Calla did not like early spring showers. They were better than wintry rain and sleet, of course, and probably farmers found them valuable but she was not an enthusiast. She found that winter's cold had a nasty way of creeping into the rain and clinging there long after it had vanished from the air. She reflected on this unhappily as she stood up from her loom and stretched her sore back. A steady, dismal rain had been falling for the three days since she had last seen Legolas. The gutters were like little rivers and the streets were so wet that every time she went out her skirt got soaked nearly to the knees. She sighed as she wrapped her cloak around her and put on the hood. Well, at least she was going straight to Shiriel's this evening. That meant there would be a fire waiting for her.

She stepped out into the drizzle with hunched shoulders and hurried along, slipping on wet cobbles. As she hurried through the streets her mind turned to Pador. Calla had been enthusiastic about having him come to dinner again and Shiriel, albeit somewhat reluctantly, had agreed. Meeting Pador had got her thinking about Harad in a new and uncomfortable way. In that little aside he'd thrown out that day in the inn, he'd said his mother was from Near Harad. She felt stupid admitting it to herself, but somehow Calla had never imagined that Harad was the sort of place that had people's mothers in it. Her father and brother hadn't been in the habit of talking shop, but when she dredged up the memories of the times they had mentioned the Haradrim, they'd scarcely sounded any different than when they spoke about orcs.

But the Haradrim weren't orcs, they were Men. It sounded absurdly obvious when put like that but Calla found that she'd never actually made the distinction before. She had certainly never thought of Haradric children and families, Haradric women, but Pador's mother was one. Did she miss her son when he was gone? Did she delight in making a big meal for her boy when he came home? Calla shivered as a drop of rain found its way down the back of her neck. Did they sing lullabies to their baby boys? And when those baby boys grew up and went away to kill the men to the north, did they lie awake at night and pray for their return? Calla's chin trembled and she blinked back tears. They attacked us, she told herself. They attacked us. She gritted her teeth and tried to shove away the nasty little voice that wanted to know why that made it okay for her to have thought of them as less than human.

It was a relief to reach Shiriel's door.

"Calla! Come in. Here, you give me that and go sit over there by the fire." Calla was dragged inside and bustled out of her wet cloak. "Just give the pot an occasional stir, would you? Pador won't be here for another half hour or so, and dinner's nearly ready. Tell me about your day. How are things going?"

"Oh, much as usual, really," said Calla, standing by the fire and rotating slowly to dry herself out. "Work's coming along quite well, all things considered. I think Hwineth's settling into her role a bit. She's having fewer crises, at least. In fact we'll probably be ready for you in a day or two. And Chanda's… Oh, she's just being her usual charming self."

"Why in the world is she so unpleasant?"

"I don't know," Calla said with a shrug. Steam began to rise from the hem of her skirt. "I think possibly she's just very ambitious, and being extra-unfriendly is her way of weeding out some of the competition. She's certainly latched on to the story of my being arrested. I'm sure that the only reason she has her friend stop by for lunch is so they can whisper loudly about how shocking it is for Chanda to have to work with someone so notorious." Calla picked up the ladle in the pot and stirred the stew meditatively.

"Unfathomable," said Shiriel. "How can life be pleasant when you spend all your spare energy finding ways to dislike people? I just do not understand." Calla sighed.

"Oh, well. I'm learning to ignore it. It would probably bother me more if I thought that that sort of rumor was going to have a bigger effect on our business, but commission requests have only slowed down slightly since my little scandal. And I we're getting requests from higher-end clients than we ever used to. But enough. Let's talk about something other than work and Chanda. Where's Cadfael?"

"Oh, he's…" Shiriel turned away and began cutting thick slices of bread. "He's on duty tonight."

"He is? But I thought— Oh." Calla's mouth hardened into a thin little line. "I see."

Shiriel nodded. The little bit of her face that Calla could see was red to the temples. Calla stared hard at the stew and poked at lumps of meat with the ladle.

"Calla, I couldn't not tell him. I couldn't have just said, 'Oh, we're having that nice boy who saved Calla from prison round to dinner' and then opened the door and let a Haradric boy come walking in."

"Half Haradric."

"Calla, I know. And I told Cadfael, but… Calla, what could I do?" Shiriel had stopped slicing bread and was twisting her hands anxiously. Calla glared at the stew and rubbed her forehead, trying to will away the mounting feeling of antagonism.

"Nothing, Shiriel. Shiriel, I'm not angry with you for telling Cadfael about Pador's parentage. You were right, it wouldn't have been right to spring that on him in his own house. I'm just—I 'm just upset on Pador's behalf. I'm upset that Cadfael took it that way." She put down the ladle and

"But Calla, try to see things from his point of view. Cadfael had friends who died on the Pelennor Fields and the Haradrim were there, fighting against us."

"And no one I know, no one I cared about was killed in this war, is that it?" said Calla icily. Shiriel went pale.

"Oh, Calla, that's not—I didn't—" she stammered, but Calla didn't want to listen. Her face felt flushed and there was a hard knot of anger in her chest.

"Pador wasn't at the Pelennor. Pador had nothing to do with that. He is a half-Gondorian merchant who risked his own safety to save me from ruin and disgrace." Her voice was rising now. Part of her mind whispered that she was being unfair to Shiriel and Calla, uneasily suspicious that it was in the right, plunged deeper into her sudden anger to escape it. "So excuse me if I seem a little upset, but I somehow find it distressing that the man who defended me is coming to dinner in a house where his host can't stand the thought of being under the same roof with him!"

"Calla!" Shiriel looked as if she were about to cry. "I know, all right? Cadfael just doesn't see it that way. Please don't be angry. Please calm down." She gulped. "I like Pador too! Calla, please don't be mad and let's just the three of us have a nice dinner. Please?" Tears welled up in her eyes and began to spill down her cheeks.

"Oh, honestly, stop crying!" snapped Calla.

"Well then don't—don't force this sort of thing on me!" Shiriel sobbed, her nose going blotchily red. "You know I cry when people start yelling, you know I can't help it!"

"I—" Calla broke off, defeated, her anger utterly undone by the sight of Shiriel's comically, pathetically contorted face. "I'm sorry. You're right, I do know better, I am sorry."

"That's," hiccupped Shiriel, "that's all right." She sniffed, wiping her nose and eyes dry, and took a shuddering breath. "Come on, Pador will be here soon. Let's try to have a pleasant evening."

Calla nodded

A few minutes later, as Calla was setting the table, there was a quick knock at the door and Shiriel ushered in a damp but smiling Pador.

"Pador, come in, come in!" she chattered. "And dry off by the fire. Here, let me take your cloak, we're so glad that you could make it. You brought me what? Oh, how perfectly sweet! Calla, look! Pador's brought me this lovely mixing bowl as a wedding present. Here, let me just set it down over here." She bustled about, and Calla hoped that Pador could not see that her constant movement was covering her discomfort, or hear that, even for Shiriel, she was speaking a little too quickly. "My husband—we're so sorry—couldn't be here at the last minute, he had to go and take guard duty, so it's just the three of us, but I'm sure you'll meet him some other time," Shiriel rattled on.

Calla studied Pador's face. Was there some flicker there of tension? Did he guess or know? His eyes flicked to her and he caught her staring. Calla blushed slightly and he smiled widely at her.

"How's business?" she asked hurriedly.

"Oh, rather non-existant just now," he said as they sat down. "I haven't got a new business associate yet. Actually I've be thinking about it and this might a chance for me to change my way of working."

"Oh? How do you mean?"

"Well, the way I've worked in the past is to team up with someone—someone respectable," he said, coloring slightly. Calla winced internally. 'Respectable' meant 'not suspiciously dark-skinned', of course. "Then I'd load up with things from Gondor and head down to Harad and spend, oh, maybe six months or so doing a tidy business on my own. When I had all the Haradric wares I could carry, I'd bring them back north to Gondor and meet my partner. We'd spend some time pricing everything and then head for a large town or a city—I don't always work in Minas Tirith. When we got there, I'd pose as my partner's assistant. It's easier, that way, not to draw too much attention to yourself. And when everything was sold, we'd repeat the whole thing. And I'd change partners now and then."

"But you want to change your approach now?"

"Well…" Pador hesitated. "For a few years now I've been thinking it might be nice to try a less nomadic life. To settle down, in fact. Start a family." There was silence for a beat. It flashed through Calla's mind that Pador would have a tough time finding himself a Gondorian bride, and she felt that Pador and Shiriel must be thinking the same thing, but before the silence could become too awkward, Pador went on. "The sight of my hostess tonight only encourages me in this ambition," he said with an odd, courteous little half-bow towards Shiriel.

"Oh!" said Shiriel, going a little pink. "I…?" She trailed off, not entirely sure what to say.

"Madame, marriage becomes you." Said Pador, smiling. "When we last met, what was loveliest to see was your devotion to your friend, it showed stronger even than your distress for her. Tonight, though, in your own home, at your own table, you are positively radiant. You make me hope one day to have a house of my own, similarly adorned."

"Oh, um, thank you… How kind of you to…" Shiriel faltered, blushing fiercely. Cadfael complimented her, Calla knew, but not in nearly such honeyed words. Calla cleared her throat and hunted about for something to say, when Pador laughed guiltily.

"Sorry," he said, sounding rather less formal all of a sudden. "That sort of speech isn't very Gondorian, is it? I forget sometimes, make these very flowery compliments to people here and embarrass them, or the other way around. Offend people in Harad by being what they think of as downright insulting—but people here would just call it straightforward or frank. I didn't mean to discomfit you," he said to Shiriel. "Your house is lovely and I really do hope you're as happy as indeed you look."

"Oh," said Shiriel, giving a relieved little laugh. "That's all right, Pador. My, what nice compliments girls in Harad must get!"

"Yes," said Calla. "So Pador, is it very difficult switching between cultures so frequently?"

"Oh, sometimes," Pador said. "For instance, there was this one time in Far Harad, I had gone straight there by caravan after leaving Gondor. I'd scarcely spoken to anyone on the way so I hadn't really readjusted myself to Haradric speech, and I was tired from the long journey and began to fall ill. The caravan came to a halt one evening in a small town, scarcely more than village, and I decide to stop there until the next one comes through to recover my health. So I'm setting myself up for a stay in this tiny inn, and everyone's very excited to have me there because traders are a bit of an event in such a pokey place. Well, they badger me within an inch of my life while I'm trying to eat dinner, so afterward I haul out a few of the things I've brought from Gondor—not the really good stuff, but just trinkets, that sort of thing.

"Now, the innkeeper has a daughter, and she falls in love with this bracelet of carved wooden beads that I've got out. Understand, now, wood is actually something of a luxury in Far Harad. There aren't many forests there, and trees are few and far between. Anyway, she's going on an on about how much she loves it, showing it to her mother and father, saying how she can't stand to give it back to me, and meanwhile my head is splitting and I just want to go to bed. So I give it to her—they could never have afforded it—and right away she's more or less convulsing with joy."

"That was sweet of you to do," said Shiriel.

"A little too sweet," said Pador, grinning. "In Gondor, a tired merchant may give a girl a bracelet to buy himself some peace, but in Far Harad, such a gift was paramount to a proposal of marriage. You should have seen her mother."

"Oh, Pador!" Calla laughed behind her hand. "How on earth did you ever get out of it?"

"Ha! I didn't even realize I was in it for a day or two," he said, his smile widening. "I was nearly delirious with fever for the next little while—"

"You poor thing!" broke in Shiriel.

"Oh, I have a pretty strong constitution. And the innkeeper's wife mothered me back to health in the best fashion, because, naturally, after my extravagant demonstration of favor she was expecting me to marry her daughter and secure a comfortable old age for my in-laws. The first morning that was lucid again the daughter brought me coffee, beaming, and was—was rather friendly. And, uh, I realized exactly what I'd done and all the implications. I must have looked pretty sick, because she ran for her mother, sure I was about to faint.

"I felt a swine. I spent three days recovering there under my sudden betrothed's ministrations. I couldn't simply sneak out and leave her in the lurch, of course, when I'd given the poor child every reason to believe I wanted to marry her. And I couldn't bring myself to tell the girl that she'd made a bad mistake. Looking back I cut a rather comical figure but it was a ghastly situation at the time."

"Well? And how did you escape?"

"I didn't have to, in the end. Her brother came home from some long journey he'd been on, took one look at me, decided I wasn't from a suitable tribe, blacked my eye, and chucked me out."

"Oh, Pador!" both girls gasped. He shrugged cheerfully.

"Well, it might have been worse. And I found it didn't hurt nearly so much when I realized that it had saved me from settling down in a Far Harad backwater. If it hadn't been for that black eye I'd probably be buried there yet, dandling my third or fourth baby on my knee. But to make, too late, a long story short: Yes, there are some difficulties when you're trying to switch back and forth between two such different places.

"But that's enough—entirely too much, probably—about me. Tell me about the weaving and embroidery business."

"Oh, there's not much to tell, I'm afraid," Calla sighed. "Certainly nothing exciting, barring the odd frame-up and night spent in prison. I weave, Shiriel embroiders, we both enjoy it. That's about it, really. They are wonderful crafts, and we're both very happy, but I'm afraid it doesn't really lend itself to anecdote very well."

"No, I'd love to hear about it. You can't think how starved I am for news of day-to-day life here in Minas Tirith."

"I, for one, know exactly what you mean," said Shiriel. "Just think, Calla. All that time that there simply was no daily life here in the city—all war and doom and evacuations—I feel like there's really nothing in the world I want to think about more than, oh, knotted threads and leaky cauldrons and bed linen and what not, which reminds me, my dear, that I must do something about the coverlet that great-aunt Borniveth gave to us. It's just lovely, only it has a great tear along one of the seams that needs sewing up rather badly, and it's wearing a bit thin in some places…"

Shiriel rambled happily into a list of small, cozy domestic difficulties. Calla hmm-ed and um-ed appropriately when her friend paused for breath, but offered no advice. Shiriel didn't need it. Certainly Calla could manage a house well enough, since she had done it for her father and brother for so many years, but she couldn't relish doing it the way Shiriel could. She glanced at Pador now and then, but never caught his eye. To her surprise, he seemed really delighted and interested by everything Shiriel had to say, and kept gratifying her by asking little questions about the details of her household worries. Calla wondered, at first, whether his interest was in earnest—could someone who had traveled so extensively among strange tribes, and been stranded in trees by mumakil and who knew what else really mind about these sorts of things?—then marveled when she decided it was, then felt a sort of tender pity for him.

He, of course, had no mother or sister or wife to pester him about taking his boots of when he came into the house. The sorts of things that made up Shiriel's world were all but alien to him and, Calla felt sure by the look on his face, they were things he wanted very much. She wondered whether they were possible for him. Was there a single girl in Gondor who would marry a man who looked like an ancestral enemy? And he was rather pathetically delighted by dinner. Calla wondered how often anyone cooked for him. Though they chatted cheerfully through the evening he made no mention of his mother or any other Haradric relatives.

Still, he seemed to have no complaints about his life. He was always happy to break out one of the stories from his travels or describe to them the desert that lay far to the south and east and the strange Men and beasts that lived there, clustered around small pockets of water or roaming across the endless sand.

After dinner, as Shiriel was clearing away the dishes from the table, he asked shyly whether the girls would like some music and went and got a strange instrument from the pocket of his cloak. It was carved from bone, with a reed mouthpiece and eight holes along the body.

"It's called a duduk," said Pador, and held it to his lips. Gently, a low, slow, sweet melody filled the room. The instrument had a warm, mournful sound, hollow and haunting. Calla leaned back in her chair, gazing sleepily into the fire, her mind drifting along with the wavering music. Shiriel came and sat beside her, resting her head on Calla's shoulder, and Pador's dark eyes half-closed. The girls sat quietly for some time with their arms around each other, lost in thought, listening to Pador play. Calla watched him idly, thinking what long fingers and lashes he had.

All at once he glanced up at her with a smile flashing in his brown eyes, the music changed, and the contemplative mood was broken. Pador played a few bars of something quick and rhythmic and then stopped.

"There ought to be someone else playing counterpoint, really," he said, fiddling with the mouthpiece cover. "But it's good company when you're traveling alone. Helps keep the night from feeling quite so vast and empty, and, er…" He trailed off and looked down at the strange instrument.

"Pador, that was truly beautiful," said Calla. "Thank you. I've never heard anything quite like it."

"I'm glad you liked it," Pador mumbled, ducking his head a little. "It's, ah, duduk music is one of my favorite things, one of my very fav… I'm glad you liked it."

"It's certainly very powerful," Calla said. "It was a lovely tune, but it's made me feel like I could sleep for a hundred years. I had probably best be getting home. There are a lot of long days ahead of me if we're to finish in time for the wedding."

"Allow me to walk you home," said Pador, getting up. "It's dark tonight."

"Oh! Thank you, yes." They put on their cloaks and thanked Shiriel for dinner. Pador opened the door and stepped out. The rain had cleared and the clouds were scudding across the sky, ribbons of stars breaking through here and there.

"I'll be right there, Pador, I just have to ask Shiriel something," said Calla. Pador nodded and shut the door. Calla turned to Shiriel.

"Sweet, I'm sorry I was so foul earlier. Forgive me?"

"Calla! Of course! Dearest, of course, I understand, Pador is really the nicest boy, even if he is the tiniest bit odd, and I'm grateful to him too for what he did for you, and of course I want Cadfael to like him too. You won't be angry at Cadfael for not being here, will you? I really think, considering how he feels, it was for the best that he decided not to stay tonight, or there might have been a scene or something, and even if not, dinner would have been all war and politics and tense, and there wouldn't have been any lovely music. So it's best, really, after all, isn't it?" She looked anxiously at Calla.

"Of course, Shiriel," said Calla, but all the same there was a prickle of irritation at the back of her mind again. Irritation at Cadfael? She wasn't quite sure it was that, so she smiled to hide it and kissed Shiriel good night.

Out on the street she and Pador walked for a minute or two in silence, until Pador, with a little twisted half-smile at his feet, said:

"My host, I take it, was only informed this evening of my pedigree?" It wasn't really a question and Calla made no answer. Her cheeks burned hot and she bit her lip.

"I'm so sorry, Pador," she said at last, not looking at him. "It's…I…" But she couldn't really think of anything to say. His arm brushed her as he shrugged.

"Don't worry too much about it. This is hardly uncommon."

"I just wish things were—were otherwise," Calla whispered. She was having difficulty finding her voice.

"Well, so do I, to be honest." Calla felt a warm hand on her shoulder and she stopped and looked up at him. There was frustration in his face, and resignation, but humor as well. "Calla, I think of myself as a Gondorian, but I look like one of the Haradrim. I do," he insisted, cutting her objection short. "And those two people have been at war for a long, long time. It is my hope, my dear hope, now that our King has been restored that that can change. But I have no illusions. Even if it happens, it will not happen quickly. And in the meantime…" Pador held up his hands helplessly. "I have no bitterness towards Cadfael or the other who feel like he does. The Haradrim have been the enemy for a long time and so I look like an enemy."

"It ought not to be like that," said Calla.

"Perhaps one day it won't be."

"Perhaps." She turned away from him and walked on. Clear and uncomfortable in her mind was the memory of herself sitting in the chair before the captain trying to decide whether or not to try saving herself by turning in the Haradric infiltrator she had spotted in the market place, and Calla burned with shame. They did not speak again until they reached her door, when she turned to say good night.

"Cheer up," said Pador. "That you feel some one else's troubles is a credit to you. And if there are people like you in Gondor, then I needn't give up hoping that I'll be able to walk openly here one day."

This was nearly too much for Calla. She choked out a good night and went in.

"Oh, dear," she said aloud to the empty house. She thought for a moment, then lit a candle and pulled out a pen and ink and some paper and sat down to write.

My good lord, she began, and then threw down her pen. Did she really want to write this to him? She would probably look foolish at best, and she might only end up convincing him that she was small-hearted, small-minded, and mean. Well, yes, that was a risk, one that turned her stomach to ice, in fact. But she needed help, advice from someone wiser than herself, and her father and brother were not there to ask.

"And until I get this sorted out I will never have peace," she told the guttering candle flame. She picked her pen up again and bent over the paper. She wrote steadily for some time, frowning seriously, then signed and sealed the letter without so much as glancing it over. Lord Legolas, she wrote on the outside. She left the letter on the table with a sigh of relief, fell into bed and blew out the candle.

She really was exhausted. For the few minutes before she sank into sleep half-dreamed visions swam before her eyes. An everlasting ocean of gold stretched across her mind, where strange creatures with high-humped backs and serene faces loped along in single file beneath strange southern stars. Only, of course, there was no sand, but a long golden braid of hair and the brightness wasn't from stars, it was the brightness of a pair of clear, light eyes…

In her sleep, Calla smiled into her pillow.

A/N: See? Not dead. I am, however, incredibly sorry for how bad I'm being at updates. Allow me to reiterate what I said last time: I will finish this story, it is still on my mind, I am not going to abandon it. To anyone who still has the patience to read this, please understand, I have, this summer, finished my final exams, graduated from university, traveled around (without access to the Internet for quite some time), taken a summer job, finished said job, and I'm preparing to head off to grad school next week. All this on top of a certain amount of personal stuff. So please, bear with me.

A duduk is a traditional Armenian wind instrument. They are actually made of wood, but there are ancient examples of them being made out of other materials, including bone.

I will be changing the title of this story to something I feel more appropriate, probably "We Live Not for Ourselves", and, at some point, I will be altering the non-Tolkien-esque characters' names to sound more Gondorian. This include's Calla's name. When I do this, I will include, for several chapters, a guide to the changed names. I will also try to make the new names sound relatively like the old ones.

Finally, those of you still reading this should direct your thanks to AnnieG163 for giving me a much-needed jumpstart.

Finally finally, thank you, as always, for reading, and please do review/scold/leave concrit as you see fit!