Penned in precise and evenly lined sentences, a blank page near the middle of a slightly scuffed, top-grain leather journal is newly inscribed. If one were to flip past the filled pages to the very beginning, one would find the first page titled with: Bernie Tweed, Bree-land followed by a series of odd symbols.
24 Thrimidge
Home, Bree-land
√ Sent letter off to Sanders with strict deadline for repayment plus fees for playing round with our agreement. Really should have ridden out to enforce but I’m done in for travelling after the walkabout with the elfin lady. Still think about her. Where’s she at now?
→ Thought came to me while I were out tending the hives. Did Miss Kitowyn happen to play round with the well out front? Stuck doll furniture in the hives for some fool reason so’s possible to think she threw stuff into it thinking it were a wishing well. Need to check this out real soon.
≡ Were having an awful time trying to get to sleep on account of the nasty musk smell what still infuses the inside of the house. Been three days I had all the windows open and I done washed all that can be, yet it still lingers on like a bad time in the outhouse after a order of whatever’s the ‘daily special’ at the Pony. So went outside to clear my head when nothing were happening save tossing and turning.
And for whatever derned reason, Miss Kitowyn herself finally turned up on my porch all smiles and sunshine. Course right as I seen her I were ready to lay into her for the state she left the house and yard in when I got back, but the girl turns real skittish when you so much as look at her wrongly, so’s instead I just tried to get her to tell me how in the blazes to clean out the smell she left behind.
Pine soap, she says. Well where am I going to find pine soap at an hour like this? So she takes off with my hand axe and comes back a time later dragging along a damn pine sapling she took from out in the woods round the village. Brought the thing right in through my door like it were the yearly yule tree, blocking my entrance and leaving a shower of pine needles all over my wood slat floor.
Good gravy. If she were any more daft, she'd have to be watered twice a week. Least she gave me my house key back.
Oh, and she’s talked me into taking her dress shopping up in Bree soon. I mean, she were easy on the eyes and all. Not like Miss Indoril were course but can’t let it be said that Bernie don’t move on after a letdown. Like water rolling off a duck’s back.
