Yule of Shire Rose

Background

Yule of Shire Rose , daughter of  Amo Goodbody of Brokenborings , is Amorey’s first cousin on her mother side.  According to family records, Amo  did show since a very early age a keen interest in adventures and travels and was not interested in living a  simple Shire’s life, preferring to spend much time in the wild, sleeping under the stars and hunting for a living... this was very much frowned upon  by other hobbits, and  eventually became the reason for a little family drama between  Amo and his father. Amo was often seen talking to travelers at The Plough And Stars Inn , men, dwarves and even  elves.

He  will eventually buy an old wagon and leave home, Amo  started traveling around  the Shire, hunting animals for leather and furs  and harvesting wood for a living. A year after leaving home Amo crossed the Brandywine  and left the Shire . Amo  kept traveling following the Great East Road, onwards to Bree and eventually Staddle. Here he settle for a while , here he  met a young local lass called Ellenor from a family or travelling performers and musicians.  Amo and Ellenor moved in his wagon and started living together as a couple. After a few months  they were joined in matrimony,  and soon Ellenor was with child.

Yule came to the world too early after a difficult pregnancy and birth  , very tiny even for a hobbit baby, but alive, her mother Ellenor died soon  within the hour  of giving birth . Amo was overwhelmed with grief for the loss of his wife, he blamed the little infant for her death and was clearly not prepared to look after her. The hobbit midwife  that was present took the baby away that night, and named her Yule as the day she was born.

Amo left Staddle on foot  one night,  a few days after the traumatic event, he was last seen traveling east . Yule was raised by the hobbit midwife that brought her into the world. Since a very early age Yule showed great interest in learning about ancient ways of midwifery, and medical herbs, as well as in hunting and been very close to the wild. Her strange appearance made her uneasy to be in large groups of people, preferring to spend time in solitude , hunting in the wild. Yule's knowledge of the Shire and her hobbit heritage was limited, growing up in the lands of men. Her adoptive mother explained to her the ways of the hobbits, but Yule could not really understand. The only connection with the Shire were a few cousins and second-cousins  living there, whom she had never met.

Yule's Journey of Discovery

Yule's first real contact with her Shire heritage came on the day she met an old  hobbit hunter from the Shire  traveling through Breeland on a cold but sunny winter morning. The sun brought steam rising from the fields and distant forests, she gazed at the Shire hobbit and invited him for some breakfast over her campfire, and it was during this meeting , which Yule believed to be just a coincidence but was not , that the Shire hobbit first mentioned to Yule about the importance or recording and preserving hobbit historical records , legends and tales.

The two spent almost three weeks together, hunting in the forests around Bree during the day, and talking about hobbit history and traditions by the fire at night. It was during this time  that Yule learned more about her own family heritage in the Shire and about her father and his extended family still living inside the bounds, and about a missing pendant called Shire Rose which originally belonged to one of her ancestors that first settled in the Shire.

Yule discovered that her family was closely connected to such mysterious pendant , so much so that even after its disappearance the family kept using a white Shire rose as its own symbol. Now she knew who she was,  her path was now stretching west, passed the lands of Bree and across the Brandywine Bridge. On the last day together, Yule asked the hobbit how the pendant  looked as was her intention to  go and search for it. The hobbit explained that he could not make a drawing of it in fear it would fall into the wrong hands. Many inside and outside the Shire were already looking for Shire Rose. Yule nodded her head in agreement and kept staring at the flames of the campfire. The old hobbit came to sit next to her and after a few minutes pulled up his shirt sleeve to reveal a pale tattoo on his left harm in the shape of a small crest with a beautiful white rose in it.

" This is Shire Rose, Yule"

he said in a low voice and quickly pulled down the sleeve again.

"From tonight, you shall carry Shire Rose on your heart until the day when you will be able to hold it in your hands."

Then darkness came upon her and she slept without dreams.

At first dawn the old hobbit was gone, and suddenly she realized  that for almost three weeks she had been with him, and never once , asked for his name. A sharp pain on her chest made her frown , her shirt was blood stained...as she opened it she saw a small crest with a white rose imprinted on the soft, white skin of her chest, just above her heart.

A few months passed,and Yule had changed, her dreams were filled with images from a place she had never seen, yet that felt so familiar at the same time. Her path now clear, and heading west , in her satchel a letter from her cousin, inviting her to visit the Shire. Sitting on her pony, she made her way through Bree, rode west along the Bree fields to Buckland , then  under a beautiful full moon, she crossed the Brandywine Bridge. It was her very first trip to the Shire, and into a new world.

Her life was about to change forever....