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Old 06-01-2004, 11:19 AM   #217
piosenniel
Desultory Dwimmerlaik
 
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Gondor

Pio spent a restless and unhappy night. The house seemed cold without the children . . . too silent without the echoes of their squabbles and their laughter. She dared not reach out to them in her thoughts. Anger and grief ran as twin themes through her mind. They would pick up on that. Leave them to their own happy dreamings she chided herself. They were safe with their aunt and uncle, Rilwen and Gaerion, spending time there while their ammë went on a short journey with Faragaer, she had told them, to finish some small business with a merchant who had asked for assistance.

She had sent for Mithadan’s brother and his wife when first she learned of the Star’s return without her Captain and First Mate. That had been but a day ago. Gaerion had been beside himself with the news. It was Rilwen who had taken him in hand, saying they must do what they could – keep safe his brother’s children until Mithadan’s return with Piosenniel. Pio could read in Rilwen’s face the quickly suppressed fear that perhaps neither would return.

Turning her thoughts from the children, Pio did reach out once more for any trace of Mithadan, casting her thoughts wide, but even her skill could not bridge the distances between them.

Baran watched her as she paced back and forth in the atrium. A bear in a cage, he thought, his eyes following her measured steps. His great brow furrowed when she at last stopped still, her hand going to the back of her neck. Rubbing it to ease the tight muscles there. Her grey eyes seemed clear and bright in the light of the small lamps lit about the area as she looked up at him briefly then focused on something in the distance. With a quick shrug of her shoulders she stood up straight and strode quickly back into the house. Baran thought to follow her in, but in a brief moment she had returned, a battered leather book of some sort in her hand. Motioning for him to come look at it with her, she laid it open on the small table beneath the fig tree. It was the old log of The Sandpiper. Her finger tracing the line of coast from Belfalas to Umbar, she bade him sit down on the bench opposite her.

‘This is how we will proceed,’ she began, in a clear voice . . .

Last edited by piosenniel; 06-04-2004 at 02:18 AM.
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