Blida

Look at this! I haven't seen this journal for years. How time passes. Now what to write, well, I am already writing but nothing of importance. Let's try and write about the latest happenings. How do I start? From  the start. Let's see...

[The script is, overall, ostentatious. Overtly curly and perhaps hard to read, and it’s almost as if the author was already wishing to write his next sentence before the first had finished. With each log, a fresh page begins, but lying on top of them all is a torn slip of parchment that reads:]

Entry the ninth.

Since last I wrote, I was called upon to assist in the treatment of lingering lung-fever, age-related cognitive decline, commotion caused by shaking of the brain, and a minor leg break. All of these cases have had in them their lessons for me — but, for certain, the one we are most concerned with at present is that of the consumptive, Master George.

[At last this log is written in again, in that firm, upright, and elegant hand.]

Entry the eighth.

His youngest child to Bóurr son of Bíld of Erebor, greetings.

I apologize, beloved father, for taking so long in the writing of this second letter even when I realized, after the company bearing the first had already set off, that upon delivering it they would like begin speaking to you of “your son Bíld” without you having received the slightest explanation.

I am sorry. I am much given to rashness, especially of late.

Entry the sixth.

I am glad to have been of service with your leg, for I was able both to save you the discomfort of redoing your own stitches and also to hone my barbering experience as hoped. As I have mentioned before, I have spent many years at needle, but flesh was never something I had the opportunity to sew.

[The hand that writes today is not as upright and elegant as it usually is. It is tired, a bit wobbly.]

Entry the fifth.

While I was smoking — or at least feigning a smoke — with friends at the Prancing Pony, a Woman arrived with an arrow-wound, apparently received during an encounter with a thug on the Bree-lands' roads. As there were a number of experienced healers present, I was needed only as an assistant, though I would like to flatter myself and say I was of a little bit of use.

Entry the fourth.

I will first say that I am very sorry that my intrusion, the one occasion I did not think to knock, was timed so poorly. I hope nothing ill comes of your wound, or otherwise.