ᚩ ᛭ ᛉ ᛭ ᛟ

She did her hair in a pompadour. Pompadours had long gone out of fashion, but they had been in when Valancy first put her hair up and Aunt Wellington had decided that she must always wear her hair so.

"Éowyn of Rohan, I say to you that you are beautiful. In the valleys of our hills there are flowers fair and bright, and maidens fairer still; but neither flower nor lady have I seen till now in Gondor so lovely, and so sorrowful. It may be that only a few days are left ere darkness falls upon our world, and when it comes I hope to face it steadily; but it would ease my heart, if while the Sun yet shines, I could see you still. For you and I have both passed under the wings of the Shadow, and the same hand drew us back."

"When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall. If they are wrong they need your prayers all the more; and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them. That is one of the rules common to the whole house."

“And when the sobs finally begin they are long, scalding ones, the kind that come again and again.”

"I'm very far now. Far from all of you, far from myself. I am in the outer darkness, you see."

He had traveled a million miles in search of it but he didn't know it when he found it; he hadn't any of it inside him, so he missed it.

“Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.”

There was something about Christmas Eve, they both felt, that demanded company; one needed somebody to whisper to, during the warm beautiful dream-taut moments between hanging the empty stocking at the end of the bed, and dropping into the cosy oblivion that would flower into the marvel of Christmas morning.

A life without pain is not on the menu, lad. A life of avoiding pain becomes a life defined by pain. Pain and regret. And you have already lived through pain.

And alone would roam this witch at certain tides of Spring, taking the form of a young girl in her beauty, singing among tall flowers in gardens…

"Anyhow, she thought, they are aware of each other, they live in each other; what else is love, she asked, listening to their laughter."