The quill scratches soothingly across pale parchment, leaving an ordered trail of numbers. Beyond the door of the small office, where the scribe now works, voices from the larger room jumble together: bartering, arguing, laughing. Their sound melds into an inchoate, muted roar, like the lapping of waves on yielding sand.

A stocky dwarven merchant sticks his bearded face through the gap between door and jam. "How goes it, Ivandar?" he asks.

Augir was gobbling up his second bowl of stew when Buhni came back to the kitchen. Hanfrere was busy handing out her stew, but Augir felt out of place. He wanted to help, but with what? He was no healer and he didn't exactly know what all the raised voices were about. He saw Thrandili in tears and knew it had something to do with Byli. When Buhni asked him to find Byl, he quickly finished his dinner and with a ”Of course!

She was the most beautiful girl that I ever saw, the most shining vala that my mind imagined and the most disturbing and unexpected being that my dreams would wave in tormenting nightmares of fighting things that cannot be fought against. All these she was at once and much more, for she looked out worldly and out of place on this side of the great sea, a vision of lost glorious past and of far away future of the end of this world.

I saw a ghost tonight in a manner of speaking, two people that were on the run, then once again showing themselves in a town that never seems to change. The faces, yes they change, but never the ways of the city? No, never. It will put you on the top for a little while and then it will kick you off of your pedestal and make you wish you never came. I met with an old contact several nights ago, Goldgel Ummurrah a rather interesting character from Harad. He's aged nicely, like me. But certainly not my type.

Her mouth tasted like a barrel of rotten blackberries. 

The throbbing ache behind her eyes didn’t help.

In a back corner of Bree’s Prancing Pony, a curious quartet had taken over a table and had held it for most of the night. Xandilif, the Champion of the Azure Faithful sat with her back to the wall, heavy steel boots up on the table as she drank Grog. Beside her, trying her best to not look like she was hiding beside Lif’s armored bulk was Finchley, a large collection of empty bowls around her as she was apparently trying to clear out Barliman’s stew supply.