The outside bears the stamp of the Quick Post on it, as well as a cirth rune in the corner. The paper is thin but tough, watermarked with cirth that a Dwarf could tell you mean "Nadvald's Wonders," with a design like the Lonely Mountain between the two words.
Dear Ma,
Well, here's your daughter, staying in a room under a roof huger nor anything you've ever seen -- no fooling, Ma, you could fit the Party Tree and the Great Willow in the main hall, and with room to spare -- and not seeing the sun at all some of the days. Everything you could want is here: your food and drink, your bed (straw is okay, especially considering the Dwarves sleep right onto a stone slab some of the time and think a wooden bed is luxury, but I'm missing my goosedown right enough), an indoor necessary... trade and sale like the M.D. marketplace, but also the making of the goods. I will say I'm never cold! Mister Nadvald has his own workshop and it's right above the hall where all the forges are. You could roast an oliphaunt on 'em, Ma. It's different here and no mistake!
The first day we got here, Mister Nadvald showed me around the whole place. First of all, there's a statue of the fella this place is named after, King Thorin Oakenshield. Terribly sad about him: he saved Erebor and got the dragon out somehow, like Mister Baggins told it, but there was a big battle and he died. Anyway, the statue is big like I can't even compare it. Maybe some of the trees in Bindbole Wood or the Old Forest. And light shines onto him, comin' from outside through a massive sapphire cut in facets. Mister Nadvald says he's the one as carved it, and then twelve Dwarves helped him hoist it up there with a block and tackle. I believe him, and his stories too, 'cause everywhere he goes in here, the merchants and anvil-pounders and warriors all nods at him like they're hoping to catch his eye.
Anyway, he showed me a place lots of the Dwarves go to relax. There's a waterfall, not too different from the one in L.D., right inside the Hall. They made a stone canal for the water to run through, and that's where they get drinking water (although you wouldn't know they ever drank any, from all the ale casks getting delivered every day) and the main canal, where there's fish. I'm glad I brought my trout flies. You never know.
And it's lovely to sit there, and sometimes I close my eyes and pretend it's the L.D. fountain and Franco is gonna come bother me any second. But it's not outdoors. So sometimes, on my lunch hour, I slips out the door in the ale-hall (the barber has his shop in the place where Dwarves do their drinking... these are grand fellas and all but I just ain't sure that's right) and that goes outside, to the foot of the main entrance stairway. And I breathe deep. There's pines around here mostly, and that's how I know there's still an outdoors, smelling 'em in stolen moments.
You're never really alone, though. There's a couple of fellas as stand right by that door, near a mailbox -- Bogi Deepdelver is the one as always greets me when I come outside every day. He's some kind of barter merchant, and he gives and receives these amber tokens. Real Blue Mountains amber, and everyone's just so casual about it. And then -- well, it's hard to get ingredients sometimes, but I had some saved pennies and long story short, I made myself a batch of your rhubarb tarts. And then some kindly old fella with a long nose and longer beard, snowy white, comes along and inquires what those delicious-smellin' things might be. So I explains it, and to be polite the way you taught me, I offers him one and warns him it's super-hot in the middle yet. So he bows to me real low and wanders off. A couple minutes later, as I'm wipin' the crumbs of my first one away, this second fella, with braids in his beard, comes by and points out he's a redhead just like me! And by the way, what is that wonderful smell? So once again I gives my little lecture on the rhubarb tart, and I can't give the first bloke one and not the second, that ain't fair. I think you can guess how I made 11 new acquaintances that day and had one tart.
I gotta go, Ma. They're havin' some kind of games that starts today, and if I finish my work, Mister Nadvald says I can go and watch. Maybe I'll even get into some of the footraces! That would be funny because some of these fellas act as they ain't seen a lady in the longest time ever. Next dress I make is gonna have a real high neck.
I miss you all ever so, even Franco, and I hope all the other Bounders is keepin' safe, and business is good, and you have some real fine mums in your garden. I'm workin' on Mister Nadvald to do a sellin' tour back through the Shire when the Farmer's Pride festival happens. Either way, I'm learnin' stuff every day, but you can sure tell Papa I miss the ring of his very own hammer.
Love and XXXXX
[large pen flourishes here]
Your favorite and only daughter, Cory
