[Thenamir]

Laevin watched Windheneb and Castar working the pretty ladies of the market from the seat at his whetstone wheel. "My old dad used to say that youth is wasted on the young, and now I think he was right," he thought to himself as he worked over the edge of a customer's butcher knife. Laevin had never felt, or perhaps had never allowed himself to feel, the longing for some one special person. He'd lived his youth much as Windheneb was doing now -- flirting, teasing, but never committing. He'd never acted dishonorably in a relationship, but neither had he pursued one.

The more he thought about it, the more he began to feel a twinge of regret that he had no one with whom to share the days and seasons of his existence. He turned his mind back to his workwheel, but still he struggled to put a name to the feeling that was creeping up on him like a cold shadow.

"Loneliness." The word broke into his mind like midnight lightning. "Bah," he thought to himself. "I've got almost everyone in this town for a friend. Anytime I want I can stroll down to the White Horse and be amongst the finest and most friendly people in Edoras!"

The other half of him answered in turn, "But how many of them really know you, Laevin? How close are they, in truth?"

To that the more cavalier side of Laevin did not have an answer save a further question, "Are you so daft as to think I could go courtin' at my age? Why, I'm 40 years old! And how could I support a bride? And maybe children? And how could I bring them to this tumbledown shanty I call a home?"

Laevin nearly sliced open a thumb when the lonely-half answered, "Love conquers all." After he took a moment to compose himself, he mused half-aloud to himself, "Love! Of all the tomfool notions...why there's probably not a woman in the whole of Rohan who could endure me for over a week except..." and there he stopped dead. For if he allowed himself to name that name, it would mean that there really was someone who he cared about, that might care for him in return. It would mean the end of the existence he'd enjoyed for all his adult life. It would mean a sea change in his predictable, comfortable life. It would mean having to go through the awkward and potentially embarassing folderol of trying to tell that person how he felt.

"It would mean the end of loneliness, Laevin," the romantic half whispered quickly to his unsettled mind.

"NO!" he shouted aloud, standing abruptly from his chair and deliberately slamming the knife into the wooden table with his powerful blacksmith's arms, sinking the blade two inches deep into the wood. It startled a couple of customers who were picking over what was left of his wares towards the end of a market day. Leaving the knife stuck in the table he brushed the remaining filaments of his train of thought from his mind by changing his countenance and amiably asking the customers what they were looking for...