otherling

The dark of night covered the land, crickets filling the frosty air with their raucous cacophony. The traveler had been lying bundled within the tattered remains of his cloak for warmth, watching the light breeze sway the branches of the trees overhead meditatively.

A twig snapped to his side, and he turned quickly to see what had approached him at this hour. A young buck appeared from the brush, with a muslin bag tied to its small rack.

   He decided that his new friend was absolutely mad.

   He'd nearly passed her by that night in Bree, walking with his head down, buried deep within the heavy folds of his traveling cloak as was his habit. The dim torchlight barely illuminated his surroundings, and mostly just casted a pale golden aura over the silhouettes of objects and people.

   He muttered every oath and curse he knew on his way back to Bree that night.

   In the deepening darkness of the fields and pastures, the traveler moved quickly and silently aside from his fuming. There was little reason for him to return to the town in truth, save that he preferred being lost in a crowd of strangers to the utter loneliness of nature.

   It was mid-morn now, bright and clear of sky. The traveler awoke right where he'd dozed off – seated on the ground of a dusty alleyway, his back against a sooty brick wall in the seedier part of Bree. He immediately checked for his rucksack, and seeing it still lying beside his thigh, relaxed again. He'd chosen a fine spot, then, to drift to sleep.

   He pulled himself up and took a few moments to stretch out the inevitable kinks in his joints.