[Hilde Bracegirdle]

Gilly

Why must they speak in secret? Gilly wondered as she noticed Dúlrain and Kaldir discussing some matter in private, glancing back at the ladies. And what would they be speaking of exactly? Whatever it was, it seemed to concern them, judging by their looks, and she hoped that they would have the courtesy to consult with Miss Benia and herself if they were about planning their future. Perhaps they too had noticed how the long journey had worn on her friend’s nerves. She was in such a state her hands were all atremble! But to have suddenly become so delicate a woman hardly seemed possible. Something else was at work here, and the hobbit suspected that her friend’s abundant concern for her patient might lie at the root of it. She had all the subtle signs of having developed what in Bywater was referred to as an “attachment”. And most likely was worn out from emotion rather than the hardship of the road.

Gilly looked at her friend searchingly, half afraid of what lay behind those fetching eyes of hers. For she had seen that Benia wasn’t the only one to have an attachment, and more than gratitude shone in the salute that Dúlrain had so freely given. But then Kaldir too, seemed to have harbored quite a soft corner for her friend in his own peculiar way, and she dared not think of how he might take this turn of events. Perhaps this was the storm he had eluded too, though he had not seemed threatening, but rather gloomy, and she had puzzled over the words at the time.

Still Benia was her friend, and she did deserve such a man as Dúlrain -though the timing of this blossoming affection left much to be desired- she would stand by her, come what may. Though thinking back to the side street in Bree she felt quite sad fearing it might bring pain to Mr. Kaldir. And truly, she did not wish him any sadness at all, or to betray the trust he had bestowed on them.

“Don’t worry, he will be fine. It will all work out in the end,” she said patting her friend’s hands and trying to reassure herself as much as Miss Benia.

“Will it?” asked Benia sadly, gesturing to were the men stood. “Look at them. They know there are wolves about.”

“Wolves!” Gilly exclaimed, shocked out of her ponderings, as if one of the furry brutes might leap at them that moment. “Though I suppose I should have guessed there might be such things here about,” she muttered under her breath as she tried to get hold of herself once again, but looking at Benia’s expression she saw such was on the wrong track. “Then again, I don’t suppose you might mean the four-legged variety.”
Before Benia could answer a sharp snap was heard in the woods outside their camp, and all froze for a brief instant. Gilly’s hand went to her belt and looking down she quickly regretted that she insisted on giving Benia her dagger back.

By the time she looked up again, Kaldir had disappeared, but there was Dúlrain collecting firewood, completely at ease. It must be nothing she decided relaxing again. But when Dúlrain had nearly assembled an armful of wood he suddenly dropped the lot and leaped into the woods. It struck Gilly as exceedingly odd and she was just about to shout after him when she heard the low growling voice of Kaldir quite close by say “A single sound and you will be a very dead hobbit.”

Gilly froze, wondering if it might actually have been Kaldir’s mind she heard snap a few moments before. And so she was quite confused when both Kaldir and Dúlrain appeared from the wood guiding a bedraggled hobbit before them at knifepoint.

And if that weren’t enough, this hobbit looked vaguely familiar. But what was he doing skulking about sneaking up on people? She wouldn’t have associated with someone like that. What utterly shameful behavior for a hobbit! And where could she have seen him before? Not the Forsaken Inn, she would have remembered easily that far back. It must be from before. Quietly and methodically she gazed at his face with narrowed eyes trying to figure who he might be, and peeling back the years of her life, to see just where he might fit in. At anyrate he wasn’t a wolf. How strange this talk of wolves when she had just been trying to remember how those old tales went about their invading the Shire! That’s was it, that is where she had seen his face before, though he had a mite more mature frame than he did in those dark years. He wasn’t a wolf, not the four legged kind, but he was as good as one, for he came with the dark days in Bywater, and left with them too, now that she thought of it.

Suddenly self-conscious, she realized that if she could place him, he too might place her, and so she made an attempt to appear more unconcerned, hoping that she had changed enough that he might not remember her as the young wife of the shopkeeper whose shop was set ablaze.

<font size=1 color=339966>[ 6:55 PM January 13, 2004: Message edited by: Hilde Bracegirdle ]