precipitately progressing toward peril.

She was just triumphantly sorting out the meter of the first couplet when a red and green blur appeared right under her nose, her ankles flew out from under her, and WHAM! she measured her five feet eight on the grassy but, as previously noted, thoroughly uneven ground.

Her first thought decidedly resentful thought was that Halladan had chosen this ill-advised manner in which to announce his early return from, and the consequent emptiness of, the banqueting tables. So already she was preparing to spring to her feet and flatten all seventy-nine bony inches of him when “I am so sorry!” a decidedly feminine voice said.

Quickly squelching the impulse to attack, Nuranar instead rolled over and accepted the offered hand up. The other was already dusting her gown off before she shook her head and realized that (a) someone besides her brother had tripped her and (b) that someone, a girl with suspiciously bright red hair, was right in front of her. That out of the way, her manners returned. “Oh, don’t worry about it! I’m never watching where I’m going anyway.”

The girl looked up for the first time. “Nuranar!” she cried, then embraced her. “Are you okay? I’m really sorry. How have you been?”

The lady so addressed looked closely, then gasped. “Orual! My goodness, it’s been such a long time! Oh yes, I’m fine. It’s been so long since I’ve been in the Green Dragon! For most of the last year I’ve still been working in the Shire. But I don’t get out much, I’m afraid,” she admitted, blushing. “I hope to soon, though. My concerns will never end, but they change from season to season, and I hope to have more time to travel from place to place. Maybe I’ll come back into the Inn sometime soon, or even travel to Rohan. What have you been up to?”