[Elora]

Uien let the rake rest in her grip and looked around the stable interior. The clean, sweet and simple scent of fresh straw wafted upon the air. She could hear the steady, rhythmic sounds of a knife on wood nearby. Derufin was carving, she realised, whilst she was out making all manner of noise. At least she had not disturbed him and that was a small comfort.

Also, the stable was cleaned and the fodder baskets for the night were stocked and waiting. There was nothing more to be done. She could not hide and skulk inside the stables any longer. Even this foolishness had to end. Uien replaced the rake and dared to venture back out into the sunlight of the Inn yard. Falowik was nowhere to be seen. This did not please her, even given her earlier impertinence, boldness, insensativity...

The list of wrongs rolled through her mind. Uien sighed and looked over to the tree that had watched over him during the night. Falowik had folded the blanket carefully and lodged it in the branches. Perhaps he was not gone afterall, Uien wondered. No, for he was a rare honest man and he would return the blanket to someone. Uien's spirit lightened a little.

She gazed up at the inn until her gaze was captured by the garden bed that ran along the porch on both sides of the front steps. Lavender, daisies, tulips and daffodils all nodded, but they were not alone. Adventurous grass had made forays into the bed, and the grass was not the only explorers trespassing. The idea of soil around her fingers was immensely appealing to Uien. The gift of nurturing life was so scarcely given, and Uien had seen too much of it robbed from the world.

Soon enough, Uien was on her knees before the outer corner of one garden bed. Her deft fingers worked nimbly as she tended the plants and soil. It had been her mother's habit to sing to the plants. Perhaps, for all Uien knew, her mother did so in Eldamar. What plants must grow there, round glittering Tirion? She did not know that either, and perhaps never would.

The Elf woman began to sing her mother's song to the flowers of the Green Dragon Inn, and to it's tidy hedges and vines that draped the porch rail posts. The sun was warm on her head and back as she worked and the morning was serene. Her thoughts untangled and smoothed further.

It was as she was tending a golden daisy bush that Uien paused. She cupped the bright blooms in her hand. "Laureä," she murmured, for the blooms were golden like Falowik's name and appearance. An idea for a beginning to the redress she owed him began to form. Uien picked a spray and rose, dusting soil from her skirts where she had been kneeling.

She crossed to the tree with the blanket nestled in its boughs like fruit. There she laid the spray of flawless blooms on the blanket. A beginning and a promise that she would somehow mend her error. Uien brushed the petals with the tips of her fingers gently, smiled at them and then returned to the garden. There was much to do and she had much to think on.

Onwards Uien went, singing as she bent over the garden, tending this and then that, smoothing the soil and soothing that which grew within it. By the time she had worked her way across the length of the garden beds, Uien felt a little calmer. It was easier to push the darkness aside in the sunshine of the morning. In the evening, there were the stars she so loved and the night.

Between now and then, she had to eat and find the hobbit that had accompanied Falowik. There was something she needed to say to the fellow that may also ease Falowik's lot after the trouble she had seemingly added to it. Uien stood, brushed the dirt from her fingers and wondered how to determine where Falowik's suspicious hobbit companion had bunked for the night.

"In the hobbit sized rooms," Uien murmured as she pondered. "Perhaps Aman will tell me should I ask." But, of course, to do that Uien had to venture inside. With skirts laden with soil, hands dirty, and Cooks wrath over another missed meal, Uien realised that this would prove more difficult to undertake than may appear. Besides, would the hobbit listen to anything she had to say when she looked as though she had recently rolled her way through a roadside ditch?

Uien knew that answer and she went in search of the solution. She needed to clean up in order to do anything else of value that day and that stream would serve well.