It hadn't rained in a week's time her hands dug through the earth. But there was only ash.  A drought had come to Bree-land.  Still, Aellwenn didn't find herself panicking. At this point in her life, she felt numb to challenges.  This drought was just another hurdle and of course the "Peasants." Would continue to believe, that they were pawns and victims beneath her heel.  That she knew nothing of suffering or pain. Because in their minds.

There's a winding alley in the depths of Bree, through Beggar's Alley, past a few homes in shambles. You turn a corner into a dark and damp street, the cobblestone always slick, even in the heat of summer. No one lives down there and no one is even sure why it hasn't been closed off and bricked up, save for the tiny shop at the end of the tiny road, with tall windowless buildings so close on either side that it nearly chokes you.

As Ivandar sorts through the boring parchments he's contracted to copy that afternoon, a scrap falls to the floor. Its edges torn, and of a different hue, it's obviously a fragment that's worked its way into the leaves by mistake. He bends and lifts it, expecting to find fragmentary merchant records or, more interestingly, a bit of history. But, no, it's a poem. His eyes scan the lines, his expression sobering slightly. Then he sets the scrap aside, trying to dismiss the words from his mind to focus on his work. After all, summer is not so sad.

I am still here.

I hearken back to the diagnosis given me by the old physician. Though he did not promise a timeline, he did swear that my days were numbered. A cruel prank to play upon a soul. "You shall live less than most, but more than others, and no number can be given to you." I linger on, and continue in the only way I know. 

It's took so long, near to a year. Leastwise it seems so long but really it's mostly figured as it would take a lot longer, and I done real well to be to this point already. Missus Nettle gave me her final test and it were a right doozy, and I stumbled a wee bit, but I got ever'thing good 'nuff as she said I were done with the teaching and she even wrote me a right glowing letter. We even went to the Pony for a celebratory feast. And now when the guild meets next month I'm goin' for to be petitioning for the creating of a new mastership and for to sell it to me.