[Amanaduial the archer]

Aman cast a nervous glance over at the schoolroom and, bracing herself and straightening up, the Innkeeper headed purposefully over to Miz Bella. As she got near though, she faltered mid-step as she saw the hulking figure of Hearpwine leaning against the doorframe, apparently also waiting for the young schoolteacher's attention. Unwilling to stop now that she had been sighted by a few of the pupils, and not wanting merely to seem to be lurking, Aman slowed as she approached the schoolroom, hesitating by the other doorway. As Miz Bella straightened up, she saw Aman and smiled, an expression infused with warmth and purpose. "Good day, Aman, and how are you doing?"

"Very well, thank you, Bella," Aman replied, coming forward and smiling not a little nervously as she resisted the urge to prefix the teacher's first name with 'Miss'. She had to admit, despite all logic or reason, Miz Bella made her a little nervous. She was so different from everything Aman had ever assosiated with teachers or tutors: she had only ever been taught by men, first her own father, then a succesion of tutors in Gondor for a few years before she had moved on to her full time apprenticeship as a horse trainer and stablehand. Beyond her own father, a timeless, self-possessed man, her experience of teachers was dry, dusty old men with beards that curled wispily down their chests to be stroked pensively as they spoke, or the nervous, shrill-voiced young men with hairless chins and black, simple clothes who grew anxious around their rowdy classes. Miz Bella was in a whole new class of her own.

"Bella, I have a possible proposition to put to you, if you wish to hear it - not a criticism, far from it," she added hastily. "But a...a thought maybe. But sure, Hearpwine was waiting first; ask of him his purpose first, I shouldn't like to queue-jump." She grinned at the bard, her fellow Rohirrim, and stepped back a little, a signal for Bella to speak to him first, as was right. As the schoolteacher conversed with Hearpwine, Aman leant against the doorway and peered into the schoolroom, where the hobbit children sat cross-legged or knelt on the floor in rough rows, slates, paper and writing impliments scattered haphazardly in front of them as they chattered or bickered among themselves. A wave of what could maybe be described as inverted nostalgia washed over the Innkeeper: memories of her past brought back by this schoolroom, but so completely different from the schoolroom of her childhood.