Journal 376th entry, Spring Festival



Dear Mother and Father, The Spring Festival has started in Eriador. There are many new games and prizes to win and I intend to try all of them. I met up with Sebbi in Bree and we started at the Bree festival grounds, racing our horses. Marshmallow won easily and I gave him some extra carrots with his feed as a reward. I was so pleased! The hedgemaze was quite a challenge; I lost my way unfortunately and in doing so, lost the game, though Sebbi made it through unscathed even while drunk! We also helped some lost elves inside the maze and for a joke planted some signs to confuse people. There were chickens loose in the maze so we chased and caught them. As a reward, the owner of the chickens gave us a lovely painting of a shrew. I also bought a keg for Rua. He does like his beer kegs. I arranged with the salesperson to have my purchases dropped off at Songburrow sometime during the next few weeks. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and hope the festival in The Shire is as much fun. Sebbi and I then travelled together to Thorin's Hall. The Inn League was there, having a beer tasting, but someone had sabotaged it by pouring swill into the waiting mugs! How rude was that! Anyway, this dwarf asked us to steal some ale recipes from the Shire! Luckily the recipes are easy to get and not secret as the dwarf thinks they are! After that we moved on to Duillond, in Ered Luin. Seems the elves there were having problems with shrews, so we pitched in and helped get rid of some. We also planted new shrubs to replace the ones the shrews had eaten. The elves were very grateful and gave us a clover table and stool for our help. We took our leave of them and went to the Shire and the Party Tree next. I danced a little with the hobbits there, but Sebbi is too dour to dance. He did want to do the Shire Inn League run though and we managed to find all the ale recipes the dwarf wanted at the same time. It was fun to do the run together with Sebbi, we raced to see who could get to the next pub first. I think I impressed him with my drinking talents. Though I did fall off the wall near Stock. He laughed at that, which I didn't mind. It was good to see a smile on his usually grim face. All in all, the festival season was a great success and I'm looking forward to the next one! Your loving Zara