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Old 03-18-2004, 10:05 PM   #277
Imladris
Tears of the Phoenix
 
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Join Date: Jun 2003
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Tolkien

Ærosylle skipped up the path to the Seventh Star. A smile was on her face, dark brown hair, shot with copper, bounced from her shoulders, her grey eyes, flecked with green, sparkled, and she clutched a leather bag. Her ragged hem of her pale green dress flapped wildly around her dancing feet.

Flinging the door of the Inn open, she threw herself into a chair and began to trace the grains of the wooden table with her finger. Two others sat at it, conversing with one another: a man with red hair and a woman with brown. Two empty plates were stacked towards the edge of the table.

Ærosylle stared at the man’s red hair: it was so lovely, so bright, so tantalizingly foreign. She flicked her eyes away, and stared at the finger that continued to trace the grain in the wood. Her feet tapped nervously, as if she wanted to go somewhere but didn’t know where to go when, with an irritable sigh, she rummaged in the bag and pulled a piece of ill shaped paper flecked with green from the leather bag along with a goose feather quill pen and a bottle of ink. Her hand quivered as she dipped the feather into the ink and began to sketch. A deformed hag’s face with hollow cheeks and a warty nose appeared upon the parchment. With long spidery line, Ærosylle drew straggling grey hair that clung to the woman’s scalp like seaweed upon an anchor.

“What are you drawing?” asked the woman, peering at the paper.

Ærosylle’s pen paused and, one eyebrow higher than the other, mouth slightly open, and eyes wide, said “It’s a woman. An old woman. A fisherwoman who will live by the sea.” She glanced up and smiled at her and continued, all the while shading and colouring the woman’s face, “Did you know that we will all grow old? Our beautiful hair will turn grey, and maybe it will fall out and become bald which would, indeed, make us even uglier than this old crone….a wart would be better than no hair at all.” She reached out and touched the woman’s hair, and stared longingly at a the man’s red hair before she said, “Leave me be…she must be perfect or she won’t live at all.”

She bent low over the paper, muttering words as she drew a still ocean, flecked with foam, and on the horizon a ship with black sails. “Corsair…” she whispered. “What is your name,” she asked, glancing towards the redhaired man and the normal woman.

“I’m Mellonin and this is Raefindan,” the woman said. “And you are?”

“Ærosylle.“ Giggling, she threw her pen down and picked the portrait up, studying it with a broad smile. But it faded, and she bit her lip as she stared at the sketch, before finally shaking her head. To the left, surrounded by smooth grey stones, was a fireplace and in that fireplace a fire burned. Red flames, streaked with orange and glimmering with blue, licked hungrily around wooden logs and sparks exploded from the collapsing wood, meeting their doom on the stone of the hearth.

Her black pupils dilated as she walked towards the fire the paper in her hands. Mellonin and Raefindan followed her. She stood in front of the fire for a few minutes, enjoying the feeling of dying skin as the heat poached her shins. With a small smile and a sob, she let the sketch fall from her fingers and drift towards the flames. The sketch convulsed into a crumpled singed ball before disappearing amidst the glowing embers of the burnt log. The taint of burning ink contaminated the homely smoky smell.

“Why did you burn it?” Mellonin cried. “It was a wonderful sketch and that paper was wasted!”

“I can always make more,” Ærosylle said with a shrug. “But the old woman! The corsairs killed her -- didn’t you see the ship on Gondor’s horizon?” she asked. She folded her arms and stared at them, tapping her foot. “They killed her…so she couldn’t exist anymore. She was a casualty of war. I do hope you understand that she’s dead, and if you’re dead you can’t exist, which means…you don’t live anymore.

“I have never been to an Inn before, and it is absolutely lovely!” she said, brightly. “I don’t know why because it’s just like a house only bigger, but there seems to be an aura of excitement and adventure which is lacking at home,” she said as she skipped back towards the table with Mellonin and Raefindan. “But I am so tired…my legs are protesting against my journey,” she laughed. “I should have flown,” she added. Seeing the two lunch plates still sitting on the table, she gestured towards them and said, “You really shouldn’t stack them so and just shove them out of the way. You’ll hurt their feelings if you haven’t done it yet.”
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