((neatly penned in Lumi-kieli))

To Raimo and Nôra of Sûri-kylä, from their daughter Ristiinnä:

I am in love, I have been almost since the first day we met. Something drew me to him but I know not what. Our courtship was difficult for me. He was not monogamous. But I felt it was not his choice exactly but more one of low self-esteem. It came from all his past loves. Men who used him, men who abused him, and men who left him. If the men I had loved been such to me, would I have been the same as Egfor, I can’t say. I think I would have become a complete loner, standing where no one could see me but I could watch everyone. But who am I to say. 

Egfor lofted a brow as he heard a young man singing. A young man singing a love song. Egfor walked towards the cow pasture, carrying a small bale of hay over one shoulder. He stopped at the base of an apple tree and looked up into it's budding branches, "Darel...?"

A young man yelped and dropped an apple he was eating on poor Egfor. Egfor fumbled and caught the apple before lobbing it back up towards it's owner, "Come help me sow the seeds, lovebird?"

The group somehow managed to walk past the two bears as Kelpie held them at bay with his body language and mubbles. Davnos spoke softly to his sister as he helped her pass, "We are helping Bex get much need supplies to her people in the Test-bridge place." He took the horse reins, "Come quickly and quietly." Reidun nodded slowly. "Bex...Test bridge." She followed. "How much has he had to drink," she thought to herself.

((neatly penned in Lumi-kieli))

I know that none of this will last. Most of it doesn't even seem real, even after being here a whole day! It's hard to wrap my mind around just how easy it's been, to be so far away from Bree and home. I won't say that I'm perfectly at ease because I'm not. I feel excited and fluttery like a butterfly just come from its cocoon. We've seen so many new sights and met so many new faces.

The world is dark. Shadows creep, blacker than the night. The light of dim stars is the only thing that illuminates the ice, and it gleams like cruel fangs. Jagged splinters pierce the landscape of snow and ice as far as one can see in the deep gloom. Wide chasms gape like hungry mouths, ready to catch an unwary traveler, and in the distance echo mournful howls and eerie cries of the monsters that roam this wasteland.

Xandalif sat upon her warhorse well off the road leading into the South Gate of Bree, simply watching the people come and go silently. Merchants, adventurers, whores, soldiers, thieves, farmers, clowns, spies...an endless kaleidoscope of the best and the worst Middle Earth had to offer. She felt a little like each one of those as she struggled to find her nerve.

Tom couldn't help but smile to himself as he walked along the streets of Bree, his feet faltering slightly in their step as the alcohol he had consumed that night took effect. He was headed home after a night of drinking at the Pony, although one much different than he was used to.

It was cold, though not overly so, as Tom hunched his shoulders forward and hugged his arms, rubbing his hands up and down them in an attempt to create some warmth. His smile deepened at this, as the memory of how it felt to be hugged flooded back into his mind.