[Elora]

Vanwe stared at the key in her hand for a moment and then back to Lespheria, puzzlement still plain in her eyes.

"I will watch this room for you, m'lady, she said uncertainly. "None shall enter or remove anything from it. I will see to it."

Vanwe closed her hand tightly around the key in emphasis of her words and studied Lespheria anew.

"I still do not understand though," she said softly. The pain should not be. Vanwe turned her gaze to Amandur who watched anxiously.

"Can you not do something," he asked of her. She saw uncertainty in him as he studied her features, and faint shock of recognition that she did not share. Again, could she not escape her mother's shadow? Vanwe felt helpless and overmatched, but she could not just leave Lespheria to the pain that made the room swim in Vanwe's vision.

"I will try," Vanwe said and again bent her untrained senses towards the pain that was real but had no source she could reach. Lespheria was struggling against it as best she could. Faced with this amorphous pain, there was no wrongness that Vanwe could set herself against. Still, she reached for what little she could sieze and did what she could.

The result was slight, but the struggle for Lespheria was a little easier also. Vanwe stirred, tired, and shook her head.

"This thing is beyond me, and I have done what little I can. But without the source of the pain, I am all but useless to you."

Amandur murmured "Interesting," as he closed inspected Lespheria for a worsening as he suspected may come from whom he thought he saw.

"Still, there may be something I can find to dull your pain, my lady," Vanwe said as an idea occured to her.

"No, it would dull my senses and we have no time," Lespheria objected.

"Not necessarily," Vanwe demurred. "The most effective would indeed have you unconscious, but I can still make something to ease the sharpness from the pain so that you can function. You will get farther much faster without this heavy burden upon you, I saw what I needed only just beyond the stables this morning. I can have them ready for you quickly."

Amandur said over Lespheria's shaken head, "Then do so."

Vanwe nodded, tucked the key into her pouch and rushed out of the room. She closed the door on Amandur question to Lespheria "Is that really -"

She let the latch click shut with a sigh. Perhaps Silvanis was right and she should cast off her name. But how was she to cast off her very face? Was he right about Kaldir? She let those thoughts buzz at the back of her mind as she raced down the stairs and out of the inn towards the fringes of the trees she had only emerged from that morning. The required plants preoccupied her.

Buried in the shadows, a woman watched the younger Elf walk beyond the first trees and bend over a growth of plants, extract a pitifully small belt knife and proceed to harvest a supply. The dappled sunlight on her back and hair told the watching woman much. Green eyes fixed on Vanwe, and a face that was serene and beautiful allowed her lips to curve into a smile. Naiore Dannan remained still though, for she knew that another was here. Rangers, whom she despised with a bitter hatred, and one she knew, perhaps more. Her decision to remain in the north longer than she had wished to would yield fruit afterall.

She watched Vanwe range a little further afield, and with the stealth of a ghost, Naiore ascended a nearby maple to there get a greater vantage. Her daughter, oblivious, bent over another plant and set her knife to that. So poorly armed and her abilities so raw and untrained, she would prove easy and therefore somewhat disappointed. But Kaldir, whom she had already tested with pain and blood, was quite another matter and she looked forward to that encounter with a sharp hunger of anticpation.