Estelrien yawned as she struggled to stay awake on her horse. The ride along the Greenway from the south had been harrowing and had taken weeks. The sun shone overhead as she passed the skirmish camp and rode through the south gate of Bree. Gondor lay a great many leagues away but the memory was very close and haunted her waking hours.
She could still hear the voice of her mother chastising her for flitting away hours of her time on those old books full of fanciful stories of kings of old and their heroic deeds. As far as she was concerned, the truly wasted hours had been spent sitting in the drawing room with the many suitors her father paraded though their house in hopes of obtaining favorable alliances with the rich and powerful of Minas Tirith. The final straw had come when a decision was made that she would wed a very old, rich and bald man from the financial district.
As she approached the Prancing Pony Inn her escape plan had come to fruition and the reality of her situation was beginning to dawn on her. She could probably afford room and board for a few weeks but after that her future was uncertain and uncomfortable to contemplate. She had skills, a good education and the will to survive, but her experience had taught her that might not be enough. The reality of the northern lands was different than the information garnered from the libraries of Gondor. So far it had not been full of fascinating Arnorian relics and ruins just waiting to be discovered.
Things looked brighter the next day when she found an advertisement for a position at the Archet crafting hall. She rode directly there adn applied for the job. The Novice scholar agreed to employ Estelrien as an apprentice and put her to work transcribing scraps of text from anduniac into the modern tongue of the west. The job was interesting to Estelrien and it gave her a degree of pleasure to contemplate how her parents would ardently disapprove of her occupation. More importantly it provided a living which turned her vanishing dowry into a savings account at the bree town vault.
In her free time Estelrien began to explore the lands around Archet and encounter the troubles brought on by the Blackwold brigands which do not come into this tale. One one particularly fine day Estelrien was trading some trinkets recovered on one of her forays into the wilderness with a man from Staddle when a voice behind her inquired, "Madame, I apologize for interrupting your business but the particular item you are trading for mere copper is made of an exquisite metal that alone is worth much in silver" . Estelrien turned to face the inquirer, a bit annoyed by the interruption in her business, when the trader reportedly from Staddle said, " mind your own business knave, we have a deal". The item had no historical value to Estelrien but she was not framiliar with the material it was made of and assumed it was made of a common metal. It had not dawned on her that it might be worth something based on what it was made from.
"The Lady's business is her own. But I am Tulko, a prospector and metalsmith apprenticing in this region and I assure you both that the trade is not a fair one for the lady." At that the stranger reached for the item to take it, but Estelrien drew her grandfather's greatsword she had brought from Gondor and gave the man from Staddle a glaring look. " I haven't concluded this trade and if Tulko will buy my goods for a better price I would be happy to trade with him instead." The man from Staddle drew back and declared, " You fools will pay for this, soon you will get what is coming to you, I assure you." With that he stomped out of the Archet crafting hall.
From that day on Tulko and Estelrien became fast friends sharing a common love of all things Numenorean and they both profited from their alliance. Their alliance became the beginning of a new kinship and a new family for the lady of Gondor who had left her's behind.
