Isulril sat by the small river. Indeed, when she thought of it, she considered it more a stream than a river. After all, a river needed swimming. The stream she could wade into, should she desire such a thing. The cattails occasionally caressed her cheek as she contemplated, closing her eyes and ridding herself of the world.
It had been an age since she had seen her peculiar friend. So long, she thought to herself, that perhaps his regard for her had died, and he would not return. The thought left a part of her bereft, increased the emptiness that was her heart, and yet, she thought, it was not all bad. She was prone to fits, she knew, of melancholy. She remembered since a girl, being of such a constitution. Lately, she feared, it had softened her, and revealed the loneliness inside of her.
She recalled when she had first met the dark-clad physician in the Inn of the Prancing Pony, but had thought little of it since. She had, she thought, embarrassed herself before the man, by writing her loneliness on her sleeve. Even well on a year later, she found she had few friends and fewer acquaintances still.
She recalled talking to Eachna, a young noblewoman of Dale, whose father had but recently passed away. The young girl could not have been more than twenty years of age. They had been friends a long time, had met a few months prior, when the girl was in ill health, and Isulril began talking to her in earnest. She had helped to resolve an issue that the girl had had with a former fiance, had taken it upon herself to take up correspondence with the girl's family. Eachna, she knew, was grateful to her for this. The two shared in loneliness, both foreigners. Eachna had even fancied that Isulril was a lady of rank. She did not correct the girl.
"I see you are in low spirits," the girl had said to Isulril. "Indeed, you have been so since first we met. You are like an elder sister to me, and I will not have it. You require occupation, something to keep you from dying of boredom here. By the looks of it, you are apt to die that way--you who complain of Bree's inactivity draining you, sucking your blood from your veins like a morroval."
"It is nothing," Isulril had replied, dismissing the notion with a wave of a hand. "There is nothing to speak of. I wish for something new, and yet I've no special powers. I've no grand notions of changing Arda for better or worse. I am ordinary. Indeed, bringing myself here has made me become so." It was a lament Eachna knew well.
"If you were yet to do something that might improve your lot, Isulril...." Eachna paused. "This evening I saw an old acquaintance of mine, the physician of whom I spoke to you some time ago. He is starting a new practice, and it seems to be more ambitious than his former. There are notices. Here, I have copied one for you. Will you not take it?"
Reluctantly Isulril accepted and regarded the advertisement with some curiosity and some anxiety. Surely there was nothing she could do. But she thought to herself of her gorgeous gowns being worn to tatters, of the endless nights spent researching and translating Gondorian texts.It had taken a certain toll on her. This new normalcy was something she did not wish.
"Please," Eachna had pleaded, had nearly implored. "Go to him. I do not think you will be worse off for it."
And so Isulril had done so. It was, she thought, a hit to what was left of her pride, to visit this stranger and beg for an occupation. Indeed, when she stood outside the door of the place, she had thought of walking away, nay, of running away. The strong-willed Gondorian woman had become a mess of anxiety and nerves.
But, thought Isulril, sitting on the bank of the stream, there might yet be something good to come of this. Idleness was never her way, and the idleness of the Bree-ish life was eating at her. If she had something...something with which to occupy herself. Well! Perhaps it may be for the better.
This positivity made her smile. She rose and brushed down her skirts. Today would be the start of a new life. Perhaps.
