Hello everyone! Here's the new chapter with an itsy-bitsy bit of delay. I'm currently on holidays at my in-laws', and was away from my computer yesterday, hence my posting it only today.

This chapter's a bit shorter than those before, but I still felt it was needed to introduce the events of the next...

Enjoy!

Chapter 52

August 25th, TA 3020

The swath of fabric shimmered, pouring like sand between Eadrun's quivering fingers, shifting from the tender, modest hues of ripe peaches to those, bolder, of fuchsia and campion.

"Oh, Mehreen, it's beautiful!" the woman gasped, not quite daring to close her hand, her breath stunted and her cheeks, flushed as bright as the organza she was holding up for the others to see. "Are you sure you're willing to part with it?"

"It'd be such a pity to cut it up!" her friend, Leoflith, agreed in an awed whisper, reaching out to run her fingertips along one pliant fold. "Do you have any more like this?"

From her stool by the wall, wedged between the footboard of Eadrun's bed and a large, iron-trimmed trunk that cramped the already small room, Mehreen nodded in affirmative to both questions, smoothing the much coarser fabric of her skirts over her knees – less in an effort towards tidiness than to give them something to do. She ought to have returned to work already, instead of dallying in Eadrun and Leoflith's chambers out of sheer nostalgia, missing the complicity and the friendships she'd left behind.

Missing Hanaa, whom she'd never see again, most of all.

In between bouts of borrowed amazement and gladness, Mehreen wondered how she'd come to be here at all, watching Eadrun marvel at a gift so inconsequential it shouldn't even have warranted a thanks. This was, after all, mere rags in comparison to what Mehreen had been used to, and though it felt a shame to pass them on to someone else, it'd be an equal shame to waste a piece of fine fabric through misplaced pride.

On second thought, Mehreen did know. Beylith had been the one invited, and had bid her come along with such geniality that Mehreen had leapt on the occasion, starved of company as she'd been. Beylith, who now dug through the unnumbered pockets of her apron, until she produced a tiny vial of brown glass the size of Mehreen's fingernail; it wasn't even full.

"Tea rose oil," she announced, and set the vial upon the windowsill, from which Leoflith snatched it at once with the same reverence she'd had for the remains of Mehreen's kaftan. "Consider it my wedding gift to you, and use it sparsely," Beylith added gruffly, "lest I get started on how hard it was to come by." The caution earned her another blush from Eadrun, who clutched the rosy fabric to her chest and looked at them in turn.

"I really don't know how to thank you both," she sniffled and reached out to embrace Beylith, who patted her back with fond awkwardness.

Refraining from disclosing the inane amounts of similar – and ofttimes even more costly – oils a harem woman could go through in a single day, or the many layers of the finest silk, chiffon and organza their grubbiest outfits were composed of, Mehreen stood and submitted to the same tearful ritual, relishing the warmth of Eadrun's embrace and the sincerity of her gratitude.

Perhaps it was high time she put Jufayrah behind her for good…?

Her fears of being cast out again had proven groundless, after all, and if anyone had complained about her 'services', once word got out about her…talents, Mehreen was yet to hear about it. Instead, women she'd never met before would now come find her, friends of this or that one she'd already met, and confess to a stubborn migraine or a sore tailbone after birthing, before wondering whether she'd help. Mehreen always did, finding a moment in between her work and after. But she'd never treated anyone inside the Houses, for fear of Redhriel's reaction to such disloyalty.

Which, incidentally, served to remind her she really ought to be going.

"What you've just said is plenty," Mehreen murmured with a pang of sadness at the realization she'd never see Hanaa clutch what'd become her wedding gown against her with such bright eyes and shaking hands. "I hope the dress comes out to your liking."

"Oh, it will," Leoflith grinned as she set down the vial back by the window and went to open the trunk. "It's almost done already," her muffled voice continued as she rummaged through the contents, "and all that's missing is the partlet…and perhaps the tippets, though I've yet to know if Eadrun wants any. Tell you what," she emerged, her blond hair disheveled and her cheeks flushed with excitement, "if you bring me any more of such fabrics, I'll sew you a dress of your own, provided you let me keep what fabric remains in reward for my troubles."

Promising to consider it, Mehreen bid them all a good afternoon, leaving Beylith and Leoflith to debate on the pros and cons of tippets to make her way down the path that led to the Houses of Healing. Before she knew it, she was nodding left and right in greeting to women whose names she couldn't remember; the very women who'd gone from ignoring her completely to various degrees of respect, from reluctant to hearty, depending on their neediness and the reasons that'd brought them to Bar-Lasbelin. The dignified old woman walking up the path with her granddaughter in tow, for instance, suffered from stiffness in her hands. Even now, the bodice of her light blue dress – which Leoflith would've deemed to compliment the silver of her hair nicely – hung loose around her thin waist, as she'd been unable to lace it up properly. Expecting to receive another visit soon, Mehreen remembered the way she'd offered her hands in surly silence, letting her lively granddaughter do the talking, and Mehreen to learn the woman's son and daughter-in-law had perished in a Dunlendings' raid on their village, leaving her to raise a child long past her child-rearing years.

Feverfew: for stubborn fevers and joint swelling. Frequent watering, but watch out for snails.

Grandma Guthrid's book was a treasure of knowledge indeed and, though the learning was a slow process for Mehreen, it was a rewarding one.

Hiding her smile under a lowered chin, she ambled downhill, unhindered by skirts nor worry…save for Redhriel's reaction to her lateness. If she was lucky, she might slip past the Steward's study unnoticed, and fetch her basket from the laundry before her absence had been written down on that terrible ledger Redhriel kept on her desk and in which, if the rumors were to be believed, she wrote every bending of the rules that happened on her watch.

Whatever she did with such a long list conveniently went unsaid.

The shade of the entrance cast an appealing coolness upon her skin, yet Mehreen couldn't afford to linger. She crossed the courtyard and headed towards the southeastern tower where, as it was wont to do, the stillness of the laundry appeased her. Here, the neatly folded linens slept upon their pine-scented and lavender-sprinkled shelves, tucked in for their long nap until Mehreen's fingers tickled their folds and pulled them out into the sunlight. No other passage disturbed their slumber; no sound, save for the occasional screeching of the axles as the cart was brought to a halt in the adjacent gate room. Here, Mehreen was sure to unwind, on days where the flurry of tasks left no time for a breather.

She counted out the linens one by one, inhaling the fragrance that never failed to remind her of Elladan.

"Mehreen. I hoped to find you here…."

She jumped, the stack of linens balanced precariously against her chest. She'd piled too much of them in her daydreaming, and now found it impossible to peer over the pile at the owner of that familiar, clipped voice, of whom all Mehreen could see was the hem of a rust-colored dress, and the pointy tips of her boots.

"…Since I did not see you in the rooms you have been assigned," Redhriel continued – for who else could it be?

"I'm sorry, Mistress," Mehreen meekly demurred, turning to offer her contrite face as proof of that statement. "I was…."

She was interrupted by an impatient wave. "I need not know." Redhriel pursed her lips, her gaze trickling over Mehreen's form as she examined her in the same, detached and slightly puzzled manner with which she stared at a stubborn stain Mehreen sometimes presented her with. "Lord Legolas requests to see you."

"Oh." Mehreen's stomach lurched at the thought that the sum of her infractions, of which she'd not been made aware until now, had been deemed high enough to warrant a lecture from Lord Legolas himself. Surely, a few minutes of lateness weren't all she was reproached with? Otherwise, many a woman she knew would've already been queueing outside Lord Legolas' study, and she guessed his annoyance at the disorder this would cause in the hallway.

Unless, of course, Redhriel knew of her new pastime, and disapproved.

"I'll just get these in one of the rooms before I meet him in his study, then," Mehreen acquiesced as cheerfully as she could, hoping to show her goodwill, as well as the acceptance of her faults, whichever they may be. "I won't be long at all."

She took a step towards the threshold, and was surprised when Redhriel made no move to budge out of the doorway.

"There is no need for that," the Steward said with unexpected softness, her hands clasped in front of her. For an instant, Mehreen feared she'd not get to plead her cause after all, and that her sentence had already been decided, until Redhriel added: "Lord Legolas is not in his study. He awaits you at the old pavilion, and you should go there at once."

Elladan.

The thought shot through Mehreen like a jolt, jerking her upright while robbing her extremities of their strength. Something dreadful must've happened to him. Why else would Lord Legolas want to see her there?

The stack of linens in her arms tilted and would've fallen, had Redhriel not caught it between her deft hands.

"Are you well, child?" she asked, her amber eyes roving over Mehreen's face. "Have you spent too much time in the sun? You are pale." She lay a cool palm against the sheen of sweat that beaded on Mehreen's forehead, and pinched her lips in disapproval. "I shall tell Lord Legolas this discussion shall have to wait."

"No!" Mehreen croaked out, evading Redhriel's solicitous touch. "I'm fine, just…just…."

Redhriel was wrong. She couldn't wait to know…she wouldn't stand it. If something had indeed happened, if she'd lost Elladan…. Balling her useless hands into fists in a deluded hope of stilling her racing heart, Mehreen opened them just as quickly, unable to bear the tension any longer.

"Hmm." The healer in Redhriel appeared to harbor fierce doubts regarding Mehreen's state, as evidenced by the frown that wrinkled her upturned nose, and the carelessness with which she thrust the pile onto a shelf without even looking. "You are everything but fine," she proclaimed with narrowed eyes, "but I suppose I shall encounter little success in trying to keep you from going. Which is why I shall come with you and ensure that, at the very least, you do not faint and concuss yourself on your way there. Well, are we going, or not?"

Upon which Mehreen found herself with little choice but to precede her auburn-haired shadow out of the room. She knew, she remembered there was a narrow, high-vaulted hallway beyond the threshold, with a broken tile in its center where a piece of the keystone had fractured and shattered it, long ago. There was a door that opened onto the courtyard, and a stretch of grass dappled by shadows of oaken leaves. A twilit entrance. A winding path. All of which Mehreen crossed without even realizing, on legs so stiff that not even all the feverfew in the world could allay until, at last, the slender posts of the pavilion came into view.

"I shall leave you here," Redhriel declared by her left shoulder upon seeing the distant silhouette of Lord Legolas, his stare lost amidst the roses. Mehreen felt a brush against the back of her arm as Redhriel caught her by the elbow in a gesture so uncharacteristic that Mehreen startled. "But I would bid you come find me…when you are done here, that is. There is something I, too, must discuss with you…and I am certain you know what it is I am referring to."

For a heartbeat, what fear Mehreen had nourished regarding Elladan's wellbeing faded, eclipsed by her worry for her own position inside the Houses, for she was now certain the Steward knew what she'd been up to behind her back: the clandestine sessions she'd been holding with those of Bar-Lasbelin's dwellers who'd either lost faith in the power of traditional medicine, or had never believed in needing it in the first place. But as soon as Mehreen raised her eyes to the pavilion, memories of Elladan's presence engulfed her, welling in her throat, bitter with the realization of her selfishness.

Please, don't go.

The One gave and the One took, and never did He explain the reasons of his actions. But sometimes, He listened.

Don't leave.

If Mehreen had been waiting for a sign, here it was, in all its cruel clarity. As she took a faltering step and met Lord Legolas' sorrowful gaze, she vowed to be as unwavering in her faith as Elladan was in his dedication to his people, as humble as he'd been in the face of his failure, and if only half as brave.

Mehreen closed her hand, clenching her jaw as her nails bit into the flesh of her palm. She wouldn't complain. She'd neither plead nor deny, bearing Redhriel's condemnation in silence, letting the reproach rain upon her lowered head, and sign at the bottom of a page filled with her sins…

…As long as Elladan came back unharmed.

Even if it meant she was no longer around to see it.