[Bêthberry]

A still hush of late midday greeted Hearpwine's singing of Galadriel's lament. It was the cessation of movement around The White Horse which caught Bethberry's eye. It was as if not a breathe was taken nor expelled.

She saw Aylwen poised above the desk, hand still holding pen, as still as the barrows which rowed the entrance to Edoras. She saw Aedre unmoving, her hand holding a pitcher which she had placed upon a wooden trestle, her face turned towards the warrior turned bard. She saw Maercwen sit quietly and all Liornung's other neices and nephews rooted to their spots upon the floor, no longer rolling their small glass baubles nor bouncing their balls and pick up sticks. She saw Ruthven and the two dwarves, Oin and Finky, stop their raucous laughter to listen to Hearpwine's entrancing voice. It was difficult to imagine those two still, but indeed they were, not a tug at their beards nor a scratch at their heads nor a stretch of their arms. The old warrior Osric, his eyelids lowered to half cover his eyes, had straightened his back and his neck, lifted his head; even his arms had sought a stiff attention as his hands held bread. What enemy was he seeing march towards him?

"It is a song of great keening, the White Lady's lament," spoke Bethberry finally, "a song suited to the passing of her people, to opportunities lost, to roads not taken, to great regret."

Both Hearpwine and Liornung raised their eyes towards the former Innkeeper. What did they know of her past, of who this woman was?

"Yet every beauty has its cost, its great peril. There are those who say that Gimli himself spoke of the danger of light and joy and the wounding which comes of its passing."

Here a fleck of sunlight skittered into the great hall and fell upon Hearpwine's face. All could see him raise an eyebrow at Bethberry, which she acknowledged with a slow, small half smile which wafted over her face as moonlight dances over a running stream.

"Your words of praise are strung as pearls, great ornaments to beauty. Yet you have said when you returned home after the War that home seemed smaller and duller than you remembered it. And now you have forsaken it, seeking a different path."

Hearpwine did not contract her, but sat waiting for her to continue. Liornung watched her closely.

"For elves, memory was their heart's desire. And their bain. Can you sing a song for me, Hearpwine, of those who heart's desire turns them not back but forward, to find ever present beauty in the changes of each day?"

The woman who as a child had played in the Withywindle and around the roots of Old Man Willow, heedless of their dangers, and who had then journied the many paths of Middle earth as an itinerent healer, in search of the lost mother, sat back in her chair, realising that this day would bring wonders more bountiful than the current Innkeeper had imagined. She asked Aedre to take a seat beside them all, relaxing with the music. Then Bethberry waited calmly.